The great texts of the Bible

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

BARNES BIBLICAL LIBRARY

THE GIFT OF

ALFRED C. BARNES

1869

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 1924 092 329 584

Cornell University
Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092329584

THE
GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE

THE GREAT TEXTS
OF THE BIBLE

EDITED BY THE REV.

JAMES HASTINGS, D.D.

EDITOR OF "THE EXPOSITORY TIMES" "THE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE'

"THE DICTIONARY OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPELS" AND

"THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS*

ST. MATTHEW

Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street

1914

/ ^ (^ /

PrinUA by
Morrison & Gxbb Liuitsd,

FOB

T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.

lONDOM ; 3IMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITKIk

HEW York: charles scribner's sons

CONTENTS

TOPICS.

PAOB

The Name of Jesus ....... 1

The Magi ....

17

The Two Baptisms

33

A Question of Life

47

The First Beatitude

65

The Puke in Heart

83

The Salt of the Earth

99

A Conservative Reformer

113

The Lord's Prater

129

The First Things First

157

The Golden Eulb

177

Choosing a Eoad

193

The Leper ....

205

The Physician .

219

The Ministry of Small Things

237

The Great Invitation .

253

Rest under the Yoke .

269

My Church

285

The Keys of the Kingdom

. 301

The Cost of Disoipleship

317

The Transfiguration .

335

Eternal Life

359

The Ministering Master

377

The Good and Faithful Servant

. 391

Unto Mb ....

405

The Blood of the Covenant .

. 419

Christ's Parting Charge

. 435

vi

CONTENTS

TEXTS.
St. Matthew.

I.

21

II.

1,2

III.

11

IV.

4

V.

3

V.

8

V.

13

V.

17

VI.

g

VI.

33

VII.

12

VII.

13,14

. VIII.

2,3

IX.

12

X.

42

XI.

28

XI.

29,30

XVI.

18

XVI.

19

XVI.

24

XVII.

1,2

XIX

16

XX

28

XXV

21

XXV

. 40

XXVI

. 28

XXVIII

. 18-20

FAOK

3

19
35

49
67

85

101

115

131

159

179

195

207 1^

221

239

255

271
, 287 "

303
. 319
, 337
. 361
. 379
. 393
. 407
. 421
. 437

The Name op Jesus.

ST. MATT.-

Literature,

Bell (C. D.), The Name above Every Name, 1.

Butler (W. J.), Sermons for Working Men, 26.

Calthrop (G.), Pulfit Recollections, 115.

Cottam (S. E.), New Sermons for a New Century, 187.

Deshon (G.), Sermons for the Ecclesiastical Year, 74.

Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 25.

Edmunds (C. C), Sermons on the Oospels, 77.

English (E.), Sermons and Homilies, 43.

Grant (W.), Christ our Hope, 175.

Gregg (J.), Sermons Preached in Trinity Church, Dublin, 142.

Gwatkin (H. M.), The Eye for Spiritual Things, 179.

Harris (S. S.), The Dignity of Man, 122.

Hawthorne (J. B.), in The Southern Baptist Pulpit, 91.

Kingsley (C), Sermons for the Times, 42.

MacDonald (G.), The Hope of the Gospel, 1.

Macgregor (G. H. C), The All-Sufficient Saviour, 9.

Maolaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew i.-viii., 12.

MacNicol (D. C), Some Memories and Memoirs, 79.

Manning (H. E.), Sermons, iv. 44.

Masterman (J. H. B.), The Challenge of Christ, 62.

Kamage (W.), Sermons, 54.

Smith (G. S.), Victory over Sin and Death, 1.

Spurgeon (0. H.), Metropolitcm Tabernacle Pulpit, xxiv. (1878), No.

1434.
Watson (J.), Respectable Sins, 163.
Wilson (J. M.), Truths New and Old, 41.
Christiam Wm-ld Pulpit, Ivi. 186 (L. Abbott).
Churchman's Pulpit : First Sunday after Christmas, iii. 66 (J. S.

Goodall).
Record, Jan. 8, 1909 (G. R. Balleine).

The Name of Jesus.

And she shall bring forth a son ; and thou shalt call his name Jesus ; for
it is he that shall save his people from their sins. — Matt. i. 21.

1. At the beginning of history, names must be invented; in
the course of ages, they become hereditary. The Baptist was
about to be called Zacharias, for that was his father's name.
But in early times the Hebrews made names for their children.
The name was often a memorial of some circumstance connected
with the birth, or descriptive of the child's appearance, or expres-
sive of the hopes entertained of him. In this last case, the name
might turn out to be most inappropriate, and become a sad
record of blighted expectations. The first child born into the
world was called by a name which betokened the fond hope of
his mother that he would prove a treasure to her; but the
infamy of his evil life bitterly put to flight that bright dream.
Our eyes are dim ; we cannot see through the mist of the
future, and foretell what our children shall be in after years.
We may bestow on them beautiful names, but, to use the striking
comparison of Solomon, this fine name may be as a "jewel of gold
in a swine's snout," the symbol of qualities of which they are
wholly destitute.

2. Had it been left to human wisdom to invent a name for the
Child of the Virgin, we can hardly form a guess of what the
result would have been. Not a little friendly discussion is some-
times excited by the difficulty of fixing on a name. But this
case was peculiar. Here was a Child unlike any that had ever
been born of woman. How perplexing it would have been to
find a name sufficiently expressive and obviously appropriate.
But the point was settled by God Himself. The right to deter-
mine the name of the child belongs to the parent; and how
infinitely competent in this case was the Father to give His Son

4 THE NAME OF JESUS

the most suitable name. None knew the Son but the Father, and
His decision must be accepted, not only as final, but as the best
that could have been come to. The name selected was beautifully
simple. A child may be taught to lisp it, and the dullest
memory can retain it. Divine greatness is unostentatious. The
simplest word in our language is "God," and the next to it is
" Jesus."

^ If thou wilt be well with God, and have grace to rule thy
life aright ; and come to the joy of love : this name Jesus fasten
it BO fast in thy heart that it never come out of thy thought.
And when thou speakest to Him, and sayest "Jesus" through
custom, it shall be in thine ears joy, in thy mouth honey, in thy
heart melody.*

The Associations of the Name.

1. The name " Jesus " was no new name, coined in the courts
of heaven, and carried to earth for the first time by the lips of
the angel messenger. A new name is cold and meaningless, and
stirs no memories of the past. There is a warmth about an old
familiar name which no new combination of letters can ever
hope to rival, and so it was an old name, a name with a history
behind it, that the angel gave to the unborn Son of Mary. There
was more than one little Jewish boy who bore that name at that
very time. In the high priest's family alone there were no less
than three, each of whom would one day be high priest in his
turn. There was Jesus, son of Sapphia, who would one day
become a famous brigand chief, and, still more famous, Jesus
surnamed Barabbas, whom the people would prefer one day
to Jesus surnamed Christ. There was Jesus Justus, who would
one day become the trusted helper of St. Paul, and Jesus the
father of Elymas, the sorcerer, St. Paul's opponent in Cyprus,
There was Jesus the friend of Josephus, and Jesus Thebuti the
priest, and Jesus the peasant, who would one day terrify Jerusalem
with his cries. Over many a little living Jesus a mother's head
was bending on the day when Mary clasped her new-born baby to
her bosom. How came it that so many boys were called by the

1 Richard EoUe.

ST. MATTHEW i. 21 5

same name ? We know what makes a name popular at the
present day ; it is because that name is borne by the popular hero
of the hour. How many girls were christened Florence, after
the lady with the lamp ! The Boer war produced a never-ending
crop of little Eoberts. And so it has always been. Those Jewish
boys were all called Jesus after two great national heroes who
had borne that name in the past.

2. Who were those heroes? Where do we find the name
"Jesus" in the Old Testament? We do not find it anywhere,
nor do we expect to find it ; for we are all familiar with the way
a name changes as it passes from one language to another — how,
for example, the Hebrew Johanan becomes in English John, and
in German Hans, and in Eussian Ivan, and in Spanish Juan, and
in Italian Giovanni; the name is the same, but the form varies
according to the language. Now the Old Testament and the
New Testament were written in different languages. The Old
Testament was written in Hebrew, and the New Testament
was written in Greek; and thus the same names appear under
different forms. Elijah, for example, in the New Testament is
always called Elias. And so when we search the Hebrew Old
Testament for the Greek name Jesus we shall expect to find
some change in the spelling.

(1) As a matter of fact we meet the name for the first time
in the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Numbers and the six-
teenth verse, where we read that " Moses called Hoshea the son of
Nun Joshua " (which means " Jehovah is salvation "). Jesus and
Joshua are exactly the same name, only one is the Greek form
and the other is the Hebrew. Joshua the son of Nun the
commander-in-chief of the Lord's people, under whom they con-
quered their inheritance, the leader who brought them out of the
desert to the land of milk and honey, the captain who ever led
them to victory, though foes were strong and crafty, the ruler
who settled every family in the precise position which God ap-
pointed for it, and there gave it rest — he is the first who bears
the name " Jesus " in the pages of history.

(2) But this Jesus died, and the centuries passed on, and a
time came when the people lost the land that had been given
them, when for their sins they were carried away captive to

6 THE NAME OF JESUS

Babylon, and then, after forty miserable years, the second Jesus
came— Jeshua the high priest, who led the people back to the
land that had been lost by sin ; Jeshua, who rebuilt the Temple
and restored the worship of God ; Jeshua, who was crowned with
gold by the prophet Zechariah, as the type and forerunner of a
greater High Priest who was to come ; Jeshua, the son of Jehozadak,
was the second Jesus in history.

3. And now we can appreciate something of the associations
of the name ; we can realize a little of what the message, " Thou
shalt call his name Jesus," would mean to a pious Jew like Joseph.
Thou shalt name Him after the great captain who drove the
Canaanites from the land. Thou shalt name Him after the great
high priest who brought back the people out of bondage. Thou
shalt call Him Jesus ; for He, too, shall be a Saviour. " He shall
save his people from their sins."

^ Man is the principle of the religion of the Neo-Hegelians,
and intellect is the climax of man. Their religion, then, is the
religion of intellect. There you have the two worlds: Christi-
anity brings and preaches salvation by the conversion of the will,
— humanism by the emancipation of the mind. One attacks the
heart, the other the brain. Both wish to enable man to reach his
ideal. But the ideal suffers, if not by its content, at least by the
disposition of its content, by the predominance and sovereignty
given to this or that inner power. For one, the mind is the organ
of the soul ; for the other, the soul is an inferior state of the mind;
the one wishes to enlighten by making better, the other to make
better by enlightening. It is the difference between Socrates and
Jesus. The cardinal question is that of sin. The question of
immanence or of dualism is secondary. The Trinity, the life to
come, paradise and hell, may cease to be dogmas and spiritual
realities, the form and the letter may vanish away, — the question
of humanity remains : What is it which saves ? ^

II.

The Meaning of the Name.

1. In one sense, there is nothing in a name. The nature of the
thing is independent of it. It is not in the power of any name
' Amiel's Journal (trans, by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 11.

ST. MATTHEW i. 21 7

to make evil good, or good evil ; and our Saviour, Jesus Christ,
would have been what He is, by whatever name He had been
called. But in another view there is something in a name. It
stands for the thing, and, through frequent use, comes to be
identified with it. It is therefore, of the highest moment that the
name should correspond with the thing, and convey a correct idea
of it. Exactness of thought requires exactness of language.
Knowledge depends for its accuracy on the right use of words,
and the great instructors of mankind are as careful of the expres-
sion as of the idea. Words are things. We deal with them, not as
sounds but as substances, and look not so much at them as at
the verities in them. Names are persons. When one is mentioned
in our hearing, it brings the man before us, and awakens the
feelings which would be excited if he were present himself.

Now, we may see this, above all, in the adorable name of
Jesus. That name, above all others, ought to show us what a
name means ; for it is the name of the Son of Man, the one
perfect and sinless man, the pattern of all men ; and therefore it
must be a perfect name, and a pattern for all names. And it was
given to the Lord not by man, but by God; and therefore it
must show and mean not merely some outward accident about
Him, something which He seemed to be, or looked like, in
men's eyes; no, the name of Jesus must mean what the Lord
was in the sight of His Father in Heaven; what He was in
the eternal purpose of God the Father; what He was, really
and absolutely, in Himself; it must mean and declare the
very substance of His being. And so, indeed, it does; for the
adorable name of Jesus means nothing else but God the Saviour
— God who saves. This is His name, and was, and ever will be.
This name He fulfilled on earth, and proved it to be His character.
His exact description. His very name, in short, which made Him
different from all other beings in heaven or earth, create or un-
create; and therefore He bears His name to all eternity, for a
mark of what He has been, and is, and will be for ever — God
the Saviour ; and this is the perfect name, the pattern of all other
names of men.

^ When Adam named all the beasts, we read that whatsoever
he called any beast, that was the name of it. The names which
he gave described each beast ; they were taken from something

8 THE NAME OF JESUS

in its appearance, or its ways and habits, and so each was its
right name, the name which expressed its nature. And so now,
when learned men discover animals or plants in foreign countries,
they do not give them names at random, but take care to invent
names for them which may describe their natures, and make
people understand what they are like. And much more, in old
times, had the names of men a meaning. If it was reasonable to
give names full of meaning to each kind of dumb animal, much
more to each man separately, for each man has a character
different from all others, a calling different from all others, and
therefore he ought to have his own name separate from all others.
Accordingly in old times it was the custom to give each child
a separate name, which had a meaning in it which was, as it
were, a description of the child, or of something particular about
the child.i

2. The name " Jesus," then, means Saviour. What does He
save men from ?

(1) Jesus saves from ignorance. If we consider the incarnate
life of the Son of God as a theophany and a revealing, we see at
once what power it had, and still has, to rescue man from the
blind error which is a part of sin. In Jesus, man sees God as He
is. And awakened by this vision, he sees time and the world as
they really are. The false theories of life on which he proceeds
are all contradicted in Him. Every falsehood which the world's
enchantment tells, every delusion which it weaves with its
Cireean spell, finds its refutation in Him. Part of the power of
sin lies in its specious delusions. Among these delusions is the
lie that the world is all ; the lie that sensual pleasure is good, that
passion is strong, that pride is majestic, that disobedience is wise.
Jesus came and refuted all these immemorial lies.

(2) But if He is only a lawgiver, or a teacher of Divine truth,
or a finger-board to direct us in the way of righteousness. He is
insufficient for our needs. The man who teaches me the truth is
not himself the truth. And if Jesus is only a teacher of the way
of salvation, He is not Himself salvation. It is true that man is
sadly and fearfully ignorant both of himself and of the infinite
God to whom he must give account for the deeds done in the
body; and it is also true that by coming to Christ he can be
relieved of this ignorance. But if Jesus is only a pedagogue or

' C. Kingsley.

ST. MATTHEW i. 21 g

schoolmaster, He does not touch the deepest necessities of man's
condition. Such a view of Him may improve a man's morals, and
elevate him somewhat in other respects, but it can never save
him from the power and consequences of sin. Jesus is Himself
the salvation which He taught, and which He commissioned His
disciples to preach. He is the wisdom, the grace, the mercy, and
the power that save men from their sins.

Tf As Laurence Oliphant lay dying, the dear and sacred name
of Jesus was ever on his tongue. There had been times in his
life when he had spoken it with an accent of perhaps less rever-
ence than was congenial to listeners probably less devout than he,
but holding a more absolute view of our Lord's position and work
— as there had been times when he had called himself not a
Christian, in the ordinary meaning of the word. But no one
could doubt now of his entire and loving reception of that name
as his own highest hope as well as that of all the world. A day
or two before his death he called his faithful nurse early in the
morning, probably in that rising of the energies which comes
with the brightness of the day, and told her that he was " un-
speakably happy." "Christ has touched me. He has held me
in His arms. I am changed — He has changed me. Never again
can I be the same, for His power has cleansed me ; I am a new
man." " Then he looked at me yearningly," she adds, " and said,
' Do you understand ? '" i

^ Many years ago there was a great famine of water in a town
in the south of France. It was a hot summer, no rain fell for
months, and as the people always suffered from the want of water,
this dry, hot season greatly increased their sufferings, and many
of them died. A few miles away from the town was a range of
hills ; in the hills were some beautiful springs of water, but the
labour and expense of bringing the water from the springs to the
town was so great that very little of it could be brought. In this
town there lived a young man whom we shall call Jean. He was
industrious and good, and was shortly to be married to a beautiful
young woman, whom he dearly loved. But all at once the
marriage was put off, the young man began to go about in old
clothes, took very little to eat, gave up his pleasant home and
went to live in a garret, and, in short, became a thorough miser.
He went to bed in the dark to save candle, begged other people's
cast-off clothing, and very soon became changed from a blithe and
happy young man into a wretched-looking old one. Nobody
loved him now. His charming bride forgot him, and married
' M. 0. W. Oliphant, Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant, 403,

lo THE NAME OF JESUS

another man ; the children called him names in the streets, and
everybody shunned his house. After many years of wretched-
ness he died. When his relatives went to search his room they
found him almost wasted to a skeleton, and all his furniture sold,
whUe the old man's body was lying upon a heap of straw.
Under his head they found a will, and what do you think was
in it ? This : that in that dreadful summer, forty years ago, Jean
had been so saddened by the dreadful suffering of the people —
especially of the children — for want of water, that he had given
up his young bride, his pleasant home, his happy prospects, and
had devoted himself day and night all through the weary years
to working and saving, so that the people might have the beautiful
water brought to them from the distant springs in the hillside.
Oh, how everybody blessed that old man ! A reservoir was made
in the hills, pipes were laid under the ground, and the water was
brought into the town so freely that its inhabitants never thirsted
any more. The old man did not create the water, neither did he
make the people thirst, he simply brought the living water and
the dying people together — and he sacrificed himself in doing it.
Now that is just how Jesus saves men. He did not make God
love them — God always loved them. He did not create God's
love or mercy — those great springs of blessing were and always
are in the great heart of God. He did not make men sinful and
sad so that they needed these things; but He brought these
springs of love and blessing down to the men that were dying
for the need of them. He is the channel through which God's
love comes to us. From God, but through Christ, we receive all
the blessings of salvation. Jesus brought all these good things to
us, and sacrificed Himself in doing so.^

(3) But if man is to be saved, he must be saved not only from
sin's guilt, and sin's defilement, but from sin's power. If man
is to be fully saved, not only must he, in the infinite mercy of
God, be treated as righteous, he must become actually righteous
and holy and good. This is the ultimate purpose of God. He
removes man's condemnation. He forgives man's sin, in order that
he may become holy. Forgiveness and justification are in order
to holiness. But man cannot be personally holy until he is set
free from the enslaving power of sin. He, therefore, who would
be the Saviour of man must deal with this. How does Jesus deal
with it ? He deals with it as our Lord and King, dwelling and
reigning within us by the Holy Ghost. Eemember, the Jesus

1 J. Colwell.

ST. MATTHEW i. 21 11

who shall save His people from their sins is One who lives. He
is One who is possessed of all power. He takes men so into
union with Himself that they are within the circle of His life.
They are in Him as the branch is in the vine. So their weakness is
turned into might, by the advent of His strength into their lives.
The sin which strives to enslave the believer finds that it has to
deal with the believer's Lord. And by that Lord it is defeated ;
its power is broken and its dominion for ever overthrown. The dis-
ease which we cannot shake off flies before Him ; the fire which
we could not quench is by Him put out ; the evil root is eradi-
cated, the mighty current stemmed. The strong man armed
meets the stronger than he, and is despoiled. In Him we conquer
sin. His power turns the scale of battle in our favour. Sin has not
dominion over us. The law of the spirit of life makes us free
from the law of sin and death. So we not only will the will of
God, but also do it. He makes us perfect in every good work to do
His will, working in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

^ The one cure for any organism is to be set right — to have
all its parts brought into harmony with each other; the one
comfort is to know this cure in process. Kightness alone is cure.
The return of the organism to its true self is its only possible
ease. To free a man from suffering, he must be set right, put in
health ; and the health at the root of man's being, his rightness,
is to be free from wrongness, that is, from sin. A man is right
when there is no wrong in him. The wrong, the evil, is in him ;
he must be set free from it. I do not mean set free from the
sins he has done ; that will follow ; I mean the sins he is doing,
or is capable of doing; the sins in his being which spoil his
nature, the wrongness in him, the evil he consents to ; the sin he
is, which makes him do the sin he does. To save a man from his
sins is to say to him, in sense perfect and eternal, " Eise up and
walk. Be at liberty in thy essential being. Be free as the Son
of Grod is free." To do this for us Jesus was born and remains
born to all the ages.'-

' George MaoDonald, The Hope of the Gospel, 6.

12 THE NAME OF JESUS

III.

The Powbe of the Name.

1. The angel said to Joseph, " Thou shalt call his name Jesus,"
and to-day what name is there so great as this ? What other so
enduring ? It has lived through anarchy and revolution, through
storm and change, decay and death. Other names since then,
and many of them accounted great — names which held the world
in awe, which blanched the cheek, and made men tremble — have
passed into oblivion ; but this name is as fresh as ever, and far
more powerful than it was of old. It is the earliest name that
Christian parents breathe into their children's ears ; the first they
teach them to lisp, as they lie in their lap, or stand at their knee.
It is the gracious name woven into all our prayers and mingling
with all our praises.

It is the great name which many a learned and holy man has
felt it his highest privilege, his most sacred duty, to proclaim.
It is the precious name which the evangelist takes to the poorest
and most wretched alleys of our cities and towns, knowing that
it can lift the burden of sin and sorrow from the soul, and fill it
with peace and purity and strength. It is the all-powerful name
which the Church is occupied in sending to the farthest places of
the earth, that the nations may be turned " from darkness to light,
and from the power of Satan unto God." It is the hallowed
name in which the civilized peoples of the globe enact their laws,
crown their kings, fight their battles, and celebrate their vic-
tories. It is the Divine name on whose authority we sanctify the
dearest relationships of life, baptize the child at the font, bless
the union at the marriage altar, and commit our dead to the grave.
And wherever this name is proclaimed, it is inspiring faith, hope,
and love. Many who hear it place their trust in the Saviour,
and look to Him as the Source of all blessing, the Well-spring of
all joy.

If Who does not know what is the power of the name of father
or mother, sister or brother ? What visions they bring back upon
us : what a stream of memories ; of years long passed away, of
careless childhood, bright mornings', lingering twilights, the early
dawn, the evening star, and all the long-vanished world of happy,

ST. MATTHEW i. 21 13

unanxious thoughts, with the loves, hopes, smiles, and tenderness
of days gone by. Who does not know what visions of maturer
life come and go with the sound of a name, of one familiar word
— the symbol of a whole order now no more ? The greater part
of our consciousness is summed up in memory ; the present is but
a moment, ever flowing, past almost as soon as come. Our life is
either behind us or before ; the future in hope and expectation,
the past in trial and remembrance. Our life to come is little
realized as yet; we have some dim outlines of things unseen,
forecastings of realities behind the veil, and objects of faith be-
yond the grave ; but all this is too Divine and high. We can
hardly conceive it; at best faintly, often not at all. Our chief
consciousness of life is in the past, which yet hangs about us as
an atmosphere peopled with forms and memories. They live for
us now in names, beloved and blessed.^

2. There is nothing which His name has not hallowed and
glorified. The commonest things of earth have now a higher
and holier meaning than they ever had before, or ever could have
had without Him. A virtue has flowed out of Him into every-
thing He has touched. Has not labour become nobler since He
sat at Nazareth on the carpenter's bench ? Has not childhood
become more sacred since He took little children up in His arms,
put His hands upon them, and blessed them ? Has not woman
been elevated since He lay in a woman's arms, and was clasped
to a woman's heart ? Has not penitence become more holy since
the Magdalen fell at His feet to wash them with her tears, and
wipe them with the hairs of her head? Has not sorrow been
more heavenly since the "Man of Sorrows" wept bitter tears,
cried out in the agony of His bloody sweat, and suffered on
Calvary ? Has not death changed its character since He died and,
robbing the arch-fiend of his sting and turning the tide of battle,
wrested from the last enemy the victory? Has not the grave
become brighter since He lay in the rocky tomb under linen
napkin and shroud ? The very cross itself, that " accursed tree,"
that symbol of shame, has been transfigured into an emblem of
all that is dearest to the Christian heart or that is holiest in the
Christian faith. And not only things but persons also have been
transfigured by contact with Jesus. Sinners have become saints ;
fishermen, apostles; publicans, disciples. A persecuting and
> H. E. Manning, Sermons, vr. 46.

14 THE NAME OF JESUS

blaspheming Saul has been changed into a holy and loving Paul.
It may be recorded of all who drew near Him that " as many as
touched were made perfectly whole." " As many as received him,
to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them
that believe on his name."

^ The Saviour of the world must heal not only the breach
between God and man, but the sickness of human nature itself.
And this He does by implanting in man, through union with His
own perfect nature, a supernatural principle of regeneration; a
germ of new life which may destroy the cause of corruption, and
arrest its progress, and make human nature again capable of union
with God. The corrupt nature struggles still, seeks for its separate
life away from God, a life that is no life. But the moment the
new life is given, the helplessness, the hopelessness of the struggle
is past. The cry of human nature, " I cannot do the things that
I would," becomes the thankful utterance of the regenerate soul,
" I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." ^

3. The name still works as a charm. As long as there is sin
in the world, and sorrow, broken hearts and wounded spirits ; as
long as there are chambers of sickness and death-beds, so long will
the name of Jesus have power. The saving wonders wrought by
Him who bears the name are continued to-day. They are con-
tinued in the thousands of assemblies which are met in toiling
cities, crowded towns and scattered villages, in solitary hamlets
and on heath-clad moors, and in lonely ships ploughing the
mighty deep. Everywhere where men of like passions with our-
selves have gathered to worship God, Christ has thrown open the
doors of heaven, and has sent down His Spirit to renew, to sanctify,
to strengthen, and to console. Many shall be born again into the
Kingdom of God, and be saved from their sins, and, receiving
pardon, shall be given power to wrestle down strong temptations,
and shall go forth inspired with ' a new hope and girt with a new
strength, to be purer, better, wiser, more humble, more peaceful ;
and all the week shall be brighter because of the worship of His
name on His own day.

TI It was in the course of these sermons delivered at Venice and
in the cities of Venetia, that Bernardine's zeal for the propagation
of devotion to the holy name of Jesus first began openly to assert
' Aubrey L. Moore, Some Aspects of Sin.

ST. MATTHEW i. 21 15

itself. This devotion, which may be said to date back to the
Pauline saying, In nomine Jesu omne genu flectatur, had been
specially fostered by the Franciscan order. We find St. Francis
of Assisi making it the theme of many pious exhortations, while
the holy name never crossed his lips without his voice faltering
as though he were inwardly entranced by a heavenly melody.
Nor was his example lost on St. Bonaventure, the author of a
leaflet, De laude melliflui nomini Jesu. Bernardine was, there-
fore, no innovator in striving to rekindle popular fervour towards
a devotion which, though heretofore greatly in vogue, had, in his
day, been cast somewhat into the shade. In his sermons our
saint was for ever extolling the beauty and majesty, the mystery
and efficacy of the name of Jesus, and, in order outwardly to
embody the sentiments of piety he sought to instil into their
hearts, we find him calling upon his hearers to inscribe the holy
Name or one of its customary abbreviations on the walls alike of
public buildings and of private houses. He himself had adopted the
monogram I.H.S., which he loved to see surrounded by a circle of
golden rays. And the adoption of this symbol he deemed particularly
opportune in a land so overrun by paganism, since he hoped to
see the same substituted for the Guelf and Ghibelline emblems
with which the walls then literally swarmed, and so to set an
outward seal on inward peace of heart. And the practice was
adopted, and spread like wildfire throughout Venetia, where both
ofiBcials and private individuals vied with one another in every-
where printing or carving the sacred monogram, encircled by rays,
until it finally became significant of Bernardine's passage and of
the popular assent to his word.^

' P. Thureau-Dangin, Saint Bernardine of Siena (trans, by Baroness G. von
Hiigel), 66.

The Magi.

ST. MATt. — 2

Literature.

Aitken (W. H. M. H.), The Bevealer Revealed, 17.
Alexander (W.), The Leading Ideas of the Gospels, 49.
Brooke (S. A.), The Early Life of Jesus, 26.
Burrell (D. J.), The Religion of the Future, 97.

„ „ The Wondrous Gross, 124.

Davies (D.), TalTes with Men, Women and Children, i. 403.
Eamea (J.), The Shattered Temple, 69.
Hall (C. R.), Advent to Whit-Sunday, 54.
Holland (H. S.), Vital Values, 24.
Hort (F. J. A.), Gambridge and other Sermons, 25.
Hunt (A. N.), Sermons for the Christian Year, i. 56.
Jones (J. C), Studies in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 27.
Liddon (H. P.), Christmastide Sermons, 348.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew i.-viii., 19.
Morgan (Q. C), The Crises of the Christ, 74.
Mursell (W. A.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 107.
Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, v. 2.
Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, ii. 17.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xvi. (1870), No. 967 ;

xxix. (1883), No. 1698.
Tipple (S. A.), The Admiring Guest, 60.
Wilberforce (B.), The Hope that is in Me, 52.
Christian Age, xli. 36 (T. de W. Talmage) ; slvi. 386 (P. Brooks).
Christian World Pulpit, xlix. 40 (A. G. Brown) ; Ivii. 33 (H. S.

Holland) ; Ixxii. 580 (A. H. Sime) ; Ixxiv. 403 (L. A. Crandall).
Churchman's Pulpit : The Epiphany, iii. 226 (F. Field).
Homiletic Review, Ivi. 460 (F. W. Luce).

i8

The Magi.

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judsa in the days of Herod
the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where
is he that is born King of the Jews ? for we saw his star in the east, and are
come to worship him. — Matt. ii. i, 2.

In the visit of the Magi we have an incident of surpassing
imaginative beauty. All through the ages it has been glorified
by pencil and song. Yet, singular to say, the Epiphany is the
only scene in the sublime opening of the drama of the life of
Jesus for which St. Matthew claims no prophecy whatever. We
are tempted to think that he might have referred to Balaam's
language (Num. xxiv. 17). The Church in her Epiphany services
has seen the bending forms of kings in the dim magnificence of
the language of psalmist and seer (Ps. Ixxii. 10-15 ; Isa. Ix. 6).
Still the fact remains that over the Epiphany alone in these two
chapters St. Matthew makes us hear no joy-bells of prophecy
filling the air. If he had foreseen that he would be accused
of translating a picture of prophecy into the language of fact, he
could scarcely have taken a more efifectual way of defending
himself than by omitting between vv. 11 and 12 of chap. ii. his
familiar formula, " that it might be fulfilled."

^ The Christians in the second century, discontented with the
extreme plainness of the story in the Gospels, embellished it
largely. We are told that the star sparkled more brilliantly
than all the others in the sky. It was a strange and wondrous
sight, for the moon and all the stars formed, as if in homage, a
choir around it as it moved.

Later on the wise men are represented as princes, then as
kings. They symbolize the Trinity. They are the lords of the
three races of men. Their gifts have spiritual, then doctrinal,
meanings. They are supplied with names and are made the
patron saints of travellers. As the legend grew, and Art took it
up, they arrive at Bethlehem attended by a great crowd of
followers, splendidly dressed, and riding on horses and camels and

19

20 THE MAGI

bearing treasures. Kneeling in their royal robes, they adore the
child in the manger, and the child bends forward to bless them.

Then come all the stories connected with them after their
death. Their bodies rested for a long time in the magnificent
temple that Eastern Christianity dedicated to the Divine Wisdom,
which still bears that ancient title, though Mohammed claims it
now instead of Christ. Milan received them next, and lost them ;
and now for six hundred years the great cathedral of the Ehine
has grown up above their sacred bones, representing in its
gradual up-building, and for a long time in its unfinished glory,
not only the slow accretion of splendid and poetic thoughts around
the solitary and ancient story, but also the growth of all those
stories to which we give the name of myths.^

•[f From time immemorial they have been regarded as kings :

We three kings of Orient are,
Bearing gifts, we traverse afar
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.

In the cathedral at Cologne there is a golden reliquary in which
are preserved, in the odour of sanctity, the relics of these men.
I said to the venerable monk in attendance, "Do you really
believe that these are the relics of the wise men ? " " Oh yes,"
he replied, " there is no question whatever as to their genuineness ;
we know their names — Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, The
Venerable Bede tells all about them." *

Seeking a King.

1. The wise men came from the East. They came from
beyond the bounds of that chosen and favoured Israel whose were
the covenants, the oracles, the fires of Sinai, the glory of Zion,
and the faith of the fathers. They came, doubtless, from Persia.
Their business was a vain attempt to read the fortunes of empires
and of men by watching the changing positions and mutual
attractions of the stars. No plainer revelation of God's loving-
kindness and wisdom stood before their eyes than the cold

*S. A. Brooke, The Early Life of Jems, 27.
' D. J. Bnrrell, The Religion of the Future, 99.

ST. MATTHEW ii. i, 2 21

splendours of the midnight sky. The heavenly commandment
and promise they must spell out in the mystic syllables of the
constellations, or else grope on in darkness. The sun was the
burning eye of an Unknown Deity. With night-long solemn
vigils, they strained their eyes into the heavens ; but they
saw no "Heaven of heavens," because they saw no Father of
forgiveness, and no "heart of love. Their prophet was Zoroaster
— a mysterious, if not quite mythical, person, ever vanishing in
the shadows of an uncertain antiquity. These were the men
whom God was leading to Bethlehem, representatives of that
whole pagan world which He would draw to the Saviour.

Yet these disciples of Zoroaster held the best religion of their
time, outside of Judaism. Their sacred books prove them to have
been no degraded or sensual idolaters. When they fed their
sacred fires with spices and fragrant wood, it was not the fire they
worshipped, but a strange and unseen Light, of which the fire was
a symbol. Their Ormuzd was an Infinite Spirit, and the star
spirits were his bright subordinates. They believed in im-
mortality, in judgment, in prayer, in the sacredness of marriage,
in obedience, in honesty; they practised carefully most of the
virtues of the Christian morality, including that foundation one
of truthfulness, which is rare enough in both East and West, and
which Christianity has found it so hard to establish in public and
in private life, in all its centuries of discipline. To this day, when
the traveller or the merchant meets among the native eastern cities
a man more intelligent, more upright, of nobler manners and
gentler hospitality than the rest, he is almost sure to find him
a Parsi, a descendant of those Zoroastrian students of the stars,
brethren or children of the wise men who offered their gold,
frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Messiah in the stable.

2. These wise men looked for a King. " Where is he," they
asked, " that is born King of the Jews ? " Why did their expecta-
tions take this form? We could understand their longing for
one who should give them bread ; or, if they had bread enough,
should give them more gold to buy whatever would minister to
their comfort, and pride ; or one who, since they cared for wisdom,
should tell them hidden things that they desired to know ; or one
who should take away the sting of a guilty conscience, and set

22 THE MAGI

them at peace with any higher god whom they might have
offended ; or, better still, one who should cleanse their will, and
strengthen their power to live a worthy life. But their hope, as
we read of it, was simply in a king. The true King might indeed
bestow all these benefits which we have been counting up ; but
that was not what came first to their minds. In hoping for a
king, they hoped for one who would rule them, to whom they
should do reverence, and whom, when the time came, they should
obey.. They felt that the first of all needs for themselves and
for the whole distracted world was to be governed, to be
bound together in a common work appointed by a common ruling
head.

^ Man is always seeking a king, for he feels in the depths of
his being that he is never so great as in the presence of his greater.
Let a great man appear in the world, and smaller men spon-
taneously rally round him ; for they feel they are never so great
as in the presence of their greater, never so noble as in doing the
work of obedience. " He that is great among you, let him be the
servant of all." That is an axiom engraved within us before
Christ formulated it into words and committed it to the pages
of inspiration. Mankind desire a king — one whose behests they
deem it all honour to obey, and in whose presence they think it
exaltation to bow. On what other principle can we account for
the terrible despotisms that have crushed the world ? How were
they possible, a few tyrannizing over millions ? They were
possible only on one condition — that they were a response, or the
semblance of one, to a deep craving implanted in our nature by
the Creator. " Where is he that is born King ? " The vast
empires were only answers to the question — false ones if you
like, but answers nevertheless — and the poor distracted heart of
humanity deemed any answer better than none at all.^

If As the magi seek a Eedeemer, so Herod fears a successor.
If His birth as an infant makes proud kings tremble, what will
His tribunal as a judge do ? *

3. They sought one who was born king of the Jews. How they

supposed at that time that this could be we know not; many

thoughts were doubtless possible then which do not occur to us

now. But the word assuredly meant at least thus much, that the

expected king was not one raised to his throne by his own right

' J. C. Jones, Studies in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 44.
' St. Augustine,

ST. MATTHEW ii. i, 2 23

hand, or by the voice of men, for his strength or courage or wisdom
or riches, but one carrying a Divine title from his birth. That
king was not to be a Saul, not even a David, but a David's son.
There was another king in the land already, Herod the king, as
the Bible calls him, a powerful ruler, cruel and unscrupulous, but
magnificent in his doings — the very ruler to draw to him men of the
East with the charm of awe. He was no true Jew, much less of
David's line ; there was nothing in him of the true Jew's heart,
which was David's heart. Many of his own subjects might be
dazzled by the one who promised to make them strong with
earthly strength, because they were indifferent to his readiness to
profane all that their fathers had kept holy. But to the wise
men he could never be what they sought. They took no sort of
account of him as they entered Jerusalem, asking, "Where is
he that is born King of the Jews ? "

4. Again, it was a king of the Jews that they looked for.
How was this? They were not Jews themselves; they were
strangers to the commonwealth of Israel. Yet there was much in
that strange nation, so full as it seemed of undying life, again and
again buffeted and crushed, but not yet destroyed, worshipping
one unseen God at one holy place with psalm and sacrifice,
which might well persuade men of the East that a wondrous future
was in store for Israel and the ruler of Israel. This was not the
first time that Gentile witness had been borne to the Divine
mission of the Jewish people ; twice, at two great moments of the
history, a voice from the world without had done homage to the
holy race. Before the Promised Land was entered, Balaam the
prophet of Moab had confessed the new power that was growing
in the East : " God brought him forth out of Egypt ; he hath as it
were the strength of an unicorn : he shall eat up the nations his
enemies '' ; " I shall see him, but not now : I shall behold him, but
not nigh : there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre
shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and
destroy all the children of Sheth." Once again, the second birth
of the people out of their long captivity was helped and blessed
by a king of the Gentile East, when Cyrus proclaimed that the
Lord God of heaven had charged him to build Him an house in
Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and sent forth the summons, " Who

24 THE MAGI

is there among you of all his people ? His God be with him, and
let him go up."

T[ The Messianic hope of the last half-century before Christ
was the hope of a King, and the Psalms of Solomon see in the
coming reign of Messiah the salvation of Israel : " Eaise up unto
them their King, the son of David . . . and there shall be no
iniquity in his days in their midst, for all shall be holy, and their
King is the Lord Messiah." The charge laid against Jesus before
the procurator was that, acting on these expectations, He had
made Himself a king, and thus posed as a rival of Caesar. As a
matter of fact. He had withdrawn from the multitudes when they
would have forced Him into that false position. Yet before Pilate
He did not deny His kingly character, only affirming, "My
kingdom is not of this world, or not from hence." The title on the
cross, therefore, though inexact, was not radically untrue ; a king
lay dying there, though not one who was in any exclusive or
earthly sense " the King of the Jews." The penitent robber came
nearer to the truth when he said, " Jesus, remember me, when thou
comest in thy kingdom." It was borne in upon his mind that in
some mysterious way the Kingdom was to be reached through
the cross, and lay beyond it ; and his words almost echo the Lord's
description of Himself as about to go " into a far country, to
receive for himself a kingdom and to return." ^

II.

Following a Stae.

1. "We saw his star in the east, and are come to worship
him." While in the East they saw the star of the King of the
Jews. They saw, probably, at first, one of the fixed stars, to
which they were led, in the course of their inquiry, to attach this
specific value ; and as it shone out on them night by night over
their western horizon, they determined to walk in the direction
from which it shone, or, as we should say, to follow it. They
followed it, accordingly, day by day ; night by night they gazed
wistfully at it, and then rose to follow it again ; they gazed and
followed, and so they crossed the desert and reached the city to
which even the heathen East had learned to ascribe an exceptional
sanctity. And as their coming became known at gatherings of
the priesthood, and in the palace of the king, they learned how an

' H. B. Swete, The Ascended Christ, 17.

ST. MATTHEW ii. i, 2 25

ancient prophecy had ruled that He whom they sought would be
born in Bethlehem.

f Many a starry night I have followed a road leading due
south, and over the road hung Betelgeux of Capella (westering
with the others), and as I walked the star " went before me," and
when I stopped it " stood " over farmstead or cottage. It was no
strain of imagination to say that the star led me on; on the
contrary, the optical illusion was so strong that while one was in
motion one could scarcely help thinking of the star as advancing
just as I myself advanced.^

^ What sort of a star was it which they tell us started them
on their journey? Not a planet, clearly, nor a conjunction of
planets, as Kepler first suggested ; for the planets were malign for
the Magi. It seems most natural to think of a Nova, one of
those sudden apparitions that tell us of a stupendous outburst in
the depths of space, bringing to our eyes a new star that in a few
weeks or months fades away from sight. We remember the Nova
in Perseus which in February 1901 added a brief unit to the small
company of our first-magnitude stars. But the Star of the Magi
need not have been as bright as this. Professional astrologers
would notice a new star which had no chance of observation by
amateurs; and whether it was a Nova or not, the place of the
star would probably count for more with them than its brilliance.
My preference for the postulate of a Nova comes from the
naturalness of their quest for an identification of the Fravashi
they would associate with it. They had no doubt met with
numerous Jews in their own country, and had knowledge of their
Messianic hopes, which may even have struck them with their
resemblance to their own expectation of Saoshyant. A dream
which would supply the sought-for identification is all that is
needed to satisfy the demands of the narrative. Their five miles'
walk due south from Jerusalem gave time for the star, if seen low
down in the sky in S.S.E. when they started, to be culminating
just over Bethlehem when they drew near to the town ; and men
so deeply convinced of the significance of stellar motions would of
course welcome this as fresh evidence that the end of their quest
was gained.^

2. The star which might lead to the cradle of the Divine
Infant shines at some time into every human conscience. God
endows us all, without exception, with the sense and perception

' W. Canton, in The Expoailor, 5th Ser., ix. 471.
' J. H. Moulton, Ea/rly Zoroastricmism, 283.

26 THE MAGI

of a distinction and a law; the distinction between right and
wrong, whatever right and wrong may be; and the law of
obedience to right, when once it is discovered. And if a man
makes the most of this endowment, instead of shunning or
scorning it or doing it violence; if he allows himself to reflect
that such inward legislation implies a Lawgiver, and to search
for other traces of His presence and action ; then, assuredly, is he
on the way to learn more.

^ The work of the inner light is that of judgment. It leads
us to distinguish between right and wrong, and continues to lead
us according as we are faithful to the light already given. We
must act on these judgments. If certain things are seen, in the
light, to be wrong, we must be faithful and put them on one side.
Further, the light is a universal light. It informs us of truths —
truths of faith and truths of conduct which are valid for all men.
If we either refuse to obey the particular disclosures of truth
given to us, or if we regard them as purely private matters, we
do, in effect, deny the light, and fail to recognize its true character.
It is useless to profess to believe in the inner light in general, and
then to refuse to accept and follow the findings of the enlightened
conscience.^

^ There is a light which flashes and is gone, and yet survives.
There is a light which eludes, but never deceives. There is a
light which guides as it flies. There is a light which comes only
to those who seek in the night, and can feel after what they can-
not find, and can still nurse " the unconquerable hope," and can
never lose heart. There is a light which is for ever in motion,
and can be retained only by moving with it. There is a light
which is always just ahead of where you stand. You must follow
if you would arrive; and the following must never cease. He,
the grey magician, has done but this one thing faithfully from
end to end of the long years. "I am Merlin, who follow the
gleam." His whole character, his whole secret, lies in that from
the first days when

In early summers,
Over the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me,
Moving to melody,
Floated The Gleam,

down to the end, when

1 H. 6. "Wood, George Fox, 115.

Therefore ;

ST. MATTHEW ii. i, 2 27

I can no longer,

But die rejoicing,

For thro' the Magic

Of Him the Mighty,

Who taught me in childhood,

There on the border

Of boundless Ocean,

And all but in Heaven,

Hovers The Gleam.

O young Mariner,
Down to the haven.
Call your companions,
Launch your vessel.
And crowd your canvas.
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it —
Follow The Gleam.^

III.

Finding a Child.

The star led the wise men to the cradle at Bethlehem, and
" stood over the place where the young child was." The pilgrims
entered and were satisfied.

1. They sought a king, and found a child. There is something
very remarkable in the fact that they came from the distant East,
and after all their sojourning and seeking found only a Child.
Yet it was worth all their toil and trouble to learn the hard but
precious lesson that true greatness consists in childlikeness. The
world all the ages through had been growing away from the Child ;
its notions of greatness lay quite at the opposite pole. The Evil
Spirit in his interview with our first parents succeeded in confus-
ing the mind of the world relative to this point, and in putting the
case altogether on a false issue. " Ye shall be as gods," said he,
"knowing good and evil." He put likeness to God to lie in
» H. S. Holland, VUal Values, 24.

28 THE MAGI

knowledge ; and the whole drift of the Divine education of the
race has been to counteract that notion, and to teach us that it
consists neither in knowledge nor in power, but in childlikeness.
As we review the history of the world, we see it dividing itself
into three stages. In the first, Power is magnified, Force is
deified. The great man is the strong man. In that era Nimrod
is the hero after the world's heart ; strength receives the homage
of men. In the second stage Power is pushed back a step or two,
and Intellect comes to the front. The great man is the intel-
lectual man. In that era Homer is the favoured idol before whom
the people delight to bow; genius receives the homage of men.
But Christianity has inaugurated a new period; it points the
world not to Nimrod or to Homer, but to a Child — not to Power
or to Genius, but to Goodness. The great man of the future will
be the good man.

Tf I remember a time, when, if any one mentioned the names
of Napoleon Buonaparte or the Duke of Wellington, my heart
responded in admiration, and I wished to become a soldier. I
remember a time after that when, if you mentioned the names of
Shakespeare or Milton, my heart responded in admiration, and I
wished to be a poet. Yes; I have had my heroes, and I have
worshipped them devoutly. But, were I to tell you my experience
to-day, it is this — I have lost a great deal of my respect for power ;
I have lost a great deal of my admiration for genius ; the supreme
desire of my heart to-day is that I may be a good man, a childlike
man, one whose life and character will mirror the Divinity. The
great man of the future will be the good man. " Blessed are the
meek, for they shall inherit the earth." ^

f The Eussian peasantry have a curious tradition. It is that
an old woman, the Baboushka, was at work in her house when
the wise men from the East passed on their way to find the Christ
Child. " Come with us," they said, " we have seen His star in the
East, and go to worship Him." " I will come, but not now," she
answered; "I have my house to set in order; when that is done,
I will follow, and find Him." But when her work was done, the
three kings had passed on their way across the desert, and' the
star shone no more in the darkened heavens. She never saw
the Christ Child, but she is living, and searching for Him still
For His sake, she takes care of all His children. It is she who in
Eussian homes is believed to fill the stockings and dress the tree
on Christmas morn. The children are awakened with the cry,
• J. C. .Tones, Studies in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 46.

ST. MATTHEW n. i, 2 29

" Behold the Baboushka," and spring up, hoping to see her before
she vanishes out of the window. She fancies, the tradition goes,
that in each poor little one whom she warms and feeds, she
may find the Christ Child whom she neglected ages ago ; but she
is doomed to eternal disappointment.

2. They fell down and worshipped Him. No journey, although
conducted with faith in the guide, will be successful unless it be
sanctified by this bowing down of soul and body. And such wor-
ship as this was natural to the Gentile mind. It had been abused
by it doubtless for idolatrous purposes, but the very bowing down
to stocks and stones, being a corruption of true worship, indicates
what the universal tradition was before it was so diverted. And
this is implied in the second commandment, " Thou shalt not bow
down to them nor worship them." For as every commandment
commands the contrary of what it forbids, so we understand that
the commandment is not fulfilled by merely not bowing down to
idols, unless we also bow down and worship God. And hence
Gentile Christianity began with this idea of worship.

^ Wise men from afar are still seeking that cradle. All the
great religions of the earth are really feeling for Christ. The con-
summation of all deep thought and aspiration is in Him. And,
although often unknowingly, all the sovereign thinkers do Him
reverence. The greatest of men have in successive generations
made that cradle the shrine of their sincerest worship. In the
corn-fields the heaviest heads bow most, and the mightiest in-
tellects have done the Master lowliest reverence. All the ground
is strewn with the tokens of their homage — sublime poems, harps
and organs, deep philosophies, eloquent orations, rich sculpture,
delightful pictures, magnificent architecture, dedicated to His
praise and glory. Genius brings its choicest products to His feet,
and thinks them poor.^

^ Have you noticed that the three Wise Men are represented
in art as men of different ages ? One is old, one is middle-aged,
and one is young. And the reason why they are so represented is
because of a tradition which came from the lips of that great
traveller Marco Polo. He recounts that when he got to Persia he
made every effort to find out more about the Wise Men. He was
shown their tomb, but that did not satisfy him. He wanted to
hear something more about them, and he could not find any one
who could give him any information. At last in his travels he

'W. L. Watkinson.

30 THE MAGI

came to a little town which rejoiced in the name of Gala Ataper-
istan, or the town where they worshipped fire, and he inquired
the reason of its name. They told him it was because it was from
that town that three men — three Kings — had started to worship
some great Being who was born in the West, and whose star they
had followed. He goes on to say that of these three men one was
old, one middle-aged, and one young, and they followed the star,
taking with them their gifts — gold, frankincense, and myrrh;
gold to give to the great Being if He should turn out to be a
king ; frankincense to offer if the great Being should have some-
thing of the Deity about Him ; myrrh if He were a physician.
And when they came to the stable of Bethlehem they went in
one at a time. First went in the old man, and instead of finding
what he expected, he found an old man who talked with him.
He left and was followed by the man of middle-age. He in his
turn entered and was met by a Teacher of his own years who
spoke with him. When the young man entered he in his turn
found a young Prophet. Then the three met together outside the
stable and marvelled — How was it that all three had gone in to
worship this Being who was just born, and they had found not a
child but three men of different ages ? The old man had found
the old, the middle-aged the middle-aged, and the young the
young. And so taking their gifts they go in all together, and
are amazed to discover that the Prophet is then a baby of twelve
days old ! Each separately sees in Christ the reflection of his own
condition, the old man sees the old, the middle-aged the middle-
aged, and the young the young : but when they go in all together
they see Christ as He is. We shall all find in Christ the answer
to our needs.^

3. The sincerity of their worship was proved by their gifts —
" gold and frankincense and myrrh." We know what gold is,
but the other gifts are unfamiliar in our day. Frankincense was
an aromatic resin, used for perfume and also in the sacrifices.
Myrrh was a highly-prized article of commerce, and, like frank-
incense, was an odorous gum. All these gifts represented value.
We do not know the financial ability of these men, but it is safe
to say that their ofi'erings adequately represented their means.
More significant than the seen was the unseen offering that they
made. In the lowly house they bowed themselves before the
Child and worshipped Him. Not content with bringing their
rare gifts of valuable substances, they gave themselves.

^ W. Gascoyne Cecil, in The Church Family New^a^er, Jan. 20, 1911, p. 48.

ST. MATTHEW ii. i, 2 31

Tj The old Mediaeval interpretation of the offered gold as
signifying recognition of His kingship, the frankincense of His
deity, and the myrrh of His death, is so beautiful that one would
fain wish it true. But it cannot pretend to be more than a
fancy. We are on surer ground when we see in the gifts the
choicest products of the land of the Magi, and learn the lesson
that the true recognition of Christ will ever be attended by the
spontaneous surrender to Him of our best.^

If I suppose that the gold and frankincense and myrrh which
the Eastern sages brought, represented the most valued treasures
of each which they hastened to lay before the feet of the infant
Christ. Even so, the heathen nations will all have their con-
tribution to bring. The Indian will bring his mysticism and his
deeply religious nature ; the Chinese his patience and endurance
and contentment; the Japanese his sense of discipline and
chivalry; the Buddhist his kindliness and lofty ideals; the
Mohammedan his strong sense of the oneness of God and his
faith and resignation. The Christian Church as it is at present
needs all these elements.*

^ Gold would be always a suitable present. Frankincense
and myrrh would be used chiefly in the houses of the great, and
in holy places. They were prized for the delicious fragrance
which they suffused. They were gifts fit to be presented to
monarchs ; and it was to Jesus, as a royal child, that they were
presented by the Magi. The fathers of the Church thought that
they could detect mysteries in the peculiar nature of the gifts.
In the gold, says Origen, there is a reference to the Lord's royalty ;
the frankincense has reference to His Divinity ; the myrrh to His
decease. The number of the gifts was also a fertile source of
cabalistic ingenuity to the older expositors. It symbolized the
Trinity ; it symbolized the triplicity of elements in the Saviour's
personality ; it symbolized the triad of the Christian graces, faith,
hope, charity, etc. etc. But such a method of expounding is to
turn the simple and sublime solemnities of Scripture into things
ludicrous and grotesque. It is of moment to note that the visit
of the Magi, and their reverential obeisance, and their gifts, must
have had a finely confirming influence upon the faith of Joseph in
reference to the perfect purity of Mary and the lofty character
and destiny of her Ofispring.*

" A. Maclaren. * H. N. Grimley. " Jamea Morison.

The Two Baptisms.

ST. MATT.-

Literature.

Carroll (B. H.), Sermtms, 315.

Davles (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, v. 277.

Harper (F.), A Year with Christ, 134.

Ingram (A. F. W.), Into the Fighting Line, 77.

Jowett (J. H.), Apostolic Optimism, 209.

Maolaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, ii. 227.

„ „ The Victor's Crowns, 207.

Martin (A.), Winning the Soul, 81.
Moore (E. W.), The Christ-Controlled Life, 39.
Parker (J.), Studies in Texts, v. 183.
Robinson (W. V.), Angel Voices, 28.
Simpson (W. J. S.), The Prophet of the Highest, 110.
Wilberforoe (B.), The Secret of a Quiet Mind, 114.

Children's Pulpit : Fourth Sunday in Advent, i. 262 (A. M. Cawthorne).
Church Pulpit Yea/r Book, 1906, p. 156.
Expository Times, xxv. 306 (J. Reid).
Preacher's Magaxine, lii. 326 (A. Tucker).

The Two Baptisms.

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance ; but he that cometh
after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear : he
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. — Matt. iii. ii.

This text is a contrast between two baptizers, John and Jesus.
Jesus is mightier than John, in the purity of His character, by
so much as an immaculate one is superior to a sinful one ; in the
power which He holds, in so much as omnipotence transcends
temporary, limited, and derived power; in the dignity of His
character and of His office, by so much as all authority in heaven
and on earth surpasses a brief earthly commission; and in His
ministry, inasmuch as one was to decrease and cease and the other
to increase and endure " alway, even unto the end of the world."
There stood the two baptizers ; and of the one it is said that he
was as great as any man ever born of a woman. Hence it is
not instituting a comparison between an insignificant man on the
one hand and a greater man on the other, but it is instituting
a comparison between the greatest man and a Being infinitely
greater than the greatest man.

I.

The baptism of John was merely preparatory and negative.
"I indeed baptize you with water." There is something ex-
tremely beautiful and pathetic in John the Baptist's clear dis-
cernment of his limitations, and of the imperfection of his work.
His immovable humility is all the more striking because it stands
side by side with as immovable a courage in confronting evil-
doers, whether of low or of high degree. To him to efface himself
and be lost in the light of Christ was no trial ; it brought joy
like that of the friend of the Bridegroom. He saw that the
spiritual deadness and moral corruption of his generation was

35

36 THE TWO BAPTISMS

such that a crash must come. The axe was " laid at the root of
the trees," and there was impending a mighty hewing and a fierce
conflagration. There are periods when the only thing to be done
with the present order is to bum it.

But John saw, too, that there was a great deal more needed
than he could give ; and so, with a touch of sadness, he symboHzed
the incompleteness of his work in the words preceding the text,
by reference to his baptism. He baptized with water, which
cleansed the outside but did not go deeper. It was cold, negative.
It brought no new impulses ; and he recognized that something
far other than it was wanted, and that He who was to come,
before whom his whole spirit prostrated itself in joyful submis-
sion, was to bestow a holy fire which would cleanse in another
fashion than water could do.

^ The bounds of our habitation are fixed ; so are our talents ,
so are our spheres of influence ; so are our ranges of ministry.
John knew exactly what he had to do, and he kept strictly
within the Divine appointment. His was, indeed, an initial, or
elementary, ministry, and yet God was pleased to make it a
necessary part of His providential purpose. Men must work up
to date, and people must be content to receive an up-to-date
ministry, and their contentment need not be the less that they
have an assurance that One mightier than the mightiest is coming
with a deeper baptism. "I indeed baptize you with water," —
that is what every true teacher says, qualifying his utterance by
the special environment vrithin which his. ministry is exercised.
This is what is said by the schoolmaster : " I indeed baptize you
with letters, alphabets, grammars ; but there cometh one after me,
mightier than I, who shall baptize you with the true intellectual
fire." The schoolmaster can do but little for a scholar, yet that
little may be all-important. The schoolmaster teaches the
alphabet, but the spirit maketh alive. There is a literary instinct.
There is a spirit which can penetrate through the letter into the
very sanctuary of the spiritual meaning. The schoolmaster has
an initial work ; the literary spirit develops and completes what
he could only begin.^

^ John's perfect freedom from jealousy, leading to the frank
and glad recognition of One who would supplant him through the
greater fulness of His Divine gifts, seems to have been that which
most impressed the EvangeKst in the character of the Baptist

' Joseph Parker.

ST. MATTHEW m. ii 37

It was this self-effacement, this entire devotion to the duty which
God laid upon him, that gave the Baptist such truth of discern-
ment. It was the single eye which gave light to his whole body,
the simplicity and purity of heart which enabled him to see
things as they really were. We are not disciples of John ; but
we should do well to honour and to imitate his noble simplicity,
which BO entirely subordinated self to the righteousness which
he proclaimed. If we have any good cause at heart, we must
unfeignedly rejoice when others are able to promote it more
efficiently than we can do; otherwise we are loving ourselves
more than the good cause. The same is true of every gift which
we can legitimately prize ; we must see with pleasure its higher
manifestations in another, for otherwise we are prizing, not the
gift, but the glory which it brings us. Though not formally a
disciple of Jesus, John was a better Christian than most of us ;
for he had the simplicity of Christ, an entire forgetfulness of self
in his devotion to God and goodness.*

Also of John a calling and a crying

Eang in Bethabara till strength was spent,

Cared not for counsel, stayed not for replying,
John had one message for the world, Eepent.

John, than which man a sadder or a greater
Not till this day has been of woman born,

John like some iron peak by the Creator

Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn.

This when the sun shall rise and overcome it
Stands in his shining desolate and bare.

Yet not the less the inexorable summit
riamed him his signal to the happier air.*

XL

A more effectual baptism was called for — a baptism with the
Holy Ghost and with fire. This would carry with it a deep and
supernatural change. Fire is an element which has always
affected the human mind with peculiar awe. It is in every way so
strange and mysterious and, as it were, preternatural. Whether

' James Druihmond, Johannine Tlwughts, 26.
^ F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paid,

38 THE TWO BAPTISMS

glowing on the hearth, or racing in forked darts across the heavens,
or carrying all before it in a hurricane of flame, it is always
weird and wonderful. And accordingly, from the first, man has
felt towards it a fear and dread with which he does not regard
any other force whatsoever in nature. In primitive times, as he
saw it crawl out of the dry sticks he rubbed together and writhe
about his fingers like a live thing, or was dazzled by the splendour
of it in the midday sky, he even found a god in it and worshipped
it; and where his religious conceptions have ceased to be so
crude as this, he has nevertheless taken it as the most natural of
all emblems under which to speak of the Divine. In the Old
Testament itself every one will remember how very often fire is
associated both with the real and with the visionary appearances
of God to man. It is from the burning bush that Moses is
commissioned to undertake the deliverance of the people. It is
a pillar of fire (and cloud) that leads them through the wilder-
ness. Long after, when rival worships have been set up in Israel,
and the controversy between them is to be finally decided, it is
by the falling of fire from heaven upon the faithful prophet's
sacrifice that the people are constrained to cry, " Jehovah, he is
God ; Jehovah, he is God." Later still, when the prophetic spark
kindles the heart of an exile by the river Chebar he can find no
better words in which to describe the Awful One who has
appeared to him, than these : " Behold, a whirlwind came out of
the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself." And, finally,
in the New Testament, where, however, such language has at last
become frankly metaphorical, you have such a statement as this :
" Our God is a consuming fire." So closely has this unaccount-
able, uncontrollable, and everyway mysterious element associated
itself in men's minds with the nature and' operations of the
Deity, that they have felt instinctively that existence furnished
them with no more apt or suggestive figure under which to think
and speak of Him.

When, therefore, it is said of Jesus that He " baptizes with the
Holy Ghost and with fire," we see what is implied. It is implied
that the influence He sheds around Him is something more than
natural. The spiritual power He exerts, the inspiration He gives,
the communication of inward life He makes is altogether difierent
from the ordinary. It does not belong to the common sphere of

ST. MATTHEW in. ii 39

resources which are at the command, or of powers which are
within the gift, of man. It is superhuman, supernatural. Divine.

^ In course of a letter to Lady Welby, Bishop Westcott writes :
" The full thought of God as Love and Fire on which you dwell
is that which is able to bring hope and peace to us when we dare
in faith to look at the world as it is. Again and again the mar-
vellous succession rises : God is spirit — light — love : our God is a
consuming fire." ^

^ Fire represents the Divine nature as it flames against sin to
consume it (Heb. xii. 29). This is the fire of God's anger. But
there is also the fire of His love. We may have the fire of sun-
shine, or the cheery fire of the hearth, or the fire which melts away
the dross, as well as the fire of the conflagration which burns and
destroys. It is this beneficent ministry of fire which symbolizes
the Spirit of God. The emblem speaks to us of the Divine love
kindled in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, the love that purifies
and cleanses. The very same word is used (Acts ii. 33) to describe
the outpouring of the Spirit which is employed (Eom. v. 5) to
express His shedding abroad of love in our hearts : evidently the
gift of the Spirit and of love are one and the same. As St.
Augustine says: "The Spirit is Himself the love of God: and
when He is given to a man He kindles in him the fire of love
to God and his neighbour." So Charles Wesley speaks of the
" fiame of sacred love," and likens " all-victorious love " to the
refining fire of the Holy Spirit. " The same idea is expressed by
the common phrases of every language. We talk about the
warmth of affection, the blaze of enthusiasm, the fire of emotion.
Christians are to be set on fire of God " — that is, the celestial flame
of love is to burn intensely in their hearts. The Spirit's baptism
of flre is His baptism of love.*

III.

The baptism of fire searches and cleanses as water cannot do.
There are some deeply established uneleannesses for which the
action of water is not sufficiently stringent. In many cases of
contagious disease, if we are to rid ourselves of every vestige of
corruption, there are many things which must be burnt. The
germs of the contagion cannot be washed away. They must be
consumed away. Water would be altogether insufficient. We

' Life and Letters of BrooTce Foss Westcott, ii. 72.
' J. H. Hodson, SyTnibols of the Holy Spirit, 35.

40 THE TWO BAPTISMS

need fire. Fire is our most efifective purifying minister, a powerful
and relentless enemy of disease.

There can be no doubt that it was mainly this thought that
was before the Baptist's mind when he spoke the words with whicJi
we are dealing. The symbol of his own work was water, and there
is a great deal, in the way of cleansing, that water can do. It can
remove the worst of the defilement to be seen anywhere, and
make unsightly things fairly pleasing to look at. As he preached
and pleaded with men his words had a certain, even striking,
effect ; the reformation that set in for the time being changed the
face of society. But there are stains which no water can erase,
inward impurities which it cannot reach. These must be burned
out if they are to disappear. And this Jesus effects through His
gift of the Holy Ghost. He breathes flame through men's hearts,
and makes them pure.

Tf In 1665 London was in the grip of that terrible Plague, the
horrors of which may still be felt through the pages of Defoe.
The disease germs were hiding and breeding and multiplying
everywhere. Every corner became a nest of contagion. Nothing
could be found to displace it. In the following year the Great
Fire broke out, and the plague-smitten city was possessed by the
spirit of burning. London was literally baptized with fire, which
sought out the most secret haunts of the contagion, and in the
fiery baptism the evil genius of corruption gave place to the sweet
and friendly genius of health. Fire accomplished quite easily what
water would never have attained. And so in a comparison of fire
and water as cleansing and redeeming agencies, common experience
tells us that fire is the keener, the more searching, the more power-
ful, the more intense.^

^ To me it seemed that God's most vehement utterances had
been in flames of fire. The most tremendous lesson He ever gave
to New York was in the conflagration of 1835 ; to Chicago in the
conflagration of 1871 ; to Boston in the conflagration of 1872 ; to
my own congregation in the fiery downfall of the Tabernacle at
Brooklyn. Some saw in the flames that roared through its organ
pipes a requiem, nothing but unmitigated disaster, while others of
us heard the voice of God, as from heaven, sounding through the
crackling thunder of that awful day, saying, " He shall baptize you
with the Holy Ghost and with fire "\^

' J. H. Jowett, Apostolic Optimism, 209.
' 2%e Avioliography of Dr. TalTtiage, 231.

ST. MATTHEW iii. ii 41

1. The fire has a refining power on true character. Partly by
the fiery trials of human life, partly by the test of sore tempta-
tion, partly by the fire of disappointment, partly by the shattering
of vain ideals and the scattering of earthly hopes, partly by all
that sobers and deepens us, by the fire of bodily pain, by the fire
of mental anguish, by every action of the Eternal Spirit of the
living God, instructing, guiding, warning, rebuking, judging, haunt-
ing, condemning, up to the sorrows of death and beyond it ; by all
these each soul is tried in the baptism by fire whereby the good is
refined and the evil destroyed.

The great glory of the gospel is to cleanse men's hearts by
raising their temperature, making them pure because they are
made warm ; and that separates them from their evils. It is slow
work to take mallet and chisel and try to chip off the rust, speck
by speck, from a row of railings, or to punch the specks of iron
ore out of the ironstone. Pitch the whole thing into the furnace,
and the work will be done. So the true way for a man to be
purged of his weaknesses, his meannesses, his passions, his lusts,
his sins, is to submit himself to the cleansing fire of that Divine
Spirit.

Tf Did you ever see a blast-furnace ? How long would it take
a man, think you, with hammer and chisel, or by chemical means,
to get the bits of ore out from the stony matrix ? But fling them
into the great cylinder, and pile the fire and let the strong draught
roar through the burning mass, and by evening you can run off
a glowing stream of pure and fluid metal, from which all the dross
and rubbish is parted, which has been charmed out of all its sullen
hardness, and will take the shape of any mould into which you
like to run it. The fire has conquered, has melted, has purified.
So with us. Love " shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost
given unto us," love that answers to Christ's, love that is fixed
upon Him who is pure and separate from sinners, will purify us
and sever us from our sins. Nothing else will. All other cleans-
ing is superficial, like the water of John's baptism.^

Tl Beautiful colours, rich gold-work, exquisite designs, and
artistic skill may be seen on the unfinished porcelain vase, but a
careless touch may spoil them, there is a needs-be that the vase
should be placed in the fire, that the artist's skill may be burnt
in, and then the colours become permanent. The Holy Spirit is
the Artist and the Fire. He alone can produce the beautiful

' A. Maclaren.

42 THE TWO BAPTISMS

colours of a holy life and make the character impervious to the
attacks of evil. He alone can make us resolve with Jonathan
Edwards, who wrote in his diary these words : " If I believed that
it were permitted to one man — and only one — ^in this genera-
tion to lead a life of complete consecration to God, I would
live in every respect as though I believed myself to be that
one."i

2. The fire will destroy everything that is not sterling metal.
This is the alternative before every human being — either to be
purified by the baptism of fire, or else to meet that central
Holiness as a flame of judgment. Of course it must be so. For
the holiness of God cannot change its character. It is man's heart
that must be changed. To the obedient it is a savour of life unto
life, to the evil a savour of death unto death ; to the one remedial,
to the other retributive. The Spirit of God must sanctify, or
else it must destroy.

The gold is gold, and cannot be anything worse if it would.
The chaff is worthless by nature, not by fault. The fire must of
necessity purify the one and burn the other. Neither gold nor
stubble can change. But that which is tested by the fire of the
Divine Holiness is the will and the character of moral and respon-
sible beings. Man can become pure as the gold or worthless as
the stubble. From the same material issues the sinner and the
saint. It must depend upon the soul itself whether the Divine
Holiness shall be to it the fire which purifies or the fire which
destroys. God cannot deny Himself, or be anything else than
moral Perfection, or He would no longer be God. It is the
creature that must change. The human will must change. The
human will must so submit itself to the action of the grace of God
that the evil shall be burnt out and the good refined. Our destiny
is in our hands. The love and mercy which created us has no
pleasure in our ruin. And if any soul hereafter meet that holiness
of God in the form of unquenchable fire, it will be because that
soul has refused to meet Him as the power which cleanses.

^ The same pillar of fire which gladdened the ranks of Israel
as they camped by the Eed Sea shone baleful and terrible to the
Egyptian hosts. The same Ark of the Covenant whose presence
blessed the house of Obed-edom, and hallowed Zion, and saved

1 F. E. Marsh, Emblems of the Holy Spirit, 122.

ST. MATTHEW in. ii 43

Jerusalem, smote the Philistines, and struck down their bestial
gods. Christ and His gospel even here hurt the men whom they
do not save.^

IV.

The baptism of fire imparts to the life an unmistakable glow
and ardour and enthusiasm. This certainly is one very prominent
trait in the life of Jesus Himself. The spirit of holiness in Him
included a great zeal in the service of the Father. Once at least
it blazed up even fiercely — when the desecration of the Temple
had stung Him to the quick, and in wrath He overthrew the
money-changers' tables and drove the offenders before Him. But
it was not only in an instance so dramatic as this that " the zeal of
his Father's house" was apparent in Him. It was the habit
of His life and it appears all through. The holy enthusiasm — if
we may use the word reverently of Him — ^in which He had given
Himself at the first to the work that brought Him here never
flagged during all the years He was engaged in it. Occasionally
we see it manifesting itself in short-lived gleams of thankfulness
at what has been accomplished for the Kingdom or of anticipation
of its future triumph. Oftener it takes the form rather of a quiet,
invincible, sustaining power that enables Him to hold on His way.
It comforts His heart under the disappointments He meets with,
strengthens Him under His heavy burden, and carries Him
through all opposition ; so that, because of His zeal for the truth
and the kingdom and the glory of God, He did not fail nor was
discouraged till He had set judgment in the earth.

What is greatly to be desired is that, in the lives of those who
follow Jesus, there should be a large measure of the enthusiasm
that glowed in His own — a serious, intelligent, glowing sympathy
with God, a supreme thankfulness because of the purposes of
grace He entertains towards our race, and a great readiness to
spend and be spent in the carrying on of these so far as oppor-
tunity offers to every man. That is Christian enthusiasm — Christ's
own enthusiasm, which He shares with all in whom His influence
has free play. As for the forms it will take, they will be endless ;
for men are endlessly different, nor is there any need why any

' A. Maclaren.

44 THE TWO BAPTISMS

man should violate his own nature in order to serve God faithfully.
In the world there are all sorts of men and women, possessed of
all sorts of temperaments and dispositions, and in the work of
building up God's Kingdom on earth there is a place and a work
for every one of them. What is imperative is that at the bottom
of all our hearts there should be this deep, unchanging, burning
desire to help that great work on for Jesus' sake.

IJ Suppose we saw an army sitting down before a granite fort,
and they told us that they intended to batter it down : we might
ask them, "How?" They point to a cannon-ball. Well, but
there is no power in that ; it is heavy, but if all the men in the
army hurled it against the fort, they would make no impression.
They say, "No; but look at the cannon." Well, there is no
power in that. A child may ride upon it, a bird may perch in its
mouth; it is a machine, and nothing more. "But look at the
powder." Well, there is no power in that ; a child may spill it,
a sparrow may peck it. Yet this powerless powder and powerless
ball are put into a powerless cannon ; one spark of fire enters it
— and then, in the twinkling of an eye, that powder is a flash of
lightning, and that ball a thunderbolt, which smites as if it had
been sent from heaven. So is it with our Church machinery at
this day : we have all the instruments necessary for pulling down
strongholds, and oh for the baptism of fire ! ^

1. Passionate religious enthusiasm attaches itself to a person ;
and the more near and real our intercourse with the person, the
more beautiful will be our holiness, and the more fiery-hearted
will be our service and devotion. Just think for a moment what
magnificent import this revelation in the Person of Jesus had for
•those Jews who became His disciples. The religion of the Jews
had become an obedience to precept and law. The germ of their
national faith is to be found in those ten laws which we call the
Ten Commandments. But to these ten laws the Eabbis had
made countless additional laws— petty, trying, and irritating laws,
which had come to be regarded as of equal importance with the
original ten. To the earnest Jew, the warm, loving purpose of God
had become buried in a mountainous mass of man-made traditions.
It was no longer God with whom the Jew was dealing, but this
vast dead-weight of Eabbinical law. God had become to them
an earth-born system, a burdensome " ism," a heavy and smothering
' William Arthur, The Tongue of Fire, 809.

ST. MATTHEW iii. ii 45

tradition. Then came the Christ, and the first thing He did was
to tear these miles of wrappages away.

Christ gives fervour by bringing the warmth of His own love
to bear upon our hearts through the Spirit, and that kindles ours.
Where His great work for men is believed and trusted in, there,
and there only, is excited an intensity of consequent affection to
Him which glows throughout the life. It is not enough to say
that Christianity is singular among religious and moral systems in
exalting fervour into a virtue. Its peculiarity lies deeper — in its
method of producing that fervour. It is kindled by that Spirit
using as His means the truth of the dying love of Christ. The
secret of the gospel is not solved by saying that Christ excites love
in our souls. The question yet remains — How ? There is but one
answer to that : He loved us to the death. That truth laid on
hearts by the Spirit, who takes of Christ's and shows them to us,
and that truth alone, makes fire burst from their coldness.

^ In the times of the Crusaders a band of valiant knights
traversed the sunny plains of France, to sail from Marseilles for
the Holy Land. There, along with others who were bound on the
same enterprise, they embarked on the stately vessel that was to
carry them across the sea. But, eager as they were to do, day
after day they lay helplessly becalmed. The hot sun beat upon
them, and was flashed back from the unbroken surface of the
waves. They lounged wearily upon the deck ; they scanned the
heavens in vain for the signs of an approaching breeze. It seemed
as though some adverse fate resolved to hold them back.
But in the stillness of an even tide, from a group of warriors
assembled at the prow, there rose the swelling strains of the Veni
Creator Spmttis — " Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire." And
straightway a breath came upon them from the dying sun ; the
smooth, shining surface of the sea was ruffled, the cordage rattled,
the sails were filled, and the vessel sped joyously over the dancing
waves. Whether the story is true or not, it contains a very grand
truth. Without the Spirit of Love all is dark and dead.

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire
And lighten with celestial fire.

2. This enthusiasm needs nurture. There is a danger that the
wide divergences of our interests in modern life diminish and
impoverish the intensity of our devotion. How did our fathers
keep the fire burning? There are some words found very

46 THE TWO BAPTISMS

frequently in their letters, and diaries, and sermons, which
awaken similar feelings to those aroused by types of extinct
species that are sometimes unearthed from the deposits of a far-
off and unfamiliar age. Here are two such words, " meditation "
and "contemplation" — words which appear to suggest an unfamiliar
day, when the world was young, and haste was not yet born, and
men moved among their affairs with long and leisurely strides.
Our fathers steeped their souls in meditation. They appointed
long seasons for the contemplation of God in Christ. And as they
mused the fire burned. Passion was born of thought. What
passion ? The passion which Faber so beautifully describes as the
desire which purifies man and glorifies God : —

But none honours God like the thirst of desire,
Nor possesses the heart so completely with Him;
For it burns the world out with the swift ease of fire,
And fills life with good works till it runs o'er the brim.

^ Let us muse upon the King in His beauty, let us commune
with His loveliness, let us dwell more in the secret place, and the
unspeakable glory of His countenance shall create within us that
enthusiastic passion which shall be to us our baptism of fire, a fire
in which everything unchristian shall be utterly consumed away.
Oh then wish more for God, burn more with desire.
Covet more the dear sight of His Marvellous Face;
Pray louder, pray longer, for the sweet gift of fire
To come down on thy heart with its whirlwinds of grace.^
' J. H. Jowett, Apostolic Optimism, 224,

A Question of Life.

47

Literature.

Alford (H.), Sermons, i. 152.

Aroliibald (M. G.), Sundays at the Royal Military College, 73,

Brooks (P.), The Spiritual Man, 47.

Burgon (J. W.), in The Expositor's Library, i. 202.

Chapin (E. H.), God's Requirements, 173.

Conn (J.), The Fulness of Time, 117.

Eyton (E.), The Temptation of Jesus, 12.

Ford (H.), Sermons with Analyses, 93.

Gibbons (J. C), Discourses and Sermons, 143.

Hitcbcock (B.. D.), Eternal Atonement, 169.

Jowett (J. H.), Things that Matter Most, 183.

Knight (G. H.), Full Allegiance, 83.

Lewis (F. W.), The Master of Life, 3.

M'Connell (S. D.), Sons of God, 203.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew i.-viii., 76.

Macmillan (H.), Sun-Glints in the Wilderness, 22.

Massillon (J. B.), Sermons, 242.

Momerie (A. W.), The Origin of Evil, 135.

Morgan (Q. C), The Ten Commandments, 6.

MnrseU (W. A.), Sermons on Special Decagons, 233.

Hummer (A.), Exegetical Convmentary on the Gospel according to St.

Matthew, 35.
Vaughan (C. J.), The Two Great Temptations, 113.
Vincent (M. E.), God cmd Bread, 3.
Welldon (J. E. C), The Spiritual Life, 140.
Contempoi-ary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., iii. 96 (H. Wace).

48

A Question of Life.

But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. —
Matt. iv. 4.

1. The Temptation Story. — Our Lord's temptation, next to His
death and passion, is the greatest event recorded of Him in the
Gospels. The reason of this is evident. It was the Messiah's
first encounter with His great enemy, Satan. Viewed aright, the
scene so simply and briefly described in Scripture is the most
terrific that can be imagined, as well as the most sublime ; for we
cannot forget that it is none other than a contest, on the issue of
which depended the salvation of all mankind. On the one side
was the Eternal Son, made flesh ; sinless indeed, yet compassed
with all the infirmity of man's fallen nature : on the other, the chief
of the fallen angels, Satan ; that old serpent who, in the beginning
by deceiving our first parents, had brought death and sin and
sorrow into the world. Satan knows his rival, and yet he knows
Him but partially. He strides out to meet Him in desperate duel,
as Goliath did the stripling whom he despised ; and both hosts
pause and gaze.

(1) In all probability the temptation of our Lord followed
immediately upon the baptism, for St. Mark uses the word
"straightway," and St. Luke states that Jesus returned from
Jordan full of the Spirit and was led by Him into the wilderness.
It was, moreover, the natural counterpart of the baptism, which
had ended with the declaration of the Divine Sonship of Jesus.
From this the tempter takes his first occasion of evil suggestion,
while Jesus takes the next step in the fulfilment of all righteous-
ness by meeting the attacks of evil on the same footing as all
men since the first temptation. That was the ordering of His
Father in Heaven, to fit Him more perfectly for His work, by giving
Him an experimental acquaintance with the force of our tempta-

ST. MATT. — 4

50 A QUESTION OF LIFE

tions day by day. But probably His own reason for going away
from the crowds into a desert place was to have more undisturbed
communion with His Father and to meditate upon the great work
given Him to do. Yet into these holy hours the tempter came ;
and what He expected would be a time of calm and hallowed inter-
coiirse with Heaven was turned into a time of dire conflict witih
all the subtlety of hell.

(2) Our Lord was " in the wilderness alone " — in St. Mark's
graphic description, "with the wild beasts." There were none
but heavenly witnesses of the mysterious experiences of those
forty days; no human eyes witnessed them; and their record,
therefore, is due to no human observation. The ultimate source
of information must have been our Lord Himself, as the most
rigorous criticism admits. His disciples would not have been
likely to think that He could be tempted to evil ; and, if they
had supposed that He could, they would have imagined quite
different temptations for Him, as various legends of the
saints show. The form, therefore, in which the temptations
are described is probably our Lord's, chosen by Him as the
best means of conveying the essential facts to the minds of His
followers.

(3) It does not follow, because the temptations are described
separately, that they took place separately, one ceasing before the
next began. Temptations may be simultaneous or interlaced;
and, in describing these three, Matthew and Luke are not agreed
about the order. Nor does it follow, because the sphere of the
temptation changes, that the locality in which Christ was at the
moment was changed. We need not suppose that the devil had
control over our Lord's Person and took Him through the air
from place to place: he directs His thoughts to this or that.
The change of scene is mental. From no high mountain could
more than a small fraction of the world be seen ; but the glory of
all the kingdoms of the world could be suggested to the mind.
Nor again do the words, " The tempter came and said unto him,"
imply that anything was seen by the eye or heard by the ear ;
any one might describe his own temptations in a similar way.
What these words do imply is that the temptations came to Christ
from the outside; they were not the result, as many of our
temptations are, of previous sin.

ST. MATTHEW iv. 4 51

2. The First Temptation, — The temptation was real. The
mystery of His humanity — a humanity real in soul as in body
— made Him capable of temptation ; made temptation a conflict and
a suffering ; made victory a thing to be fought for — the victory
not of an insensible, impassive Divinity, but of a manhood
indwelt by the Spirit.

(1) For forty days and nights He had been alone in the
wilderness. St. Mark and St. Luke inform us that during the
whole of that time He was tempted of the devil ; and the former
perhaps indicates one method of temptation which may have been
tried, in adding " and he was with the wild beasts." It may have
been attempted by terror to shake the Eedeemer's firmness of
purpose. But of this Scripture leaves us in uncertainty ; and it
is not till the end of the forty days that we are permitted
to witness the forms which His temptation assumed. At that
time we find Him exhausted with His long abstinence from
food.

He was hungry, grievously hungry. He was experiencing to
the full extent that strong craving of our nature which some-
times turns men into brutes. His tongue was parched and
blackened with the terrible heat of the wilderness. He was worn
out with hunger. Every circumstance conspired to render the
allurement of food as strong as possible. The pitiless blue, like
brass above ; the barren wilderness around Him, where roam the
prowling beasts. Son of God? Did He look like the Son of
God, without accompaniment of angel or of glory ? Was it not
a fancy and a dream ?

(2) The wilderness in which He kept His lonely vigil for
forty days, the hunger and exhaustion which He felt after His
long fast and travail of soul, were all symbols and evidences of the
curse of man. Satan came to Him while He was suffering from
these effects of Adam's sin, and suggested to Him an easy method
by which they might be removed. By a miracle, the curse would
be neutralized and His wants supplied. The food which the
wilderness like a miser refused could be wrung by force from its
grasp. Faithful to the just and wise law of barrenness imposed
upon it by God, it could be made conveniently disobedient by the
arbitrary exercise of Divine power. " If thou be the Son of God,
command that these stones be made bread." Use Thy Divine

52 A QUESTION OF LIFE

power to procure comfort; choose a life of ease and abundance,
instead of the bare hard stones of the wilderness.

(3) Jesus overcomes the solicitation of evil as a pious man
and as a believing Israelite. His mind is saturated with the
Bible, and a word of it which meets the case leaps instinctively to
His tongue. The passage which Jesus quotes is from the Book
of Deuteronomy, in which the spiritual lessons of the leadings of
Israel as God's Son in the wilderness are drawn out. In Deut.
viii. 1-3 the hunger suffered during forty years in the wilderness,
and its reUef by the gift of manna, was to teach the people that
man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro-
ceedeth out of the mouth of God.

The bearing of the words on Christ's hunger is twofold : first.
He wni not use His miraculous powers to provide food, for that
would be to distrust God, and so to cast off His filial dependence ;
second. He will not separate Himself from His brethren and pro-
vide for Himself by a way not open to them, for that would really
be to reverse the very purpose of His incarnation and to defeat
His whole work.

LuK BY Bread,

How shall we live ? Multitudes of people are asking that
question to-day with peculiar earnestness. The man who could
give a satisfactory practical answer would be regarded as the
greatest of all pubhc benefactors. Sometimes a kindly providence
apparently shapes all for a man at the moment of his birth. Not
till some sudden calamity overwhelms him is he roused into a
conscious necessity of deciding for himself what he will do and
become. But to most men there comes early in life the occasion
and the necessity for deliberation and decision. Towards what
goal in the future, he then asks, shall I now direct my steps, and
by what route and methods shall it be reached ? To these questions
he is forced to give some kind of answers.

1. What is covered ly the word " Bread " ? — Bread we call the
staff of life. This familiar imagery is as ancient at least as the

ST. MATTHEW iv. 4 53

time of Abraham. To the three angels, one of them the mysterious
angel of the covenant, who appeared to him as he sat at the door
of his tent in the plains of Mamre, the hospitable patriarch said,
" I will fetch a morsel of bread, and stay ye your hearts." Moses,
when he threatened the people with famine in punishment of their
sins, described it as the breaking of their staff. Isaiah also warns
the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah that the Lord of hosts
will take away " the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and
the whole stay of water." Bread was what the famished Bedouin
craved when he caught up so eagerly the bag he found lying by
a fountain in the desert, and flung it down again so quickly in
despair, exclaiming, " Alas ! it is only diamonds."

But " bread," as we have it in the text, means more than this.
It covers the whole visible economy of life — all that range of
supplies, helps, and supports upon which men depend to keep
themselves alive, and to make life comfortable and enjoyable. It
covers the whole economy of food and drink, clothing, shelter,
ministry to the senses, to power, respectability, and worldly honour.
The world's commonly accepted theory is, By these things we live.
We cannot gel on vnthout them.

^ If it be urged that these views of Mr. Hinton [on sacrifice]
are very uncomfortable views of life, I might suggest that
Christianity itself, with its fundamental axiom, " He that loveth
his life shall lose it," cannot strictly be defined as a comfortable
• religion. I would ask whether our modern worship of " the com-
fortable " has given us a life that really satisfies even the most
worldly amongst us ; whether, on the contrary, it has not bound
down the free play and joyous movement of life under a " weight
of custom, heavy as frost, deep almost as life," debarring us from
the healthy joys of "plain living and high thinking," from the
lofty enterprise and joyous heroism that " feeds the high tradition
of the world," and from the deeper blessedness of sacrifice,

That makes us large with utter loss
To hold divinity?!

2. TJie peril of " Bread." — Possessed as we are of a physical

nature, with its clamorous appetites and its innumerable bodily

needs, we are tempted at times to believe that man is merely a

superior kind of animal, living by bread alone, and with no interest

1 Ellice Hopkins, J^fe and Zettera o/Jenmes ffinten, 293,

54 A QUESTION OF LIFE

in anything save what he can see and touch and taste. On this
view, man becomes and remains a mere instrument, in one way
or another living only for bread, living only for an end out of
himself, living merely in subservience to that class of things which
bread represents. There is the great evil in this world, and there
spring up temptations similar in character to those which assailed
Christ in the wilderness.

(1) There is danger for the individual. In that first concep-
tion of himself as a responsible and solitary being, every young
man meets the same devil as Jesus met.^ And the temptation
is the same — the assurance given in some form or other that
bread is all that a man needs, that everything else is a delusion,
that to live a life of physical comfort is the only solid wish for a
man's soul. Perhaps it is a business which he knows is wrong,
but sees must be profitable. Perhaps it is the abandonment of
those he ought to care for, so that he may himself get rich.
Perhaps it is the hiding of his sincere convictions in order to keep
his place in some social company. Perhaps it is connivance at
a wicked man's sin in order to preserve his favour. Perhaps it is
the postponing of charity to some future day when it shall be
easier. Perhaps it is a refusal to acknowledge Christ, the Master,
out of fear, or because some easy, foolish friendship would be
sacrificed. Perhaps it is simply the giving up of ambitions, in-
tellectual or spiritual, for the sake of quiet, unperturbed respecta-
bility. These are real struggles.

Now, manifestly, it must lead to the most disastrous results
when the lower elements of a man's nature are treated as if they
were the only, or at any rate the most important, elements. The
soul of the sensualist is like a State in which the ignorant, vulgar
and stupid mob has usurped the reins of government, and is pro-
ceeding to destroy everything better than itself. Enjoyment,
which is the proper satisfaction for the sensuous part of our being,
is no satisfaction at all for the mind and heart and spirit. The
unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted to pleasure may be proved, not
only by abstract considerations, but by the fact that those who
have lived in this fashion invariably speak of their existence with
disappointment and disgust.

If I have seen the silly rounds of business and pleasure and
have done with them all, I have enjoyed all the pleasures of

ST. MATTHEW iv. 4 55

the world and consequently know their futility, and do not regret
their loss. Their real value is very, very low ; but those who have
not experienced them always overrate them. Por myself, I by no
means desire to repeat the nauseous dose.^

^ In one of his Hebrew Melodies Byron speaks in a similar
strain —

Fame, wisdom, love, and power were mine,

And health and youth possess'd me;
My goblets blush'd from every vine,

And lovely forms caress'd me;
I sunn'd my heart in beauty's eyes,

And felt my soul grow tender;
All earth can give, or mortal prize,

Was mine of regal splendour.

I strive to number o'er what days

Eemembrance can discover,
Which all that life or earth displays

Would lure me to live over.
There rose no day, there roU'd no hour

Of pleasure unembitter'd ;
And not a trapping deck'd my power

That gall'd not while it glitter'd.

The serpent of the field, by art

And spells, is won from harming;
But that which coils around the heart,

Oh ! who hath power of charming ?
It will not list to wisdom's lore,

Nor music's voice can lure it;
But there it stings for evermore

The soul that must endure it.

(2) There is a national menace. In these modern days one finds
oneself rummaging the pages of Gibbon and Tacitus and Juvenal.
Look at those old empires which lived by bread alone ; by riches
so enormous that it seems as if God had determined to give money
a chance to do its best ; living by power so vast that there were
no more worlds to conquer ; living by pleasure so prodigal and so
refined and varied that the liveliest invention was exhausted, and
the keenest appetite surfeited. Babylon, Eome, Antioch, Alex-
* Lord Chesterfield.

56 A QUESTION OF LIFE

andria, Carthage, — to-day we dare not open to our children the
records of the inner life of these communities. We almost
hesitate to read its fearful summary in the first chapter of St.
Paul's Epistle to the Komans. The old empires have gone down
in ruin, and their pleasures have turned to a corruption which is an
offence in the world's nostrils. The old city which rang with the
cry of " Bread and the Circus ! " is only a monument now. The
tourist wanders over the Palatine, and peers down into the choked
vaults of the Caesars' palaces; and the antiquarian rummages
where Nero's fish-ponds gleamed, and climbs along the broken
tiers of the Coliseum, from which the culture and beauty and
fashion of Eome looked down with delight upon Christian martyrs
in the fangs of tigers.

Not in material progress then, nor in art and science, nor in
the stoicism of absolute duty, is the law of human nature found to
lie. We fall back upon the immemorial truth — " Man shall not
live by bread alone."

^ The most helpful and sacred work, which can at present be
done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all
best teaching must be done) not how " to better themselves," but
how to " satisfy themselves." It is the curse of every evil nation
and evil creature to eat, and not be satisfied. The words of
blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied. And as there is
only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only
one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger — the bread of justice,
or righteousness; which hungering after, men shall always be
filled, that being the bread of heaven ; but hungering after the
bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being
the bread of Sodom.^

3. Christ's attitude to " Bread." — But the subject has another
side. There are people who try to get rid altogether of the lower
elements. They attempt to eradicate desire, to extinguish
instinct, to suppress and annihilate the bodily nature. Principal
Caird says, " If the spiritual self is essentially greater than the
lower tendencies, why should it not exist without them? If
desire and passion drag me down from my ideal life, why should
I not escape from their thraldom, and live as if I were a disem-
bodied spirit ? Snap the ties that bind me to the satisfactions of
' Euskin, Modem Painters, v. ( PTorJcs, vii. 426).

ST. MATTHEW iv. 4 57

the moment, that absorb me in the transient and perishable, and
will not my spirit gain at a bound its proper sphere ? But," he
answers, " the ties cannot be snapped, and even if they could, the
end proposed would not be gained. The violent self-suppression at
which the ascetic aims can never be effected ; and if it could, it
would be, not the fulfilment, but the extinction, of a moral life.
In our self-development the lower natural tendencies have an
indispensable part to play. Apart from them, the realization of
our ideal nature would be utterly impossible." In the life of our
Lord we find no encouragement for this ascetic theory. " The Son
of man came eating and drinking." Very precious to Christian
hearts are those brief, those thrilling records which make Him
like unto us, one with us, in all things : Jesus wept. Jesus was
wearied with His journey. Jesus said, I thirst. Jesus was in the
hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow. He afterward
hungered. The Maker of our bodies never speaks scornfully
of their normal, innocent necessities. Human life, in the lowest
sphere of its merely animal functions and wants, is invested with
a sort of sacredness as the workmanship and husbandry of God.

Tj How utterly opposed to the thought of Jesus Christ is all
asceticism, all religious isolation and retreat from the world.
Society, not solitude, is the natural home of Christianity.
The Christian is not to flee from the contagion of evil, but to
meet it with the contact of health and holiness. The Church is
not to be built on glass posts for moral insulation, but among the
homes of common men for moral transformation. What use
is a light under a bushel ? It must shine where there is darkness.
The place of need is the field of duty, and though we are not to be
of the world, we are to be first and last in the world and for the
world.^

U In a letter to the Eev. W. P. Wood, who was thinking
of introducing some criticism of Benthamism into his Oxford
Sermons, Dean Hook wrote : " If you have had time to look into
Bentham's work you will find that he assumes that there are only
three principles of action, (1) asceticism, (2) sympathy, (3) utility.
There is a misplaced attempt at facetiousness involving a gross
misstatement of the first of these principles at the outset of the
book; for it is a bad introduction to a work professing strict
philosophy to lay down that the principle of asceticism consists in
supposing the 'misery of His creatures to be gratifying to the
* M. D. Babcock, Thoughta for Every-Day Living, 42.

58 A QUESTION OF LIFE

Creator.' The principle, though carried to an excess, was in
itself good and true, namely, the subduing of sensual appetites as
a means of freeing the mind from their bias. Like every other
device of man, this principle failed with the monks as it had
failed with the Stoics, and I think that on inquiry it would be
found the radical vice of the system was its leading men to dwell
too exclusively on self, by which in the first place pride, and in
the next indifference to the happiness of others, became gradually
engendered in the ascetic." ^

II.

Life by the Wokd of God.

When Christ says that men shall live by God's word, He means
by " life " far more than the little span of years, with their eating
and drinking and pleasure and gain-getting. This utterance of
the world's Eedeemer assumes the fact of immortality. If not,
the theory of life by God is condemned ; and there is nothing for us
but the bread-theory : " Let us eat and drink ; for to-morrow we
die." To live by the word of God is to share the eternal life of
God. The bread-life is but the prelude and faint type of this.

1. The first point to be attained by man is to rise to the true
conception of life. When he does this he has a different standard
of value from that of the mere bread standard. The standard of
value yyith him is whatever elevates and perfects his personality ;
not what he gets, not what he accumulates, not what feeds only
one part of his nature, but what makes him great and good,
strong and beautiful, and assimilates him to God and Christ. He
values everything that comes from the mouth of God, and lives
by it — that is, all things that God gives, not merely to the body,
but to the soul.

Every word of God contains a revelation and a command-
ment. Whenever God speaks by any of His voices, it is first to
tell us some truth which we did not know before, and second to
bid us do something which we have not been doing. Every word
of God includes these two. Truth and duty are always wedded.
There is no truth which has not its corresponding duty. And
there is no duty which has not its corresponding truth. We are
' W. E. W. Stephens, The Life and Letters of WaZUr Farquhar Hook, 1. 246.

ST. MATTHEW iv. 4 59

always separating them. We are always trying to learn truths,
as if there were no duties belonging to them, as if the knowing of
them would make no difference in the way we lived. That is the
reason why our hold on the truths we learn is so weak. And we
are always trying to do duties as if there were no truths behind
them ; that is, as if they were mere arbitrary things which rested
on no principles and had no intelligible reasons. That is why we
do our duties so superficially and unreliably. When every truth
is rounded into its duty, and every duty is deepened into its truth,
then we shall have a clearness and consistency and permanence
of moral life which we hardly dream of now.

^ The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor experience,
nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor State convenience,
nor fitness, order, and the pulchrum. Conscience is not a long-
sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself ; but
it is a messenger from Him who, both in nature and in grace,
speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His repre-
sentatives. Conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ, a prophet
in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in
its blessings and anathemas ; and even though the eternal priest-
hood throughout the Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal
principle would remain, and would have a sway.^

2. Man cannot be satisfied with bread, with anything material
— ^he cannot live upon it ; there are portions of his nature which
it will not nourish, cravings which it will not satisfy. "Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God." If man is to live, he must satisfy the
deeper cravings first. This is shown both in consciousness and
in experience.

(1) The appeal to consciousness. — Man discovers within himself
certain powers — powers of work, powers of study, powers of
sacrifice, powers of suffering for others; what is. to become of
these powers if he lives by bread alone, if he makes material
comfort his one and only object ? Undoubtedly they will dwindle
and decay. We know that we have a reason and a conscience
which ought to be our guide ; and we are all conscious, at least
at times, of feelings, wishes, aspirations which material things
can never satisfy. We all feel that we are capable of and meant
' Cardinal Newman.

6o A QUESTION OF LIFE

for a higher and nobler life than that of an animal : even for a
life guided by reason and conscience, a life of faith, love, righteous-
ness, holiness, a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice for our own
good and for the good of our brethren ; and we all somehow or
other have a belief that no life can be at its best or worthiest
which is not after this pattern.

(2) The appeal to experience. — Again by a survey of human
history we find that other men, in other days, have lived not
for the flesh, but for the Spirit. The testimony of devout men
at many times and in many regions of the earth to the capacity
of the human spirit for communion with the Divine Spirit, which
is the very breath of the Godhead, is as sure and strong as any
testimony to any essential fact of human nature. Their history
confirms man in his study of himself. He reads his duty in their
stories. " It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone."

Tl A second man I honour, and still more highly [than the
toilworn Craftsman] : Him who is seen toiling for the spirituality
indispensable ; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he
too in his duty ; endeavouring towards inward Harmony ; reveal-
ing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours,
be they high or low ? Highest of all, when his outward and his
inward endeavour are one : when we can name him Artist : not
earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-
made Implement conquers Heaven for us I If the poor and
humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious
toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance,
Freedom, Immortality ? — these two, in all their degrees, I honour ;
all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it
listeth. Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both
dignities united ; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest
of man's wants is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer
in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such
now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to
Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring
forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in
great darkness.^

3. To live this higher life is to be obedient to the word of
God. Jesus, the author of Christian faith, lived from beginning
to end, without deviation or exception, by the words proceeding

' Carlyle, Swrtor Sesartus, Bk. iii. chap. iv.

ST. MATTHEW iv. 4 61

from the mouth of God. In His passion-baptism He bore the
penalty of the disobedience of the race, and in His resurrection
He took again His life, that He might communicate it to sinful
men, that in its energy they also might obey the law of God. He
conquered at the last, as He conquered at the first, by obeying
every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God ; overcame
by His human faith and obedience, and not by His Divine power ;
made Himself known in His highest glory to men, not by ex-
empting Himself from the lot of humanity, but through a
fellowship with their miseries.

(1) Obedience is the secret of manhood. — The supreme duty of
every man is that he should discover and obey these words. If
he live from day to day, from week to week, from month to
month, and from year to year without reference to that law,
hoping that, after being regardless of, if not rebellious against, it,
he will at last slip into some happy state, then surely he must
indeed be blind and foolish. Self-control and a willing humilia-
tion of self to the Will that rules the universe is man's first and
hardest lesson. This teaches him at the outset how helpless and
hopeless he is in himself. Such knowledge drives a man out of
himself hungry and thirsty for every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God. When once he has learned to lay hold of the
Power which alone can help him, then begins the process which
ends in the mastery of self and in the consummation of a life
which alone is worth living.
I

' ^ How is the soul free ? Not, as has been excellently put,
" when it is at the mercy of every random impulse, but when it
is acted upon by congenial forces, when it is exposed to spiritual
pressure, to constraint within itself." Let us take a concrete
instance. Take a high-souled man who is injured or insulted by
his fellow. How will he act ? What will be here the next thing ?
The natural reaction, the instinctive movement, will be one of
revolt, of paying back in like coin. That lies nearest to the
animal in him, and he feels it all. But will it determine his
action? WiU that actually come next? There is a beautiful
story which D'Aguesseau, a French Advocate-General of the
seventeenth century, tells of his father: "Naturally of a quick
temper," his son says of him, " when under provocation one saw
him redden and become silent at the same moment ; the nobler
part of his soul allowing the first fire to pass without word said,

62 A QUESTION OF LIFE

in order to re-establish straightway that inner calm and tranquil-
lity which reason and religion had combined to make the habit of
his soul." There you have the thing taken from the life; the
trained soul caught in the entire fineness of its action. The
whole philosophy of the spirit is there ; the higher nature con-
structing its next thing, not from the grosser impulses, but from
the free obedience it pays to the highest that is in it.^

(2) Ohedience is the proof of sonship.—lt was by His obedience
to the word of God that Christ proved His Sonship. As there is
no doubt, neither is there any wavering in His decision. The
life of man is the life of obedience to God. He has bidden me
be His son here. The life of a son is the life of obedience, and He
has bidden me prove that the life of sonship and the life of man
are one, and that I must prove. My sonship — not by claim from
the heavens ; not by being exalted with twelve legions of angels ;
not with flare of trumpet — I must prove my sonship through
obedience. I must prove my sonship by working out the will and
carrying out the word of my Father. There is a long, long, fierce
struggle before the man who says he will not live by bread alone.
But by obedience to the word of God the victory will ultimately
be ours, and our title, " sons of God," be approved.

^ You must yield yourselves to be led along by the Spirit,
with that leading which is sure to conduct you always away from
self and into the will of God. You must welcome the Indweller
to have His holy way with your springs of thought and will. So,
and only so, will you truly answer the idea, the description, " sons
of God " — that glorious term, never to be satisfied by the relation
of mere creaturehood, or by that of merely exterior sanctification,
mere membership in a community of men, though it be the
Visible Church itself. But if you so meet sin by the Spirit, if
you are so led by the Spirit, you do show yourselves nothing less
than God's own sons. He has called you to nothing lower than
sonship; to vital connexion with a Divine Father's life, and to
the eternal embraces of His love. For when He gave and you
received the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of promise, who reveals Christ
and joins you to Him, what did that Spirit do, in His heavenly
operation ? Did He lead you back to the old position, in which you
shrunk from God, as from a Master who bound you against your will?
No, He showed you that in the Only Son you are nothing less than
sons, welcomed into the inmost home of eternal life and love.*

' J. Blierley, Religion and To-Day, 143.

' H. C. G. Monle, The EpisUe to the Eomana, 228.

ST. MATTHEW iv. 4 63

^ Francis had conquered, one by one, his love of company, of
fine clothes, of rank and wealth ; his aversion to squalor, disease,
and misery ; his daintiness in food and surroundings. AH were
laid upon the altar of obedience, and for all God gave him a
thousandfold of their antitypes in the spiritual life — for parents
and friends, His own continual presence ; for rank, sonship of the
King of kings; for garments, the robe of righteousness; for
wealth, " all things " ; for personal fastidiousness, a purity, tender-
ness, and joy which lifted him above the annoyances of daily
experience. The weapons marked with the cross were gaining
him the victory. His vision was in course of fulfilment.^

* A. M. Stoddart, Francis ofAssisi, 91.

The First Beatitude.

ST. MATT.-

Literature.

Ainsworth (P. C), The Blessed Life, 61.

Brett (J.), 2716 Blessed Life, 1.

Callan (H.), HeaH Cures, 18, 27.

Carpenter (W. B.), The Great Charter of Christ, 77.

Charles (Mrs. R.). The Beatitudes, 21.

Deshon (G.), Sermons for the Ecclesiastical Year, 484.

Dudden (F. H.), Christ and Christ's Religion, 47.

Dykes (J. 0.), The Manifesto of the King, 25.

Eyton (R.), The Beatitudes, 14.

Fletcher (A. E.), The Sermon on the Mount amd Practical PoKtics, 1.

Fox (W. J.), Collected Works, iii. 210.

Gore (C), The Sermon on the Mount, 23.

Hambleton (J.), The Beatitudes, 32.

Ingram (A. F. W.), Secrets of Strength, 14.

Iverach (J.), Tlie Other Side of Greatness, 1.

Jones (J. D.), The Way into the Kingdom, 23.

Laverack (F. J.), These Sayings of Mine, 19.

Leckie (J.), Life and Religion, 209.

Maolaren (A.), Th* Beatitudes, 1.

Meyer (F. B.), Blessed a/re Ye, 22.

Miller (J. R.), The Master's Blesseds, 23.

Moberley (G.), Sermons on the Beatitudes, 1.

Monsell (J. S. B.), The Beatitudes, 1.

Pearson (A.), Ghristus Magister, 51.

Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 64.

Ridgeway (0. J.), The Mounta/in of Blessedness, 12.

Spurgeon (0. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Iv. (1909), No. 3156.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xxi. (1882), No.

1197.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), Day ly Day Duty, 172.
Woods (H. G.), At the Temple Church, 185.
Cambridge Review, it. Supplement Nos. 145, 161 (W. Sanday).
Christi<(,n World Pulpit, xv. 49 (W. Hubbard) ; xix. 401 (G. G. Bradley) ;

xxxviii. 3 ("W. J. Woods) ; Ivi. 379 (J. Stalker).
Church of England Pulpit, Ixii. 101 (C. G. Lang),
Preacher's Maga^ne, xxiv. 423 (E. G. Loosley).

66

The First Beatitude.

Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Matt. V. 3.

1. The Beatitudes, which stand in the forefront of Christ's
moral system, are not meant to convey an exhaustive description
of the Christian character ; they refer to moral qualities of which
society can take no cognizance and to which it offers no rewards
— unobtrusive qualities which press no claims and exact no
recognitions, and which depend for their existence on a man's
own inward self-regulation. No doubt the qualities here described
issue in action, and often in very striking action. They are the
motive power of many noble acts, they inspire much of the
heroism of the world, their results win the praise, the enthusiasm,
the homage of mankind; but in themselves they must exist,
before anything of this kind can take place, as deliberately chosen
laws of character and of inward being. They do not easily lend
themselves to that self-advertisement which is the bane of our
modern quasi-religious movements, and it would be hard to con-
struct out of them materials for a thrilling biography ; and yet,
when accepted as a basis of character, they are full of power —
their un-self-conscious influence is the strongest thing in the
world, the thing that still works miracles, the thing that attracts,
and moves, and sways, and tells in spite of every external gulf.
They are to be cultivated for themselves, not for their results ;
for a man would find it hard, if not impossible, to cultivate any one
of them for the value of the power and influence it would give
him. The passion of the heart must love them for their own sake,
if it would take them in perfectly and distribute all around their
precious results. They come down from heaven, and none may
summon the gifts of heaven for any ulterior reason ; those who
would win them must love them for themselves, for their own

intrinsic beauty. Every one of them, if rightly looked at, will

67

68 THE FIRST BEATITUDE

kindle within us that sense of beauty, that desire, that longing,
which is the first step towards possession. It is something to
admire, to envy, to long for them, to be able to appreciate their
moral beauty, to have " eyes to see and ears to hear," even if one
fails grievously to reproduce them in oneself. And the very tone
and temper of our day, while in some ways it is a hindrance,
comes in here to help us. In an age when men were weary of the
rules of ecclesiastics, the hair-splittings of mere ceremonialists
and of moral expedients, Christ first uttered them, and their
simple ethical beauty went into the hearts of those who heard
them. Who can say that there is not much in our modern
conditions of the same weariness, produced, too, by much the
same means ?

^ Last night I spent at home ; I meant to dedicate the time
to writing, but I was in a mood too dark and hopeless to venture.
The exhaustion of Sunday remained ; I tried light reading in vain.
At last Charley came in from school, and I made him do his
Latin exercise before me; all the while I kept my eyes fixed
on that engraving of the head of Christ by Leonardo da Vinci,
which I have had framed, and felt the calm majesty of the counten-
ance by degrees exerting an influence over me, which was
sedative. Then I made him read over, slowly, the Beatitudes, and
tried to fix my mind and heart upon them, and believe them;
explaining them to him afterwards, and to myself as I went on.
" Blessed are " — not the successful, but " the poor in spirit."
" Blessed," not the rich, nor the admired, nor the fashionable, nor
the happy, but " the meek and the pure in heart, and the merci-
ful." They fell upon my heart like musie.^

2. Our Lord begins His reckoning of blessedness with poverty
in spirit. And this is evidently just ; for if blessedness depends
upon attainments, then the first step is to be conscious of poverty.
He who thinks himself already rich, why should he desire increase ?
Poverty in spirit leads to mourning and to hunger and thirst for
righteousness. The heavenly throne is given to those for whom
it is prepared ; but they must previously have been prepared, and
preparation of heart involves the poverty in spirit from which
the golden ladder of the Beatitudes climbs upward to blessedness.
Earthly thrones are generally built with steps up to them ; the
remarkable thing about the thrones of the eternal kingdom is
' Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Roleiison, 442,

ST. MATTHEW v. 3 69

that the steps are all down to them. We must descend if we
would reigii, stoop if we would rise, gird ourselves to wash the
feet of the disciples as a common slave in order to share the
royalty of our Divine Master.

^ The world has its own idea of blessedness. Blessed is the
man who is always right. Blessed is the man who is satisfied
with himself. Blessed is the man who is strong. Blessed is the
man who rules. Blessed is the man who is rich. Blessed is the
man who is popular. Blessed is the man who enjoys life. These
are the beatitudes of sight and this present world. It comes with
a shock, and opens a new realm of thought, that not one of these
men entered Jesus' mind when He treated of blessedness.^

The Book.

1. Whom did Jesus mean by the poor in spirit ? It is usually
supposed that He meant the humble-minded, but this was
probably not His meaning, as we see from the corresponding
passage in St. Luke's Gospel. There we find the Beatitude in a
simpler form : " Blessed are ye poor " ; and this phrase must be
taken in a literal sense of material poverty, because it is followed
by the words, " Woe unto you that are rich ! " and it is impossible,
of course, to suppose that Jesus would have condemned those
who are spiritually rich. We may feel tolerably sure that the
very same people whom St. Luke calls simply " poor " are called
by St. Matthew "poor in spirit." But why the variation of
phrase, and which of the two phrases did Jesus actually use?
The latter question is beside the mark. Strictly speaking. He
did not use either. He spoke Aramaic, the language which in
His day had superseded Hebrew in Palestine, and the Gospels
were written in Greek. Both phrases are therefore translations,
and the actual words used are beyond our reach. There is reason,
however, to think that St. Matthew's " poor in spirit " is the later,
and St. Luke's "poor" the earlier, version of the saying.

We might illustrate our Lord's point of view by a reference
to the Psalms. The Psalmist frequently speaks of the poor (the

' John Watson, The Mind of the Master, 65.

70 THE FIRST BEATITUDE

poor and needy) a8 if they were as a matter of course the servants
of God. They are constantly identified with the godly, the
righteous, the faithful; they suffer undeservedly; God has a
special care of them and listens to their cry. There is a certain
amount of truth, no doubt, in this picture of the poor which the
Psalms draw. It is true to some extent nowadays. Poverty
still has a tendency to wean people from worldliness. Poverty
may, of course, be so grinding as to fill the mind continually with
sordid anxieties and so make a spiritual life almost impossible.
But poor people are often strikingly unworldly.

There is a tendency in all material possession to obscure the
needs it cannot satisfy. A full hand helps a man to forget an
empty heart. The things that effectually empty life are the
things that are commonly supposed to fill it. The man who is
busy building barns and storehouses is sometimes shutting out
the sweet alluring light of the city of God and the vision of
heavenly mansions. " Property " is not the best stimulus to faith.
" Blessed are the poor." There are fewer obstacles and obstruc-
tions between them and the Kingdom. They are not compassed
about with spurious satisfactions. There are not so many things
standing between them and life's essentials. There is one de-
lusion the less to be swept from their minds. History bears all
this out. If you look into the story of the Kingdom, you will
find it has ever been the kingdom of the poor. They have ever
been the first to enter in.

^ The poverty which was honoured by the great painters and
thinkers of the Middle Ages was an ostentatious, almost a pre-
sumptuous poverty: if not this, at least it was chosen and
accepted — the poverty of men who had given their goods to feed
the simpler poor, and who claimed in honour what they had lost
in luxury; or, at the best, in claiming nothing for themselves,
had still a proud understanding of their own self-denial, and a
confident hope of future reward. But it has been reserved for
this age to perceive and tell the blessedness of another kind of
poverty than this; not voluntary nor proud, but accepted and
submissive; not clear-sighted nor triumphant, but subdued and
patient ;_ partly patient in tenderness — of God's will; partly
patient in blindness — of man's oppression; too laborious to be
thoughtful — too innocent to be conscious — too long experienced
in sorrow to be hopeful — waiting in its peaceful darkness for the

ST. MAtTtiEW V. 3 ^

unconceived dawn ; yet not without its own sweet, complete, un-
tainted happiness, like intermittent notes of birds before the day-
break, or the first gleams of heaven's amber on the eastern grey.^

2. Yet the picture which the Psalms put before us is, after
all, an ideal one. It is very far from being true that all poor
people are, or ever were, followers of righteousness and godliness.
Our Lord felt this, just as He also felt the corresponding truth
about the rich. He begins by telling His disciples how hard it
is for them that have riches to enter into the Kingdom of God,
and then He modifies the saying by restricting it to them that
trust in riches. Exactly the same modification has taken place
in St. Matthew's version of the Beatitude as compared with St.
Luke's. The blessing is pronounced on the poor, not, however, on
the actual poor, but on those who embrace poverty in spirit, even
though as a matter of fact they are rich. The man who by the
external accident of his position in life is rich is not necessarily
debarred from the blessing, because he can be, and indeed ought
to be, in spirit poor.

In saying "Blessed are the poor in spirit," then, Jesus is
saying, Blessed are the unworldly ; blessed are they who, though
in the world, are not of the world. The world says. Get all you
can and keep all you get. Jesus says. Blessed are they who in
will and heart at any rate have nothing. He does not say to
every one, " Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." That is
a counsel of perfection beyond the reach of the average man ; it
needs the spirituality of a Prancis of Assisi to hear and obey
that command. But He does say to us all. Do not cling to your
possessions as though they were your own by some inalienable
right. Be ready to resign them freely and cheerfully if need be.
Eemember that they are a trust from God. Be ready always to
use them in His service and for the good of your fellow-men. If
you can do all this, you are poor in spirit, and the blessing is
yours.

^ So long as 1700 years ago a tract was written upon this
subject by Clement of Alexandria, entitled, Quis dives salveturl
(" What rich man shall be saved ? "). The teaching of this ancient
Father is still to the point : " Eiches in themselves are a thing
indifferent; the question with regard to them being this, as to

' Ruskin, Academy Notes, 1868.

72 THE FIRST BEATITUDE

whether they are used as an Ipyawi of good. By those whom He
praises as poor in spirit, Christ means to denote those who, be
they rich or poor, are in heart loosened from worldly possessions,
are therefore poor ; and to this idea an admirable parallel passage
might be found in 1 Cor. vii. 29, ' They that possess, as though
they possessed not ' (comp. Jer. ix. 23) ; and in St. James i. 9, 10,
' But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate : and
the rich, in that he is made low.' " "■

II.

The Pooe in Spirit.

The more usual interpretation of " the poor in spirit," however,
has more interest and attractiveness, and deserves consideration.

1. Poverty of spirit is not poverty in the lower soul but in
that higher part of man which comes into immediate contact with
the Divine, in the higher soul which comes face to face with God,
in that spirit with which " the Spirit bears witness that we are
the children of God."

The simplest way to grasp its meaning is perhaps to consider
its opposite, i.e., the moral distortion of being lifted up in spirit.
This uplifted spirit is the spirit of self-exaltation which filled the
heart of Nebuchadnezzar when he contemplated the glories of the
great Babylon which he had built. This is the spirit of those
who are self-satisfied and at ease, who call their lands after their
own names, and look at everything through the medium of their
own self-importance. For such the world has no significance
except as it affects their interest or their convenience. This is
the radical spirit of worldliness ; for it is the spirit which makes
self the centre of everything. This spirit is the seed-ground of
sin. All kinds of wrong become possible to the man who makes
his own pleasure or aggrandizement the supreme rule of his life.
Conscience has little place in the heart of the man who makes
self the axis of reference in all his conduct. This inflated egotism
is flat against the order of the universe, and essentially hostile to
the Kingdom of God. It is in one sense the starting-place of
evil ; it is in another sense its climax. Egotism in moral life is

' E. G. Loosley.

ST. MATTHEW v. 3 n

the cause of most of the heedlessness and sinfulness of the world ;
and yet it is only after a prolonged indulgence of selfishness that
the humane and kindly instincts of nature are destroyed. The
evil principle of self works till all the finer, better, and purer
feelings and aspirations are brought to naught. It stands out
then as the naked antagonist of all that is good.

^ And so Vergil and Dante come at last to the Angel-Guardian
of the Cornice, against the place of ascent to the next ring — the
Angel of Humility, " in his countenance such as a tremulous star
at morn appears." He bids them to the steps and beats his wings
on Dante's forehead. There comes to Dante's ears the sound of
sweet voices singing, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and he
notices that, though mounting steep stairs, he is lighter than when
walking on the level below. Why is this ? Vergil explains that
one of the seven Sin-marks on Dante's brow has been erased by
the Angel's wings, the Pride-mark, and that all the remaining six
have, at the same time, become much fainter than before; a
beautiful indication this of the doctrine that Pride is the deadliest
foe of human salvation. When the last Sin-mark is removed
Dante will experience not merely no difficulty in mounting but
actual delight. Dante feels his brow on hearing this and finds
that only six of the marks remain, and Vergil smiles at this. True
humility is not even conscious of being humble.^

2. Poverty of spirit is not a feeling of self-disgust which comes
over us when we compare our gifts and talents with those of
others ; it is born from no earthly inspiration, it proceeds from
coming face to face with God. A man may be poor in spirit
while his soul is on fire with enthusiasm for the cause of God, for
the good of man. It is born of a double sense, both of the Divine
greatness and of the Divine nearness. It is shown in unrepining
acquiescence in our present limitations ; it is shown in acceptance
of the will of God in everything ; it is shown not in self-depreciation,
but in the strength that comes of trustfulness. It is the attitude
which, in the presence of God, recognizes its entire dependence,
empties itself, and is as a poor man, not that it may be feeble, but
that God may fill it. It is the virtue which sends a man to his
knees bowed and humbled and entranced before the Divine Presence,
even in the hour of his most thrilling triumph. He cannot vaunt
himself, he cannot push himself, he is but an instrument, and an
' H. B. Garrod, Damte, Goethe's Faust, and Other Lectures, 140.

74 THE FIRST BEATITUDE

instrument that can work only as long as it is in touch with its
inward power ; the " God within him " is the source of his power.
"What can he be but poor in spirit, how can he forget, how can he
call out " worship me," when he has seen the Vision and heard the
Voice, and felt the Power of God? Poor in spirit, emptied of
mere vain, barren conceit, deaf to mere flattery he must be, because
he has seen and known; he has cried "Holy, Holy, Holy"; he
knows God, and henceforth he is not a centre, not an idol, but an
instrument, a vessel that needs for ever refilling, if it is to overflow
and do its mission. His is the receptive attitude ; not that which
receives merely that it may keep, but that which receives because
it must send forth. And so he accepts all merely personal con-
ditions, not as perfect in themselves, but as capable of being
transmuted by that inward power which is his own yet not his
own — his own because God is within him, not his own because he
is the receiver, not the inspirer.

^ I am sure there must be many who have a difficulty in
understanding these words of our Lord — " Blessed are the poor in
spirit." It must almost seem to them as if He had meant to pro-
nounce a blessing on the cowardly and mean-spirited ; whereas the
blessing is on those who know and keep their place in the Divine
hierarchy. We are dependent creatures, not self-existent or self-
suf&cing ; but there is nothing degrading in this dependence, for
we share it with the eternal Son. When we forget this, we lose
our blessedness, for it consists in the spirit of sonship, by which
alone we can receive and respond to our Father's love. God does
not call for the acknowledgment of our dependence as a mere
homage to His sovereignty, but because we are His children, and
it is only through this acknowledgment that we can receive His
fatherly love and blessing. The blessedness arises out of the spirit
of dependence, and when that spirit departs the blessedness departs
with it ; therefore as the spirit of independence is the spirit of this
world, we need not wonder at its unblessedness, for that spirit
shuts the heart against God and cuts off its supply from the
Fountain of Life.^

3. Only he who has discerned the ideal can feel what is

described in the text as poverty of spirit. The man contented

with himself, satisfied with his work and his position, to whom no

ideal opens itself as something yet imattained, can never feel

' Thomas Erstine of Linlathan, The Spiritual Order, 233.

ST. MATTHEW v. 3 75

poverty of spirit. In short, this foundation Beatitude, on which
all the other Beatitudes are built up, sets forth a universal law of
human life ; it describes the attitude of mind characteristic of the
wisest, strongest, best of the human family. The greater a man
is in any walk of life the wider his vision, and the keener his
insight the greater is his poverty of spirit in the presence of the
perfection he has seen.

So doth the greater glory dim the less.
A substitute shines brightly as a king
Until a king be by ; and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters.

The vision of the greater glory, showing the contrast between
what he has seen and what he has in possession, makes the man
full of poverty of spirit. The stars shine as brightly during the
daylight as they do at night, but they are invisible because of the
greater glory of the sun. One can be content with his present
state only when he has seen no brighter, clearer vision.

•[f Miss EUice Hopkins writes her impressions of a visit to the
Briary at this time :

" At a very unassuming looking house at the foot of the Downs
lived another of the Immortals, our great painter, who always
went by the name of the ' Divine Watts.' Mrs. Cameron took us to
see his studio, and to be introduced to him. We found a slightly
built man with a fine head, most courteous in manner, and with the
simplicity and humility of the immortal child that so often dwells
at the heart of true genius. There was something pathetic to me
in the occasional poise of the head, the face slightly lifted, as we
see in the blind, as if in dumb beseeching to the fountain of
Eternal Beauty for more power to think his thoughts after Him.
There is always in his work a window left open to the infinite, the
unattainable ideal." ^

4. Poverty of spirit comes first because it must be first. It is
the foundation on which alone the fabric of spiritual character can
rise. It is the rich soil in which alone other graces will grow and
flourish. Hill-tops are barren because the soil is washed off by
the rains; but the valleys are fertile because there the rich
deposits gather. In like manner proud hearts are sterile, afford-
ing no soil in which spiritual graces can grow ; but lowly hearts
' George Frederic Watts, i. 299.

76 THE FIRST BEATITUDE

are fertile with grace, and in them all lovely things grow.
If only we are truly poor in spirit, our life will be rich in its
fruits.

TJ A consciousness of want and shortcoming is the condition
of success and excellence in any sphere. Of those who aspire to
be doctors, lawyers, painters, musicians, scholars, I would say,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit — blessed are they who are
conscious of their defect and want — for to them the. high places
of their professions belong." The only hopeless people in the
world are the self-satisfied people, the people who do not think
they need anything. The only man who will ever make a great
scholar is the man who is keenly conscious of his own ignorance,
who feels, like Sir Isaac Newton, that he has but gathered a few
pebbles on the shore of the infinite ocean of truth ; who carries
the satchel still, like Michel Angelo, into an old age, and who,
like J. E. Green, dies learning. But the man who starts by think-
ing he knows everything dooms himself to lifelong ignorance.
A sense of want, humility of mind, is the very condition of
excellence and success.^

^ The most marked of all the moral features in Dr. Duncan's
character was humility. He was singularly humble, in considera-
tion of his great talents, of his vast treasures of learning, and of
his attainments in the Divine life. But if we set all these aside,
and compare him with other Christian men, we cannot but come
to the conclusion that out of all the guests bidden in these days
by the King within the circle of our knowledge, it was he that
took the lowest room at the feast. This lowliness was allied to
the childlike simplicity which pervaded his whole Christian
course, and was made more evident by the helplessness which
rendered him so unfit to guide himself in common matters, and
so willing to be guided by others. But its root lay in his sense of
the majesty of God, which was far more profound than in other
men, and humbled him lower in the dust ; in his perception and
his love of holiness, and the consciousness of his own defect ; in
his sense of ingratitude for the unparalleled love of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and in his abiding conviction of past sin and of
present sinfulness. This habitual humbling was deepened by the
wounding of his very tender conscience, through yielding himself
to be carried away by what chanced to take hold of his mind.
These combined elements rendered him an example of an altogether
rare and inimitable humility. Men who may be reckoned holier
might be named out of those who served the Lord along with
' J. D. Jones, The Way into the Kingdom, 31.

ST. MATTHEW v. 3 77

him ; but among them all it would be hard to find one so humble.
The holiness of Eobert M'Oheyne, if not so deep, was more equal,
and more thoroughly leavened the character hour by hour. The
holiness of William Burns was in some respects as deep, and it
was singularly constant. They were both more watchful, and
therefore more evenly holy. ' But in the race to stoop down into
their Lord's sepulchre, John Duncan outran them both ; he was
the humblest of the three, and of all the men whom most of us
have known.^

5. We must also distinguish between poverty of spirit and self-
depreciation. There is a false humility which finds pleasure in
calling itself a worm and a miserable sinner, simply as an excuse
for being no better. It is a false humility which pleads its humble-
ness as an excuse for aiming low. It is a false humility which
says, " We are no better than our fathers were," as an excuse for
not trying to rise to a higher level, and for maintaining a low
standard and perpetuating abuses. It is a false humility which
leads us to take the lower room, that we may shirk our duties and
avoid taking a lead when we are called upon to do so. It was
not true humility that led the idle servant to bury his talent in
the ground. Whatever name it may assume, it is conceit and
pride that in the heart believes itself fitted for higher things,
and is discontented with its part on the world's stage. It is pride
that wishes to be ministered unto, and is too conceited to
minister. There is no true humility in pretending to be worse
than we are, in underrating the gifts that God has given us, in
declining to take the part for which we are fitted.

^ Do you want a cure for that false humility, that mock
modesty which says, " I am not worthy," and trumpets its denial
till all the world knows that an honour has been offered ; which,
while it says with the lips, " It is too great for me," feels all the
time in the heart that self-consciousness of merit which betrays
itself in the affected walk and the showy humility ? Would you
be free from this folly ? Feel that God is all ; that whether He
makes you great, or leaves you unknown, it is best for you, because
it is His work.2

1 A. Moody Stuart, SecoUecUoiis of the late John Duncan, 175,
' Stopford A. Brooke,

78 THE FIRST BEATITUDE

III.

The Bbn-bdiction.

1. The bulk of the remaining Beatitudes point onward to a
future ; this deals with the present ; not " theirs shall he," but
"theirs is the kingdom." It is an all-comprehensive promise,
holding the succeeding ones within itself, for they are but diverse
aspects — modified according to the necessities which they supply
— of that one encyclopaedia of blessings, the possession of the
Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven — what is it here ? Surely we shall
read the words aright if we think of them as conveying the
promise of a present dominion of no ordinary kind ; an inward
power that comes here and now, and finds its exercise in ways all
unknown to the possessor, that blesses those whom it has never
seen and cheers those who have felt only its shadow ; an inward
im-self-conscious, often unrealized, power that flows out and is
conveyed in a word or a look, or even by something more subtle
still. So does Christian influence work among men. The poor
in spirit make men believe that Christ is God, because they show
the Divine beneath the human.

Tl Often, as formerly with Jesus, a look, a word sufficed
Francis to attach to himself men who would follow him until
their death. It is impossible, alas ! to analyze the best of this
eloquence, all made of love, intimate apprehension, and fire. The
written word can no more give an idea of it than it can give us
an idea of a sonata of Beethoven or a painting by Eembrandt.
We are often amazed, on reading the memoirs of those who have
been great conquerors of souls, to find ourselves remaining cold,
finding in them all no trace of animation or originality. It is
because we have only a lifeless relic in the hand ; the soul is gone.
It is the white wafer of the sacrament, but how shall that rouse
in us the emotions of the beloved disciple lying on the Lord's
breast on the night of the Last Supper ? ^

2. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who feel their
own unworthiness and utter need, and who seek in Christ the
sufficiency they do not find in themselves. They have already

' Paul Sabatier, Life of St. Francis of Assist, 131.

ST. MATTHEW v. 3 79

entered into their heritage because they have learnt their true
position in it — fit to rule because they have learnt to serve, fit to
infiuence because they have felt the Divine spark kindling them.
They may not be called to high office ; their place in the world
may be a very lowly one, but their rule is more of a fact now
than if they had the mastery of many legions. For there is no
influence so certain, so strong, so compelling, as that which is
founded upon the assured sense of the Divine indwelling, and the
Divine co-operation; if a man has that sense he must become
poor in spirit, emptied of mere conceit and shallow pride, because
he has seen what real greatness is.

^ The clearest and most significant of all the relationships of
this grace of humility is that which connects it with greatness.
Humility and greatness always walk together. I do not think
that Euskin ever spoke a truer word than when he said, " I
believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility." That
truth shines with lustre upon every page of our human record.
There is nothing more beautiful in the whole of the human story
than the humility of the greatest men. The mind of the seer is
not so far from the heart of the little child as we sometimes
imagine. Most of the great scientific discoveries have been
achieved through the spirit of humility. Men have been willing
to be led to great discoveries through observation of the simplest
things — an apple falling from the tree or steam coming through a
kettle's spout. The willingness to learn has opened the doors to
the most fruitful discoveries. An over-assertive knowledge is
always the cloak of ignorance. And as with knowledge, so with
everything else. Power always veils itself. It does not seek to
produce an impression. It does not need to do that. It walks in
the paths of the humble. There are many people in the world
who will not stoop to menial tasks. In their blindness they
imagine humble duties to be a sign of lowly station or inferior
nature. If they but knew, there is no sign of inferiority so
patent as that which cannot stoop in lowliness or work in secret.
There is a beautiful and significant sentence in St. John's record
of the ministry of our Lord which illustrates this association be-
tween greatness and humility. This is how it reads: "Jesus
knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and
that he was come from God, and went to God ; he riseth from
supper, and laid aside his garments ; and took a towel, and girded
himself . . . and began to wash the disciples' feet." The moment
when He was most conscious of greatness was the time when He
performed the most menial duty. And that association is always

8o THE FIRST BEATITUDE

true in humble life. Greatness is never ashamed to be found in
lowly guise. The surest sign of a high nature is that it can stoop
without apologizing for itself.^

3. We can understand the happiness of this attitude. The
man is absorbed in the work — the God-given work — before him.
He has no leisure to pause and ask what the world thinks of him.
There is a real work to do, and he is alive to its importance and
to the necessity of turning his whole energy into it. The work
has to be done ; the trust must be discharged ; the criticisms of
the world, whether favourable or unfavourable, are of little
moment. Egotism has so small a place in his spirit that he is
neither uplifted nor depressed by the words of men's lips. His
soul is set on other things. He seeks the Kingdom of God, and
no kingdom of self — and it is in the emancipation of self from self
that he finds that Divine Kingdom. He loses himself to find
himself. This is the note that seals the possession of the Kingdom
of Heaven. In fact, this is the keynote of all our Lord's teaching.
It is the note of His own life. It is expressly what He says of
Himself : " Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am
meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls."
It is what He teaches by His example. For He ever watched
the Father's hand. He spoke the Father's words, He did the
Father's works, and all He thought, felt, and did was done in
obedience to the Father. He emptied Himself. At every fresh
departure in His work He spent the night in prayer and fellow-
ship with the Father, and whenever He needed wisdom and power
for His life-work He sought these from the Father. Thus in
virtue of His poverty of spirit He was in possession of the Kingdom.

^ I cannot tell you how great a point our Blessed Father
made of self-abandonment, i.e., self-surrender into the hands of
God. In one place he speaks of it as : " The cream of charity,
the odour of humility, the flower of patience, and the fruit of
perseverance. Great," he says, "is this virtue, and worthy of
being practised by the best-beloved children of God." And again,
" Our Lord loves with a most tender love those who ^re so happy
as to abandon themselves wholly to His fatherly care, letting
themselves be governed by His divine Providence without any
idle speculations as to whether the workings of this Providence
' Sidney M. Berry, Graces of the Christian Character, 78.

ST. MATTHEW v. 3 81

will be UBeful to them to their profit, or painful to their loss, and
this because they are well assured that nothing can be sent,
nothing permitted by this paternal and most loving Heart, which
will not be a source of good and profit to them. All that is
required is that they should place all their confidence in Him,
and say from their heart, ' Into thy hands I commend my spirit,'
my soul, my body, and all that I have, to do with them as it shall
please Thee." ^

■(I Christ showed that sacrifice, self-surrender, death, is the
beginning and the course and the aim and the essential principle
of the higher life. To find life in our own way, to wish to save it,
to seek to gain it, to love it, is. He proclaims, to miss it altogether.
. . . The law of sacrifice is based on essential moral relations,
justified by the facts of common experience, welcomed by the
universal conscience. . . . Sacrifice alone is fruitful. . . . The
essence of sin is selfishness in respect of men, and self-assertion
in respect of God, the unloving claim of independence, the arro-
gant isolation of our interests. . . . That which we use for our-
selves perishes ignobly : that which He uses for us but not on us
proves the beginning of a fuller joy. Isolation is the spring of
death ; life is revealed through sacrifice. . . . Vicarious toil, pain,
sufi'ering, is the very warp of life. When the Divine light falls
upon it, it becomes transformed into sacrifice. . . . Not one tear,
one pang, one look of tender compassion, one cry of pitying
anguish, one strain of labouring arm, offered in the strength of
God for the love of man, has been in vain. They have entered
into the great life with a power to purify, and cheer, and nerve,
measured not by the standard of our judgment but by the com-
pleteness of the sacrifice which they represent.*

1 J. P. Camns, The Spirit of St. Frarnds De Sales, 278,
' Bishop Westcott, The Victory of the Crosi, 22.

ST. MATT. — 6

The Pure in Heart.

Literature.

Ainsworth (P. 0.), The Blessed Life, 131.

Barrett (G. S.), Musings for Quiet Hours, 110.

Dykes (J. O.), The Manifesto of the King, 119.

Gore (C), The Sermon on the Mount, 40.

Houchin (J. W.), The Vision of Ood, 1.

Hull (E. L.), Sermons, 1. 154.

Huntington (F. D.), Christ in the Christian Year : Advent to Trinity,

219.
Jones (J. S.), The Invisible Things, 34.
Kennett (R. H.), In Our Tongues, 51.
Lightfoot (J. B.), Cambridge Sermons, 34.
Lockyer (T. P.), The Inspirations of the Christian Life, 144.
Maclaren (A.), The Beatitudes, 53.

Meyer (H. H.), in Drew Sermons on the Golden Texts for 1910, 19.
Miller (J. E.), The Master's Blesseds, 125.
Momerie (A. W.), The Origin of Evil, 283.
Neale (J. M.), Sermons for Children, 105.
Parkhurst (C. H.), The Blind Man's Creed, 205.
Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, i. 69.
Smith (W. C), Sermons, 50.
Thompson (J. R.), Burden Bearing, 187.
Vaughan (C. J.), University Sermons, 425.
Wardell (R. J.), Studies in Homiletics, 106.
Wilberforoe (B.), Spiritual Consciousness, 88.
Wray (J. J.), Honey in the Comb, 59.
British Gongregationalist, February 2, 1911 (J. H. Jowett).
Camibridge Review, v. Supplement No. 126 (G. Salmon).
Christian World Pulpit, xxix. 238 (J. Lloyd) ; xxxix. 12 (0. A. Vince) ;

Ixvi. 337 (W. T. Davison) ; Ixxxiii. 33 (J. S. Holden).

64

The Pure in Heart.

Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God. — Matt. v. 8.

If there be in the bright constellation of the Beatitudes one
particular star, it is this text. If in blessedness there be a crown
of blessedness, it is here. If there be a character that in its very
quintessence is spiritual, it is this. And if there be a delight
above all conceivable delights, it is that which is promised in these
well-known words. So lofty a verse is this, that it is one of the
texts which the preacher trembles to take, and yet is continually
impelled to take, that at least he may teach himself if he cannot
teach other people, and that preacher and congregation together
may do a little towards climbing up to summits which seem like
the far-off Alpine heights.

Oh, snow so pure, Oh, peak so high,
I shall not reach you till I die.

Yet lofty and remote as they seem, these words are in truth
among the most hopeful and radiant that ever came even from
Christ's lips. For they offer the realization of an apparently im-
possible character. They promise the possession of an apparently
impossible vision. They soothe fears, and tell us that the sight
from which, were it possible, we should sometimes shrink, is the
source of our purest gladness.

I.

The Vision.

I

" They shall see God " ; what do these words mean ? In their
widest and fullest significance they must remain to us an eternal
mystery. They express the object around which all the hopes and
fears of the best men of the human race have always gathered, and

86 THE PURE IN HEART

around which they are gathering still. To see God has been
the ultimate aim of all philosophy; it is the ultimate hope
of all science, and it will ever remain the ultimate desire of all
nations.

^ In all the nobler religions which the world has seen, we
can trace an endeavour to rise to a vision of God. The Brahmin
on the burning plains of the East gave up all the present charm
of life, and, renouncing ease and love, passed his years in silent
thought, hoping to be absorbed into the Eternal. The Greek
philosopher spoke of passions that clogged the soul's wings, and
desires that darkened its piercing eye, and he strove to purge his
spirit from them by philosophy, that he might free its pinions
and quicken its sight for beholding the Infinite. And in this
light we can understand how the monks in the Middle Ages
became so marvellously earnest. These men felt a Presence
around their path which at one time appeared to reveal itself like
a dream of splendour, and at another swept like a vision of terror
across the shuddering heart; and to behold Him they crushed
their longings for fellowship, steeled their hearts to the calls of
affection, and alone, in dens and deserts, hoped, by mortifying the
body, to see God in the soul. In a word, the dream which has
haunted the earnest of our world, has ever been this — to be
blessed, man must know the Eternal. Christ proclaims that
dream to be a fact — they are blessed who see God.^

1. To see God is to stand on the highest point of created being.
Not until we see God — no partial and passing embodiment of Him,
but the abiding Presence — do we stand upon our own mountain-
top, the height of the existence which God has given us, and up to
which He is leading us. That there we should stand is the end
of our creation. This truth is at the heart of everything, means
all kinds of completions, may be uttered in many ways ; but
language will never compass it, for form will never contain it.
Nor shall we ever see, that is, know, God perfectly. We shall
indeed never absolutely know man or woman or child; but we
may know God as we never can know human being, as we never
can know ourselves. We not only may, but we must, so know
Him, and it can never be until we are pure in heart.

If Eeligion largely lies in the consciousness of our true relation
to Him who made us ; and the yearning for the realization of this
• E. L. Hull, Sermons, i, 155,

ST. MATTHEW v. 8 87

consciousness found constant expression in Tennyson's works and
conversation. Perhaps its clearest expression is to be found in
his instructions to his son : " Eemember, I want ' Crossing the
Bar ' to be always at the end of all my works."

I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the Bar.

When in answer to the question, What was his deepest
desire of all ? he said, " A clearer vision of God," it exactly
expressed the continued strivings of his spirit for more light
upon every possible question, which so constantly appear in his
poems.^

Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He

seems ?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in

dreams ?

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but that which has power to feel " I
am I"?

Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom,
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and
gloom.

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man can-
not see;

But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not
He?2

2. To see God is to be admitted into His immediate presence

and friendship. In the court language of ancient Oriental

despotisms, where the Sovereign was revered as if he were the

vicegerent of Heaven, to " see the king's face " stood for the highest

felicity of the most favoured subjects. It was the petition of the

disgraced prince Absalom, after he had for two full years resided

in the capital without being received at his father's palace : " Now

therefore let me see the king's face ; and if there be iniquity in

' Tennyson and Sis Friends, 305.
^ Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism.

88 THE PURE IN HEART

me, let him kill me ! " " Happy are these thy servants," said the
African queen to Solomon; happy in this, that they "stand
continually before thee." So the seven chief princes of the Medo-
Persian Empire who sat first in the kingdom of Ahasuerus were
they " which saw the king's face." The same magnificent phrase-
ology passed from the court to the temple. In the Hebrew State,
Jehovah was the national Sovereign ; and the reigning king was, in
no flattering hyperbole, but in constitutional law. His elected
vicegerent. The temple was His palace, the most holy place His
chamber of presence and of audience ; and the one thing desired
by His devout and favoured servants was to behold His beauty;
their prayer, that His face would shine on them ; their hope, to
see His face in righteousness, and one day to be satisfied with His
likeness.

^ In prayer there would sometimes come upon me such a sense
of the Presence of God that I seemed to be all engulfed in God.
I think the learned call this mystical experience ; at any rate, it
so suspends the ordinary operations of the soul that she seems to
be wholly taken out of herself. This tenderness, this sweetness,
this regale is nothing else but the Presence of God in the
praying soul. God places the soul in His immediate Presence,
and in an instant bestows Himself upon the soul in a way she
could never of herself attain to. He manifests something of His
greatness to the soul at such times: something of His beauty,
something of His special and particular grace. And the soul
enjoys God without dialectically understanding just how she so
enjoys Him. She burns with love without knowing what she has
done to deserve or to prepare herself for such a rapture. It is
the gift of God, and He gives His gifts to whomsoever and when-
soever He will.^

3. The theophany, or visible discovery of the Divine Being,
which was given to the best period of Hebrew history, was a
prefigure of the Incarnation — the chief theophany of all time —
in which, through a human character and life, there has been
discovered to us all the ethical beauty and splendour of the God-
head. To " see God " must now for ever mean nothing else than
this : to see His " truth arid grace " mirrored in the face of that
Man, who alone of all men on earth " is of God, and hath seen
the Father."

' Saint Teresa.

ST. MATTHEW v. 8 89

^ We are in the world to see God. That is the final spiritual
purpose of life. Across the cradle of the babe and the playtime
of the girls and boys this purpose ever falls. It can be forgotten
and frustrated, but as life's highest possibility and truest destiny
it is always with us. It follows the prodigal in his wandering,
the fool in his folly, the strong man in his wilfulness. It is all-
inclusive. It waits men in the quiet places of thought, and in
the clangour of the world's work. The student, the book-writer,
the weaver at his loom, the buyer and seller, the woman mid her
household cares — the vision is close to them all. It is before us
in the sunlight and the green earth, it is about us in all the
grace and trust and intimacy of home life. In youth and age, in
gladness and in grieving, the vision waits. And most of all the
vision draws near to us in the life of Him who said, " He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father." ^

^ Through all the complexities of Christ's mind and mission,
how essentially single His spirit and simple His method — rare
as morning air, Hmpid as spring water, clear as a running brook,
ever standing in the truth, utterly veracious and sublimely
superior to worldly policy ! Is not this, indeed, the meaning of
that choice beatitude — among those beatitudes with their seven-
fold colours like a rainbow round the throne of Christ — " Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God " ? Not the " im-
maculate" — it would be superfluous to say, "Blessed are the
holy" — but rather those of pure intent and single spirit, free
from duplicities in their motives. " Blessed " in that trueness of
spirit which gives vision, that honest and unadulterated child-
heart which enables us to see our Pather-God and the Good
everywhere.*

If clearer vision Thou impart.

Grateful and glad my soul shall be;

But yet to have a purer heart
Is more to me.

Yea, only as the heart is clean

May larger vision yet be mine.
For mirrored in its depths are seen

The things divine.*

1 P. 0. Aiusworth, The Blessed Ufe, 132.

" R. E. "Welsh, Man to Man, 90.

' Walter 0. Smith, Poetical Works, 478.

90 THE PURE IN HEART

II

The Condition of the Vision.

There are three distinct kinds of sight. There is, first of all,
physical sight, which depends chiefly on bodily organs, and which
merely enables us to distinguish material objects from one another.
Then, secondly, there is mental sight — the sight of the scientist
and the poet. This faculty helps men to discover analogies and
resemblances and connexions between dissimilar and distant
things ; and hence it gives rise to the metaphors and similes of
poetry, and leads to the discovery of the laws of nature. It was
the faculty of mental vision, for example, that led to the establish-
ment of the widest scientific generalization, by suggesting to
Newton that perhaps the earth might exercise the same influence
of attraction upon the moon as it did upon a falling apple. Then,
thirdly, there is spiritual sight, which belongs to the man of
faith and pure heart. Spiritual vision enables men to see Him
who is invisible.

^ I care not whether God's self-revelation in the conscience
be called an immediate vision of God in the experiences of con-
science, or whether it be taken as an inference drawn from the
data they supply. It is the truth contained in them ; with one
man it may be only implicitly felt in their solemn and mystic
character ; with another, explicitly and immediately seen emerging
from them as they come, and making him the Seer of God rather
than the reasoner about Him. In any case, the constitution of
our moral nature is unintelligible, except as living in response to
an objective Perfection pervading the universe with Holy Law.^

1. God cannot be seen by the eye of sense. Of course, we
know that ; we admit it at once ; and yet men have an idea that
God was nearer to the patriarchs, and the people in the early
days who, in a vision or in some way or other — we hardly know
how — did see God ; and though they do not know what heaven
is, they think that somehow or other, by and by, in another state,
they will see and consciously have a sensible vision. It cannot
be. " Eye hath not seen," and eye can never see. And God is
not seen by reason. Doubtless if reason were freed from all
1 James Martineau, A Study of Helicon, ii. 28.

ST. MATTHEW v. 8 91

clogs and hindrances and drawbacks, if it worked with perfect
clearness and completeness, we might reason about God; but
even so we should conclude and argue and infer ; we should not
see. Nor by imagination. Imagination may do a great deal, but
the danger with regard to it is that we deceive ourselves, that
we worship our own fancies, and that the image below us is one
which we see in a mirror, and which we ourselves have, so to
speak, created. And God cannot be seen by means of traditional
knowledge, though that is very good. One hopes that religious
knowledge will continually be handed on from parents to children,
and that the children are being taught in all that is good, and
that they learn that God is infinite and eternal and omniscient ;
and well indeed that so they should learn. But they do not see
Him by that process. And faith — faith can do a great deal. It
has a marvellous power of transporting us beyond ourselves, and
beyond the world of the seen and tangible ; but faith itself is op-
posed to sight, and though faith can trust and obey, it cannot see.

^ You know that your friend is never seen by the eye of the
body ; you can discern a form, a figure, a countenance, by which
you know that he is near ; but that is not the friend you love ;
you discern him spiritually ; you understand his inner character ;
you know his truth, his nobleness, his affection, his charity — all
these the eye of sense cannot see. A stranger does not see him
thus ; he sees only the visible form and feature which imperfectly
represent the qualities of mind and heart which you know ; but
you see in that friend things which were invisible to the other.
It is in this sense — in understanding the truth and goodness, in
feeling the pity and charity, in holding communion with the
loving spirit of the Father — that Christ speaks of seeing God.^

^ Science is teaching us now that at each end of the spectrum,
beyond the red rays and the violet rays, there are rays of light
which our eyes cannot perceive. We know perfectly well that
there are notes of music too acute or too grave for our ears to
apprehend them. Do they not exist, then, though the ear cannot
hear them ? And so in religious matters, even though we are
regular worshippers in the Lord's house, and profess to know a
great deal about Christianity, we may be as blind men walking
in a gallery of pictures or — I will not say as deaf men, but — as
a large number of those who go to a Beethoven concert.^

' E. L. Hull, Sermons, i. 159,

2 W. T. Davison.

92 THE PURE IN HEART

2. The vision of God is possible only to the pure in heart.
The word " pure " as ordinarily used, in Hebrew, in Greek, and
in English, means "without alloy," "clean," "clear," "simple,"
" single." It is applied, in the Bible, to virgin gold, to a clean
table or candlestick, to flawless glass, to unmixed oil, and to water
that is only water. It does not necessarily involve a moral
element. It never stands for absolute sinlessness of being. Hence
it is to be taken, in the Sermon on the Mount as well as else-
where, when connected with " heart," or " mind," as meaning
" single," " simple," " unmixed." The " pure in heart " are those
whose minds, or very selves, are single, simple, undivided and un-
alloyed in one aim and purpose.

Single-mindedness, or simple-mindedness, is a characteristic of
childhood. A child is all attent to one thing at a time, looking
at that one thing with single eye and simpleness of mind ; while
double-mindedness, or divided thinking, is the peril of the full-
grown person. How many things a keen-eyed child will see in
an everyday walk that are unnoticed by the father whom he
accompanies ! The father has too many things in his mind, or on
his mind, to observe that which, for the moment, is the all in all
to the single-eyed and simple-minded — or, as the Bible would call
it, the pure-hearted — child. Therefore it is that our Lord said to
His maturer disciples : " Verily I say unto you. Whosoever shall
not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no
wise enter therein " (Luke xviii. 17). The pure in heart are the
child-minded. They shall see God, because when they are looking
for Him they are not looking for anything else. Their eyes
are single, their minds are undivided, and their whole being
goes out towards the object of their search. They seek for
God, and they find Him when they search for Him with all their
mind.

^ He returned to the Abbey, and preached his sermon on the
words, " Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." The
short, simple discourse contained the last words that he spoke in
Westminster Abbey. By one of those strange coincidences that
seem more than chance, the subject of his sermon was the blessed-
ness of purity of heart and life, which those who knew him best
considered to be the distinguishing quality of his character and
career. " The words," he said, " may bear a twofold meaning —

ST. MATTHEW v. 8 93

pure, disinterested love of truth, and pure and clean aversion to
everything that defiles." He goes on to give three examples of
the blessedness of purity in men whose hearts and writings were
pure, and who not only abstained from anything which could
defile the soul, but fixed their eyes intently on those simple affec-
tions and those great natural objects of beauty which most surely
guard the mind from corrupting influences. " And what," he asks
in the words which conclude his last sermon, " is the reason that
our Saviour gives for this blessedness of the pure in heart ? It is
that they shall see God. What is the meaning of this connexion ?
It is because, of all the obstacles which can intervene between us
and an insight into the invisible and the Divine, nothing presents
so coarse and thick a veil as the indulgence of the impure passions
which lower our nature, and because nothing can so clear up our
better thoughts, and nothing leaves our minds so open to receive
the impression of what is good and high, as the single eye and
pure conscience, which we may not, perhaps, be able to reach, but
which is an indispensable condition of having the doors of our
mind kept open and the channel of communication kept free
between us and the Supreme and Eternal Fountain of all purity
and of all goodness." ^

T[ I hardly know whether Dean Stanley's last words will make
an adequate impression upon the pubHc. The Dean had begun
on Saturday afternoons a course of sermons on the Beatitudes.
In great weakness he finished the fourth sermon a little more
than a week before his death, and for his text on that occasion he
took two of the benedictions together, " Blessed are the merciful :
for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart : for
they shall see God." He illustrated his discourse from conspicuous
monuments in the Abbey, taking sometimes one instance, and
sometimes another, but I think that the Dean himself was the
best instance of these two benedictions, for he was a merciful man,
and as pure in heart as a little child. In some aspects of his
character he was more like a little child than a full-grown man
who had lived sixty-five years in the midst of this wicked world.
In many aspects of its wickedness the world had never tainted his
pure soul.^

3. It is not enough to be clean outside. In our Lord's days

much attention was paid by religious people to external purity.

They had many ceremonies of washing. They washed nearly

^ R. E. Prothero, Life of Bean Stanley, ii. 667.
^ Bishop Fraeer's Lancashire Life, 267,

94 THE PURE IN HEART

everything they used — not to make it clean, but to make it holy.
They were quick to condemn any one who failed to observe all
the rules for outward cleansing. Yet Jesus reproved them for
their insincerity, for while they made clean the outside of the
cup and the platter, within they were full of extortion and excess.
He said they were like whited sepulchres, which appeared beautiful
without, but within were full of dead men's bones and all unclean-
ness. It is not enough to have a fair exterior; the heart must be
pure. It is in the heart that God would live. The heart, too, is
the centre of the life. If the heart be not holy, the life cannot
be holy.

If " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God."
There is no fault in our Authorized Version in this passage, but
the words " pure in heart " should be rendered in modern English,
" clear in their affections." These are the truly simple, who read
Dante's Ben del Intelletto — the vision of the Godhead. To be truly
pure in heart is to search for one's main duty and to set oneself
to do it, subordinating to this life-task all other desires and all
distractions of a more or less material kind.^

Bernard made signal to me with a smile
To look above; but of myself had I
Anticipated his desire the while ;

For now my vision, clearer than before,
Within that Beam of perfect Purity
And perfect Truth was entering more and more.

From this time forward that which filled my sight
Became too lofty for our mortal strains ;
And memory fails to take so vast a flight.^

^ In the Middle Ages, and sometimes since, men who desired
earnestly to see the vision of God strove to attain it by asceticism
— that is, by a sort of forced, mechanical purity. The mechanism,
we believe, failed, for it was not appointed of God, but was a
clumsy contrivance of men. Yet the attempt showed a recogni-
tion, however perverse, of the truth which Christ puts here so
beautifully and simply. The same truth inspired the chivalrous
legend of the Holy Grail. Many brave and worthy knights
addressed themselves to the quest of the Sangreal, yearning to see
the vision of the chalice that brimmed red with the very blood of
God Incarnate, and to win the mysterious blessings which that

' H. B. Garrod, Dante, Goetlie's Faust, and Other Lectures, 376.
' Dante, Paradiso, xxxiii. 49-57 (trans, by Wright).

ST. MATTHEW v. 8 95

vision brought. But to none was it given to accomplish the
quest save to the pure in heart. The knight who could sing,

My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure —

he it was who was sanctified and consoled by the mystic vision

A gentle sound, an awful light !

Three angels bear the Holy Grail:
With folded feet, in stoles of white,

On sleeping wings they sail.
Ah, blessed vision ! blood of God !

My spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,

And star-like mingles with the stars.

Sir Galahad no longer rides in harness on quests of knight-
errantry ; he labours without fame in the byways of life. But
he is still consoled by the reward of purity, and endures as seeing
Him who is invisible.^

4. There is no true purity apart from the absolute enthrone-
ment of God in the affections. It is not the absence of unholy
affections, it is the presence of a holy and surpassing earnest love,
that makes us really pure. Man is not made by negatives. It is
not what the heart loves not, but what it loves, that makes the
man : " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The soul is so
supremely an altar that it must worship something in its inmost
shrine ; and unless it worship God there, it cannot be pure.

Jesus saw God reflected in His own soul. His own pure soul
was a mirror in which spiritual imageship to the Heavenly Father
was perfectly revealed. For us His thoughts were God's thoughts.
His love was God's love. His will was God's will. So perfectly
at one with the holy Father was His pure heart that, when He
looked into the depths of His own being. He had His profoundest
revelations of the moral nature of His Father. There was no
blur upon His soul. The cloudless likeness of the Heavenly
Father was there. Alas, that upon our hearts the breath of sin
has condensed itself so that we see in ourselves only a foggy image
of God I

» 0. A. Vinoe.

96 THE PURE IN HEART

The truth in God's breast
Lies trace upon trace on ours imprest:
Tho' He is so bright, and we are so dim,
We were made in His image to witness Him.

^ The heart where " Christ dwells " is, so far as His residence
there is unhindered and entire, the purified heart. Let Him be
welcomed not into its vestibule only but into its interior chambers,
and the Presence will itself be purity. Before Him so coming, so
abiding, the strife of passion cannot but subside. Flowing out
from His intimate converse there, the very love of God will mix
itself with the motives and the movements of the will. The
heart thus made the chamber of His life will by a sure law reflect
His character ; nay, it will find itself shaped and dilated by His
heart, not from its exterior or circumference, but from its centre.^

Tf Mark Eutherford says, " The love of the beautiful is itself
moral. What we love in it is virtue. A perfect form or a
delicate colour is the expression of something which is destroyed
in us by subjugation to the baser desires or meanness ; and he who
has been unjust to man or woman misses the true interpretation
of a cloud or a falling wave." In the light of this beatitude I
think he is right. Sin does not cheat a man out of the fragrance
of a rose, but it cheats him out of that sweeter soul-fragrance of
Divine love that is folded in every petal. Sin does not veil from
our eyes the fashion of things seen, but it obscures their eternal
and spirit-satisfying meaning. The impure shall see all — except
God. That is to say, they shall see nothing as it is. For the
pure-hearted all the mystery of the waking earth tells something
of the soul's immortal story. Through the avenues of sight the
pure heart goes on and finds insight. Through all that the ear can
hear and the hand can touch, it passes into that real world that
is so near to us all, if we but knew it, where failing voices utter
unfailing messages and where beneath the ephemeral the soul
finds the eternal.*

5. The vision of the pure in heart is its own exceeding

blessedness. HoUness has in itself the elements of happiness. It

frees us from a thousand sources of pain, the inward strife of the

heart with itself, the condemning voice of conscience, the fret and

worry of anxious worldly care, the bitterness of passion, anger,

envy, jealousy, discontent, and a thousand thorns that spring in

1 H. C. G. Monle, FaUh, 1B6.

« P. 0. Ainsworth, The Blessed Life, 137.

ST. MATTHEW v. 8 97

the soil of the natural heart — these roots are all removed and the
" peace of God, which passeth all understanding," keeps the heart
and mind, and makes life a heaven below.

^ Horace Bushnell gives his own experience in these words :
" Clear of all the vices, having a naturally active-minded, inquiring
habit, never meaning to get away from the truth, one has yet
relapsed into such doubt as to find that he has nearly lost the
conviction of God, and cannot, if he would, say with emphasis
that God exists. Such a one pacing in his chamber, comes some
day suddenly upon the question — Is there then no truth that I
do believe ? Yes, there is one ; there is a distinction of right
and wrong, that I never doubted, and can see not how I can.
Nay, I am even quite sure of this. Then forthwith starts up the
question — Have I ever taken the principle of right for my law ?
Have I ever thrown my life out on it, to become all that it
requires of me ? No matter what becomes of my difficulties, if I
cannot take a first principle so inevitably true and live in it.
Here, then, will I begin, If there is a God, as I rather hope than
dimly believe there is, then He is a right God. If I have lost
Him in wrong, perhaps I shall find Him in right. Will He not
help me, or, perchance, even be discovered to me ? Then he prays
to the dim God so dimly felt. It is an awfully dark prayer in the
first look of it; but it is the truest and best that he can; the
better and more true that he puts no orthodox colours on it ; and
the prayer and the vow are so profoundly meant that his soul is
borne up with God's help, as it were by some unseen chariot, and
permitted to see the opening of heaven. He rises, and it is as if
he had gotten wings. The whole sky is luminous about him. It
is the morning of a new eternity. After this all troublesome
doubt of God's reality is gone. A being so profoundly felt must
inevitably be." ^

' 0. H. Parkhurst, The £Und Man's Creed, 215.

ST. MATT.^7

The Salt of the Earth.

Literature.

Austin (A. B.), Linked Lives, 221.

Brooke (S. A.), Short Sermons, 22.

Chadwick (W. E.), Christ and Everyday Life, 134.

Church (R. W.), Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 110.

Cope (F. L.), A NortK Country Preacher, 161.

Dixon (A. C), Through Night to Morning, 194.

Dyke (H. van), The Open Door, 63.

Furst (A.), Christ the Way, 31.

Gough (E. J.), The Religion of the Son of Mem, 57.

Hamer (D. J.), Salt amd Light, 3.

Hamilton (J.), Works, vi. 212.

King (T. S.), Christianity and Humanity, 267.

Lyttelton (E.), The Sermon on the Mount, 113.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew i.-viii., 178.

Mantle (J. Q.), God^s To-Morrow, 19.

Meyer (F. B.), The Directory of the Devout Life, 33.

Miller (J.), Sermons Litera/ry and Scientific, ii. 369.

Peabody (F. Q.), Mornings in the College Chapel, iL 52.

Smith (N.), Members One of Another, 153.

Smith (W. C), The Sermon on the Mount, 37.

Symonda (A. B.), Fifty Sermons, 352.

Tait (A.), The Charter of Christianity, 97.

Thorold (A. W.), Questions of Faith and Duty, 179.

Trench (E. C), Westrrdnsteir and Other Sermons, 281.

Whately (E.), Sermons, 251.

Christian World Pulpit, il. 360 (A. Melville) ; Iviii. 183 (H. S. Holland) ;

Ixx. 49 (A. Clayton); Ixxvi. 75 (W. Glover); Ixxxii. 282 (N.

Marshall).

The Salt of the Earth.

Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt have lost its savour, where-
with shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast
out and trodden under foot of men.— Matt. v. 13.

The exact position of these words in the Sermon on the Mount
must be carefully remembered. They follow immediately after
the Beatitudes — those sayings in which Christ had described the
various qualities of character essential to the citizen of the
Kingdom of Heaven, that is, for one who would obey the rule
which He had come on earth to establish and extend. A citizen
of that Kingdom, Christ had just taught His hearers, must be
humble-minded : he must grieve over the sin and the various evils
which exist in the world; he must be gentle; he must desire
righteousness above all things ; he must be merciful ; he must be
pure-minded in the fullest sense of the words ; he must do all in
his power to promote peace ; and he must be prepared to suffer in
order that righteousness may be promoted and extended. A
character which fulfils these conditions, that is, a character of
which these virtues are the factors, is the character desired by
Christ, and such a character is His own.

Immediately after this description has been given, as soon as
ever this ideal has been set us as the standard, Christ addresses the
words of the text to those who were following Him and learning
from Him. To them He looked to cultivate this character. And
for a moment He thinks of them, not as they actually were, but
as He would have them be. For a moment He treats them as if
His ideal for them were already realized in them; He does
not say ye shall be, but ye are the salt of the earth. The
spirit of all the united qualities commended in the Beatitudes
is the salt of the life of the world. All of them — meekness and
humility and purity and the rest — run up into two : the spirit of
love and the spirit of righteousness. These, then, embodied in

I02 THE SALT OF THE EARTH

human life, are the salt of the earth, the salt of Churches and
nations, of all forms of human activity, of thought, of imagination,
of business, of the daily life of men. These keep humanity fresh
and living, preserve it from corruption, and add to it the savour
which secures to men their true and enduring enjoyment of life.
But chiefly, in Christ's present idea, they were the freshening,
purifying, preserving element in His Kingdom.

I.

The Salt and its Savour.

" Ye are the salt of the earth."

1. Salt is one of those superfluities which the great French
wit defined as " things that are very necessary." From the very
beginning of human history men have set a high value upon it and
sought for it in caves and by the seashore. The nation that had
a good supply of it was counted rich. A bag of salt, among the
barbarous tribes, was worth more than a man. The Jews prized
it especially because they lived in a warm climate where food
was difficult to keep, and because their religion laid particular
emphasis on cleanliness, and because salt was largely used in their
sacrifices.

^ Both in Hebrew and in Eoman bywords, salt is praised as a
necessity of human life. Homer calls it "divine," and Plato
speaks of it as a " substance dear to the gods." It is an indis-
pensable element in the food both of men and of animals.
It is so cheap and plentiful with us that we can hardly reaUze
that there are places where there is what is known as salt
starvation, which is in its way even more painful than hunger or
thirst. A missionary tells us that in Africa he has known natives
who have travelled fifty or sixty miles in search of salt. Their hot
African blood, lacking the purifying and health-giving salt, has
broken out in painful ulcers which drain the life and energy;
and when the mission-house has been reached they have begged
in piteous tones, not for money or bread, but for salt.^

^ Chloride of sodium (common salt) is fortunately one of the
most widely distributed, as well as one of the most useful and
absolutely necessary, of nature's gifts ; and it is a matter of much

' J. G. Mantle, Ood's To-Morrow, 22.

ST. MATTHEW v. 13 103

comfort to know that this mineral exists in such enormous
quantities that it can never be exhausted. " Had not," says Dr.
Buckland, " the beneficent providence of the Creator laid up these
stores of salt within the bowels of the earth, the distance of
inland countries from the sea would have rendered this article of
prime and daily necessity unattainable to a large proportion of
mankind; but under the existing dispensation, the presence of
mineral salt, in strata which are dispersed generally over the
interior of our continents and larger islands, is a source of health
and daily enjoyment to the inhabitants of almost every region."
Even supposing that the whole of the mines, brine pits, and
springs become exhausted, we can fall back on the sea, whose
supply is as boundless as its restless self ; and there is as little
fear of its exhaustion as there is of the failure of the sun's heat.^

2. From one point of view it was an immense compliment for
the disciples to be spoken of as salt. Their Master showed great
confidence in them. He set a high value upon them. The
historian Livy could find nothing better to express his admiration
for the people of ancient Greece than this very phrase. He called
them sal gentium, " the salt of the nations." But our Lord was
not simply paying compliments. He was giving a clear and
powerful call to duty. His thought was not that His disciples
should congratulate themselves on being better than any other
men. He wished them to ask themselves whether they actually
had in them the purpose and the power to make (Dther men better.
Did they intend to exercise a purifying, seasoning, saving influence
in the world ? Salt exists solely to purify, not itself, but that
which needs its services. The usefulness of the Church as a
separated society lies wholly in the very world from which it
has been so carefully separated. It exists to redeem that world
from itself. Out of love for that world it is sent by the same
impulse of the Father as sent to it His only-begotten Son;
and the damning error of the Pharisee is that he arrests this
Divine intention in mid career, arrests it at the point where it has
reached him, arrests it for his own honour and his own benefit,
refusing to let it pass through him to its work on others.

(1) Salt is most largely used as an antiseptic, for allaying
corruption, and for stopping the effects of climate upon animal
matter ; it is a preservative of sweetness and purity in that with
' W. Coles-Finch, Water : its Origin amd Use, 167.

I04 THE SALT OF THE EARTH

which it is associated. So the presence of Christ's Church in the
world, of a Christian man or woman in the smaller world of his or
her own circle in society, is to be preservative : to allay corruption,
to maintain life, to ward off decay and death, to uphold a standard
of right, without which the world would be a far worse place than
it is.

^ " Ye " — Christians, ye that are lowly, serious, and meek ; ye
that hunger after righteousness, that love God and man, that do
good to all, and therefore suffer evil — "ye are the salt of the
earth." It is your very nature to season whatever is round about
you. It is the nature of the Divine savour which is in you to
spread to whatsoever you touch ; to diffuse itself, on every side,
to all those among whom you are. This is the great reason why
the providence of God has so mingled you together with other
men, that whatever grace you have received of God may through
you be communicated to others; that every holy temper and
word and work of yours may have an influence on them also. By
this means a check will, in some measure, be given to the cor-
ruption which is in the world ; and a small part, at least, saved
from the general infection, and rendered holy and pure before
God.i

(2) To put our Lord's comparison in its full relief, however, we
must add the sacrificial use of salt in Hebrew worship as well as in
the rites of heathen antiquity. No offering of cakes or vegetable
produce was laid on Jehovah's altar saltless ; perhaps this season-
ing was added even to animal sacrifices ; certainly it entered iuto
the composition of the sacred incense. With all this in their
minds, Jesus' audience could understand Him to mean no less
than this, that His disciples were to act on society (Jewish
society, of course, in the first place) as a moral preservative,
keeping it from total decay, and fitting it to be an oblation, not
distasteful, but acceptable, to Jehovah. The thought was far
from a new one to the Hebrew mind. Eemembering how the
world before the flood perished because " all flesh had corrupted
his way," except one salt particle too minute to preserve the mass ;
how ten men like Lot would have saved the cities of the lower
Jordan ; how it marked the extreme ripeness to destruction of the
Israel of Ezekiel's day, that even these three men, Noah, Daniel,
and Job, had they been in it, could have delivered " neither son

' John Wesley.

ST. MATTHEW v. 13 105

nor daughter " ; no Jew could miss the point of our Lord's words
to His Twelve around Him, "Ye are the salt of the land."
When He spoke, the corruption of His nation was extreme, as
His own sermons show us ; and effete Judaism was fast ripening
for its fall.

(3) Salt gives relish to what would otherwise be tasteless or
unpleasant; and Christ's people are, if we may so speak, the
relishing element in the world, which prevents it from being
loathsome altogether to the Lord. So Lot was in the cities of the
plain the one savour which made them even so long endurable.
There was not much salt in Lot ; but there was a little, there was
a righteous soul that at least vexed itself because of the un-
righteousness around it, if it did not do very much to arrest that
unrighteousness. And because of Lot, God almost spared the
place, would have spared it had there been only a few more like
him, or had he been just a little truer than he was. Even so
Christians are to be as salt to the earth, which, without them,
would be in a manner loathsome, being so possessed with mean
and base and ignoble souls.

^ A king asked his three daughters how much they loved
him. Two of them replied that they loved him better than all
the gold and silver in the world. The youngest one said she
loved him better than salt. The king was not pleased with her
answer, as he thought salt was not very palatable. But the cook,
overhearing the remark, put no salt in anything for breakfast
next morning, and the meal was so insipid that the king could
not enjoy it. He then saw the force of his daughter's remark.
She loved him so well that nothing was good without him.^

(4) Salt does its work silently, inconspicuously, gradually.
" Ye are the light of the world," says Christ in the next verse.
Light is far-reaching and brilliant, flashing that it may be seen.
That is one side of Christian work, the side that most of us like
best, the conspicuous kind of it. But there is a very much
humbler, and a very much more useful, kind of work that we have
all to do. We shall never be the " light of the world," except on
condition of being " the salt of the earth." We have to play the
humble, inconspicuous, silent part of checking corruption by a
pure example before we can aspire to play the other part of

' A. C. Dixon, Through Night to Morning, 197.

io6 THE SALT OF THE EARTH

raying out light into the darkness, and so drawing men to Christ
Himself.

^ I was OQce travelling in an Oriental country, where life was
squalid, women despised, and houses built of mud; and of a
sudden, I came upon a village where all seemed changed. The
houses had gardens before them and curtains in their windows ;
the children did not beg of the passer-by, but called out a friendly
greeting. What had happened ? I was fifty miles from a Chris-
tian mission-station, and this mission had been there for precisely
fifty years. Slowly and patiently the influence had radiated at
the rate of a mile a year, so that one could now for a space of
fifty miles across that barren land perceive the salt of the Chris-
tian spirit, and could see the light of the Christian life shining as
from a lighthouse fifty miles away. That was the work to which
Jesus summoned the world, — not an ostentatious or revolutionary
or dramatic work, but the work of the salt and of the light. The
saying of Jesus is not for the self-satisfied or conspicuous, but for
the discouraged and obscure. A man says to himself : " I cannot
be a leader, a hero, or a scholar, but I can at least do the work of
the salt and keep the life that is near to me from spoiling ; I can
at least do the work of the light so that the way of life shall not
be wholly dark." Then, as he gives himself to this self-effacing
service, he hears the great word : " He that loseth his life for my
sake shall find it," and answers gladly : " So then death worketh
in us, but life in you." ^

II.

The Salt without the Savour.

"If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?"

1. Salt may lose its seasoning power. In Christ's era salt
frequently reached the consumer in a very imperfect state, being
largely mixed with earth. The salt which has lost its savour is
simply the earthy residuum of such impure salt after the sodium
chloride has been washed out. Blocks of salt were quarried on
the shores of the Dead Sea and brought to Jerusalem, and a store
of this rock-salt was kept by the Levites in the Temple to be
used in the sacrifices. It was very impure — usually containing a
large mixture of sand — and in moist weather the saline ingredient
deliquesced and, trickling away, left the porous lump in its original
^ F. G. PeaboJy, Mornings m the College Chapel, 11. 53.

ST. MATTHEW v. 13 107

shape, but all its substance, all its " savour " gone. For food it
was no longer fit seasoning. Cast on the altar it would no longer
decrepitate and sparkle, and in flowers of flaming violet adorn
and consume the offering. Even the farmer did not care to get
it. The gritty, gravelly mass was good for nothing — only fit to
be pounded and sprinkled on the slippery pavement, and trodden
under the feet of men.

f I have often seen just such salt, and the identical disposition
of it that our Lord has mentioned. A merchant of Sidon having
farmed of the Government the revenue from the importation of
salt, brought over an immense quantity from the marshes of
Cyprus — enough, in fact, to supply the whole province for at least
twenty years. This he had transferred to the mountains, to cheat
the Government out of some small percentage. Sixty- five houses
in Jfine — Lady Stanhope's village — were rented and filled with
salt. These houses have merely earthen floors, and the salt next
the ground in a few years entirely spoiled. I saw large quantities
of it literally thrown into the street, to be trodden under foot of
men and beasts. It was " good for nothing." Similar magazines
are common in Palestine, and have been from remote ages ; and
the sweeping out of the spoiled salt and casting it into the street
are actions familiar to all men. Maundrell, who visited the lake
at JebbM, tells us that he found salt there which had entirely
"lost its savour," and the same abounds among the debris at
Usdum, and in other localities of rock-salt at the south end of the
Dead Sea. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that the salt of this
country, when in contact with the ground, or exposed to rain and
sun, does become insipid, and useless. From the manner in which
it is gathered, much earth and other impurities are necessarily
collected with it. Not a little of it is so impure that it cannot
be used at all ; and such salt soon effloresces and turns to dust
— not to fruitful soil, however. It is not only good for nothing
itself, but it actually destroys all fertility wherever it is thrown ;
and this is the reason why it is cast into the street. There is a
sort of verbal verisimilitude in the manner in which our Lord
alludes to the act — " it is cast out " and " trodden under foot " ; so
troublesome is this corrupted salt, that it is carefully swept up,
carried forth, and thrown into the street. There is no place
about the house, yard, or garden where it can be tolerated. No
man will allow it to be thrown on to his field, and the only place
for it is the street ; and there it is cast, to be trodden under foot
of men.^

' W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, chap, xxvi.

io8 THE SALT OF THE EARTH

2. What is a saltless Christian ? A saltless OhriBtian is one
who has gone back to the earthly, the worldly, the carnal. The
heavenly element is no longer in the ascendant; the salt has
lost its savour.

(1) One sign of deterioration is to be found in a lowered and
attenuated ideal. Christ has little by little become almost a
personal stranger. We do not seek His company, watch His eye,
listen for His voice. The thought of Him does not send a thrill
of joy into the heart. We have not renounced Him or consciously
taken another Lord in His place. But we have lagged so far
behind in the journey that He is quite out of our sight and reach.
We can no more honestly say, as once we could say with a kind
of rapture, " He is chief among ten thousand, and altogether
lovely." It is the inevitable result from this changed relationship
to Christ that the cross has dropped from our back (we did not
feel it drop, nor do we miss it now that it is gone) ; there is
nothing in our lives, or activities, or general profession, that is
irksome or troublesome, compelling sacrifice, and earning joy.
The world is apparently neither worse nor better for us. Keally
it is worse. The candlestick is still iu its place, the candle is
still feebly burning, but in a moment it may go out, and then
where shall we be ?

^ If you take a red-hot ball out of a furnace and lay it down
upon a frosty moor, two processes will go on — the ball will lose
heat and the surrounding atmosphere will gain it. There are two
ways by which you equalize the temperature of a hotter and a
colder body ; the one is by the hot one getting cold, and the other
is by the cold one getting hot. If you are not heating the world,
the world is freezing you. Every man influences all men round
him, and receives influences from them ; and if there be not more
exports than imports, if there be not more influences and mightier
influences raying out from him than are coming into him, he is
a poor creature, and at the mercy of circumstances. " Men must
either be hammers or anvil " ; — must either give blows or receive
them. I am afraid that a great many of us who call ourselves
Christians get a great deal more harm from the world than we ever
dream of doing good to it. Remember this, you are " the salt of
the earth," and if you do not salt the world, the world will rot
you.i

' A. Maclareu.

ST. MATTHEW v. 13 109

(2) Another sign of deterioration is a growing indifference to
all great enterprise for Christ. Few things are more exhilarat-
ing, more invigorating, more uplifting, more solemnizing, than a
mighty gathering of Christian people, met, let i;s say, for a great
missionary anniversary, to hear the glad tidings of the progress
of the Eedeemer's kingdom, and to return to their homes, stirred,
joyful, thankful. The man whose heart is cold to all this,
sceptical about it, indifferent to it, and who yet looks back
on days when every word spoken, every blow struck, every
triumph won for Jesus, was a joy which few things else
equalled, has good reason for asking himself what has happened
to him to make the growth of the Kingdom of Christ so
small and dull and unattractive and commonplace a thing.
The change is assuredly not in the purpose of Jesus, or in
the value of the soul, or in the duty of the Church, which
is His Body.

^ If, as can be reasonably argued, the historian may trace an
increasing deterioration in the moral worth of Alexander Borgia
from the period when the influence of Cesare at the Vatican
replaced that of Juan, the fact has its obvious explanation.
Eodrigo Borgia was a man of extraordinary vitality, with unusual
reserves of power for his years. His energies had found their
chief outlet in keen interest in the functions of his ofBce as he
understood them. His sensual indulgences, however disreputable,
were never the first preoccupation of his nature ; they were rather
the surplusage of a virile temperament to which such interests as
art, letters, or building made no serious appeal. In any position
but that of the Vicar of Christ his excesses would have passed
unremarked. If they weakened, as they undoubtedly did, his
spiritual authority, they had hitherto scarcely detracted from the
respect due to his political capacity. But in proportion as he
surrendered his initiative in affairs and shared the control of
policy, of finance, and of ecclesiastical administration with Cesare,
the less worthy elements of his nature asserted themselves more
forcibly. It was inevitable that in such a man abdication of
responsibility should have this result, till in the end Alexander
became a thoroughly evil man; evil, in that under guise of
natural affection, in reality through cowardice, he allowed his
authority, both spiritual and political, to be shamelessly exploited.
Thus knowingly and without resistance Eodrigo Borgia steadily
yielded to the worst impulses of his nature.^

' W. H. Woodward, Cesare Borgia, 136.

no THE SALT OF THE EARTH

3. When the salt has lost its savour it is good for nothing.
There are some things, the chemist tells us, which, when they
have lost their own peculiar form and utility, are still of some
good, for they can be put to other and baser uses. But to what
use can a dead Church be put ? You may try to galvanize it into
newness of life by artificial means, but, after all, it is nothing
more than a corpse. All that can be truly said of such an
attempt is that it was an interesting experiment. A mere pro-
fession of religion is either an embarrassment or, what is worse,
a fatal delusion. This old world of ours has undergone many
material changes during its existence, yet it has grown more and
more beautiful, in spite of them, as the forces of evolution have
unfolded themselves. But there is one change it could hardly
survive as the habitation of man, and that is the lost conscious-
ness of the presence and power of God with the people, or the
loss of the sweetness and beauty of the Kedeemer of men as
revealed in the lives of those faithful souls who sincerely love
Him. For the Church which has lost its savour there will
come a day when men, overwhelmed by their disappoint-
ment, and maddened by their sense of its lost savour, will
tear it to pieces, just as the enraged mob in Paris is said to
have torn the fillet from Eeason's brow and trampled it under
their feet.

If the salt should lose its savour, if the regenerative force
should die out of the Church — if there were a Church into which
the spirit of the world had passed, a Church which had become
assimilated by the world, a Church which had somehow learnt
to speak the world's language and to justify the world's moraUty,
and to echo the world's phrases, a Church which ate and drank
at the world's table without the world becoming aware of any
protest, or any discomfort, or any fear, a Church which, instead of
awakening consciences, sent them to sleep, instead of exposing
the world's plagues flattered them into excusing or forgetting
them : in the name of God what use, or place, has such a Church
on the face of the earth ? Such a Church has falsified the first
law of its existence. It has killed out the very conscience which
it was created to sustain. It has destroyed the very power of
remedy from sin which it alone held in charge. It has poisoned
the wells of human hope. " If the very salt have lost its savour.

ST. MATTHEW v. 13 m

wherewith shall it be salted ? It is thenceforth good for nothing,
but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men."

Tf The really amazing thing is that such immense numbers of
people have accepted Christianity in the world, and profess them-
selves Christians without the slightest doubt of their sincerity,
who never regard the Christian principles at all. The chief aim,
it would seem, of the Church has been not to. preserve the original
revelation, but to accommodate it to human instincts and desires.
It seems to me to resemble the very quaint and simple old Breton
legend, which relates how the Saviour sent the Apostles out to sell
stale fish as fresh ; and when they returned unsuccessful, He was
angry with them, and said, " How shall I make you into fishers of
men, if you cannot even persuade simple people to buy stale fish
for fresh ? " That is a very trenchant little allegory of ecclesiastical
methods ! And perhaps it is even so that it has come to pass that
Christianity is in a sense a failure, or rather an unfulfilled hope,
because it has made terms with the world, has become pompous
and respectable and mundane and infl.uential and combative, and
has deliberately exalted civic duty above love.^

TJ Glanced over some lectures of Mr. Gore's on " The Mission
of the Church." He tells a story of St. Thomas Aquinas which is
new to me. The Pope said to him, as the bags full of the money
of the faithful, who had crowded to the Jubilee, were carried past :
" Peter could not say now, ' Silver and gold have I none.' " " No,"
was the reply, " neither could he say, ' Arise, and walk ! '" ^
' A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard, 197.
" Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 189S-1896, i. 138.

A Conservative Reformer.

ST. MATT. — 8

Literature.

Bellars (W.), Our Inheritance, 128.

Campbell (L.), The Christian Ideal, 236.

Chad wick (W. E.), SocialEelationships, 91.

Dawson (G.), Hiree Books of God, 58.

Drummond (R. J.), Faith's Certainties, 41.

Holland (H. S.), Pleas and Claims, 292.

Jones (J. C), Studies in the Gospel according to Matthew, 111.

Lyttelton (E.), Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 125.

McAfee (C. B.), Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 55.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew i.-viii., 199.

Matheson (G.), Bests by the River, 147.

„ „ Thoughts for Life's Journey, 51.

Matthew (J.), The Law of Jehovah, 205.
Meyer (F. B.), The Directory of the Devout Life, 47.
Morison (J.), A Practical Commerda/ry on the Gospel according to

St. Matthew, 67.
Owen (J. W.), Some Australian Sermons, 88.
Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, i. 41.
Hummer (A.), An Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to

St. Matthew, 74.
Shuttleworth (H. C), in Lombard Street in Lent, 199.
Smith (W. C), The Sermon on the Mount, 52.
Southouse (A. J.), Men of the Beatitudes, 23.
Tait (A.), The Charter of Christianity, 129.
Thome (H.), Notable Sayings of the Great Teacher, 54.
Watson (J.), The Inspiration of Our Faith, 147.
Wilson (J. M.), in The Anglican Pulpit of To-Day, 356.
British Weekly Pulpit, iii. 468 (A. F. Kirkpatrick).

"4

A Conservative Reformer.

Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets : I came
not to destroy, but to fulfil. — Matt. v. 17.

Christ, the new Prophet and Teacher, has gone up upon the
Mount and is about to speak to the people. He is sitting down
to preach. The villages will be empty soon, for the news has
gone abroad and great excitement has seized the people. What
new thing will He tell them? What daring message is this
Revolutionary about to give them ? They throng the slopes ;
they hang upon His words ; there is the silence of a great expecta-
tion upon the multitude. And Christ begins to preach. What is
His subject ? What is He saying ?

Not a syllable about what they called religion, law, and
Sabbath, and temple worship, and fasts; simply the Beati-
tudes, the inner virtues of the heart, the duty to show light. He
moves the conscience of the people by bringing them straight into
the presence of their Father. He recalls them to the conscious-
ness of God, whom they are forgetting. His words move them as
nothing had ever moved them before. They feel for an instant
the pressure and the nearness of God Himself. At such a moment,
in presence of a higher religion, what to them were law, and
ceremonial, and priest ? The murmur goes round that old things
have passed away ; it is a new world ; away with remnants of
exploded superstition and bygone forms of worship ! It is to meet
this inarticulate thought that Christ stops and says, " Think not
that I came to destroy the law or the prophets : I came not to
destroy, but to fulfil." There is to be entire continuity with the
past.

With absolute decisiveness He states the purpose of His
coming. He knows the meaning of His own work, which so few
of us do, and it is safe to take His own account of what He intends,
as we so seldom do. His opening declaration is singularly com-

ii6 A CONSERVATIVE REFORMER

posed of blended humility and majesty. Its humility lies in His
placing Himself, as it were, in line with previous messengers, and
representing Himself as carrying on the sequence of Divine revela-
tion. It would not have been humble for anybody but Him to
say that, but it was so for Him. Its majesty lies in His claim to
" fulfil " all former utterances from God.

^ My love of, and trust in, our Lord, after I had seen Him in
a vision, began to grow, for my converse with Him was so con-
tinual. I saw that, though He was God, He was man also ; that
He is not surprised at the frailties of men, that He understands
our miserable nature, liable to fall continually, because of the
first sin, for the reparation of which He had come. I could speak
to Him as to a friend, though He is my Lord. ... my Lord !
my King ! who can describe Thy Majesty ? It is impossible
not to see that Thou art Thyself the great Euler of all, that the
beholding of Thy Majesty fills men with awe. But I am filled
with greater awe, my Lord, when I consider Thy humility, and
the love Thou hast for such as I am. We can converse and speak
with Thee about everything whenever we will ; and when we lose
our first fear and awe at the vision of Thy Majesty, we have a
greater dread of offending Thee, — not arising out of the fear of
punishment, my Lord, for that is as nothing in comparison
with the loss of Thee ! ^

L

Christ the Eevolutionaet.

After the multitude had heard those wonderful teachings con-
tained in the Beatitudes, most of which were new and startHng,
one might well suppose that the question uppermost in every
heart would be. Are those laws and institutions which have lasted
for two thousand years now to undergo complete change — are
they to be superseded by those precepts which we have now just
heard propounded by this Great Teacher, who seems to be the
rounder of an entirely new law; for what Jewish Eabbi ever
gave utterance to such precepts as the proclaiming of blessedness
to the poor in spirit, the meek, the humble, the mourning, the
persecuted ? In the text the Saviour corrects this view.
' The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (trans, by D. Lewis), 367.

ST. MATTHEW v. 17 117

1. " Think not," He says, " that I came to destroy." It is
noticeable at once that Christ uses a word for " destroy " which
seems to be merely an echo of some confused popular sayings
about the Messiah. It is indeed not easy to state clearly what is
meant by destroying a law or a set of laws, still less easy to say
what would be the meaning of " destroying the prophets." Laws
may no doubt be repealed, but it is not conceivable that any clear-
headed man anticipated that the Messiah would repeal the Ten
Commandments, or was going to forbid the Old Testament to be
read. Strictly speaking, this is the only rational sense which
attaches itself to the words. It is probable that Christ was here
merely putting on one side a rough popular description of the
r&le which He was supposed to be going to play.

^ It is not obvious at first sight what Christ means by " fulfil-
ling the law." He does not mean taking the written law as it
stands, and literally obeying it. That is what He condemns, not
as wrong, but as wholly inadequate. He means rather, starting
with it as it stands, and bringing it on to completeness ; working
out the spirit of it ; getting at the comprehensive principles which
underlie the narrowness of that letter. These the Messiah sets
forth as the essence of the revelation made by God through the
Law and the Prophets. Through them He has revealed His will,
and it is impossible that His Son should attempt to pull down or
undo this revelation of the Father's will, or that His will, in the
smallest particular, should fail of fulfilment. It is not the Law
or the Prophets that Jesus proposes to abolish, but the traditional
misinterpretations of these authorities. To destroy these mis-
interpretations is to open the way for the fulfilment of the Law
and the Prophets ; and He thus substituted free development of
spiritual character for servile obedience to oppressive rules.^

2. To destroy — that is the creed of the revolutionary. In the
French Eevolution, Eobespierre and his confederates went so far
as to obliterate the septennial division of time, insisting that the
week should consist of ten rather than seven days. New names
were affixed to the days, to the streets, and to the officials of the
State, But it was not thus that Christ inaugurated His work. He
answered the thoughts of His age, saying, " Think not that I came
to destroy." Every "jot and tittle ' of the ancient code was dear
to Him. Jesus was no iconoclast.

' A. Plummer.

ii8 A CONSERVATIVE REFORMER

3. For there is nothing to be gained by destruction. There are
men who think that the best means of heralding the new dawn is
to fling a bomb into a crowd of harmless people. There are those
who believe, with Bakunin, that the only way to regenerate
society is to wipe it out by utter destruction, on the supposition
that a new and better order will surely be evolved out of chaos.
It never has been so, and it never can be so. Such methods can
only delay the advance of progress. You can, indeed, cast out
devils by Beelzebub. You cannot keep them out; only angels
can do that. " His kingdom shall not stand " ; for by fulfilment,
not by destruction, the old passes into the new.

^ Carlyle could not reverence Voltaire, but he could not hate
him. How could he hate a man who had fought manfully against
injustice in high places, and had himself many a time in private
done kind and generous actions ? To Carlyle, Voltaire was no
apostle charged with any divine message of positive truth. Even
in his crusade against what he believed to be false, Voltaire was
not animated with a high and noble indignation. He was simply
an instrument of destruction, enjoying his work with the pleasure
of some mocking imp, yet preparing the way for the tremendous
conflagration which was impending. In the earlier part of his
career Carlyle sympathized with and expected more from the
distinctive functions of revolution than he was able to do after
longer experience. , " I thought," he once said to me, " that it was
the abolition of rubbish. I find it has been only the kindling of
a dunghill. The dry straw on the outside burns off; but the
huge damp rotting mass remains where it was." ^

If " Think not (comp. iii. 9, x. 34) that I came to destroy the
law or the prophets." Such an expression implies that Christ
knew that there was danger of the Jews thinking so, and possibly
that some had actually said this of Him. The Pharisees would
be sure to say it. He disregarded the oral tradition, which they
held to be equal in authority to the written Law; and He in-
terpreted the written Law according to its spirit, and not, as they
did, according to the rigid letter. Above all. He spoke as if He
Himself were an authority, independent of the Law. Even some
of His own followers may have been perplexed, and have thought
that He proposed to supersede the Law. They might suppose
" that it was the purpose of His mission simply to break down
restraints, to lift from men's shoulders the duties which they felt
as burdens. The law was full of commandments ; the Prophets
' J. A. Froude, Thomas Cwrlyle, 1795-18S5, ii. 54.

ST. MATTHEW v. 17 119

were full of rebukes and warnings. Might not the mild new Eabbi
be welcomed as one come to break down the Law and the Prophets,
and so lead the way to less exacting ways of life ? This is the
delusion which our Lord set Himself to crush. The gospel of the
Kingdom was not a gospel of indulgence " (Hort, Judaistic Chris-
tianity, 15). He was not a fanatical revolutionary, but a Divine
Restorer and Reformer.^

II.

Christ the Conservee.

If Christ is not to destroy the law and the prophets, what then
is He to do with this old faith of the Jews ? How is He to treat
this partial, this imperfect, faith which is already on the ground ?
He may do either of two things. He may destroy or He may
preserve. With the most deliberate wisdom He chooses one method
and rejects the other. To the conservative, Christ comes with
reassurance.

1. Nothing of the old that is valuable or strong shall be lost.
Examine the new, and we shall find the old at the heart of it.
Study the channel where the new current is running and we shall
find the water of the old channel there. That is a very suggestive
fact ; it appears everywhere. Study the real forward movement
of thought and we shall find it true. There will always be petty
disturbances, offshoots here and there which have no reference
to the real advance of thought ; they may cut loose from the old
truth, but they are short-lived and passing. In the main move-
ments, down the main stream, the old is never lost.

^ An American missionary in Japan, Dr. S. L. Gulick, writes
thus : " The Christian preacher should constantly take the ground
that every good teaching in the native faith is a gift of God the
Pather of all men, and is a preparation for the coming of His
fuller revelation in Jesus Christ. We should show our real and
deep respect for the ' heathen ' religions ; we should take off our
hats at their shrines, as we expect them to do in our churches.
We should ever insist that Christianity does not come to destroy
anything that is good or true in the native faiths, but rather to
stimulate, to strengthen, and fulfil it — to give it life and real
energy. The trouble with the native religions is not that they

' A. Pliimmer.

I20 A CONSERVATIVE REFORMER

possess no truth, but that the truth they have is so mixed up with
folly and superstition that it is lost ; it has no power — no life-giving
energy." ^

2. Nothing is to be remitted — no rule of purity, no necessity
of righteousness. How can it be, when we are brought, by enter-
ing this Kingdom, nearer to God, who must be of purer eyes than
to behold iniquity ? No slackening of the spiritual code is possible,
is conceivable. To suppose this is to mistake all the meaning of
mercy, all the purpose of pardon. Let no one make such a dis-
astrous blunder. " Think not that I came to destroy the law or
the prophets : I came not to destroy, but to fulfil."

^ " Think not that I will dispense with any of the rules of
morality, prescribed by Moses, and explained by the prophets," is
Blair's rendering of this verse. " I came not to destroy, but to
fulfil " (both the law and the prophets) : " To fulfil," that is, to
render full obedience to those great commandments (see ver. 19)
which it is the pre-eminent aim of the Scriptures to inculcate
and enforce. Jesus came to render this full obedience in His own
person, and also to secure that it should be rendered increasingly,
and ever increasingly, in the persons of His disciples, the subjects
of His Kingdom. It is this latter idea that was prominently in
His mind on the present occasion, as is evident from the 19th and
20th verses. He came, not to introduce licence and licentious-
ness into His Kingdom, but to establish holiness. Some exposi-
tors suppose that the word " fulfil " means to supplement or
perfect ; and they imagine that Christ is here referring to His
legislative authority. But such an interpretation of the term is
at variance with verses 18 and 19, and with its use in kindred
passages, such as Eom. xiii. 8, Gal. v. 14. Theophylact, among
other interpretations, says that Christ fulfilled the law as a
painter fills up the sketch of his picture. But it is a different
"full-filling" that is referred to. When commandments are
addressed to us, they present, as it were, empty vessels of duty,
which our obedience is to " fill full." "

3. The Old Testament is not as it were the scaffolding neces-
sary for the erection of the Christian Church, needing to be taken
down in order that the full symmetry and beauty of the building
may be seen, and only to be had recourse to from time to time
when repairs are needed. It is an integral part of the structure.

' World Missionary Conference, 1910: Report of Commission IF., 95,
' J. Morison.

ST. MATTHEW v. 17 121

Te are " built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone." How could
it be otherwise ? we ask with reverence. It was God who spoke
" through the prophets," it is God who speaks " in a Son." Every
Divine word must be of eternal import. God's truth does not
vary ; there is no mutability of purpose in the eternal present of
the Divine mind.

The Old Testament leads us up to Christ, and Christ takes it
and puts it back into our hands as a completed whole. He bids
us study it as " fulfilled in him," and " put ourselves to school with
every part of it." The old lesson-book is not to be thrown away
or kept as an archaeological curiosity ; it is to be re-studied in this
fresh light of further knowledge.

^ The "rrXfipiaais of the law and the prophets is their fulfilment
by the re-establishment of their absolute meaning, so that now
nothing more is wanting to what they ought to be in accordance
with the Divine ideas which lie at the foundation of their
commands. It is the perfect development of their ideal reality
out of the positive form, in which the same is historically appre-
hended and limited. . . . Luther well says : " Christ is speaking
of the fulfilment, and so deals with doctrines, in like manner as
He calls ' destroying ' a not acting with works against the law, but
a breaking off from the law with the doctrine." The fulfilling is
"showing the right kernel and understanding, that they may
learn what the law is and desires to have." The Apostle Paul
worked quite in the sense of our passage ; his writings are full of
the fulfilment of the law in the sense in which Christ means it ;
and his doctrine of its abrogation refers only to its validity for
justification to the exclusion of faith. Paul did not advance
beyond this declaration, but he applied his right understanding
boldly and freely, and in so doing the breaking up of the old form
by the new spirit could not but necessarily begin, as Jesus Him-
self clearly recognized (cf. ix. 16 ; John iv. 21, 23 f.) and set forth
to those who believed in His own person and His completed
righteousness. But even in this self-representation of Christ the
new principle is not severed from the Old Testament piety, but
is the highest fulfilment of the latter, its anti-typical consumma-
tion, its realized ideal. Christianity itself is in so far a law.^

» H. A. W. Meyer.

122 A CONSERVATIVE REFORMER

III.

Christ the Fulfillee.

Continuity with the old is part of Christ's teaching. He came
to conserve. But He came to do more than that — infinitely
more than that. He came also to fulfil. " To fulfil." Do we not
often limit the idea of " fulfilment " to what are called the typical
and prophetic parts of the Old Testament, and regard the ful-
filment as just the counterpart of the type or prediction, as
the reality of which only the reflection had hitherto been visible ?
But "fulfilment" is far more than this. It is the completion
of what was before imperfect; it is the realization of what was
shadowy; it is the development of what was rudimentary;
it is the union and reconciliation of what was isolated and
disconnected ; it is the full growth from the antecedent germ.

1. Christ fulfilled the law. — The law (nJ/ioj) is not to be
restricted here to the Decalogue ; it is to be taken in its more
extended signification as denoting the entire law. The moral
law was an expression of the mind of God, of God's moral nature
— a revelation, or rather expansion, of the law of nature which He
originally wrote in the heart of man. Sin blinded men to such
an extent that it was necessary to have the law promulgated ;
hence God wrote it on two tables of stone. And it stood as a
public warning against sin, and as a standard of moral duty. It
disclosed wants that it was incapable of satisfying, it aggravated
the evil it could not heal ; and, compelling men to see their own
weakness, it taught them to look forward to One who would be
capable of fulfilling all its demands. This is the " fulfilling " of
which Christ speaks, the completion of that which for two
thousand years had been imperfect and ineffectual. " Christ ful-
filled the law and the prophets," says Bishop Wordsworth, " by
obedience, by accomplishment of types, ceremonies, rites, and
prophecies, and by explaining, spiritualizing, elevating, enlarging,
and perfecting the moral law, by writing it on the heart, and by
giving grace to obey it, as well as an example of obedience by
taking away its curse ; and by the doctrine of free justification

ST, MATTHEW v. 17 123

by faith in Himself, which the law prefigured and anticipated,
but could not give."

Let us look shortly at three main ways in which Christ ful-
filled the law.

(1) Christ fulfilled the law hy meeting its requirements. — From
first to last the life of our Lord was the fulfilment, in spirit and
letter, of the ancient ritual. As a son of the law. He obeyed
the initial rite of Judaism on the eighth day after birth, and there
was no item of the law, even to the dots of the i's or the crossing
of the t's, which He omitted or slurred. He died for our sine
according to the Scriptures, and He rose again the third day
according to the Scriptures. What could be only partially true
of His Apostle was literally true of the Lord: as touching the
righteousness which is of the law. He was found blameless. Our
Lord fulfilled the ceremonial law and fulfilled the moral law,
since He was Jesus Christ "the Eighteous." He honoured the
law by His obedience " even to death," atoning for its breach and
violation by mankind, and giving, through His unknown sufferings
an answer to its just dues and demands, such as could not have
been afforded though the whole race had been mulcted to the
uttermost farthing of penal consequences. His fulfilment, there-
fore, was not for Himself alone, but as the second Adam, the
representative man, and for us all.

(2) Christ fulfilled the law ly spiritualizing it. — Were we to
enter a room in the early morning where a company were sitting or
drowsing, with sickly hue, by the dull glimmer of candles, which
never had given a sufficient light, and were now guttering,
neglected, and burning down to the socket, we would not think
we were destroying the light by flinging open the casement, and
letting in the clear sunshine upon them. We would, on the
contrary, feel that by this process alone could they get the full
light which they needed. Now, much in the same way the Lord
Jesus came into the world, and found there, as it were, the old
seven-branched candlestick of the tabernacle still burning, though
dim and low, for it was not well trimmed in those neglectful
years; found there the old law of Moses, moral, ceremonial,
and judicial, still recognized, though a good deal obscured by
traditions; and what He did was to purify and spiritualize the
law. He opened upon it the windows of His spirit, illumining its

124 A CONSERVATIVE REFORMER

every part, showing its perfection and comprehensiveness. Other
teachers had taken the law, the law as it stood, and had so dealt
with it as to present it in all its bareness and outwardness, its
narrowness and burdensomeness ; Jesus Christ took the same law,
the law as it stood, but He so dealt with it as to present it in all
its fulness and inwardness, its breadth and goodness.

(3) Christ fulfilled the law hy generalizing it. — He broke down
all class distinctions in morality. Heathenism divided mankind
into two classes, the learned and the ignorant, and between these
two it erected a high partition walL These distinctions, though
discountenanced in Jewish law, were admitted in Jewish practice.
" This people who knoweth not the law are cursed." Christ boldly
demolished the wall of partition built high and broad between the
cultured and the illiterate. He entered the granary of Divine
truth, took out the golden grain, and scattered it broadcast on the
face of the common earth. The truths of the favoured few He
made the common property of the uncultured many. He alone
of all His contemporaries or predecessors perceived the intrinsic
worth and vast possibilities of the human soul.

Christ also broke down all national distinctions in morality.
The intense nationalism of the Jews in the time of the Saviour
is proverbial ; they surrounded sea and land to make one proselyte.
Instead of trying to make Judaism commensurate with the world,
they tried to make the world commensurate with Judaism. How-
ever, Jewish morality here, as in every other instance, was superior
to contemporaneous pagan morality. Notwithstanding its intense
nationalism, Judaism always inculcated kindness to strangers.
" The stranger within thy gates " — the recurrence of that phrase
in the Mosaic ethics lifts them above all other ancient ethics
whatever. What Moses only began, Jesus Christ beautifully
perfected. He made morality absolutely human. It is no longer
Greek under obligation to Greek, but man under obligation to
man. What the Greek poet only momentarily conceived, Jesus
Christ has converted into a powerful element in modern civiUza-
tion — " I also am a man, and nothing human is foreign to me."

^ Jesus felt Himself called of God to a lot within the chosen
people, because He was Himself the culmination of the revelation
made to them in the past. As that revelation had been through
a special nation, so it had to complete itself there. That He

ST. MATTHEW v. 17 125

Himself lived within the limits of Judaism was not a confession
that He was merely the crown of a national or racial faith, but
rather the vindication of the older religion as an inherent part of
a world-revelation. It was not the lowering of His message to
the particularism of the Jewish religion, but the elevation of the
latter into a universal significance first fully revealed in Him.
The problem which Jesus had to solve was not the destruction of
Judaism, but its consummation, the liberation of its spiritual
content from the restrictions of its form. That He should have
indicated the supersession of Jewish privilege is not at all un-
likely ; but manifestly this could not be His usual or character-
istic tone, if He were to implant in Jewish minds the germs of
His wider faith. He had largely to put Himself in their place, and
work through the forms of their thought. Primarily, therefore,
His universalism had to be implicit. He did not so much give
them new religious terms as fill the old terms with a new mean-
ing and reference. Hence it was only after He had at least
partly accomplished this in the ease of a chosen circle of followers,
and attached them unalterably to Himself, that He spoke openly
and frequently of the larger issues of His gospel, and the in-
gathering of the " nations." Jesus saw that if He were to con-
serve the eternal element in the Jewish religion. He must work
within its lines. He broke, indeed, with the existing authorities,
but only because He maintained that they misrepresented it.
The principle on which He acted, as regards both the teaching of
His ministry and the subsequent development of His Church,
was to sow germinal truths which could come to maturity only
through the reaction . of individual thought, and the enlarging
of experience. Therefore, whUe He did not leave the dis-
ciples wholly without plain announcements of the universality
of His mission. He did not so emphasize this as to impair
their confidence in the imity and continuity of the old and the
new faiths.^

2. Christ fulfilled the prophets. — We are familiar with the idea
of the " fulfilment " of prophecy, though that idea is often unduly
limited. Prophecy is not " inverted history " : it was not a re-
flection beforehand by which men could foreknow what was to
come : it was but as the seed out of which plant and flower and
fruit were to be developed. Prophecy kept men's eyes fixed upon
the future ; it created a sense of need, it stirred deep and earnest
longings ; it stimulated hope. And then the fulfilment gathered

1 D. W. Forrest, The Christ of History and of Mcperience, 418.

126 A CONSERVATIVE REFORMER

into one unimagined reality all the various lines of thought and
longing and hope, in a completeness far transcending all anticipa-
tion. The fulfilment could not have been conjectured from the
prophecy, but it answers to it, and shows the working of the one
Divine purpose, unhasting, unresting, to its final goal of man's
redemption.

The prophets' great teachings were all centred round the
figure of the Deliverer of the future. There were three things
concerning the person and work of this Messiah upon which they
laid special emphasis.

(1) The Messiah was to be humble in the circumstances of His
life. — His birthplace. His lowly outward condition, His having no
visible grandeur to attract the world's eye, had all been noted by
the pen of inspiration. If He had been born in any other place
than Bethlehem, if He had appeared as a rich Prince instead of
being the son of a poor family, there would have been reason to
say that the words of Scripture were against Him ; for it was
prophesied regarding Him, " Thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though
thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall
he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings
forth have been from of old, from everlasting."

^ Christian religion beginneth not at the highest, as other
religions do, but at the lowest. It will have us to climb up by
Jacob's ladder, whereupon God Himself leaneth, whose feet touch
the very earth, hard by the head of Jacob. Eun straight to the
manger, and embrace this Infant, the Virgin's little babe, in thine
arms; and behold Him as He was born, nursed, grew up, was
conversant amongst men ; teaching ; dying ; rising again ; ascend-
ing up above all the heavens, and having power over all things.
This sight and contemplation will keep thee in the right way,
that thou mayest follow whither Christ hath gone.^

(2) But the Messiah was to be great in His person. — He was
to be of high origin, though He was to take up a lowly position
on earth. It was said of Him by one of the prophets. His
"goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." These
words intimated that He who was afterwards to appear in
human nature for the deliverance of His people had lived from
the beginning, from eternity. The prophet Isaiah had also said
with reference to Him, " Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is

' Luther, Cormneniary on the Oalaticms, 102.

ST. MATTHEW v. 17 127

given : and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The
Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

H The Jews took great offence, we read, because Jesus, being a
man, called Himself the Son of God. But did not the Scriptures,
which they professed to follow, speak of the Messiah as both God
and man ? If He had claimed less He would not have been the
Deliverer promised to their fathers. And were the actions of
Jesus inconsistent with His high claim ? When He gave sight to
the blind, and hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, and
life to the dead by a word, did He not show that He indeed was
what the prophet Isaiah had said the Messiah at His coming
should be, " The Mighty God " ? 1

(3) He was also to accomplish a matchless work. — He was to
bruise the head of the serpent ; or, as this first announcement is
explained again and again in the prophecies which follow, and
particularly in the prophecies of Daniel, He was " to finish trans-
gression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation
for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness." He was
to take away the sins of men which separated them from God, to
put an end to the commission of sin, and to bring in the reign of
, righteousness for ever. He was in consequence called by the
prophets in other places " the Lord our righteousness." Jesus de-
clared when He was upon the earth that this was to be the great
purpose of His mission. " The Son of man," He said, " came not
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many." He came to take away all burdens and all
troubles by taking away sin, which is the cause of them all.
" Come unto me," He said, " all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest." And with reference to all that
come unto Him, He says, ''I give unto them eternal life; and
they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my
hand."

T[ In St. Paul, Christ is the Deliverer from sins in the past ;
He is the Defender against sins in the future. God's love in
Christ is emphatically that which delivers the wretched man,
beaten in all his endeavours to free himself from the body of this
death of sin : it is that which has done through Christ what the
law could not do, enabled the righteousness of the law to be ful-
filled in His redeemed. Over St. Paul's mind there ever seems to
1 G. S. Smith, Victory Over Sin and Death, 21.

128 A CONSERVATIVE REFORMER

be resting the shadow of the memory of the past ; he remembers
how wrong he once went, what a terrible mistake he made. And
he remembers how, not by any reflection, not by any study of his
own, but by the direct influence of Christ Himself, he first learned
how fearfully wrong he was. Hence throughout his life there is
present to him a sense of his own weakness. Yet while these
thoughts sometimes come across him, and make him more eagerly
watchful over all that he does, nothing can shake his firm per-
suasion that " neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord." To him
Christ is emphatically the power which wipes out the past, and
which upholds the soul, the power which alone can preserve us
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose
strength is made perfect in our weakness, who shall one day
"change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his
glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even
to subdue all things unto himself." ^

1 Archbishop Temple.

The Lord's Prayer.

ST. MATT. — 9

Literature.

Aked (C. F.), The Lord's Prayer.

Cohu (J. E.), Our Father.

Dearmer (P.), in Churchmamship and Labour, 226.

Dods (M.), The Prayer that Teaches to Pray.

Eyton (R.), The LorSls Prayer.

Farrar (F, W.), The Lord's Prayer.

Gibbon (J. M.), The Disciples' Prayer.

Gore (C), Prayer and the Lord's Prayer, 30.

Goulburn (E. M.), The Lord!s Prayer.

Hall (N.), The Lord's Prayer : A Practical Meditation,

Hare (A. W.), Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.

Jones (J. D.), The Model Prayer.

Jones (E. M.), The Double Search, 94.

Jowett (B.), Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, 250.

Lowrie (W.), .466a, Father.

McFadyen (J. E.), The Prayers of the Bible, 132.

Maurice (F. D.), The Pra/yer-Book and the Lord's Prayer.

Miller (J. E.), The Golden Gate of Prayer.

Milligan (G.), The Lord's Prayer.

Richards (W. E.), A Study of the Lord's Prayer.

Roberts (J. E.), Studies in the Lord's Prayer.

Eoss (C. B.), Our Father's Kingdom.

Ross (G. A. J.), The Universality of Jesus, 129.

Ruskin (J.), The Lord's Prayer and the Church.

Sapliir (A.), The Lord's Prayer.

Scbenck (F. S.), The Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer.

Stanford (C.), The Lord's Prayer.

Stubbs (C. W.), The Social Teaching of the Lords Prayer.

Vaughan (C. J.), The Lord's Prayer.

Waddy (J. T.), The Lord's Prayer.

Watt (L. M.), God's Altar Stairs.

Wells (J.), The Children's Prayer.

Wilberforce (B.), Sanctification by the Truth, 189.

Wordaworth (E.), Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer.

Woiiledge (A. J.), Prayer, 160.

ija

The LORD'S Prayer,

After this manner therefore pray ye. — Matt. vi. 9.

1. The Lord's Prayer has been the type of prayer among Christians
in all ages. Throughout the Christian centuries men have poured
forth their hearts to God in these few words, which have probably
had a greater influence on the world than all the writings of
theologians put together. They are the simplest form of com-
munion with Christ : when we utter them we are one with Him ;
His thoughts become our thoughts, and we draw near to God
through Him. They are also the simplest form of communion
with our fellow-men, in which we acknowledge that He is our
common Father and that we are His children. And the least
particulars of our lives admit of being ranged under one or other
of the petitions which we offer up to Him.

2. It has not only become the one universal prayer of
Christendom; it has appealed to and has been adopted by the
most enlightened exponents of other faiths. This result is all
the more astounding if, as some scholars have declared, no single
petition of the prayer was in the strict sense " original," the
startling originality being in the structure of the prayer. Within
the narrow framework of an utterance containing only peti-
tions, Jesus has gathered all the deepest necessities of the col-
lective and of the individual life of mankind, and has so knit
together and built up these petitions in orderly sequence that
the prayer as a whole appeals to men everywhere, and remains
to any man who will thoughtfully use it a liberal education in
sympathy with mankind and in understanding the character of
God.

^ In his " Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude,"
Thomas Gray endeavoured to impress on an age of indifference
the priceless value of the daily earthly blessings which we receive,

131

132 THE LORD'S PRAYER

too often without a thought of their beauty, and healthfulness,
and joy, without a word of gratitude to Him who gives and sus-
tains, without one real expression of prayer that we may conse-
crate them more entirely to His service. He describes the
feelings of one who, after a long and painful illness, finds himself
at last able to leave his room, and move once more amid familiar
sights and sounds which, in a normal state of health, scarcely
excite attention :

See the "Wretch, that long has tost

On the stormy bed of Pain,
At length repair his vigour lost

And breathe and walk again;
The meanest flowret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common Sun, the air, the skies.
To him are opening Paradise.

In the spiritual world there are blessings like " the common sun,
the air, the skies," the priceless value of which in regard to com-
munion with God in Christ, the conscious sense of the Divine
presence, the formation of character, and control of conduct, we
for the most part hardly estimate until we find ourselves deprived
of them, or unable to make use of them. Among such blessings,
inestimable, yet taken as a matter of course, is the gift of the
Lord's Prayer.^

(1) To begin with, a man is bidden postpone the outpouring
of his private needs till he has related himself aright to the needs
of the world : the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer are
"missionary" intercessions, which, when a man begins to use,
at once narrowness and possible selfishness of outlook are checked,
and the sympathies spread out to take in the wants that lie
deepest in the life of universal man. " Our Father which art
in heaven. Hallowed be thy name" — hallowed, that is, the
whole world over. What a sweep of intercessory affection, what
enlightening recollection of what the world most truly needs,
what readjustment to fraternal fellowship of desire lies behind
the intelligent use of this petition alone ! It means that one
sees, instructed by Christ, that the profoundest necessity for the
broken and sundered lives of our race is reunion in spiritual
religion, in one universal reverence to one worthy thought of
God; and to go on intelligently to pray, "Thy kingdom come:
' A. J. Worlledge, Prayer, 160,

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 133

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," is to desire (and
surely also to be moved to work for) the reorganizing of man's
broken life on the basis of a universal subordination to God,
orderly and loyal, because willing, enlightened, and free. Think
of the power that lies in a series of intercessions like that to
educate the intercessor in the true meaning and inwardness of the
history behind him and being made around him ! Think of its
stores of impulse to a cosmopolitan outlook, its potent force as a
solvent of the parochial spirit ! And then think of the range and
depth of the insight of the "Galilsean peasant" who thus per-
ceived and read the universal needs of man ! How came He to
have those eyes which, like the eyes of God, "are over all the
earth " ?

^ In each petition we ask to be blessed with God Himself.
In each petition we therefore see the Trinity, while one Person of
the Trinity is more prominently brought forward. The name is
the Son revealing the Father; the kingdom is the Father beheld
and loved in the Son ; the will renewed is the Holy Ghost f ul-
filhng in us what the Father ordains and Christ mediates. In
these three petitions there is no sequence — they are co-equal,
co-ordinate — hence there is no conjunction.^

(2) The remaining four petitions of the prayer are no less
marvellous as a transcript of the cry of the world-wide heart of
man. " Give us this day our daily bread " — give us, for we can
neither manufacture nor for very long so much as store the raw
material of life's nourishment. " Forgive us our debts " — forgive,
for we can neither pay for, expiate, nor endure unexpiated, the
irreparable past. "Lead us not into temptation" — for life is
beset with risk as well as opportunity. " Deliver us from evil "
— for that is the deep-set root of all woes. Is it not the unani-
mous voice of mankind that sighs through these petitions ? Has
there ever been so perfect, so adequate an articulation of the
murmur of the hungering world-soul ? Is prayer for more than
this prayer includes essential? Would prayer for less be less
than vicious ? Men vary in their power of calling up from the
subconscious region the thoughts and sympathies that wander to
the farthest frontiers of personality and seem to travel even
beyond; but this is more than telepathy in excelsis: it is a
^ Adolph Saphir, The Lord's Prayer, 58.

134 THE LORD'S PRAYER

knowledge of universal man gathering itself in such a way within
the compass of a single mind that the inference is irresistible that
this Man's consciousness was more than "individual," and that
these things He had learned in some residence in G-od antedating
His residence on earth. The vast sweep of the Lord's Prayer, and
its astounding grasp of what is deepest in the necessities of the
world in every age, go far to make credible even the saying attri-
buted to Christ in the Fourth Gospel, " Before Abraham was, I
am."

^ Of symbolical numbers in Scripture, there are none whose
meaning is so certain and obvious as the numbers three, four, and
seven. Three is the number of God, as in the threefold blessing
which the high priest pronounced, the threefold "holy" in the
song of the seraphim, and in various passages. The mystery, most
clearly expressed in the institution of baptism and throughout the
Epistles, is contained in germ in all the manifestations of God
unto His people. The number four is evidently the number of
the world, of the manifold mundane relationship of creation in
its fulness and variety. This symbolism finds its expression in
nature — the four directions in space, the four corners of the earth,
the four winds, from which all the elect shall be gathered. It is
to be noticed in the Tabernacle, the measures, curtains, colours,
and ingredients, where it denotes regularity and completeness.
With this correspond the facts that we have a fourfold account of
the life of Christ, and that the creaturely life and perfection is
represented by the four living Beings. Seven is the number
symbolizing God manifesting Himself in the world. From the
very first chapter of Genesis to the closing Book of the inspired
record, this number is invested with a special dignity and
solemnity. The seventh day is not merely the day of rest, but
the day on which are completed wnd perfected the works of God.
Seven is the number of clean animals which Noah was com-
manded to bring into the Ark. Seven branches had the golden
candlestick in the holy place of the Tabernacle ; seven days lasted
the great festivals in Israel ; on seven pillars was built the House
of Wisdom ; walking amid seven golden candlesticks Jesus is
represented in the Apocalypse ; seven spirits are before the throne ;
seven words the Saviour uttered from the cross ; seven petitions
He gives to His people.^

' ' Adolpli Saphir, The Lord's Prayer, 59,

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 135

The Father.

"Our Father which art in heaven."

"After this manner therefore pray ye." This then is the
right way of praying. Our Lord here in the Sermon on the
Mount is telling men how to do the three eminent duties —
"When thou doest alms," "When ye fast," "When ye pray."
About each of the three He has the same thing to say — Do not
advertise it ; but when He speaks of prayer He goes further, for
it is by far the most difficult of the three ; He goes on to tell us
the right method. " After this manner therefore pray ye." The
Lord's Prayer is given, not to tie us down to that particular form
of words (though, indeed, there are none so good), but to show us
how to pray. " After this manner." This is the right way.

1. Too often man trips in and out of God's presence, saying
words that he does not feel towards a Person of whom he has no
intelligent conception. But we must not do so. Our love and
our awe must be first evoked. " Father," we approach Him as a
child in the tenderest relationship ; He is One who loves us with
more than human love, loves us more than we can love Him, One
who is more ready to hear than we are to pray.

*\ Father ! It is the greatest word on mortal tongue, and the
truth of the universal Fatherhood of God is the greatest which
ever dawned on the intelligence of man. But did it ever dawn
upon the intelligence of man in such a way as the other truths
have done ? When Peter made his great confession, " Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God," our Lord answered him in
joy and thankfulness, "Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonah;
for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father
which is in heaven." May we not say that flesh and blood never
revealed this truth of God's eternal Fatherhood ? It is God's own
direct supreme revelation of Himself in Christ His eternal Son.^

^ No exercise of will can procure for me, and no amount of
demerit can forfeit for me, the fact, the existence, of a sonship and
a Fatherhood. Even in the far country, where the prodigal
son is feeding swine, not memory alone, but consciousness,
recognizes a relationship between himself and a far-off person,
whom he confidently calls his father. And when he forms the
1 0. F. Aked, The Lord's Prayer, 14.

136 THE LORD'S PRAYER

resolution to escape from his misery and his destitution, and to seek
again the land and the home which for years have been to him
but a dream and an illusion, he frames into words, without a doubt
or a peradventure, the confession with which he will present him-
self at the door of that house and that heart, and it begins with
the assertion of an inalienable relationship — " I will say to him,
Father!"!

2. The Lord's Prayer bids us lay aside all selfishness at the
outset. Its first word — " Our " — is the most difficult of all ; for
to lay aside selfishness is the hardest thing in the world. We
must begin by casting off self, by realizing that we are only one
minute unit in the great millions of humanity. Think of it, what
this word " our " means — all those who are separated from us by
impassable barriers, those who are so far above us that we cannot
reach them, those who are so far beneath us that we reckon the
slightest act of human recognition is a gracious condescension, all
those who belong to the opposite faction in politics, those who
belong to hostile nations, those whose religion or whose irreligion
wars with our deepest convictions ; all those who are outcasts too,
and criminals, the enemies of society, and those — it is often
hardest to remember — with whom we have had disagreements,
quarrels, those whom we feel we cannot like. He is our Father
only in connexion with these others also. We cannot speak for
ourselves unless we speak also for them ; we cannot carry our
petitions to the throne of His grace unless we carry theirs ; we
cannot ask for any good unless it is for them as much as for us.
For He is their Father as much as ours, and we cannot say,
" Our Father which art in heaven," unless we have first learnt to
say, " Our brothers who are on the earth."

^ The Lord's Prayer is the simplest of all prayers, and also
the deepest. We are children addressing a Father who is also
the Lord of heaven and earth. In Him all the families of the
earth become one family. The past as well as the present, the
dead as well as the living, are embraced by His love. When we
draw near to Him we draw nearer also to our fellow-men. From
the smaller family to which we are bound by ties of relationship
we extend our thoughts to that larger family which lives in His
presence. When we say, " Our Father," we do not mean that God
is the Father of us in particular, but of the whole human race,
' C. J. Vaughan, The Lord's Prayer, 15.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 137

the great family in heaven and earth. The Heavenly Father is
not like the earthly ; yet through this image we attain a nearer
notion of God than through any other. We mean that He loves
us, that He educates us and all mankind, that He provides laws
for us, that He receives us like the prodigal in the parable when
we go astray. We mean that His is the nature which we most
revere, with a mixed feeling of awe and of love ; that He knows
what is for our good far better than we know ourselves, and is
able to do for us above all that we can ask or think. We mean
that in His hands we are children, whose wish and pleasure is to
do His will, whose duty is to trust in Him in all the accidents of
their lives.^

^ It is in every line a prayer of fellowship and co-operation.
It is a perfect illustration of the social nature of prayer. The
co-operation and fellowship are not here confined, and they never
are except in the lower stages, to the inward communion of an
individual and his God. There is no / or me or mine in the whole
prayer. The person who prays spiritually is enmeshed in a living
group, and the reality of his vital union with persons like himself
clarifies his vision of that deeper Eeality to whom he prays.
Divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood are born together. To
say " Father " to God involves saying " brother " to one's fellows,
and the ground swell of either relationship naturally carries the
other with it, for no one can largely realize the significance of
brotherly love without going to Him in whom love is completed.*

3. Yet again, it is to the Father in heaven that we are to
pray. Mankind before Christ sought two ways of knowing God.
The philosopher thought of Him as far removed from earth in
His perfection. The polytheist thought of Him as embodied in
many gods, half-human, and for that reason very near to him.
The one protested against the error of the other, and both were
half-true. God is infinitely above us, as the philosopher thought ;
but He is also very human, very near. So Jesus Christ came to
show us that God is not some vast abstraction, but is a present
Father, closer to us than breathing, and nearer than hands or

feet.

For God is never so far off

As even to be near.
He is within. Our spirit is

The home He holds most dear.

' Benjamin Jowett, Sermons on Faith and Dodrme, 252.
^ R. M. Jones, The Double Search, 65.

138 THE LORD'S PRAYER

To think of Him as by our side

Is almost as untrue
As to remove His shrine beyond

Those skies of starry blue.

So all the while I thought myself

Homeless, forlorn, and weary.
Missing my joy, I walked the earth,

Myself God's sanctuary.

4. " In heaven " does not mean at a distance. What does it
mean ? It means perfection. " Our Father in heaven " suggests
perfection in love, in helpfulness, in homeliness.

(1) Perfection in love. — We can learn heavenly things only from
earthly types. Looking at such types, what is our idea of what a
Father should be ? At least we understand that the word repre-
sents love — love that thinks, love that works ; the love of one who
is wise,. who is strong, and who takes trouble. It means this in
man, it means this in God, and to perfection.

(2) Perfection in helpfulness. — " If ye then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your
Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him ? "
That word " if " seems meant not only to imply an argument, but
to suggest a question. " If ye . . . know how ! " Do fathers and
mothers always know ? Look at Hagar, when the bread was gone,
the water spent, and Ishmael ready to die of want — did she know ?
" She cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went,
and sat her down over against him, a good way off, as it were a
bowshot: for she said. Let me not see the death of the child.
And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept."
Look at certain times into certain houses not far from your own,
and you might hear a child ask for bread, and then hear the
father say, " There is none." He would help, but he does not know
how. God, as our helper, because He is our Father in heaven,
might say to us, " As the heavens are higher than the earth, so " —
in helping you — " are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts."

(3) Perfection in homeliness. — The words, " Our Father which
art in heaven," suggest to us the perfection ' of our home.
Although the word " heaven " is here used mainly to remind us
of our Father's perfection, it is meant also to remind us of the

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 139

family home. Some Christians seem not to care for this doctrine,
and in giving us their own views they are almost as refined as
Confucius, who said, '' Heaven is Principle." Our notion, although
it includes this idea, does not stop at it. It includes not only
character but condition, not only principle but place. We look
upon heaven as the perfect home of perfect human nature.

^ What must that place be in which even God is at home !
We cannot tell, and it is astonishing that any mortal has ever
tried to tell. It is written in an old story that an artist, led by
Indians, snce went to paint Niagara, but that when he saw it, he
dashed his disappointing pencil down the precipice, for he felt
that he could as soon paint the roar, as the fall, the foam, the
great sheets of light, the arch of coloured rays, with all the other
wonders that went to make up the surprising cataract ; and shall
we who have only seen earth, try to picture heaven ! No ! poems
of glory, pictures of magniiicence, all fail, " imagination in its
utmost stretch, in wonder dies away " ; in our present state, our
future state is a mystery, though a mystery of delight. It is our
home, but the celestial homeliness is beyond us now.^

I.

The Name.

" Hallowed be thy name."

This is no doxology. It is a prayer. It is the first of three
prayers concerning God Himself.

1. What is a " name " ? What is it for us ? A name is the
brief summary of a person. The use of a name, the object of each
man having a name, is to supersede the necessity of interminable
descriptions, and to set before us, by a sort of telegraphic dispatch,
the whole person — face, form, and properties — of him whom we
know and of whom we would make mention. The " name " is the
catchword which renders amplification needless by bringing up
to us the person — figure and qualities and characteristics in one.
The name is the man. The absent, distant, inaccessible man is
made present to us in the naming of the name.
1 0. Stanford, The Lord's Prayer, 81.

140 THE LORD'S PRAYER

Even thus is it with the name of God. "When Moses prayed,
" I beseech thee, shew me thy glory " — and when he was told that
to see the Face of Grod was impossible, but that he might be
privileged to behold some sort of back look and (as it were) retro-
spect of His Person — we read next that the Lord descended,
passed by before him, and, in answer to that prayer for a sight of
His glory, proclaimed the name of the Lord. Now what was
that name ? Was it the " Jehovah," the " I Am," of the original
revelation ? Eead it as it lies there at length in the 34th chapter
of the Book of Exodus, and you will see that the name of God is,
in other words, the sum of God's attributes, " The Lord, the Lord
God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in good-
ness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity
and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the
guilty." God, such as He is, in mercy and righteousness, in
boundless compassion and just judgment — that, that is His
" name."

2. Learning what God is, we ask that His name may be
hallowed or held sacred, regarded by all as a true and holy thing
that is at any cost to be maintained in esteem, and under all
temptation still believed in. May the idea of God which He
would have us to possess be held as the choice possession of our
spirits, the treasure on which our hearts rest, and to which they
ever return ; may it be held separate from all contamination of
our own thoughts about God ; and may it never be obscured by
any cloud of adversity tempting us to think that God has changed,
never lost sight of by any careless devotion of our thoughts to
other objects and names ; never presumed upon nor polluted as
countenancing folly or sin, but cherished still and guarded as " the
holy and reverend name of the Lord."

II It is to be noted that this petition stands first of all the
petitions in the Lord's Prayer. It is the very first thing that a
disciple thinks of as he begins to pray, indicating what must be
our first business on the first day of every week — to hallow God's
name. Nothing else is to take precedence of that. Other things
may follow. Before the day is over it will be right to offer a
prayer for daily bread, but that can wait till later. Even the
prayer for forgiveness of our sins comes later, and the prayer for
deliverance from temptation comes later. In Christ's order

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 141

earliest of all stands this petition that the name of God our
Father may be hallowed.^

II.

The Kingdom.

" Thy kingdom come."

What is a kingdom ? It is a society of men living in an
orderly manner a common life under one head or ruler. The
Kingdom of God is this, but more. For human rule is over men
only, speaking generally ; the rule of God is over all created
things. Thus the Kingdom of God is an orderly constitution of
all things visible and invisible, inanimate, animate and spiritual,
each in its own place fulfilling the Divine will.

1. Now this idea of the Kingdom is taken for granted when
we pray "Thy kingdom come.'" The necessity for this prayer
arises only because the rule of God in the world has been — not
indeed banished, but — obscured. So that from the point of view
of sinful, alienated man, the Kingdom of , God, His manifested
rule, must be treated as an absent thing to be desired and
invoked.

2. This is by no means to be limited to the desire that God's
sovereignty should be established over our hearts. The prayer is
put into the mouth of disciples, who have already surrendered
their hearts and wills to God. " Jesus came preaching the gospel
of the kingdom " ; and the Kingdom of God is only Christ's name
for the blessings of the gospel. Therefore this petition means:
Let thy gospel have world-wide supremacy, and the conceptions
of God and of life which it teaches govern everywhere. It
means that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms
of our God and of His Christ, through the acceptance and appli-
cation of Christian teachings ; and that the name of God which
is to be hallowed is that revealed by Jesus Christ.

^ I am prepared to adopt the following declaration: "The
coming of the kingdom would mean the death of flunkeyism and
1 W. E. Richards, A Study of the Lord's JPrayer, 45.

142 THE LORD'S PRAYER

toadyism in the personal life, the death of mammon in the social
life, and the death of jingoism in the national life." I venture to
think that it would banish from our social life all strife, all envy,
all slander. It forbids Christian people to follow unchristian
fashions. It makes the pride and stand-offishness of some
Christians towards their fellow-members positively ridiculous.
It bids us be courteous, kindly affectioned, pitiful, given to hospi-
tality, charitable. The same consecrating hand laid upon our
commercial life will prevent the fierce competition which chokes
the life out of the weak and exalts the strong ; a heartless rejec-
tion of a good servant because a few shillings a week can be saved
by giving the post to a boy : a recognition of a moral code differ-
ing fundamentally from Jesus Christ's moral code. Business men
will give a helping hand to fallen brothers who are trying to
recover themselves ; they will scorn to ask their young clerks
to make untrue statements about goods. Workmen will lose
theii' passion for strikes. Christian people — certainly Christian
ministers — will be ashamed to take shares in a brewery " because
it pays," or to demand a larger dividend from any company with-
out enquiring what the effect may be on the employees. In civic
and political life we shall refuse to allow large vested interests to
occupy the seat of authority and to shape legislation for their own
advantage. When the Kingdom comes, no Parliament would
allow the children's charter — a Bill for preventing the sale of
intoxicants to young children, a Bill the necessity for which was
recognized by everybody — to be flung to the brewers and publi-
cans for them to tear and trample upon. Indeed, we niight go a
step farther back, and say that when the Kingdom comes there
will be no liquor traffic on lines that bear any comparison with
that which shocks and mocks and murders us to-day. And in
our national life when this prayer is prayed earnestly, we shall
distinguish between the shoddy patriotism which is only a masked
pagan vice, which desires to exalt British interests by any means
warlike or not at the expense of other people, and that truer
patriotism which is a Christian virtue, which longs to make one's
own nation good, that it may be blessed of God and become a
means of blessing to the world. You may easily quarrel with my
provisional programme of Christian life, but you cannot be a true
follower of Christ if you do not pray and labour for the coming
of the Kingdom of our Father, through the spread of the Chris-
tian religion and the supremacy of the teaching of Jesus.^

Father, let Thy kingdom come, —
Let it come with living power;

^ J. E. Roberts, Studies in the Lord's Frayer, 29.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 143

Speak at length the final word,
Usher in the triumph hour.

As it came in days of old,
In the deepest hearts of men.
When Thy martyrs died for Thee,
Let it come, God, again.

Tyrant thrones and idol shrines,

Let them from their place be hurled:

Enter on Thy better reign,

Wear the crown of this poor world.

what long, sad years have gone,
Since Thy Church was taught this prayer !
what eyes have watched and wept
For the dawning everywhere.

Break, triumphant day of God !
Break at last, our hearts to cheer;
Eager souls and holy songs
Wait to hail Thy dawning here.

Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones,
May they all for God be won;
And, in every human heart,
Father, let Thy kingdom come.^

IIL

The Will.

"Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."

In the second petition of this prayer, we have prayed for God's
spiritual Kingdom, that it may be set up and established in our
hearts ; for His visible Kingdom, or Church, that it may increase and
spread, until it fill the whole earth ; and for His heavenly Kingdom,
that it may soon drive away and put an end to every kind of sin
and sorrow, and leave nothing to be seen in the new heavens and
the new earth but a glorious God, filling all things with His
presence, and ruling with a Father's love over His dutiful and

' John Page Hopps.

144 THE LORD'S PRAYER

holy children. Already, therefore, we have desired that those
things be fulfilled which are contained in this third petition. We
cannot desire that He be King over the earth, without desiring
that His will be done on earth. We do not sincerely own Him as
King, unless we set His will above our own and every other. For
a kingdom where there is not one guiding will is a distracted
kingdom, doomed to fall: a king whose will is not done is a
mocked and virtually dethroned king. However, to add this
petition is not to repeat, though it be to develop and follow out,
the preceding. The three petitions are to one another as root,
stem, and fruit ; as beginning, middle, and end.

It is not enough that the Kingdom be established, that its
boundaries be enlarged, and its glory delighted in ; there is an
end for which all this is brought about, and that end is that the
will of the Ruler may be done. We desire that God may assert
His dominion over us and all men, and may give us to know that
He is a living and near God by the force of His will upon us.
From the " name " we pass to the work as displayed in His
Kingdom, and from the work to the will. From the outskirts of
His personality we pass to its heart.

1. The petition, " Thy will be done," is not only the summit or
the climax of those petitions in which we seek God's honour and
glory ; it is the foundation of all prayer. For what is prayer ? It is
not, as is sometimes foolishly thought, a mere means of trying to
extort something from God ; nor an attempt to change the will of
God regarding us, as if, by our continual asking, we might obtain
certain things which God had hitherto denied us. It is, first of
all and chief of all, an acknowledgment on our part that God
knows what is best for us, and a desire that He would enable us
to submit our wills to His will. We cannot rightly ask for any-
thing, unless we ask for it in humble dependence upon the will of
God ; unless, in asking, we are conscious that we do not desire it,
unless God desires it for us.

2. " Thy will be done," — that, then, is the spirit of every true
prayer. But it is more, it ought to be the spirit of every true life.
Apart from such acknowledgment as is here implied, how aimless
our lives are apt to be, swayed hither and thither by every idle

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 145

impulse, at the mercy of every gust of passion, or at the best
centred in some selfish or worldly pursuit. But, on the other
hand, once a man has realized that he has come forth from God,
that God has need of him, and has a purpose for him to fulfil,
what new strength and dignity of character he gains ! He learns
that he does not stand alone, and gradually there is borne in upon
him the triumphant consciousness of a life lived, not according to
any self-willed object or desire, but step by step unfolding itself
according to " the complete and perfect plan cherished for it in the
heart of God." "With the Hebrew Psalmist he can exclaim, "
Lord my God, in thee do I put my trust." " My times are in thy
hand."

3. God's will is to be done here — here on earth — and now. We
are not to wait for another life, as if then alone we could truly
serve God. But our service here is to prepare us for our service
hereafter. We are told of the angels of God that they " do his
commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word," and that
they are " all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them
who shall be heirs of salvation." And the ministry of the angels
is, as this petition teaches us, to be the model of our ministry.

^ When Hooker was lying on his deathbed, a friend visiting
him found him in deep contemplation, and asking what his
thoughts were, received the reply that he was "meditating the
nature and number of angels, and their blessed obedience and
order, without which peace could not be in heaven ; and. Oh ! that
it might be so on earth." ^

Tl When Gladstone was asked for his favourite quotation he
gave the six words of Dante, " La sua volontade e nostra pace " —
" His Will is our peace." *

IV.

The Daily Bread.

"Give us this day our daily bread."

In the Lord's Prayer there are three petitions for God's glory,
three for man's spiritual necessity, and in the midst is set one

1 G. Milligan, The LorcHs Prayer, 83.
' P. Dearmer, in ChurchmansMp and Labour, 249.
ST. MATT. — lO

146 THE LORD'S PRAYER

petition for man's bodily needs — only one, and that most full of
significance, " Give us this day our daily bread."

Let us be reverent enough to take this sentence in its plain
meaning. To give it some mystical or symbolic interpretation
which our Lord did not mean it to have is to set up another
prayer which is not the Lord's Prayer. " Daily bread " does not
refer to the Eucharist. The word translated "daily" is very
obscure, it occurs nowhere else in the Greek language; but all
are agreed that the meaning is " bread for our daily subsistence,"
and the attempt made by Abelard in the twelfth century to
translate it " supersubstantial " is undoubtedly wrong. The
petition simply deals with the most fundamental of social
questions — the need of sustenance.

^ There is no better commentary on this petition than that
of old Bishop Barrow : " A noble heart will disdain to subsist
like a drone on the honey gained by others' labour; or like
vermin to filch its food from the public granary ; or like a shark
to prey on the lesser fry: but wijl one way or other earn his
subsistence, for he that does not earn can hardly be said to own
his daily bread." ^

1. The first point to notice in this clause of the Lord's
Prayer is its moderation. In the prayer which is prompted by
our natural instinct we ask for everything we happen to want ;
we put ourselves first; we are immoderate in our desires; we
seek to bend the Divine will to our own wishes. In all these
respects, as has been already noticed, the Lord's Prayer puts
human instinct under the strongest check. This prayer for the
supply of our own needs is not allowed to be uttered till it has
been preceded by prayer for the honouring of the Divine name,
the coming of the Divine Kingdom, and the doing of the Divine
will ; and till, in all these respects, the law of heaven has been
taken for the law of human conduct.

2. Next let us ask what daily bread can be understood to
include ? Surely it is all that is necessary for us to make the
best of our faculties. It is nourishment ; and everything may
fairly be called nourishment which can be said to fertilize and

^ P. Dearmer, in Churchmanship wnd Labour, 252.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 147

liberate the energies of human nature, instead of cloying and
clogging them. Once grant this, and it is obvious that very
different things are meant by "bread" to different people.
There is hardly any luxury which has not its use to stimulate
this or that nature, or to meet this or that exceptional need.
The question whether this or that article of diet or comfort can
be used under the head of " daily bread," can be answered only
by answering the question — Do I work the better for it ? And
in answering this question there are two facts, closely allied,
which have to be kept in mind.

(1) The first is, that comforts very soon reach the point where
they begin to clog human energies instead of liberating them.
A venerable statesman has been often heard to remark that the
things people say they " can't do without " are like the pieces of
thread with which the Lilliputians bound Gulliver. Each of
them could be snapt by itself, but taken together they bound
him more tightly than strong cords. N'obody, therefore, can find
out what he really needs for his work without constantly testing
himself in giving up things. No one can consider a number of
well-to-do Englishmen without perceiving that they are material-
ized; that is, that the supply of food and drink and comfort
generally dulls their intellectual and still more their spiritual
powers. In other words, the spirit in them is the slave of the
flesh.

(2) Here comes in view the second fact. Easting has been
historically a principle of Christianity, and was so in Apostolic
Christianity. Eightly stated, the principle of fasting is but the
recognition that the flesh has in ordinary human life got the
upper hand of the spirit, and that it is time for the spirit to take
revenges upon the flesh, and to assert its mastery. Fasting, like
every other principle, must have its methods and its rules and its
order, or it will fail to take effect ; but we are concerned now
only with the principle, and it is this — the Christian will, from
time to time, deliberately deny himself in lawful comforts, and
nourishment of the body, in order to assert spiritual vitahty,
in order to find out what he can do without, in order to
maintain the principle that " man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God."

148 THE LORD'S PRAYER

3. The next point in this petition lies in the word "this
day." St. Matthew has "this day"; St. Luke has "day by
day." It is conjectured that the one was the morning version
and the other the evening version of the Early Church.
The lesson is simple. We must be content to wait from
day to day upon the hand of God; we must ask only
for present needs; we must not be anxious about the
morrow.

But, it may be said, how can this be reconciled with the fore-
thought and far-sightedness that are necessary to civilized life ?
The answer lies in our own experience. Have we found that
anxiety about possible consequences increased the clearness of our
judgment ? Have we found that it made us wiser and braver in
meeting the present, or more far-sighted in arming ourselves for
the future ? We know very well that it is the opposite spirit that
has made civilization possible — the spirit of men who are content
to do their work from day to day, to plough the field and wait
for the harvest, the spirit of men who take their meat from God
in simple and hearty reliance upon the Power whom the earth and
the winds and seas obey. Clearness of vision, providence, dis-
covery, are the rewards of the calm and patient spirit, that is
content day by day to have the daily bread. Out of the anxiety
for the morrow that cannot pray, " Give us to-day our bread,"
spring all the evils of the money-lust — the fever of speculation,
the hasting to be rich, the endless scheming, the continual reactions
of fantastic hope and deep depression in individuals, of mad
prosperity and intense sufferings in nations. Wars, oppressions,
misery, crime — these are because men do not pray, " Give us this
day."

V.

Forgiveness.

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."

After bread, forgiveness. After the wants of the body comes
this prime necessity of the soul, " Give us our bread, forgive us
our debts." It is put here as a daily spiritual need — something
that we require as constantly as food.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 149

1. Debts. — The Bible has many words for sin, but debt is the
only word for it in the Lord's Prayer. In explaining this petition,
our Saviour calls sins "trespasses," but in the Prayer itself we
have only " debts." A debt is what is due but has not been done
or paid. " Debts," " dues," and " duty " come from the same root.
Sins are like debts in many ways, though not in everything, for
the debts of the soul are more awful than any money debts can
be. Sins represent duties that have not been met, and they make
us guilty or liable to punishment.

2. Our debts. — Our debts are ours exclvsively — without any sub- '
traction, division, or partnership. They are ours as our eyes, our
bones, and our soul are ours : they are ours alone ; they cannot
be ascribed to us and to some other person. It is in vain to blame
others for them, as Adam blamed Eve, and Eve the serpent. Our
temptations are not our sins, and our tempters cannot sin for us.
Each is a solitary agent, and must bear his own burden of blame.
And our debts are ours inseparably. Many tickets have the
words, " Not transferable " ; we are not allowed to hand them to
some one else. Some people think that they may transfer their
sins to pious relatives, to monks or nuns who pray and fast much,
to priests, or to the Church. That cannot be ; for there is only
One who can say, " Put that on mine account."

3. The forgiveness of our debts. — A gospel is in the words.
Here, in the Master's Prayer, given for the perpetual use of all
men, is mention made of " sins " as belonging to all, and of " forgive-
ness " as ready for all ; and the little particle " and " couples
this petition, as though it were the easiest and most natural thing
in the world, to the request for " daily bread." Could all this be
so, if Christ our Lord were not teaching us that which God alone
could know, that of which the reality could have been seen only
in heaven, concerning that most impossible thing to flesh and
blood — " the absolution and remission of our sins " ?

^ Forgiveness is the miracle of miracles of the Gospel Dispensa-
tion. You count it a great thing — it is so — when you see the
Holy Ghost breathing into dead matter newness of life ; when you
see the lifeless affection rekindled, and the sinner, buried in his
lusts and passions, quickened out of that grave into newness of
life. But surely even this miracle, were infinites comparable,

ISO THE LORD'S PRAYER

might shriuk into insignificance in contrast with that other. In
this you see the effect, if not the instrumentality. You hear the
wind, if you cannot track it. In the other, all is faith, all is super-
natural, all is Divine, God, by the fiat of His own " Let there be
light," bids the past, which is a real existence, shrivel up, and be
no more. God bids the wicked act which you did last night, in
your wantonness or in your refusal to reflect, to die with itself and
bear no fruit. Did you think, when you lightly or summarily said
last night's prayer, " Forgive us our sins," all, all that was involved
in it? You might not — but Christ did. Christ, who presided
over Creation — Christ, who became Incarnate that He might
" become sin " — Christ took the measure of it. Christ taught that
Prayer which you uttered — only I cannot tell whether the lips
which said it meant it, felt it, or " babbled " in the uttering.^

VI.

Temptatiokt.

" Lead us not into temptation."

The original and true meaning of the word " temptation " is
simply a "trial," or a "test." Anything which tries a man's
mettle, puts him to the proof, reveals the real character of his
heart, is a temptation in the true sense of the word. This is
its meaning in Holy Scripture, and this was also its only meaning
in English at the time of the translation of our Authorized
Version. Viewed in this light, every experience of life is a
temptation. Our joys and sorrows, our health or sickness, our
work or play, our adversity and prosperity can and do put us to
the test quite as effectively as Eve's temptation in the Garden
of Eden.

1. The Christian, while in the world, has to face the tempta-
tions and dangers of the world ; and, so long as there is any evil
within him, he will be prone to yield to these. Only after a race,
a race run in much weakness, it may be with many falls and
bruises, does he obtain the prize. Only after a fight, a fight with
the evil within him, around him, a fight which he is at times
tempted to abandon in despair, is the victory his. Therefore it is

' 0. J. Vaughan, The Lord's Prayer, 131.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 151

that our Lord, to the petition for forgiveness, adds the further
petition, " Lead us not into temptation." As that points to the
past, this points to the future. When we pray, " Forgive us our
debts," we think of contracted guilt which we ask God to cancel,
liabilities we have failed to meet which we ask Him to pardon.
When we pray " and lead us " (or " bring us ") " not into tempta-
tion," we think of the temptations and difficulties which are lying
before us, and ask for the needful grace and strength to meet them.
It is as if with the Psalmist we cried, " Thou hast delivered my
soul from death : wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that
I may walk before God in the light of the living ? "

2. But it may be asked : " Why should we thus pray to God ?
Do we not know that, as He 'cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempteth he any man'" (Jas. i. 13)? Yes; but God may
permit temptation. He does not, like the tempter, stand on the
side of temptation, and desire to see evil result from it ; but He
may at times place a man in such a situation that it is very easy
for him to do wrong, very hard for him to do right. Thus we
read of our Lord Himself that He was " led up of the Spirit into
the wilderness to be tempted of the devil " (Matt. iv. 1). He was
as much under the guidance and direction of God then as when
He went down into the water to be baptized; and because His
will was in perfect harmony with the will of God, He successfully
overcame the temptation. And so, when we look forward to the
temptations which must meet us in the world, what petition can
be more natural for us than that God should not bring us into
such as may prove too strong for us ? It is our prayer of con-
scious weakness, the weakness which shrinks from the danger
by which it may be overcome ; or, in the words of the Shorter
Catechism, it is the prayer " that God would either keep us from
being tempted to sin, or support and deliver us when we are
tempted."

3. If we are following Christ fully, we will not hesitate to go
with Him into any experience, however perilous it may be. " He
that saveth his life shall lose it." Yet so much is involved in
temptation, such possibilities of defeat and failure are dependent
on the issue, that we dare not desire to enter into it. It is pre-

152 THE LORD'S PRAYER

sumptuous to clamour to be led into the conflict. More than
once Jesus warned His disciples to watch, that they might not
enter into temptation. He knew how inadequate their courage
and strength would prove in battle with the Evil One, how their
faith would fail in the moment of assault. We read of soldiers
sick of camp, and chafing to be led against the enemy, but the
Christian who is impatient to be tempted is very foolish. Temp-
tation is too terrible an experience to be rushed into, unled by
God.

VII.
The Evil One.

"Deliver us from the evil one" (R.V.).

St. Paul says, " We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-
rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness
in the heavenly places." In other words, the temptations that
come from visible and tangible sources draw their strength from
a source which is unseen. Behind visible foes there is an in-
visible; behind the visible opposition of evil men there is an
invisible prince of darkness and an unseen host of fallen spirits
intruding themselves into the highest things, into the heavenly
places.

^ I am quite sure that our Lord speaks so confidently and so
frequently of the existence of evil spirits that a sober Christian
cannot doubt their reality, and I feel sure also that their exist-
ence interprets a good deal which would otherwise be unintel-
ligible in our spiritual experience. When thoughts of poisonous
evil, distinct and vivid, are shot into our mind, like suggestions
from a bad companion; when a tempest of pride and rebellion
against God surges over our soul ; when voices of discouragement
and despair tell us that it is no use trying, and that human
nature is hopelessly bad ; when a sinful course of action presents
itself to us in a wholly false aspect until we have committed our-
selves to it, and then strips off its disguises and shows itself in its
true colours, in its ugliness, in its treachery, in its infamy — in all
such experiences we do well to remember that besides the weak-
ness or pollution of our own flesh, and besides the solicitations of
the world, there is " the adversary," " the devil," that is, the

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 153

slanderer of God and of our human nature and the " father of
lies," actually at work to seduce our wills and sophisticate our
intelligences.^

1. What the particular form of deliverance is which we re-
quire must be left for each one to discover in the silence of his or
her own heart. The devil does not assail us all alike ; he comes
to us in many ways. To some he comes in great spiritual dulness
or deadness, rendering them unable to lift up their thoughts or
hearts to God, whispering that God has forgotten them, and no
longer cares for them, His children. To others he comes in all
the might of some terrible besetting sin, — anger, pride, impurity,
intemperance, — binding them with cords which seem too strong
to be broken ; while many — all — even if they are not conscious
of any one outstanding temptation, and can point to no special
hindrance in their Christian path, yet know that their lives are
not what they ought to be, and that, consciously or unconsciously,
openly or secretly, they are continually led to do those things
which they ought not to have done, and to leave undone those
things which they ought to have done.

^ It is told of a Eoman youth who, notwithstanding a
mother's unwearied prayers, had lived a life of self-seeking and
sinful indulgence, that one day, as he sat in the garden, in the
cloudless beauty of an autumn day, a great struggle took place in
his mind. Throwing himself on his knees he prayed earnestly
to God, " Lord, how long — how long — how long wilt thou be
angry with me ? Must it be for ever to-morrow, and to-morrow,
and to-morrow ? Why should it not be to-day ? " Suddenly in
his agony he seemed to hear the voice as of a little child repeat-
ing, " Take up and read " ; " Take up and read." And taking up
the Epistles of St. Paul which he had h,appened to be reading,
and opening the book at random, his eye caught these words:
" Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wanton-
ness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts
thereof" (Kom. xiii. 13, 14). The words came to him as a
direct message from God, and in one instant strong resolve,
he determined for ever to break with his old life and in
the might of Christ to enter on the new. Augustine put on
Christ.2

' Charles Gore, Prayer and the Lord's Prayer, 75,

» G. Milligan, The Lord's Prayer, 153.

154 THE LORD'S PRAYER

2. There are temptations to the energetic and there are
temptations to the indolent.

(1) To the energetic. — Let us mention just a few temptations.
Irritability with others who perhaps do not work quite on our
lines, or in our way ; self-satisfaction, with that blunting of
sympathy for others which so often accompanies it ; trust in self,
rather than reliance on God; perhaps a disposition to sacrifice
means to ends, to be so anxious to attain some good object that
we, as Shakespeare says, " to do a great right do a little wrong."
We may name also uncharitable judgments; want of considera-
tion for other people's points of view ; perhaps thinking we are
doing so much for God in some respects that He will not be
very particular about our shortcomings in others ; e.g., letting our
practical duties swallow up all our time for prayer, or being
very kind to those we love, but not quite upright and sincere
in our dealings with our neighbour, or being very devout, and
good to the poor, yet living on in some sinful habit. Let us
add, impatience for results, and fretfulness imder disappoint-
ment.

(2) To the indolent. — Are there no temptations to the timid,
the slothful, and the indifferent? Does not Satan come to us
in the guise of a false humility ? — false humility, as Milton repre-
sents him doing to our Lord when he appeared an aged man in
rural weeds —

Following, as seem'd, the quest of some stray ewe.
Or wither'd sticks to gather; which might serve
Against a winter's day when winds blow keen,
To warm him wet return'd from field at eve,

or when he departs, baiHed at the close —

bowing low
His gray dissimulation.

Does not Satan often come wearing an air of lowliness, or inviting
us to assume one, whispering in our ear that we are not the
people to put ourselves forward or to exert ourselves, that we are
only commonplace, that third-class carriages are the proper ones
for us to ride in, that we need not feel any self-reproach when we
hear of great acts, great efforts, great self-denials ?

ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 155

f We read of a man like Henry Martyn, the evangelist of
India, and think we have settled everything by saying, " People
like that are born saints ; they belong to quibe a different cate-
gory from ourselves." We seem to think there is a kind of virtue
in shirking anything that calls us to rise above an everyday
level, and that we deserve credit for our very neglect of duty.
I do wish sometimes some of us were a little more ambitious, a
little more eager, about the best things. We do not seem to
realize that Satan can tempt and does tempt people quite as much
to be slothful and stupid in religion as he does to be proud and
self-righteous. There is no more instructive passage in the
Pilgrim's Progress than the picture of the enchanted ground. It
has no grim figure of Apollyon with his darts, nor of Giant
Despair with his bolts and bars, nor of the worldly seductions
and bitter persecutions of " Vanity Fair " : the enemy is not seen ;
he is shapeless and impalpable, but his power is on the heavy
eyelids, the stupefied brain, the laggard limbs of every pilgrim who
goes through the region and feels its dulling, deadening influence.^

' Elizabeth Wordsworth, Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer, 212.

The First Things Fiest,

UT

LITERATURE.

Alexander (S. A.), Christ and Scepticism, 109.

Clayton (C), Stanhope Sermons, 127.

Davies (J. LI.), Social Questions, 154.

Ebright (H. K)., in Drew Sermons on the Golden Texts for 1910, 37.

Ewing (J. F.), The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 241.

Hare (J. C), Parish Sermons, i. 283.

Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, ii. 81.

Howard (H.), The Raiment of the Soul, 58.

Jackson (G.), The Teaching of Jesus, 129.

Jenkinson (A.), A Modem Disciple, 107.

Kingsley (C), Sermons for the Times, 167.

Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., iv. 550.

Mcllveen (J.), Christ and the Christian Life, 121.

Miller (G. A.), The Life Efficient, 39.

Miller (J.), Sermons, i. 37.

Porter (N.), Yale College Sermons, 268.

Eeid (J.), The First Things of Jesus, 119.

Southouse (A. J.), The Men of the Beatitudes, 127.

Talbot (E. S.), Sermons at Southwarh, 267.

Wardell (R. J.), Sermons in Homiletics, 116.

Williams (0. D.), A Valid Christianity for To-Day, 276.

Wilson (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Clifton College Chapel, ii. 7.

Woodhouse (F. C), The Life of the Soul, 262.

Young (P.), in Sermons for the People, vi. 121.

Christian World Pulpit, xii. 164 (H. W. Beecher) ; Ixi. 184 (F. W.
Macdonald) ; Ixxv. 300 (G. E. Darlaston) ; Ixxxi. 156 (W. Mac-
Mullen).

Church of England Pulpit, Ixii. 166 (H. H. Henson).

Church Fa/tmly Newspaper, Jan. 12, 1912 (J. D. Thompson).

Record, May 28, 1909 (G. Nickson).

IS6

The First Things First.

But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness ; and all these
things shall be added unto you.— Matt. vi. 33.

There is no sentence which more distinctively expresses the mind
of Jesus regarding the conduct of life than "Seek ye first his
kingdom, and his righteousness." It gathers up everything into
itself. It is His definition of the chief good which is within the
reach of men. Many other words of His may be taken as ruling
principles of life, but they are only parts of this simple and sublime
utterance. It is the " secret of Jesus," the clue which He put
into the hands of men to guide them through the labyrinth of life.
Many of the deep-reaching principles of Jesus were spoken
in opposition to those of the Scribes and Pharisees, but in this
instance He passes beyond the ideas of any sect or class, and sets
forth His thought of the chief aim of life in contrast to what was
universally held then, and is also widely, if not universally, held
now. In His moral perspective the desirable things of life are
arranged in a startlingly new order, and with a surprisingly strong
emphasis. He places first what men degrade to a very subordinate
position. In the foreground, as men's highest and best good. He
sets the quest for the Kingdom of God.

I.

The Kingdom of God.

Every man who would make life a success must have something
that is always first for him. Now Jesus declared that the great
first thing of life is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
" Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness."

1. The Kingdom of God and His righteousness is one of the

159

i6o THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

key-phrases of the gospel, and it is freely employed in many
connexions. Christ takes it from the common stock of political
phraseology, from which the men of His nation clothed their
aspirations. In a theocracy the State adopts the language of the
Church and advances identical claims. " The Kingdom of God,"
as the formula of Messianic politics, meant no more than a mere
project of nationalist triumph. But Christ, in adopting the
phrase, purged it of secularism, exalted it from the plane of
politics to that of morals, and enlarged it until all the drama of
human life could be gathered within its meaning. It- stood for
loyalty to the higher self, obedience to the Divine monitions of
conscience, the pursuit of righteous ends, the self-dedication to
spiritual service, the sustained crusade against evil within and
without the man himself. Christ tells us that there is a true order
of human endeavour, and that when that order is followed all
the lesser concerns of human life find sufficient and unfailing
guarantee. Make these your principal concern, and you lose the
summum bonum itself, and do not even secure them. " Seek ye
first his kingdom, and his righteousness ; and all these things shall
be added unto you." He unrolls before us no alluring picture of
reward, no Muhammadan Paradise of feasting and pleasure, but
He tells us that we are the sons of the Most High, and bids us
live as such.

Nor sang he only of unfading bowers,

Where they a tearless, painless age fulfil,
In fields Elysian spending blissful hours,

Eemote from every iU;
But of pure gladness found in temperance high,

In duty owned, and reverenced with awe.
Of man's true freedom, which may only lie

In servitude to law.

2. The Kingdom of God which we are to seek is a great ideal,
under which all lesser aims must find their place ; it provides us
with a great end of all action to which the plans and purposes of
our daily lives are but means ; it informs our lives with a great
principle by which all our acts are co-ordinated and to which
they are relative. The word " kingdom " speaks of something
wide, all-embracing, manifold, but with all its manifoldness made
one by law, which impresses upon all its diverse elements the

ST. MATTHEW vi. 33 161

unity of one will, one purpose, one destiny. We are too apt to
speak of an ideal as something wholly unattainable, and to excuse
ourselves for not living the ideal life by saying that it is ideal ;
that is not the sense in which our Lord speaks of the Kingdom
of God. It is rather an ideal to be realized in every act, and
therefore within our reach at every moment ; imperfect as we are,
it is to be embodied in us, and made visible to the world through
our lives. To seek for the material objects, the subordinate aims
of life first, before this ideal is apprehended, is to invert the order
in which God would have us live ; to immerse ourselves in details,
without constant reference to the ideal, is to break up our lives,
our characters, our institutions, into incoherent fragments devoid
of all unity. The details are not indeed unimportant, but they
are important only in relation to the ideal, which gives to them
all their beauty, all their excellence. Without it they are but as
the random streaks of colour on a painter's palette ; with it, and
in due subordination to it, they are as the various brush-strokes
which gradually realize on the canvas the one purpose of the
painter's mind. "All these things," these lesser objects, these
fragmentary aims, these partial goods, shall be not theirs who
strive for them alone, but theirs who seek first the ideal, the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

^ In all ages men have dreamjd of isles of the blessed and
Elysian fields. Some have dreamed of Utopias in this world.
But in all these dreams only externals have been considered.
Pindar sings :

For them the night all through,

In that broad realm below,

The splendour of the sun spreads endless light;

'Mid rosy meadows bright . . .

There with horses and with play

With games and lyres they while the hours away.

And Plato in bis ideal republic, and modern dreamers, plan only
for an equitable distribution of property and the elimination of
poverty, that should accompany the coming of the Kingdom of
Heaven. But the first characteristic of the Kingdom of Heaven
is that it is inward, facts prove that men can be rich and
educated and yet vile. Nations have been prosperous and
cultured, but rotted away because of their sin. The Kingdom of
Heaven is in the heart of men. St. Paul said, " The kingdom of

ST. MATT. — II

i62 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

God is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy
in the Holy Ghost." ^

3. The "Kingdom of God," to use Bishop Gore's terse and
pregnant definition, is, " human society as organized according to
the will of God," just as " the world " of the New Testament is
"human society as organized apart from the will of God." It
means the will of the Father-king "done in earth, as it is in
heaven." Now to take up our ordinary daily work, whatever it
be, as a ministry of human service fitting into the great plan of
God for a redeemed universe, and to do it to that end, to set that
high purpose and ideal over it all and be absolutely faithful to
that, cost what it may of success or gain, whether in the form of
wages or profits, to eliminate the mercenary motive and substitute
that spiritual purpose — that is to seek first the Kingdom of God
and His righteousness in our common occupations.

The Kingdom of God is an empire with three provinces. One
province is a man's own heart, when the throne of Christ is once
really set up in it. Another province is the Church as it is
established upon the earth. And another is that final and mag-
nificent condition of all things, when Christ shall come and reign
in His glory. There are, then, before every one these three great
primary objects : the first is to have the whole of one's own heart
in subjugation to God ; the second is to extend the Church ; and
the third is to long and pray for, and help on, the Second Coming
of Christ. If we have begun to make the Kingdom of God our
great object, then our first desire is that Christ may have His
proper place in our hearts. Our great longing is after holiness.
We are more anxious about our holiness than we are about our
happiness. And then every day we are trying to make some one
happier and better. We have in our circles inner ones and outer
ones. We do not neglect the nearer for the sake of the farther
one ; but yet we do not so confine ourselves to that which is close
that we do nothing for that which is far off. But we love the
Church, the whole Church of Christ ; we are trying to increase
the Church of Christ; we go about with a missionary spirit
And, further, our eye is looking for the coming of Jesus. It is a
happy thought to us every day, "Now the coming of Jesus is

1 H. K. Ebright.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 33 163

1

nearer than it was yesterday," because it is to us no fear ; we are
not watching against it, we are watching for it ; it is the climax
of all pleasant things to us.

^ The return of Christ in bodily form to reign over His faith-
ful ones, their own bodies rescued from death and the grave, is
the aim and goal of our exultant hope. For that return His early
followers eagerly waited. And their eager hope suggested that
perhaps they might hear His voice and see His face without
passing under the dark shadow of death. That expectation was
not fulfilled. And we cannot share it. But, long as the time
seems, that day will come. Had we witnessed the creation of
matter, and known that long ages were predestined to elapse
before rational man would stand on the earth, our expectation
would have wearied at the long delay. But those long ages
rolled by ; and for thousands of years our planet has teemed with
rational life. So will pass by whatever ages remain before our
Lord's return. Many reasons suggest that, though not close at
hand, it cannot be very long delayed. Doubtless we shall lay us
down for our last sleep. But in our sleep we shall be with Him.
And when the morning dawns we shall wake up in the splendour
of the rising Sun.

Yes, I come quickly.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.^

4. Thus the Kingdom is both individual and social. It begins
with the individual indeed ; it can do nothing unless it transforms
the springs of action within him. But it does not end With the
individual. It proposes to regenerate society also, and so to renew
both that every individual act and every social agency shall be in
harmony with the original ideal of God. Its Founder in His
humility declared the Kingdom of God to be like leaven which
rests not till it pervades and restores the mass unto itself. And
when He sat upon His throne, He said, " Behold, I make all things
new,"

•[I The Kingdom of Heaven does not mean the kingdom in
heaven. The phrase describes the Kingdom's temper and quality,
not its locality. It is a term spiritual, and not geographical.
John Bunyan had a wonderful vision of spiritual experience in
Bedford gaol. It is accurate enough so long as you make it sub-
jective. A man ought to escape from spiritual pest-holes, and
^ J. Agar Beet, The Last Thirngs, 112,

i64 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

struggle out of spiritual despondency, and get the burden of his sin
loosened from the shoulders of his soul, and vigorously climb hills
of difficulty, and valiantly fight the devil, and get mountain-top
visions of the Glory Land, before he gets to the Celestial City.
But if you forget that these are interior experiences that the
great spiritual dramatist is describing, and make them instead a
picture of a man's actual attitude towards the world, then the
pilgrim's achievement ceases to be a spiritual exercise and becomes
a terribly selfish performance. For the thing that is true about
the man who really seeks the Kingdom where it ought to exist —
that is, on earth — is that he will not run away from the city of
destruction, but do his best to make it a city of God ; will not
calmly desert wife and family to get personal spiritual treasure ;
and will not be carelessly indifferent to his companions on his trip
because they are not of his sort. And if he comes to a slough of de-
spond, he will try to drain the swamp instead of merely floundering
in and floundering out again ; and when he escapes from the castle ,
of the Giant Despair, he will bombard the castle and do his best
to make an end of the giant for the sake of other poor pilgrims.
His business is not to get to the City Celestial as soon as possible,
but to bring celestial atmosphere and celestial splendour into all
the regions through which he moves.^

5. Our Lord adds, "and his righteousness." What does
He mean? There is a righteousness such as that in which
man was originally made upright ; there is a righteousness which
is a part of the character of God ; and there is a righteousness
composed of all the perfections of the life of Christ. These three
righteousnesses are all one. Now, this triple righteousness is
what every good man is " seeking " after : first, something which
will justify him before God, and then something which will
justify him to his own conscience, and to the world, in believing
that he is justified before God. And where shall a man find his
justification before God but in faith in Jesus Christ? And
where shall a man find the justification of his faith and hope
that he is justified, but in the justification of his own good works
which he is doing every day ? To those, then, that " seek " these
two things — "the kingdom" and "the righteousness" — the
promise belongs.

T[ Kighteousness, as it was understood and taught by Christ,
includes the two things which we often distinguish as religion

' W. MaoMullen.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 33 165

and morality. It is right-doing, not only as between man and
man, but as between man and God. The Lawgiver of the New
Testament, like the lawgiver of the Old, has given to us two
tables of stone. On the one He has written, " Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind " ; and on the other, " Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself," In these two commandments the whole
law is summed up, the whole duty of man is made known.^

6. God's righteousness is itself the very spirit of His own
Kingdom. Christ does not here tell us merely to seek righteous-
ness, though elsewhere we are thus bidden; but to seek God's
righteousness. Any righteousness which is of our own making,
which we try to gain by standing aloof from Him, is worth
nothing at all. His righteousness does not merely mean righteous-
ness like His, but His own very righteousness. We must receive
Himself into our hearts, and then His righteousness will spring
lip within us and overflow all our doings.

And we receive God into our hearts by receiving Christ.
Christ is all His followers are to be; in Him the righteousness
of the Kingdom is incarnate. Prom henceforth the righteous
man is the Christ-like man. The standard of human life
is no longer a code but a character; for the gospel does not
put us into subjection to fresh laws ; it calls us to " the study of a
living Person, and the following of a living Mind." And when to
Jesus we bring the old question, " Good Master, what shall I do
that I may inherit eternal life ? " He does not now repeat the
commandments, but He says, " If thou wouldst be perfect, follow
Me, learn of Me, do as I have done to you, love as I have loved
you."

^ " Unselfed and inchristed " is the phrase that has been em-
ployed to set forth the great transaction of spiritual renewal ; and
observe how the Apostle encourages us to serve a writ of ejection
on the old tenant, our evil self, and to bring in a new occupant of
the premises : " That ye put off concerning the former conversa-
tion the old man, which is corrupt 'according to the deceitful lusts ;
. . . and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created
in righteousness and true holiness." No betterment or reforma-
tion of the depraved tenant, who is also in hopeless arrears with
his landlord, but a peremptory order to move out ! Moreover, the

' G. Jackson, The Teaching of Jesua, 129.

i66 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

Christian is considered to have done this very thing — evicted his
former self, and set its goods and chattels out upon the sidewalk.
" Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds ; and
have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after
the image of him that created him." So vividly and strongly did
this conception take hold of Martin Luther that he used to say,
" When any one comes and knocks at the door of my heart and
asks, ' Who lives here ? ' I reply, ' Martin Luther used to, but he
has moved out, and Jesus Christ now lives here.' " ^

IL

The Kingdom First.

" Seek ye first." It is interesting to note that the word trans-
lated " seek " in the text has for one of its meanings, if not for its
primary significance, "to beat the covers for birds." It is the
sportsman's method of seeking. How does a sportsman seek?
Many readers of these words will know from experience what it
means in the way of work, even under the most favourable condi-
tions, for a sportsman to fill his bag — how he must be prepared to
wade swamps, climb uplands, push through brake and brier, watch,
wait, wriggle, and in fact do everything but fail, for no sportsman
worthy of the name cares to come back with an empty bag. If,
however, he is to succeed, his whole soul must be in his quest.
Hand and eye and ear must all be working in concert. For note
it is "birds under cover" to which the word relates, and, that
being so, the bird is up only for a brief moment, and must be taken
as it flies. What a startling suggestion is this — the Kingdom of
God like a bird on the wing ! It is a passing thing — here now, and
to-day within present sight and range ; but it is speeding past,
and we must take it as it flies lest to-morrow it should be " under
cover," and " these things be hid from our eyes."

1. First — that is now, and without further procrastination, if
the fresh dawn of existence is no longer mine. It is suicidal to
persist through another hour in filching from my soul its proper
patrimony. My times are uncertain; my health is brittle;
hardening and ossifying infiuences are incessant in their action ;
* A. J. Gordon: A Biography, 100.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 33 167

God is free to take His departure. Is it not the folly of follies to
stand in jeopardy for one instant more ? First — that is, when I
rise in the beginning of each day. If I have sought and found the
Kingdom's gold and crystal and pearl and gem, let me renew
acquaintance with them every morning. To them, and to the
Lord who makes and keeps them my own, let me return, when
mind is clear and thought is vigorous and weariness is far away.
So they will gleam into warmer loveliness and greater worth.

We would fill the hours with the sweetest things

If we had but one day;
We should drink alone at the purest springs

In our upward way;
We should love with a lifetime's love in an^^hour

If the hours were few;
We should rest not for dreams, but for fresher power

To be and to do.

We should waste no moments in weak regret

If the day were but one;
If what we remember and what we regret

Went out with the sun;
We should be from our clamorous selves set free

To work and to pray,
And to be what the Pather would have us to be.

If we had but a day.^

2. But to seek the Kingdom first means more than this. It
means an act of deliberate preference on the many occasions in
life when coimter claims come up. Again and again it may be
that, in our inner life, in our family life, in our business life, in our
public life, there come, and will come, times when the forces
of the world, of self, of sense, of earthly affection, of taste, of
ambition, pull one way, and the interests of the Kingdom of God
the other, and for an hour, a day, a week, a month, perhaps, there
is a struggle as to which is to be put first.

The major problem of life is that of its dominant note, its
central issue, its great first thing. The one supreme business of
living is to get that decisive emphasis on the thing that is first.
The supreme tragedy of life comes to the man who gets the major
emphasis on something else than the first thing. All life is then
1 Mary Lowe Dickinson.

i68 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

out of proportion, all experience a tangle, and all tasks in con-
fusion. There are strong lives that stagger and sink because
they have missed the course. There are men of genius who go
out in despair because they have put the major emphasis on the
wrong thing. It is no more possible to bring strength to a life
with a false axis than to keep the solar system in order with some
other body than the sun as its centre. Poe and Byron, and Bums
and Shelley, and De Quincey and Napoleon, and Nero and Saul
were men who got the emphasis in the wrong place, and their
splendid lives crashed to inglorious ruin. Lesser men in lesser
measure exhibit the same tragedy of misplaced emphasis and dis-
ordered lives.

^ The sister of Nietzsche tells us that, when the thinker was
a little boy, he and she once decided to take each of them a toy
to give to the Moravian Sisters in support of their missionary
enterprise. They carefully chose their toys and duly carried them
to the Sisters. But when they returned Nietzsche was restless and
unhappy. His sister asked what ailed him. " I have done a very
wicked thing," the boy answered. " My fine box of cavalry is my
favourite toy and my best : I should have taken that ! " " But do
you think," his sister asked, " do you think God always wants our
best ? " " Yes," replied the young philosopher, " always, always ! "
The lad was then, at least, following a true instinct. Professor
William James, in his Lecture to Teachers on " The Stream of
Consciousness," says that every object is either "focal" or
"marginal" in the mind. That represents with psychological
precision the difference between the sanctities of life as they
appeared to my Syrian bushman [who made a god out of only
" the residue " of the tree he had felled] and the sanctities of life
as they appeared to the boy philosopher. In the one case they
were merely marginal; in the other they were grandly focal.
Surely, if they have a place at all, they should be in the very
centre of the field — regal, transcendent, sublime. The whole
matter is summed up there.^

3. Of course the ideals of Christ and the world are not
opposed as good and bad, or as right and wrong, but as first and
second. It is a total misapprehension of our Lord's words to say
that He forbids His followers to think of getting the wealth of
the world, or of securing " what they shall eat and drink or
wherewithal they shall be clothed." Men's fault and folly lie in
' F. W. Boreham, Mountains in the Mist, 66.

ST. MATTHEW vi. ss 169

seeking them as if they were primary and essential ; in making
them the treasures of the soul ; in thinking of them with anxious
and absorbing care, as if they supplied the supreme need of life.
The Kingdom of God is not set in opposition to the things of the
world for which men seek ; it is set above them. It belongs to a
realm that is higher than the physical and the material. It
has to do with the essential life of man — a life that is more than
existence, more than meat, more than riches. Man is a child of
earth and time, but he is also a child of God — a spiritual being,
made in His image, with power to think His thoughts and live
in fellowship with Him. All thought and effort which are
dominated by a lower conception of man's nature are misdirected.
They leave him unsatisfied and undeveloped. The riddle of our
life is never solved until we say, " Thou hast made us for Thyself,
and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."

^ It is as if a company of sculptors should spend all their
time and effort providing pedestals, — some able to get only rough
boulders from the wayside, others polishing and finishing fine
shafts of purest marble, — but nobody thinking of carving a statue
to set thereon. Or as if a company of painters busied themselves
exclusively with finding and stretching their canvases, some
getting only coarse sacking, others silks of the finest web, — but
nobody ever painted a picture. Now Jesus is saying here, " Don't
bother so much about the pedestals and the canvases. They are
absolutely insignificant beside the statues and the pictures. These
are the paramount concern." The roughest boulder that carries
a noble statue is better than the finest shaft of polished marble
that carries nothing. The coarsest sacking upon which some rude
but great etching has been sketched is better than the most
delicate silk which is absolutely blank. So the meagrest living
upon which a life of human service and spiritual significance is
built is infinitely better than the most luxurious existence which
but cumbers the ground with its purposeless and useless occupancy
of space and time.^

4. Jesus is asking men to do what He did Himself. He knew
the numberless spiritual perils of poverty. He suffered hunger,
and had power to make the stones of the wilderness bread. But
to use His power in that way would have shown that He put
self before God, and the satisfying of hunger before the interests

' C. D. Williams, A Valid Christmnity for To-Day, 281.

170 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

of His Kingdom. He saw that " life is more than meat," that
"man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro -
ceedeth out of the mouth of God." He set the Kingdom first,
and the angels ministered unto Him. Because He was tempted
thus He is able to succour those who are tempted by the same
pressure of need. It is in divinest pity that He says to the poor,
" Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness ; and all these
things shall be added unto you." He knew the tragedies of the
souls of men, knew how the soul could be lost in the strong and
urgent pressure of the demands of the body. Therefore He spoke
so convincingly and so persuasively of the Heavenly Father's
care, and gave the great assurance of His loving watchfulness.
To Him man is dearer than to himself. He bids men trust
God to provide what they need for the body, and give their
anxiety and strength to the doing of His will. God will not
deny Himself. Faithfulness on our part will be answered by
faithfulness on His. His name has ever been " Jehovah-jireh " :
" The Lord will provide." If men seek first the Kingdom of God,
He will not fail to add " all these things."

TI Trust in God, an unshaken confidence in God, which is
never dismayed at the changes or surprises of life — he who has
this faith will not be distracted by anxious care concerning the
things of this life. He will make God the supreme object of his
choice and service, will seek first His Kingdom and righteousness,
confident that the Father, who knows all his needs, will confer
the minor benefits. This confidence that God will approve and
bless us in all our life if we seek first His Kingdom and righteous-
ness, and seek all other things second, is the faith which " removes
mountains " (Mark xi. 23) ; it is adequate to the greatest difficulties
and perplexities of life. It steadies, strengthens, and unifies all
our efforts, preventing us from wasting our energies by dividing
life between two inconsistent objects, and from wearing our hearts
out by corroding cares, needless anxieties, and unbelieving fears.
There can be no doubt that Jesus would include this concentra-
tion of life upon spiritual good and the trustful spirit which it
inspires, in that love to God which comprises all forms of service
which we can render to Him.^

' G. B. Steyens, Theology of the New Testament, 110,

ST. MATTHEW vi. 33 171

III.

All these Things.

1. The possession of the Kingdom carries with it every need-
ful thing. All values are included in the Divine. Within the
Kingdom is absolute beauty, " the altogether lovely," and if you
seek for that the beautiful must come to you. Within the
Kingdom is absolute truth, and if you seek for that the true will
come to you in the process. And if you do with all your might
whatsoever your hands find to do, and do it for the highest
end, those necessaries of life which money can buy will also come
to you. Good workers who live for the Kingdom never lack
bread. It is true that often the very best of them get nothing
but bread, or " bread and salt," whilst those who care nothing for
the Kingdom get bread and many things besides. But as Lewis
Morris puts it, "Strong souls need little more than bread and
truth and beauty."

Strong souls within the present live;
The future veiled, — the past forgot;
Grasping what is, with thews of steel.
They bend what shall be, to their will;
And blind alike to doubt and dread,
The End, for- which they are, fulfil.

And it was to make strong souls that Jesus came.

Tf There is a story in the " Arabian Nights " of a prince who
brought to the king, his father, a fairy tent folded into the con-
fines of a walnut shell. When it was spread in the council chamber
it sheltered the king and his counsellors. When taken out and
spread in the courtyard, it provided shade for all the household.
When taken out on the great plain, where the army were en-
camped, it grew until all the hosts were beneath its canopy. It
had flexibility and expansiveness which were indefinite. That
gives us a fair symbol of the expansive, co-ordinating, all-inclusive
capacity of the Kingdom of God, which gathers into its confines
all the needs and all the treasures of men.^

2. There are many things which we get by aiming beyond
them. Philosophers of the world tell us that we should aim at

1 W. MaoMiillen.

172 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

what is near and tangible, and should not concern ourselves with
what is shadowy and remote; that to talk of and aim at such
things as God's love and God's righteousness and a high and
chivalrous rule of duty is wasting our time on things not within
our reach. Now, that these high and far things are indefinite and
misty to us at times is granted. If you get into argument with
some philosopher of the lower school he can easily show you that
his aims are more practical, as he calls it, that the things he aims
at are more clearly in his view. But how if the Divine law holds
good in spite of his practical philosophy ; how, if by aiming at
what we admit is remote and dim, we make sure of getting all
that is really worth having in these everyday things ? When we
have aimed at getting reputation we have missed it ; when we
have aimed at doing duty and helping man the reputation has
come. Have we never found this law holding good even in the
struggles of our inner life ? When we fought with a number of
small faults we made little progress. When we aimed at some
high, self-devoted goal beyond, they disappeared. The other
things were added. When men fire the rocket of the life-saving
apparatus out to a ship, they aim, not at the deck, but considerably
above it.

^ A woodsman wielding his axe swings it upward to lop off
the heavy branch, but finds it hard work. His skyward strokes
are feeble, for the law of gravitation operates against him and to a
certain extent neutralizes the power of his arm. He next swings
it downward, and every stroke makes the hills resound. He
works with and not against the law of gravitation; and the
power of this central law of creation being added to the
power of his muscles, he prosecutes his work with energy and
success. Every stroke has a double power — the power of the
arm and the power of gravitation. Thus man in pursuit of evil
proceeds in the teeth of the most potent laws of the Divine
Government — the odds are all against him, his strokes are all
upwards; and sooner or later he must be made to feel the
weariness of wrong-doing. But the good man places himself in
harmony with the moral law of God, and thus the strength of the
law be^comes his panoply. His goodness is so far an advantage
to him and not an impediment. And in prophecy the reign of
goodness is always associated with the reign of plenty ; when the
knowledge of God will cover the earth, then and not before will
a harvest of wheat be reaped upon the tops of the mountains.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 33 173

Evil and famine on the one hand, goodness and abundance on the
other, always go together.^

^ A man gifted with powers and capacities for the calling
desires to become an artist. He will aim high. He tells himself
that he will not be content with mediocrity, nor allow himself to
sink to the lower level of other men. Of him it shall not be
true:

That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it, and does it.

Eather will he be one who, if he fail, can cry :

Better have failed in the high aim, as I,
Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed.
As, God be thanked, I do not.

But how shall he become such a one ? Only when he has stood
before the great masterpieces of all time, and felt the spirit of
their creators breathe upon his own. He must enter into their
mind ; he must feel the nobility of their conceptions touch his
own faculty of imagination ; he must see the vision of the lesson
they sought to write upon their canvas; he must catch the
loftiness and grandeur of the spirit that animated them. And
what follows ? In proportion as these things enter into his soul,
possess his faculties, transfuse their own powers into his, will
success and greatness meet him. Had he sought success and
greatness for themselves alone he would have failed ; but, seeking
first the spirit of a Master's mind, " all these things have been
added unto him." *

3. It is only when our hearts are on the chief thing that
secondary things yield pleasure. It is possible to have a thing,
and yet not to have the good of it. There it is in our hands, the
very thing we wanted apparently, and yet it does not seem to be
the thing we wanted. It is not the thing, but the aroma of
pleasure that is in the thing that we really wish ; just as we wish
a rose for its smell. Now, pleasure is a very delicate article.
Men miss pleasure by the ways they take to get it. If they snatch
impatiently at it, it escapes them. Except those in actual destitu-
tion, professional pleasure-seekers are the most miserable of men.
People who spend their life in pursuit of pleasure never get it.
One who knew about these things very well said, " Pleasures are
' J. 0. Jones. * Gr. Niokson.

174 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

like poppies spread; you seize the flower; its bloom is shed."
We go to some of the most beautiful objects in nature. If we
happen to take them in a wrong light, on a bad day, at a false
angle, they lose all their beauty. Or if we are trying to experi-
ence some pleasant sensation, the least thing wrong with our
health, the least thing amiss with the experiment we make,
spoils all. The poise of our mind is everything. Pleasure comes
when we are seeking something else, when we are rejoicing in
hard work, when we are resting after long exertion, when we
have won some worthy object of ambition. The true flower of
satisfaction is thrown into our lap by an invisible hand when we
are thinking little or nothing of it.

TJ One of the first and most clearly recognized rules to be
observed is that happiness is most likely to be attained when it
is not the direct object of pursuit. Both the greatest pleasures
and the keenest pains of life lie much more in those humbler
spheres which are accessible to all than on the rare pinnacles
to which only the most gifted or the most fortunate can attain.
It would probably be found upon examination that most men
who have devoted their lives successfully to great labours and
ambitions, and who have received the most splendid gifts from
Fortune, have nevertheless found their chief pleasure in things
unconnected with their main pursuits and generally within the
reach of common men. Domestic pleasures, pleasures of scenery,
pleasures of reading, pleasures of travel or of sport, have been the
highest enjoyment of men of great ambition, intellect, wealth, and
position.^

Oh righteous doom, that they who make

Pleasure their only end.
Ordering the whole life for its sake.

Miss that whereto they tend.^

4. The things we wish to have are not really in our hands
at all. Suppose that when we grasped the thing we could make
certain that the pleasure for the sake of which we grasped it
would not evaporate in the process, how could we make sure of
grasping it ? It might be taken from us when we were within a
few inches of it. The things for which men toil and suffer are
often taken from them in this way. The things the Gentiles

1 W. E. H. Leokie, The Map of Life, 19.
« E. C. Trench.

ST. MATTHEW vi. 33 175

seek can never be in our hands. They remain in God's hands.
They are always His, and not ours at all. They are like old
illuminated manuscripts or curiosities which you see on the
table of a museum or library. We may examine them, and read
them, but we cannot take them away. We cannot acquire free-
hold rights on God's great estate. We are only tenants at will, and
therefore what we should first do is to gain the goodwill of the Pro-
prietor, especially as it is a great deal more than His goodwill which
He offers us. He offers us His love and Himself, and it stands to
reason that " all these things " will be thrown into the bargain.

TJ It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by
caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only
have the highest happiness by having wide thoughts, and much
feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves ; and this
sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can
only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before
everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so
many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man can be
great — he can hardly keep himself from wickedness — unless he
gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets
strength to endure what is hard and painful. And so, if you
mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put
within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end,
and not on what will happen to you because of it. And re-
member, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the
rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what
is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same ; and it would
be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow
that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, — " It
would have been better for me if I had never been born." ^

^ This is the sovereign remedy : to believe utterly in the
Heavenly Father's love and wisdom and make His Kingdom and
His righteousness the supreme concerns, leaving all lesser interests
in His hands. " Seek ye first his kingdom and his righteousness ;
and all these things shall be added unto you." Here is the secret
of a quiet heart. " Nothing," says St. Chrysostom, " makes men
light-hearted like deliverance from care and anxiety, especially
when they may be delivered therefrom without suffering any
disadvantage, forasmuch as God is with them and stands them in
lieu of all." a

^ George Eliot, Epilogue to Bomola.

' David Smith, The Days ofEis Flesh, 295.

176 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST

Oh, if we draw a circle premature,

Heedless of far gain,
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure

Bad is our bargain!
Was it not great ? did not he throw on God,

(He loves the burthen) —
God's task to make the heavenly period

Perfect the earthen ?
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear

Just what it all meant ?
He would not discount life, as fools do here.

Paid by instalment!
He ventured neck or nothing — Heaven's success

Found, or earth's failure:
" Wilt thou trust death or not ? " He answered " Yes

Hence with life's pale lure!"^

' Browning, A Grwmmaricm's Funeral,

The Golden Eulb.

ST. MATT. — 13

Literature.

Balmforth (E.), The New Testament in the Light of the Higher Criticism,

108.
Bonar (H.), God's Way of Holiness, 104.
Chadwick (W. E.), Christ and Everyday Life, 103.
DavieB (J. LI.), Social Questions, 97.
Fox (W. J.), Collected Works, iii. 155.
Goodwin (H.), Parish Sermons, iv. 196.
Home (C. S.), The Model Citizen, 136.
Meyer (F. B.), The Directory of the Devout Life, 179.
Pearson (A.), Christus Magister, 249.
Eutherford (J. S.), The Seriousness of Life, 97.
Sadler (T.), Sermons for Children, 93.
Seeker (T.), Sermons, vii. 243.
Smith (W. C), The Sermon on the Mount, 292.
Snell (H. H.), Through Study Windows, 27.
Swing (D.), Truths for To-Day, i. 31.
Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, v. 144.
Christian World Pulpit, xiii. 12 (E. W. Shalders) ; xliv. 329 (E. A.

Lawrence).
Church of England Pulpit, xlviii. 13 (J. Eeid).
Churchman's Pulpit : Sermona to the Young, xvL 472 (C. E. Eenna-

way).
Twentieth-Ceniury Pastor, xxxii. (1912-13) 130 (N. D. Hillia).

178

The Golden Rule.

All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you,
even so do ye also unto them : for this is the law and the prophets. — Matt.
vii. 12.

1. Perhaps no days have been more ingenious and industrious
than our own in the endeavour to discover working principles and
methods for everyday conduct. One that aroused much interest
was contained ia the phrase, " What would Jesus do ? " It is a
noble question, but its defect for the purpose for which it is
devised is that the answer is not always either easy or obvious. It is
an old instruction in dealing with your neighbour to put yourself
in his place. It is a less easy thing, if you come to think of it, to
put somebody else in your place. And when that somebody else
is one no less august and unique than the Lord Christ Himself,
the problem is not simplified. It seems sometimes as if this
eagerness for a new formula of conduct springs from despair of
the old. But perhaps it would be truer and fairer to say that it
springs from ignorance of the old, springs from failure really to
grasp and clearly to investigate the content of the old. There is
no need to discover any new formula for the regulation of conduct.
All legal and prophetic, all casuistical and spiritual wisdom still
stands summarized and complete in the Golden Eule. It is the
pith and marrow of all ethics; and obedience to it is the final
achievement of all religion.

2. The word " therefore " in the text would seem to give it a
connexion with what precedes, and it will be instructive to inquire
the meaning of this connexion. Now if we look at the context, we
shall find that at the seventh verse of the chapter the Lord com-
menced a new division of His sermon, of which division the text is
the conclusion. He is speaking of prayer. He says, " Ask, and it
shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be

179

i8o THE GOLDEN RULE

opened unto you " ; and then He goes on to enforce the duty of
prayer by reference to our own conduct towards our children, draw-
ing the very plain conclusion that, if we with all our infirmities still
answer our children's prayers, much more will our Heavenly Father
give good things to those who ask Him : up to this point all is clear
and easy, but then follow apparently somewhat abruptly the words
of the text, " All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men
should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them : for this is
the law and the prophets." How do these words hang on to
the preceding part of the discourse ? We shall understand this if
we observe that in the exhortation to prayer in the context our
Lord is in reality only taking up a point in the former part of His
sermon ; it is in the preceding chapter that He first introduces
the subject of prayer, and in it He not only gives directions
concerning prayer in general, but utters that particular form of
prayer which has been used by His disciples ever since, known as
the Lord's Prayer. Now if we look to this prayer, and then
regard the clause of which the text forms the last verse as a
recurrence to the same subject, we shall be able to understand
why Christ began His Golden Eule with a "therefore," and so
made it to hang upon what He had already said : for our Lord
teaches us in His prayer to make our own conduct towards our
brethren the measure of the grace which we venture to ask of
God : " forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them who trespass
against us," — forgive us so, and only so — and this being the ground
upon which we ask for forgiveness of sins, it is not to be much
wondered at that He who taught us thus to pray should also
teach us to be careful, lest our own conduct should condemn us
and prevent our prayers from being heard ; in fact, if we pray to
God to dea,l with us as we deal with others, it is a necessary
caution that we should be taught to deal with our neighbours
as we would wish them to deal with us.

^ The principle here enunciated is fwndamental, underpinning
the whole structure of human society. It is equitable, because all
men are more nearly on an equality than might be inferred from
a consideration of their outward circumstances. It is portable,
" like the two-foot rule " which the artisan carries in his pocket
for the measurement of any work which he may be called to
estimate. The Emperor Severus was so charmed by the excellence
of this rule that he ordered a crier to repeat it whenever he had

ST. MATTHEW vit. 12 181

occasion to punish any person, and he caused it to be inscribed on
the most notable parts of the palace, and on many of the public
buildings.^

I.

The History of the Peecept.

1. The words of the text are old and familiar. We learn from
our infancy to say, " My duty towards my neighbour is to love
him as myself, and to do to all men as I would they should
do unto me." All Christians accept this as an elementary and
fundamental maxim of their religion. But not only are these
words not new to ourselves in this age of Chistendom ; they were
by no means altogether new to the world when our Lord spoke
them. Parallels to them lean be found in heathen philosophers, in
the sacred books of other religions. The maxim may justly be
regarded as human and universal, rather than as specifically
Christian.

Christ not only did not claim for the precept any originality,
but He expressly disclaimed it ; He gave this as the sanction of
the rule, that it was " the law and the prophets," that is to say,
that all the precepts which had been given of old concerning our
conduct one towards another were briefly comprehended in this
one saying, that we should do to all men as we would that they
should do to ourselves ; the Lord gave this as a key to the whole,
and would have us to understand that if we once master this
great principle, and make it the real principle of our conduct, all
particular duties will be easily, and as a matter of course, per-
formed. And so St. Paul represents the matter. He says, " He
that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this. Thou shalt
not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal,
Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet ; and if
there be any other commandment it is briefly comprehended in
this saying, namely. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Love worketh no ill to his neighbour : therefore love is the fulfil-
ling of the law." What Christ did, then, was to bring together
scattered duties under one general head and supply a principle
which should be applicable to them all.

1 P. B. Meyer, The Directory of the Devout Life, 179.

i82 THE GOLDEN RULE

II In Confucius this Divine instinct of the soul began to
break forth in history. He said, "You must not do to others
what you would not they should do to you." This was only a
refrain. It was a rule telling us what to avoid doing. The
grand old Plato went further, and in a kind of prayer says, in the
eleventh book of his Dialogues, " May I, being of sound mind, do
to others as I would that they should do to me." ^

^ A Gentile inquirer — so the Talmudic story runs — came one
day to the great Shammai, and demanded to be taught the law,
condensed to a sentence, while he stood on one foot. In anger
the Eabbi smote him with his staff and turned away, and the
questioner went to Hillel, and Hillel made answer, " Whatsoever
thou wouldest that men should not do to thee, that do not thou
to them. All our law is summed up in that." And the stranger
forthwith became a proselyte. The best of the Scribes went no
further than this negative goodness in_^ their approaches to the
teaching of our Lord. He teaches that love cannot be satisfied
with this cold abstinence from harm-doing. Active, energetic
benevolence is the only true outcome of a character which has
yielded to, and been moulded by, the Divine bounty. Frigid
negatives satisfy neither Law nor Gospel.^

2. Our Lord translated other men's negatives into God's
positive. Hitherto, the Golden Eule among men had been in the
merely negative form. " That which is hateful to thyseK do not
do to thy neighbour " ; that is to say, if thou abstainest from certain
gross injustices and iniquities, thou hast fulfilled the whole Law.
It is not in such a saying as that that all the philanthropies and
humanities of Christianity lie dormant. Those great beneficent
systems and institutions with which Christian feeling has covered
this land and so many others are not the outgrowth of a mere
negative ambition to abstain from insulting or injuring one's
neighbours. It was Christ's genius that translated the negatives
of religion into the positives. With Him the " thou shalt nots "
of the Decalogue became the positive constructive doctrine of the
ethics of the Sermon on the Mount.

Each time that we turn to the Gospels we find ourselves

awed, commanded, moved, as by no other morality. We know

nothing deeper, nothing more universal, nothing more practical,

than the laws of human conduct which our Lord clothed in

> D. Swing, Truths for To-Day, i. 34.
' A. Pearson, Christus Magister, 261.

ST. MATTHEW vit I2 1^3

language intelligible and impressive to His Galilean hearers.
The gospel morality needs no championship ; it only needs to be
understood and felt. It has much that is manifestly higher than
what human wisdom unenlightened by the gospel has ever sug-
gested ; but it also welcomes and justifies and exalts every good
idea which has appeared to be independent of it.

^ By universal consent, if Jesus has any rival it is Buddha ;
by common consent also Sir Edwin Arnold is the man who went
through all the Indian literature, sifted out the straw and the
chaff, gathered up every grain of wheat he could find, and gave it
to us in that poem, The Light of Asia. Then a few years later
Sir Edwin re-opened his New Testament, and after a year pub-
lished The Light of the World. And lo, the disciple of Buddha
reverses his judgment! With poetic licence Sir Edwin Arnold
represents the Wise Men of the East as Buddhists, who brought
their gold and frankincense and offerings to the infant King, and
left them, and journeyed back to the Ganges. Then, when two-
score years had passed, one of the Wise Men, still living, retraced
his steps, fascinated by that memory of the wonderful child. In
his travels he meets Mary Magdalene, and hears the tragic story
of the life and death of Jesus.

After long brooding upon Christ's words, the aged Indian
priest puts the Light of the World over against the Light of Asia.
First, Jesus is infinitely superior, because, until Christ spake,
" never have we known before wisdom so packed and perfect as
the Lord's, giving that Golden Eule with which this earth were
heaven." And, second, he finds that Buddha held life was one
long sorrow ; but " right joyous, though, is Christ's doctrine, glad
'mid life's sad changes and swift vicissitudes, and death's un-
shunned and hard perplexities " ; for over against the despair, the
gloom and the pessimism that makes Buddha propose extinction
and a dreamless sleep stands the piercing joyousness and out-
breaking " gladsomeness of the life of Jesus." And, third, the old
Buddhist finds another round in the golden ladder; if Buddha
wrapped the universe in darkness and gloomy mystery, "thy
teacher doth wrap us round in glorious folds with mighty name
of love, and biddeth us believe, not law, not faith, hath moulded
what we are, and built the worlds, but living, regnant love," for
the fury of unharnessed, natural laws, the ferocity of fate, gives
way before the advancing footprints of a Father of life and love.
Then comes the priest's final confession. " My teacher bade us
toil over dead duties, and brood above slain affections, until we
reached Nirvana; yours, to love one's neighbours as one's self.

i84 THE GOLDEN RULE

and save his soul by losing heed of it, in needful care that all his
doings profit men and help the sorrowful to hope, the weak to
stand."

Oh, nearer road, and new ! By heart to see
Heaven closest in this earth we walk upon,
God plainest in the brother whom we pass.
Best solitudes 'midst busy multitudes.
Passions o'ercome when Master-passion springs
To serve, and love, and succour.^

11.

Its Scope.

1. The rule does not cover all behaviour and all conduct. It
has nothing to say of a man's private attitude and relation to
God. It has nothing to say of our behaviour when we are alone
— in those times when some men and women are conscious of
least responsibility, because their thoughts, desires, or actions do
not bring them into any sort of contact with other people. It is
therefore not in the nature of spiritual discipline ; it is not given
to regulate the secret inner life of a man's thoughts and feelings.
It applies to a man's dealings with his fellows, the multitudinous
occasions when the orbit of his life intersects the orbits of other
lives, and these other orbits intersect his ; and thus it clearly con-
templates that the life of the Christian will be a life necessarily
rich in social duties and responsibilities and opportunities.

^ Froude, in his Erasmus, relates a curious incident in the
life of Ignatius Loyola. Loyola, one day, met with a copy of the
New Testament. He took it up, opened it, and began to read it.
But after a short time he threw it down, because, he said, "it
checked his devotional emotions." Froude thinks it very likely
did. He found here a religion taught the supreme expression of
which was in absolute righteousness, truth, and charity. " If any
man deemeth himself to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue,
is not just, fair, honourable, open, merciful, that man's religion is
vain." Loyola said this sort of thing checked his devotional
emotions ! Well, if so, it was high time they were checked. For
they were running to seed, and not growing, under due discipline,

' N. D. HilUs.

ST. MATTHEW vn. 12 185

to flower and fruit. In the religion of Jesus, the ethical, the
practical, is the ultimate. To keep the Golden Eule is to fulfil
the Law and the prophets.^

2. Like other general precepts, it will not bear to be taken
slavishly in the letter. The worth of a precept is rather to
suggest a temper or attitude of mind than to determine precisely
what in a given case ought to be done. It is a superficial and
therefore a bad morality, not merely defective, but unwholesome
and misleading, that attempts to prescribe for conduct by precise
regulations. Human life is too free and various to be governed
by such methods. You may, without any great ingenuity, imagine
cases in which it would be undesirable and wrong to carry out
literally our Lord's injunction, " All things whatsoever ye would
that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them."
Perhaps the most obvious instance is flattery. There are tens of
thousands of people who flatter their fellow-men because they like
it and expect it themselves. And on the principle that you are
simply to do to others what you wish them to do to you, it is
unexceptionable. Clearly the criticism is that you ought not
to wish for flattery yourself ; in other words, to make the Golden
Eule adequate and true, we must have some guarantee that what
we wish to receive from others is what we ought so to wish.

But there is a far more difficult case for the application of the
Golden Eule than this. Suppose that you have fallen into some
gross sin, and incurred a very severe punishment, what may we
assume you would wish that men should do to you ? In ninety-
nine cases out of a hundred the answer would be, " Let me off the
penalty." Are we, then, to go on to assume that it is your duty
to remit all punishment, however deserved, because of your sense
that you would wish it to be remitted if you were in the wrong-
doer's place ? The social conscience has said No ; the Christian
conscience says No. It is not a question of what you might
happen to wish if you were simply an irresponsible and religiously
uneducated being, but of what you would wish if you were subject
to the spirit and discipline of Christianity. In this latter case
you would wish that your sin should be punished, your offences
corrected; and consequently you would not do to others an
1 C. S. Home, TU Model Citizen, 140.

i86 THE GOLDEN RULE

injustice and call it mercy, because you were weak enough to
desire it for yourself.

III.

Its Standard of Duty.

1. The Golden Eule surpasses all formulas of justice by bring-
ing the case before our loving, trembling, sensitive self, and
begging that it be tried in the light and justice of all this light of
self-love, self-joy, and self-agony. We know how near and dear
a thing one's own self is. The moment we step away from our
consciousness we lose our mental grasp upon the phenomenon
of right or wrong. We can look upon a suffering man, sick or
wounded, with comparative peace, because our knowledge will not
travel away from om* own consciousness. We may say, "Poor
man, poor child, we pity you," but we are so cut off from his pain
that an infinite gulf lies between our feelings and the sufferer's
agony. But let that pain, that sickness, that dying, come to self,
and how quickly the heart measures all the depths of the new
sorrow.

^ It was reported that one of the victims of the Cuban
massacre offered a million dollars if the savages would spare
his life. The death of others, the common calamities of life had
not filled with tremor that heart naturally brave; the grief of
death at large had been, as it were, spoken in a foreign language
not to be understood by him, but now the grim monster was
coming up against self, it was his heart that was to be pierced with
balls, not yours, nor mine, but his own, bound to earth, to friends,
to country, to home and its loved ones ; his was to pour out its
blood and sink into the awful mystery of the grave. This was the
vivid measurement of things that made the hero try to buy sun-
shine and home and sweet life with gold. When it comes to any
adequate measurement of life's ills or joys, the only line which
man can lay down upon the unknown is the consciousness within,
the verdict of this inner self.^

2. It has consequently been alleged that this precept falls
short, as a rule of morality, of what the inspiring principle of a

' D. Swing, Trvihsfor To-Day, i. 39.

ST. MATTHEW vii. 12 187

good man's life ought to be, and what the hest men, in their better
moments, have really aimed at. It puts, to a man's heart and
conscience, his fellow-men only on the same level as himself. It
seems to start from a regard for self, to recognize the claims of
self. It is a nobler morality — this is what has been alleged —
that calls upon men to love their neighbours not merely as well
as, but better than, themselves. To live for others, quite sup-
pressing and subordinating self, may be the high ideal, the inspir-
ing principle, of a good man's efforts. Such a man should think,
not " How should I wish my neighbour to behave towards me ? "
but " How can I serve my neighbour ? How can I do most good,
regardless of my own pleasure or interest, to those around me ? "

Of course the general feeling is that the laws of conduct laid
down in the Gospels are only too high, too exacting ; that they
require to be toned down and qualified before they can be applied
to the practice of ordinary life. The morality of the Sermon on the
Mount has been regarded as something exceptional, something
ethereal, that might have suited the first disciples or the saints in
later ages who have retired from the world, but " too good for
human nature's daily food." And Christian expositors have
generally felt called upon to show that the laws of the Kingdom
of Heaven, as laid down by the Lord Jesus in these discourses,
were essentially such as men might act upon and ought to act
upon, though they may seem to enjoin an almost romantic or
chimerical suppression of self and superiority to the world. Still,
it is possible to argue that to love my neighbour as myself and
to do to him as I should wish him to do to me, is a rule which
assumes that I am caring for myself, and which does not aim at
doing more than placing my neighbour on a level with myself in
my estimate of his claims upon me.

The answer is that the disciple of Jesus Christ is not only to
love his neighbour as himself, but to love the Lord his God with
all his heart and soul and mind and strength. And this latter
commandment, the first and great one, has much to do with a
man's relations to his fellow-men. It would, we might almost
say, be enough of itself, if the second were not, for the sake of
explicitness, added to it.

H " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," is
the first and great commandment. Nothing comes before first,

i88 THE GOLDEN RULE

and nothing can get before this — nothing can take its place. The
second commandment is, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour " ; but
you cannot get to the second until you have taken in the first.
The essential thing in religion is loving God, loving God in Jesus
Christ. Eeligion begins here. A gospel of love for men, with no
antecedent love for God, is a gospel without life. But the second
commandment must always follow the first. Both are essential.
As love for man counts for nothing if there be not first love for
God, so love for God, if there be no love for man, is not genuine.
The fountain of religion is always the love of God in us. But if
there be the fountain, the well of water springing up in us, there
will also be streams of water pouring out, rivers flowing forth, to
cheer, refresh, and bless the land.

While I love my God the most, I deem
That I can never love you overmuch:
I love Him more, so let me love you, too.
Yea, as I understand it, love is such,
I cannot love you if I love not Him;
I cannot love Him if I love not you.^

(1) In the first place we notice that this standard imposes
upon us the duty of doing justice to our neighbour. The desire
for justice is so universal that we may call it an instinct of
human nature. What is history, as we find it in every age, but
one long series of efforts to obtain justice? These efforts have
been among the strongest of all motive powers towards moral,
social, political, and religious progress. To-day we are often told
that we are living in the midst of a social movement of almost
world-wide scope, and we are also told that the chief cause of
this movement, the force of which is the principal factor in its
momentum, is " a passionate desire for justice." This is probably
true ; but it is also true that apparently many of those who are
taking a leading part in the movement have by no means a clear
idea of the exact nature of justice, and that they have a still less
clear conception of the conditions which must be fulfilled in order
to obtain it. History teaches us that far too often justice appears
to mean the redressing of any injustice which people themselves
may suffer, by inflicting some injustice upon others. Thus the
object is defeated by the means employed to attain it.

To dispense justice one must be possessed of the cultivated
' J. E. MUler, The Blossom of Thorns, 224.

ST. MATTHEW vii. 12 189

attributes of manhood. A kind heart and a desire to do good are
a very insufficient equipment with which to take our neighbour's
affairs into our own hands. We require far more equipment than
these, if we are to treat him with the justice which is his due.
What we must remember is that the text requires a very strong
qualification, one doubtless assumed by Christ, and one which
must not be forgotten by us. Thus it should be read, " All things
therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do imto you (if
you were equipped with full knowledge to perceive and skill as
perfect as possible to decide what was best for you), even so do also
unto them, for to enable you to do this is the purpose and the
object of the whole course of Divine revelation."

Tf The one divine work, the one ordered sacrifice is to do
justice; and it is the last we are ever inclined to do. . . . Do
justice to your brother (you can do that whether you love him or
not), and you will come to love him. But do injustice to him,
because you don't love him, and you will come to hate him.*

11 When Napoleon, with his companions, was climbing the steep
defile of St. Helena they met a peasant with a bundle of faggots
upon his head. The aide-de-camp signalled to the peasant to step
aside. But Napoleon rebuked his officer, exclaiming, "Eespect
the burden ! Eespect the burden ! " It was the sense of justice
that was voiced in these words of the soldier, for Napoleon had
been himself a peasant boy, and he wished to do to a burden-
bearer that which he had asked others to do for him when as a
child he carried his bundle of faggots down the mountain side.^

(2) But, in the second place, the Christian must not draw the
line at justice; he must exercise mercy and forbearance. God
has made us neighbours of hundreds and thousands in this land —
the poor, the degraded, the unattractive; the crippled and the
handicapped, the diseased and the infirm; children sufferers,
adult sufferers; lives suddenly broken, seemingly spoiled and
ruined by accident, lives suddenly menaced by internal disorder,
bright lives blighted, strong lives emaciated. We think of some
for whom life has suddenly resolved itself into a condemned cell,
with nothing to look forward to but dying ; the great army of the
incurable waiting, some with smiles of brave anticipation, some
with sobs of weakness and despair, the inevitable hour. Yes,

> Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive, § 39 {Works, xviii. 420).
» N. D. Hillis.

I90 THE GOLDEN RULE

God has made these our neighbours. And if we were in their
place ! If we were the condemned, the pain-stricken, the crippled,
the diseased, and they were here to-day in our places, in health
and hope, what should we wish that men should do for us ? The
question answers itself. We should long that all that skill and
care and comfort and kindness can do should be done for us in
our lamentable lot. If a man lives a dissolute life, and nature
begins to exact her penalties and wrecks the physical frame, we
maintain a costly staff of physicians and an expensive system of
hospitals to stand between that man and the direct consequences
of his evil living. Logically, that is indefensible. But there are
higher principles in life than the merely logical. And we have con-
cluded that life is so sacred, and its opportunities are so precious,
that we will direct all our skill and all our care to enlarging and
extending life's opportunities for every man, even for the worst.

^ There are vessels on our seas that bear an ill name, and
have an evil notoriety. But let the worst of these run upon the
rocks, and the men of your lifeboats will not stay to haggle about
character and deserts. They will do for the worst what they
would do for the best. Such is the inspiring influence of our Chris-
tian conception. Christ Himself died for an evil world that was
in peril of shipwreck.^

3. It is not too much to say that the spirit of the Golden
Kule created a new atmosphere for the world. But it needed to
be illumined and reinforced, and this our Lord proceeded to do.
If the Golden Eule is the high-water mark of the other teaching, it
is the lowest round in the ladder which Christ begins to climb.
Where the other teachers stopped on the hill of aspiration and
difficulty, Jesus begins, and rushes on and up to hitherto undreamed-
of heights. At the beginning of His ministry He said, " Do unto
others as you would have others do unto you." After three years
of self-abnegating service He parted the curtains, and showed
them the heights where perfect love had her dwelling-place, from
which she beckoned men out of the low plains of selfishness up to
the realms where perfect truth and beauty have their dwelling-
place. " A new commandment I give unto you " — that abrogates
that lower Golden Rule — " that ye love one another, as I have loved
you." The Golden Kule was a mere embodiment of absolute

' 0. S. Home, The Model OUiaen, 148.

ST. MATTHEW vii. 12 191

justice; Christ proposes to break the alabaster box of love
unmerited and undeserved. " As I have loved you " — what word
is this? For three years He had shown them the pattern of
earth's most glorious friendship. Jesus has not done unto the
Twelve simply and alone what He would have the Twelve do
unto Him. He has done more. Peter denies His Master, and
Jesus stretches forth His hand and draws Peter up out of the
abyss, and gives the sceptre of power and the keys of influence
into Peter's hand.

^ The solid blocks or tables on which the Ten Commandments
were written were of the granite rock of Sinai, as if to teach
us that all the great laws of duty to God and duty to man were
like that oldest primeval foundation of the world — more solid,
more enduring than all the other strata; cutting across all the
secondary and artificial distinctions of mankind ; heaving itself up,
now here, now there ; throwing up the fantastic crag, there the
towering peak, here the long range which unites or divides the
races of mankind. That is the universal, everlasting character of
Duty. But as that granite rock itself has been fused and wrought
together by a central fire, without which it could not have
existed at all, so also the Christian law of Duty, in order to
perform fully its work in the world, must have been warmed at
the heart and fed at the source by a central fire of its own — and
that central fire is Love — the gracious, kindly, generous, admiring,
tender movements of the human affections ; and that central fire
itself is kept alive by the consciousness that there has been in the
world a Love beyond all human love, a devouring fire of Divine
enthusiasm on behalf of our race, which is the Love of Christ,
which is of the inmost essence of the Holy Spirit of God. It is
not contrary to the Ten Commandments. It is not outside of
them, it is within them ; it is at their core ; it is wrapped up in
them, as the particles of the central heat of the globe were encased
within the granite tables in the Ark of Temple.^

' A. P. Stanley, History of the Church of Scotland, 8.

Choosing a Eoad.

ST. MATT. — 13

Literature.

Bersier (E.), Twelve Sermons, 19.

Blunt (J. J.), Plain Sermons, i. 337.

Campbell (J. M.), Sermons and Lectures, i. 41.

Chafer (L. S.), True Evangelism, 54.

Dods (M.), Christ and Man, 200.

Goodrich (A.), in The Sermon on the Mount, iii. 195.

Gunsaulus (F. W.), Paths to the City of God, 70.

Hutton (J. A.), At Close Quwrters, 181.

Jones (J. D.), The Unfettered Word, 101.

McAfee (0. B.), Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 163.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Matthew i.-viii., 342.

Maopheraon (W. M.), The Path of Life, 64.

Manning (H. E.), Sermons, i. 77.

Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 42.

Morison (J.), A Practical Commentary on the Gospel according to

St. Matthew, 110.
Parker (J.), The City Temple, ii. 169.
Pearson (A.), Christus Magister, 264.
Pierson (A. T.), The Making of a Sermon, 54.
Kaleigh (A.), From Dawn to the Perfect Day, 62.
Smith (W. C), The Sermon on the Mount, 308.
Southouae (A. J.), The Men of the Beatitudes, 203.
Stuart (A. M.), The Path of the Redeemed, 1.
Tait (A.), The Charter of Christianity, 565.
Thorne (H.), Notable Sayings of the Great Teacher, 49.
Wilson (R.), The Great Salvation, 185.
Christian World Pulpit, xliii. 6 (D. M. Rosa) ; liv. 136 (M. Dads) ;

Ivii. 113 (J. Stalker); lix. 171 (C. Gore).

I9»

Choosing a Road.

Enter ye in by the narrow gate : for wide is the gate, and broad is the
way, that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter in thereby.
For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and
few be they that find it.— Matt vii. 13, 14.

1. There is a certain inevitable movement of human beings
implied in the whole of this passage. Our Lord regards the
multitudes around Him as all in motion — none quiescent, none
fixed and centred. This transiency and mutability of human life
can neither be doubted nor denied. We are not dwellers, we are
travellers. We are all on the way, staff in hand, loins girt, the
dust on our sandals.

And the myriad feet are echoing that trod the way before
In a vague and restless music evermore.

Ahead of us there is the cloud of a vast company travelling;
behind, the clamour of those who follow in our track ; each one
pressing forward, never resting, not in sleep, not in daytime, not
in stillest night.

2. Similarly, moral progress is also constant. This is a far
more serious and important kind of progress. If we could stay
our spirits amid this universal vicissitude, and keep them in fixed
conditions, the outward change would be of less moment. But
the moral progress is as constant as, and infinitely more important
than, any change that can be apprehended by the senses. This
is the tremendous thing, that each one of us is being saved or
lost, that each one is putting on the image of God, the eternal
beauty, and wearing more and more the everlasting strength, or
losing both, falling into vileness and weakness, although it may
be by slow or even imperceptible degrees. It is a solemn thought
that the one process or the other is going on in every one of us,
without the intermission of a day or an hour. Our souls as well

19s

196 CHOOSING A ROAD

as our bodies are on pilgrimage ; our spirits as well as our feet are
on the way. And here the question arises: What way? How
many are there to choose from ? Two ; only two. The way of
the many or the way of the few.

I,

The Way of the Many.

The world speaks of numerous ways. It specially favours a
via media. But here our Lord, with more than a touch of
austerity in His tone, declares there is no middle way. He puts
the antithesis sharply and nakedly. There is a wide gate, and
there is a narrow gate; there is a broad way, and there is a
straitened way ; and there are just two ends, destruction and life.
At one or other of these ends every man shall arrive, and what
end it will be depends upon the road he travels.

1. The entrance is wide. — We have taken the broad way first, if
for no other reason than that it is the broad way. It is the most
manifest and obtrusive, and the nearest to us naturally. Let us
begin at the beginning of it. It has a gate. A gate is a place
of entrance — to a city, or a field, or a country. As a religious
term it means the beginning of a course or onward career. Being
a figure, there is no need to attach to it a narrow inelastic mean-
ing, but it does point to the great moral truth that there are
critical and decisive points in life to which men come. There
are gates of decision, narrow or wide, through which they pass
into the course that lies within. It might indeed be said that
we enter upon the broad way when we are born : that birth is
the wide gate, and natural life the broad way. There is truth in
that ; but it is only a half truth. It is also true that we may be
born in the narrow way, may pass, as it were, through the strait
gate in our nurture as infants ; we may tread the narrow way in
our Christian training, and leave it only by our own act and
choice. Manifestly, our Lord is not entering here upon that
question. He is speaking to reasonable and responsible men of
their acts of choice, in the decisive times and places in life. He
is speaking of the entering in at either gate of those who know

ST. MATTHEW vn. 13, 14 197

that they so enter. And yet the knowledge may not be very
express or clear. From want of reflection, from want of observ-
ance of the real character and consequences of things, men may
go on from youth to age without being aware that they pass
through " gates " at all. They live as they list, or as they can.
They take life as it comes, and they are not conscious of points
of transition. They see no gates in life, pass through none to
their own consciousness. To-day is as yesterday, and to-morrow
will be as to-day ! All this is consistent with the spirit of the
passage " wide is the gate." One may go through it and hardly
know it is there. No one needs to jostle another in passing
through. No one needs to ruffle his garments or to lay anything
aside or to leave anything behind ; no one needs to part from his
compaiiions ; all can enter together, for the gate is wide.

^ The pangs of pity which Dante's sensitive soul feels for
the forlorn and tormented spirits in the Inferno serve to show
how intense is his conviction that nothing can set aside the laws
of eternal right. Francesca will arouse in him infinite and over-
whelming compassion, but Francesca must face the withering
tempest which her fault has aroused against her. Mr. J. A.
Symonds expressed his wonder that Dante should be so hard
and pitiless in his judgment upon the weaklings who hesitated
to identify themselves on either side in the great battle of all
time. Others may have felt that the harsh contempt expressed
by the poet was out of proportion to a fault which might be
called weakness, but never vice; but to Dante the cowardice
which refused the call of high duty or noble ideal was sin almost
beyond forgiveness: it revealed a spirit dead to righteousness
through the paralysing influence of self-interest.^

2. The way is broad. — If there is amplitude even at the
entrance, or at the critical points of life when the gates are
passed, we may well expect that there will be space, and allow-
ance, and freedom in the way. All kinds of persons may walk
in it. The man of the world may work out his schemes, gather
his money, and achieve his position. The pleasure-seeker may
eat and drink and dance and sleep and sing. The sensual
man who kills his moral life and vilifies the Divine image within
him may pass on unchecked. The formalist may count his
beads and say his prayers. The Pharisee may draw his garments
^ W. Boyd Carpenter, The Spiritual Message of Dante, 33.

198 CHOOSING A ROAD

away from the sinner's touch. The sceptic may think his doubt-
ing thought^; and the crowds of persons who never think, who
live without a purpose, who do good or evil as the case may be,
may all find a place here.

^ There is a wide gate. It opens into a broad way. But the
broad way leads to destruction. The idea of an enclosure, a
place enclosed within a wall, lies at the basis of the representa-
tion. One might have supposed, from the spacious entrance,
that the way would conduct to some magnificent home, a palace
of beauty and of bliss. But no. It leads to destruction, to some
kind of everlasting death. What may this broad way be, with
its wide gate ? It is doubtless the way of self -licence, of that
self-gratification which is determined to take a wide berth for
itself, spurning Divine prohibitions, and laughing at the limits
of a strict and narrow morality. It is the way of things that is
counter to the way and will of Christ. There were many in
Christ's day "entering in through it." There are still many.
The multitude still goes that way. He who would be a Christian
must still be somewhat singular in his habits and manner of life.^

3. It leads to destruction. — All who journey upon the broad
way come at last to its conclusion. And what do they find ?
Life ? Happiness ? Peace ? They find destruction. Destruc-
tion ! Destruction of our higher sentiments, of the peace of our
conscience, of the life of our spirit ! Destruction of our faith, our
love, our hope, of our character, of our soul. Destruction ! The
pains of the final condemnation of God, of banishment from His
presence into the darkness unutterable, into the penal fires of
self-reproach and remorse.

By a natural law man leans towards destruction. It may be
called the gravitation of a fallen being. Let a man only be at
ease in himself, satisfied with what he is, and consent to the
usurping customs of the world, drawing in the unwholesome
breath of refined evil, and letting his moral inclination run its
natural course, without check or stay, and he will most surely
tide onward, with an easy and gentle motion, down the broad
current to eternal death. Such a man is seldom strongly
tempted. The less marked solicitations of the tempter are enough.
The suggestion of a great sin might rouse his conscience, and
scare him from the toils. We may take this, then, as a most

^ James Morison.

ST. MATTHEW vii. 13, 14 199

safe rule, that a feeling of security is a warning to be suspicious,
and that our safety is to feel the stretch and the energy of a
continual strife.

Tj There is an extraordinary confirmation of His teaching
about the broad way in the attitude of those who among our-
selves have rejected Christ and His laws. Their thought tends to
Pessimism ; and so far as they believe anything, they believe in
extinction — i.e., the broad path leading to destruction. What is
the attitude of Nietzsche or Max Nordau in Germany? or of
Daudet, Loti, Guyau in France ? or of Bjornsen and Ibsen in
Norway ? The way of Jesus is surrendered or rejected, and blank
destruction stares the thinker in the face.^

^ There is in man an instinct of revolt, an enemy of all law,
a rebel which will stoop to no yoke, not even that of reason, duty,
and wisdom. This element in us is the root of all sin. The
independence which is the condition of individuality is at the
same time the eternal temptation of the individual. That which
makes us beings makes us also sinners. Sin is, then, in our very
marrow, it circulates in us like the blood in our veins, it is mingled
with all our substance. Or rather I am wrong : temptation is our
natural state, but sin is not necessary. Sin consists in the
voluntary confusion of the independence which is good with the
independence which is bad.^

But two ways are offered to our will —
Toil, with rare triumph. Ease, with safe disgrace;

Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance!
The man's whole life preludes the single deed

That shall decide if his inheritance
Be with the sifted few of matchless breed,
Or with the unnoticed herd that only sleep and feed.

II.

The Way of the Few.

In reading the Gospels one is often struck with what, for lack
of a better term, one might call Christ's /raw^w«ss. He makes no
secret of the conditions of discipleship. He does not attempt to
deck the Christian life out in gay and attractive colours. On the

1 R. F. Horton, J'fte Gommcmdments of Jesus, 227.

2 Amiel's Journal.

200 CHOOSING A ROAD

contrary, He scores and underlines and emphasizes its hardships
and difficulties. He wants no man to follow Him under the
impression that he is going to have a pleasant and easy time of it.
And so at the very beginning He confronts him with the " narrow
gate " of an exacting demand. " If any man would come after
me," He said, " let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and
follow me." Self-denial and the cross — these constitute the
"narrow gate" by which a man enters upon the service of
Jesus Christ.

1. The entrance is narrow. — Like the broad way, this way of the
few has, at its outset, a gate. It is a narrow gate and may be
taken as expressing the initial act of repentance and the com-
mencement of a life dedicated to Christ. The entrance into the
Christian life may aptly be described as a narrow gate, for it is
a definite and decisive act into which one is not likely to drift
with a multitude by chance. Like a narrow gate, it may easily
be overlooked; and the main difficulty of the Christian life is
perhaps that it escapes notice altogether. Multitudes of people
seem not to have so much as heard that there is a Christian life.
They follow the broad path because it is broad, and they never
notice that unostentatious entrance into the way of life, repentance
and faith. But, while it is narrow, the gate is broad enough for
entrance, always provided that one is content to enter stripped
and unburdened.

The entrance into the way of life is by the strait gate of
penitence and renunciation. If men could carry the world along
with them, if young people could carry their love of pleasure along
with them, multitudes would crowd into the gate of the Kingdom.
But to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof is
too hard a command. To put away the old man with his deeds
is more than they can bring themselves to do. The gate is
" narrow." That is why Christ added that solemn word, " Few
there be that find it."

^ " Thou didst send for me," said Savonarola to Lorenzo the
Magnificent, the tyrant of Florence, as he lay on his dying bed.
" Yes," said Lorenzo, " for three sins lie heavy on my soul," and
then he told the monk how he was tortured by the remembrance
of the sack of Volterra, and his robbery of a bank whereby many
poor girls had lost their all and been driven to a life of shame,

ST. MATTHEW vn. 13, 14 201

and the bloody reprisals he took after a political conspiracy
against him. " God is good," replied Savonarola, " God is merciful.
But," he at once added, " three things are needful." " What
things ? " asked Lorenzo anxiously. " First, a great and living
faith in God's mercy." " I have the fullest faith in it," replied
the dying man. " Secondly, you must restore all your ill-gotten
wealth." At this Lorenzo writhed, but at last he gave a nod of
assent. " Lastly," said Savonarola to the cowering prince, " you
must restore to Florence her liberty." And Lorenzo angrily
turned his back upon the preacher and said never a word. The
gate was too " narrow." ^

2. The way also is narrow. — The word used by the Eevisers
here is " straitened." The figure contemplated is that of " double-
dykes." There is a path between two properties, each measured
off with its wall. Both walls approach as closely and compress-
ingly as possible to the centre of the thoroughfare, which is the
public " right of way." The " double-dykes " almost meet, and
there is, at points here and there, bulging on either side, while all
along loose stones have fallen down, and make the way incon-
venient, so that the traveller can only painfully and with trouble
pick his steps as he moves along. It leads, however, to life, that
is, to everlasting life, to the home of everlasting lliss. Being a
narrowed way, it will not admit of latitudinarianism of demeanour.
Neither will it admit of accompanying parade and pomp. It
would not be possible to drive along it in a coach and six. When
kings would go by it they must step out of their coaches and
walk. Princes and peasants must travel there on an equality.
What is this narrow way? When we get down, through the
envelopments of imagery, to the real base or essential substrate
of the representations, we hear the voice of Jesus Himself saying,
" I am the way ; no man cometh unto the Father " (or " to the
Father's house") "but by me" (John xiv. 6). As the martyr
Philpot said, " The cross-way is the high-way to heaven." There
is no other way.

][ The word Strait, applied to the entrance into Life, and the
word Narrow, applied to the road of Life, do not mean that the
road is so fenced that few can travel it, however much they wish
(like the entrance to the pit of a theatre), but that, for each
person, it is at first so stringent, so difficult, and so dull, being
^ J. D. Jones, Ths Unfettered Word, 106.

202 CHOOSING A ROAD

between close hedges, that few will enter it, though all may. In
a second sense, and an equally vital one, it is not merely a Strait,
or narrow, but a straight, or right road ; only, in this rightness
of it, not at all traced by hedges, wall, or telegraph wire, or even
marked by posts higher than winter's snow ; but, on the contrary,
often difficult to trace among morasses and mounds of desert,
even by skilful sight ; and by bhnd persons, entirely untenable
unless by help of a guide, director, rector, or rex : which you may
conjecture to be the reason why, when St. Paul's eyes were to be
opened, out of the darkness which meant only the consciousness
of utter mistake, to seeing what way he should go, his director
was ordered to come to him in the " street which is called
Straight." 1

(1) How is the way straitened ? Did God make it so ? The
Bible recording that the one way is narrow and the other broad
does not make them so, any more than a medical book recording
smallpox makes smallpox to exist. The fact is, God has done
His best to reverse these terrible facts. God has striven to make
the way to the good broad, and the way to the evil narrow.

^ " When I was a young man," says Dr. Albert Goodrich, " I
taught in the ragged schools of London. On one Sunday I had
this passage for my lesson. ' I say, teacher,' merrily sang one of
those sharp, ragged boys, ' it says, don't it, the way to the good
is narrow and the way to the bad wide?' 'Yes, it does,' I
replied. 'I know that's true,' he said, with a knowing wink;
' but,' he added, dropping his voice, ' is it fair ? Oughtn't God
have made them both the same width ? He'd have given us,
then, a fair chance.' "

(2) Who or what, then, makes the two ways so different ?
It is not the will of God ; it is the sin of man. Man's injustices
to man, man's inhumanity to man, narrows the way. By hard-
ness, by provoking one another, by tempting one another, we
make the way narrow. Employers make it narrow to their
employees; employees make it narrow to their employers.
Children make it narrow to their parents; parents make it
narrow to their children. What need there is to consider one
another, lest we make the way to life even more narrow than
it is.

^ What is it, Augustine asks, which makes this gate so strait
to us, and this way so narrow ? It is not so much " strait " in

' Buskin, Fors Glavigera, Letter 69 ( Works, xxviii. 441).

ST. MATTHEW vii. 13, 14 203

itself, as that we make it strait for ourselves, by the swellings of
our pride ; — and then, vexed that we cannot enter, chafing and
impatient at the hindrances we meet with, we become more and
more unable to pass through. But where is the remedy ? how shall
these swollen places of our souls be brought down ? By accept-
ing and drinking of the cup, wholesome though it may be distaste-
ful, of humility : by listening to and learning of Him who, having
said, " Enter ye in at the strait gate," does to them who inquire,
"How shall we enter in?" reply, "By Me;" "I am the Way;"
" I am the Door." 1

3. Tht narrow way leads to life. — Life! The mind alive in
truth, the heart alive with full affection, the conscience alive in
the vision of duty, and the enjoyment of peace, the soul alive in
joyous communion with God. Life! The activity of our finer
faculties, the consciousness of their expansion, the enjoyment of
achievement, of progress, of laying up imperishable treasure, the
sense of wealth and power in truth and in God, the enjoyment of
service with God for the coming of the Kingdom, the hope of the
crown of life, of life regal, imperial, in and with God for ever.
That is worth an effort to attain. That is worth the striving
needful to walk the narrow way.

^ Jesus here quotes an idea whereof the ancient moralists had
made great use and which had passed into a commonplace, almost
a proverb. It is as ancient as the poet Hesiod ; and it appears
in Kebes' quaint allegory The Tablet, a sort of Greek Pilgrim's
Progress, purporting to be an account of a pictorial tablet which
hung in the temple of Kronos and emblematically depicted the
course of human life. Kebes saw it and had it explained to him
by an old man who kept the temple.

" What is the way that leads to the true Instruction ? " said I.
"You see above," said he, "yonder place where no one dwells,
but it seems to be desert ? " "I do." " And a little door, and a
way before the door, which is not much thronged, but very few go
there ; so impassable does the way seem, so rough and rocky ? "
" Yes, indeed," said I. "And there seems to be a lofty mound
and a very steep ascent with deep precipices on this side and on
that ? " "I see it." " This, then, is the way," said he, " that leads
to the true Instruction."

The allegory of the Two Ways had passed into a sort of pro-
verb, and Jesus here applies it to the great business of salvation,

' E. C. Trench.

204 CHOOSING A ROAD

throwing His hearers back on the broad principles of life. It was
recognized that, if a man would attain to Virtue or Wisdom, he
must face a steep and toilsome way, and climb it with resolute
heart, " All noble things," said the proverb, " are difficult " ; and
salvation, being the noblest of all, is the most difficult. It can be
attained only by resolute endeavour, and every man must face the
ordeal for himself. It is folly to stand gazing at the height and
wondering whether few or many will win it. "There is the
narrow gate ! " cries Jesus ; " yonder is the rugged path ! Enter
and climb." ^

^ While the writers of the New Testament vary in their mode
of presenting the ultimate goal of man, they are at one in regard-
ing it as an exalted form of life. What they all seek to commend
is a condition of being involving a gradual assimilation to, and
communion with, God. The distinctive gift of the gospel is the
gift of life. " I am the life," says Christ. And the Apostle's
confession is in harmony with his Master's claim — "For me to
live is Christ." Salvation is nothing else than the restoration, pre-
servation, and exaltation of life. ... I am come that they might
have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. " More
life and fuller " is the passion of every soul that has caught the
vision and heard the call of Jesus. The supreme good consists
not in suppressed vitality, but in power and freedom. Life in
Christ is a full, rich existence. . . . The spiritual man pursues his
way through conflict and achievement towards a higher and yet a
higher goal, ever manifesting, yet ever seeking, the infinite that
dwells in him. All knowledge and quest and endeavour, nay,
existence itself, would be a mockery if man had no " forever."
Scripture corroborates the yearnings of the heart and represents
life as a growing good which is to attain to ever higher reaches
and fuller realization in the world to come. It is the unex-
tinguishable faith of man that the future must crown the present.
No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive ; but every gift
and every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless
process.

" There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as
before." 2

1 D. Smith, The Days of His Flesh, 302.

' A. B. D. Alexander, Christianity and Ethics, 128.

The Leper.

S!05

Literature.

Burrell (D. J.), Christ and Men, 168.

Calthrop (G.), The Futv/re Life, 256.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, i. 21.

Gilbert (M. N.), in Sermons on the Gospels : Advent to Trinity, 119.

Howatt (J. B.), Jesus the Poet, 57.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Christmas and Epiphany,

463.
Macduff (J. R.), Memories of Oennesaret, 51.
Mackennal (A), Christ's Healing Touch, 1.
McNeill (J.), Regent Square Pulpit, iii. 313.
Magee (W. C), Growth in Grace, 271.
Matheaon (G.), Thoughts for Life's Journey, 16.
Parkhurst (C. H.), A Little Lower than the Angels, 39.
Power (P. B.), The "I Wills " of Christ, 67.
Eaymond (G. L.), The Spiritual Life, 33.
Thompson (R. E.), Nature, the Mirror of Grace, 69.
Trench (R. C.), Westminster and Other Sermons, 15.
Wilberforce (B.), The Power that Worketh in Us, 54.
Williams (C. D.), A Valid Christianity fen- To-Day, 20.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), By Word and Deed, 21.
Christian World Pulpit, liii. 48 (H. S. Holland) ; Ixxx. 56 (H. E.

Selwyn).
Churchman's Pulpit : Third Sunday after the Epiphany, iv. 52 (E. Palmer).
Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., xi. 20 (W. Burrows).

3o6

The Leper.

And behold, there came to him a leper and worshipped him, saying,
Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And he stretched forth his
hand, and touched him, saying, I will ; be thou made clean. And straight-
way his leprosy was cleansed. — Matt. viii. 2, 3.

1. The disease of leprosy is scarcely known, except in a mild
form, among ourselves ; only those who have seen it in Eastern
lands can realize its full horror and loathsomeness. And not
even then unless they place themselves in intelligent sympathy
with the ancient Hebrew point of view, and understand the
mysterious dread and utter abhorrence which surrounded the
person so afflicted. He was an accursed thing, under the ban of
God, the pariah, the unapproachable. Writhing under the dread
disease, he was lost to the world. His home was the caves among
the rocks, his food the scanty pittance which he could gather in
the fields or by the roadsides. Leprosy was held to be the mark
of awful sin, the manifestation of God's special displeasure. Even
if he recovered, he could not be restored without an elaborate
ritual, which was supposed to cleanse him from the taint of
disease, and to reconcile him to God. How horrible this all seems
as we read and think about it. Yet we must realize it if we desire
to appreciate fully all that the Saviour's touch and healing
implied.

2. To approach the leper, to look upon him, to bend over him,

to reach out the hand and touch him, required no common courage.

There was such pollution in the act that the one doing it became

ritually unclean. For a man to step across the awful chasm

which yawned between the leper and society, to minister to his

wants, to show him the way back to health and home, was braver

than to face death on the battlefield. To the beholder it would

be an evidence of utter recklessness, an open defiance of all

307

2o8 THE LEPER

tradition and all law. Yet Christ, the Son of Man, did not hesitate
for a moment. He did not come to set at naught the law, made
sacred by Moses' decree and by long ages of use. It was not that.
It was only a declaration, of which His wonderful life was so full,
of the higher law which was from henceforth to govern the world ;
that higher law of the sympathy of the great Father with all
manner of suffering and sorrow, that higher law which was to
take the place of the narrow rule of Hebrew ritual, of the possi-
bility of the restoration of every outcast by the acceptance of the
help of the Saviour.

^ Christ did not disregard the prohibition to touch the leper
because He wanted to show His contempt for the statute. For
Him the Wealth of His own life repealed the statute. He was
like a vessel riding the deep sea ; all underlaid with rocks the sea
may be, but for that vessel there are no rocks ; the vastness of the
deep waters on whose surface its course is swung practically
obliterates the rocks, and bears the vessel forward in the con-
fidence of infinite security.^

The Cry foe CLEANsraa.

" Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean."

1. This is a confession of faith rather than a direct prayer. It
expresses faith in the power of Christ. It is a grand thing when
a leper can believe in anything besides his own misery. Probably
this man had heard only at a distance (owing to the disabilities of
his loathsome disease) of Christ's deeds of power, and had never
been near enough to Him to hear the tender tones of that voice
which had melting pity in it, or to trace the lines of gentleness
and grace in His loving countenance. Besides, men learn sooner
to trace power than to trace tenderness. The Eed Sea and Sinai
revealed God's power, but it took a millennium and a half longer
for Calvary to reveal His love. The plea of the leper therefore is,
" Lord, if thou wilfc, thou canst." Did he accept the general belief
that only God could heal the leper ? Then there was the more
faith in this admission of Christ's power.

' C. H. Parkhurst, A Little Lovxr than the Angels, 43.

ST. MATTHEW viii. 2, 3 209

^ What a consciousness of might there was in Jesus ! Others,
prophets and apostles, have healed the sick, but their power was
delegated. It came as in waves of Divine impulse, intermittent
and temporary. The power that Jesus wielded was inherent and
absolute, deeps which knew neither cessation nor diminution.
Christ's will was supreme over all forces. Nature's potencies are
diffused and isolated, slumbering in herb or metal, flower or leaf,
in mountain or sea. But all are inert and useless until man
distils them with his subtle alchemies, and then applies them by
his slow processes, dissolving the tinctures in the blood, sending
on its warm currents the healing virtue, if haply it may reach its
goal and accomplish its mission. But all these potencies lay in
the hand or in the will of Christ. The forces of life all were
marshalled under His bidding. He had but to say to one " Go,"
and it went, here or there, or anywhither ; nor does it go for
nought ; it accomplishes its high behest, the great Master's will.^

2. Now the exercise of faith must always precede healing. A
certain moral temper there must be in the recipient, a certain
spiritual outlook, a movement of trust, a personal desire of living
interest that will go out from the soul towards the presence of
Him who draws it into His mastery. These there must be if any
virtue is to go out from Him. He moves along in silence, but His
silence has power in it that can be felt, and it acts as a spiritual
test of those on whom it falls. If they are in a moral condition to
be helped, they become aware of the succour that is at hand.
They feel about for what it means, they detect His personal
supremacy. They have an impulse that goes out to Him ; they
put up a cry ; they thrust out a hand to touch, if it may be, the
hem of His garment. That act of theirs releases His force.
Instantaneously and inevitably His life has passed into theirs.
They are invaded by His strength ; they are permeated by His
vitality ; they are quickened by His energy ; they find themselves,
by sheer and natural necessity, rising, walking, seeing, hearing.
They could not do anything else. Surprise vanishes and wonder
is slain. It is as simple as any other natural effect. They
perfectly understand Him as He tells them that they had but to
be in that condition and the thing is bound to happen — " Thy
faith hath made thee whole."

Oft had the Master to pass inactive and helpless as poor
' H. Burton, Th& Gospel of St. luke, 267.
ST. MATT. — 14

2IO THE LEPER

maimed men sat in moody silence by the roadside, and never
asked who He was, and never hoped for a hand to save. He saw
many a leper go by engulfed in his own shame, never lifting his
eyes to beg of Him a boon. He had to watch the stupid indiffer-
ence of those whom misery had dulled and hardened into despair,
and still He might not speak. He might not shake them out of
their torpor ; His mouth was closed ; His hope must hold itself
back. Why will not they understand? Why cannot they cry
out ? Just one whisper, " Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy upon us,"
and in a moment He would be free. He would be there at their
side ; His hand would have leaped out ; His touch would have been
upon them. The words would have rushed out willingly from his
tongue, '' I will ; go in peace, for thy faith hath made thee whole."

^ Just as the amazing resources of electricity lie all about us,
quivering and inactive until we call out their capacities, so the
vast pardon of God waits, and through its obedience to natural
law must wait until the Master's touch has on it a human pressure.
The leper must discover it, must draw upon it, must open himself
to it, and then the power long repressed leaps out in an instant,
rushes forward in free haste, in liberated gladness. It pours itself
out upon him, it bathes him round, it seizes upon him, it possesses
him. Not a moment is lost. Before his own appeal has died off
his lips, "Lord, if thou wilt," the answer is upon him — it has
already done its full work — " I will ; be thou clean." ^

^ '' Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean " is a prayer
lovely in the simplicity of its human pleading — an appeal to the
power which lay in the man to whom he spoke : His power was
the man's claim ; the relation between them was of the strongest
— that between plenty and need, between strength and weakness,
between health and disease — poor bonds comparatively between
man and man, for man's plenty, strength, and health can only
supplement, not satisfy, the need; support the weakness, not
change it into strength ; mitigate the disease of His fellow, not
slay it with invading life ; but in regard to God, all whose power
is creative, any necessity of His creatures is a perfect bond between
them and Him ; His magnificence must flow into the channels of
the indigence He has created.*

3. Why does the leper question the Saviour's will ? It does

not appear as if our Lord had as yet healed any leper ; this man

' Canon Scott Holland.

' George SlaoDonald, The Miracles of Ov/r Iiord, 86,

ST. MATTHEW vm. 2, 3 211

is at any rate the first leper mentioned as coming to Him for
healing. Then the poor man no doubt regarded his leprosy as
a just judgment for the sins of which his conscience was afraid,
and went about so humbled and ashamed that he hardly dared
pray for deliverance. Besides, he might think (for so the Jews
commonly thought) that there was no healing of leprosy except
by miracle, by the immediate act of God Almighty Himself;
and this again would make his request seem bolder. And so the
wonder is, not that he questioned Jesus' will, but that he believed
in His power. By believing in His power he threw himself upon
the innermost tenderness of Christ's nature ; and the whole being
of our Lord answered to the call. There was no question of power
to be solved or proved ; the method of the appeal left no room for
argument; the leper's words, as they passed into the depths of
Christ's loving nature, which alone was invoked, cut a passage for
themselves, through which the healing waters could flow. The
response was instant — " if thou wilt " — " I wiU."

Tf Jesus did not treat slight ailments, only the most profound,
obstinate, ghastly maladies. He did not concern Himself with
simple aches and pains, but proved His Divine authority and
efficacy in distinguishing leprosy, palsy, fever, blindness, and
terrible psychic derangements. Numbers of reformers are prepared
to deal with the superficial ailments of humanity — with its tooth-
aches, sores, and scratches ; but only One dares attack the deep,
stubborn, chronic diseases of our nature, the fundamental evils of
the race. He alone is the grand physician of the world-lazaretto,
the healer of the incurable, despairing of no man. Let me, then,
seek in Him for the grace that shall root out the most malign
morbid humours of the soul. The darkest and deadliest elements
of evil He can rebuke and expel. " Lord, that I might be clean ! " ^

IL

The Healing Touch.

" And he stretched forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will ; be
thou made clean."

1. " Touch is the sense which love employs." It means the
annihilation of distance between one whg loves and that which
' W. L. Watkinson,

212 THE LEPER

he loves, so that mere nearness is replaced by contact. Our sense
of the significance of touch finds expression in such phrases as
"getting into touch," or "living in touch," with people. They
stand for sympathetic contact, the sympathy which seeks contact,
and does not keep others " at arm's length." Children learn it in
their mothers' laps, and are never content to be merely near those
they love without actually touching them.

A very little thing was this touch, even as an indication of
kindly purpose, but it was just the little thing that a sensitive sick
man needed. It is, after all, little things that indicate either
sympathy or antipathy. "I will buy with you," says Shylock,
" sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following ;
but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you."
Had Jesus held aloof from the afflicted they never would have
trusted Him. Nothing so pains a sick person as the sign of
shrinking from him. Wear your gloves in any room you like,
but not in the sick-room. Bend your ear to the trembling dying
lips, and shun not to lay your hands on the diseased, if you are
to do them any good, either as nurse or as spiritual adviser and
Christian friend.

^ We may be allowed to insert here a few words from an
account sent to us of Dolling's influence with the rough youths of
Landport by a lady (then Miss Nance, now Mrs. Cator) who
managed a club for those fellows, under his sanction, when he
was at S. Agatha's: "Mr. Dolling and S. Agatha's Mission was
the only kind of religion that ever appealed to them, and I feel
sure I could never have persuaded them to go and talk about
their lives to anyone else. They said, ' Oh, he's different ; we don't
mind him.' I could tell of miracles of healing under Mr. Dolling's
touch. One young soldier said to me, ' He laid his hand on my
head, and, I don't know why, I told him all I had ever done.' " ^

2. It would have been quite possible for our Lord to heal this
leper by a word alone. It would be quite possible for God
Almighty to say to all the moral lepers of the world, " Be thou
clean!" and the cure would be Divinely perfect. Why, then,
does He not ? Just because the cure would be Divinely perfect.
Grod wants it to be humanly perfect, and this can be effected only
by a touch. Elijah in the desert may be fed by ravens or he may

' C. E. Osborne, The Life of FatMr Dolling, 269.

ST. MATTHEW vin. 2, 3 213

be fed by man's philanthropy. The physical effect will be the
same, but not the moral effect. Elijah fed by the ravens is not
a whit nearer to his kind than Elijah faint and hungry; but
Elijah fed by human hands becomes himself more human. The
greatest calamity of a leper was not his leprosy ; it was his divorce
from his fellow-men. It was not his physical disease that divorced
him ; it was the belief in his moral contagion. His greatest cry
was for some one to touch him — to bridge the river of separation.
It was easy to get the touch after he was healed. But the hard
thing was to get contact before healing — to receive the touch
before receiving the mandate, " Be thou clean ! " His fellow-men
would not grant him that boon. Doubtless they prayed for his
recovery, but they would not touch him un-recovered. God could
have healed him in answer to their prayers, but He wanted to
heal him in answer to their contact.

Tf Social reformers are discovering that they can do little good
for people of any sort while they hold them at arm's length. " I
have learned," says a worker in one of the University settlements,
"that you can get access to the people who need you only by
living with them. They will not come to you; but Jew and
Gentile will make you welcome if you come to them. Our
meetings for their benefit are a failure. Our personal intercourse
with them, man to man, has been promising great good. It is of
no use to come once or twice to see them ; you must live with
them if you are to do anything for them." ^

Tl The hand, more than any other limb or organ, differentiates
man, begotten in the image of his Father, from the whole series
of animal creations. No other animal has a hand. The corre-
sponding organ in the anthropoid ape, which is the most like
a hand, is not really a hand ; it can fashion nothing, it is fit for
nothing but to cling to a branch or convey food to the mouth.
Only man has a hand, and as with it he stamps his impress upon
nature, and founds his sovereignty of civilization, and performs
his deeds of heroism, so, when he would caress, or soothe, or
comfort, or encourage, or bless, or stimulate, or welcome his fellow
human being, in obedience to some secret instinct, he inv^ariably
automatically lays his hand upon him.^

^ Jesus could have cured the leper with a word. There was
no need He should touch him. No need, did I say ? There was

' K. E. Thompson, Nalwre, the Mirror of Grace, 81.
' B. Wilberforce, The Fower that Worketh in Us, 66.

214 THE LEPER

every need. For no one else would touch him. The healthy
human hand, always more or less healing, was never laid on him ;
he was despised and rejected. It was a poor thing for the Lord
to cure his body ; He must comfort and cure his sore heart. Of
all men a leper, I say, needed to be touched with the hand of love.
Spenser says, " Entire affection hateth nicer hands." It was not
for our master, our brother, our ideal man, to draw around Him
the skirts of His garments and speak a lofty word of healing, that
the man might at least be clean before He touched him. The
man was His brother, and an evil disease cleaved fast unto him.
Out went the loving hand to the ugly skin, and there was His
brother as he should be — with the flesh of a child. I thank God
that the touch went before the word. Nor do I think it was the
touch of a finger, or of the finger-tips. It was a kindly healing
touch in its nature as in its power. Oh, blessed leper! thou
knowest henceforth what kind of a God there is in the earth —
not the God of the priests, but a God such as Himself only can
reveal to the hearts of His own.^

III.

The Greater Gift.

The physical cure is the pledge and promise of a still greater
blessing. For leprosy was singled out by God Himself from the
vast catalogue of human diseases and sufferings to keep before
the eyes of His people of old a perpetual memorial of the vileness
and awfulness of moral evil. The outer body was made by Him
a mirror of the far deeper and darker taint in the soul. It was
a silent preacher in the midst of the theocratic nation and to
the end of time, testifying to the virulence of a more inveterate
malady — that " from the sole of the foot even unto the head there
is no soundness in us, but wounds and bruises and putrefying
sores." Although it by no means invariably followed that the
lepers of Israel were afflicted with their dire plague in con-
sequence of personal sin, yet we know that this was the case
in some instances, such as those of Miriam, Gehazi, and Uzziah.
And at all events the disease was regarded by the Jews as a mark
of the Divine displeasure. They spoke of it as "the finger of
' 6. MacDonald, The Miracles of Owr Lord, 88.

ST. MATTHEW vm. 2, 3 215

God." It was considered an outward and visible sign of inward
disorganization, guilt, and impurity.

^ It is clear that the same principle [of the law of Moses]
which made all having to do with death, as mourning, a corpse,
the occasions of a ceremonial uncleanness, inasmuch as all these
were signs and consequences of sin, might consistently with this
have made every sickness an occasion of uncleanness, each of
these being also death beginning, partial death — echoes in the
body of that terrible reality, sin in the soul. But instead of this,
in a gracious sparing of man, and not pushing the principle to the
uttermost, God took but one sickness, one of these visible out-
comings of a tainted nature, in which to testify that evil was not
from Him, could not dwell with Him. He linked this teaching
with but one; by His laws concerning it to train men into a
sense of a clinging impurity, which needed a Pure and a Purifier
to overcome and expel, and which nothing short of His taking of
our flesh could drive out. And leprosy, the sickness of sicknesses,
was throughout these Levitical ordinances selected of God from
the whole host of maladies and diseases which had broken in
upon the bodies of men. Bearing His testimony against it. He
bore His testimony against that out of which every sickness
grows, against sin ; as not from Him, as grievous in His sight ;
and against the sickness also itself as grievous, being as it
was a visible manifestation, a direct consequence of sin, a
forerunner of that death which by the portal of disobedience
and revolt had found entrance into natures created by Him for
immortality.^

1. Salvation provides free access to God. When the Lord said,
" I will ; be thou made clean," when He had put forth His healing
hand, from that moment the man had a right of approach to the
place where God's honour dwelt — he might again tread the courts
of the Temple ; he might again offer his gifts ; he might once more
worship with the worshippers. And this is the great fruit of the
sacrifice of Christ — of the "I will; be thou made clean," pronounced
concerning each and all of us — that it procures us admission into
the holiest, into the presence of God, and so brings us under the
mighty healing influences which are ever going forth from Him,
that having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, purged
from dead works, we are able to draw near in faith, and hence-
forth to serve the living God,

' B. C. Trench, Notes on the Mvrcbclea of Owr Lord, 226.

2i6 THE LEPER

Tl The Son of God, at once above our life and in our life,
morally Divine and circumstantially human, mediates for us be-
tween the self so hard to escape, and the Infinite so hopeless to
reach ; and draws us out of our mournful darkness without losing
us in excess of light. He opens to us the moral and spiritual
mysteries of our existence, appealing to a consciousness in us
that was asleep before. And though. He leaves whole worlds of
thought approachable only by silent wonder, yet His own walk of
heavenly communion. His words of grace and works of power,
His strife of Divine sorrow, His cross of self-sacrifice. His re-
appearance behind the veil of life eternal, fix on Him such holy
trust and love, that, where we are denied the assurance of know-
ledge, we attain the repose of faith.^

2. Salvation links men together in a holy fellowship. As the
Lord sent this suppliant, before an outcast, back to the society of
his fellows, a cleansed man, no longer obliged to cover his lips in
shame, no longer with a miserable sense of something that separ-
ated him from all his race, even so He gives unto His redeemed
and sanctified a ground of true communion and fellowship one
with another — He takes away the middle wall of partition that
was between each man and his brethren, having slain the enmity
and the selfishness by His cross.

^ I have endeavoured in my tracts to prove that if Christ be
really the head of every man, and if He really have taken human
flesh, there is ground for a imiversal fellowship among men (a
fellowship that is itself the foundation of those particular fellow-
ships of the nation and the^family, which I also consider sacred).
I have maintained that it is the business of a Church to assert
this ground of universal fellowship ; that it ought to make men
understand and feel how possible it is for men as men to fraternize
in Christ ; how impossible it is to fraternize, except in Him.*

3. It will be said that in any case the days of isolation are
gone, and gone for ever. Nation can no longer hold itself aloof
from nation, and people from people, as if they did not share
a common humanity, hardly as if they lived in the same world.
We are daily being forced into closer contacts, welded into closer
unities. Well, what is to be the consequence of all this ? With-
out the touch, the healing, cleansing, life-giving touch of Christ

^ Life and Letters of James Martineau, i. 286.
" The lAfe of Frederick Denison Mwu/nee, i. 258.

ST. MATTHEW vni. 2, 3 217

and His gospel, without the higher life of a genuinely Christian
civilization, it may mean a disaster fearful to contemplate, whose
proportions we can scarcely imagine. On the one side it can
mean only destruction to the races of heathendom. It is a well-
known law of ethnology that, unless there be some assimilating,
unifying power such as the gospel alone can furnish, the weaker
always perishes rapidly before the stronger. The contacts of
trade, commercialism, and militarism bring invariably in their
train contagion and infection. The heathen are apt pupils of evil.
With a fatal facility they learn the new vices of the soldiers,
sailors, and traders of so-called civilized and Christian peoples,
and add them to their own native vices and diseases. And the
combination means nothing less than destruction.

There are consequences that run in the other direction also.
With these ever closer relations of commerce and conquest which
are fast knitting all the world into one come new and fearful
dangers to ourselves. Up from the uncleansed life of heathendom
shall sweep mighty plagues, both physical and moral. That life
has diseases to give us whose horror we never dreamed of. It
has sins to teach us which even in the depths of our depravity
we have not imagined. And soldiers and sailors, traders and
merchants, wanderers in far lands, away from the restraints of
home, acquaintance, and familiar associations, are apt pupils in
such things. That is what contact without Christ is bound to
mean. If, through that inevitable touch of people upon people,
virtue does not go out from us to them, then contagion and in-
fection are sure to pass from them to us and us to them. If we
will not share with them our highest life, our nobler ambitions,
our blessings, above all, our gospel, then they will share with us
their plagues of soul and body. Therefore alongside the ware-
house, the barracks, and the saloon, which always mark the first
wave of an advancing Western civilization, must be built the
Christian school, the hospital, and the church.

^ During Sunday afternoons in June 1888, Professor Drum-
mond delivered a series of religious addresses at Grosvenor
House, London. After distinguishing between religion and
theology, he said that the truth of Christianity is mani-
fest in the fact that there is no real civilization without it,
and that the purer the form of Christianity the greater the
development of civilization. " Show me," he said, with Matthew

2i8 THE LEPER

Arnold, " ten square miles outside of Christianity where the life
of man or the virtue of woman is safe, and I'll throw over Chris-
tianity at once." ^

^ Chalmers' address at the Exeter Hall meeting of the London
Missionary Society in 1886 was the climax of his public work
during this visit home. Exeter Hall was crowded, and the main
interest of the meeting centred in Tamate's unpolished but thrill-
ing eloquence. To recall a few of the most striking passages : " I
have had twenty-one years' experience amongst natives. I have
seen the semi-civilized and the uncivilized ; I have lived with the
Christian native, and I have lived, dined, and slept with the
cannibal. I have visited the islands of the New Hebrides; I
have visited the Loyalty Group, I have seen the work of missions
in the Samoan Group, I know all the islands of the Society Group,
I have lived for ten years in the Hervey Group, I know a few of
the groups close on the line, and for at least nine years of my life
I have lived with the savages of New Guinea ; but I have never
yet met with a single man or woman, or a single people, that
your civilization without Christianity has civilized. For God's
sake let it be done at once ! Gospel and commerce, but re-
member this, it must be the Gospel first. Wherever there has
been the slightest spark of civilization in the Southern Seas it has
been because the Gospel has been preached there, and wherever
you find in the Island of New Guinea a friendly people or a
people that will welcome you, there the missionaries of the Cross
have been preaching Christ. Civilization! The Eampart can
only be stormed by those who carry the Cross." ^

^ G. A. Smith, Th^ Life of Henry Drummond, 279i
^ £. Lovett, Ja/mti Chahners, 278.

The Physician.

SIg

Literature.

Black (J.), The Pilgrim Ship, 199.

Bruce (A. B.), The Galilean Gospel, 73.

Campbell (W. M.), Foot-Prints of Christ, 92.

Cox (S.), A Day mth Christ, 91.

Griffith-Jones (E.), Faith and Verification, 134.

Hall (R.), TVorhs, iv. 421.

Kingsley (C), The Water of Life, 213.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew ix.-xvii., 18.

Ross (J. M. E.), The Self -Portraiture of Jesus, 1.

Sjjurgeon (0. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xi. (lS65), No. 618.

Zahn (T.), Bread and Salt from the Word of God, 227.

Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 385 (F. W. Farrar).

Church of England Magazine, lii. 112 (C. Clayton).

The Physician.

They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick,
— Matt. ix. 12.

1. One of the best known scenes in the gospel story is here
placed before our eyes, and the same picture, in all essentials,
meets us more than once in the Gospels. On the one side stands
Jesus, who sat at meat with publicans and sinners as their friend ;
and on the other side the Pharisees, who murmured and found
fault with our Lord for so doing. On another day Jesus replied
to the murmuring of the Pharisees by the three parables of the
Lost Piece of Silver, the Lost Sheep, and the Lost Son. The same
opposition was manifested when He sat at meat as the guest of
Simon the Pharisee, and, to the astonishment of those who were
eating with Him, allowed a woman that was a sinner to wash
His feet with her tears, and to wipe them with her hair. To all
sorts of people Jesus cried, " Follow Me." There were the honest
fishermen by the Lake of Gennesaret ; there was the faithful son
who wanted first to go and bury his father ; and to-day it is a
publican who is sitting at the receipt of custom at Capernaum.
He is named Matthew, and he is the Apostle whose name stands
at the head of the Gospel from which the text is taken. The
publican must not be missing from the inner circle of Jesus'
disciples, from those whom He invited to give up their former
calling and become His fellow-workers. He was not only tolerated
but even drawn by Jesus to Himself, and brought forward by
Him that all might know why Jesus came into the world.

If we ask in amazement how it was that a publican could
immediately respond to such a call, and give up the whole course
of his life, a satisfactory answer will occur to each of us. The
publican Matthew, like many more of his order, must have heard
Jesus preaching more than once, and possibly he may even have
listened secretly to the preaching of John the Baptist. This

222 THE PHYSICIAN >

powerful preaching had opened a new world to him, the very
opposite of the world in which he had hitherto lived ; a world of
righteousness, of grace, and of peace. Hence sprang his implicit
trust in the Man who offered Himself to him as a guide to a new
life and a new life-work. He celebrated with a feast the hour in
which Jesus made him a sharer in His own work. On the same
day he invited many of his own class to a meal in his house.
And as they felt drawn to Jesus, so Jesus also seems to have felt
at ease in their company. But what a company that was ! Even
those who know but little of the conditions of the Holy Land at
that time, of the fearful pressure of taxation under which the
Jewish people had long groaned, of the habitual embezzlements
and extortions of those who farmed out the taxes and of the
officials under them, can understand that publicans and sinners
were almost interchangeable words. Jesus Himself did not speak
of them in any other way. The publicans were branded as
sinners ; for they were solemnly excommunicated from the syna-
gogue as traitors and renegades, and most of them were, according
to Jewish law, beaten with forty stripes save one, before they
were cast out, by order of the rulers of the synagogue. Thus
branded as traitors and sinners, they were shut out from all
decent society, and were compelled to herd together, corrupt and
corrupting. Despised, they became despicable, extortionate, base.
We cannot wonder that the Pharisees sneered and shook their
heads when they asked the disciples of Jesus, " Why eateth your
Master with publicans and sinners ? "

^ There was nothing in Eoman tax-gathering which made
vice in that calling a necessary thing. In point of fact, the vice
came from the outside. The masfer-publicans were men of rank
and credit ; but they put their work into the hands of subordinates
who were often taken from the slums. The vices these exhibited
in their profession were brought with them into their profes-
sion ; they came from the previous corruptions of human nature,
and no trade is chargeable with them. We cannot morally label
Matthew by calling him " Matthew the Publican." The truth is,
the obloquy with which Matthew was regarded by his country-
men did not proceed from the fear that he was a bad man, but
from the certainty that he was a bad Jew. The most galling fact
to the Israel of later days was the fact that she paid tribute to
another land. Ideally she claimed to be the mistress of the world

ST. MATTHEW ix. 12 223

— the nation into whose treasury all tribute should flow. That
such a nation should pay taxes to a foreign people, a Gentile
people, was an awful thought. It was a pain worse than lacera-
tion, more cruel than a blow. But there was the possibility of a
pain more poignant still. It was bad enough that the tribute of
homage from Israel should be collected by a Boman. But what
if the man who gathered it should be a son of Israel herself !
What if the man who taunted her with her misfortunes should be
one born within her pale, bred within her precincts, sheltered
within her privileges — one from whom was due the veneration for
her sanctuary and the reverence for her God ! Now, this often
happened ; and it happened in the case of Matthew. Here was
a Jew who had lost the last shred of patriotism. He had for-
gotten the traditions of his ancestors ! He had not only accepted
without a blush the domination by the stranger ; he had taken
part with the stranger in his domination ! He had attached him-
self to the enemies of his country — had become a collector of their
tribute from his own conquered land ! The man who acted thus
was bound to be execrated by his race. He was execrated on that
ground alone. No amount of personal vices would in the eyes of
his countrymen have added to the enormity of his sin, and no
amount of personal virtues would in the slightest degree have
minimized that sin. His deed was itself to them the acme of all
iniquity, from which nothing could detract and which nothing
could intensify. The blackness of Matthew's character in the
eyes of the Jew was the fact of his apostasy.^

2. It seems as though the disciples of those times were em-
barrassed by the question. Jesus Himself was obliged to give the
answer in their stead. He replied with the proverb : " They that
are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick."
He sheltered His work as a healer of men's souls behind the
example of those who healed men's bodies. " Physicians go where
they are needed " (so ran His argument). " They do not haunt
the houses of the healthy. They go where the disease is, and you
honour them for their devotion to duty. Even so I also go where
I am needed. And if there be any cases specially serious,
specially hopeless, specially friendless, there, above all, must I go.
There My work calls Me, and there My heart leads Me." It was
a great argument, simple as the common speech of men, yet deep
as the Everlasting Love.

> G. Matheson, The Representative Men of tin New Testament, 188.

224 THE PHYSICIAN

Tl In 1842, when Dr. Hutchison Stirling was a young man and
uncertain whether to follow medicine or literature as a profession,
he wrote to Carlyle, who, in course of his reply, said : " Practi-
cally, my advice were very decidedly that you kept by medicine ;
that you resolved faithfully to learn it, on all sides of it, and make
yourself in actual fact an 'larpig, a man that could heal disease. I
am very serious in this. A steady course of professional industry
has ever been held the usefullest support for mind as well as body :
I heartily agree with that. And often I have said. What pro-
fession is there equal in true nobleness to medicine? He that
can abolish pain, relieve his fellow-mortal from sickness, he is the
indisputably usefullest of all men. Him savage and civilized will
honour. He is in the right, be in the wrong who may. As a
Lord Chancellor, under one's horse-hair wig, there might be mis-
givings ; still more perhaps as a Lord Primate, under one's cauli-
flower ; but if I could heal disease, I should say to all men and
angels without fear, ' En ecce ! ' " ^

3. The proverb Christ employed was in common use both by
the Hebrew Eabbis and by the heathen historians and poets. We
find it in the Talmud, and in Greek and Eoman authors. It was
one of that kind of sayings — the gnomic — which the Eabbis spent
their lives in making, learning, repeating. And on our Lord's
lips, as they would instantly feel, it took a tone of rebuke.
They professed to be healers in Israel. They professed to have a
vast store of medicinal words with which they could minister to
the mind diseased, and give saving health to the distempered
soul. But what kind of healers were those who administered
their remedies only to the hale and robust, who shrank from the
sick lest they should expose themselves to infection ? Yet this
was precisely what these professed " healers " were doing. They
had wisdom for the wise, but none for the foolish. They would
explain the secrets of righteousness to the devout, but not to the
sinful. They taught the spiritually healthy how health might be
preserved, but left the sick multitude, the people altogether bom
in sin, to languish and perish in their iniquities.

That was not Christ's conception of the Healer's art and duty.

The true Healer was he who dreaded no infection, who went

fearlessly among the diseased, and sought to make them whole ;

who gave eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, feet to the lame,

' James Sutchiaon Stirling : His Life and Work, 57.

ST. MATTHEW ix. 12 225

vigour to the decrepit, life to the dying. The Healer's duty lay,
not with the few strong and hale, but with the great multitude
lying sick unto death, no man caring for their souls.

In this proverb, therefore, Jesus virtually announced Himself
as the true Healer, the Good Physician, as caring for the weak
more than for the strong, for the. sick more than for the whole.
And, if in that announcement there was rebuke for the Eabbis and
doctors of the law as untrue to their vocation, unfaithful to their
professed art of healing, there was plainly comfort and hope for
the weak and sick who reclined at Matthew's table.

Tf Natural Eeligion is based upon the sense of sin ; it recog-
nizes the disease, but it cannot find, it does not look out for
the remedy. That remedy, both for guilt and for moral impo-
tence, is found in the central doctrine of Eevelation, the Mediation
of Christ. Thus it is that Christianity has been able from the
first to occupy the world and gain a hold on every class of human
society to which its preachers reached ; this is why the Eoman
power and the multitude of religions which it embraced could
not stand against it; this is the secret of its sustained energy,
and its never-flagging martyrdoms ; this is how at present it is
so mysteriously potent, in spite of the new and fearful adversaries
which beset its path. It has with it that gift of staunching and
healing the one deep wound of human nature, which avails more
for its success than a full encyclopedia of scientific knowledge
and a whole library of controversy, and therefore it must last
while human nature lasts.^

Christ the Healbe of the Body.

"They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they
that are sick." This saying serves two purposes — an immediate
apologetic purpose, and a permanent didactic one. Viewing it
first in the former aspect, we remark that the point of the saying
lies not in what is stated, but in what is implied — in the sugges-
tion that Christ was a Physician. That understood, all becomes
plain. For no one is surprised that a physician visits the sick
rather than the healthy, and visits most frequently those that are
most grievously afflicted with disease. Nor does any one dream
' J. H. Newman, The Orammwr of Assent, 480.
ST. MATT. — 15

226 THE PHYSICIAN

of making it an occasion of reproach to a physician that he
shrinks not from visiting those whose maladies are of a loathsome
or dangerous nature, offensive to his senses, involving peril to his
life. That he so acts is regarded simply as the display of a praise-
worthy enthusiasm in his profession, the want of which would
be reckoned a true ground of reproach. Eegard Christ as a
physician, and He at once gets the benefit of these universally
prevalent sentiments as to what is becoming in one who practises
the healing art.

1. Jesus Christ is the Good Physician as well as the Good
Shepherd. His public ministry proves that He recognized two
deadly enemies of mankind. The arch-enemy is sin — the dread
evil that afflicts man's soul, against which He directed the whole
forces of the spiritual world. But there was another enemy
against whom also He waged a hearty and persistent warfare —
disease, which afflicts man's body. He thus proved His love for
man's nature as a whole, and laid down the redemption of the
race on that double basis, without recognizing which the world
can never be fully saved. For man's life is a unity with two
essential sides ; he is a compound of matter and spirit, clay and
divinity, perishable body and immortal soul. Salvation means
restored health ; and the old proverb, Mens sana in corpore sano, is
thus the condition of that perfect well-being which it is the will
of God that we should all normally enjoy. In our actual experi-
ence we seldom attain to this happy condition ; but that we were
meant for it, and that we should strive hard for it, is shown
beautifully and convincingly in the attitude which Jesus took
towards sin and disease throughout His public ministry. He
treated them as enemies, and He recognized their close connexion ;
He did what He could in forgiving men's sins to heal their sick-
nesses ; and in healing their sicknesses He never failed to emphasize
the darker evil of which disease is fundamentally one of the most
persistent symbols. " But that ye may know that the Son of man
hath power to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy),
Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house."

^ Memory and imagination linger lovingly over the external
ministry of healing which filled the land with the name of Jesus.
He was not the only healer : in these words there is an evident

ST. MATTHEW ix. 12 227

reference to physicians in general, men who embodied such skill
and knowledge as were then possible. Luke is called " the be-
loved physician," and no doubt there were many beloved for their
own sakes and honoured for their work's sake. But of exact
science there was, of course, little or none, and every chance for
quackery, for empiricism, for superstition. That is a terribly
suggestive phrase in the story of the woman who touched the hem
of Christ's garment: she "had suffered many things of many
physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing
bettered, but rather grew worse." So is the proverb quoted by
our Lord : " Physician, heal thyself." So also is another ancient
Jewish proverb : " Even the best of doctors deserves Gehenna."
And all who have seen anything of native medicine among
primitive tribes know how often the cure is truly worse than the
disease. It was into all that chaos and crudity that the Son of
Man came with Divine power flowing from Him. Surely there
never was a more beautiful story more exquisitely told! The
main incidents are written on all our hearts. Yet perhaps we do
not estimate largely enough the amount of His work in this
direction, nor the physical and nervous strain it caused Himself
as virtue went forth from Him in His manifold acts of healing.
" Whithersoever he entered, into villages, or city, or country, they
laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might
touch if it were but the border of his garment : and as many as
touched him were made whole." "■

TI Christ's healing of the sick can in no way be termed against
nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed was against the
nature of man, that it is sickness which is abnormal, and not
health. The healing is the restoration of the primitive order.
We should see in the miracle not the infraction of a law, but the
neutralizing of a lower law, the suspension of it for a time by a
higher. Of this abundant analogous examples are evermore going
forward before our eyes. Continually we behold in the world
around us lower laws held in restraint by higher, mechanic by
dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by moral ; yet we do not say,
when the lower thus gives place in favour of the higher, that there
was any violation of law, or that anything contrary to nature
came to pass ; rather we acknowledge the law of a greater free-
dom swallowing up the law of a lesser.*

2. Now, this ministry of physical healing was in itself a

revelation. De Quincey says that Jesus adopted this line of

' J. M. E. Boss, TM Self-Portraitwe of Jesus, 3.
' Archbishop Trench, Notes on the Miracles, 16.

228 THE PHYSICIAN

action " chiefly as the best means of advertising His approach far
and wide, and thus convoking the people to His instructions."
But there was more in it than that, a whole world more, then and
now ! It is the Divine justification of all attempts to alleviate
the external and physical conditions of human life. It is the
Divine justification of medical missions, which have the unique
glory of being not only Christ's own work, but His own work done
in His own way. It is a rebuke to the unreal and affected way
in which we sometimes speak of physical pain as though it were
nothing at all. Had pain and sickness not been great realities,
Christ would not have spent so much time and strength in fight-
ing against them. He stands for ever now in the sight of men as
the goal towards which humanity is travelling. And His ministry
of physical healing is a proof that pain and sickness are temporary
and abnormal things : in God's good time there shall be no more
pain because " the former things are passed away."

^ Within the lifetime of some of us a strange and wonderful
thing happened on the earth — something of which no prophet
foretold, of which no seer dreamt, nor is it among the beatitudes
of Christ Himself ; only St. John seems to have had an inkling
of it in that splendid chapter in which he describes the new
heaven and the new earth, when the former things should pass
away, when all tears should be wiped away, and there should be
no more crying nor sorrow. On October 16, 1846, in the amphi-
theatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, a new
Prometheus gave a gift [sulphuric ether as an anaesthetic] as rich as
that of fire, the greatest single gift ever made to suffering humanity.
The prophecy was fulfilled — neither shall there ie any more pain ;
a mystery of the ages had been solved by a daring experiment by
man on man in the introduction of anaesthesia. As Weir Mitchell
sings in his poem. The Death of Pain —

Whatever triumphs still shall hold the mind,
Whatever gifts shall yet enrich mankind.
Ah! here, no hour shall strike through all the years,
No hour so sweet as when hope, doubt and fears,
'Mid deepening silence watched one eager brain
With Godlike will decree the Death of Pain.

At a stroke the curse of Eve was removed, that multiplied sorrow
of sorrows, representing in all ages the very apotheosis of pain.
The knife has been robbed of its terrors, and the hospitals are
no longer the scenes of those appalling tragedies that made the

ST. MATTHEW ix. 12 229

stoutest quail. To-day we take for granted the silence of the
operating-room, but to reach this Elysiuid we had to travel the
slow road of laborious research, which gave us first the chemical
agents, and then brave hearts had to risk reputation, and even
life itself, in experiments, the issue of which was for long doubtful.
More widespread in its benediction, as embracing all races and
all classes of society, is the relief of suffering, and the prevention
of disease through the growth of modem sanitary science in which
has been fought out the greatest victory in history. ... It is not
simply that the prospect of recovery is enormously enhanced, but
Listerian surgery has diminished suffering to an extraordinary
degree. . . . Man's redemption of man is nowhere so well known
as in the abolition and prevention of the group of diseases which
we speak of as the fevers, or the acute infections. This is the
glory of the science of medicine, and nowhere in the world have
its lessons been so thoroughly carried out as in this country. . . .
If, in the memorable phrase of the Greek philosopher Prodicus,
" That which benefits human life is God," we may see in this new
gospel a link betwixt us and the crowning race of those who eye
to eye shall look on knowledge, and in whose hand nature shall
be an open book.^

XL

Christ the Healer of the Soul.

But, after all, our Lord's supreme purpose was to be a healer
of souls. Had the critics of Jesus but accredited Him with the
character of a Healer of spiritual maladies, they would not have
been scandalized by His habit of associating with the morally and
socially degraded. But that Jesus was a physician was just the
thing that never occurred to their minds. And why ? Because
their own thoughts and ways went in a wholly different direction,
and they judged Him by themselves. The Kabbis and their
disciples were students of the law, and their feeling towards such
as knew not the law was one of simple aversion and contempt.
They expected Jesus to share this feeling. Men are ever apt
to make themselves the standard of moral judgment. The Eabbi
expects all who assume the function of a teacher to share his
contempt for the multitude ignorant of legal technicalities and
niceties ; the " philosophe," confining his sympathies to the culti-
' Sir W. Osier, MwiCt Sedenyition o/Man, 81.

230 THE PHYSICIAN

vated few, regards with mild disdain the interest taken by philan-
thropists in popular movements ; the " mystagogue " who invites
select persons to initiation into religious mysteries adopts for
himself, and expects all others belonging to the spiritual aristo-
cracy of mankind to adopt along with him, the sentiment of the
Eoman poet : " I hate and abhor the profane rabble." The mass
of mankind have eternal reason for thankfulness that Jesus Christ
came not as a Eabbi, or as a " philosophe," or as a " hierophant,"
with the proud, narrow contempt characteristic of men bearing
these titles, but as a healer of souls, with the broad, warm
sympathies and the enthusiasm of humanity congenial to such
a vocation. The fact exposed Him to the censure of contempor-
aries, but by way of compensation it has earned for Him the
gratitude of all after ages.

^ Thou speakest of thy sin and miseries, which do indeed
make a barrier between God and us : but, if I know Jesus ever
so little, I think, when I read or hear such complaints, of practised
physicians, when they are confronted with a common disease:
they are not unprovided, they have medicines for it that never fail.
So say I now: Jesus knows plenty of means of healing, show
Him all thy wounds with a weeping heart, ask in humility and
confidence for His mighty healing, and that He may heal thee
thoroughly; but this may not happen unless He, for a while,
increases thy wounds by a deep sense of thy sin, misery, and
darkness, which indeed is means in love that thou hereafter, yea,
for ever, mayest feel no further need.^

1. That Christ came into the world as a healer of souls is a
fact full of didactic meaning. It means, first, that Christianity is
before all things a religion of redemption. Its proper vocation is
to find the lost, to lift the low, to teach the ignorant, to set free
those in bonds, to wash the unclean, to heal the sick ; and it must
go where it can discover the proper subjects of its art, remembering
that the whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

(1) There is in the natural heart of man an indifferent selfish-
ness and a careless cruelty which make men always let the weak
go to the wall, and very often trample savagely on the fallen.
They are akin in this to the creatures of the field ; to the hounds
that bite their wounded brother in the kennel ; to the sea-gulls
' Gerhardt Tersteegen,

ST. MATTHEW ix. 12 231

that swoop down on the wounded bird as the wave is already
beginning to be crimsoned with its blood. Among savage tribes
the sick and the injured were killed or left to die. In polished
Greece and Imperial Eome children were exposed and slaves
were mercilessly tortured. Christ taught the world that this
apathy of heart is earthly, sensual, devilish. He taught us once
and for ever the sacredness, not of fine gifts and fair and brilliant
intellects, but of man as man. It was not for the sake of the
rich, the strong, the mighty, the noble, that He took our nature
upon Him, but for poor men, for slaves, for carpenters, for tax-
gatherers, for fishermen, for daily labourers, for peasant women,
nay, even more, for the sake of the sinful, the outcast, the fallen,
for all at whom men, who are in most respects the causes of their
ruin, point the finger of cruel scorn. He saw the soul of beauty
in things ugly, and the potentiality of goodness in things evil.

^ There is an Eastern legend about Christ so profound of
meaning, so full of instruction, that we are half tempted to think
that it must be true in fact as it is in feeling. On the high road,
under the blistering sunlight, lay a poor, miserable dog that had
died of starvation. Clouds of flies had begun to settle on the
carcase, and the lazy, aimless wayfarers gathered round to look at
it, scaring away for a moment the obscene vultures that hovered
near; and all of them, one after another, expressed their idle
disgust and their pitiless loathing of it. But at last they fell
silent, for the Master approached, and for a moment He stood and
cast His eye on that horrible object, on that dead creature which
God had made, and there was silence, and at last He said, " Its
teeth are as white as pearls," and so He passed on. He who cared
for the lilies and for the lions cared also for the little sparrows,
and had His word of pity even for that dead dog. I think that
he who could have invented such a legend must have seen very
deeply into the heart of Christ.^

^ The late General Gordon, in one of his published letters,
describes the remorse he long felt for a trivial act of cruelty into
which he inadvertently fell, A lizard was climbing up the side
of his house in the sunshine and he thoughtlessly flicked it with
his cane and so cut short its life. He had often shed blood upon
the battlefield without the slightest hesitation, and felt never a
qualm of conscience afterwards. But this act troubled him more
than the carnage in which he had taken his part as a soldier.

^ Dean Farrar.

232 THE PHYSICIAN

He was haunted by the feeling that he had destroyed a life that
was more meagre in capacity than his own, and much shorter in
its span. In the regret to which he confessed there was a genuine
ethical discernment, for every virtuous nature feels itself under
special obligation to the weak. God thinks mercifully of us
because, in comparison with His own rich, manifold, exhaustless
and immortal blessedness, our lives are chequered, circumscribed,
crippled, and poverty-stricken. We are mortal, blooms trembling
to their fall, fading dreams, fabrics of exposed nerve, phantasms
of alternating smiles and tears. We do not expiate our sins by
that which we suffer, and God has no indulgent laxity for wilful,
unwept, reiterated transgression ; but our frailties woo the
marvellous compassions of His Fatherhood. Perhaps if He had
not made us out of the dust we could not have stood so near the
sacred centre of His pitying love.^

(2) The whole need not a physician. Are there any men,
then, who are whole ? Jesus did not directly deny it. The
publicans and sinners were sick people — sick in soul, sick in honour,
sick in conscience. The Pharisees were whole in comparison with
them. They had remained true to their nationality, they lived
correctly according to the law of their fathers, they were held in
honour by their nation as the guardians and teachers of the law.
If they were of different minds amongst themselves on religious and
moral questions, still they had and knew the law, and were well
versed in expounding it. They had had great teachers, whose
decisions were accounted by them as a gospel. They would also
gladly have recognized a new Master, who in their own way,
only more clearly and more intelligently than their former
masters, would comment on the Word of God and teach the true
wisdom of life. But they had no need of a Teacher who said, " I
am a Physician," because they did not feel ill.

^ In the great company of those who have been baptized in
the name of Christ, we find many people like the Pharisees, who
are unable to accept Jesus and to desire a closer relationship to
Him, just because Jesus is a Physician and they feel well. The
Gospel is a medicine : to one it tastes bitter, to another nause-
ously sweet. Who cares to take medicine when he feels perfectly
well ? A draught of fresh water from a natural or an artificial
well, or a glass of wine at a joyful feast, tastes better and does
more good to a man who is whole.

' T. G. Selby, The God of the Frail, 6.

ST. MATTHEW ix. 12 233

How are we to reply to this? Are we to prove to such
people that they are sick, and that our whole nation is sick, from
the crown of the head to the sole of the foot ? Are we to force
ourselves upon them, and show that their imaginary health does
not exist, and that they are sadly in need of the Physician?
That would not be like unto the Master. Jesus did not say to
the Pharisees, "Come unto Me," He said, "Go your way."
Neither did He say, " Come and learn to know Me better," but,
" Go and learn what is written in your Bible : ' I will have mercy
and not sacrifice.' " If ye were compassionate, ye would not look
down so contemptuously on degraded and inferior people, and so
askance at those who take an interest in them ; ye would not find
the distance so great between them and yourselves, but would
acknowledge them as your equals in all the essentials which make
up the misery and the dignity of man. Go and learn better what
ye yourselves acknowledge as the chief command of your God, the
law of love. Then prove yourselves, and thus learn to know your-
selves. Perhaps the day will come when ye will find yourselves
destitute of love, and therefore destitute of all true life, when ye
will feel sick in the innermost centre of your being. Eemember
then that there is a Physician who heals all diseases. Jesus still
speaks thus to those who are whole, and who turn their backs
upon Him; and He can scarcely speak in any other way to
many of those who confess Him.^

^ A minister, when he had done preaching in a country
village, said to a farm-labourer who had been listening to him,
" Do you think Jesus Christ died to save good people, or lad
people ? " " Well, sir," said the man, " I should say He died to
save good people." " But did He die to save bad people ? " " No,
sir ; no, certainly not, sir." " Well, then, what will become of you
and me ? " " Well, sir, I do not know. I dare say you be pretty
good, sir ; and I try to be as good as I can." That is just the
common doctrine ; and after all, though we think it has died out
among us, that is the religion of ninety-nine English people out
of every hundred who know nothing of Divine grace : we are to
be as good as we can ; we are to go to church or to chapel, and do
all that we can, and then Jesus Christ died for us, and we shall be
saved. Whereas the gospel is that He did not do anything at all
for people who can rely on themselves, but gave Himself for lost
and ruined ones. He did not come into the world to save self-
righteous people ; on their own showing, they do not want to be
saved. He comes because we need Him, and therefore He comes
only to those who need Him ; and if we do not need Him, and are
' T. Zahn, Bread amd Salt from the Word of Qod, 235.

234 THE PHYSICIAN

such good, respectable people, we must find our own way to heaven.
Need, need alone, is that which quickens the physician's foot-
steps.i

2. That Christ's supreme purpose in coming was to heal men's
souls means, further, that Christianity must be the universal
religion. A religion which aims at the healing of spiritual
disease, and which has confidence in its power to effect the cure,
is entitled to supersede all other religions and to become the faith
of all mankind ; and it will be well for the world when it has
become such in fact. The world everywhere needs this religion,
for sin is universal.

It is not unlikely that the Pharisees had an instinctive per-
ception that the new love for the sinful exhibited in the conduct
of Jesus meant a religious revolution, the setting aside of Jewish
exclusiveness, and the introduction of a new humanity, in which
Jew and Gentile should be one. They might very easily arrive
at this conclusion. They had but to reflect on the terms they
employed to describe the objects of Christ's special care.
Publicans were to them as heathens, and " sinners " was in their
dialect a synonym for Gentiles. It might, therefore, readily
occur to them that the man who took such a warm interest in the
publicans and sinners of Judsea could have no objection, on
principle, to fellowship with Gentiles, and that when His religion
had time to develop its peculiar tendencies, it was likely to
become the religion, not of the Jews alone, but of mankind.

Whether the men who found fault with the sinner's Friend had
so much penetration or not, it is certain at least that Jesus
Himself was fully aware whither His line of action tended. He
revealed the secret in the words, " I came not to call the
righteous, but sinners." In describing His mission in these terms.
He intimated in effect that in its ultimate scope that mission
looked far beyond the bounds of Palestine, and was likely to have
even more intimate relations with the outside world than with
the chosen race. He knew too well how righteous his countrymen
accounted themselves to cherish the hope of making a wide and
deep impression upon them. He deemed it indeed a duty to try,
and He did try faithfully and persistently, but always as one who

' 0. H. Spurgeon.

ST, MATTHEW ix. 12 235

knew that the result would be that described in the sad words of
the fourth evangelist, "He came unto his own, and his own
received him not," And as He had an infinite longing to save,
and was not content to waste His life, He turned His attention
to more likely subjects ; to such as were not puffed up with the
conceit of righteousness, and would not take it as an offence to
be called sinners. Such He found among the degraded classes
of Jewish society ; but there was no reason why they should be
sought there alone. The world was full of sinners ; why, then,
limit the mission to the sinful in Judsea ? Shall we say because
the Jews were lesser sinners than the Gentiles ? But that would
be to make the mission after all a mission to the righteous. If it
is to be a mission to the sinful, let it be that out and out. Let
Him who is intrusted with it say, " The greater the sinner the
greater his need of Me." That was just what Christ did say in
effect when He uttered with significant emphasis the words, " I
came not to call the righteous, but sinners." It is, therefore, a
word on which all men everywhere can build their hopes, a word
by which the Good Physician says to every son of Adam, " Look
unto me, and be saved,"

^ Christ's way with sinners was to love them, to believe in
their recoverability. He tackled the outcasts as an object-lesson
in the possibilities of a loved humanity. To preach His Gospel
to men is to announce your faith in a Divine something in them
which will respond to the Divine something you bring to them.
It is this spirit which makes Christianity the most daring of
optimisms ; which puts it into magnificent contrast with the
fatalism of the East and the fatalism of the West. While
Schopenhauer declares you can no more change the character of
a bad man than the character of a tiger ; while Nietzsche sneers
at the weak and exalts force and repression, the Gospel goes on
hoping and goes on saving.^

' J. Brierley, Edigion and To-Day, 37,

The Ministry of Small Things.

"97

Literature.

Austin (G. B.), The Beauty of Goodness, 81.

Binney (T.), Money, 220.

Broughton (L. G.), Gh/risticmity and the Commonplace, 41.

Burrell (D. J.), The Unaecountahle Man, 214.

Carter (T. T.), Meditations on the Public Life of Ov/r Lord, i. 256.

Jeffrey (G.), The Believer's Privilege, 73.

Jones (J. M.), The Cup of Cold Water, 3.

Maclaren (A.), A Year's Ministry, ii. 331.

„ „ Expositions: St. Matthew ix.-xvii., 110.

Parker (J.), The Cavendish Pulpit, i., No. 10.
Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 201.
Wiseman (N.), Children's Sermons, 136.
Christian World Pulpit, Ixxx. 122 (J. C. Owen).
Examiner, April 27, 1905 (J. H. Jowett).
Homiletic Review, New Ser., zx. 626 (G. M. Meacham).

»33

The Ministry of Small Things.

And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of
cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in
no wise lose his reward, — Matt. x. 42.

In ordinary circumstances there is scarcely any act that can have
less about it of self-denial and self-sacrifice than the gift to any
one of a cup of cold water. The water is so abundant, and the
gift of it involves so little cost or care, that it is bestowed without
thought of obligation, rendered and received without thought of
any gratitude being due. Here, however, our Lord brings into
play a principle which dignifies and ennobles the simplest acts,
and gives signal value to the smallest gifts. It is not the value
of the gift in itself, but the end the giver had in view, and the
spirit in which he gave it ; it is not the gift, but the motive that
the Lord causes to stand out in broadest relief before our eye.
The gift may be great in itself, and yet, in so far as the spirit and
motive of the giver are concerned, may be valueless. And, on
the other hand, the gift or deed may be insignificant in itself,
yet when coupled with the spirit and motive may be worthy of
special cognizance and honour. More than all this — for here,
withdrawing our minds from all vain and selfish motives, striking
a death-blow at all self-seeking Pharisaism and hypocrisy, measur-
ing men's acts by the high standard of genuine love to Himself,
as represented in the person of a disciple — our Lord leads us
particularly to note that all acts are noble — are worthy of honour
and reward — only as the motives of the actor are unselfish and
loving, and spring out of regard to Christ Himself and respect to
His name and glory. Thus, if we were to place in one scale of
the balance what men should reckon the noblest deed or the
noblest gift with only the love of self in it,-and in the other scale
the most insignificant act or gift with the love of Christ, and
bestowed upon a disciple for His sake, that insignificant act or

339

240 THE MINISTRY OF SMALL THINGS

gift, thus freighted with love to Him, would immeasurably out-
weigh the other. Not only so, but if we take the Saviour's
estimate. He reckons the one as valueless, while He tells that the
other shall not lack its reward.

Little Things.

1. Life's most perfect gifts, life's most perfect mercies, are little
things. "A cup of cold water." We have sometimes become
singularly blind. We set before ourselves as life's most perfect
prizes, the summing up of life, the essence of its bliss, the things
which the experience of every age has proved have no relation
to genuine bliss at all. We strive and deny ourselves, become
untrue to our divinest longings, strangle our noblest instincts in
order to possess them, and they leave us hungry and haggard as
ever. But it is common things, single things, that quench thirst ;
not spiced wine, but the "cup of cold water." Health, work,
genuine friendship, the caresses of little children, the love that
set its hand in yours one beautiful morning five-and-twenty years
ago, which has become deeper, richer, sweeter, as your head has
grown grey. God's sweet, simple gifts ! A soul which is always
young, which is as fresh in old age as when it came first from
the hand of God. That is life's most precious wealth, life's most
perfect gift — the " cup of cold water."

^ I saw a rich man's Bible a little while ago, and on the
inside cover there was gummed a little message of goodwill from
a poor man, and the rich man found refreshment in it daily. It
is a delightful study to go through the Epistles of St. Paul and
to discover how many obscure people ministered to the great
Apostle's refreshment. " The Lord give mercy unto the house of
Onesiphorus ; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of
my chain." " I was refreshed by the coming of Fortunatus and
Achaius." These were all subordinate people; their names are
linked with no great exploits ; but they gave cups of cold water
to a mighty Apostle, and kept his spirit strong.^

2. Our real salvation, the things which refresh and put heart
into us, are the simplicities of the gospel — the cup of cold water.

' J, H. Jowett, in The Examiner, April 27, 1905.

ST. MATTHEW x. 42 241

Charles Kingsley was a scientist, but he was a poet also in every
fibre of his soul ; and it is only a scientist who is a poet that can
expound his own science. Charles Kingsley showed how the great
volcanoes have been God's most glorious workers. Every harvest
in the fruitful plains of Europe is due to the beneficent work of
the volcanoes ages ago ; every grain of the rich soil was melted
out of the solid granite. It is a romantic story, a perfect fairy
tale, an enchantment, if you know how to read it, if you have the
imagination to picture the whole process to yourself. But the
embarrassed farmer with a hundred calls upon him, who finds it
hard work to provide for his children, has little heart to think of
those things ; he only wonders what the next harvest is going to
be. So the great mysteries of theology — they ought to be studied.
Depend upon it that to give up thinking is to impoverish the
gospel. But those matters are not our real salvation. There
come times when those things are not bread, but stones — a highly
flavoured and elaborately cooked feast, but we cannot eat it.
You have laid out the table grandly. Like Ahasuerus at his
banquet, you have set out " vessels of gold " and poured " royal
wine " into them ; but I am thirsty, and the fever is in my blood
still ; I crave for " a cup of cold water." " God is love " ; " God
80 loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son " ; " Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved " ; " Him that
cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out " ; " Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners " ; " Where I am, there shall ye be
also " ; "I go to prepare a place for you " — that is the " cup of
cold water " ; I drink deep of it ; it quenches my thirst ; I am
young again ; despair is gone ; I am master of life ; nothing can
quail me. It is the " cup of cold water " that we need.

^ I have heard that during the battle of Fredericksburg there
was a little patqh of ground which was occupied in turn by the
contending forces. It was covered with the dead and the dying ;
and all through the afternoon of a weary day the cry was heard,
" Water, water ! " A Southern soldier begged of his captain to be
allowed to answer those piteous cries, but met with the refusal,
" No ; it would be certain death." He persisted, however, saying,
" Above the roar of artillery and the crack of the muskets I hear
those cries for water : let me go ! " He set out with a bucket of
water and a tin cup ; for awhile the bullets sang around him, but
he seemed to bear a charmed life. Then, as the Federals beyond

ST. MATT. — 16

242 THE MINISTRY OF SMALL THINGS

the field perceived his purpose, the firing gradually ceased ; and
for an hour and a half there was an armistice, while the soldier in
grey, in full sight of both armies, went about on his errand of
mercy. Verily, that was the truce of God !

And this was the kindness of our Lord. He came from
heaven to bring the cup of cold water to dying men. Ah, that
was the greatest kindness that ever was known. It was the most
sublime heroism too. But the firing did not cease when He came
to us with the water from the well beside the gate at Bethlehem ;
His mercy toward us cost Him His hfe. What shall we render
unto the Lord for His loving kindness ? ^

IL

Small Services.

1. There cannot seemingly be a more trivial service than a
cup of cold water given to the passing traveller. So we think in
this land, where springs of water and rivers abound, and where a
cup of cold water can be so easily obtained. If, however, we go to
the desert, as the weary traveller passes along it under the burning
rays of an Eastern sun, how precious to him is the cup of cold
water to allay his thirst ! There have been seasons of famine
when a loaf of bread was of more value than gold, and when he
who brought it was the messenger of life to those who were
starving with hunger and staring death in the face. It may seem
a very trifling thing to pay a visit to the house of a poor disciple
and leave there with him some small token of Christian kindness ;
yet the visit and the act may have been light and comfort to him
in the hour of despondency and distress. The widow on our
northern Highland coast who lost her only son in a storm because
there was no light to guide his frail bark to the natural inlet of
safety by the shore might seem to do a very slight thing when
every evening thereafter at sundown she put her little lighted oil-
lamp in the end window of her humble abode to burn till dawn of
the morning ; yet the trifling act, as some might reckon it, was
the safety of many of the island fishermen in nights of storm.
Could we bring before our eye all the results of the acts that in
themselves seem but slight and insignificant, but which love to
' D. J. Burrell, The Unaccountable Man, 222.

ST. MATTHEW x. 42 243

Christ has evoked, it would be found that they have formed the
starting-point of influences that have told materially upon the
well-being of mankind.

^ The other morning I saw an ingenious machine which told
with the minutest exactitude the strength of a bar of metal put to
the test. You had only to look at the indicator, and it told you
within the hundredth fraction of a pound what weight that bar of
metal could bear. So the smallest thing may indicate the force of
Christian life; the store of Christian self-denial, the power of
Christian service, there is in you.^

2. Few men have the opportunity of performing great things
in the cause of the Lord. There are few that have great things,
as these words are generally understood, to do in the way either of
service or of sacrifice for Christ. All men cannot be missionaries,
or devote the whole of their time to direct work in the vineyard
of the Lord. All are not blessed with temporal abundance. Most
Christian men are occupied in the business of the world, and have
to engage in toil for their daily bread. Some, indeed, can
command all their time, but most have little more than their
Sabbaths and their savings to offer to the Master. They can give
only a portion of their means and shreds of their time for labour
in the vineyard of the Lord. They can give no more, for they
have no more to give. But we can all do little things ; and there
are a hundred little things round about us which we can do, and
which are crying to be done. In one of the very greatest of his
poems Wordsworth speaks of

that best portion of a good man's life.
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

And that is surely what every good man feels. If ever we have
performed Heaven's highest ministry, and done some service which
angels might have coveted, it has been in some hour when on a
bleak hillside we found a lost sheep of the Good Shepherd, and
bore it home to care, to love, and to safety. And it was all done
so simply. No church was near. We came not to God by the
path of beautiful service. We preached no sermon. We sat in
the house of loneliness, where men go softly, as though they
' J, M. Jones, The Gup of Cold Water, 13.

244 THE MINISTRY OF SMALL THINGS

feared a haunting spectre, and simply spoke of the many mansions
in the Father's home. We watched for a brief hour beside a child
while the fever held him in its power, and spoke words of delicate
sympathy to the woman who was his mother. We smiled upon a
man when he was in the bitterness of defeat. We spoke a word
of encouragement to one who had a heavy burden to carry. And
our acts were cups of cold water to dry and parched lips, and
carried God's great hope and encouragement to hearts that were
lonely and sad.

^ Mrs. Deane, who had often been a guest at Bishopscourt,
writes : " When I first went out to Capetown in 1898, a friend
gave me an introduction to the Archbishop and Mrs. West Jones,
and said to me, ' I have written about you to the Archbishop, and
you will be right.' And so, indeed, I was ! The friendship I found
at Bishopscourt, and my frequent visits to that lovely home, were
the greatest happiness in my life at the Cape. Whatever the
Archbishop did, he pat his whole heart into it at the time, and
this, I think, was largely the secret of his great charm. When he
was talking to any one, he made that person feel that, for the
moment, he or she was his one interest in life. And so, again,
his heart was in his work or in his recreation, whichever it might
be. I think that the Archbishop will be remembered much by
his ' faithfulness in little things ' — all those small details which go
to make life pleasant. He liked to recollect and mark birthdays
and other anniversaries, to give wedding presents, and to do all
sorts of little, charming, unexpected acts of friendliness. He
never omitted to answer a letter, either personally or by deputy,
and I believe that he really enjoyed being asked to do kindnesses,
if he had not already discovered his own way first. In more
important matters he was ever ready to give advice and sympathy.
Every one who knew him loved him. And no wonder ! " ^

What are we set on earth for ? Say, to toil ;
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines.
For all the heat o' the day, till it declines.
And Death's mild curfew shall from work assoil.
God did anoint thee with His odorous oil.
To wrestle, not to reign ; and He assigns
All thy tears over, like pure crystallines.
For younger fellow-workers of the soil
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labour, to their heart and hand,

' M. H. M. Wood, A Father in God, : The Episcopate of W. West Jones, 448.

ST. MATTHEW x. 42 245

From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer.
And God's grace fructify through thee to all.
The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand,
And share its dewdrop with another near.i

3. The greatest things are poor, if the little things are not
done — those minor courtesies which do so much to oil the wheels,
to soften the jars, and to heal the heartaches of the world.

Tf The most miserable homes I have ever known have often
been those that ought to have been the happiest ; I envied them
before I got to know the whole story. The house was a palace ;
the head of the household had worked hard, had made money ; he
could command every luxury, and it was his one pride that every-
thing that money could command was at the disposal of every
member of his home-circle; art had done its best, culture had
added its sweetest ministries; everything there — everything but
the delicate courtesies, the ingenious devices of love, which are
life's most perfect graces.*

^ In Oscar Wilde's tragic book, Br Profundis, the author t«lls
us how unspeakably he was helped in his shame, when a friend
paid him the common courtesy of lifting his hat in his presence !
But when these simplicities of life are consecrated they become
sublimities, and they work the Lord's will with amazing fruitful-
ness. I think what is needed, above many things in our time, is
the sanctification of conventionalities. Some men's " Good morn-
ing " falls upon your spirits like morning dew. There is one man
in this city whom I sometimes meet upon a Sunday morning, and
his "The Lord be with you" revives my spirit with the very
ministry of grace. All these are cups of cold water.*

IIL

The Motive.

The true value of an action is to be measured by its motive.
The cup of cold water must be given " in the name of a disciple,"
or, as St. Mark puts it, " because ye are Christ's." There is nothing
uncommon in the act of giving a cup of cold water to the thirsty
one. But when we give the cup of cold water to the little ones

'■ E. B. Browning.

» J. M. Jones, The Gup of Cold Water, 11.

' J. H. Jowett, in The Mmmimr, April 27, 1905.

246 THE MINISTRY OF SMALL THINGS

upon whose brow we read the name of Christ, who died for them,
then the action is raised to the moral sphere and wins the com-
mendation of the Lord of the little ones. A common deed becomes
uncommon when done in the name and for the sake of Christ,
Eight motives transform men and their actions.

1. The expression, " these little ones," refers to His disciple-
band, whom He regards as little children in their want of experience
and advantage. They had the undeveloped perceptions of a little
child ; their spiritual senses were not sure and certain. They had
a child's immaturity of mind, and a great thought overpowered
them. They had a child's uncertainty of limb, and were easily
made to stumble. They were " little ones " in the sphere of
advantage. None of the " great ones " of the earth were among
them. None of them occupied rank, or possessed wealth, or were
adorned with culture. We find among them children of dis-
advantage with their powers undisciplined and unknown. Mr.
Feeble-mind was there. Mr. Little-faith was among them. Mr.
Limp-will was of their number. And these " little ones " are
among us in all times. The roads are full of them. We may find
them by every wayside. And the Lord looks upon them with
tender pity and solicitous love.

T[ There is an Eastern story of a king who built a great temple
at his own cost, no other one being allowed to do even the smallest
part of the work. The king's name was put upon the temple as
the builder of it. But, strange to say, when the dedication day
came it was seen that a poor widow's name was there in place
of the king's. The king was angry and gave command that the
woman bearing the name on the scroll should be found. They
discovered her at last among the very poor and brought her before
the king. He demanded of her what she had done toward the
building of the temple. She said, " Nothing." When pressed to
remember anything she had done, she said that one day when
she saw the oxen drawing the great stones past her cottage,
exhausted in the heat and very weary, she had in pity given them
some wisps of hay. And this simple kindness to dumb animals,
prompted by a heart's compassion, weighed more in God's sight
than all the king's vast outlay of money. What we truly do for
Christ and in love is glorious in His sight.^

^ The Vision of Sir Launfal, by James Eussell Lowell, glows

' J. E. Miller, Owr New Mens, 132.

ST. MATTHEW x. 42 247

with the glory of the right motive. Sir Launfal was a knight of
the North Countree, who made a vow to travel over sea and land
in search of the Holy Grail. Before his departure, he sleeps, and
in the dreams of the night he sees a vision of what is and what
will be. From the proudest hall in the North Countree, Sir
Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, and saw a leper
crouching by his gate, who begged with his hand and moaned as
he sat. A loathing came over the knight, for this man, foul and
bent, seemed a blot on the summer morn. In scorn he tossed him
a bit of gold. Years seemed to pass, for in our dreams we live an
age in a moment. Sir Launfal, old and grey, returns from his
weary quest to find his heir installed in his place. Unknown, he
is turned away from his own door.

As he sits down in the snow outside the gates, musing of
sunnier climes, he hears once more the leper's voice, "For
Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms." The knight turns to the
sound and sees again the leper cowering beside him, lone and
white :

And Sir Launfal said, " I behold in thee

An image of Him who died on the tree ;

Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns.

Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns.

And to thy life were not denied

The wounds in the hands and feet and side:

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;

Behold, through Him, I give to thee ! "

So he parted in twain his single crust, and broke the ice of the
stream and gave the leper to eat and drink. Then, lo ! a wondrous
transformation took place.

The leper no longer crouched at his side,

But stood before him glorified,

Shining and tall and fair and straight

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, —

Himself the Gate whereby men can

Enter the temple of God in Man.

And the voice that was softer than silence said,

"Lo, it is I, be not afraid!

In many climes, without avail.

Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;

Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou

Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now;

248 THE MINISTRY OF SMALL THINGS

This crust is My body broken for thee,
This water His blood that died on the tree;
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need ;
Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,
Himself, his hungering neighbour, and Me."

Thus, with the true instinct of a prophet, did Lowell portray
the right motive in its recognition. When Sir Launfal in scorn
tossed the bit of gold to the leper, the Holy Grail was far away
from the seeker ; but when he shared his crust in the name of
Christ, he found what he sought. " Ye ask and receive not,
because ye ask amiss." *

2. Eeal goodness can never be conjBned to great acts only. It
invests with sudden glory the life of him who ventures all and,
leaving those things which men count dearest, goes to tell the
story of the love of Jesus to men who sit in darkness and the
shadow of death. But it also clothes with exquisite graciousness
those who, by the lesser ministries of life, strive in all things to
interpret the beauty of the spirit of God, and hour by hour to give
fine revelations of the heart of Christ. It blazes out in some
great piece of sacrifice or self-renunciation, but it shines with a
persistent light in the exquisite self-forgetfulness of a life that
desires only to do the will of Jesus. David consecrating great
wealth to the building of a temple, and a poor widow casting two
mites into the treasury ; Moses delivering a whole people from
cruel bondage, and a simple unknown man giving a cup of cold
water only to one who is hot after life's fierce battle — all these
manifest one and the selfsame goodness, which is the heart's love
and loyalty to God flowing through all our deeds and consecrating
them all.

^J When Edward Payson was dying, he said, " I long to give
a full cup of happiness to every human being." If with such
urgency of desire we should daily go out among men, how selfish-
ness would perish out of our dealings with them ! What love
would be in our homes ! What changes would be wrought in
human society ! Now giving food to the needy, clothes to the
naked, a toy to a child, opportunity for work to the unemployed,

' J. 0. Owen.

ST. MATTHEW x. 42 249

a good book to one who will prize it as the thirsty do water — in
such simple ways will streams be made to flow through life's
deserts, and cups of comfort come to famishing lips.^

IV.

The Eewakd.

Some people tell us that it is defective morality in Christianity
to bribe men to be good by promising them heaven, and that he
who is actuated by such a motive is selfish. Now that fantastic
and overstrained objection may be very simply answered by two
considerations : self-regard is not selfishness, and Christianity does
not propose the future reward as the motive for goodness. The
motive for goodness is love to Jesus Christ ; and if ever there was
a man who did acts of Christian goodness only for the sake of
what he would get by them, the acts were not Christian, because
the motive was wrong. But it is a piece of fastidiousness to forbid
us to reinforce the great Christian motive, which is love to Jesus
Christ, by the thought of the recompense of reward. It is a
stimulus and an encouragement, not the motive for goodness.
This text shows us that it is a subordinate motive, for it says that
the reception of a prophet, or of a righteous man, or of " one of
these little ones," which is rewardable, is the reception " in the
name of" a prophet, a disciple, and so on; or, in other words,
recognizing the prophet, or the righteousness, or the disciple for
what he is, and because he is that, and not because of the reward,
receiving him with sympathy and solace and help.

1. What is the reward of heaven ? " Eternal life," people say.
Yes ! " Blessedness." Yes ! But where does the life come from,
and where does the blessedness come from? They are both
derived, they come from God in Christ ; and in the deepest sense,
and in the only true sense, God is heaven, and God is the reward
of heaven. "I am thy shield" so long as dangers need to be
guarded against, and thereafter " thy exceeding great reward." It
is the possession of God that makes all the heaven of heaven, the
immortal life which His children receive, and the blessedness with
which they are enraptured. We are heirs of immortality, we are
1 G. M. Meacham, in The HomUetic Review, xx. 527.

250 THE MINISTRY OF SMALL THINGS

heirs of life, we are heirs of blessedness, because, and in the
measure in which, we become heirs of God.

^ " You forgot to mention where heaven is," said the good lady
to her pastor after a sermon on the better land. " On yonder
hill-top stands a cottage, madam," replied the man of God; "a
widow lives there in want ; she has no bread, no fuel, no medicine,
and her child is at the point of death. If you will carry to her
this afternoon some little cup of cold water in the name of Him
who went about doing good, you will find the answer to your
inquiry." ^

2. In heaven as on earth men will get just as much of God as
they can hold ; and in heaven as on earth capacity for receiving
God is determined by character. The gift is one, the reward is
one, and yet the reward is infinitely various. It is the same light
which glows in all the stars, but " star differeth from star in glory."
It is the same wine, the new wine of the Kingdom, that is poured
into all the vessels, but the vessels are of divers magnitudes,
though each be full to the brim.

3. The reward is both present and future.

(1) There is present compensation for doing good. It is im-
possible to do good with a loving heart to Christ without growing
good. Every act of kindness done in the name of a disciple, and
every work engaged in and prosecuted for His sake, and every
gift conscientiously made and bestowed for the advancement of
His glory, expands the heart, enlarges the sympathies, and
deepens the sources of its joy. There is no such pleasure to the
heart as that which proceeds from a deed of Christian benevolence
and kindness, done from love to the Saviour and His cause.
Besides, the heart's true pleasure is increased in the proportion
that it is opened by the expanding power of true Christian love
through acts of Christian kindness done for the Saviour's sake.
The deed reacts in blessing on the doer. Every lesson of Chris-
tian truth which a Sabbath-school teacher imparts makes more
precious to him the water of life as he fills up his cup with bless-
ing for the souls of others. Every word we utter for Christ, every
deed we perform, every gift we bestow, is even now in its reactive
influence a present reward.

' M. J. McLeod, Heavenly Hwrmomesfor Earthly Living, 38.

ST. MATTHEW x. 42 251

^ Expositors of sacred Scripture have spoken diversely con-
cerning these rewards. For some say that all of them refer to
the future bliss : as Ambrose, on Luke. But Augustine says that
they pertain to the present life. Whereas Chrysostom says in
his Homilies that some of them pertain to the future life, but
some to the present. For the elucidation of which we are to con-
sider that the hope of future bliss may exist in us in virtue of two
things: first, in virtue of a certain preparation or qualification
for future bliss, which comes through merit; and secondly, by
virtue of a certain imperfect beginning of future bliss in holy men,
even in this life. For the promise of fruit in a tree is there in
one fashion when it throws out its green foliage ; but in another
fashion when the first formation of the fruit begins to appear.
And thus the merits spoken of in the Beatitudes are of the nature
of preparations or qualifications for blessedness, whether perfect
or incipient. Whereas the rewards set forth may be either the
perfect bliss itself, in which case they pertain to the future hfe :
or a certain beginning of bliss, as found in perfect men, and in
that case they pertain to the present life. For as soon as a man
begins to make progress in the acts appropriate to the virtues and
(spiritual) gifts, there may be good hope of him that he shall come
to the perfection alike of the pilgrimage [of earth] and of the
fatherland [of heaven].^

^ In helping others we benefit ourselves ; we heal our own
wounds in binding up those of others.*

(2) The highest reward will come hereafter. The present life
is only the seed-plot of eternity. "Nothing human ever dies."
All our deeds drag after them inevitable consequences ; but if you
will put your trust in Jesus Christ He wiU not deal with you
according to your sins, nor reward you according to your in-
iquities ; and the darkest features of the recompense of your evil
will all be taken away by the forgiveness which we have in His
blood. If you will trust yourselves to Him you will have that
eternal life which is not wages, but a gift ; which is not reward,
but a free bestowment of God's love. And then, built upon that
foundation on which alone men can build their hopes, their
thoughts, their characters, their lives, however feeble may be our
efforts, however narrow may be our sphere, — though we be neither
prophets nor sons of prophets, and though our righteousness may

' St. Thomas Aquinas, Swmma Theologica, Prima Seoundse, Ixix. § 2.
' St. Ambrose.

252 THE MINISTRY OF SMALL THINGS

be all stained and imperfect, yet, to our own amazement and to
God's glory, we shall find, when the fire is kindled which reveals
and tests our works, that, by the might of humble faith in Christ,
we have built upon that foundation, gold and silver and precious
stones ; and shall receive the reward given to every man whose
work abides that trial by fire.

"My day has all gone" — 'twas a woman who spoke,
As she turned her face to the sunset glow —

"And I have been busy the whole day long;
Yet for my work there is nothing to show."

No painting nor sculpture her hand had wrought ;

No laurel of fame her labour had won.
What was she doing in all the long day,

With nothing to show at set of sun?

Humbly and quietly all the long day
Had her sweet service for others been done;

Yet for the labours of heart and of hand
What could she show at set of sun?

Ah, she forgot that our Pather in heaven

Ever is watching the work that we do.
And records He keeps of all we forget.

Then judges our work with judgment that's true;

For an angel writes down in a volume of gold

The beautiful deeds that all do below.
Though nothing she had at set of the sun,

The angel above had something to show.

The Great Invitation.

*S3

Literature,

Allon (H.), The IndwelKng Christ, 43.

Beecher (H. W.), Hen/ry Wwrd Beedier in England, 101.

Brandt (J. L.), Soul Saving, 251.

Burrell (D. J.), The Wondrous Cross, 18.

Burrows (W. 0.), The Mystery of the Cross, 141.

Chapman (H. B.), Sermons in Symbols, 8.

Clark (H. W.), Laws of the Inner Kingdom, 98.

Curnock (N.), Comfortable Words, 56.

Denney (J.), The Way Everlasting, 308.

Dods (M.), Christ and Mam, 38.

Holden (J. S.), The Pre-eminent Lord, 180.

Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 79.

Hutton (W. R.), Low Spirits, 147.

Kelman (J.), Redeeming Judgment, 19.

Maclaren (A.), A Bosary of Christian Cfraees, 145.

Morgan (G. C), The Missionary Manifesto, 143.

Neville (W. G.), Sermons, 9.

Owen (J. W.), Some Australian Sermons, 93.

Pierson (A. T.), in Dr. Pierton and His Message, 233.

Rate (J.), Leaves from the Tree of Life, 119.

Russell (A.), The Light that Lighteth Every Man, 293.

Shepard (J. W.), Light and Life, 279.

Temple (W.), Bepton School Sermons, 84.

Christian World Pulpit, xii. 142 (A. P. Peabody); xxiv. 30 (H. W.

Beecher) ; xlii. 102 (G. MacDonald) ; Ixiv. 289 (W. B. Carpenter) ;

Ixvii. 246 (C. S. Home) ; Ixviii. 183 (E. Rees).
Church of England Pulpit, Ixi. 414 (H. E. Ryle),
Weekly Pulpit, i. 71 (G. H. Spurgeon).

«54

The Great Invitation.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest— Matt. xi. 28.

1, There were several reasons which made this gracious invita-
tion and glorious promise specially appropriate to the age in
which it was spoken. It was an age of political revolution. The
old Eoman Empire was breaking up, and already the seeds were
being sown in it which left it, a few hundred years afterwards,
an easy prey to the incursions of the Goths. It was an age of
moral collapse. The old stern morality which had made Eome
was breaking up like rotten ice. Marriage became a mere tem-
porary convenience, which lasted for a time and then was laid
aside. It was an age of social unrest. It was an age of much
despair in individual souls. As always, with the decay of faith
came in the prevalence of suicide.

When all the blandishments of life are gone.
The coward slinks to death, the brave live on.

And the great number of suicides at that time in the Eoman
Empire pointed to the despair which was creeping over soul after
soul. It was in the midst of such a world that Jesus Christ
uttered this splendid invitation : " Come unto me, all ye that
labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

^ " Despair is the vilest of words." That expresses Fitzjames's
whole belief and character. Faith may be shaken and dogmas
fade into meaningless jumbles of words : science may be unable to
supply any firm ground for conduct. Still we can quit ourselves
like men. From doubt and darkness he can still draw the
practical conclusion, "Be strong and of a good courage." And
therefore, Fitzjames could not be a pessimist in the proper sense ;
for the true pessimist is one who despairs of the universe. Such
a man can only preach resignation to inevitable evil, and his best

355

256 THE GREAT INVITATION

hope is extinction. Fitzjames goes out of Ms way more than
once to declare that he sees nothing sublime in Buddhism.
" Nirvana," he says in a letter, " always appeared to me to be at
bottom a cowardly ideal. For my part I like far better the
Carlyle or Calvinist notion of the world as a mysterious hall of
doom, in which one must do one's fated part to the uttermost,
acting and hoping for the best and trusting that somehow or
other our admiration of the 'noblest human qualities' will be
justified."!

2. Those to whom Jesus spoke that day in Galilee were con-
spicuously the labouring and the heavy laden. They were a
labouring and a heavy-laden people, because they were in the
worst sense a conquered people. The lake district was rich in
national products, the fields brought forth largely, and the lake
with its fishings was a very mine of wealth. But the land was
overrun by the invader. The conqueror's tax-gatherer was every-
where to be seen, and the wealth of Galilee went to feed the
luxury of Eome. Hence the husbandmen and fishermen in the
worst sense laboured and were heavy laden. Their rich crops
fell to their sickle, their nets were often full to the point of
breaking, necessitating hard toU to bring them to the shore, but
the tax-gatherer stood over the threshing-floor and in the market,
and swept the profits into the emperor's hands. Nor did their
revolts bring them anything but harder labours and a heavier
load. Their wrestling and struggling only procured them the
sharp pricking of the goad and the firmer binding on their
shoulders of the yoke.

^ How large the taxes were in Palestine about the time of
Christ will probably never be known. Shortly after Herod's
death a committee of Jews stated to the emperor that Herod had
filled the nation full of poverty and that they had borne more
calamities from Herod in a few years than their fathers had
during all the interval of time that had passed since they had
returned from Babylon in the reign of Xerxes. It is said that he
exacted about three million dollars from the people. His children
did not receive quite that amount, but to raise what they received
and what the Eoman government demanded, nearly everything
had been taxed. There was a tax on the produce of land, one-
tenth for grain and one-fifth for wine and fruit. There was a tax
^ Leslie Stephen, Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 458,

ST. MATTHEW xi. 28 257

of one denarius on every person, exempting only aged people over
sixty-five years, and girls and boys under the age of twelve and
fourteen respectively. Then there was an income-tax. There
were also taxes levied on trades, such as that of hosier, weaver,
furrier, and goldsmith, and on movable property, such as horses,
oxen, asses, ships, and slaves. The duties paid on imported goods
varied from two and one-half to twelve per cent. Then the
homes were taxed, at least the city homes, and there was bridge
money and road money to be paid. There was also a tax on what
was publicly bought and sold, for the removal of which tax the
people pleaded with Archelaus, apparently in vain. Besides this,
every city had its local administration, and raised money to pay
its officials, maintain and build synagogues, elementary schools,
public baths, and roads, the city walls, gates, and other general
requirements. Tacitus relates how the discontent occasioned by
the burdensome taxation in the year 17 a.d. assumed a most
threatening character not only in Judea, but also throughout
Syria. Taxes were farmed out to the highest bidders, who in
turn would farm them out again. They who got the contract
were not paid by the government from the taxes they collected,
so that their support, or income, must be added to the taxes.
How large that was we cannot -know, but it was very large, as the
collectors would, taking advantage of their position, often be very
extortionate. Amid these unfortunate economic conditions —
anarchy, war, extravagance, and taxation — the people grew
poorer and poorer. Business became more and more interrupted,
and want, in growing frequency, showed its emaciated features.^

3. But the national feeling which held them together as a
people, had it not its side of faith ? It had not. Faith, as it found
expression in the Eabbi's words, only added a thousand times to
the labour and the yoke. What of money the tax-gatherer left
the priest devoured, and what the priest left the scribe laid hands
upon ; and as the masses sank deeper and deeper in poverty, only
the more were there heaped upon them the curses of the law.
Eobbery, impiety, cursing, were all the multitude saw in faith.
Can we not picture that weary crowd of waiting men and women,
with, as Carlyle says, " hard hands, crooked, coarse ; their rugged
faces all weather-tanned, besoiled; their backs all bent, their
straight limbs and fingers so deformed; themselves, as it were,
encrusted with the thick adhesions and defacements of their

1 G. D. Houver, The Teachings of Jesus Concerning Wealth, 31.
ST. MATT. — 1^

258 THE GREAT INVITATION

hopeless labour ; and seeing no cause to believe in, and no hope
for rest " ? But Jesus spoke of rest, and not idly, or to delude
them with a dream. He, like themselves, was a toiler, and
offered no hope that with His own hand He would drive out the
Eoman, or even put the priest and scribe to flight. He did not
speak of rest in the sense of relief from labour. His exhortation,
"Take my yoke upon you," makes that conclusive. His relief
and rescue were along a totally different line. Eest can be under-
stood only when labour is properly undertaken. When work is
regarded as a task, then the only possible rest is relief from it.
If, however, labour is undertaken as cordial service, it is quite
different. Best may then mean additional labour; it does then
mean harmony and peace of mind and soul.

^ " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and
I will refresh you." It is thus that this saying of Jesus is
rendered in the Latin Bible, and, after it, in the version of old John
Wycliffe. And thus rendered, it was associated by the devout
men of mediaeval days with the sacred ordinance of the Supper.
" Thou biddest me," says St. Thomas k Kempis, " confidently
approach Thee, if I would have part with Thee ; and accept the
nourishments of immortality, if I desire to obtain eternal life and
glory. ' Come,' sayest Thou, ' unto me, all ye that labour and
are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.' " ^

The Call.

" Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden."

1. In the history of the world was ever an utterance made
like this ? Was ever a claim of power or an assertion of supre-
macy so vast, so calm, so confident? Could we have endured
it from one of the teachers of the world — from Socrates, from
Seneca, from Isaac Newton, from Kant, or from Shakespeare?
Would not its utterance have repelled and disgusted us ? Its
arrogance would have been intolerable. And yet have these
words from the lips of Christ ever produced repulsion ? Is it not
the case that they have ever been regarded as among the most
' D. Smith, The Feast of the Covenant, 123.

ST. MATTHEW xi. 28 259

gracious and lovely of the Saviour's words ? And why so ? Has

it not been because it was known and felt that these were the
words of Him who was God as well as Man ? They follow in this
chapter of St. Matthew the verse in which Jesus has said, " All
things have been delivered unto me of my Father." The beauty
and the sweetness of the invitation, "Come unto me," depend
upon the sovereign right to give it. He who is the Son of God
as well as the Son of Man alone has the right. In His mouth
alone such words possess not only beauty but also the force of
genuineness.

Thus we see that beneath the tenderness of this evangelical
message, "Come unto me," lies the bed-rock foundation of the
Christian faith, that Christ is God as well as Man. Call it dogma ;
if dogma be the epitome of belief, it is the dogma of dogmas.
Call it Christian truth ; it is the one truth without which Christi-
anity fades into an airy system of baseless speculation, and its
claims shrink and shrivel to the dimensions of a human imposture.
It is the Divinity of our Lord that makes these word^ of His so
splendid and inspiring in their strength and comprehensiveness.
There is no hesitation in their tone ; they strike no apologetic or
self-depreeiatoiy note. It is not the outcome of long argument to
advance or prove His claims. It is not the vague pronouncement
of bliss and reward upon those who followed His cause. No ; it
is the simple authoritative personal invitation of Christ to the
people of the world ; it is an imperial message given in infinite
love and proclaimed with infinite power to the souls of men and
women. And we, whether we teach it to our children or repeat
it to the dying, can attach no adequate meaning to the words
unless we are convinced in our hearts that He who spoke them
was God as well as Man, and could really give what He promised.

^ We are making trial of the belief that in Christ we see the
Power by which the world is governed — the Almighty. But the
world, if we regard its present condition in isolation, is most
manifestly not governed by any such Power. The Sin and Pain
of the world we know cannot be themselves the goal of the
Purpose of God, if God is the Father of Jesus Christ. Either
then Christ is not the revelation of God, or else the world as we
see it does not express its real meaning. Only, in fact, as Christ
is drawing men to Himself from generation to generation is the
victory over evil won, and His claim to reveal the Father vindi-

26o THE GREAT INVITATION

cated ; we can only regard Him as Divine, and supreme over the
world, if we can regard Him as somehow including in His
Personality all mankind. If the Life of Christ is just an event in
human history, what right have we to say that the Power which
directs that history is manifest here rather than in Julius
Caesar or even Nero ? We can only say this, if He is drawing all
men to Himself so that in Him we see what mankind is destined
to become.^

2. The call is addressed to all who labour and are heavy laden.
To all ; not merely to a few favoured souls, not merely to the
Jews ; it is an invitation to mankind. Our Lord, when He uttered
the words, was looking out with the gaze of Omniscience across
the ages. He saw each human soul, with its capacity for eternal
blessedness or endless loss. Generation after generation swept
before His vision, as He longed that they might all come unto
Him and find rest. No one is excluded, for all need the healing of
Christ. Christ saw — as the painter of "The Vale of Tears" has
vividly portrayed in his last picture — all conditions of men, weary
of the sorrows, trials and burdens of human life, as well as of
its pleasures, ambitions and prizes, when He uttered the tender,
authoritative, universal invitation, " Come unto me."

(1) First, He invites those who labour; or, perhaps more
correctly, all who are toiling. Can we venture to reconstruct the
scene? Close beside Him stand His immediate disciples, who
alone had been privileged to hear the language of His prayer.
But beyond the circle of His immediate followers is gathered a
crowd of the inhabitants of Capernaum, who had been passing
homeward at the close of the day. Labourers would be there in
plenty, coming back from their toil in the fields; women also,
returning from the market or the well; and fishermen too,
doubtless, who had stopped awhile to listen on the way to their
nocturnal labours on the deep. On the outskirts of the crowd
there might be others, shop-keepers, working men, and farmers ;
and perhaps women such as Mary Magdalene, for Magdala was
not far from Capernaum. Such, in some degree at least, was the
character of the multitude on whom our Lord's eyes could rest.
And as He gazed upon that group of peasants, representative as
they were of human weariness and suffering, there welled up in

' W. Temple, in Foundations, 245.

ST. MATTHEW xi. 28 261

His heart a great compassion for the souls before Him, weighed
down with a load that was too heavy for them to bear. So, con-
scious of His power to alleviate the woes and sorrows of humanity
and to lighten the common burdens of mankind. He who claimed
a knowledge of the unknown God, and had been rejoicing in
communion with the Father, opened His arms to the listening
multitude and cried, " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

(2) But Christ called not only those who labour or toil ; He
called those also who are burdened or heavy laden to Him. As
the idea of toil refers to what we may call the active side of life,
to what we do or attempt to do, so the term " heavy laden " or
" burdened " refers to the passive side, to that which we bear or
endure. Frequently this latter is a condition added to, or even
responsible for, the former. We may be toiling while we are
heavy laden, or our work may actually be toil because while we
work we have also to bear a heavy burden. If we consider
the burdens of life they fall into two classes; we may term
these the self-imposed and the inevitable : those which are due,
and those which are not due, to our own actions. And many
of us would be surprised, after a strict self-examination, to find
how large a proportion of the whole of our burdens the self-imposed
ones are. We may not like to confess this, but still it is true. The
burdens imposed by carelessness and thoughtlessness, by sin in the
present and in the past, by the force of evil habits which have
been allowed to grow unchecked, by our declining to exercise self-
discipline and by our refusing to submit to the wise discipline of

others all these various not inevitable burdens will be found to

outweigh and outnumber the burdens which are really outside our

own control.

(3) What must especially have distressed Jesus and filled Him
with pity was that men turned their very religion into a burden
and a toil. That which was meant to give them strength to bear
all other burdens they turned into an additional load. Instead of
using their carriage to carry themselves and all their belongings,
they strove to take it on their backs and carry it. All that
religion seemed to do for them was to make life harder, to fill it
with a thousand restrictions and fretting duties. They toiled to
keep a multitude of observances which no man could keep ; they

262 THE GREAT INVITATION

bound heavy burdens of penances and duties and laid them on
their backs, as if thus they could please God. The sinner was in
despair, and the religious man a heartless performer. They had
fancied that God was like themselves, a poor little creature,
revengeful, spiteful, liking to see men suffering for sin and crushed
under His petty tyrannies. They thought of a God who must
be propitiated by careful and exact performances and to whom the
sinner could find access only after crushing penances. As if the
pain of sin were not enough, and as if the bitterness of a misspent
life were not itself intolerable, they sought to embitter life still
further by emptying it of all natural joy and by hampering it
with countless scruples.

^ The kernel of the law was found in the Jewish scriptures.
But this was augmented by four tremendous accumulations.
First, there was the Mishna, which was an elaborate reiteration
of the law with innumerable embellishments. Then there was
the Midrash, which consisted of volumes of the minutest explana-
tions of the meaning of every part of the law. Then there were
other bulky tomes called the Talmud, which was a formulation of
the law into doctrine at portentous length. And finally there
was an intricate mass of comments and legal decisions of the
Eabbis. And for a Jew to live right he must be in complete
harmony with all this mass of accumulated tradition, speculation,
allegory, and fantastic comment. And as every Eabbi had the
right and, indeed, the duty to add to it, it is easy to see how the
burden would grow. Rabbis were said to make the law heavy, to
burden people, and many of them regarded this as their chief
duty.i

(4) But primarily Christ addressed Himself to the sin
problem. Indisputably sin is the cause of all unrest, the poison
which has fevered every life. Sin is the root of all the weakness
and weariness which rob life of its true quality. Sin it is that
blurs the vision of God, and blinds men to His unfailing nearness
and help, as also to the true issues of life, for the realizing of
which they do so much need Him. And when Christ offers rest
to the weary and heavy laden. He is proposing to deal with the
sin which has created their need.

^ Sin is the greatest disturbance of men's souls, far deeper
than any agitation or pertui'bation that may arise from external

1 N. H. MarsbiiU,

ST. MATTHEW xi. 28 263

circumstances. It is our unlawful desires that shake us ; it is our
unlawful acts that disturb us, rousing conscience, which may
speak accusingly or be ominously silent, and, in either case, will
disturb our true repose. As our great dramatist has it, " Macbeth
has murdered sleep." There is no rest for the man whose
conscience is stinging him, as, more or less, all consciences do
that are not reconciled and quieted by Christ's great sacrifice.
Such an one is like the troubled sea " that cannot rest, whose
waters cast up mire and dirt " ; whilst they who come to Jesus
are like some little tarn amongst the hills, surrounded by
sheltering heights, that " heareth not the loud winds when they
call," and has no more movement than is enough to prevent
stagnation, while its little ripples kiss the pure silver sand on the
beach ; and in their very motion there is rest.^

^ Browning has suggested that, among those who heard the
Lord Jesus invite the weary and heavy laden to come to Him, was
one of the two robbers who were eventually crucified at His side.
The poem describes the emotions which passed through the man's
soul, and he is made to say :

The words have power to haunt me. Long ago
I heard them from a Stranger — One who turned,
And looked upon me as I went, and seemed
To know my face, although I knew Him not.
The face was weary; yet He spoke
Of giving rest — He needed rest, I think —
Yet patiently He stood and spoke to those
Who gathered round Him, and He turned
And looked on me. He could not know
How sinful was my life, a robber's life.
Amid the caves and rocks. And yet He looked
As though He knew it all, and, knowing,
Longed to save me from it.

It may have been so, or it may not. Browning's fancy may
have a basis in fact; we cannot tell. But this at least we know
— that he who suffered by the side of Jesus is one of those who
have proved the truth of His saying, and have found Him able to
make good His word."

1 A. Maclaren, A Sosary of Christiam, Graces, 152.

» H. T. Knight.

264 THE GREAT INVITATION

II.

The Gift.

" I will girt you rest.''

I. Eest, then, is a gift; it is not earned. It is not the
emolument of toil ; it is the dowry of grace. It is not the prize
of endeavour, its birth precedes endeavour, and is indeed the
spring and secret of it. It is not the perquisite of culture, for
between it and culture there is no necessary and inevitable
communion. It broods in strange and illiterate places, untouched
by scholastic and academic refinement, but it abides also in
cultured souls which have been chastened by the manifold ministry
of the schools. It is not a work, but a fruit ; not the product of
organization, but the sure and silent issue of a relationship.
" Come unto me, . . . and I will give you rest."

^ " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and
I will give you rest." Who but would test this gracious promise ?
Who is altogether free from the heavy load of pain, either bodily,
mental, or spiritual? Yet how many spend half their lives in
vainly seeking rest! If ever there was a question which it
concerns us all to answer it is this, Where is rest to be found ?
The larger part of mankind seek it in wealth, in honours, in
worldly ease ; but they do not find it. Covetousness, greed, envy,
fraud, conspire to spoil all thought of rest in the good things of
this world. Others seek rest in themselves, but what can be
expected from our weak, changeable natures ? Society, literature,
science may occupy, but they cannot satisfy or rest, the heart.
There is no rest for the heart of man save in God, who made him
for Himself. But how shall we rest in God? By giving our-
selves wholly to Him. If you give yourselves by halves, you
cannot find full rest — there will ever be a lurking disquiet in that
half which is withheld; and for this reason it is that bo few
Christians attain to a full, steadfast, unchanging peace — they do
not seek rest in God only, or give themselves up to Him without
reserve. True rest is as unchanging as God Himself — like Him
it rises above all earthly things : it is secret, abundant, without a
regret or a wish. It stills all passion, restrains the imagination,
steadies the mind, controls all wavering : it endures alike in the
time of tribulation and the time of wealth; in temptation and
trial, as when the world shines brightly on us. Christ tells you

ST. MATTHEW xi. 28 265

of His peace which the world can neither give nor take away,
because it is God'e gift only. Such peace may undergo many an
assault, but it will be confirmed thereby, and rise above all that
would trouble it. He who has tasted it would not give it in ex-
change for all this life can give : and death is to him a passage
from this rest to that of eternity.^

2. Many of the great gifts of life are not transmissible. Ask
the artist for the power by which he gives ua the inspired painting,
ask the poet for the power by which he is able to sing and touch
men's hearts into enthusiasm, and they cannot give it. There is
always just the inexpressible something which they can never
impart. It is the spirit of the thing, which is incommunicable,
the Divine touch ; the fairy has not given her kiss at birth. But
here is Christ who can impart restfulness of soul, that which
transforms the soul from being worldly and agitated to being a
spirit possessed of calm. It seems to be a miracle that a subtle
quality should be transmissible from the Lord to His disciples.
Here He stands above all other instructors in being able to pass
on that which otherwise is incommunicable, but which, in His
hand, has been a real persistent heritage in the Church.

^ On the way to Chapra from Eatnapur Miss Dawe, of the
Church of England Zenana Mission at Eatnapur, told me of a
Hindu with whom God's Spirit worked before he met any
missionary and gave him a sense of sin, so that he became dis-
satisfied. He visited various places of pilgrimage seeking rest.
One day he picked up a piece of paper on which were written the
words : " Come unto me, and I will give you rest." He did not
know where they came from and went inquiring from one to another.
At length a fakir who had heard something of Christianity told
him they were to be found in the Christian books. Then he came
to a C.M.S. Mission at Krishnagar, where he was instructed, and
a Bible given him, and he was baptized. Then his great desire
was for his wife. He wrote to her telling her he was a Christian,
and asking her to come to him. She was a remarkable woman,
and had taught herself to read through her little brother, who
went to school. She consented to come to him, as she was his
wife. There was great opposition from the family, but he carried
her off. On his way he passed a tree where Miss Dawe was
preaching, and took his wife to her. Miss D. was astonished that
she knew how to read, and put a New Testament into her hand
1 Jean Nicolas Grou, The Hidden Life of Ood.

266 THE GREAT INVITATION

On opening it, her eye fell on : " Let not your heart be troubled "
— ^just the word for her. Miss D. pitched her tent near her village
and gave her a course of instruction every day for some weeks.
At the end she wished to be baptized. This was many years ago.
They are now in Calcutta, working in connexion with the London
Missionary Society.*

3. The rest which Christ gives is based on a perfect reconcile-
ment to God. He gives us an eternal settlement, adjusting us
to a place which we feel to be thoroughly suitable, and satisfying
all in us which we feel deserves to be satisfied. He gives us rest
by making life intelligible and by making it worthy ; by showing
us how through all its humbling and sordid conditions we can live
as God's children ; by delivering us from guilty fear of God and
from sinful cravings ; by setting us free from all foolish ambitions
and by shaming us out of worldly greed and all the fret and fever
that come of worldly greed ; by filling our hearts with realities
which still our excited pursuit of shadows, and by bringing into
our spirit the abiding joy and strength of His love for us. We
enter into the truest rest when we believe that He takes part
with us and that we can depend upon Him.

What the man who is burdened with a bad conscience needs
is the assurance that there is a love in God deeper and stronger
than sin. Not a love which is indifferent to sin or makes light
of it. Not a love to which the bad conscience, which is so tragic-
ally real to man, and so fatally powerful in his life, is a mere
misapprehension to be ignored or brushed aside as insignificant.
No, but a love to which sin, and its condemnation in conscience,
and its deadly power, are all that they are to man, and more ; a
love which sees sin, which feels it, which is wounded by it, which
condemns and repels it with an annihilating condemnation, yet
holds fast to man through it all with Divine power to redeem,
and to give final deliverance from it. This is what the man
needs who is weighed down and broken and made impotent by a
bad conscience, and this is what he finds when he comes to Jesus.

I hear the low voice call that bids me come, —
Me, even me, with all my grief opprest,
With sins that burden my unquiet breast,

And in my heart the longing that is dumb,

' Li/e Radiant : Memorials of the Sev. Frcmeis PayrUer, 144.

ST. MATTHEW xi. 28 267

Yet beats forever, like a muffled drum,
Tor all delights whereof I, dispossest,
Pine and repine, and find nor peace nor rest

This side the haven where He bids me come.

He bids me come and lay my sorrows down,

And have my sins washed white by His dear grace;

He smiles — what matter, then, though all men frown?
Naught can assail me, held in His embrace;

And if His welcome home the end may crown,
Shall I not hasten to that heavenly place ?^

4, The rest which Christ gives is not rest from toil, but rest in
toil. That toil may be excessive, may be incompatible with health,
may be very slightly remunerative, may be accompanied with condi-
tions which are disagreeable, painful, depressing ; but Christ does
not emancipate the individual from this toil. He does indeed
slowly influence society so that the slave awakes to his rights and
the slave-owner acknowledges them ; and so that aU grievances
which oppress the various sections of society are at length
measured by Christ's standard of righteousness and charity, and
tardy but lasting justice is at length done. But until the whole
of society is imbued with Christian principle thousands of indi-
viduals must suffer, and often suffer more intensely because they
are Christians. Yet even to ordinary toil Christ brings what may
well be called " rest." The Christian slave has thoughts and hopes
that brighten his existence ; he leads two lives at once — the over-
driven, crushed, hopeless life of the slave, and the hopeful, free,
eternal. Divine life of Christ's free man. And, wherever in the
most shameful parts of our social system the underpaid and over-
driven workman or workwoman believes in Christ, there rest
enters the spirit — the hunger, the cold, the tyrannous selfishness,
the blank existence are outweighed by the consciousness of
Christ's sympathy, and by the sure hope that even through all
present distress and misery that sympathy is guiding the soul to
a lasting joy and a worthy life. And surely this is glory indeed,
that from Christ's words and life there should shine through all
these centuries a brightness that penetrates the darkest shades of
modern life and carries to broken hearts a reviving joy that
nothing else can attempt to bring,

' Lonise Cbuidler Moulton, In the Oardm iff Dreami,

268 THE GREAT INVITATION

^ There is a sweet monastery in Florence, fragrant with sacred
memories, rich with blessed history to the religious soul. Its
very dust is dear, for there the saintly Bishop Antonio lived as
Christ lived, and there the prophetic Savonarola wore out his
noble heart, and there also lived the pious painter, Fra Barto-
lommeo. It stands the forlorn relic of a dream. And even yet it
breathes of the true domestic peace, with secluded cloisters where
the noise of the city is hushed ; with its little cells, whose bare
whitewashed walls are clad with the pure delicate frescoes of the
angelic painter — the reflection of his own pure soul. In the
centre is a little garden kissed by the sunshine ; and up from it is
seen the deep blue of the Italian sky, speaking of eternal peace.
It is natural to think that one might cultivate the soul there ;
might there forget the world, its hate, ambitions, and fierce
passions. It is a dream. Christ's peace is not a hothouse plant
blighted by the wind ; it rears its head to meet the storm.
Christ's ideal is love in the world, though not of the world. It is
rest for the toil; it is peace for the battle. You must have a
cloister in your heart ; you must not give your heart to a cloister.
You can have it — you, in your narrow corner of life ; you,
amid your distractions and labours ; you, with your fiery trials
and temptations ; you, with your sorrow and your tears. It can-
not be got for gold; it cannot be lost through poverty. The
world cannot give it ; the world cannot take it away. It is not
given by any manipiilation of outward circumstances ; it rules in
the heart ; it is an inward state. To be spiritually-minded is life
and peace.'

Tf My real feelings about my work and duty have been so
aroused by recent experiences that I do not estimate these
external matters as I used to do. And it would be well indeed
for my peace of mind — I do not see any other real source of peace
— if I could rise above them altogether, and do all I do simply
from a sense of duty, from thoughtful and quiet religious impulses,
making my work as thorough and as good as I can, and leaving
all the rest to God. That is the only rest, if one could only attain
to it ; but with an excitable, sensitive nature like mine, so alive
to the outside world, and with such an excessive craving for
sympathy, it is very difficult to do this. If I could only learn
quietness and patience, and not self-trust, which is simply self-
delusion ; but 1 trust in God. If God will, I will learn this.^

' Hugh Black. " Memoir of Principal Tulloch, 202.

Rest Under the Yoke.

389

Literature.

Ainger (A.), Sermoni Preached in the Temple Church, 39.

Allon (H.), The Indwelling Christ, 43.

Brandt (J. L.), Soul Saving, 261.

Burrows (W. O.), The Mystery of the Cross, 141.

Chadwlck (W. E.), Christ and Everyday Life, 11.

Cumock (N.), Comfortable Words, 56.

Denney (J.), The Way Everlasting, 308.

Dods (M.), Chria and Man, 38.

Purst (A.), True Nobility of Cha/racter, 302.

Holden (J. S.), The Pre-eminent Lord, 180.
„ „ Life's Flood-Tide, 70.

Kelman (J.), Redeeming Judgment, 19.

Knight (H. T.), The Cross, the Font, and the AUwr, 1.

Little (W. J. K.), Characteristics of the Christian Life, 223.
„ „ The Hopes of the Passion, 156.

Maclaren (A.), A Rosary of Christian Graces, 145.

Neville (W. G.), Sermon*, 9.

Owen (J. W.), Soot* Australian Sermons, 93.

Rate (J.), Lea/oesfrom the Tree of Life, 1.

Russell (A), The Light that Lighteth Every Man, 293.

Temple (W.), Repton School Sermons, 84.

British Congregationalist, Jan. 18, 1914 (A. E. Qarvie).

Christian World, May 20, 1909 (J. D. Jones).

Christian World Pulpit, x. 309 (H. W. Beecher); xii. 222 (H. W.
Beecher) ; xl. 396 (H. Ross) ; xli. 156 (T. R. Stevenson) ; Ixv. 305
(J. H. Jowett) ; Ixix. 81 (A. F. W. Ingram) ; Ixxii. 68 (A. B. Scott) j
Ixxxii. 43 (A. C. Dixon).

Church of England Pulpit, Ixi. 414 (H. E. Ryle).

■70

Rest Under the Yoke.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in
heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my
burden is light.— Matt. xi. 29, 30.

1. Chkist saw the people as poor, toiling, jaded animals labouring
in the yoke, carrying an almost intolerable load, and in sheer
compassion and love He cried to them, and said, " Come unto me,
. . . and I will give you rest." And this " rest " He proposed to
give, not by relieving them of every yoke and burden, but by an
exchange of yokes and burdens. He proposed to take away the
heavy yoke they were then bearing, and to give them His yoke
instead. " The yoke you are bearing," He said to them, in effect,
" is too galling ; the burden you are carrying is too heavy ; they
are more than flesh and blood can bear. Take off your yoke, lay
aside your burden, and take Mine instead, for My yoke is easy
and My burden is light."

2. So Christ also lays a yoke upon us. But what sort of
yoke ? Justin Martyr, who lived in the first half of the second
century of the Christian era, tells us that when Jesus was a
carpenter at Nazareth He used to make " ploughs and yokes for
oxen." It has been suggested that this ancient Church Father
derived that curious piece of information from the now lost
"Gospel according to the Hebrews." If we may accept it as
correct, — and it comes from very old times, — Jesus was a yoke-
maker by trade. Then He knew what make of yoke would be
hard to wear and what easy. The easy yoke would be one that
would not gall the back of the poor ox on which it was fitted, one,
perhaps, that was deliberately eased so as not to press on a tender
place. This is what a considerate artisan would be careful to see
to ; and we may be sure that in His artisan life Jesus would be
thoughtful for the welfare of the dumb animals with which He

371

272 REST UNDER THE YOKE

had to do. He is considerate as a Master of human souls. There
are some whose slightest commands sting like insults, and others
so gracious, genial, and considerate that their very orders are
accepted by the servants as favours. It is a delight to serve such
masters. Their yoke is easy. Now Jesus Christ is the most
considerate of masters. As Milton said, reflecting on the un-
welcome limitations imposed upon his service by his blindness,
" Doth God exact day labour, light denied ? "

^ In using the metaphor of a yoke, Christ was probably em-
ploying an expression which was already proverbial. In the
Psalms of Solomon, which are a little earlier than the time of
Christ, we have : " We are beneath Thy yoke for evermore, and
beneath the rod of Thy chastening " (vii. 8) ; and " He shall
possess the peoples of the heathen to serve Him beneath His
yoke " (xvii. 32). " The yoke " was a common Jewish metaphor
for discipline or obligation, especially in reference to the service
of the Law. Thus, in the Apocalypse of Baruch : " For lo ! I see
many of Thy people who have withdrawn from Thy covenant, and
cast from them the yoke of Thy Law" (xli. 3). Comp. Lam.
iii. 27 ; Eeclus. li. 26 ; Acts xv. 10 ; Gal. v. 1 ; Pirqe Ahoth, iii. 8.
In the Didache (vi. 2) we have " the whole yoke of the Lord,"
which probably means the Law in addition to the Gospel.^

Taking the text in its own simplicity we find three things
in it —

I. The Yoke — " Take my yoke upon you."
II. The Lesson — " Learn of me."
III. The Eest — " Ye shall find rest unto your souls."

L

The Yoke.

" Take my yoke upon you."

1. When Jesus spoke these words He referred to the yoke He
Himself wore as Man. That was the yoke of a perfect surrender
to the will of God, and absolute submission to His throne. To all
who came to Him He said, " Take my yoke ; the yoke I wear is
the yoke I impose upon you. As I am submissive to government,

' A. Plummer.

ST. MATTHEW xi. 29, 30 273

so also must you be, if you are to exercise authority." Said the
Eoman centurion, "I also am a man under authority, having
under myself soldiers." The condition for the exercise of author-
ity is ever that of submission to authority.

At the very beginning of His career Christ had to make His
choice betv?een self and God. The significance of the temptation
in the wilderness is surely this, that Christ then deliberately chose
to walk in God's way, and with His eyes wide open submitted
Himself to the yoke of God's holy will. That is, indeed, the
key of our Lord's life. Beus vult was His watchword. He pleased
not Himself. It was- His meat to do the Father's will, and to
accomplish His work. He shrank from nothing which the will of
God brought to Him. When it brought Him to Gethsemane and
the cross. He said, " The cup which the Father hath given me to
drink, shall I not drink it ? " And that is the yoke He is com-
mending here to the people, the yoke He had all His life borne
Himself.

2. It is not easy at first to lay aside every other yoke and
accept the yoke of Christ. The yoke is easy when you have put
your neck beneath it ; but to bring yourself to that point may
involve a wrestle with self that almost tears the heart asunder.
The burden is light when you have forced your reluctant shoulders
to bear it ; but to do that may be the most difficult thing in all
the world. There are some things that are easy enough to do,
once you have made up your mind to do them ; it is making up
the mind that is the straining, torturing thing. And easy as may
be the burden that Christ imposes, calmly as the soul's experience
may go on when once the soul has settled down to the Christian
conditions, there remains for all of us the battle with stubbornness
and pride, the coercion of the stiff and resisting will, before we
pass into the Christian peace. It is a difficult thing to take up
the easy yoke. It is a heavy task to make ourselves carry the
light burden. And we need not, therefore, distrust the genuine-
ness of our Christward desires because we are conscious of so
much difficulty in driving our rebellious natures to the point of
Christly submissiveness.

Tl " How hard it is to be a Christian," cried Browning in the
opening words of his " Easter Day." To-day some people are trying

ST. MATT- — 18

274 REST UNDER THE YOKE

to make it more easy. So they are discreetly silent about the yoke,
and the cross, and the denying of self, concerning all of which
Jesus spoke so plainly — while they make the most of the joy, and
peace, and comfort of the Gospel. The experiment does not appear
to be very successful. Chivalrous souls would be more drawn by
the spirit of adventure in response to a trumpet-call to battle than
to listen to these soothing songs of ease. But if it did succeed,
what would be the value of a Christianity so one-sided, so enervat-
ing, so self-indulgent ? In fact, I do not see how you can call it
Christianity at all. The ship is stranded at the bar of the harbour.
What is to be done to float her ? You can throw the cargo over-
board ; but then the very purpose of her voyage will be destroyed.
It will be better to wait till the flood-tide, and then the ship will
rise in the deep water and sail out to sea, cargo and all. It is vain
to float our Gospel ship by throwing cargo overboard. The only
wise course is to take Christ's full message. To have the yoke
and the cross as well as the pardon and the peace.^

^ Is there no difference when you are on your bicycle between
bicycling with the wind, when you scarcely feel the wind and go
smoothly and firmly down the road, and bicycling against the
wind ? There is all the difference. In one there is peace and
rest, and swiftness and progress. In the other it is beating up,
beating up this way and that. You could hardly have a simpler
and yet a truer illustration of the difference between being borne
by the Spirit along the course of the will of God and trying to
beat against the will of God and against the action of the Spirit.
It is to fling ourselves into the tide of the Spirit — Jesus was driven
by the Spirit into the wilderness — to yield ourselves to the action
of the Spirit, and to pass down the will of God before the wind.
That is peace ; that is rest. And there is no other in the world.^

3. Ease comes by practice. When we have fully surrendered
ourselves to Christ, the yoke becomes easy and the burden light.
To yield to Christ, to obey His conditions, brings us into harmony
with the eternal order of things, and makes us realize this ; we
know, when once we have yielded and obeyed, that we are in
the spiritual position — if one may employ the phrase — where we
have all along, although perhaps without understanding it,
wanted to be ; and they who hear Christ's call and answer to it
are sure, so soon as their responsive movement towards the calling
Christ is made, that the soul's questions are settled once for all,

' W. F. Adeney. = Bishop A. F. W. Ingram.

ST. MATTHEW xi. 29, 30 275

the Boul'a requirements met and its instinctive, deep-seated
capacities filled. It is difficult to force ourselves to the yoke;
but once it is taken up, the yoke fits, sits lightly, does not fret or
gall. Christ is found to do no violence to the soul. Eeally to
accept Christ's conditions is to find ourselves where we want to
be, set going on the true and satisfying line of life. We give
ourselves to Christ — and in that surrender we, so to say, receive
ourselves back again, made great and free. Christ's whole
method and spirit of life, once we comprehend and accept it,
comes to us as the one right and natural thing.

^ We know what a galling bondage an uncongenial service
may be; we know, on the other hand, what a genuine, an
unalloyed delight that work is which is absolutely congenial.
We make most of our children learn some musical instrument or
other. But to many a boy the hours he spends at the piano are
sheer drudgery. His practice-hour is Egyptian task-work to him.
He has no taste or aptitude for music. But watch the man with
music in his soul at the piano ! Watch a Paderewski play !
His hands ripple over the keys in a kind of ecstasy. Playing is
not task-work to him, it is a rapturous delight. It is congenial
work. When sons are growing up and the time draws near
when they must face life for themselves, their parents' great
anxiety is to discover what their special aptitudes are, for in the
long-run no man can be really happy or useful in his work unless
he has some taste and fitness for it. A boy with mechanical
.'aptitudes is unhappy if put to a literary or intellectual calling.
A boy with intellectual tastes is wasted if put to mechanical em-
ployment. If a man is to be happy and useful he must find
a congenial sphere in life. And the law holds good in higher
concerns than the choice of a trade or calling. It is valid also in
the moral and spiritual realm. If a man is to be at rest and
peace, his soul must be in congenial service. And that is why
Christ's yoke is easy — the service of God is congenial service.^

Tl At the time of the great Civil War in America, the call
went round the land for men to take up the cause of their
country's freedom. The men responded, and it was noticed that
men whose lives had been made a very burden to them by all sorts
of trifles, men who were always suffering friction and irritation
because little things went wrong, men who, perhaps, could not
stand any little trial or trouble without becoming almost unen-
durable to live with— these were the people who, not groaning and

1 J. D. Jones.

276 REST UNDER THE YOKE

making a misery of it, but with a certain exultation of the heart,
took upon them the great yoke of their country's emancipation,
and straightway all the little burdens were forgotten, they became
absolutely trivial and insignificant, and the burden that they bore
was light.i

Tf Matthew Henry characteristically says that Christ's yoke is
" lined with love " ; and St. Bernard cried in his distant day, "
blessed burden that makes all burdens light 1 blessed yoke that
bears the bearer up ! "

11.

The Lesson.

"Learn of me."

1. We understand now why Jesus adds, " Learn of me." To
take His yoke is to be trained in His school. It was a common
thing for Jewish teachers to issue such invitations, just as to-day
men issue prospectuses. Here, for instance, is a passage from the
book of Sirach, written several centuries before the birth of Jesus :
"Draw near unto me ye unlearned, and lodge in the house of
instruction. Say wherefore are ye lacking in these things and
your souls are very thirsty ? I opened my mouth and spake.
Get her for yourselves without money. Put your neck under the
yoke, and let your souls receive instruction. She is hard to find.
Behold with your eyes how that I laboured but a little, and found
myself much rest." The disciple must sit at his Master's feet,
and patiently learn of Him, drinking in His teaching, absorbing
His spirit, gradually growing into the knowledge and character
that He desires to impart. This is required of the disciple of
Christ who would learn His secret of rest.

^ When He says, " Come unto me, and learn of me," we are
not to think merely that we have to learn something ; but we
have to know that if we learn it in any other way than from
Jesus, it is a lost learning.'

Tl It must have been at one of the early meetings [with

University students at Edinburgh], when he had for text the

grand Gospel invitation in the end of the eleventh of Matthew,

that Mr. Drummond used an illustration which caught their

' C. Silvester Home. ^ Erskine of Linlathen.

ST. MATTHEW xi. 29, 30 277

attention and guided some to the discipleship of Christ. "You
ask what it is, this coming to Christ. Well, what does Jesus
Himself tell you here? He says, 'Learn of me.' Now, you are
all learners. You have come to Edinburgh, some of you from the
ends of the earth, to learn. And how did you put yourself in the
way of learning what is here taught ? You went to the University
office and wrote your name in a book. You matriculated; and
becoming a University student, you went to get from each
individual professor what he had to teach. So, with definite
purpose to learn of Christ, must you come to Him and surrender
yourself to His teaching and guidance." Sometimes thereafter,
when a happy worker had to tell of a new addition to the number
of Christ's disciples, he would pleasantly say that So-and-so had
" matriculated." ^

2. Jesus gives us a perfect pattern of submission. " I am
meek and lowly in heart." Here alone in the New Testament is
mention made of the heart of Jesus. He whose yoke we take,
whose service we enter, whose lesson we learn, is lowly in heart ;
His love stoops from heaven to earth ; His care is for all who are
weary with earth's vain service, all who are down-trodden in the
hurry and rush of life. In Him they shall find what their souls
need ; not freedom from sickness, sorrow, or death, not deliverance
from political or social injustice. No; He Himself suffered
patiently ; He endured these hardships and the agony of loneli-
ness, desertion, and misunderstanding. He gives rest and re-
freshment to the soul. "When meekness enters into the heart
and is enthroned therein as a queen, a revolution takes place in
that heart. At the gentle swaying of her wand many a Dagon
crumbles to the ground. Pride must go, false ambition must go,
resentment must go, jealousy must go ; all these false gods must
go, and take their baggage with them. And when all those have
left, the roots of restlessness and worry will be plucked from that
heart.

^ In the meekness and lowliness of Jesus lies great part of His
mastery over men ; in meekness and lowliness like those of Jesus
lies our rest. . . . The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit is like
the dust from flowers in bloom. It insinuates and instils. The
meek man is not without opinions, or a stranger to enterprise. He
does not live in an untroubled sphere, but he has no desire to see his
1 G. A. Smith, The Life of Henry Drvmmmd, 300.

278 REST UNDER THE YOKE

opinion imposed on any. Children find out the meek ; for meekness
is the childhood of the soul. Haughty men are never young, the
meek never grow old. Most of us have known some. The young
are warmed by them, the middle-aged soothed, the old supported.
Meek hearts live for ever : they are the stock of an immortal tree.
They inherit lives that live after them, they are spiritual children.
David says, " God is meek " : Christ says, " I am meek." The Holy
Spirit's emblem is a dove. The dove comes when you do not stir
it. Ask gently in silent prayer. He came thus to Christ, and
will to you when kneeling and broken down. Thou, who art
Thyself meek and lowly, take pity and create in us Thy meekness.^

3. "We must learn humility, because without it there can be no
true obedience or service. Humility is the keynote of the Divine
music which Jesus came to make in our world. It is because we
have lost it that all has become discord. It is the keystone of the
arch of the Christian virtues. It is because that is wanting that
the whole structure of the Christian character so often crumbles
into ruin. We are loth to give meekness that prominent position
among the Christian virtues which Christ assigned to it. We often
go so far as to put pride in its place, though pride is probably the
most hateful of all vices in the sight of God. Without meek-
ness it is impossible to perform any good and acceptable service to
our fellow-men, for pride vitiates and stultifies all we do ; and it
is impossible to love and serve God, for pride banishes us from Him,
since it is written : " As for the proud man, he beholdeth him
afar off." True humility, therefore, must be ours if we would
obtain rest unto our souls.

^ The man that carries his head high knocks it against a great
many lintels which he who stoops escapes. The lightning strikes
the oak, not the grass. If you wish to be restless and irritated
and irritable all your days, and to provide yourself with some-
thing that will always keep you uncomfortable, assert yourself,
and be on the look-out for slights, and think yourself better than
people estimate you, and be the opposite of meek and humble,
and you will find trouble enough.^

1 R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 105, 112.

" A. Maclaren, A Eosary of Chrislian Graces, 154.

ST. MATTHEW xi. 29, 30 279

III.

The Ekst.

" Ye shall find rest unto your souls."

1. When we respond to Christ's invitation and come to Him,
we enter into the rest of faith. The very act of trust brings
tranquillity, even when the person or thing trusted in is human
or creatural, and therefore uncertain. For, to roll the responsi-
bility from myself, as it were, upon another, brings repose, and
they who lean upon Christ's strong arm do not need to fear,
though their own arm be very weak. The rest of faith, when we
cease from having to take care of ourselves, when we can cast all
the gnawing cares and anxieties that perturb us upon Him, when
we can say, " Thou dost undertake for me, and I leave myself in
Thy hands," is tranquillity deeper and more real than any
other that the heart of man can conceive. "Thou wilt keep
him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he
trusteth in thee." Cast yourself upon Christ, and live in that
atmosphere of calm confidence; and though the surface may
be tossed by many a storm, the depths will be motionless and
quiet, and there will be " peace, subsisting at the heart of endless
agitation."

Ij Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his concep-
tion of rest. The first chose for his scene a still, lone lake among
the far-off mountains. The second threw on his canvas a thunder-
ing waterfall, with a fragile birch-tree bending over the foam ; at
the fork of a branch, almost wet with the cataract's spray, a robin
sat on its nest. The first was only Stagnation; the last was
Eest. For in Eest there are always two elements — tranquillity
and energy ; silence and turbulence ; creation and destruction ;
fearlessness and fearfulness. This it was in Christ.^

2. This was Christ's own rest. In reading the story of Christ's
life you are struck by that wonderful self-possession, that quiet
dignity of soul which never forsook Him. There is never any-
thing approaching to the agitation which betokens smaller minds.
There is that large equanimity which never forsakes Him even in

' Henry Drummond.

2§o REST UNDER THE YOKE

the hour of profoundest distress. Look at Him during the quiet
years in the home. Though conscious of the high calling which
awaited Him He never showed any impatience during those thirty
years. Though He knew He should be about His Father's
business, He first found it in the little home in which He
lived. Watch Him, too, when He moves out into the busy
activities of His ministering life; you still find the same quiet
self-possession and restfulness of soul. He stands absolutely
unmoved amongst those temptations and seductions which were
set before Him. So, when the crowd thronged round Him while
on His way to the healing of Jairus's daughter, you see His quiet-
ness, self-possession, and restfulness of spirit. Even when you
come to the final scenes of the agony, there is the same equanimity,
for it is equanimity which can detach self from the urgency and
the duties of the moment. When you turn to the pages of
the evangelists, what is uppermost in the mind surely is this,
the thought of the quietness, the dignity, the unrivalled tran-
quillity, the self-possession, the restfulness of soul which never
deserts their Lord and Master. Throughout all. He possessed that
restfulness of soul of which He speaks here. And this is the
secret which the world has so often longed for. All men are
disposed to say at a later stage of their life, " Give us what you
will, I do not ask now for joy or happiness ; give me the capacity
for sweet contentment, give me quietude of soul, give me the
power to be at rest."

^ We can no more leave the path of duty without danger of
ruin than a planet could without danger break away from the
path of its orbit. The moral law is as binding and beneficent in
its action, if duly obeyed, as the physical law. The yoke is a
badge, not of servitude, but of liberty ; duty and law are not stern
and forbidding, but gentle and friendly ; they are but two names
for the fostering care of God over all His works. Wordsworth,
who with clearer insight than all others caught a glimpse of the
face of God beneath the veil of Nature, thus addresses Duty :

Stern Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads;

ST. MATTHEW xi. 29, 30 281

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and
strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power

I call thee: I myself commend

Unto thy guidance from this hour ;

Oh, let my weakness have an end!

Give unto me, made lowly wise,

The spirit of self-sacrifice;

The confidence of reason give;

And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live.^

3. This strange gift of rest is at once immediate and pro-
gressive. " I will give you .rest," that is, " on your coming to
Me " ; and " ye shall find rest," that is, " on your continuance
with Me." The experiment of faith is to issue in an experience
of rest which pervades every part of life until the whole is under
its dominion, and until the peace of God reigns unhindered in
the throne-room of the heart. As the tide setting in from the
deep rises steadily until every dry inlet and creek along the
coast-line is filled with the ocean's fulness, so is the experience
of Christ's rest to increase and enlarge in the lives of His people.
No man has learned all there is of a language or its literature
when he has but mastered the alphabet. And no man finds all
that the rest of Christ is who is content with a mere casual
acquaintance with the Son of God. For the relationship which
is adjusted on our first coming to Him must be strengthened on
our side by a constant increase of the area of surrender, answer-
ing to increasing light. And it is in this ever-enlarging obedience
that rest is increasingly found.

^ When our surrender is made, the pain of our sacrifice is
great in proportion to our former selfishness. It is also harder
to bear, or more protracted when there is any looking back.
When we have once renounced our self-will and deliberately
chosen the WUl of God, if we look back we not only expose our-
selves to grievous risk, but also we make everything so much
harder to accomplish. If we would be brave in the surrender of
the will, we must set our faces in the way of the higher life, con-
template the beauty of the graces proposed to us, and deny the
former gratifications and appeals of self-love. We shall indeed

' A. M. Mackay.

282 REST UNDER THE YOKE

prove that the surrender of our will and the acceptance of God's
Will is no pleasing action of the soul ; but rather that, again and
again, as grace increases so love will be tested. And yet, so
perfect is the response of Divine love, that habitual surrender of
the will to God leads to great peace in the fact that we have no
will but His. Thus St. Catherine of Siena was enabled to make
so complete a surrender of her own will that our Lord gave her
His Will. She had made her communion with such devotion
that she was led to pray "that He would take away from her
all comforts and delights of the world that she might take pleasure
in none other thing, but only in Him." If we are moved by a like
holy desire, we should persevere in the constant surrender of the
will; nor let us be discouraged though we have to renew our
efforts at ever-increasing cost. New and higher ways of self-
surrender will appear, new opportunities of sacrifice will be pre-
sented, greater and more interior sufferings will test us, whether
our love is equal to really great things ; whether we will aspire to
the heroism of the Saints in the effort after perfection. " Be ye
perfect " is the Divine precept which echoes in the soul inflamed
by love.^

4. When we give ourselves up to the Father as the Son gave
Himself, we shall find not only that our yoke is easy and our
burden light, but that they communicate ease and lightness ; not
only will they not make us weary, but they will give us rest from
all other weariness. Let us not waste a moment in asking how
this can be ; the only way to know that is to take the yoke upon us.
That rest is a secret for every heart to know, for nev^r a tongue
to tell. Only by having it can we know it. If it seem impossible
to take the yoke upon us, let us attempt the impossible, let us lay
hold of the yoke, and bow our heads, and try to get our necks
under it. If we give our Father the opportunity. He will help
and not fail us. He is helping us every moment, when least we
think we need His help : when most we think we do, then may
we most boldly, as most earnestly we must, cry for it. What or
how much His creatures can do or bear God alone understands ;
but when it seems most impossible to do or bear, we must be
most confident that He will neither demand too much nor fail
with the vital Creator-help. That help will be there when wanted
— that is, the moment it can be help. To be able beforehand to
imagine ourselves doing or bearing we have neither claim nor need.
1 Jesse Brett, Humility, 14.

ST. MATTHEW xi. 29, 30 283

^ They tell me that on a farm the yoke means service.
Cattle are yoked to serve, and to serve better, and to serve more
easily. This is a surrender for service, not for idleness. In
military usage surrender often means being kept in enforced idle-
ness and under close guard. But this is not like that. It is all
upon a much higher plane. Jesus has every man's life planned.
It always awes me to recall that simple tremendous fact. With
loving, strong thoughtfulness He has thought into each of our
lives, and planned it out, in whole, and in detail. He comes to a
man and says, " I know you. I have been thinking about you."
Then very softly — "I — love — you. I need you, for a plan of
Mine. Please let Me have the control of your life and all your
power, for My plan." It is a surrender for service. It is yoked
service. There are two bows or loops to a yoke. A yoke in
action has both sides occupied, and as surely as I bow down my
head and slip into the bow on one side — I know there is Somebody
else on the other side. It is yoked living now, yoked fellowship,
yoked service. It is not working for God now. It is working
with Him. Jesus never sends anybody ahead alone. He treads
down the pathway through every thicket, pushes aside the thorn
bushes, and clears the way, and then says with that taking way
of His, " Come along with Me. Let us go together, you and I.
Yoke up with Me. Let us pull together." And if we will pull
steadily along, content to be by His side, and to be hearing His
quiet voice, and always to keep His pace, step by step with Him,
without regard to seeing results, all will be well, and by and by
the best results and the largest will be found to have come.^
' S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 79.

My Chuech.

a8s

Literature.

Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 157.

Adeney (W. F.), in Men of the New Testament, 109.

Book (W. H.), The Columbus Tabernacle Sermons, 142.

Brown (C. E.), The Young Man's Affairs, 139.

Biirrell (D. J.), The Spirit of the Age, 296.

Clow (W. M.), The Secret of the Lord, 42.

Dewburst (F. E.), The Investment of Truth, 191.

Goulburn (E. M.), The Holy Catholic Church, 1.

Gray (W. H.), Old Creeds and New Beliefs, 232.

Greenhough (J. G.), The Cross in Modern Life, 105.

Holland (H. S.), Creed and Character, 37.

Horton (E. F.), The Teaching of Jesus, 125.

Jones (J. C), Studies in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 255.

Neville (W. G.), Sermons, 109.

Newman (J. H.), Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, 263.

Nicoll (W. E.), The Lamp of Sacrifice, 113.

Owen (J. W.), Some Australian Sermons, 167.

Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 33.

Sanderson (T.), Unfulfilled Designs, 141.

Shepherd (A.), Bible Studies in Living Subjects, 219.

Stanley (A. P.), Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age, 76.

British Congregationalist, March 23, 1911 (W. B. Selbie) ; Sept. 21, 1911

(J. Warschauer).
Christian World Pulpit, xxxiv. 207 (C. Garrett); Iviii. 243 (J. A.

Brinkworth).
Chv/rchman's Pulpit : St. Peter, St. James, xv. 36 (C. Hardwiok).
Contemporary Review, xcvii. (1910) 165 (G. Whitelock).
Expositor, 2nd Ser., vii. 311 (J. A. Beet).
Homiletic Review, New Ser., xliv. 239 (F. E. Hiel).

z86

My Church.

And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my church ; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.—
Matt. xvi. l8.

Cheist had come very nearly to the close of His Galilean ministry.
He had been preaching for about a year, and the twelve disciples
had been accompanying Him, listening to His preaching, doing a
little preaching themselves, and gradually learning the truth which
He had come to proclaim. He had taken them apart by them-
selves for more close individual religious instruction. He pursued
the Socratic method. He asked them to what conclusions they
had come as the result of what they had seen and heard during
this year's companionship with Him. He asked, " Who do men
say that I am?" And the Apostles reported various answers:
" Some say John the Baptist ; some, Elijah ; and others, Jeremiah,
or one of the prophets." Then He said unto them, " But who say
ye that I am?" And Peter, who was never slow to speak,
answered, perhaps as spokesman for the rest, "Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God." To this Christ replied:
"Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock
I will build my church ; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail
against it."

The whole passage from which these words are taken has
been a battlefield for centuries between two irreconcilable con-
ceptions of Christianity. Our Lord had put a question to His
disciples, and it was no mere casual inquiry suggested by some
chance turn in the conversation. It was really an investigation
into the foundation of that world-wide kingdom He had come to
establish.

287

288 MY CHURCH

I.
The Eock Foundation of the Chuech.

"Thou art Peter (Petros), and on this rock (petra) I will build my
church."

1. The name of Peter is not bestowed here but interpreted.
Christ does not say, " Thou shalt be," but " Thou art " : and so
presupposes the former conferring of the name. Unquestionably,
the Apostle is the rock on which the Church is built. The efforts
to avoid that conclusion would never have been heard of, but for
the Koman Catholic controversy ; but they are as unnecessary as
unsuccessful. Is it credible that in the course of an address
which is wholly occupied with conferring prerogatives on the
Apostle a clause should come in which is concerned about an
altogether different subject from the " thou " of the preceding and
the " thee " of the following clauses, and which yet should take
the very name of the Apostle, slightly modified, for that other
subject ? We do not interpret other books in that fashion. But
it was not the " flesh and blood " Peter, but Peter as the recipient
and faithful utterer of the Divine inspiration in his confession,
who received these privileges. Therefore they are not his
exclusive property, but belong to his faith, which grasped and
confessed the Divine-human Lord; and wherever that faith is,
there are these gifts, which are its results. They are the
" natural " consequences of the true faith in Christ in that higher
region where the supernatural is the natural. Peter's grasp of
Christ's nature wrought upon his character, as pressure does upon
sand, and solidified his shifting impetuosity into rocklike firmness.
So the same faith will tend to do in any man. It made him the
chief instrument in the establishment of the Early Church. On
souls steadied and made solid by like faith, and only on such, can
Christ build His Church.

What Christ says, then, is not, " On you and your successors
in ecclesiastical of&ce I will build My Church " ; not, " On what
you have said I will build My Church " ; but, " On you as a man
transformed by the power of an indwelling Christ, on you as the
type of a long line of humanity growing broader through the
sweep and range of history, humanity transformed and changed

ST. MATTHEW xvi. i8 289

by the indwelling of My own Messianic life, I will build My
Church." This is the interpretation of the text afforded by its
setting. This is also Peter's own interpretation. " Wherefore
laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies,
and evU speakings, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of
the word, that ye may grow thereby : if so be ye have tasted that
the Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone,
disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye
also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priest-
hood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus
Christ."

^ The change of person " on this rock," instead of " upon thee,"
is the natural result of the sudden transition from a direct to a
metaphorical address ; and is in exact accordance with our Lord's
manner on other occasions. He said not " Destroy Me " or " the
temple of My body," but "destroy this temple" (John ii. 19).
The change of gender from Fetros to petra is the natural result of
the change from a proper name to the work from which the
proper name is derived. The French language alone, of all those
into which the original has been translated, has been able entirely
to preserve their identity. The Greek Fetros, which for the sake
of the masculine termination was necessarily used to express the
name itself, was yet so rarely used in any other sense than a
" stone " that the exigency of the language required an immediate
return to the word petra, which, as in Greek generally, so also in the
New Testament, is the almost invariable appellation of a " rock."
To speak of any confession or form of words, however sacred, as a
foundation or rock, would be completely at variance with the
living representation of the New Testament. It is not any
doctrine concerning Christ, but Christ Himself, that is spoken of
as being in the highest and strictest sense the foundation of the
Church (1 Cor. iii. 11), and so whenever the same figure is used to
express the lower and earthly instruments of the establishment of
God's Kingdom, it is not any teaching or system that is meant, but
living human persons. Thus the Apostles are all of them called
"foundations" of the Church in Eph. ii. 20; Eev. xxi. 14; and,
by a nearly similar metaphor, Peter, James, and John are called
" pillars " (Gal. ii. 9), the faithful Christian a " pillar in the temple of
God" (Eev. iii. 12), and Timotheus, by a union of both metaphors,
" the pillar and ground " of the " truth in the house of God." 1

Tl Stier is suggestive upon this point : " The man is Simon
' A. P. Stanley, Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age, 113.
ST. MATT. — 19

290 MY CHURCH

Bar-jona the sinner : not upon him, therefore, is it to be built ;
but upon this Peter such as grace makes him ; upon him because,
and in as far as, he certainly corresponds to this name more than
the others. Still for this very reason the co-ordinate stones and
pillars are by no means excluded, and even the primacy of Peter
rests at bottom only upon this, that he is called to begin the
preaching of the Word as first among equals." So wonderfully
does the Lord vouchsafe to build up the eternal fabritJ of the
Church out of human stones. Himself indeed the chief corner-
stone, and the twelve Apostles the twelve foundations, St. Peter
the great basal stone of the fabric, while thereon is built up, as
that very St. Peter himself testifies, out of living stones, a spiritual
house.^

2. Jesus builds His Church upon average human nature.
Who was this man of whom Jesus said that he was a rock ? He
was the most unstable and shifting of the disciples, as little like a
rock as a man could be. Jesus must have known this ; Peter must
have known it ; and the fishermen with Peter must have known
it also. He was quick to act and quick to reject. He was what
the modern world calls a " quitter," a man who could not stand
the strain of disapproval or suspicion ; a man who was more like
sand than rock. Yet Jesus takes him just as he is, believes in
him when he does not believe in himself, sees his underlying
qualities of strength and leadership, and converts him into the
rock which He would have him be. It was like the process of
nature which tosses the sand up on the shore and then beats upon
it and hardens it until it becomes converted into stone ; and we
call it, by what seems a contradiction in terms, sandstone. So
Jesus takes this unstable character and says to it : " Thou shalt
be a rock," and by the hard friction and compression of experience
Peter becomes that which Jesus saw that he could be.

% Mr. Bernard Shaw (who asks not for a new kind of
philosophy but for a new kind of man) cannot understand that
the thing which is valuable and lovable in our eyes is man — the
old beer-drinking, creed-making, fighting, failing, sensual, respect-
able man. And the things that have been founded on this
creature immortally remain ; the things that have been founded
on the fancy of the Superman have died with the dying civiliza-
tions which alone have given them birth. When Christ at a
symbolic moment was establishing His great society. He chose for
' A. Ritohie, Spiritual Studies in St. Matthew's Gospel, ii. 33.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. i8 291

its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John,
but a shuffler, a snob, a coward — in a word, a man. And upon
this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have
not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have
failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they
were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one
thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man,
and for that reason it is indestructible. Por no chain is stronger
than its weakest link.^

^ We are all familiar with the expression " a chip of the old
block." The quality of the chip bespeaks a block of like quality.
The chip is a pattern or sample of the block. In the same way
the evidently durable jpetra calls up the image of a petros of like
quality, as that which would afford an unrivalled foundation upon
which to build. Thus when our Lord to His first utterance, " I
also say unto thee, that thou art Petros," adds the words, " and
upon this petra I will build my church," it is like the farmer
taking up the sample, and declaring, " With this corn will I sow
my field," or the woman viewing the pattern, and saying, " Of this
stuff will I have a dress." ^

3. Although the meH;aphor here regards Jesus, not as the
foundation, but as the Founder of the Church, yet in a real sense
He is the Church's "one foundation," and Scripture generally
speaks of Him as such. If you would seek a sufficient foundation
for the Church, it can be found only in One who can give support
and maintenance to all that the Church is ; only in One who can
uphold from the first and through the ages all that enters into
the parts and thought and activities of the Church ; only in One
who Himself contains within Himself the substance which, when
worked out by the power of living spirit, will become the manifold
forms of the Church's contents — her faitli, her sacraments, her
worship, her activities, her many kinds and forms of grace and
goodness. And He only is such a One who said " Upon this rock
I will build my church." And so St. Paul says, " Other foundation
can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

^ Our Lord proclaimed Himself the Pounder of a world-wide
and imperishable Society. He did not propose to act powerfully
upon the convictions and the characters of individual men, and
then to leave to them, when they believed and felt alike, the

' G. K. Chesterton, Berelics, 66.

» F. G. Cholmondeley, in The Expositor, 2nd Ser,, viii. 76.

292 MY CHURCH

liberty of voluntarily forming themselves into an association, with
a view to reciprocal sympathy and united action. From the first,
the formation of a society was not less an essential feature of
Christ's plan than was His redemptive action upon single souls.
The society was not to be a school of thinkers, nor a self -associated
company of enterprising fellow- workers ; it was to be a Kingdom,
the Kingdom of Heaven, or, as it is also called, the Kingdom of
God.i

II.

The Stkuctuee Built upon the Eock.

" I will build my church."

1. The word "church" was neither new nor doubtful in
meaning to Jesus' disciples. It was the rendering they found in
that Greek Bible they had in their hands for one of the most
sacred and significant terms of the Old Testament. The Greek
word ecclesia is the translation of the Hebrew expression for " the
congregation of the Lord." Peter and his fellow-disciples could
not fail to realize that Jesus was forming the little band who had
companied with Him into a definite and organized religious
community. They were no longer a company of men who formed
the school of a Master. They were the church, the society, the
congregation of Christ. That society was seen in those twelve
men who looked up with wondering eyes and flushed faces to Him
whom they had confessed. It was seen again in the Upper Eoom
at the supper table. It was seen again in Jerusalem as, together
with the women, they waited on God in prayer, and the number
of the names was about an hundred and twenty. It was seen
again when the believers met in the first Council at Jerusalem,
and the apostles and elders came together to consider. It was
seen also whenever men and women met for prayer and for service
to Christ.

H Euskin has pointed out how the New Testament use of the
word "church" emphasizes this simple and unecclesiastical
meaning of the term. It can be seen to-day where two or three
are gathered together in His name. To be gathered together in
His name means for some purpose He has ordained which can be

■^ H. P. Liddon, TJie Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 101.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. i8 293

fulfilled through His Spirit, under a sense of His presence. " UU
Christus, iU ecclesia." Where Christ is, there is the Church. It
is the organ through which the great truths He preached, those
of God, of the meaning and worth of His words and life and
passion and redemption, are declared. It is the witness to His
resurrection, the evangelist of His message, the pillar and ground
of His truth, the fold of His flock. Like every other society it
must have its officers and its ceremonies. Like every other society
it must have its functions and its services. These have been
simply and fully described as " the word, sacraments, and prayer."
Whatever more men shall plead they may and should add to the
form and fashion of the Church of Christ nothing more than this
was understood by the men of Christ's own time.^

2. The Church, or assembly of God's people, is represented as
a house ; not a temple so much as a beleaguered fortress, accord-
ing to the figure frequently used by the prophets immediately
before the Captivity, and naturally suggested by the actual position
of the palace and Temple of Jerusalem on their impregnable hills.
But this assembly or congregation, which up to this time had
been understood only of the Jewish people, is here described as
being built afresh ; " built," according to the significant meaning
of that word, which, both in the Old and in the New Testament,
always involves the idea of progress, creation, expansion, by Him
who here, as so often elsewhere, appropriates to Himself what had
up to that time been regarded as the incommunicable attribute of
the Lord of Hosts. It is of this fortress, this " spiritual house,"
to use the phrase in his own Epistle (1 Pet. ii. 5), that Peter is to
be the foundation-rock. It was no longer to be reared on the
literal rock of Zion, but on a living man, and that man not the
high priest of Jerusalem but a despised fisherman of Galilee.
He who had stepped forward with his great confession in this
crisis had shown that he was indeed well fitted to become the
stay and support of a congregation no less holy than that which
had been with Moses in the wilderness, or with Solomon in the
Temple.

Tf We are to be careful as to where we build, and with what

we build. The Eddystone Lighthouse was once demolished

because it did not properly rest on the rock ; and if we are not

built on Christ — His doctrine, merit, fellowship, promise — we must

' "W. M. Glow, The Secret of the lord, 46.

294 MY CHURCH

be confounded. Let me be sure that I am morticed into the
impregnable Rock ! Careful with what we build ! Eddystone
Lighthouse perished once because it was built of wrong material
— constructed of wood, it was burnt. How much often enters
into the Christian creed that is not jewel or gold — fancies, specu-
lations, notions, utterly worthless ! How much often enters into the
Christian life that is superficial, freakish, trivial, inferior, and in-
harmonious ! Strange combinations of the true and the false, the
precious and the paltry, the beautiful and the vulgar, the essential
and the absurd ! Lord, grant me grace to build on the granite —
to build on Thee."-

3. Christ describes the Church lovingly as " My church." If
we read the Gospels carefully we shall see with what strictness of
application our Lord used the word " My." He never said, " My
house," " My lands," " My books," " My wife," " My child." He
said, " My Father," " My friends," " My disciples." When we
think of it we shall see that His true possessions were His Father
and His Church—" My Father," " My Church."

The Church is the company, now indeed quite innumerable,
of disciple-like souls who are for ever and ever learning of Him,
some of them, the greater number, beholding His face, and serving
Him day and night in His temple ; the rest not seeing Him yet,
but rejoicing in Him with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
In a word, the Church is the faithful souls of every place and name
known and unknown to whom His name is unutterably dear and
His words are more precious than fine gold, who love Him with a
love that is more than human, who trust Him with a trust that is
stronger than life or death, whose eager desire is to obey Him and
serve Him, and whose fervent prayer for ever and ever is to get
His truth made known. His salvation proved, and His name lifted
above every name, until at the name of Jesus every knee shall
bow. Upon all these, wherever they are, the Saviour looks down
as with the joy of one who looks upon a noble possession, and He
says, " They are My Church ; and there is no other."

\\ It is not our Church ; it is Christ's Church, first and last
and always. We cannot do in it what we please: we must do
what Christ pleases. He is its Builder. We may use the term
" Builder " of Him very much as we use it of an architect to-day.
Jesus Christ is the Architect of the Christian Church, and we are

» W, L. Watkinson.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. i8 295

all builders under Him — masons, carpenters, hodmen — and the
business of these people, from the foreman of the works right
downward, is to carry out the Architect's plan.^

^ A foundation must be hidden and out of sight unto all those
that outwardly look upon the house. They cannot perceive it,
though every part of the house doth rest upon it. And this hath
occasioned many mistakes in the world. An unwise man coming
to a great house, seeing the antics [wall decorations] and pictures
[figures ? pillars ?] stand crouching under the windows and sides of
the house, may haply think that they bear up the weight of the
house, when indeed they are for the most part pargeted [painted]
posts. They bear not the house : the house bears them. By their
bowing and outward appearance, the man thinks the burden is on
them, and supposes it would be an easy thing, at any time, by taking
them away, to demolish the house itself. But when he sets him-
self to work, he finds these things of no value. There is a founda-
tion in the bottom, which bears up the whole, that he thought not
of. Men looking upon the Church do find that it is a fair fabric
indeed, but cannot imagine how it should stand. A few supporters
it seemeth to have in the world, like crouching antics [wall decora-
tions] under the windows, that make some show of under-propping
it ; here you have a magistrate, there an army or so. Think the
men of the world, " Can we but remove these people, the whole
would quickly topple to the ground." Yea, so foolish have I been
myself, and so void of understanding before the Lord, as to take a
view of some goodly appearing props of this building and to think.
How shall the house be preserved if these be removed — when lo !
suddenly some have been manifested to be held up by the house, and
not to hold it up. I say then, Christ, as the foundation of this
house, is hidden to the men of this world ; they see it not, they
believe it not. There is nothing more remote from their appre-
hension than that Christ should be at the bottom of them and
their ways, whom they so much despise."

III.

The Security of the Steuctuke.

"The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."

1. The figure of the gates is one of the oldest and most familiar
in Eastern life. At the gate of every city its elders sat in judg-
^ "W. B. Selbie, in TJie British CongregatimaHit, March 23, 1911.
' John Owen.

296 MY CHURCH

ment and in council, as Lot sat in the gates of Sodom. From the
gates of the city there issued forth its armies of conquest. " The
gates of Hades " is a picturesque and Oriental metaphor for the
counsel and craft and force of evil. By the figure Jesus con-
jured up to the imagination of His disciples that underworld of
spiritual evil from which there issued forth the powers of darkness.
From these gates of hell Jesus saw down the centuries of the
history of His Church, in which all the wisdom of this world, its
cunning and cruelty and foul passion, would assail His society of
believing men. He foresaw the long struggle when

Zion in her anguish
With Babylon must cope.

He foresaw those eras when the battle would seem to go against
His Church. He saw His disciples before the Council. He saw
His martyr saints witnessing with their lives when paganism
sprung on them like a savage beast roused from its lair. He saw
the subtler powers of darkness sapping the faith, corrupting the
purities, and leavening the simplicities, of His people's worship,
and service. He saw the enemy sowing his tares among the
wheat. But He saw His Church, in the power of its moral and
spiritual energy, emerging from every conflict with a greater victory.
He saw of the travail of His soul and was satisfied.

2. History has justified this promise. The gates of Hades have
not prevailed. The Christian Church, on whose foundation in
Himself He began to build with, as it were, but a single stone in
His hand, has, beyond all other positive institutions, defied and
surmounted destruction. Great changes have taken place since
Jesus ventured the promise of this portion of Scripture to a poor
fisherman, and threw into the air that challenge against fate.
Numerous old customs have decayed. Whole systems of religion
and philosophy have passed away. Famous cities have crumbled
in the dust, and wild beasts have roamed, and birds of prey have
screamed over their ruins. Eaces of men have been dispersed, or
are even now in their last remnants thinly melting into the grave
which this earth has for nations as well as for individuals. Yea,
the very shores of the seas have begun to shift their places, and
the everlasting hills have bowed their heads since Jesus spoke to

ST. MATTHEW xvi. i8 297

Peter. But the gates of hell have not prevailed against His
Church. Not only has it survived unhurt, as the promise implies,
but it has flourished and increased ; and under its various names,
and with open doors, it still invites the sons of men at once to the
shelter of its walls and through the opening of its aisles into paths
of endless advancement.

^ In the middle of the last century all literary and philo-
sophical people in this country were writing down the Church,
saying its last days were come: when bishops like Butler were
apologizing for Christianity, and historians like David Hume were
predicting that by the end of the century it would be among the
dead religions ; it was just at that time that the great Evangelical
revival of Wesley and Whitefield commenced, which carried a
new wave, or rather a new iire, of religious fervour into every
corner of the land. Again, towards the close of the century, when
the French Encyclopasdists, led by Voltaire, were saying that Jesus
the Nazarene had at last been blotted out, and that Christian
temples would be changed into halls of science — it was at that
time that William Carey went out to India, and the great foreign
missionary enterprise was renewed, if not commenced, which has
carried the sign of the cross, and the light of it, into the darkest
parts of the world. And the Church has always been surprising
its enemies in that way by its wonderful resurrections, just as
Jewish rulers were surprised when they found that the name of
Jesus which they had crucified, and buried, and got rid of, was
working greater miracles than ever."-

^ We understand ourselves to be risking no new assertion,
but simply reporting what is already the conviction of the
greatest of our age, when we say, — that cheerfully recognizing,
gratefully appropriating whatever Voltaire has proved, or any
other man has proved, or shall prove, the Christian Eeligion, once
here, cannot again pass away; that in one or the other form, it
will endure through all time ; that as in Scripture, so also in the
heart of man, is written, "the Gates of Hell shall not prevail
against it." Were the memory of this Faith never so obscured,
as, indeed, in all times, the coarse passions and perceptions of
the world do all but obliterate it in the hearts of most: yet
in every pure soul, in every Poet and Wise Man, it finds
a new Missionary, a new Martyr, till the great volume of
Universal History is finally closed, and man's destinies are fulfilled
in this earth.2

' J. G. Greenhougli, The Cross in Modem Life, 116.
' Carlyle, Miscellanies, ii. 173 (Essay on Toltaire).

298 MY CHURCH

3. The greatest hindrance to the victory of this society of
Christ, and the supreme sorrow of all loyal hearts within it, has
heen the low standard of its Christian character, and the apostasy
of those traitor hearts who have sometimes fouiid a place among
its leaders. The root of this low level of life, and the source of
this treachery, has always been the failure to maintain the test
of a personal experience. Wherever Christian teachers sanction
membership on the ground of a proper age, a sufficient knowledge,
a Christian training, or a due regard for religious observances,
unworthy lives and heedless practices abound. So long as the
winnowing fan of persecution blew away the chaff there was little
but wheat in the garner of God and the society of Christ. When
the cleansing fires of a searching poverty, a costly service, and an
open outcastness, purged believers' hearts of pride and ambition,
Christ's society was the ideal of a godly chivalry. But when the
Church grew rich and powerful, and when title and rank became
appanages of its leaders, and office in it became a coveted dis-
tinction, then this solemn test of a personal touch with God was
evaded. Christ's society was no longer a community and brother-
hood of pure and lowly men. Whatever rank, or place, or
authority any man has held in any church in Christendom, it is
a simple certainty that Christ has not welcomed him in at all, if
he has had no revelation from God.

^ Thoreau spoke of men whose pretence to be Christian was
ridiculous, for they had no genius for it. Matthew Arnold said of
John Wesley that he had " a genius for godliness." But nothing
can be more misleading than to use such terms as these. They
are a distinct denial of Christ's great truth that God's revelation
of grace is made not to the wise and prudent, but to babes. There
have been men of a real genius for morality, but there is no such
thing as a genius for religion. The most reckless and godless
wretch, whose name has been a synonym for coarse and blatant
atheism, about whom Thoreau and Matthew Arnold would say
that he had a genius for devilry, has become a splendid and
glorious saint. Wherever there is a soul there is a genius for
godliness. But that soul must have come nakedly and openly
under the power of God. Then and not till then does it pass into
Christ's society.^

^ If Augustin guessed from this upheaval of his whole frame
1 W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 49.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. i8 299

how close at hand was the heavenly visitation, all he felt at the
moment was a great need to weep, and he wanted solitude to weep
freely. He went down into the garden. Alypius, feeling uneasy,
followed at a distance, and in silence sat down beside him on the
bench where he had paused. Augustin did not even notice that
his friend was there. His agony of spirit began again. All his
faults, all his old stains came once more to his mind, and he grew
furious against his cowardly feebleness as he felt how much he
still clung to them. Oh, to tear himself free from all these
miseries — to finish with them once for all! . . . Suddenly he
sprang up. It was as if a gust of the tempest had struck him.
He rushed to the end of the garden, flung himself on his knees
under a fig-tree, and with his forehead pressed against the earth
he burst into tears. Even as the olive-tree at Jerusalem which
sheltered the last watch of the Divine Master, the fig-tree of
Milan saw fall upon its roots a sweat of blood. Augustin,
breathless in the victorious embrace of Grace, panted : " How long,
how long ? To-morrow and to-morrow ? Why not now ? Why
not this hour make an end of my vileness ? "

Now, at this very moment a child's voice from the neighbour-
ing house began repeating in a kind of chant : " Take and read,
take and read." Augustin shuddered. What was this refrain ?
Was it a nursery-rhyme that the little children of the countryside
used to sing ? He could not recollect it ; he had never heard it
before. Immediately, as upon a Divine command, he rose to his
feet and ran back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for he
had left St. Paul's Epistles lying there. He opened the book, and
the passage on which his eyes first fell was this : " Put ye on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil
the lusts thereof." The flesh ! The sacred text aimed at him
directly— at him, Augustin, still so full of lust ! This command
was the answer from on high.

He put his finger between the leaves, closed the volume. His
frenzy had passed away. A great peace was shed upon him — it
was all over. With a calm face he told Alypius what had
happened, and without lingering he went into his mother's room
to tell her also. Monnica was not surprised. It was long now
since she had been told, " Where I am, there shalt thou be also."
But she gave way to an outburst of joy. Her mission was done.
Now she might sing her canticle of thanksgiving and enter into
God's peace.^

' Louis Bertrand, Saint Augustin (trans, by V. O'SulUvan), 206.

The Keys of the Kingdom.

301

Literature.

Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 115.

Book (W. H.), The Columbus Tabernacle Sermons, VI.

Burrell (D. J.), The Spirit of the Age, 306.

Clow (W. M.), The Secret of the Lord, 57.

Fraser (J.), Parochial and Other Sermons, 302.

Howatt (J. R.), Jesus the Poet, 151.

Jerdan (C), Oospel Milk and Honey, 54.

Lewis (L. H.), Petros, 65.

Norton (J. W.), Golden Truths, 326.

Selby (T. G.), The Imperfect Angel, 261.

Wright (W. B.), The World to Come, 45.

Church ofEnglcmd Pulpit, Ixii. 376 (F. R. M. Hitcbcock).

Church Family Newspaper, Feb. 17, 1911 (F. S. Webster).

3oa

The Keys of the Kingdom.

I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou
Shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.— Matt. xvi. 19.

When this promise was given the little Galilean company was
standing on one of the lower spurs of the Lebanon, amidst the
pleasant rush and music of its countless brooks, with the grey
walls of the Eoman castle at Csesarea Philippi in the distance.
Peter had just made his great confession, and by his swift and
far-reaching intuition had established his place as foremost man
of the Twelve. It was under these circumstances that this peculiar
form of expression was first used by our Lord. After speaking
of the supernatural knowledge that Peter had received from the
Father, Christ goes on to announce the important relation of Peter,
as the first possessor and witness of such knowledge, to the Church
of the future. And then He advances a step, and speaks of a
future gift of light and power and dominion to Peter which the
Apostle should receive from His hand : " And I will give unto
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

L

The Keys.

" I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

Keys are the emblems of authority, and this language was
addressed to Peter because of the power that was to be conferred
on him. He was to arrange and toil, determine and order, in the
affairs of Christ's Kingdom, not, of course, absolutely, but under
Christ, for Christ is the Head. Peter's authority was to be real,
but none the less derived from and dependent upon Christ's will.

304 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

Now, as Peter's power was not to be absolute, so it was not to be
solitary. It was to be shared by the other Apostles. That is not
brought out in the text, for here Christ is dealing only with His
servant who had so grandly confessed Him. But later on Christ
conferred on the entire company of the disciples the same wonder-
ful power and privilege as He had conferred on Peter, when He
said, not to any Apostle in particular but to the entire Church,
" Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost : Whose soever sins ye forgive, they
are forgiven unto them ; whose soever sins ye retain, they are
retained." One outcome of the authority was that Peter, like the
others, could bind and unloose, could forbid or enjoin, what should
be done in the Kingdom of Christ. Through the Apostle Christ
was to express His will. Through him the Master was to carry
on and carry out His purposes. What Peter ordered would be
what Christ desired. What Peter forbade would be the things
Christ disapproved, and herein was the reality of the power, herein
the vastness of the privilege, that Christ was to work in and
through him, for that is loftier and grander than for any man to
devise and determine unaided and unguided of the Spirit of God.
And it is in virtue of this real and true guiding Spirit that we
have the Epistles of Paul, and Peter, and John, and others
developing the doctrine of the cross of Christ, and setting forth
the source of and the power of the Christian life.

1. If we refer to another occasion upon which Christ used
this metaphor of the keys, we shall find that Christ was accustomed
to associate with the expression knowledge and the specific power
that comes from knowledge. To the lawyers He said, " Ye took
away the key of knowledge." The reference here can only be to
the knowledge that unlocks the gates leading into the Kingdom
of Heaven. That was Christ's future gift to Peter. Putting this
side by side with the fact that Christ has just been speaking of a
knowledge of His own person and character that had been given
to Peter, what can the knowledge that Christ would by and by give
be but the knowledge of the Pather, of which He was the one
only spring and channel amongst men ? It was through that
knowledge that Peter was to open the way for men into the
Kingdom of Heaven. " To bind " and " to loose " was to teach
and to rule in the Kingdom of Heaven, in harmony with the

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 19 305

knowledge received from the Father. We observe that the
promise deals more immediately with things, not persons; with
truths and duties, not with human souls. The Apostles dealt
with souls as all other disciples of Christ deal with them, ipter-
mediately, through the truths and precepts on which the salvation
of souls turned. The power of the keys, of binding and loosing,
was in reality the power of knowing the essential truths of God's
character and will.

(1) It is the power of a teacher. Among the Jews, when a
scribe was admitted to his office a key was given to him as the
symbol of the duties which he was expected to perform. He was
set apart to study with diligence the Book of the Law, and to read
and explain it to the people. Jesus Christ reproved the Eabbis
and Pharisees of His day for having taken away the key of
knowledge, and for shutting up the Kingdom of Heaven against
men, that is, trying to lock good men out. They knew little of
the spirit of the law which they taught, and their teaching
produced evil fruits in the lives of their countrymen.

There is a sense in which all who faithfully preach the word
of the Kingdom hold the keys. When we say that we have got
the key to a difficulty, or that an army holds the key to a position,
we mean that, however long it may be before the proof of the
power is manifested, yet it is there. So with those who proclaim
the truth as it is in Jesus. Their word may be derided, their
warnings scorned, their entreaties mocked at; yet as the word
they speak is not their own but the word of God, so shall that
word loose or bind, shut up or set free. But it is the Lord who
does this; man is but His agent for declaring His message.
Every command or threat is heard by conscience, but the thing
that is declared may be long a-coming. It will come, however.
So with every word of the gospel : the truth in Jesus is the key
of the Kingdom : the decisive proof we may be long in discovering,
but early or late every one must iind a barred or an abundant
entrance, according as he has given heed to or neglected the word
of life.

If When Luther opened the long-closed Bible in the Gospels
and Epistles, he was bringing forth out of his treasury things new
and old. He was binding and loosing the consciences of men.
When Andrew Melville, in Scottish history, took King James by

ST. MATT. — 20

3o6 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

the sleeve as that pedant was arrogating to himself a spiritual
power which was his neither by law nor by grace, and called him
" God's silly vassal," reminding him that there were two kings
and two kingdoms in Scotland, he may have been lacking in
courtesy, but he was proving himself a scribe of the Kingdom.
When John Brown of Harper's Ferry stooped to kiss the negro
child in its slave mother's arms as he passed to his death, men of
vision might have seen the keys of the Kingdom at his girdle.
All men now realize that in his own rude way he taught the
things of Christ to his own generation. Wherever and whenever
the Christian Church, through its ministers and people and its
inspired saints, shall stand to proclaim some high duty or to
renounce some hoary wrong, they shall bind and they shall loose,
and they shall fulfil the function of the Church in the Kingdom
of God.i

(2) Again, we are reminded that knowledge is necessary to
life ; we believe and then do. The great principle is taught that
the morality of Christianity flows directly from its theology, and
that whoever, like Petgr, grasps firmly the cardinal truth of
Christ's nature, and all which flows therefrom, will have his
insight so cleared that his judgments on what is permitted or
forbidden to a Christian man will correspond with the decisions
of heaven, in the measure of his hold upon the truth which under-
lies all religion and all morality, namely, " Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God." These are gifts to Peter indeed, but
only as possessor of that faith, and are much more truly under-
stood as belonging to all who "possess like precious faith" (as
Peter says) than as the prerogative of any individual or class.

^ In a chapter of reminiscences which is given at the end of
the second volume of the Letters of Erskine of Linlathen, Principal
Shairp writes; "Mr. Erskine utterly repudiated the character
which Eenan's Vie de J6sus drew of our Lord, and almost
resented the fatuity which could separate with a sharp line the
morality of the Gospels from their doctrinal teaching as to Christ
Himself. He used to say, ' As you see in many English churches
the Apostles' Creed placed on one side of the altar, on the other the
Ten Commandments, so Eenan would divide as with a knife the
moral precepts of the Gospels from their doctrines. Those he
would retain, these he would throw away. Can anything be more
blind ? As well might you expect the stem and leaves of a
flower to flourish when you had cut away the root, as to retain the
» W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 65.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 19 307

morality of the Gospels when you have discarded its doctrinal
basis. Faith in Christ, and G-od in Christ, is the only root from
which true Christian morality can grow.' " ^

2. The history of St. Peter, as recorded in the Acts of the
Apostles, reveals the facts that the lofty promise contained in the
text was fulfilled in three important particulars.

(1) He is first in the first election to the vacant apostolate.
He is first in the first great conversion of souls. His word rolls
like the storm. It cuts and pierces like the sword. We do not
require to have the imagination exalted by the vast gilded letters
round the cupola of St. Peter's at Eome. This is truly to hold the
keys, and to roll back the doors of the Kingdom !

^ My mother's death was the second epoch in my father's
life ; and for a man so self-reliant, so poised upon a centre of his
own, it is wonderful the extent of change it made. He went
home, preached her funeral sermon, every one in the church in
tears, himself outwardly unmoved. But from that time dates an
entire, though always deepening, alteration in his manner of preach-
ing, because an entire change in his way of dealing with God's
Word. Not that his abiding religious views and convictions were
then originated or even altered — I doubt not that from a child he
not only knew the Holy Scriptures, but was " wise unto salvation "
— but it strengthened and clarified, quickened and gave permanent
direction to, his sense of God as revealed in His Word. He took as
it were to subsoil ploughing ; he got a new and adamantine point
to the instrument with which he bored, and with a fresh power —
with his whole might, he sunk it right down into the living rock,
to the virgin gold. His entire nature had got a shock, and his
blood was drawn inwards, his surface was chilled, but fuel was
heaped all the more on the inner fires, and his zeal, that n iif/ih
-ir/iayf^a, burned with a new ardour ; indeed had he not found an
outlet for his pent-up energy, his brain must have given way, and
his faculties have either consumed themselves in wild, wasteful
splendour and combustion or dwindled into lethargy. . . . Prom
being elegant, rhetorical, and ambitious in his preaching, he
became concentrated, urgent, moving (being himself moved), keen,
searching, unswerving, authoritative to fierceness, full of the
terrors of the Lord, if he could but persuade men. The truth of
the words of God had shone out upon him with an immediateness
and infinity of meaning and power which made them, though the
same words he had looked on from childhood, other and greater and
• Letters of Thomas JErskine of LinloUhen, 1840-1870, p. 376.

3o8 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

deeper words. He then left the ordinary commentators, and men
who write about meanings and flutter around the circumference
and corners ; he was bent on the centre, on touching with his own
fingers, on seeing with his own eyes, the pearl of great price.
Then it was that he began to dig into the depths, into the primary
and auriferous rock of Scripture, and take nothing at another's
hand: then he took up with the word "apprehend"; he had
laid hold of the truth, — there it was, with its evidence, in his hand ;
and every one who knew him must remember well how, in speak-
ing with earnestness of the meaning of a passage, he, in his ardent,
hesitating way, looked into the palm of his hand, as if he actually
saw there the truth he was going to utter.^

(2) But the great promise to Peter is fulfilled in a second way.
Spiritual sin would steal into the Church ; it would glide in under
a haze of profession and pretence, as Milton tells us that Satan
passed in mist into Paradise. It is Peter who speaks with such
awful power. Simon makes an attempt to buy the gift of God
with money, and brands upon his own name for ever its ill-
omened connexion with the foul offence (far from obsolete) of
buying spiritual offices. Peter's voice pronounces his condemna-
tion. " All men," says the Koran, " are commanded by the saint."
All men know, if only by instinct, that this priesthood of good-
ness has been won at the cross, in blood, the " crimson of which
gives a living hue to all form, all history, all life." Let us no
longer lose our purchase of this mighty term, through fear of its
sacerdotal connotations. Dissociated from the institution, as it
has been well pointed out, the true priest makes good his claims
to mediatorship in the heart of his fellows, solely by the possession
of those spiritual qualities which create and confirm the impres-
sion that he is nearer to God than they.

^ Francis of Assisi is pre-eminently the saint of the Middle
Ages. Owing nothing to church or school, he was truly theo-
didact, and if he perhaps did not perceive the revolutionary
bearing of his preaching, he at least always refused to be ordained
priest. He divined the superiority of the spiritual priesthood.
The charm of his life is that, thanks to reliable documents, we
find the man behind the wonder worker. We find in him not
merely noble actions, we find in him a life in the true meaning of
the word ; I mean, we feel in him both development and struggle.
How mistaken are the annals of the Saints in representing him as

' Dr. John Brown, Hora Subaeeivce, ii. 9.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 19 309

from the very cradle surrounded with aureole and nimbus ! As if
the finest and most manly of spectacles were not that of the man
who conquers his soul hour after hour, fighting against himself,
against the suggestions of egoism, idleness, discouragement, then
at the moment when he might believe himself victorious, finding
in the champions attracted by his ideal those who are destined 3
not to bring about its complete ruin, at least to give it its most
terrible blows. Poor Francis ! The last years of his life were
indeed a via dolorosa as painful as that where his Master sank
,down under the weight of the cross; for it is still a joy to die for
one's ideal, but what bitter pain to look on in advance at the
apotheosis of one's body, while seeing one's soul — I would say his
thought — misunderstood and frustrated.^

(3) But there is exhibited yet another fulfilment to the great
promise. Peter is also the first to divine the secret of God, to
follow the mind of the Spirit. He climbs rapidly to the highest
peak, and is the first herald of the dawn. The old is, no doubt,
very dear to him ; he clings to all that is devout and venerable
with the tenacious loyalty of a true Hebrew churchman. He
goes up " into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth
hour." He ascends the house-top "to pray at the sixth hour."
The services of the Temple and of the synagogue go on upon a
parallel line with the first eucharists. But this Hebraic Christi-
anity, or Christian ^ Hebraism, cannot continue indefinitely.
There are souls among the Gentiles longing for forgiveness, for
i-est and purity. They are not to dwell in the shadow, to tarry
disappointed in the vestibule for ever. It is for Peter to fling
back the doors once again. He receives the vision in the house
of Simon, the tanner, by the seaside.

Far o'er the glowing western main
His wistful brow was upward raised.

Where, like an angel's burning train.
The burnished waters blazed.

And now his part as founder and rock is almost over. The
reception of Cornelius is his last great act. The last mention of
his name in St. Luke's narrative is in these sentences : " There
rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, say-
ing, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command
them to keep the law of Moses. And the apostles and elders
1 P. Sabatier, Life of St. Francis (f Assist, p. xt.

3IO THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

came together for to consider of this matter. And when there
had been much disputing, Peter rose up and said unto them" —
his last words are characteristic — " But we believe that through
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as
they."

n.

The Power of the Keys.

"Whatsoever thou shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

Although the notion of opening and shutting shades off into
that of " binding and loosing,'' it is obvious that the less familiar
expression would not have been substituted for the more familiar
without some specific reason, which reason is in this case supplied
by the well-known meaning of the words themselves. The figure
of " binding and loosing," for " allowing as lawful, or forbidding as
unlawful," is so simple and obvious that no language has been
wholly without it. Twice besides the expression is used : " Verily
I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound
in heaven : and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed
in heaven" (Matt, xviii. 18) ; and "Whose soever sins ye forgive,
they are forgiven unto them ; whose soever sins ye retain, they
are retained " (John xx. 23). On these occasions the words are
spoken to others besides St. Peter, and on each occasion the sense
is substantially the same: "So great shall be the authority of
your decisions, that, unlike those of the ordinary schools or Rabbis,
whatsoever you shall declare lawful shall be held lawful, what-
soever you shall declare unlawful shall be held unlawful, in the
highest tribunal in heaven."

1. It is, as it were, the solemn inauguration of the right of the
Christian's conscience to judge with a discernment of good and
evil, to which up to this time the world had seen no parallel. In
that age, when the foundations of all ancient belief were shaken,
when acts which up to that time had been regarded as lawful or
praiseworthy were now condemned as sinful, or which before had
been regarded as sinful were now enjoined as just and holy, it

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 19 311

was no slight comfort to have it declared, by the one authority
which all Christians acknowledged as Divine, that there were
those living on the earth on whose judgment in these disputed
matters the Church might rely with implicit confidence. In the
highest sense of all, doubtless, this judgment was exercised by
Him alone who taught " as one having authority, and not as the
scribes," and who on the Mount of the new law drew the line be-
tween His own commandments and what was said by them of old
time. In a lower sense it was exercised, and has ever since been
exercised, by all those who by their teaching or their lives, by
their words or their example, have impressed the world more
deeply with a sense of what is Christian holiness and what is
Christian liberty. In an intermediate sense, it has been
exercised by those whose special gifts or opportunities have
made them in a more than ordinary degree the oracles and law-
givers of the moral and spiritual society in which they have been
placed. Such, above all, were the Apostles. By their own lives
and teaching, by their Divinely sanctioned judgments on in-
dividual cases (as St. Paul on Elymas or the 'incestuous Cor-
inthian) or on general principles (as in their Epistles), they have,
in a far higher sense than any other human beings, bound and
loosed the consciences, remitted and retained the sins, of the
whole huinan race for ever.

The Jewish scribe kept the treasury of knowledge. His keys
were his powers of reading and understanding and applying the
law of God. He was the expositor of God's word, the interpreter
of God's mind, the commentator on God's counsels, the teacher of
the truth made known to him by God. He hound the things of
God — His laws, His ideals of life and duty. His lawful sanctions.
His sacred and mystic revelation of Himself — upon men's hearts
and consciences. He looseci men's minds and wills from any
bondage, or any tyranny of unrighteous laws, and he enabled
them to refrain from indulging in things forbidden. What the
Jewish scribe with the keys of knowledge and truth and duty was
to the Law, the Christian Church should be to the Kingdom of God.
" Every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is
like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out
of his treasure things new and old." That describes both Christ's
own office as the Master and His disciples as His Church.

312 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

^ Go into an observatory, and watch some astronomer as he
is following the transit of a star. His telescope is so adjusted
that an ingenious arrangement of clock-work is made to shift
it with the transit of the star. His instrument is moving in
obedience to the movement of the star in the heavens. But the
clock-work does not move the star. The astronomer has made
his faultless calculations ; the mechanic has adjusted his cranks
and pendulums and wheels and springs with unerring nicety, and
every movement in the telescope answers to the movement of the
star in the far-off heavens. The correspondence rests on know-
ledge. And so when the things that are bound on earth are
bound in heaven. Every legislative counsel and decree and
movement in a truly apostolic and inspired Church answers to
some counsel and decree and movement in the heavens. But
then the power of discerning and forecasting the movements
of the Divine will and government rests upon the power
of interpreting the Divine character and applying its princi-
ples of action, as that character is communicated to us by
Jesus Christ.^

% Over thirty years ago Scotland was overwhelmed by a great
commercial disaster through the failure of one of its leading
banks. It was a calamity that could not stand alone, and day
after day the strongest business houses were compelled to suspend
payment. The distress brought upon the shareholders, many of
them widows and orphans brought in a single morning to poverty,
was so great that a gigantic lottery of six millions sterling was
proposed. One half of these millions was to be given to sub-
scribers. The other half was to be given to relieve the distress
of those who were impoverished. The object seemed so praise-
worthy, and the misery was so widespread and so extreme, that
many of the wisest and clearest minds in Scotland gave it their
support. Suddenly Principal Eainy, the foremost Christian
minister of this land in his day, raised his voice. In a letter full
of invincible argument, couched in courteous and appealing terms,
he protested against this appeal to the very passions and follies,
the greed and the gambling, which had produced the ruin. The
scheme was dropped in a day. He had bound and loosed the
consciences of men. All Scotland understood, for one moment at
least, the true meaning of the power of the keys.*

2. The power given by these words perhaps goes further still,

and implies, under certain extraordinary conditions, fitness and

1 T. G. Selby, The Imperfect Angel, 266.
» W. M. Clow, Tht Secret of the Lord, 64.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 19 313

qualification to pronounce an unerring spiritual judgment upon
the soul's relation to God. And this leads us to ask the question,
Upon what conditions does this power of opening and closing the
Kingdom of Heaven, and of retaining and remitting the sin of
men, rest ? We observe, in the first case, that nothing whatever
was promised to Peter, except so far as he was already the
subject of a teaching inspiration, and was to become so in a yet
richer degree in future days. He held the keys, and could bind
and loose in so far as the Son was revealed to him by the Father .
and the Father by the Son, and not one iota beyond. He could
not open the gates of the Kingdom by any private authority and
apart from the possession of these truths. Then we come to the
promise of this same power to the whole congregation of the
disciples. There is no power of binding and loosing apart from
Christ's indwelling presence within the Church. And then we
come to the last case. Christ connected the power of absolution
with a symbolic act, in which He made the disciples recipients of
His own life, and partakers and instruments of the Holy Ghost
by that fellowship. But it will be observed that there is no
valid retention or remission of sin that can be pronounced
to men, except by the lips of which the Holy Ghost is the
unceasing breath. Given that condition in the case of either
priest or layman, one may safely extend to him the power of
absolution.

Tf As the doctor takes the key of his drug-store and selects
from the specifics that are arranged around him, he kills or makes
alive. His key means a power of absolution. When it is first
put into his hand he is instructed with as solemn a responsibility
as the Judge who pronounces death-sentences. When he selects
this drug, or looks upon that as hopeless to apply under the
conditions into which the patient has fallen, he is dealing with
questions of life and death. And so Christ in His closing
admonitions to the disciples teaches that they are not dealing
with speculative truth only. The doctrine they are set forth to
disseminate is not, like the curious and trivial questions discussed
by some of the Eabbis, a matter that cannot possibly affect the
spiritual well-being of a single human soul in the slightest
degree. They are not following out questions that have a hypo-
thetical value only. It is not for some idle debate in the groves
that they are setting forth in the scanty outfit of couriers. They
are commissioned to deal with grave, spiritual destinies. " Whose

314 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose
soever sins ye retain, they are retained." ^

^ We are told that, throughout the strain of the civil war in
America, Abraham Lincoln found a true priest in the godly and
much-suffering woman who had charge of his children. He, who
became more powerful than any monarch of modern times
through the reverence of his countrymen for the man he was,
tells us how he was sustained in that awful crisis of national
calamity and personal sorrow by the prayers in his behalf of this
. stricken, yet believing woman. She knew God, Lincoln felt, so
she became God's priest to Lincoln. He resorted to her for inter-
cession on his behalf — he who would, as one truly remarks, have
treated with " courteous and civil incredulity a proffer of sacer-
dotal good of&ces from Cardinal Gibbons." *

3. Yet the responsibility is always with the man himself.
To each soul personally God gives the keys of his own destiny and
bids him unlock life's closed doors ; puts in his hands the rudder
and bids him steer his bark ; gives him the tools and bids him
model his own character. This is the most solemn fact of all, for
this is an undivided and unshared responsibility. I may throw
on others the blame for the failure of the State and the sins of
the Church ; but for my decisions respecting my own life I am
alone responsible. In vain the reluctant receiver protests against
taking the key of his own life ; in vain he endeavours to pass it
to some other one ; in vain he seeks to avoid the necessity of
deciding life's problems and making life's choice. Sometimes he
seeks a father-confessor and asks him to take the key and bind
and loose his life for him ; and the father-confessor may accept
the trust. But it is in vain. Every one of us shall give account
of himself to God. Whether the father-confessor sits in a priest's
chair, or in a Protestant minister's chair, or in a religious editor's
chair, he can take no responsibility ; he can give counsel, but that
is all. To each soul God has given the keys ; each soul must
bind and loose for itself.

^ A father whose wealth is in ships and warehouses and rail-
roads, but who has an acre garden attached to the country home-
stead, summons his boys one spring, as he is going to Europe, and
says to them, " I put this garden in your charge ; spend what

' T. G. Selby, The Imperfeci Aiigel, 268.

' A. Shepherd, Bible Stvdiet in Living Subjeett, 231.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 19 315

you will ; cultivate according to your own best judgment ; send
the product to the market ; and account to me for sales and
expenditures when I get home." "But, Father," say the boys,
" what shall we sow 1" "I cannot tell you ; you must judge for
yourselves." "Where shall we sell?" ''Find out for your-
selves." " What prices ought we to get ? " " Learn for yourselves."
" But, Father, we know nothing about gardening ; we shall make
dreadful mistakes." " No doubt you will," replies the father,
" and you will learn by your mistakes ; and it is your learning,
not the gardening, I care for." " But, Father, we are afraid we
shall bankrupt you." The father laughs and replies, " You can-
not bankrupt me, if you try, with a summer's gardening on an
acre plot." " But, Father," finally protest the boys, " we are
afraid that when you come back and see how poorly we have done
you will find fault with us and be sorry that you gave us such a
trust." And the father catches up a piece of paper and writes
upon it : " Know all men by these presents that I hereby appoint
my boys, James and John, my true and lawful attorneys, to do all
things that may be necessary in the cultivation and charge of my
acre garden, and I hereby ratify and confirm beforehand what-
ever they may do." And he signs it, hands it to them, and goes
his way. So God gives to us. His children, in this summer
day out of eternity which we call life, and on this little acre
plot of ground out of the universe which we call the world,
the responsibility and the liberty involved in the charge of
our own destinies, and with this He gives power of attorney
promising beforehand to ratify and confirm whatever we do
in loyal service to Him and in loyal allegiance to His name
and honour.^

^ Whatever' may have been the influences which concurred in
effecting this fundamental transformation in Dr. Martineau's
philosophical system, there can be little doubt that when he
preached the striking sermon on " The Christian View of Moral
Evil " the process was virtually completed. That discourse gives
expression in the most emphatic terms to the doctrine of Ethical
Individualism, which forms the keynote of his moral philosophy.
" This sense," he says, " of individual accountability — notwith-
standing the ingenuity of orthodox divines on the one hand, and
necessarian philosophers on the other — is impaired by all refer-
ence of the evil that is in us to any source beyond ourselves. . . ,
There is no persuasion more indispensable to this state of mind,
and consequently no impression which Christianity more pro-
foundly leaves upon the heart, than that of the personal origin
' L. Abbott, Signs of Promite, 187.

3i6 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

and personal identity of sin, — its individual incommunicable
character. . . . Hence it appears impossible to defend the doctrines
of Philosophical Necessity — which presents God to us as the
author of sin and suffering — from the charge of invading the
sense of personal responsibility." ^

^ The Life ami Letters of James Martineav,, ii. 271.

The Cost of Disciplbship.

»7

Literature.

Armstrong (R. A.), Memoir and Sermons, 195.

Bishop (J. W.), The Christian Year and the Christian Life, 117.

Black (J.), The Pilgrim Ship, 189.

Butler (W. A.), Sermons, i. 24.

Gibbon (J. M.), In the Days of Youth, 59.

Lawlor (H. J.), Thoughts on Belief and Life, 62.

Mackenzie (R.), The Loom of Providence, 69.

Macpherson (W. M.), The Path of Life, 198.

Matheeon (G.), Searching} in the Silence, 56.

Moody (0. N.), Love's Long Campaign, 114.

Parker (J.), The City Temple, ii. 258.

Sampson (E. F.), Christ Church Sermons, 265.

Trumbull (H. C), Our Misunderstood Bible, 130.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ii. (1862), No. 323.

Vickery (J.), Ideals of Life, 295.

Watkinson (W. L.), 2'he Supreme Conquest, 158.

Watson (J.), Respectable Sins, 83.

Christian World Pulpit, vii. 305 (D. Thomas) ; xii. 394 (H. W. Beecher) ;

Ivii. 219 (C. Gore).
Church of England Pulpit, liii. 163 (J. P. Sandlands).
Chv/rch Family Newspaper, April 7, 1911 (W. C. E. Newbolt).

j«

The Cost of Discipleship.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man would come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.— Matt. xvi. 24.

These words were spoken by our Lord when He first began
definitely to prepare the minds of His disciples for the humilia-
tion, and suffering, and death which lay before Him. The con-
ception of a suffering Messiah was so alien to the thought of
His time that it became needful to prepare the minds of His
immediate followers for receiving the Divine idea of self-sacrifice,
which He was to reveal in His sufferings and death. " From that
time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he
must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders
and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised
again the third day." One of them, with characteristic im-
pulsiveness, repudiated the idea; and Jesus, reading at once
the earthly thoughts which prompted the remonstrance of Peter,
laid down the indispensable condition of spiritual life, the Divine
law of self-sacrifice : " If any man would come after me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoso-
ever would save his life, shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose
his life for my sake, shall find it."

1. There was a special truth in these words for the disciples
to whom they were spoken; and to them they were primarily
addressed. No one could become a faithful follower of Jesus with-
out being prepared to renounce everything, without carrying his
life itself in his hand. And the first desire of Jesus in speaking
these words was undoubtedly to make Peter and the rest of his
companions understand clearly the absolute degree of the self-
sacrifice which they must make in spirit, if they would be
thoroughly associated with the Leader in whom they believed.
He was going before them bearing His cross, submitting before-

3i»

320 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

hand to the igaominy and pain which were to be openly reaUzed ;
He was thus submitting, not in spite of His Divine nature, but
because He was the perfect Son of the righteous and loving
Father. If His disciples would cherish the high ambition of
being His friends and followers ; if they would look forward to
the joy and the crown with which true sacrifice was to be rewarded
— they also must tread in the steps of the Master, they must be
content to serve and submit, they must gird themselves to the
unreserved offering of themselves to God.

2. The Christian life also is one of service, of submission.
Men do not sit and sing themselves away to everlasting bliss;
the way thither is the way of the yoke. Christ is very frank
about this ; He allures no man to follow Him by false pretences.
When men would follow Garibaldi to the liberty of Italy, he
warned them that there would be hunger and thirst and fatigue,
battle and wounds and death to be endured. Those who would
follow must be willing to bear the yoke. When men would
follow Christ, He frankly said, "Take my yoke upon you"
— the yoke of service, of self-denial, of submission. " He that
taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy
of me."

^ When Bernard of Quintavalle, convinced of the rare grace
granted by God to Francis, and longing to come under its
power, determined to join him, the saint, notwithstanding his joy,
gave proof of that sound judgment upon which the commune
had learned to draw, by proposing that since the life of renuncia-
tion was hard, they must lay the whole matter before the Lord,
who would Himself be its judge and their counsellor. So they
repaired to St. Nicholas' Church, and, after the office, knelt long
in prayer for guidance. The curate of St. Nicholas was their
friend, and he consulted the gospel text when their minds were
prepared to accept its mandates. The first time he opened it
these words met his eyes : " Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven :
and come, take up thy cross, and follow me." The second time,
the very gospel which had lately impelled Francis to preach was
on the open page (Luke ix. 1-6), while the third test of Bernard's
faith was found to be the great and strenuous commandment:
"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take
up his cross daily, and follow me." Bernard bowed his head in

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 24 321

obedience to all three, and leaving the church, he and Francis at
once set about selling his houses and possessions, and bestowing
the money realized on hospitals, poor monasteries, the neediest
townsfolk. Then, having finished this affair, the brothers passed
down to the plain, and a new stage in the Franciscan movement
was initiated.^

There are three things in the text —

I. Self-denial — " Let him deny himself."
II. Cross-bearing — " And take up his cross."
III. Following—" And follow me."

I.

Self-Denial.
" Let him deny himself."

1. " If any man would come after me," said Jesus, " let him
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." Here Jesus
makes the duty of denying self an essential requisite of Christian
discipleship. A man cannot be a follower of Jesus unless he
denies himself, or, as the Greek term indicates, denies himself
utterly. The requirement is not the denial of anything, either
little or much, to self, but the utter denial of self — a very im-
portant and too often unrecognized difference.

As the term stands in the Greek, the injunction of our Lord to
His every disciple, to " deny himself," includes the idea of turning
oneself away from oneself, of rejecting self as the desire of
self. It suggests the thought of two centres — self and Christ —
the one to be denied and the other accepted as an object of
attraction and devotedness. Its use in the original seems to say :
" If you would turn toward Me, you must turn away from yourself.
If you would accept Me as the chief object of desire, you must
renounce yourself as such an object. If you would henceforward
live in My service, you must at once cease to live for your own
pleasure and interest."

It is a very common mistake concerning the nature of self-
denial to suppose that it involves a constant thought of self, in
order to the entire subjection of self. As a matter of fact, he who
' Anna M. Stoddart, Fremcis of Assm, 95.
ST. MATT. — 21

322 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

lives the truest life of self-denial has very little trouhle with
himself. Being absorbed in an object of interest outside of
himself, he forgets himself ; living for something worthier of his
devotion, he does not give any worrying thought to that self from
which he has turned away in his enthusiastic pursuit of a nobler
aim. A soldier is worth little as a soldier until he forgets himself
in his interest in his military duties. If he even thinks of pro-
longing or protecting his life, he is more likely to lose it than if
he is absorbed in the effort to do his work manfully as a soldier.
An unselfish interest in our fellows causes us to forget ourselves
in our loving thought of others. An unselfish interest in our
Friend of friends takes us away from ourselves, and fills our mind
with a simple purpose of pleasing and serving Him. A life of self-
denial is not a life of conflict with self ; it is rather a life turned
away from self in utter self-forgetfulness.

^ Self-denial is not an outward act, but an inward turning of
our being. As the steamship is turned about by the rudder,
which is swung by the means of a wheel, so there is within our
being a rudder, or whatever you may call it, which is turned by a
small wheel, and as we turn the entire craft either leeward or
windward, we deny either self or God. In its deepest sense we
always deny either the one or the other. When we stand well
we deny self; in all other cases we deny God. And the internal
wheel by which we turn the entire craft of our ego is our intention.
The rudder determines the course of the ship ; not its rigging and
cargo, nor the character of the crew, but its direction, the
destination of the voyage, its final haven. Hence, when we see
our craft steering away from God, we swing the rudder the other
way and compel it to run toward God.^

2. We have often to deny ourselves in matters that may be in
themselves allowable. If they tend in our case to withdraw our
hearts from Christ, we must be willing to give them up. Being
innocent in themselves, we might be at liberty to choose them or
not as we liked, but we have to think of the discipline and
maturity of our Christian character, and in regard to this such
voluntary sacrifices are in the sight of God of great price,
moulding us as they do into a loving and wide embracing obedi-
ence to Him. Again and again we may have to deny ourselves
' A. Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 605.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 24 323

things that seem fitted for adding to our enjoyment, but when we
think how Christ denied Himself the most ordinary comforts, not
seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister, and giving His life
a ransom for us, shall we for a moment hesitate to drink of His
spirit that we may do likewise? Very anxiously have we to
remember that there is no Christian self-denial in anything that is
done merely as self-denial — that all true self-sacrifice is uncon-
scious of itself, strives not to think of itself, but longs simply to
please Christ and to do His will and work, without reckoning the
cost or trial.

If It is said that prior to the rise of Christianity not one of
the Western languages had any word for self-denial. The austere
moralists of India, indeed, had long since taught the sacrifice of
inclination to lofty ideals of duty. But Greece and Eome, nay,
even Israel, had not contemplated self-denial as in itself essential
to virtuous or devout character ; and so they had coined no word
for it. But when one by one the Western nations were subdued
by the spiritual weapons sharpened in the armoury of Christ, the
idea and the word "self-denial" quickly came to the front in
preaching and in practice. Nor will any student of the Gospels
deny that this is quite a characteristic and typical utterance of
Jesus : " If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross, and follow me." *

(1) We are constantly tempted to self-indulgence, to do simply
what is easy and pleasant to us, agreeable to our tastes, inclina-
tions, and habits, and leave others to do or leave undone altogether
the things that are not according to our taste or that require from
us any care or effort or sacrifice. All analogy, and all reason, and
all Scripture teach us that we must not consult our own ease and
pleasure, that we must not make a kind of pastime of religious
service, that we must not be earnest and self-denying in our
ordinary calling, and then come to Christ's work as an entertain-
ment for our leisure hours, just playing with the great cause of
God. We must not do that ; we must work if we would have
God to work with us. It is when we do our part that we have
any right at all to expect that God will do His part; it is when
we do our very best — and we cannot do our very best without
much thought, and much prayer, and much effort ; without facing
difficulties, without strain, without doing some hard things, some
^ E. C. Armstrong, Memoir wnd Sermons, 195.

324 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

painful things. We cannot do our best without all this, and it is
when we do our best that we can expect God to do the most.

^ You have all, I dare say, seen lightning conductors put up on
buildings in London ; and perhaps you wondered why they were
put up. Well the reason is this : the lightning is on the look out
for an easy way to come down to the earth ; it finds it very hard
to go through the air. That is the reason why we hear the
thunder : it is the noise the lightning makes because it has to
come through the air so quickly. And the air tries to stop it
coming at all. If it could get on to anything — on to tlie spire of
this church, for example — and slide down, it would be a very easy
way of getting along. But it wouldn't be a good thing for the
spire ; and so they put up lightning conductors — rods right up
into the air — so that if the lightning is coming anywhere near, it
may get on to the rod and so slip right down into the earth,
without doing any harm to the church. For it is always looking
out for the easiest way dovm,}

(2) Self-seeking is another form of temptation that we must
guard against. We are tempted to serve ourselves in God's service,
to seek for our own ends when we are professedly and really
engaged in His work. Sometimes the selfish end is indirectly
sought by us, as when it is the glory, honour, power, and triumph
of our party or sect or denomination that we labour for. Some-
times the selfish end is directly before us, as when it is our own
influence, or position, or honour, or praise that we seek after.
The love of man's approbation is natural to us, and it is quite
legitimate that we should seek it, and that we should appreciate
it ; but how very apt it is to degenerate into downright selfishness,
and how very often we are tempted in connexion with God's own
work to seek chiefly, to seek unduly, our own selfish ends.

^ You remember that wonderful parable in the Peer Oynt of
Ibsen. The worn-out wanderer, grown hoary in selfishness, a
past-master in self-seeking, in a rare moment of reflection takes
an onion in his hand, and begins to strip it, scale by scale, and
the fancy takes him that each scale or flake or lobe or fold repre-
sents some experience of his past, some relation in which he has
stood to others in the long and chequered experience of life.
This one is Peer Gynt tossed " in the jolly-boat after the wreck."
This is Peer Gynt a steerage passenger sailing westward over the
Atlantic. This is Peer Gynt the merchant, this Peer Gynt as he

' J. M. Gibbon, In the Days of YmUh, 00.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 24 325

played the prophet. What a host of parts he has played ! What
a host of folds lie around the central core or kernel of the onion !
When he comes to the actual centre, that will stand for Peer
Gynt himself, his inner self, apart from all the parts he has
played, apart from all the relations to others he has held. And
he strips and strips, smaller and smaller are the onion-flakes as
he nears the centre. What will the centre be ? And in his im-
patience he tears half a dozen away at once.

There seem a terrible lot of flakes,

To get to the core what a time it takes!

Yes, gramercy, it does, one divides and divides;

And there lis no kernel: it's all outsides!

That is the parable as the great Scandinavian dramatist has
written it. And it is a parable which may be variously applied.
Strip away from your life, your soul, every relation in which you
stand to other lives, other souls, than your own. You may think
thereby to reach at last your own very life or soul ; but you will
find that there is no self there. You live only in your relations
to others than yourself. Annihilate these and you are yourself
annihilated.^

II.

Ceoss-Beabing,

"And take up his cross."

1. Cross-bearing is usually regarded as the bearing of burdens,
or the enduring of trials in Christ's service, or for Christ's sake.
It is impossible to give ourselves up to Christ without suffering
some loss or trouble. In early days the consequence might be
martyrdom; in our own day it always involves some sacrifice.
Now, the cross which the Christian has to bear is not inevitable
trouble, such as poverty, sickness, or the loss of friends by death.
These things would have been in our lot if we had not been
Christians. They are our burdens, our thorns in the flesh. They
are sent to us, not taken by us. But the cross is something
additional. This is taken up voluntarily ; it is in our power to
refuse to touch it. We bear it, not because we cannot escape, but
because it is a consequence of our following Christ ; and the good
' R. A. Armstrong, Memoir wild Sermons, 223.

326 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

of bearing it is that we cannot otherwise closely follow Him. He,
then, is the true Christian who will bear any cross and endure
any hardship that is involved in loyally following his Lord and
Master.

When Jesus found His disciples expectant of honours in His
service as the Messiah, and longing for places nearest Him when
He should be uplifted in His Kingdom, He told them that they
little knew what they were asking. His first uplifting was to be
on a cross. Would they be willing to share that experience with
Him ? " Ye know not what ye ask," He said. " Are ye able to
drink the cup that I drink ? " It costs something, He suggested,
to be My follower. A man who enlists in My service must do so
with a halter round his neck. If he cares more for his life than
for Me, he is unfitted to be one of My disciples. " If any man
Cometh unto me, and hateth not [in comparison with me] his own
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me,
cannot be my disciple."

T[ Tertullian, speaking to us out of the second century, tells
us how the Christians of his day were wont to carry about with
them everywhere the sign of the cross, at every step, at every
movement, sealing themselves with it. It is now honoured and
consecrated ; our very churches are built in its shape and orna-
mented with its figure. But then, to those poor Galileans, Who
had left all to follow Christ, who dimly dreamed of kingliness and
victor pomp, of thrones on the right and thrones on the left, and
the fulfilment of patriotic dreams — taking up the cross, it was a
thing strange and abhorrent, and contrary to their religious con-
victions, " Cursed is every one that hangeth on the tree." *

^ The idea of these words, says Euskin, "has been exactly
reversed by modern Protestantism, which sees in the Cross, not a
f urea to which it is to be nailed ; but a raft on which it, and all
its valuable properties, are to be floated into Paradise." We need
but superficial knowledge of current ways of speaking and writing
among some religious people to know that there is much that goes
a good way to excuse or to justify this very severe criticism.^

2. Each has his particular cross to bear. This we have each to
discover for ourselves, and bear as we follow Him. Never are we
' Canon Newbolt. ° E. F. Sampson, Christ Church Sermons, 265.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 24 327

to invent crosses for ourselves, and most anxiously are we to take
heed that we do not make them for others, for this would indeed
be to sin against God, and to bring continued misery on those
beside us. Our own cross is close at hand, and we are to see
rising high above it that awful yet most blessed and now vacant
cross on which the Son of God suffered that He might win us
back to the Father. We think how much easier it would be for
us, and how much more devout and vigorous a Christian life we
should lead, if we could but " change " our own cross for some
other one that we imagine we could readily name, thus wishing
even our trials to be bent to our own self-will, and suited to what
we think for our comfort. We think that we can judge of the
crosses which others have to bear, and that ours is often so much
heavier than theirs. We may even magnify our own cross until
it almost shuts out of view that awe-inspiring cross on which our
Saviour offered Himself unto death. We may have sore trial from
some beside us, owing to our "choosing that good part" which
He sets before us, and we may have daily to bear this cross,
which in His wise permission He allows to be laid upon us,
although we feel that by only a little change in their disposition
they themselves would be blessed, and all life made different
to us.

^ There is a poem called The Changed Cross. It represents a
weary one who thought that her cross was surely heavier than
those of others whom she saw about her, and wished that she
might choose another instead of her own. She slept, and in her
dream she was led to a place where many crosses lay, crosses of
divers shapes and sizes. There was a little one most beauteous to
behold, set in jewels and gold. " Ah, this I can wear with com-
fort," she said. So she took it up, but her weak form shook
beneath it. The jewels and the gold were beautiful, but they
were far too heavy for her. Next she saw a lovely cross with
fair flowers entwined around its sculptured form. Surely that
was the one for her. She lifted it, but beneath the flowers were
piercing thorns which tore her flesh. At last, as she went on, she
came to a plain cross, without jewels, without carving, with only
a few words of love inscribed upon it. This she took up, and it
proved the best of all, the easiest to be borne. And as she looked
upon it, bathed in the radiance that fell from heaven, she recog-
nized her own old cross. She had found it again, and it was the
best of all and lightest for her.

328 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

God knows best what cross we need to bear. We do not
know how heavy other people's crosses are. We envy some one
who is rich ; his is a golden ci'oss set with jewels. But we do not
know how heavy it is. Here is another whose life seems very
lovely. She bears a cross twined with flowers. But we do not
know what sharp thorns are hidden beneath the flowers. If we
could try all the other crosses that we think lighter than ours, we
should at last find that not one of them suited us so well as our
own.*

III.

Following the Master.

"And follow me."

1. Christ pictures Himself here, not as the Eedeemer, but as
the Leader and Pattern. It was a great event for the world when
there was born into it the Perfect Man. Formerly the children of
men were aware that they fell short of the perfection that was in
God ; but they did not suspect that one born of woman could actually
attain such holiness. Jesus disclosed what man could be and do.

^ Mechanics are well aware that the engines on which they
spend their powers are far from perfect. But, if some day a
machine immensely superior to any that had been produced were
devised and constructed by one of themselves, the whole trade
would at once undergo a revolution. Employers, designers,
draughtsmen, moulders, finishers, fitters, the whole population of
the place, would vie with one another in their efforts to equal or
surpass the achievement. If, perhaps, like ignorant Eussian
peasants, they broke the splendid instrument, or if they put it
into a glass case as a mere curiosity, yet, after a while, a wiser
counsel would prevail. Our great Fellow-workman produced a
matchless work; and although for a time His jealous comrades
endeavoured to crush it and to suppress the very mention of it,
yet, in the end, they began to copy it. The life of Jesus, if it had
been an example and nothing more, must certainly have left its
mark on the customs of the world.^

2. It has been suggested that this phrase, though authentic,
may perhaps be misplaced as we have it here in Matthew, and may

' J. R. Miller, Olimpses Through Life's Windows, 81.
- C. N. Moody, Love's Lcag Campaign, 255.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 24 329

refer to an incident of that dolorous procession in which the
Master — Himself for a little while mastered by His foes — was
struggling towards the appointed place of tragedy with the huge,
rough cross upon His shoulder, ere some flickering of pity on the
part of His guards impressed the more muscular Simon of Gyrene
to bear the instrument of death along the road. We are invited
to behold Jesus with gentle fortitude struggling to bear up under
the cruel load, and even then, while the weight of the cross is
pressing on His worn and sensitive frame, uttering the precept
which had in that moment illustration so terrible : " If any man
would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross,
and follow me."

The disciple was to be as his Master, the servant was to be as
his Lord ; but the Master was to be a crucified Master ; the Lord
was to be not merely nailed to the tree, He was to hear His cross
to the place of execution. And which of them all could have fore-
seen that awful end ? Which of them could have guessed that
the degrading punishment, reserved for the basest criminals,
would have been assigned to the pure and sinless Jesus ? Which
of them could have thought that against this humble working-
man Prophet the power of Kome would accomplish that which
His own nation could not do ? Which of them who had believed
it possible that He would die upon the cross could have realized
that, faint and weary with suffering, He Himself would bear His
cross on the road to Calvary, till He could bear it no longer ?

^ Last night I had another mother's meeting for the mothers
of the Free Kindergarten. This time I gave a magic-lantern
show. 1 was the showman. The poor, ignorant women sat there
bewildered ; they had never seen a piano, and many of them had
never been close to a foreigner before. I showed them about a
hundred slides, explained through an interpreter until I was
hoarse, gesticulated and orated to no purpose. They remained
silent, stolid. By and by there was a stir, heads were raised
and necks craned. A sudden interest swept over the room. I
followed their gaze, and saw on the sheet the picture of Christ
toiling up the mountain under the burden of the cross. ' The
story was new and strange to them, but the fact was as old as life
itself. At last they had found something that touched their own
lives and brought the quick tears of sympathy to their eyes.*
' The Lady of the Decoration, 107.

330 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

3. Christ appeals to the will. " If a man wills to come after
me." The cross must be taken up consciously, deliberately,
sympathetically. The sacrifice we see in nature is unconscious.
When the outer row of petals is sacrificed to the welfare of the
guelder rose, the petals are unaware of their immolation ; when
the bracts wither which have cradled the young leaves of the tree,
they perish without any sense of martyrdom. In all their sacri-
ficial work the ant and wasp obey blind impulse. It is often little
better in society. We suffer and die for others without realizing
the fact. The thought of the genius, the statesman, the physician,
and the nurse is often almost entirely self-regarding ; they really
suffer for the commonwealth without either consciousness or
intention. The superior civilization also suffers for the inferior
unsympathetically. The bee is a self-centred creature ; when it
visits a flower it does not think of adorning the plant, of filling
the air with sweetness, of delighting human eyes ; it thinks only
of getting a living, of enjoying itself ; yet all the while, unknown
to itself, it conveys the pollen which secures the perfection and
perpetuity of a thousand flowers. So the European visiting India,
Africa, or China does not always realize the larger mission he
is fulfilling — advancing civilization by sacrifice. The scientist
explores strange lands for knowledge, the soldier for glory, the
trader for gold, the emigrant for bread ; and yet, all unwittingly,
above and beyond their immediate purpose, they impart to the
strange regions they penetrate the ideas and qualities of a higher
civilization.

In Christ the principle of self-denial became conscious,
voluntary, and delightful. He entered into the work of redemp-
tion with clearest knowledge, entire sympathy, absolute willing-
ness, and overflowing love. From all His doing and suffering for
our salvation come freedom, readiness, and joyfulness. His true
disciples share His spirit of intelligent self-sacrifice : consciously,
willingly, lovingly, they serve the world and one another. Self-
immolation, which is unconscious in the brute, which dimly
awakes to the knowledge of itself in reflective humanity, realizes
itself lucidly and joyously in the light, love, and liberty of Christ.
"Lo, I come to do thy will, God." "I delight to do thy
will, my God." Such was the spirit and language of the
Master in the hour of Gethsemane, in the presence of Calvary.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 24 331

The disciple must not rest until he attains something of the same
conscious surrender and joy.

^ Phillips Brooks reminds us that the sacrifice of old was
offered to the sound of the trumpets with joy, and there ought to
he a sort of joy — a real joy — about self-sacrifice in bearing the
cross. The pictures of our Lord on the cross, the earliest repre-
sentations, were not like later ones ; they were of a victorious
figure in the prime of life, with no nails through His hands and
feet, with an upright head, and a look of joyful self-sacrifice. And
that is what we must aim at : we must bear the cross joyfully ;
" take up " the cross — it makes all the difference — lying down
under it is one thing, taking it up is another. Take it up
bravely, joyfully, cheerfully, and you will find the cross com-
paratively easy to bear.^

But if Himself He come to thee, and stand
Beside thee, gazing down on thee with eyes
That smile and suffer, that will smite thy heart,
With their own pity, to a passionate peace;
And reach to thee Himself the Holy Cup
(With all its wreathen stems of passion-flowers
And quivering sparkles of the ruby stars).
Pallid and royal, saying, " Drink with Me,"
Wilt thou refuse ? Nay, not for Paradise ! ^

4. Discipleship demands perseverance. " Let him follow me."
There is no discharge in this service. It is a lifelong compact.
The disciple must follow the Master to the last limit of self-denial
and cross-bearing. But the Master lives to help us to be and to
do what He shows in His own life is the highest of all goodness
and nobleness. So near does He keep to us in His indwelling
Presence that He wishes to strengthen us to " walk even as he
walked" (1 John ii. 6). We are to feel that though we cannot
see Him with our bodily eyes, yet there is no such living Power
in the universe as He is ; and as we continue to ponder His life
and sufferings we shall seem to see Him standing out before our
hearts "full of grace and truth," and shall become gradually
transformed into His likeness so as to be fitted for living with
Him through eternity in His unveiled vision, and for engaging in
His sinless service.

1 A. F. W. Ingram, Joy in God, 178.
" H. E. Hamilton King.

332 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

' ^ It is easy to take up one's cross and stand ; easier still to
fold it in the arms and lie down ; but to carry it about — that is the
hard thing. All pain shuns locomotion. It is adverse to collision,
adverse to contact, adverse to movement. It craves to nurse its
own bitterness; it longs to be alone. Its burden is never so
heavy as when the bell rings for daily toil. The waters of
Marah seek repose. If I could only rest under my cloud I might
endure; but the command is too much for me — "Go, work
to-day in my vineyard." If I could go without my cross, it
would be something; but I cannot. I can no more escape
from it than I can escape my own shadow. It clings to
me with that attraction which repulsion sometimes gives. It
says, "Whither thou goest, I wUl go; and where thou lodgest,
I will lodge." 1

^ The followers of Christ are not as Frederick the Great, who
in the midst of the Seven Years' War wrote thus : " Happy the
moment when I took to training myself in philosophy ! There is
nothing else that can sustain the soul in a situation like mine."
This same Frederick, three years later, wrote that it was hard for
man to bear what he endured : " My philosophy is worn out by
suffering," he confessed ; " I am no saint, like those of whom we
read in the legends ; and I will own that I should die content if
only I could first inflict a portion of the misery which I endure."
But Charity never faileth. When Christians grow weary of their
efforts, when they are tempted to give up their Christian service
because of discouragements in the work, or because of rebuffs and
unkindness from their fellow-workers, they remember what sort
of Captain they follow, and what sort of strength has been
vouchsafed to them.*

^ Drawing his sword, Pizarro traced a line with it on the sand
from east to west. Then, turning towards the south, "Friends
and comrades ! " he said, " on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness,
the drenching storm, desertion, and death ; on this side, ease and
pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches ; here, Panama and its
poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian.
For my part, I go to the south." So saying he stepped across the
line. He was followed by the brave pilot Euiz ; next by Pedro
de Candia, a cavalier, born, as his name imports, in one of the
isles of Greece. Eleven others successively crossed the line, thus
intimating their willingness to abide the fortunes of their leader,
for good or for evil. Fame, to quote the enthusiastic language

' G. Matheson, Searchings in the Silence, 56.

' 0. N. Moody, Love's Lang Campaign, 266.

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 24 Zi3

of an ancient chronicler, has commemorated the names of this
little band, " who thus, in the face of difficulties unexampled in
history, with death rather than riches for their reward, preferred
it all to abandoning their honour, and stood firm by their leader
as an example of loyalty to future ages." ^

' W. H. Prescott, The Conquest of Peru, bk. ii. chap. iv.

The Transfiguration.

33S

Literature.

Bruce (A. B.), The Training of the Twehje, 191.

Campbell (W. M.), Foot-Prints of Christ, 182.

Curling (E.), The Transfiguration, 1.

Deshon (G.), Sermons for the Ecclesiastical Year, 138.

Gray (W. A.), The Shadow of the Hand, 217.

Gregg (D.), Our Best Moods, 73.

Gunsaulus (F. W.), The Transfiguration of Christ, 93.

Jeffrey (R. T.), Visits to Calvary, 89.

Jones (J. D.), The Gospel of Grace, 189.

Kingsley (C), Village, Town, and Country Sermons, 207.

Nixon (W.), Christ All and in All, 246.

Eitchie (D. L.), Peace the Umpire, 146.

Vernon (E. T.), The Holy Mount, 13.

Waugh (T.), Mount and Multitude, 117.

Wolston (W. T. P.), Night Scenes of Scripture, 46.

Christian Age, xlii. 290 (F. G. MoKeever).

Christian World Pulpit, liv. 182 (R. Thomas) ; Iv. 32 (H. S. Holland) ;

lix. 364 (G. C. Morgan); Ixxii. 154 (G. A. J. Ross); Ixxvi. 85

(R. a Parsons).

93*

The Transfiguration.

And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John
his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart : and he was
transfigured before them : and his face did shine as the sun, and his
garments became white as the light. — Matt. xvii. i, 2.

1. Very little is said in Scripture concerning the glory and majesty
of Christ. A stranger reading the Bible, especially the New
Testament, would be impressed far more with the majesty of the
Messiah's character, and the glory of His moral qualities, than
with anything else. This, undoubtedly, was part of the Divine
plan ; for the search of men was rather for tokens of material
glory than for signs of moral excellence. His coming was
principally for the display of the latter, and such signs as might
have appealed to the desire of the men whose only conception of
glory had come to be that of manifested splendour were denied.
The word of the prophet spoken in another connexion had a
supreme fulfilment in the Person of Jesus, " There was the hiding
of his power." Consequently, that which arrests one in the
study of the life of Christ is not outward magnificence, not
pageantry or pomp, but something more wonderful, and without
which mere outward pageantry and pomp would be nothing worth,
even His moral glory. It is the beauty of His character that
lays hold upon the inmost spirit, and commands its admiration.
To see the Christ in the glories of His character is to lie prostrate
before Him in adoration.

2. Yet, while the glory of His power is hidden, and the radiant
splendours of His person are veiled, occasionally during His so-
journ upon the earth they flashed into prominence. Here upon
the mount, before the eyes of the disciples, there flamed forth the
magnificence and the majesty of Him who, in order that the
weakest and most trembling might hold intercourse with Him,
had veiled these splendours behind the human.

ST. MATT. — 22

338 THE TRANSFIGURATION

^ To any one who remembers who Jesus Christ is, and what
He has been and will be to men, no incident of His life is more
credible. In all likelihood Jesus was often transfigured in His
nights of lonely prayer, although there were no eyes to see Him.
No experience set down in the Gospels more entirely becomes the
Lord of glory. To one who walked with G-od and spoke face to
face with Him as a child to a father, round whom God's angels
continually hovered, on whom the thoughts of all God's saints
were set, it is only natural that the fashion of His face should
alter, His raiment become as white as snow, and men of God
commune with Him.^

Let us look at —

I. The Setting of the Transfiguration.
IL Its Significance.
III. Its Practical Suggestions.

The Setting of the Teansfigueation.

1. " After six days," — or, as Luke in less definite language
says, " About eight days after these sayings," — " he bringeth them
up into a high mountain apart." The point of time at which the
Transfiguration occurred is given by all the three Synoptists, and
what they tell us is that at a definite point of time in the progress
of His public ministry the Lord meditated deeply upon His coming
death, and sought to familiarize His disciples with the idea of
His atoning death, and to get some sympathy from them in
regard to the idea of that death. When He broke the news of
it to them first, Peter resisted the idea, saying, " Be it far from
thee, Lord: this shall never be unto thee," and with pain and
distress Jesus saw that Peter was at this time out of sympathy
with the idea of His suffering for him. Six days passed. We do
not know how these six days were filled up. It may be that they
were filled up by patient conversation between our Lord and His
disciples as to the place which this atoning death of His should
occupy in the whole scheme of God's dealings with men. It may
be that He set forth to them the relation of the previous ettbrts
of God for men, symbolized by the life-work of Moses and Elijah.
' W. M. Glow, 2'he Secret of the Lord, 167.

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i, 2 339

Fot all we know, they may have had this work of Moses and
Elijah fully in their minds during that week. On the other hand,
it may have been a week of absohrte silence between our Lord
and His disciples, when our Lord was, so to say, alienated from
His very own, because they could not understand. We read of
His marvelling, being astonished at their incapacity to sympathize
with this idea of His death. In any case, it was certainly for
relief, for sympathy, for reassurance, and for reconsecration of
Himself to the atoning work which He was going out to do, it
was for these ends that the Lord Jesus went up to this hill to
hold fellowship with His Father.

2. Who were His companions in that mysterious hour ? At the
foot of whatever peak of Hermon He ascended, He left nine
of the Twelve in waiting. There, unattended by any save the
chosen three, he took His twilight way up the steep. Peter,
James, and John, "the three most receptive of Him and most
representative of His Church," who had stood with Him in the
solemn presence of death in the house of Jairus, who will be with
Him in the sorrows of Gethsemane, would Jesus have with Him
amid the glories of the Transfiguration. Peter must be there,
for Peter will hereafter stand in many a place where only the
recollection of the voice from the cloud will strengthen his waver-
ing courage. When the demon of fear would possess his soul, or
the spirit of impetuosity thwart the Master's purposes ; when he
would stand up to press home upon the consciences of his fellow-
countrymen the claims of his crucified Lord, or resist the persecu-
tions of some of them, or rebuke avarice, shame, and hypocrisy ;
when he must needs withstand fanaticism in the Church, comfort
believers in trial, enforce their practical duties, warn them against
temptation or remove their doubts, he will need the experience of
that hallowed night when he was an " eye-witness " of his Lord's
majesty. James must be there, for the recollection of those scenes
will cool his intolerant spirit, temper his ambition, comfort him
in Gethsemane, give perseverance in prayer, and nerve his faith
as he lays his head upon Herod's block. John must be there,
for Jesus, like all mankind, must needs have near Him in His
most sacred moments the one nearest His heart. Love will be
strengthened by conviction, and these together will stay John's

340 THE TRANSFIGURATION

hasty flight from the garden, enable him to brook the frowns of
the Sanhedrin, strengthen his heart that it may not break under
the shadow of the cross, and give clearness of vision to recognize
his risen Lord as His voice descends from the opening heavens
into the quarries of Patmos ; and when, an old man, he shall sit
down pen in hand to tell the world that Jesus was Divine, then
he will remember, " we beheld his glory."

3. "He bringeth them up into a high mountain apart." It
is not to be supposed that a mountain was absolutely necessary
for such an event as the Transfiguration, but it is to be con-
ceded that no other place could have been equally appropriate.
The voice from heaven had been heard by the Jordan, at the
Baptism ; an angel had appeared to Zacharias in the Temple ; but
neither in the Temple with all its sacred associations, nor by the
Jordan, the historic river of the nation, would a spot have been
found more appropriate for the occasion than that which was
chosen, " a high mountain." Our Lord, apparently, was at home
among the everlasting hills; they were to Him a mighty stair-
case that reached to the throne of God. Never did the tempter
make a greater mistake than when he supposed he could lay a
snare for Jesus on the top of an exceeding high mountain. There
the Saviour was more invulnerable than anywhere else on earth.
Among the hills Jesus triumphed over the tempter ; among them
He made known the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven to men ; there
He sought communion with God ; and there He was transfigured.

^ Several times the writer has climbed to the loftiest peak of
one of the grandest of our Scottish mountains, on each occasion
accompanied by a different companion, and always without
exception his companion has exclaimed, after some minutes of
silence on the summit. Let us sing a psalm of praise. The writer's
own feeling was rather, Let us pray, or. Let us speak, the con-
sciousness of the Divine presence being stronger than ever else-
where experienced. Was this feeling shared by our Lord ?
Probably it was. He is found so frequently up the mountain.
And it is clear that His desire was not merely to get away from
the world and its disturbing influence, but to get near to the
Father. Amidst the grand majestic surroundings of nature. He
found Himself near God, and all night, with the silent stars over-
head. He held communion with the Father.^

' E. T. Vernon, Tfte Holy Mount, 37.

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i, 2 341

11 One cannot but ask what was the " high mountain " on
which six days from the time of Peter's confession, whilst still
in this region [of Csesarea Philippi], " he was transfigured " before
His three disciples ? It is impossible to look up from the plain
to the towering peaks of Hermon, almost the only mountain which
deserves the name in Palestine, and one of whose ancient titles
was derived from this circumstance, and not be struck with its
appropriateness to the scene. The fact of its rising high above all
the other hills of Palestine, and of its setting the last limit to the
wanderings of Him who was sent only to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel, falls in with the supposition which the words
inevitably force upon us. The sacredness of Hermon in the eyes
of the surrounding tribes may well have fitted it for the purpose,
even if it did not give it the name, of " the Holy Mountain." High
up on its southern slopes there must be many a point where the
disciples could be taken " apart by themselves." Even the tran-
sient comparison of the celestial splendour with the snow, where
alone it could be seen in Palestine, should not, perhaps, be wholly
overlooked. At any rate, the remote heights above the sources
of the Jordan witnessed the moment when. His work in His own
peculiar sphere being ended, He set His face for the last time " to
go up to Jerusalem." ^

^ A strong Christian tradition dating from the fourth century
makes Tabor the scene of our Lord's Transfiguration. It was
probably natural that this event should become connected with
the most conspicuous mountain of Galilee, and as early as the
sixth century three churches had been built to commemorate the
three tabernacles which Peter proposed to erect. But at this
particular period Tabor was covered with houses, and therefore
could not correctly be described as " apart " (Matt. xvii. 1). Then
again, just before His Transfiguration, Jesus was far away from
Tabor, in the neighbourhood of Hermon.^

4. We are told by St. Luke that they went up " to pray." It
seems most natural to accept this statement not only as correct,
but as a sufficient statement of the object our Saviour had in view.
The thought of transfiguration may not have been in His mind at
all. Here, as always, He was guided by the will of His Father in
heaven ; and it is not necessary to suppose that to His human
mind that will was tnade known earlier than the occasion required.
We are not told that He went up to be transfigured : we are told

' A. P. Stanley, Simm cmd Palestme, 899.

* A. W. Cooke, Palestme in Oeography and History, i. 132.

342 THE TRANSFIGURATION

that He went up to pray. It seems probable that the idea was
to spend the night in prayer. We know that this was a not
infrequent custom with Him ; and if ever there seemed a call for
it, it must have been now, when about to begin that sorrowful
journey which led to Calvary. "With this thought agree all the
indications which suggest that it was evening when they ascended,
night while they remained on the top, and morning when they
came down. This, too, will account in the most natural manner
for the drowsiness of the Apostles ; and the fact that their Lord
felt none of it only proved how much more vivid was His realiza-
tion of the awf ulness of the crisis than theirs was. We are to think
of the four, then, as slowly and thoughtfully climbing the hill at
eventide, carrying their abbas, or rugs, on which they would kneel
for prayer, and which, if they needed rest, they would wrap round
them, as is the Oriental custom. By the time they reached the
top, night would have cast its veil of mystery on the grandeur of
the mountains round about them, while snowy Hermon in the
gloom would rise like a mighty giant to heaven, its summit " visited
all night by troops of stars." Never before or since has there been
such a prayer meeting on this earth of ours.

Having gone up to pray, they would doubtless all kneel down
together. As the night wore on, the three disciples, being ex-
hausted, would wrap themselves in their rugs and go to sleep;
while the Master, to whom sleep at such a time was unnatural, if
not impossible, would continue in prayer. Can we suppose that
that time of pleading was free from agony ? His soul had been
stirred within Him when Peter tempted Him to turn aside from
the path of the cross ; and may we not with reverence suppose
that on that lonely hill-top, as later in the Garden, there might be
in His heart the cry, "Father, if it be possible"? If only the
way upward were open now ! Has not the Kingdom of God been
preached in Judeea, in Samaria, in Galilee, away to the very
borderlands ? and has not the Church been founded ? and has not
authority been given to the Apostles? Is it, then, absolutely
necessary to go back, back to Jerusalem, not to gain a triumph, but
to accept the last humiliation and defeat ? There cannot but have
been a great conflict of feeling ; and with all the determination to
be obedient even unto death, there must have been a shrinking
from the way of the cross, and a great longing for heaven and

ST. MATTHEW xvit. t, 2 343

home and the Father's welcome. The longing cannot be gratified ;
it is not possible for the cup to pass from Him ; but just as later
in Gethsemane there came an angel from heaven strengthening
Him, so now His longing for heaven and home and the smile of
His Father is gratified in the gladdening and strengthening ex-
perience which followed His prayer — a foretaste of the heavenly
glory, so vivid, so satisfying, that He will thenceforth be strong,
for the joy that is set before Him, to endure the cross, despising
the shame. For behold, as He prays, His face becomes radiant,
the glory within shining through the veil of His mortal fiesh.
We all know that this flesh of ours is more or less transparent,
and that in moments of exaltation the faces of even ordinary men
will shine as with a heavenly lustre. We need not wonder, then,
that it should have been so with our Lord, only in an immeasur-
ably higher degree: that His face should have shone even "as the
sun"; and that, though He could not yet ascend to heaven,
heaven's brightness should have descended on Him and wrapped
Him round, so that even " his garments became white as the light."

^ " And while he was praying, the appearance of his face
underwent a change," says Luke; he alone preserving for us this
vital fact of " prayer," of profound and deliberate absorption in
the Divine Life, as the immediate cause of the transfigured bodily
state. This change, this radiance, seemed to the astonished on-
lookers to spread to the whole personality ; conferring upon it an
enhancement and a splendour which the limited brains of those
who saw could only translate into terms of light — " His clothing
became white, and like the flashing lightning" — whiter, says
Mark, with a touch of convincing realism, than any fuller can
bleach it. Bound together by a community of expectation and
personal devotion, and now in that state upon the verge of sleep
in which the mind is peculiarly open to suggestion, it is not
marvellous that this, to them conclusive and almost terrible,
testimony of Messiahship should produce strange effects upon
those who were looking on. In an atmosphere so highly charged
with wonder and enthusiasm, the human brain is at a hopeless dis-
advantage. Such concepts as it is able to manufacture from the
amazing material poured in on it will take of necessity a symbolic
form. In minds dominated by the influence of a personality of
unique spiritual greatness, and full of imaj^es of those Old Testa-
ment prophecies wbich seemed to be in course of actual fulfilment
before their eyes, all the conditions were present for the produc-

344 THE TRANSFIGURATION

tion of a collective vision in which such images played a promi-
nent part; bodying forth the ideas evoked in them by the
spectacle of their Master's ecstasy. That Master, whose deep
humanity had never failed them yet, whose strangest powers had
always been evoked in response to the necessities of men, was
now seen removed from them by a vast distance. Unconscious of
their very existence, His whole being appeared to be absorbed in
communion with another order, by them unseen.^

^ There is a height in prayer above communion. What shall
I call it ? It may be named the prayer of surrender. Very few
ever utter that prayer to its utmost syllable. Few ever really
lay themselves, spirit and soul and body, on God's altar. We are
always withholding something, keeping back from God some dear
and cherished possession, some gift or talent or power, some love
or pleasure or passion. We will not yield up some one dear and
tightly held joy. Yet when we do pray this prayer we pass on to
an experience which seals us with a seal that cannot be broken,
to the service of God for ever. Then on the transparent mirror
of the face the light leaps and flashes, and some of it abides.
That is the secret of that heavenly and almost intolerable radiance
on the face of Moses which men feared to look upon. He had
come out of that most holy place and offered up his prayer of
surrender in these solemn words, "But if not, blot out my name
from thy book." That is why Stephen's face shone in the council.
His clear and discerning mind saw his martyr death before him,
and he yielded himself up to God's will. Could we have seen
Paul's face when he heard God's words, " My grace is sufficient
for thee," and meekly accepted God's will, we would have seen
the sheen of the transfiguring light also upon it. He did not
know whether he was " in the body " or " out of it." That is why
Christ's face shone as He prayed. And that is how our faces also
shall be transfigured.^

5. With what overwhelming awe must these men have looked

upon their Master ! They had become familiar with Him as with

a man sharing their nature. His face lined with the furrows of

care. His visage sorrowfully marred, beautiful, yea, passing

beautiful, and yet always overshadowed with the signs of sorrow.

As they looked up from their bewildered sleep in the darkness of

the night, they beheld Him white as the light, His raiment

glistening as with the radiance of the snow-capped peaks behind

1 Evelyn Underhill, The Mystic Way, 118.
' W. M. Clow, Tlie Secret of the Lord, 182.

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i, 2 345

Him, His whole Person standing out in clear relief against the
dark background, the lightning flashing upon the bosom of the
night. Long years after, Peter, writing of the vision, said, " We
were eyewitnesses of his majesty." The word there translated
" majesty " occurs only three times in Scripture. Once it is trans-
lated " mighty power,'' once " magnificence," and once " majesty."
The thought it suggests is that of splendour, of overwhelming beauty
and glory, and that which arrests and subdues the mind to the point
of adoration and worship ; and Peter, looking back to the splendours
of that night scene, wrote, " We were eyewitnesses of his majesty."

^ The Transfiguration is the key-word of the Incarnation.
Jesus Christ went up into a mountain to reveal to the chosen
three the secret of the Kingdom. Before they ever tasted death
they were to see the Kingdom come on earth. A moment was to
sweep over them when the hidden workings were to be laid bare
to them of that action which should hereafter perpetuate the
tabernacling of God among men. Alas ! their eyes were heavy at
the time, and their wits were clouded, and they were dazed by the
excess of glory ! They wist not what they saw or said. But yet
one swift glance they won before the cloud enveloped them, and
in that glance they caught sight of Jesus transfigured. Trans-
figured ! It was the Jesus whom they knew, the same, and not
another. Everything that constituted His identity in face and
form was there, unobliterated — only, it was raised to a new power,
it was possessed by unanticipated capacities. A Higher Force had
smitten into it, had released itself through it, so that it shone and
glowed. It was uplifted, changed, yet the same, burning, yet never
consumed. The body showed itself, not as unnaturalized, but as
the true and proper organ of the forces which should reveal
themselves through it. It was made clear that its natural con-
struction adapted it to become the vehicle of the invading Spirit :
it finds its own life in becoming transfigured.^

^ The Transfiguration had a purpose also in relation to the
disciples. It was designed to reconcile them to the incredible and
repulsive idea of Messiah's sufi^erings by reveaUng to them the
glories that should follow. What did they hear as they listened
to the converse betwixt those two glorified saints who bore the
greatest names on Israel's roll of honour? They heard them
talking of " the decease," or, as it is in Greek, " the exodus, which
he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." In the judgment of
Moses and Elijah that issue, which seemed to the disciples an in-
' Canon Scott HoUand.

346 THE TRANSFIGURATION

tolerable ignominy and a crushing disaster, was a splendid triumph,
like the mighty deliverance which God had wrought for Israel
when He brought her by the hand of Moses out of the land of
bondage and made her a free nation. It is very significant that
in the copies of St. Luke's Gospel which were in use in St.
Chrysostom's day, this sentence ran : " They spake of the glory
which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." And such was
the conception of her Lord's sufferings which was by and by
revealed to the Church. " We behold Jesus," it is written in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, "by reason of the suffering of death
crowned with glory and honour." ^

He taketh us

On a high mountain, nor forsaketh us,

But turneth round upon us, glistening

In face and raiment, as He were a King.

In converse we discover at His side

Moses, Elias. ... He is glorified.

The Son of God : and Peter would abide

Forever with these three, and prays to rear

Three tabernacles. And the light grows drear.

Some sin is on us that no wise we wist;

We are closed up as in God's very fist;

We cannot see : only there floats above,

Eumbling and murmuring as an angry love,

Some element in havoc that doth press

Against the idle word that Peter said.

I know not by what stroke,

Beneath that awful cloak,

Elias and the Law-giver are brought

To nothingness in the Eternal Thought:

For presently we are allowed.

Through adumbrations of the cloud,

To hear the Father's Voice in its caress.
As if from Chaos sped
Toward that beloved Head —

Jealous and watered as of rain-drop tears
That Voice appears

In majesty on the cloud's breaking rim :

" Lo, this is my beloved Son ; hear Him ! "

The Lord is glorified; we see

His Body as in glory it will be —
Nothing it lacks

Save of His Wounds the lovely tracks,
' D. Smith, The Days of His Flesh, 274.

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i, 2 347

I, John, who lay upon His bosom, I

Must testify
I never saw Him — now
I see Him in the Father and rejoice:
He standeth meek amid His snows,

Flushed as a rose,
For we have heard that Voice.
How maiden in humility His brow !
Almost He whispereth " No word of this !
It is our secret: I should take amiss
That of this hour one word be said,
Peter, till I am risen from the dead."
And, having spoken. He looks back on me,
And in an instant my theology
Is given; and I know the Word is God.^

II.

The Significance of the Transfigueation.

" He was transfigured before them." It was Tindale who first
used this word to describe the change that took place, and we
have adhered to it ever since. It is the best English word we
have to explain the original but not the most exact. "Trans-
formed" is more literal, while "metamorphosed" is simply the
Greek word anglicized, but it is too foreign and cumbrous. The
word "changed," which is the equivalent for the same word in
Corinthians, is too weak. We do not have a word that is exactly
suitable and sufficient. Moreover, it is clear that the evangelists
felt themselves at a loss adequately to describe the glory that
covered their Lord at that supreme hour. One evangelist says,
" The fashion of his countenance was altered " — " became other " as
the word may be literally translated ; while another says " it did
shine as the sun," and we understand that the face shone with a
radiance exquisitely bright. And not the face only ; the whole
body apparently became radiant with light, so that it shone
through the garments, making them appear " white as the light."
St. Mark finds his illustration on the spot, " exceeding white as
snow." St. Luke goes further and finds his semblance in the
lightning.

' Michael Field, Mystic Tries, 20.

348 THE TRANSFIGURATION

^ It ia possible that this radiance may be related to the so-
called aura, which the abnormally extended vision of many
"psychics" perceives as a luminous cloud of greater or less
brilliance surrounding the human body; which varies in extent
and intensity with the vitality of the individual, and which they
often report as shining with a white or golden glory about those
who live an exceptionally holy life. This phenomenon, once
dismissed as a patent absurdity by all " rational " persons, is now
receiving the serious attention of physicians and psychologists ; and
it is well within the range of possibilities that the next generation
of scholars will find it no more " supernatural " than radio-activity
or the wireless telegraph. It is one of the best attested of the
abnormal phenomena connected with the mystic type : the lives
of the saints providing us with .examples of it which range from
the great and luminous glory to a slight enhancement of person-
ality under the stress of spiritual joy.^

1. If we imagine that the sun-like splendour of our Lord's
countenance and the snow-like whiteness of His raiment were but
a reflection of the glory of heaven, we shall miss the significance
of the Transfiguration. There was a manifestation of heavenly
glory — the bright cloud overshadowed them — but that was not
till after the glory so graphically described in the narrative had
shown itself in our Lord's face and raiment. What the disciples
saw was the bright shining of Christ's own spirit, which, asserting
itself over flesh and raiment, made the one to shine as the sun
and the other to glisten like the driven snow. It was Jlis glory
the disciples saw; the glory which belonged to His pure and
perfect character, and which belongs in a greater or less degree to
every one who is changed into the same image. For " we all, with
open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord," may be
" changed into the same image from glory to glory."

^ We are told that Francis of Assisi, when absorbed in prayer,
" became changed almost into another man " ; and once at least
was " beheld praying by night, his bands stretched out after the
manner of a cross, his whole body uplifted from the earth and
wrapt in a shining cloud as though the wondrous illumination of
the body were a witness to the wondrous enlightenment of his
mind." The sympathetic vision of her closest companions saw
Teresa's personality, when she was writing her great mystical
works, so changed and exalted that it seemed to them tliat her

' Erelyn Underbill, TJie Mystic Way, 120.

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i, 2 349

countenance shone with a supernatural light. Again, St. Catherine
of Bologna, always pale on account of her chronic ill-health, was
seen by her sisters in choir with a " shining, rosy countenance
radiant like light " : and we are told of St. Catherine of Genoa,
that when she came forth from her hiding-place after ecstasy
" her face was rosy as it might be a cherub's : and it seemed as if
she might have said. Who shall separate me from the love of
God ? " In such reports we seem to see the germ of that experi-
ence which lies at the root of the story of the Transfiguration of
Christ. As Moses came down with shining face from the mountain,
so these turn towards the temporal order a countenance that is
irradiated by the reflection of the Uncreated Light.^

2. The Transfiguration of Jesus was the natural consummation
of His human life, the natural issue of all that had preceded it.
Born into the world by the Holy Spirit, He had lived a life linked
to, and yet separated from, humanity; linked to it in all the
essential facts of its nature, separate from it in its sin, both as a
principle and as an activity. He had taken His way from His first
outlook upon life as a human being, a babe in His mother's arms,
through the years of childhood and growth, through all the
temptation and testing of manhood, and through the severer
temptation of public ministry, and here, at last, that humanity,
perfect in creation, perfect through probation, was perfected in
glory. The life of Jesus was bound to reach this point of trans-
figuration. It could do no other. In Jesus of Nazareth there
was the perfect unfolding before Heaven and before men of the
Divine intention as to the process of human life. Beginning in
weakness and limitation, passing through difficulties and tempta-
tion, gaining perpetual victory over temptation by abiding only,
at all times and under all circumstances, in the will of God. At
last, all the testing being ended, the life passed into the presence
of God Himself, and into the light of heaven, not through the
gate of death, but through the painless and glorious process of
transfiguration. The Transfiguration of Jesus was the outcome of
His unceasing victory in every hour of temptation. The garrison
of His life had been kept against every attack of the foe ; no room
had been found in any avenue of His being, or in all the circle of
His manhood, for anything contrary to the will of God. His life
' Evelyn Underhill, The Mystic Way, 120.

350 THE TRANSFIGURATION

was a perfect harmony, and the unceasing burden of its music was
the goodness, the perfectness, and acceptableness of the will of
God.

^ Eeverently take a flower as an illustration of the process,
watching it in its progress from seedling to perfect blossoming.
The blossom rested in the seed in potentiality and possibility.
Take a seed and hold it in the hand — strange little seed, without
beauty, the very embodiment of weakness. But lying within that
husk in which the human eye detects no line of beauty or grace, no
gleam or flash of glory, there lie the gorgeous colours and magnifi-
cent flower itself. From that seed through processes of law, plant
and bud proceed, until at last the perfect blossom is formed. God's
humanity has blossomed once in the course of the ages, and that
transfigured man upon the holy mount, flashing in the splendour
of a light like the sun, glistering with the glory of a whiteness
like that of the snow, and flaming with the magnificent beauty of
the lightning that flashes its radiance upon the darkness, that was
God's perfect man. That was the realization of the thought that
was in the mind of God when He said, " Let us make man in our
image." ^

3. The Transfiguration marked Christ's triumph over tempta-
tion. On the mount He was again tempted to refuse the cross, to
escape His death and His shame, and to pass with Moses and
Elijah into that glory which He had with the Father before the
world was. But in that high hour He renounced the glory ; He
accepted the cup, and turned His face to Calvary.

It is the renunciation of that glory on the hill-top that is the
moral wonder of this great incident. Conceive of the wonderful
position which our Lord occupied at the time of this Transfigura-
tion. He had risen to the climax; He had transmuted the
innocence of childhood into the holiness of manhood. He had
uniformly resisted sin, its nearest approaches to His Spirit, and
He rose to the completeness of manhood at the age of thirty-three,
shall we say, absolutely unstained by sin. If ever there was a
case in which the old law, " Do this and thou shalt live," should
come into play, it was now. He had kept the law of God. It was
His right to enter into the glory and blessedness of immortality
without death, its pains and its humiliations. And as He offered
Himself with the completeness of His life to God, offered Himself

' 6. Campbell Morgan.

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i, 2 351

there on the Mount of Transfiguration, the choice appears to have
been given to Him. The glory of the higher mode of existence
budded upon His person, but, had He entered heaven then, He
must have entered it alone, and the golden gates must have closed
upon Him. And so, as a French writer says, He turned His back
on the arch of triumph, and resolutely decided upon the pathway
of shadows and of grief that led to glory through the grave.

And why ? Because He loved men, and could not even go to
heaven alone. Love, says the Song of Solomon, is stronger than
death ; but the Transfiguration proves that it is stronger than
something which is stronger than death itself — stronger than
heaven and the attractions of heaven for a heavenly mind.
That was the renunciation of the Christ.

^ I read a wonderful story about Buddha, which is a strange
adumbration of this experience of our Lord. It is said that when
Buddha, before he was styled the enlightened one, was sitting at the
base of the tree of meditation, there passed before him in proces-
sion temptations of various sorts. First temptations of the flesh,
and Gautama Buddha put these aside. Then temptations of the
mind, and Buddha put these aside. Then various temptations of
the spirit, and Buddha put these aside. And then came a subtle
temptation. A temptress whispered in his ear, " Thou hast now
overcome all the temptations ; enter into Nirvana now " — Nirvana
being the Buddhist heaven. And Buddha very nearly gave way,
the legend says. But lo ! as he sat at the base of the tree, he
heard a rustling in the leaves of the tree above him. And the
rustling of the leaves was caused by the agitation of those little
creatures of God that crept amongst the leaves, who were looking
forward, says the legend, to being saved throug^i Buddha ; but if
he escaped now into Nirvana by himself they would be left un-
saved ; and the tree rustled with the agitation of the little
creatures ; and Buddha was recalled, and he refused the tempta-
tion to enter Nirvana then.^

If Among the many ways in which we miss the help and hold
of Scripture, none is more subtle than our habib of supposing that,
even as man, Christ was free from the Fear of Death. How
could He then have been tempted as we are ? since among all the
trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than
that Fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a unity, which
we can never comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory, — as
His sorrow for Lazarus, with the consciousness of the power to
' G. A. Johnston Eoss.

352 THE TRANSFIGURATION

restore him ; but it had to be borne, and that in its full earthly
terror ; and the presence of it is surely marked for us enough by
the rising of those two at His side. When, in the desert, He was
girding Himself for the work of life, angels of life came and
ministered unto Him ; now in the fair world, when He is girding
Himself for the work of death, the ministrants come to Him from
the grave. But from the grave conquered. One, from that tomb
under Abarim, which His own hand had sealed so long ago ; the
other, from the rest into which he had entered, without seeing
corruption. There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and spake of
His decease. Then, when the prayer is ended, the task accepted,
first, since the star paused over Him at Bethlehem, the full glory
falls upon Him from heaven, and the testimony is borne to His
everlasting Sonship and power. " Hear ye him." ^

4. The Transfiguration was the preparation for the cross ; it
was the vision of the crown before the fight. The cross was set
up on the holy mount because it was the Divine purpose from
the first to cover the cross with glory. Only eight days have
passed since first it was announced to men that the Son of God
should be crucified. Already it is seen from the attitude of the
disciples in general and Peter in particular that the cross will be
an offence unto men. Without delay this mistaken notion, so far
as these disciples are concerned, must be corrected. It must not
be allowed to continue unchecked. It is necessary that those who
are being trained to be the first preachers of the cross should not
remain long or altogether under a misapprehension as to its
significance. They must be given to understand that it is not
without a high purpose, and though they may not yet understand
much, their mind must be opened to perceive that somehow there
is a hidden glory in what seems only a shame and a curse. Jesus
too, in this hour of final acquiescence in His destiny, must, for
the sake of His faith and courage, see something of the honour
as well as feel somewhat of the sorrow of His cross. And so
Calvary is anticipated and transfigured on the holy mount. We
see it all as they speak of His decease. Jesus is in the midst
bearing His cross. But the visage which will afterwards be
" marred more than any man " now shines with the splendour of
the sun ; the raiment that will be gambled for glistens like the
enow. The malefactors are displaced, and instead we find Moses
* Euskin, Modern PaiiUert, iy. chap. xx. § 49.

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i. 2 353

and Elijah who, themselves covered with glory, adorn the cross.
Instead of the darkness and the cry of desertion, " My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " there is the bright cloud and
the approving voice of the Heavenly Father, " This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased." It is a marvellous and striking
situation; the cross, while only eight days old in its earthly
history, set up and surrounded by a wealth of highest glory.

1J The Transfiguration was designed, in the first instance, to
strengthen Jesus and nerve Him for the dread ordeal which
awaited Him. It was as though the veil had been drawn aside
and the eternal world for a little space disclosed to His view. It
was like a vision of home to the exile, like a foretaste of rest to
the weary traveller. He was granted a glimpse of the glory
which He had resigned that He might tabernacle among the
children of men, winning redemption for them, and an earnest
likewise of the joy that was set before Him. Prom the vantage-
ground of the Mount of Transfiguration He descried the consum-
mation which awaited Him beyond the Hill of Calvary. Nor was
that the only consolation which was vouchsafed to Him. His
heart had been grieved by the dulness of the twelve, the folly of
the multitude, and the hostility of the rulers, and in that tran-
scendent hour it was revealed to Him how His work was viewed
by God and the glorified saints. Though He stood alone on
earth, misunderstood, forsaken, and persecuted. He had Heaven's
sympathy and approval.^

^ A great artist has represented the crown of life which Christ
holds out to men as a circlet of gold with another circlet of
thorns intertwined. The idea symbolized is true to fact. Jesus
Himself experienced it. Here on the mount He is being crowned
with glory ; it is a moment of honour and joy, a season to be pro-
longed and enjoyed without anything intervening, but He still stands
upon the earth, and within the gold there is the thorn which yet
will tear and bruise His holy brow. " They spake of his decease." ^

III.

The Peactical Suggestions of the Teansfiguhation.

In one sense the Transfiguration of Christ rises into a plane
of thought ^nd feeling beyond our power to enter. No other son

» D. Smith, The Days of His Mesh, 272.
» E. T. Vernon, The Holy Mount, 83.
ST. MAIT. — 23

354 THE TRANSFIGURATION

of man was, or ever shall be, transfigured as was the Lord. No
other ever reached manhood without a sting of memory or a
qualm of regret. No other ever kept the faith with a clear vision
and an unbroken victory. No other ever lived under the sure
and constant sense that this world was but his Father's footstool,
and the world unseen his Father's house. Yet we must not forget
that the Transfiguration was a wholly human experience. It was
as human as His hunger, or His weariness, or the accents of His
voice in prayer, or His trembling under temptation. Because it
is so entirely human it is possible for us to understand its signifi-
cance, to pass through it each in his own measure, and to enter
into its felicity and reward.

^ The Transfiguration is not an impressive spectacle arranged
for the Apostles, but a peep into the awful background behind
life. Let me use a simple parable: imagine a man who had a
friend whom he greatly admired and loved, and suppose him to
be talking with his friend, who suddenly excuses himself on the
plea of an engagement, and goes out ; and the other follows him,
out of curiosity, and sees him meet another man and talk intently
with him, not deferentially or humbly, but as a man talks with an
equal. And then drawing nearer he might suddenly see that the
man his friend has gone out to meet, and with whom he is talking
so intently, is some high minister of State, or even the King
himself ! That is a simple comparison, to make clear what the
Apostles might have felt. They had gone into the mountain ex-
pecting to hear their Master speak quietly to them or betake
Himself to silent prayer ; and then they find Him robed in light
and holding converse with the spirits of the air, telling His plans,
so to speak, to two great prophets of the ancient world. If this
had been but a pageant enacted for their benefit to dazzle and
bewilder them, it would have been a poor and self-conscious
affair ; but it becomes a scene of portentous mystery if one thinks
of them as being permitted to have a glimpse of the high, urgent,
and terrifying things that were going on all the time in the un-
seen background of the Saviour's mind. The essence of the
greatness of the scene is that it was overheard. And thus I think
that wonder and beauty, those two mighty forces, take on a very
different value for us when we can come to realize that they are
small hints given us, tiny glimpses conceded to us, of some very
great and mysterious thing that is pressingly and speedily pro-
ceeding, every day and every hour, in the vast background of life ;
and we ought to realize that it is not only human life as we see

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i, 2 355

it which is the active, busy, forceful thing ; that the world with
all its noisy cities, its movements and its bustle, is not a burning
point hung in darkness and silence, but that it is just a little
fretful affair with infinitely larger, louder, fiercer, stronger powers,
working, moving, pressing onwards, thundering in the background ;
and that the huge forces, laws, activities, behind the world, are
not perceived by us any more than we perceive the vast motion
of great winds, except in so far as we see the face of the waters
rippled by them, or the trees bowed all one way in their passage.^

1. The soul may he transfigxired. — In those hours of absorbing
emotion, in desire and communion and surrender, God's Spirit
works in upon the soul. By a spiritual law the whole inner
core of our being is reacted upon, and mind and heart and
will are transformed. This subjective blessing of prayer — the
cleansing and renewing of the soul while we pray — is not the only,
not the supreme, answer to prayer; but it is the first, the im-
mediate, and the most enduring answer we can receive ; it is the
answer which is never denied.

^ "What possibilities of glory there are in human nature !
Scientists perceive in us undeveloped senses, and anticipate a
period when man will possess qualities, perceptions, and powers
far exceeding any attributes of the present. It is in Christ Jesus
that the latent glory of our nature stands most fully and con-
spicuously declared. In Him we see what man is in the Divine
ideal. He has shown of what our moral nature is capable ; in Him
we behold the transfigured conscience, will, affections, character.
He has shown of what this physical vesture is capable in exalta-
tion, refinement, and splendour.^

2. The face mayle transfigured. — The face is the involuntary
and, at the last, the accurate index of the soul. A man may
" smile, and smile, and be a villain " through a few years of his life.
But in the end, let him pose and posture and dissemble as he
will, what he has become in his soul is seen on his face. As
surely as the sap wells up in the stem, and bursts out into leaf
and blossom, and as certainly as the acid in a man's blood will be
seen in the scab upon his skin, the passion of his soul renewed in
hours of consecration will become the light and the line which all
men's eyes can see.

' A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard, 120.
2 W. L. Watkinson.

356 THE TRANSFIGURATION

^ There were two faces which the great artists of the Middle
Ages held it to be their just ambition to represent. One was the
face of Christ. But that face was as a rule the artist's despair.
The other face was that of the Madonna Mary, the Virgin of
Nazareth. These mediaeval artists sought far and near for faces
of perfect beauty as models for their portraits. They looked into
every young face in the hope that the ideal in line and form and
colour would be found. One can see in all the galleries of the
Continent those pictures of radiant youth and dazzling bloom.
But the nobler minds soon passed beyond the thrall of those
faultless faces with their dimpled beauty and their earthly charm.
They began to search after something more lovely and more sig-
nificant than skin-deep loveliness. They began to discern that
the face of some simple peasant girl, marked by no unusual grace
of contour or of colouring, could wear a glory which earth could
not give. They marked that her daily prayer before the cross
had schooled her soul to God's discipline and enriched it with
God's grace. So Eaphael painted as his Madonnas a simple
peasant girl, with motherhood's human yearning in her eyes, and
the pale austerity of consecration matching her white stole, and
the mark of her rapt and adoring humility manifest in the grace
and sweetness of her air. They realized that when the soul had
become transfigured the light in the temple of God shone through.^

3. The life may he transfigured. — " His raiment was white and
glistering." We read these words with a little wonder and more
doubt. We are tempted to think that they are a note of ex-
aggeration in the report. We wonder if the white snow of the
Hermon Hill above them had not dazzled their eyes. But quite
apart from the fact that the radiance of the face would steal
down and illumine Christ's white robe, this statement is a hint
and a prophecy of a vital truth. The transfiguration of the soul
within is not only seen in the shining of the face ; it begins to
transform and to ennoble the very habit of the life. It is nothing
marvellous to us that after years of devotion and long continuing
in hours of prayer and the renewing of the mind from day to day,
the clothes a man wears proclaim the transfiguring power of the
Spirit of God. Although not suddenly and in a moment, yet
surely and with increasing beauty, all life is transfigured. A
man's look, his courtesies of speech and of gesture, his walk and
poise, his ways and customs, his gifts and services, the very
' W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 185.

ST. MATTHEW xvii. i, 2 357

furnishing of his home and all the habits of his life, become
beautiful.

TJ Astronomers tell us that dead, cold matter falls from all
corners of the system into the sun, drawn by its magic magnetism
from farthest space, and, plunging into that great reservoir of fire,
the deadest and coldest matter glows with fervid heat and
dazzling light. So you and I, dead, cold, dull, opaque, heavy frag-
ments, drawn into mysterious oneness with Christ, the Sun of our
Souls, shall be transformed into His own image, and like Him be
light and heat which shall radiate through the universe.^

^ Many old faces have hard lines, grim angles, cold and cruel
aspects. They reflect what the man has become in soul. They
are the faces of men who are self-centred, unloving, and unhelpful.
They reveal to every eye the fact that the man lives without
prayer. But when life is increasingly and more deeply prayer,
when, in desire for things good and true and beautiful, in com-
munion with the God of our life, in surrender after surrender,
the soul is transfigured, then we see not only the shining face but
the raiment white and glistering. Newman has told this story in
three impressive verses —

I saw thee once, and nought discern'd

For stranger to admire;
A serious aspect, but it burn'd

With no unearthly fire.

Again I saw, and I confess'd

Thy speech was rare and high;

And yet it vex'd my burden'd breast,
And scared, I knew not why.

I saw once more, and awe-struck gazed

On face, and form, and air;
God's living glory round thee blazed —

A Saint — a Saint was there !^

^ No outline of his personality can be at all adequate without
the attempt being made to describe an exceedingly elusive, but at
the same time distinguishing, characteristic, which the word
charm does not entirely cover ; it was this, that the Seer in him,
or, if it must be called by the more modern name, the transcen-
dental Self, was always visible. Intensely human as he was,

^ A. Maclaren, Paul's Prayers.

' W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 188.

358 THE TRANSFIGURATION

understanding all in the lives of those about him — the most
trifling difficulties and the most profound, entering gaily into the
merriest mood or the manliest sport — the presence of this tran-
scendental Self was always apparent. Everything about him
seemed an expression of this, and if touched by some thought of
specially wide reach from a friend or from a book, the contact
with his imaginative Self sent a sort of transfigured look into his
face, as if a flame had been lighted.^

^ M. S. Watts, George Fredei-ic Walts, i. 115,

Eternal Life.

359

Literature.

Allen (G. W.), Wonderful Words and Works, 85.

Bain (J. A.), Questions Answered hy Christ, 52.

Cockin (G. S.), Some Difficulties in the Life of our Lord, 114.

Cooper (E.), Fifty-Two Fwmily Sermons, 116.

Davidson (A. B.), The Called of God, 299.

Eyton (R.), The Ten Commandments, 147.

Goodwin (H.), Parish Sermons, iii. 198.

Lucas (B.), Conversations vdth Christ, 182.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew xviii.-xxviii., 47.

Morrow (H. W.), Questions Ashed and Answered by our Lord, 210.

Prothero (G.), The Armour of Light, 253.

Salmon (G.), The Reign of Law, 194.

Shedd (W. G. T.), Sermons to the Spiritual Man, 34.

Christian World Pulpit, xxxviii. 152 (M. Dods).

Church Pulpit Year Book, 1906, p. 182.

Homiletic Review, New Ser., xxxvii. 424 (G. E. Faber).

Preacher's Magazine, xii. 7 (M. G. Pearse).

360

Eternal Life.

And behold, one came to him and said, Master, what good thing shall I
do, that I may have eternal life ? — Matt, xix, i6.

1. Tms young ruler, who appears and disappears again so suddenly
in the gospel narrative, is one of the most interesting and tragic
figures in the Bible. The interest is enhanced by the strong
resemblance he seems to bear to the Apostle Paul in circum-
stances and character. Both were in the prime of early man-
hood when they came into contact with Jesus. Both were rulers,
with all that such a position implied of theological education,
social position, and ecclesiastical influence. Both were religious
to the full extent of their light, striving to obey the Law and
believing that they had succeeded. Both were lovable in dis-
position. Both were rich. The one, we are told, had great
possessions. The wealth of the Apostle of the Gentiles is inferred
from various circumstances. It is inferred from the education
that he received, from the fact that he was a ruler, from the ease
and air of equality with which he addressed nobles, governors, and
kings, from the position occupied by his relatives in Jerusalem,
from the two years' imprisonment in which Felix detained him in
the hope of obtaining a bribe, from the consideration shown to
him on the voyage to Eome, from the unusual permission given
him to take Luke with him. It is also suggestive that his
favourite description of the gospel is " riches," a suitable word on
the lips of one who had been forced to ask himself if he had
received compensation for what he had sacrificed. The point of
decision in both men was the same — the necessity to abandon a
supposed righteousness ; and the touchstone of sincerity in both
was the same — their readiness to abandon wealth for Christ. At
that point the difference arose. The one went away sorrowful,
for he had great possessions. The other counted all things but

loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.

361

362 ETERNAL LIFE

2. Never before had such an one come to Jesus. That he should
come at all was much; that he should come at such a time
was very much ; that he should come at such a time and
in such a way was a splendid proof of independence, of courage,
and of earnestness. It was utterly unlike those about him. A
man whose religion was not a cloak for all kinds of self-indulgence ;
whose wealth was not a thing that possessed and enslaved him;
who had not learned to put the anise and cummin in place of
justice and mercy ; who did not go priding himself on his long
robes, or his long prayers, or his trumpeted alms — free ahke
from hypocrisy or pride, simple and sincere. Nor was it any
sudden outburst of emotion kindled by the sight of that face, by
His words of wisdom, or by the tokens of His tenderness. No
shallow-ground hearer of the Word was this, receiving it with
joy, and then when the sun was up withering away. There was
the fixed habit of goodness in him. A blameless youth had led
up to a generous and noble manhood. So sincere, so brave, so
earnest, no wonder that Jesus beholding him loved him. The
look, the tone, the manner of Jesus told how His heart went
forth to him.

% It may be instructive to set this young man beside that
other ruler who came to Jesus. Nicodemus came at the very
outset of the Saviour's ministry, when as yet men had not made
up their minds as to His authority, and when at any rate there
was neither peril nor social sacrifice in recognizing Him. And
yet Nicodemus came by night, under cover of the darkness. He
came when Jesus was alone, or when only John was with Him.
But now Jesus is excommunicated; He is denounced and con-
demned, and the authorities have already sought to stone Him.
On every side there are those who watch Him with a hatred that
only His death will satisfy. To honour Him in any way is to
incur their suspicion and denunciation. Yet this young ruler
comes openly before all the people. And more than that, there is
an enthusiasm in his coming, an ardent admiration for Jesus
Christ that no other rich man ever showed. He came running — •
that was a starthng enough thing amidst the leisurely strut of the
Pharisee and the languid indifference of the rich. Such enthu-
siasm has always been regarded as vulgar by the well-to-do ; and
to be vulgar is with them worse than to be wicked. He came
with a respect and reverence that acknowledged alike the great-
ness and the goodness of the blessed Lord. He kneeled at the

ST. MATTHEW xix. i6 363

feet of the Saviour, and asked Him, as the great authority,
" Master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal
life?"i

The QuESTioiT.

1. By " eternal life " we must understand not merely
continued existence, but continued happy existence, than which
there can be no higher good. Many people are happy here — at
times, and for times. But the old saying, "No one is always
happy," shows how constant is man's experience of the mutability
of happiness. And many men wonder why this is so. The truth
is — though few people see it at first — that nothing is, or is real,
but what is in harmony with the mind and will of God. He alone
can create. What man seems to create, as apart from God, can
last only so long as man's illusion lasts ; for it is illusion alone that
gives such " works " apparent reality. As in the case of the house
founded on the sand, a little time and those natural forces which
can overthrow anything illusory will distinguish the apparent
from the real. The illusion will vanish like a burst bubble ; and
what is real — that is, what is in harmony with the mind and will
of God — will alone endure. Therefore eternal life can mean only
a life (desires, tastes, workings, productions) that is in harmony
with the mind and will of God. All else is folly, vanity, empti-
ness, illusion, which, like the state of childhood, can last its time,
and then must pass away.

^ In the complex, of vivid, operative convictions connected
with Eternal Life there is, first, a keen yet double sense of
Abidingness — an absolute Abidingness, pure Simultaneity,
Eternity, in God; and a relative abidingness, a quasi-eternity.
Duration, in man (qvM personality). And the Eternity is always
experienced by man only within, together with, and in contrast
to, the Duration. And both Eternity and Duration stand out, in
man's deepest consciousness, with even painful contrast, against
all mere Succession, all sheer flux and change. Here the special
value lies in the double sense that we are indeed actually touched,
penetrated, and supported by the purely Eternal ; and yet that
we ourselves shall never, either here or hereafter, be more than

1 M. G. Pearse.

364 ETERNAL LIFE

quasi-eternal, durational. For only this double sense will save us
from the perilous alternatives of an uncreaturely sheer fixity and
an animal mere flux and change. We thus gain a perennial source
of continuity and calm. There is, next, the keen sense of Other-
ness in Likeness. We are genuinely like, and we are genuinely
unlike, God, the Kealized Perfection. Hence there is ever a certain
tension, a feeling of limitation or of emptiness, a looking for a
centre outside of, or other than, our own selves. Here again this
double sense will be profoundly helpful in our troubles. For thus
we are never free to lose reverence for the deepest of what we
are, since it is like God, and actually harbours God. And yet we
may never lose humility and a thirst for purification, since even
the deepest and best of ourselves never is, never will be, God.^

2. Where had the ruler got hold of the thought of eternal
life ? It was far above the dusty speculations and casuistries of
the Eabbis. Probably from Christ Himself. He was right in
recognizing that the conditions of possessing it were moral, but his
conception of " good " was superficial, and he thought more of doing
good than of being good, and of the desired life as payment for
meritorious actions. In a word, he stood at the point of view of
the Old Dispensation. " This do, and thou shalt live," was his
belief; and what he wished was further instruction as to what
" this " was. He was to be praised in that he docilely brought
his question to Jesus, even though, as Christ's answer shows, there
was error mingling in his docility. The fact that he came to
Christ for a purely religious purpose, not seeking personal
advantage for himself or for others, like the crowds who followed
for loaves and cures, nor laying traps for Him with puzzles which
might entangle Him with the authorities, nor asking theological
questions for curiosity, but honestly and earnestly desiring to be
helped to lay hold of eternal life, is to be put down to his credit.
■He is right in counting it the highest blessing.

3. Probably when he came to our Lord with his question the
ruler had an idea that Christ would recommend him to build a
synagogue or ransom some of his countrymen who were slaves, or
do some striking religious act ; for when our Lord gives him the
simple answer that any child of his own household could have
given him, he answers, "What commandment?" fancying He

' F. von Hugel, Eternal Life, 365.

ST. MATTHEW xix. i6 365

might mean some rules for extraordinary saintliness which had
not been divulged to the common people ; and evidently, when
our Lord merely repeated the time-worn Decalogue, the young
man was disappointed, and somewhat impatiently exclaimed,
" All these have I kept from my youth up." He probably did not
mean to vaunt his own blamelessness of life. Not at all. He
merely meant to state that all his life he had had these command-
ments before him, and if this were all our Lord had to tell him,
then that was no fresh light for him at all. All the good they
could do him he had already got ; and that was not all the good
that could be got, he felt. " What lack I yet ? " We are told
that the Talmud describes one of the classes of Pharisees as the
" tell-me-something-more-to-do-and-I-will-do-it " Pharisee. The
young man plainly belonged to this class. He thought he was
ready to make any sacrifice or do any great thing which would
advance his spiritual condition.

•(I A sermon by the Archbishop of York emphasizing that the
test of religion is love for one's neighbours fills her with delight ;
a sermon on the third anniversary of her baptism by the vicar of
St. Mary Abbot's, in which " he laid stress on the impossibility of
doing without first being," is noted with ardent enthusiasm a few
days afterwards. Then she makes an approving note of some
words of Dr. Parker : " He spoke against men who met together
in a nice room to discuss how to do something for the suffering
masses ; if you want to reach them— go to them yourself." " I
feel no doubt of religion," she wrote on the threshold of 1891, and
she immediately hurried to reflect that it was Hfe essentially:
" There is a tremendous difference between admiring and
believing in Christianity on the one hand, and on the other putting
ourselves under the Divine influence hour by hour." She was
discovering the old problem of how to be what one believed, and
she was just the person to solve it with almost a ruthless
rectitude. She had come to the briar patches already.^

4. It is evident that the young ruler made the mistake of
forgetting that goodness can come only from God. He apparently
imagined that goodness is inherent in man, if he only knew how
to exercise it. " What good thing shall I do ? " And the Lord
answered, " Why askest thou me concerning that which is good ? "
as if there were several good things: good works, and good

^ J. Eamsay MaoDonald, Margaret Etlul MacDonald, 66.

o

66 ETERNAL LIFE

eternal life ? There is but one true Good, and that is not a thing,
but a Being. God is the One Good, and the One Life. It is as
if our Lord would say, " You ask Me a question which I cannot
answer directly ; because, if I did, you would not understand Me.
Eternal life is not a commodity to be purchased at a price. God
and eternal life are one. If you have God, you have eternal life ;
if you enter into God, you enter into eternal life." Or, more
plainly, if your idea of life, what you like, desire, work for, is one
with God's idea of life, you are thereby one with God. Your will
is " at-oned " to His will ; and therefore what you vnll you will
have eternally, because you vnll what is eternal. For God is
good, and good is God ; and therefore whatever is good — the good
thought, the good desire, the good deed — these, and these only,
are eternal.

^ We should mark and know of a very truth that all manner
of virtue and goodness, and even that Eternal Good which is God
Himself, can never make a man virtuous, good, or happy, so long
as it is outside the soul. Therefore although it be good and
profitable that we should ask and learn and know what good and
holy men have wrought and suffered, and how God hath dealt
with them, and what He hath wrought in and through them, yet
it were a thousand times better that we should in ourselves learn
and perceive and understand who we are, how and what our
own life is, what God is and is doing in us, what He will have
from us, and to what ends He will or will not make use of us.
Further we should learn that eternal blessedness lieth in one
thing alone, and in nought else. And if ever man or the soul is
to be made blessed, that one thing alone must be in the soul.
Now some might ask, " But what is that one thing ? " I answer,
it is goodness, or that which has been made good, and yet neither
this good nor that, which we can name, or perceive or show ; but
it is all and above all good things. . . . All the great works and
wonders that God has ever wrought or shall ever work in or
through the creatures, or even God Himself with all His goodness,
so far as these things exist or are done outside of me, can never
make me blessed, but only in so far as they exist and are done
and loved, known, tasted and felt within me.*

5. The ruler also forgot that goodness is not a thing to be
done, or an attribute of actions, but an element of character in
the person who performs the actions. There is no more common

' Theologia Oermanica, chap. ix.

ST. MATT HE V/ xix. i6 367

mistake in religion and ethics than this, and scarcely any mistake
more fatal. It shifts the centre of gravity in religion from the
centre to the circumference, from the soul to the outward act.
The form of his question, " What good thing shall I do ? " reveals
the short-coming of his apprehension as to how the case really
stands. He puts the question much as one might ask, "What
premium must I pay to insure my life for a thousand pounds 1 "
The premium is paid, not from the love of paying it, but as the
only way of procuring a good we desire to obtain. Note how our
Lord, in His reply, at once tries to shift the question to a different,
and higher, ground. The question is, " What good thing shall I do
that I may have eternal life ? " The answer is, " If thou wilt enter
into life." Eternal life is not a thing you can have, as you have
an estate, or a balance in the bank. It must have you : you must
enter into it. A man and his estate are two, and can be separated :
a man and his eternal life are one, and cannot be separated.

^ The young ruler is in the position of a man who comes to
his medical adviser complaining of a slight uneasiness which he
supposed a tonic or a change of air may remove, and is told that
he has heart disease or cancer. Or he is in the position of a
sanguine inventor, who has spent the best years of his life on a
machine and at last puts it into the hands of a practical man
merely to get the fittings adjusted and steam applied, and is tqld
that the whole thing is wrong in conception and can never by
any possibility be made to work.^

6. The man was thus under an entire misapprehension as to
his own spiritual condition. Exemplary in conduct, very much
the model of what a wealthy young man ought to be, he had
naturally some self-complacency. He had become a ruler of the
synagogue, and was probably a man of influence, of large charity
and much good feeling, so that the people who saw him come to
consult Jesus would suppose that it was something of a conde-
scension on his part. He was not perfectly satisfied, however,
about his spiritual condition, but he thought a very little addition
to his present attainments would set him above suspicion. He
was well enough as he was, but he wished, as any young man with
anything in him does wish, to be perfect. He was of an ardent,
aspiring temper, and would leave nothing undone that he could

' Marcus Dods.

368 ETERNAL LIFE

measure his human nature and strength with, so he came to
Jesus, not to be taught the mere rudiments, but to receive the
finishing touches of a religious education.

^ In Clean Browning pictures man perfectly civilized, having
left the lower and unconscious forms of life and grown to the
only life, the life of culture, the pleasure house.

Watch-tower and treasure-fortress of the soul,
"Which whole surrounding flats of natural life
Seemed only fit to yield subsistence to;
A tower that crowns a country.

It is a magnificent conception of the educated, refined, civilized
man. And then comes the awful awakening to its utter unsatis-
factoriness.

But alas.
The soul now climbs it just to perish there !

And then he pictures the visions from that tower of capacity for
joy, spread round it, meant for it, mocking it, and the agony of
the soul finding itself less capable of enjoyment even than before.
The very fatigue consequent on the realization has brought de-
struction to it.

We struggle, fain to enlarge
Our bounded physical recipiency.
Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,
Eepair the waste of age and sickness : no.
It skills not ! life's inadequate to joy.
Most progress is most failure.

He fails just as he is learning the value of gifts which he longs
to use and cannot. To his patron Protus he writes : —

Thou diest while I survive?
Say rather that my fate is deadlier still,
In this, that every day my sense of joy
Grows more acute, my soul (intensified
By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen;
While every day my hairs fall more and more,
My hand shakes, and the heavy yea^s increase —
The horror quickening still from year to year,
The consummation coming past escape
When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy.

ST. MATTHEW xix. i6 369

The progress of culture without the spiritual outlet which com-
munion which Christ brings, without the vision of the Eternal,
beyond time and sense, being one with us, is only more and
more unsatisfying. When we have kept all the commandments
of science and philosophy and civilization, the question will recur,
"What lack I yet ?"i

II.

The Answek.

1. Jesus said to him, " If thou wilt be perfect — if thou wilt
supply what is lacking — sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." This is intended to bring
out an application of the law which he had not observed. There
is one of the commandments the purpose of which is to pierce the
heart and bring not merely the outward action to view, but also
the actuating impulses. It is interesting to note that in the
case of the Apostle Paul, whose resemblance to the young ruler
has been referred to, it was thus that his boasted righteousness
dissolved. " I had not known sin, except through the law : for I
had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt
not covet." So here, too, Jesus brought out the unobserved
covetousness by asking the young ruler to sacrifice his wealth for
the eternal life he was anxious to acquire.

^ There is no passion so tenacious as covetousness. Most of
the passions which rule men are exposed before long to some
withering influences. The passions of young life are bound up
with our physical nature, and with changed physical conditions
their supremacy may be undermined. The passions of manhood,
like ambition and the love of power, are shaken by stormy
weather. . . . Covetousness, unlike other passions, grows stronger
with advancing years. The power of pleasure dies, the value of
fame is found to be unsubstantial, but wealth is hard, solid, lasting
— more real than the vain things which charmed our younger
years. So wealth is loved, and covetousness grows, and becomes
a tyrant vice with increasing years. It was a true instinct which
led Dante to picture avarice as an invincible foe. In his pilgrim-
age he passed safely by the leopard of pleasure ; he feared, yet
was not vanquished by, the lion of ambition ; but the lean wolf
of avarice drove him step by step back to the darkness. Such is

^ R. Eyton, The Ten Gomma/nd/meifUs, 157.
ST. MATT. — 24

370 ETERNAL LIFE

the power of covetousness. It is a vice which renews its strength
and is tenacious and remorseless.^

2. This young man was plainly told that in order to inherit
eternal life he must give up his pleasant home, all his comforts,
his position in society, and become a poor, houseless wanderer.
This always seems a very harsh demand to make of a well-
intentioned youth. One might have expected that, instead of
thus bluntly laying down an ultimatum, our Lord would have
won him by gentle, gradual, seductive methods. But often the
decision of the surgeon who sees what must in the long run be
done, and knows that every hour lost is a risk, sounds abrupt
and harsh to those who have no such knowledge; and "ve can
scarcely question that the method which our Lord adopted with
this young man was not merely the only wise method, but the
kindest possible method. This young man's possessions happened
to be what prevented him from following Christ; but some
pursuit of ours, or some cherished ambition, or some evil habit,
or some love of ease, or mere indifference, may be as completely
preventing us from learning of Christ and from living as He lived
and so attaining true likeness to Him.

11 " Never fear to let go," he says in his philosophical notes ; " it
is the only means of getting better things, — self-sacrifice. Let go ;
let go ; we are sure to get back again. How science touches the
lesson of morals, which is ever. Give up, give up ; deny yourself, —
not this everlasting getting; deny yourself, and give, and in-
finitely more shall be yours ; but give — not bargaining ; give from
love, because you must. And if the question will intrude, ' What
shall I have if I give up this ? ' relegate that question to faith,
and answer, ' I shall have God. In my giving, in my love, God,
who is Love, gives Himself to me.' " ^

3. But the demand of Jesus was not simply to sacrifice his

wealth. Jesus makes no such merely negative claim on men.

He desires to put Himself in the place of that which the heart

has worshipped. He adds, "And come, follow me." That is.

He must have the first place in the heart and life of those who

seek eternal life. Christian life is not mere renunciation. It

often appears to be such to those who look only at the renuncia-

' W. Boyd Carpenter, The Son of Man Among tJie Sons of Men, 148.
' Life and Letters of James Einton, 206.

ST. MATTHEW xix. 16 371

tion by which they are asked to enter on life. To make that re-
nunciation is a great venture of faith. The man who makes it
does not yet see that what he will get will make ample amends
for what he loses. Christ is Himself the fountain of spiritual
life to those who come to Him. He is life. Coming to Him and
following Him is life indeed. Many seek life by flinging a loose
rein on the neck of their passions, others in the exercise of the
intellectual and social gifts they possess. But the richest life
is that which calls into exercise the highest elements of our
nature, those elements which bring us into touch with the
spiritual and the eternal. The life Christ gives is eternal. It is
above the powers that bring the lower elements of Hfe to an end.
And it is the satisfying life — the life that will compensate for
any sacrifice that has to be made to attain it.

^ Our Saviour, with that wonderful consideration that belongs
to Him, never demanded anything unreasonable. Some He has
bidden to leave all and follow Him. Some He bids to go home
to their friends, and there, within the circle of their own influence,
declare what great things God has done for them. The way of the
Cross, the way to Heaven, can never be the way of self-indulgence
and seK-pleasing, whether coarse or refined. It seems to me that
a refined, self-pleasing, indulgent sentimentalism, with its pretty
phrases, its exquisite propriety of emotion, with nothing endured,
with nothing done, is one of the subtlest religious perils of the day.
It is as the Son of God, come down from Heaven, that Christ
said, "Believe on me"; but it is as the Son of Man, living a
human life, that He said, "Follow me." He showed how men
might live in the world, and yet not be of the world ; or, in St.
Paul's phrase, how they might use the world without abusing
it, and make life a nobler, purer, and holier thing.^

4. Let us remember that Jesus was already girt for the great
sacrifice. He was hastening to surrender Himself utterly to it.
He who was rich had become poor and had humbled Himself to
death, even the death of the cross. The claims of the world and of
wealth could scarcely find a place in His thoughts. Already He
for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising
the shame. And now the enthusiastic approach of the young
ruler, most welcome to his Lord, is answered with this splen-
did opportunity of service. He may bring his devotion and his
' Bislwv Fraser's Lancashire Life, 254.

372 ETERNAL LIFE

longing after goodness into the service of the Saviour ; he may go
with Him as one of His chosen disciples to Jerusalem, and to the
judgment-hall, and to Calvary, and find eternal life in thus follow-
ing his Lord and in such fellowship with Him. Is not this the
meaning of the Master's words — that He would fain have had this
brave and earnest spirit as one of His chosen band ? The word
was that which was spoken to the disciples in Csesarea Philippi
when Jesus had first revealed to them that He must die, and it is
recorded only once besides. If the young man had but seen the
meaning of the words as the Saviour did, in the light of eternity,
in the light of the glory of God, how sublime an offer it would
have appeared, what trust and confidence it declared, what an
opportunity for highest service it afforded !

^ Have you ever seen those marble statues in some public
square or garden, which art has so fashioned into a perennial
fountain that through the lips or through the hands the clear
water flows in a perpetual stream, on and on for ever ; and the
marble stands there — passive, cold, — making no effort to arrest
the gliding water 1 It is so that Time flows through the hands of
men — swift, never pausing till it has run itself out ; and there is
the man petrified into a marble sleep, not feeling what it is which
is passing away for ever. It is just so that the destiny of nine
men out of ten accomplishes itself, slipping away from them, aim-
less, useless, till it is too late. Now is a time, infinite in its value
for eternity, which will never return again. Now — or Never.
The treasures at your command are infinite. Treasures of time —
treasures of youth — treasures of opportunity that grown-up men
would sacrifice everything they have to possess. Oh for ten years
of youth back again with the added experience of age ! But it
cannot be.^

III.

The Choice.

1. "He went away sorrowful." The completeness and im-
mediateness of the collapse are noticeable. The young man
seems to speak no word, and to take no time for reflection. He
stands for a moment, as if stunned. The eager look passes from
his face and the shadow of a great disappointment darkens his
' F. W. Robertson, Sermons, ii. 289.

ST. MATTHEW xix. i6 373

brow. For the first time he found his resources insufficient to
secure the object of his desire. He discovered that there were
some things which money, however plentiful, could not buy ; that
there were possessions which could not be inherited, but must be
earned. He turned away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
The great testing had come, the clouds which portended a great
storm had already gathered, and soon the placid bosom of the lake
would be heaving and swelling under the stress and strain of a
mighty tempest. He would never be the same man again. The
depths of his nature had at last been stirred, and the effect of the
storm must give him a deeper peace than he had ever known
before, or intensify the unrest which he had already experienced.

2. He loved his comforts and his position better than he loved
Christ. That is the whole state of the case. He did not oppose
Christ. He was willing to consult Him. He was prepared to
follow His advice to a certain extent. He recognized that He
was a Teacher whom it would never do to argue with or scoff at.
He owned Him a Teacher of the truth, but he could not obey
Him ; he did not love enough to follow Him ; he was not fasci-
nated by Christ. It is needless to say that, wherever such a
comparative estimate of things spiritual and things worldly exists,
the result must always be the same. Wherever a man is more
concerned about his profits and his possessions than about his
character, this will one day disastrously appear. Wherever love
of Christ unsuccessfully competes with something inferior, this
must one day show itself by the man cleaving to the inferior
thing, and preferring to go with it.

^ Tolstoy, the Russian socialist, has said that " the rich are
willing to do anything and everything for the poor, except get off
their backs!" Through a similar but universal perversity, the
unconverted man is willing, more or less, to do anything and
everything toward God that might lie in his power — heathen-like
— except to yield Him real heart-friendship ! ^

3. Henceforward he disappears from the gospel history ; yet we
are not forbidden to hope that the Saviour wlio loved him may
have again repeated to him His command, "Follow me." The
sorrow which he felt was, no doubt, real ; and it may have been

» G. E. Fabdr.

374 ETERNAL LIFE

so lasting as to make him reconsider the wisdom of his choice.
And the times were coming when his nation was to pass through
bitter trials, and when the wealth of many who trusted in riches
was suddenly taken from them. In the ordinary course of nature
this young man would have lived to see this time of great
calamity for the Jewish people, and it may well have been that
he who would not, of his own accord, give up all for Christ, may
afterwards have suffered the loss of all things, and yet have found
that it was love that sent the trial, and that the Lord was making
good His promise to him of treasure in heaven.

In Dante's great poem there is a lost spirit without a name
of whom he says, " I looked and saw the shade of him who through
cowardice made the great refusal." And he places him among
those whom he calls " hateful alike to God and to God's enemies."
But was there not in that sorrowful and grieved departure a proof
of nobleness ? How many rich men of to-day, if summarily bidden
to sell all their goods and give to the poor, would go away grieved
and sorrowful ? Would they not rather go away, like Naaman,
in a rage, scornful that any could make so outrageous a proposal,
and talking angrily about the importance of class distinctions?
Was not that sorrow most of all at his own failure ; at finding his
own weakness? We can follow him in thought to a happier
destiny than Dante has depicted. It may well be that he went
up to the Passover, and there again saw the Christ of whom
he thought so much — saw Him accursed and crucified. And,
strengthened by that great example, he may have given to his
risen Lord that service which he had shrunk from before. We
can think of him as foremost among those of whom we read, " As
many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought
the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them at the
apostles' feet."

"What lack you yet? A pathway, do you want.
Of noble struggle after perfect good?
A chance I give you: leave your cherished sphere
Of virtuous deeds; sell all and follow Me."

Think not this test a trial hard and stern,
Coldly applied by Christ to shame his pride:
No, 'twas a genuine offer, not bestowed
On many. Men were often sent away:

ST. MATTHEW xix. i6 375

Not the relinquishment of outward wealth

The chief thing Christ required; but that the man,

Set free from earthly things, should then begin

A loftier career, beside Himself.

Think what this offer meant. Christ saw in him

High capabilities: His heart went out

To that young man. But it was not to be:

His weakness was revealed; before his eyes

Eose the heroic vision, and he saw

It was beyond his power. The record ends

With his discomfiture. He went away,

A sadder, wiser man. We know no more.

The Ministering Master.

»T

Literature.

Anderson (W. F.), in Drew Sermons on the Oolien Texts for 1910, 199.
Banks (L. A.), Sermons which have Won Souls, 365.
Barry (A.), The Atonement of Christ, 39.
Benson (B. M.), The Final Passover, i. 50.
Black (H.), Christ's Service of Love, 23.
Burrows (H. W.), Parochial Sermons, 12.
Haokett (W. S.), The Land of Yoitr Sqjournings, 121.
Hall (B. H.), Discourses, 14.
Hallock (G. B. F.), The Teaching of Jesus, 145.
Holland (H. S.), Logic and Life, 225.
Hughes (H. P.), Ethical Christianity, 95.
MacDonald (G.), A Dish of Orts, 298.
Maclaren (A.), Christ's Mv,sts, 55.
Marsh (F. E.), Christ's Atonement, 73.
Murray (W. H.), The Fruits of the Spirit, 441.
Rashdall (H.), Doctrine and Development, 128.
Ridgeway (C. T.), The King and His Kingdom, 50.
Robertson (A. T.), Keywords in the Teaching of Jesus, 41.
Smith (G. S.), Victory over Sin and Death, 28.
Wells (J.), Christ in the Present Age, 171.
Williams (W. W.), Resources and Responsibilities, 71.
Christian World Pulpit, xvii. 339 (A. Scott) ; xxiii. 82 (H. W. Beecher) ;
xlix. 226 (L. Abbott) ; Hi. 285 (C. J. Ridgeway).

378

The Ministering Master.

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give his life a ransom for many, — Matt xx. 28.

The whole scope of the teaching and example of Jesus from the
beginning went to show that greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven
is a different thing from that which is accounted greatness among
men. The pagan ideal of life, the semi-barbaric and old Eoman
conception, finds the dignity and serviceableness of life in the
influence of one man over another. From the days of Nimrod it
has crowned the men of strong will. As Jesus said. They that
wield authority over the nations have been hailed as their bene-
factors. In the form of military or physical mastership, or in the
less brutal form of intellectual rule, rule by law, or the assertion
of brain-power over feebler races and feebler men, this ideal of
human life has played a great part in history and is destined still
to play a great part. The ages of "blood and iron," of the
domination of the strong over the weak, and of ruling over
subject peoples, are not yet done.

The Christian ideal is the precise contrast. Christ came, not
to be ministered unto, but to minister; not to enrich Himself,
either with nobler or with baser wealth, but to impoverish Himself
that He might make many rich. With Him first, and with His
followers in proportion as they actually do follow Him, self is
subordinated into a minister to others ; while the good of others
and the honour of God in others' good become the end, the centre,
the dominant and rewarding goal, towards which, in labour or in
endurance, the whole life tends.

^ Louis XIV., in his spirit of tyranny, could say, " I am the
state." This was the pagan view. Frederick the Great, of Prussia,
gave fine expression to the modern and Christian view in that
noble utterance, " It is the business of the king to be the chief of
the servants of the state ! " This is the new standard, and has taken
firm hold of the thought and life of Christian civilization, and to-

379

38o THE MINISTERING MASTER

day, without argument, he is conceded to be the greatest who is
greatest in service to the cause of human progress and the
advancement of the Kingdom of God.^

I.

The Pattekn of Service.

" The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister."

1. The Master here finds occasion to teach His disciples the
profound lesson that the way to spiritual greatness is by service.
It seemed an inversion of the ordinary rule by which princes
exercise dominion and the world's great men exercise authority.
For here it is the opposite—" whosoever will be great among you,
let him be your minister ; and whosoever will be chief among you,
let him be your servant." He takes Himself as an illustration of
the law ; for even the Son of Man " came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister." The lesson is that we should follow in His
steps, and make our religion not merely a getting but a giving,
the service of Christ and of the brethren.

^ The notion of rank in the world is like a pyramid ; the
higher you go up, the fewer there are who have to serve those
above them, and who are served more than those underneath
them. All who are under serve those who are above, until you
come to the apex, and there stands some one who has to do no
service, but whom all the others have to serve. Something like
that is the notion of position, of social standing and rank. And
if it be so in an intellectual way, — to say nothing of mere bodily
service^ — if any man works to a position that others shall all look
up to him and that he may have to look up to nobody, he has just
put himself precisely into the same condition as the people of
whom our Lord speaks, — as those who exercise dominion and
authority, — and really he thinks it a fine thing to be served. But
it is not so in the Kingdom of Heaven. The figure there is
entirely reversed. As you may see a pyramid reflected in the
water, just so, in a reversed way altogether, is the thing to be
found in the Kingdom of God. It is in this way : the Son of Man
lies at the inverted apex of the pyramid ; He upholds, and serves,
and ministers unto all, and they who would be high in His

' W. F. Anderson.

ST. MATTHEW xx. 28 381

Kingdom must go near to Him at the bottom, to uphold and
minister to all that they may or can uphold and minister unto.^

2. Now in order to appreciate the significance of that life of
service, we must take into account the introductory \vords, " The
Son of man came." They declare His pre-existence, His voluntary
entrance into the conditions of humanity, and His denuding Him-
self of the glory which He had with the Father " before the world
was." We shall never understand the Servant-Christ until we
understand that He is the Eternal Son of the Father. His service
began long before any of His acts of sympathetic and self-for-
getting lowliness rendered help to the miserable here upon earth.
His service began when He laid aside, not the garments of earth,
but the vesture of the heavens, and girded Himself, not with the
cincture woven in man's looms, but with the flesh of our humanity,
and " being found in fashion as a man," bowed Himself to enter
into the conditions of earth. This was the first, the chief, of all
His acts of service, and the sanctity and awfulness of it run
through the list of all His deeds and make them unspeakably
great. It was much that His hands should heal, that His lips
should comfort, that His heart should bleed with sympathy for
sorrow. But it was more that He had hands to touch, lips to
speak to human hearts, and the heart of a man and a brother to
feel with as well as for us. " The Son of man came."

^ Scientists tell us that, by the arrangement of particles of
sand upon plates of glass, there can be made, as it were, percep-
tible to the eye, the sweetness of musical sounds ; and each note
when struck will fling the particles into varying forms of beauty.
The life of Jesus Christ presents in shapes of loveliness and
symmetry the else invisible music of a Divine love. He lets us
see the rhythm of the Father's heart. The source from which His
ministrations have flowed is the pure source of a perfect love.
Ancient legends consolidated the sunbeams into the bright figure
of the far-darting god of light. And so the sunbeams of the
Divine love have, as it were, drawn themselves together and
shaped themselves into the human form of the Son of Man who
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.''

•^ Sir Walter Scott says that the most beautiful scenery in
Scotland is where the Highlands and the Lowlands meet. Not in

' George MaoDonald, A Dish of Orts, 299,
' A. Maolaren, Christ's Musts, 57.

382 THE MINISTERING MASTER

the Highlands, nor yet in the Lowlands, but at the meeting of the
two. And it is as true in the spiritual kingdom, when the beaten
track becomes the highway of God, and the heavenly places in
Christ Jesus are connected with the common duties and everyday
business of life.^

3. He cdTne to minister. His service was to be utterly un-
stinted. He would go the whole length with it. He saw that we
should demand from Him all that He had ; that we should use up
His very life ; that our needs and necessities would press upon Him
so sorely, so urgently, that He would spend Himself, and be spent,
in this hard service ; that we should never let Him stop, or stay,
or rest, while we saw a chance of draining His succouring stores.
He foresaw no light and easy giving, no grateful and pleasant
ministry ; He saw that it would cost Him His very life. And yet
He came : even that He would lay down for our profit ; even that
He would surrender at our demands. And just because the work
of the faithful service would indeed involve this surrender of life,
which is the final and utter proof of all loyal and unselfish devotion.
He had found it a joy and gladness to enter a world that would
ask so much of Him. In this hope He came. " The Son of man
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister"; yes, and so
to minister, so to serve, that He would " give his life a ransom for
many."

^ Christ had always found His happiness and His honour in
serving others and doing them good ; but the supreme illustration
of the principle on which He conducted His life was still to come
— His final service was to consist in giving His life a ransom for
many. This image of a ransom does not appeal to our minds as
forcibly as it would to those of the disciples, because the experi-
ence of being ransomed, in the natural sense, is much rarer in
modern than it was in ancient times. In the British Isles at
present there do not probably exist a hundred persons who have
ever been ransomed, whereas in the ancient world there would be
such wherever two or three were met together. War was never
a rare experience to the countrymen of Jesus, and in war the
process of ransoming was occurring continually, when prisoners
were exchanged for prisoners, or captives were released on the
payment by themselves or their relatives of a sum of money.
Similarly, slavery was a universal institution, and in connexion

' L. A. Basks.

ST. MATTHEW xx. 28 383

with it the process of ransoming was common, when, for a price
paid, slaves received their liberty. The Jews had, besides,
numerous forms of ransoming peculiar to their own laws and
customs. For example, the firstborn male of every household
was, in theory, liable to be a priest, but was redeemed by a pay-
ment of so many shekels to the actual priesthood, which belonged
exclusively to a single tribe. A person whose ox had gored a
man to death was in theory guilty of murder, but was released
from the liability to expiate his guilt with his life by a payment
to the relatives of the dead man. Such cases show clearly what
ransoming was: it was the deliverance of a person from some
misery or liability through the payment, either by himself or by
another on his behalf, of a sum of money or any other equivalent
which the person in whose power he was might be willing to
accept as a condition of his release. It was a triangular trans-
action, involving three parties — first the person to be ransomed,
secondly the giver, and thirdly the receiver of the ransom.^

4. His life was a continued ministry. And it was such by its
own necessity. Not as though He chose it should be so, as though
He debated with Himself whether He would serve His fellow-men
or not, go forth to meet persecution and contumely or lead a quiet
and peaceful life, speak the truth that was in Him or withhold it ;
but simply because there was that in Him which must needs
find expression, because feelings so deep and tender must assert
themselves, because sympathies so broad and generous cannot
confine themselves within the heart, because the great power of
blessing or capacity of action is its own incentive to beneficence
or action. He would not be ministered to. He saw too many souls
about Him to be aided, too many sorrows to be comforted, too
many doubts to be answered, too much spiritual darkness to be
illumined, for Him to wait for others' ministering. To see such
needs was to long to supply them. To feel within Him the power
to serve was to put forth that power. To know the truth for
which other souls were waiting was to utter it. To minister was
the Divine necessity of His being. It was His soul's great pre-
rogative, which could not be put aside.

^ Some can be touched by personal sympathy ; they have
heart, but they cannot take a comprehensive view and embrace a
noble cause — they fail in mind. Others have their imagination

' J. stalker, The Christology of Jesus, 179.

384 THE MINISTERING MASTER

fired by a cause, but they cannot sympathize with a wounded
heart. We have narrow good men, and we have iron-hearted
philanthropists. Christ takes in the tender heart and compre-
hensive thought — the person and the cause — the woman's way of
looking at it and the man's. Or take another feature of it. He
sympathizes with suffering and sorrow — a bruised heart ; and He
weeps over sin — a blinded heart. Christianity alone has set these
two forth, — it is our glory and our duty — -and in One Person ; the
tenderness of the human with the comprehensiveness of the
Divine.^

5. The virtue of His costliest service extended to alL He says
here " a ransom for many." Now that word is not used here in
contradistinction to " all," nor in contradistinction to " few." It
is distinctly employed as emphasizing the contrast between the
single death and the wide extent of its benefits: and in terms
which, rigidly taken, simply express indefiniteness, it expresses
universality. " Many " is a vague word, and in it we see the dim
crowds stretching away beyond vision, for whom that death was
to be the means of salvation. The words of the text may have an
allusion to words in the great prophecy in the 53rd chapter of
Isaiah, in which we read, " By his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many ; for he shall bear their iniquities." Calvin
says, " The word ' many ' here is not put definitely for a certain
number, but for a large number, for the Saviour contrasts Himself
with all the rest of mankind." The New Testament meaning of
" many " is " all." " Ye are of more value than many sparrows."
Surely this means than all the sparrows. " If through the offence
of one many be dead " (that is, all be dead), " much more the
grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus
Christ, hath abounded unto many." " That he (the Son) might be
the firstborn among many brethren" — that is, among aU the
brethren. In the ministry of His life He drew no distinctions ;
in the ministry of His death He encompasses the wide world.
" He is the propitiation for our sins : and not for ours only, but
also for the sins of the whole world." If in His life His ministry
was, of necessity, confined within geographical bounds, on His cross
He stretched out His hands, mighty to save, to the whole world.

^ The word " ransom," though not rare in the Old Testament,

' J. Ker, Thoughts for Heart a-ndLift, 148.

ST. MATTHEW xx. 28 385

is used in the New Testament, only in this context; and the
English phrase, '' a ransom for many," is not likely to be misunder-
stood. It means a ransom by means of which many are set free
— from bondage, or captivity, or penalties, or sentence of death.
But the Greek phrase might be misunderstood ; " a ransom instead
of many " might be thought to mean that many ought to have
paid ransom, but that He paid it instead of them ; which is not
the meaning. And the indefinite " many " does not mean that
there were some whom He did not intend to redeem ; that He did
not die for all. " Many " is in opposition to one ; it was not for
His own personal advantage that He sacrificed His life, but one
life was a ransom for many lives. Here, where Christ for the
first time reveals that His death is to benefit mankind. He does
not reveal the whole truth. Compare 1 Tim. ii. 6 and 1 John ii. 2,
where the more comprehensive truth is stated.^

^ When prisoners were bartered at the conclusion of a
war, the exchange was not always simply man for man. An
officer was of more value than a common soldier, and several
soldiers might be redeemed by the surrender of one officer. For
a woman of high rank or extraordinary beauty a still greater
number of prisoners might be exchanged ; and by the giving up
of a king's son many might be redeemed. So the sense of His
own unique dignity and His peculiar relation to God is implied in
the statement that Christ's life would redeem the lives of many.
St. Paul expresses the truth still more boldly when he says that
Jesus gave His life a ransom " for all " ; but the two phrases come
to the same thing; because the "many" spoken of by Jesus
really include " all " who are wilUng to avail themselves of the
opportunity,*

II.

The Obugation of Sekvicb.

" Even as the Son of man came."

1. He came as a servant, and He has the right to ask service
of us. We must give Him what He asks; not only because
reason says that His claim is just, not only because conscience
tells us there can be no peace till we take up His yoke and follow
in His steps, but also because we are bound to the King by ties

1 A. Pluinmer.

' J. Stalker, The Chrislology of Jama, 184.

ST. MATT. — 25

386 THE MINISTERING MASTER

of gratitude : " The love of Christ constraineth us, . , . that they
which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him
who for their sakes died and rose again."

^ Long ago Lord Wolseley wrote in his Soldier's Pocket-Book a
sentence which deserves to live — "The officers must try to get
killed." The matter could not be more conclusively put. Not in
the battlefield alone, but everywhere and always, except among
the few lost souls of whom men do not speak, has that great rule
won simple unthinking obedience. Every physician goes by it to
the haunt of contagion. John Eichard Green wrote his beloved
history when the pains of death gat hold upon him ; Archbishop
Temple's father made provision for his widow and family by
taking a government appointment in a deadly climate and leaving
them a pension after two years' service. Undistinguished men
and women are spending their slender capital of health and hfe
with but a plain idea of doing right by those they love, and with
no talk of sacrifice. So vast and lovely are man's possibilities
when he turns his face to Eight — which is God ! ^

2. The soul finds its life only in action, in going forth out of
itself. Neither mind nor heart matures, however fine its training
or abundant its resources, if it simply appropriates to itself, giving
nothing out. Its strength and power come as it begins to react
upon the world. Self-culture, however noble an aim, is never the
noblest. Good for our earlier years, it must be replaced in later
life by some great purpose beyond — the love of truth for its own
sake, the desire for power, or the pure longing to serve humanity.
Between the life spent in such intellectual pursuits as will simply
gratify the tastes, stimulate the mind, or kill time, and the hfe
spent in some actual service to society is all the distance between
the dilettante and the man. The advantage of great qualities of
mind or heart lies not half so much in what they directly bring
to us as in the larger strength and capacity which we gain through
their exercise. The more keenly we learn to realize others'
wants and desires, as though they were our own, the wider the
sympathies by which we act, the further away from ourselves our
affections are turned, so much the larger and more vigorous does
the soul become. The morbid nature, as you sometimes encounter
it, at home only with its own griefs, or dwelling solely in its own
past, or in love with its own fastidiousness, or finding nothing
1 W. S. Haokett, The Land of Vour Sojownings, 126.

ST. MATTHEW xx. 28 387

beautiful save in its own tastes and nothing great or good save in
its own ideals, or pursuing any thoughts which circle round and
round the little centre of self, becomes the sure abode of weakness
and discontent. Its egotism can end only in insufferable weari-
ness and intellectual death.

3. In one of the most beautiful of his little poems, Whittier
speaks about " the dear delight of doing good." He who has not
tasted of that delight has been living upon the husks of things.
They who spend their lives for others are ever living upon the
'royal wine of heaven. When God called Abraham to go into a far
country He gave him a casket containing seven promises : " And
I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and
make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a blessing : and I will
bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee : and
in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." " Thou shalt
be a blessing " — this W£is the jewel in the casket. The man who
has not tasted the luxury of being a blessing, who has not felt a
vital personal relation to some good cause, and that he is of
service to his fellow-men, has not yet sounded the deeps of life.
This must have been in the mind of Browning when he spoke of
" the wild joys of living."

^ Dr. Henry vab. Dyke has given strong setting to this truth
in his suggestive little poem. The Toiling of Felix. In 1897 a
piece of papyrus leaf was found at Oxyrhynchus, near the Nile.
It bore the fragments of several sayings supposed to be the lost
sayings of our Lord. The clearest and most distinct was :

Eaise the stone, and thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and
there am I.

Dr. van Dyke has made the historic incident the occasion of the
writing of a very significant little poem which exalts the dignity
of labour. Felix, a young Egyptian, very early in his life is
mastered by a longing for a revelation of the Divine glory. In
quest of it he goes to the libraries, takes down the volumes which
contain the creeds, studies them long and patiently in hope that,
while he studies, the Divine glory will burst from out the sacred
page. But after weary months of experimenting he concludes
that he has not adopted the right method.

Now he turns away from the libraries fifid frequents the

388 THE MINISTERING MASTER

sacred temples where men are wont to gather for worship. In
the early morning and in the evening twilight he becomes a
suppliant before the throne of heaven, at the altar of many a
sacred fape.

"Hear me, thou mighty Master," from the altar step he

cried ;
" Let my one desire be granted, let my hope be satisfied ! "

But after other weary months of seeking he is again disappointed.
Now he is told that yonder in the desert is a monastery, and
in that monastery is an aged saint who has meditated long and
patiently on the deepest problems of life ; that once a year the
aged saint comes from out his lonely dwelling and gives his bless-
ing to the individual whom he happens to meet. Felix places
himself at the outer wall. One morning he sees the gate open.
He presents himself as a suppliant and entreats the blessing of
the aged one, who looks at him earnestly but only in silence. He
takes a token, however, from his garments and handing it to
Felix retires within the monastery. Felix is again disappointed.
But as he turns away it occurs to him that there may be some-
thing upon this token. He opens and reads :

Raise the stone, and thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and
there am I.

As he wonders what it all means he hears the echo of the
hammers of the workmen who are engaged in quarrying out the
stone in a stone quarry near at hand. Meantime an inner voice
begins to plead with him and to suggest that he must become one
of those workmen, and that by the rugged road of toil he will find
his way to a vision of the Divine glory. The voice pleads so
earnestly that at last he heeds it and presents himself, is accepted,
and begins to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. At the
end of the first day a new zest has come into his life. This grows
on him as the days come and go. He is sure now he is on the
right road. One day a fellow-workman is overcome by the burn-
ing rays of the noonday sun. In natural compassion Felix
shelters his head with a palm leaf, and while doing so it seems to
him he catches the vision of a face of wondrous beauty. Another
day they are transporting some building material across a stream
of water ; the workman who stands by his side loses his footing
and falls into the stream. In a moment Felix has plunged in
after him. Firmly grappling him in one arm, he makes his way
to shore with the other, and while he struggles toward the place

ST. MATTHEW xx. 28 389

of safety it seems to him that he sees a form walking on the
surface of the water like unto the Divine form of the Son of God.
Thus he finds the way to a fellowship with his Lord that is deep
and rich, sweet and glorious and divine.

The spirit or the teaching of the little poem is thus beautifully
summed up by the author :

This is the gospel of labour — ring it ye bells of the kirk —
The Lord of Love came down from above, to live with the

men who work.
This is the rose that He planted, here in the thorn-cursed

soil —
Heaven is blest with perfect rest, but the blessing of Earth is

toil.i

• W. F. Anderson.

The Good and Faithful Servant.

391

Literature,

Baker (0. C), in The Methodist Episcopal Pulpit, 203

Brooks (P.), Christ the Life and Light, 222.

Dawson (W. J.), The Reproach of Christ, 37.

Farrar (F. W.), Social and Present-Day Questions, 254.

James (J. A.), Sermons, iii. 260.

Jordan (W. G.), The Crown of Individuality, 175.

Jowett (J. H.), Meditations for Quiet Moments, 98.

Llewellyn (D. J.), The Forgotten Sheaf, 99.

Matheson (G.), !rhe Joy of Jesus, 5.

Moule (H. C. G.), Thoughts for the Sundays of the Yea/r, 35.

„ „ The Secret of the Presence, 194.

Neale (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Sachville College Chapel, i. 301.
New (C), The Baptism of the Spirit, 289.
NicoU (W. R.), Ten-MinuU Sermons, 115, 268.
Shannon (F. E.), The Soul's Atlas, 86.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxvi. (1880), No. 1541.
Vincent (M. R.), Ood and Bread, 117.
Christian World Pulpit, Ixxiv. 373 (G. H. Morrison) ; Ixxv. 391 (J. S.

Robertaon).
Expositor, 2nd Ser., vi. 204 (G. Matheson).

39«

The Good and Faithful Servant.

Well done, g^ood and faithful servant : thou hast been faithful over a fev7
things, I will set thee over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord. — Matt. xxv. 21.

The plain ethical purpose of this parable is to teach the need for
fidelity to duty in all human concerns. The great idea on which
it is based is that man is the depositary of a great trust. The
Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who went into a far country
and left his property to be administered by his servants. We have
all of us as children been puzzled by the unaccountable fact that
God is unseen, and that the Governor of the universe seems to
take no active part in its affairs. This is Christ's answer to the
puzzle : God has delegated the administration of His world to
His servant, man. In man there is a Divine capacity for truth,
and duty, and righteousness: and still further to guide and
strengthen that capacity in its development, God has given him a
code of instructions, which goes by the name of the " Kingdom of
Heaven." Obeying that code of moral law it is in the power of man
to administer the world rightly as the vicegerent of God, and to
develop his own highest self in the process. Time and talent —
every form of human gift and opportunity — are part of the wealth
of God which is invested in man, and the one business of man in
this theatre of human life is to be a faithful steward of the trust
reposed in him.

The Text defines—

I. The Life that Christ Approves.
II. The Bewards that Christ Dispenses.

I.

The Life that Christ Appkovks.

"Good and faithful servant." Here are the elements of a

great life. Christ does not say a great life is brilliant. He does

393

394 THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

not say a great life is splendid. He does not say a great life is
illustrious. He does not say a great life is heroic. A great life
is all these and more, but Christ does not say so. He simply
says " good and faithful."

1. Goodness is a fundamental and essential element of Christian
character. It is a household grace, adapted to every changing
circumstance, and to every occasion. Some of the Christian graces
seem not to enter into every act of life, but are called out in
peculiar emergencies. Patience and resignation exhibit them-
selves only under the ills of life, or in the dark hour of adversity ;
but Christian goodness, from whatever position it is viewed, is
equally conspicuous.

^ There is one place where the difference between the good
man and the bad man is hidden out of sight, and that is when
both are kneeling at the foot of the Cross. But till men are
brought there in repentance, the gulf which separates the desire
to serve God from the disregard of His will is as wide as from
heaven to hell. Nov can we do a greater mischief to our con-
sciences than by trying to teach them that because we are weak
therefore all Christian goodness is worth nothing, and there is
little to choose between living one way and living the other way.
On the contrary, weak as we are, we are expressly told that our
goodness is in kind the same as our Lord's. " He that doeth right-
eousness is righteous, even as he is righteous." The little good of
which we are capable is for all that in its nature heavenly, and
comes directly from the other world. Our weakness may make
us incapable of attaining much of it : and our want of earnestness
may rob us of still more. But still in its kind it is of heaven and
not of earth, and nothing on earth can be compared with it in
value. We cannot be as true and just and unselfish as we should
be ; and we are not as true and just and unselfish as we can be ;
but for aU that, what truth and justice and unselfishness there is
upon earth is of the same priceless heavenly quality as shall be
found in the other world.^

(1) " Good " and " goodness " are used in different senses. We
say that fruit is good, when it is agreeable to the sense of taste.
An article of husbandry is good, when it is happily adapted to the
purposes for which it was constructed. Goodness, as existing in
the Deity, embraces that principle which leads the Divine Being
' Archbishop Temple.

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 21 395

to bestow blessings upon His creatures. Goodness, as applied to
man, must be taken in a restricted sense ; it refers to the moral
qualities of his heart. It consists in the possession of the
Christian graces. The Apostle has enumerated, " Add to your
faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge
temperance ; and to temperance patience ; and to patience godli-
ness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly
kindness charity." The supposed possession of any one grace
gives us no right to profess Christian goodness. The Apostle says,
"Add," lead up, alluding to the chorus in the Grecian dance,
where they danced with joined hands. The allusion is a beauti-
ful one, showing the intimate connexion existing between the
graces of the Spirit. Where one truly exists, they all exist, and
nearly in the same strength and maturity. Christian goodness is
necessarily associated with Christian holiness. It implies not
merely a state in which the sympathies of human nature are
easily excited, and lead to acts of kindness towards the bereaved
and distressed, but a state in which fruit is shown unto holiness,
and the end eternal life. It is not a mere negative state, in which
there is no marked development of unsanctified nature, but the
good man, like Barnabas, is full of faith and of the Holy Ghost.
When the work of creation was completed, from the beauty and
harmony of the parts, and their perfect adaptation to accomplish
the Divine purposes, everything was pronounced to be very good.
No higher appellation could be given. And man now becomes
good only so far as, by the renewal of the Holy Ghost, he bears
the impress of his original nature.

^ In a letter to his youngest boy, James Hinton wrote : " If
you haven't been perfect, you must not be discouraged, but must
only try again and the more. And remember, the art is to do at
once ; delay is the great enemy. If you do at once what you are
told, you can hardly imagine how beautifully everything will go.
Only think of your ship ; you see as soon as ever the wind says to
it go, it goes at once. It doesn't wait a moment ; and if it did,
would it get on well, do you think? You know it wouldn't.
Why, it would topple over, and its friend, the wind, in its very
help, would only hurt. Now we ought to be Uke ships before the
wind, and the wind should be love, moving us at once. Do you
know, the Spirit, God's own Spirit, is called by the same word that
means the wind ? And I dare say one reason is that He fills the

396 THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

sails, and that they yield freely and happily to Him, like ships
before a favouring breeze." ^

(2) In our ordinary interpretations of this parable, we are in
some danger of laying the emphasis on power rather than on
character. We say, " The servant made the best of his power, and
the result was correspondingly large." We draw the practical
lesson, " The more faithfully you use your talents, the more you
will accomplish." We perhaps tend to forget that it is the moral
quality of the user that gives character to the result; that a
smaller result, as the outcome of faithfulness, is more in God's
eyes than a larger one without it ; that to God there is no large
result, no good result, without goodness; that God demands
interest on character no less than on endowment, and that interest
on endowment counts for nothing without interest on character ;
that quality fixes the rate of interest on quantity. We may go into
the other world with the reputation of great or brUIiant or efficient
men. It will count for nothing if we are not also good men.

11 We have heard of the Eoman who, to show that he could
not be dispirited by fear, or intimidated by suffering, calmly
placed his right hand upon the burning altar, and there steadily
held it, without emotion, until it was consumed. We have heard
also of the distinguished martyr of whom it was said, "In an
unguarded and unhappy hour he had subscribed to doctrines
wMch he did not believe; an act which he afterward deeply
repented of, as the greatest miscarriage of his Hfe. And when he
was subsequently led to the stake, he stretched out the hand
which had been the instrument in this false and discreditable
subscription, and, without betraying, either by his countenance or
motions, the least sign of weakness, or even of feeling, he held it
in the flames till it was entirely consumed." In the one case we
admire the man, in the other the moral principles of his heart.
Though the acts were similar, the one showed the martial man,
the other the good man.*

f With special clearness Dr. Martineau shows that, as
the Greek proverb, which Emerson so aptly quotes, well put it,
" The Dice of God are always loaded," and goodness must ever
in the long run win the victory. It would be difficult to find in
English literature a more perfect combination of depth of thought
with beauty of expression than is presented in that section of

^ Life and Letters of James Hvnion, 216.
■ 0. 0. Baker.

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 21 397

A Study of Beligion, in which Dr. Martineau illustrates " The
Triumphs of force in History," and shows how rude strength
always gives way at length before intelligence ; how intelhgence,
when it chiefly subserves the ends of pleasure or of gain, is sure
to be worsted in the struggle with moral principle, and how in our
present civilization the unobtrusive elements of Christian faith
and love are gradually over-mastering all lower and coarser forces
and tending to become, in the course of centuries, the dominating
influence in the social and pohtical Hfe of humanity.^

2. Faithfulness imparts the quality which answers God's test
of moral value; and value and award in the Kingdom of God
turn upon quality, and not upon quantity. Faithfulness spans
the differences of ability. No difference of endowment can put
one out of reach of that test. It follows endowment down to its
vanishing-point, and binds the possessor of an infinitesimal fraction
of a talent to raise his fraction to the highest power as stringently
as it binds the holder of five or ten talents. The servant with
the smallest capital was condemned simply because he did not
use it. On the other hand, endowment never rises out of the
atmosphere of faithfulness. No measure of abihty ever exempts
from duty. No amount of brilUancy compensates for unfaith-
fulness.

^ There is no lack of great works going on for our Lord to
which we may safely attach ourselves, and in which our talent is
rather used by the leaders of the work, invested for us, than left
to our own discretion. Just as in the world there is such an end-
less variety of work needing to be done, that every one finds his
niche, so there is no kind of ability that cannot be made use of in
the Kingdom of Christ. The parable [of the talents] does not
acknowledge any servants who have absolutely nothing; some
have little as compared with others, but all have some capacity to
forward the interests of the absent master. Is every one of us
practically recognizing this — that there is a part of the work he is
expected to do ? He may seem to himself to have only one talent,
that is not worth speaking about, but that one talent was given
that it might be used, and if it be not used, there will be some-
thing lacking when reckoning is made which might and ought
to have been forthcoming. Certainly there is something you can
do, that is unquestionable ; there is something that needs to be
done which precisely you can do, something by doing which you
' Life amd Letters of James Mwrtvwm^ ii. 442.

398 THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

will please Him whose pleasure in you will fill your nature with
gladness. It is given to you to increase your Lord's goods.^

3. When we think of the world's great men, when we get to
know them intimately in their Uves, there is perhaps nothing so
arresting as the fidelity which we discover there. When we are
young we are ready to imagine that the great man must be free
from common burdens ; we think he has no need to plod as we
do and face the weary drudgery daily; we picture him light-
hearted and inspired, moving with ease where our poor feet are
bleeding. In such terms we dream about the great in the days
when we know little of them, but as knowledge widens we see how
false that is. We see that at the hack of everything is will. We
come to see how every gift is squandered if it be not clinched with
quiet fidelity, until at last we dimly recognize that the very
keystone of the arch of genius is something different from all
the gifts, that something which we call fidelity.

^ One of the latest critics of Shakespeare, Professor Bradley,
insists upon the faithfulness of Shakespeare. It is the fidelity of
Shakespeare, in a mind of extraordinary power, he says, that has
really made Shakespeare what he is. The same is true of Sir
Walter Scott. It is written on every page of his journal. If
there ever was a man who was faithful unto death, faithful to
honour, to duty, to work, and to God, it was that hero who so loved
his country, and died beside the murmur of the Tweed. Yes, one
mark of all the greatest is a fidelity which is sublime. No gifts,
no brilliance, no genius can release a man from being faithful.
Not in the things we do but how we do them, not in fame but in
fidelity, is the true test of a man's work, according to the teaching
of our Lord.^

^ On that great day when the nobility of England assembled
in Westminster Abbey before the open tomb in which the body of
David Livingstone was to be laid, all eyes were fixed on the quiet,
black man, Jacob Wainwright, who stood at the head of the coffin.
He was the Zanzibar servant who with his companions had
brought his master's body back from the swamp in the heart of
Africa where he died, and had delivered him to the representative
of the Queen at the seacoast, and had asked as his sole recompense
the privilege of attending the body until he could deliver it to his
friends in the distant home. Now the service was completed ;

' Marcus Dods, The Parables of Our Lord, i. 263.
' 6. H. Morrison.

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 21 399

and as England arose to pay her tribute of honour to the heroic
man who had given his life to close the open sore of the world,
all eyes were turned to the faithful servant who stood at the head
of his grave.^

II.

The Eewaeds that Cheist Dispenses.

1. The first word of the Master is a word of recognition and
approval — " Well done ! " Fournier names his latest book, Two
New Worlds. It is a study of the infra-world and the supra-
world — a theory of the wonders of electrons and stars, a mathe-
matical survey of the infinitesimal and the infinite. Now, here
are two words that hold more wonders than two worlds. Here is
the ultimate pronouncement of God and His universe upon the
highest attainment of the human spirit. " Well done ! "

^ The God of the Holy Scriptures is characteristically generous
in His moral estimates of His servants. He pronounces
perfect and good men in whom we have no difficulty in seeing
moral defect. The epithets are freely applied wherever there
is single-hearted devotion ,to the cause of God — to a Moses,
a David, a Job, a Barnabas. And those who serve the Lord of
the Kingdom ought to bear this truth in mind. It is well that we
think humbly of ourselves, but it is not well that we imagine that
God thinks meanly of the best endeavours of His servants. It is
injurious as towards Him, and it is degrading in its effect on our
own character. KeUgion, to be an elevating infiuence, must be a
worship of a generous, magnanimous God. Therefore, while in the
language of a former parable we say of ourselves we are unprofit-
able servants, so disclaiming all self-righteous pretensions to merit,
let us remember that we serve One who wiU pronounce on every
single-hearted worker, be his position distinguished or obscure, or
his success great or small, the honourable sentence, " Well done,
good and faithful servant." ^

2. The faithful servant is given a larger sphere of power and

influence. "I will set thee over many things." God's rewards

are never arbitrary. They grow out of the struggle that we wage,

as the fruit of autumn grows from the flower of spring. All

1 H. A. Stimson, The New Things of God, 224.

^ A, B. Bruce, The Parabolic Teaching of Christ, 213,

400 THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

the rewards that we shall ever gain are with us in their rudi-
ments already, just as the doom that awaits some in eternity is
germinating in their heart this very hour. We see, in the light
of that, why Christ associates faithfulness and rule: "Because
thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler
over many things." It is because one is the outflow of the other,
as is the burn of the spring among the heather. It is because, as
flower from the bud, influence blossoms from fidelity.

][ What is it to be faithful ? It is to be full of faith. The
man who has no faith is not faith full but faith empty. He is
faithless. It is trusting God down to the end of the journey,
through storm and sunshine, through adversity and prosperity,
through good report and evil report, saying, even with the last
breath, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." It is fidelity.
It is being trustworthy as well as trustful. It is trusting God
until men can trust me. It is being so loyal to duty, so devoted
to truth, so steadfast to principle, that no lure of quick success
can tempt me to be faithless. It means that I should rather be
defeated than lie, that I should rather fail in business than succeed
through dishonesty, that I should rather be broken in fortune and
ruined in reputation than compromise my honour. And it is all
this, not for a day or a year, or a decade, but for life, not merely
when it pays but when it costs, not only when it is applauded
but when it is hissed ; it is " unto death." ^

3. While the reward bears a direct relation to present fidelity,
like all God's gifts it is exceeding abundant — "a few things,"
" many things." The greatness of God is that He asks so little
and gives so much. A missionary left a few pages of the Gospel
in an Indian village. Swifter than the arrows he shot from his
bow, the message went straight to an Indian's heart. Meanwhile,
the missionary had travelled on some two hundred miles. But
the Indian measured the missionary's footprint, made him a fine
pair of moccasins, tracked him over hill and valley until he found
him, and gave him the tokens of his gratitude. God always takes
the measure of His servant's footprint. And though he travel
never so far and never so lonely, God will overtake him — no, not
that, God will go with him, God will slug to him, God will cheer
him, God will rest him, God will comfort him, God wiU richly
reward him ! God's remunerations are incalculable ! For brass
' J. I. Yance, Tmdene>/, 227.

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 21 401

He gives gold, for iron He gives silver, for stones He gives iron,
for a few things He gives many things !

^ The bounty of the Lord gives enlarged opportunity for
energy and usefulness. The "few things" of earth are to be
replaced by " many things " which Divine grace provides for the
faithful. The close of the earthly life, which seems as the yielding
up at once of the capital and the gain procured by it, is followed
by introduction into a new and grander order of things, in which
larger possessions and wider opportunities are intrusted to each
one. The greater power appears as a wider influence and rule
under God's government. In the everlasting life procured for
us by Jesus, a future is prepared for enlarged work and also for
extended reward. In the heavenly kingdom, where righteousness
reigns in man and extended favour comes from God, life is pro-
gressive in ever increasing ratio.^

4. The faithful servant is admitted into the Master's own joy.
" Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

(1) What is the joy of God ? As concerns us, one thing and
only one — our goodness. Not our activity, not our intelligence,
but to see us growing more and more like Himself, purer, truer,
more loving — this is the sight in us that sends a new current of
joy through the perfect happiness of the perfectly happy God.
To reach by His grace, by His training, some new measure of His
holiness, to recognize it and begin to use it and rejoice in it as His
gift; to lift up our hearts with the same happiness as fills
His heart when a new temptation is conquered and a new purity
reached — this is to enter into the joy of our Lord.

^ In one of His most beautiful parables, the Lord gives us a
glimpse of one of His joys. A shepherd has lost a sheep. It has
wandered on to the wilds, and has missed the flock. The good
shepherd goes in search of it. He roams over the storm-swept,
rain-beaten moors. He peers into precipitous ravines. He
descends into valleys of shadow, where the wild beast has its lair.
He trudges high and low, far and wide, gazing with strained vision,
and at last he finds his sheep, maybe entangled in the prickly
brushwood, or bruised and broken by the rocky boulders of sonie
treacherous ravine. "And when he hath found it, he layeth it
on his shoulder, rejoicing." That is one of the joys of the Lord —
the finding of the lost ! "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
Can we do it ? Stay a moment. Let us follow the shepherd home.
1 H. Calderwood, The Parables of Our Lord, 417.
ST. MATT. — 26

402 THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

" And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and
neighbours, saying unto them, Eejoice with me, for I have found my
sheep which was lost." Could they do it ? I know that they could
come to his house, and sit down to the feast, and enjoy the good
things provided, and fill the house with music and song. But could
they really enter into his joy ? Suppose that among his neighbours
there were some who had been with him upon the wilds, who had
dared the dangers of the heights and the terrors of the beasts, who
had trudged with tired feet far into the chilly night — would not
these be just the neighbours who would be able to enter into the
shepherd's joy ? To enter into the joy of finding, we must have
entered into the pain of seeking. To enter into the joy of my Lord,
I too must become " a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." ^

(2) A measure of joy accompanies all good and faithful work.
" The doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."
Before the deed reaches completion a wave of heavenly satisfaction
and joy breaks over the soul of the doer, which reveals the truth
that man is in his element when doing good. Our conscience
condemns us when we do an unkind action ; we are pained when
we fall below our ideal of true manhood ; pain accompanies the
dirty deed as inevitably as when the body receives a blow. The
years, as they roll on, will cause us to lose many an object that
we would fain keep, but they will not obliterate the memory of
painful actions. " Verily we are guilty concerning our brother,"
said Joseph's brethren when they appeared before the ruler of
Egypt. There was something, maybe, in the tone of the ruler's
voice which reminded them of Joseph and of their own dastardly
deed. Painful was the recollection and fearsome was the whisper-
ing of their guilt concerning their brother. On the other hand,
our moral nature approves kindness in the glow of pleasure which
begins within in the doing of the deed. The doer becomes con-
scious of the music of heaven as he goes along his way. The
angels of heaven seem to him to be opening doors of pleasure and
joy each step he takes, and voices ring out the Divine invitation,
" Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

Just to recollect His love,

Always true.
Always shining from above,

Always new;

' J, H. Jowett, Meditations for Qvdet Moments, 99.

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 21 403

• Just to recognize its light

All-enfolding,
Just to claim its present might,

All-upholding ;
Just to know it as thine own,

That no power can take away —
Is not this enough alone

For the gladness of the day?

(3) The joy of the Lord is reserved in its fulness for the other
life. Here His people fight the battle within themselves. With
the great simplicity of revelation, St. James tells us the source of
all disquiet, from the meanest brawl to world-shaking war:
" From whence come wars and fightings among you ? Come they
not hence, even of the lusts that war in your members ? " The soul
is without peace until the will rules every other power, and until
that will is Christ within. The true kings unto God have known
this so well that they have hardly asked for any other dominion.

^ I cannot describe that joy. It is something to be experi-
enced rather than described. As the rose defines the bush, as the
music interprets the musician, as the pure face explains the pure
heart behind it, so, in some such way, doth God's joy in the soul
sing of the God who created the soul in His own image. I some-
times think that we have a hint of that joy when God and the
soul understand each other in Christ. This picture from life may
help us just here. There are in the parsonage two boys between
five and six years of age. They are cousins ; they are healthy ;
they are selfish ; they are strenuous. You know the rest. The
other night, after returning from a preaching engagement in a
distant part of the city, I walked up to the bed on which the two
lads lay, sound asleep. And the picture that met my eyes was so
lovely that I walked away and back again for the third time.
There they lay, cheek to cheek, heart to heart, hand in hand, even
breathing in perfect unison, folded in the calm and sweet embrace
of slumber. Long hours before, they had forgotten their scratched
faces. Long hours before, they had forgotten the toys that caused
so much misunderstanding. Long hours before, they had forgotten
the unkind words they did not mean. Long hours before, they
had forgotten their little heartaches and dried their childish tears.
Long hours before, they had climbed the white, dreamful hills of
sleep, where tearful eyes become tearless, where stormy words melt
into peace, where broken toys and broken hearts are mended,
where God's angels brood above restful pillows !

404 THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

And so there is one place — more tranquil than childhood's
sleep, more wonderful than childhood's dreams ! — where our souls
may find whiteness, where our minds may find unity and poise,
where our hearts may find forgiveness, where our hot brows may
find coolness. And that place is the bosom of Jesus Christ. In
Him, through whom Jehovah is reconciling the world unto
Himself, the soul and its God come to a perfect understanding.
Then are set in motion those deepening currents of joy whicl? will
flood us at last into that infinite ocean named "the joy of thy
Lord" 11

» F. E. Shannon, The Soul's Atlas, 101.

Unto Me.

4<>S

Literature.

Burrell (D. J.), The Verilies of Jesus, 82.
Butler (W. A.), Sermons, ii. 347.
Carroll (B. H.), in The Southern Baptist Pulpit, 54.
Darlow (T. H.), The Upward Calling, 217.
Dykes (J. 0.), Plain Words on Great Themes, 159.
Barnes (J.), The Shattered Temple, 79.
Ford (G. E.), in Religion in Common Life, 72.
French (E. A.), God!s Messages through Modern Doubt, 75.
Hepher (C), The Self-Revelation of Jesus, 54.
Holden (J. S.), Redeeming Vision, 86.
Jenkinson (A.), A Modern Disciple, 205.
Leach (C), Sermons to Working Men, 24.
Lucas (H.), At the Pa/rting of the Ways, 277.
Miller (J. R.), A Help for the Common Days, 31.
Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, ii. 22.
Parkhurst (C. H.), Three Gates on a Side, 157.
Pearson (A.), The Claims of the Faith, 53.
Service (J.), Sermons, 216.
Tyng (S. H.), The Peoples Pulpit, iii. 61.
Watts-Ditchfleld (J. E.), Fishers of Men, 91.

Christian Wwld Pulpit, xviii. 89 (J. H. HoUowell); xxiv. 337 (T. E.
Evans) ; xxix. 259 (R. Veitch) ; Ixxxi. 310 (L. G. Broughton).

406

Unto Me.

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my
brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.— Matt. xxv. 40.

1. Our Lord is here lifting the curtain of the Unseen. He is
describing a great symbolic act of final judgment. The Throne
of God is pictured, set upon the clouds ; the nations are gathered
before Him. The King is seated to judge in person. The issues
of eternity depend upon His word. He will give sentence, with
discernment that cannot err, of reward or punishment to every
man according to his works. He calls no witnesses, for none are
needed. The books that are opened, spoken of elsewhere, are
but the universal memory of the Divine omniscience which this
Judge brings to His work. Without hesitation, without the
possibility of other than perfect justice. He divides, sepa-
rating one from another to the right hand or to the left, and
they that have done evil go, in that timeless existence which
we call eternity, into punishment, but they that have done good
into life.

2. The two earlier parables of judgment refer to those who
are in confessed relationship with God. The parable of the Ten
Virgins represents the relationship of friendship, — that of people
who would share in the joys of God's home, as friends at a
wedding feast; the parable of the Talents represents a less
intimate relationship — that of service; the talents are com-
mitted to their proprietor's " own servants." Now the scene
changes, and we are brought out to the larger world of the
nations; the judgment of those who do not know Christ as
their Friend or consciously serve Him as their Master is here
typified.

407

4o8 UNTO ME

The Judge.

1. The Judge is " the Son of Man." The significance of that
title is thus drawn out by Dr. Sanday : " The ideal of humanity,
the representative of the human race. , . . Jesus did deliberately
connect with His own Person such ideas as these. . . . This deeply
significant title ... at the centre is broadly based upon an
infinite sense of brotherhood with toiling and struggling humanity,
which He who most thoroughly accepted its conditions, was fittest
also to save."

It is the conception which fits most closely to St. Paul's
thought of Jesus as the Head of the race, the second life-giving
" Adam," the consummation of humanity, in whom all that is
human is gathered up, the new Father of the Eace, for at His birth,
perhaps by virtue of His birth of a virgin, there came into the
stream of human life a fresh impulse of creative power, as some
swift-flowing clear and wholesome stream pours itself into a
sluggish and polluted river. He has bound humanity to Himself,
and Himself to humanity, in His incarnation, multiplying the
bonds of union in His love. None is so near akin to each of us
as He, not even brother or child; therefore none is faint and
weary among us, none is wrong or oppressed, but He feels the
pain and the heartache. It is this first that gives truth to His
words, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even
these least, ye did it unto me." He is the Son of Man because He
stands in a unique relation to the human race.

^ Not with people as social accidents have sorted them — as
rich or poor, as wise or foolish, as lords and ladies or humble folk,
has He that close affinity which makes Him call us all His
" brethren " ; but deep within these wrappings of rank or circum-
stance He who shares our nature reads the characteristic features
of our manhood — common infirmity, common need, common pains,
and common mortality. In these it was that He took part. In
these, as often as He sees them. He still claims to have a share.
Whatever sharpens in your bosom the sense that your neighbour
is your brother-man must likewise sharpen the sense that he is
a born brother to the Son of God. Is it not, then, due to this
deep underlying unity of His nature with all our race, a race

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 40 409

which, Bundered by many things, is one in its sorrows, that Jesus
Christ bids us discern Himself in every man who hungers, bleeds,
weeps, or dies ? With that most human of all things, suffering,
the badge, not of a tribe, but of our whole race, has He most com-
pletely identified Himself, who is Himself the Ideal Man and the
Eepresentative Sufferer for all mankind. " Ye did it unto me ! " ^
Tf Not long since, a lady stood on our southern coast and saw
a dear sister drown. She could neither give help nor procure it ;
she could only stand still and sufier. And it is told to this day
how they both died together, one in the sea, and the other on the
land. As the remorseless current choked life in the one, grief
palsied the heart of the other. Not a blow was struck, not a
wave touched her feet, but that awful sympathy which links our
souls became insufferable, and went to her heart as fatally as an
assassin's steel.*

^ The first evangelist, who delights to grace his narrative of
the ministry of Jesus with citations from the Hebrew scriptures
containing oracles that have at length found their fulfilment, be-
thinks himself of that weird description of the suffering servant
of Jehovah in the writings of Isaiah, and the text which appears
to him most apposite is : " Surely he hath borne our griefs, and
carried our sorrows." Surely, indeed ! The oracle is happily
chosen. What strikes Matthew's mind is the sympathy with
human suffering displayed in Christ's healings. He could easily
have found other texts descriptive of the physical side of the
phenomenon, 6.g., the familiar words of the 103rd Psalm, " who
healeth all thy diseases." But it was the spiritual not the
physical side of the matter that chiefly arrested his attention:
therefore he wrote not "that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by David, saying, who healeth all thy diseases," but " that
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet,
saying. Himself took our infirmities and bare our diseases,"
translating for himself from the Hebrew to make the text better
suit his purpose. The evangelist has penetrated to the heart of
the matter, and speaks by a most genuine inspiration. For the
really important thing was the sympathy displayed, that
sympathy by which Jesus took upon Himself, as a burden to His
heart, the sufferings of mankind. That was the thing of ideal
significance, of perennial value, a gospel for all time. The acts
of healing benefited the individual sufferers only, and the benefit
passed away with themselves. But the sympathy has a meaning
for us as well as for them. It is as valuable to-day as it was

' J. O. Dykes, Flwim, Words on Great Themes, 165.

a J. H. HoUowell.

4IO UNTO ME

eighteen centuries ago. Tea, it is of far greater value, for the
gospel of Christ's sympathy has undergone developments of which
the recipients of benefit in Capernaum Httle dreamed. Christ's
compassion signified to them that He was a man to whom they
might always take their sick friends with good hope of a cure.
How much more it signifies to us ! We see there the sin-bearer
as well as the disease-bearer, the sympathetic High Priest of
humanity who hath compassion on the ignorant, the erring, the
morally frail ; who, as a brother in temptation, is ever ready to
succour the tempted, whose love to the sinful is as undying as
Himself, " the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." ^

2. The Son of Man is identified with us not only in nature
but in condition. "Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he
became poor." His design in coming here at all was to be
a Healer, Eescuer, and a Comforter for mankind. To One who
came forth from the unseen world of bliss on such an errand,
the most suitable place and the most attractive would be the place
where He was needed most. In His own language, the physician
must go where the sick are to be found ; and the sore, sad sick-
ness under which humanity pines away to death is at once sin
and the suffering which is sin's shadow. To get near enough to
our stricken race that He might probe and know its misery, feel
and bear its evil, and win the power at once to stanch its wounds
and lift from it its whole burden, Jesus needed to become familiar
with men in whom the malady had worked itself out to its pain-
fullest consequences. Therefore "he bare our sicknesses and
carried our sorrows." He became the companion of the unhappy,
and the resort of outcast men and women and of the desperately
sick whom no one else could save. It was on the shady side of
life that He expected to find a welcome. The proud and prosper-
ous are too well satisfied with the world and with themselves to
make likely patients for a Divine Healer. Where people had
drunk life's cup down to the bitter lees, and found at the bottom
only failure, penury, sickness, and sorrow of heart, there He
hoped to win a hearing for His soft and soothing call, " I will
give you rest."

^ What is this quality of sympathy which Jesus so constantly
revealed ? Certainly it is something more than amiable pity for
distress. Such the priest and Levite might have felt, who never-
' A. B. Bruce, The Galilean Qosptl, 130.

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 40 411

theless passed their wounded countryman on the other side. As
its meaning teaches, sympathy is never indifferent. It is a
"suffering with" the distressed. It is the "passion of doing
good." It is the satisfaction of self in the helping of others. A
reader of the woes of soldiers left to die on a battlefield knows
the emotion of pity. It is a Plorence Nightingale who
sympathizes with them by nursing them back to life. One
learns with regret and concern of the wretched lives of the
lepejs in the penal colonies in the south seas. It is a Father
Damien who by his self-devotion and tireless labours, ending only
in the common death of the afflicted ones, reveals what sympathy
in its truest form can mean. Herein is seen the revelation of
God's life in Christ. His is not the passionless and unsuffering
life which the medieval saints loved to picture.^

3. The Judge is so identified with the moral law that He
feels every violation of it as an outrage upon Himself. Dr. Dale
of Birmingham used to say, " In God the moral law is alive."
We may go further. This word of judgment, which we are now
considering, is true only because in Jesm the moral law is alive.
To resist His will is a synonym for sin. It is the nature of
Christ which is outraged by every sin that is committed.
Holiness is simply the will of Christ, and whenever we have
put from us truth as we know it, or right as it called to
us, whenever we have held down the good within us and
given rein to the evil, it was Jesus who was there despised and
rejected.

^ Dora Greenwell, in her poem, A Legend of Toulouse,
describes the act of wilful sin as the flinging of a dagger at the
heart of God, in desperate revolt against the splendour of His
holy nature.

A legend was it of a youth.

Who as it then befell.
From out his evil soul the trace
Had blotted out of guiding grace,

Abjured both heaven and hell;
That once unto a meadow fair,

(Heaven shield the desperate !)

Impelled by some dark secret snare,

Bepaired, and to the burning sky

Of summer noon flung up on high,

> H. L. 'Willett, The Call of the Chrut, 167.

412 UNTO ME

A dagger meant for God's own heart,
And spake unto himself apart
Words that make desolate.

The dagger that was meant for God found its mark in the heart
of Christ ; and in the blood from His wounds we are to see the
appeal of God to the sinner for mercy, upon the cross, and in His
crucifixion in the soul of the sinner.

There came from out the cloudless sky '

A hand, the dagger's hilt
That caught, and then fell presently

Five drops, for mortal guilt

Christ's dear wounds once freely spilt:
And then a little leaf there fell
To that youth's foot through miracle —
A leaf whereon was plain

These words, these only words enwrit,
Enwritten not in vain.

Oil! miserere mei; then

A mourner, among mourning men,
A sinner, sinner slain
Through love and grace abounding, he
Sank down on lowly bended knee.

Looked up to heaven and cried,
"Have mercy, mercy, Lord, on me
For His dear sake, who on the tree

Shed forth those drops and died!"

II.

The Standard of Judgment.

The standard of judgment is intensely human and practical.
It is no ecstatic rapture, no ritual observance, no external
profession that is to be the test. It is plain humanity, a cup of
cold water, a morsel of bread — social service, in a word. In this
tremendously Divine word, with its sweep of authority so
amazing, here is the kind of test most natural to man, as it is
true to His own example.

1. The final test for every soul is its relation to Christ
Himself. It does not seem to be so much a verdict passed by one

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 40 413

who has heard the evidence and sums it up impartially as a
sentence which results from the touchstone of His presence. He
implies that He — partly the word He has spoken, partly the
works He has done, but essentially He Himself — is the standard
by which men will be tried. In some of His sayings the idea of
the Judge almost melts away, becomes an inappropriate image.
Eather there appears simply the gracious Saviour of men, the
only One who could really save them, and for that reason the
only One who could really judge them. He is there, not only in
the last day, but now always in the course of human history, in
our midst, willing to save all who will accept His call, rejecting
literally no one, but for that reason passing an unwilling verdict on
those who will not come unto Him that they might have life. It
seems to be in this sense that He regards His function of
judgment as beginning from the time of His manifestation to men.
And we almost gather that the scene of a judgment-bar, and the
dramatic division of all mankind into two classes at one moment,
is sketched for the sake of pictorial representation to the
multitude, but that what fills the mind of Jesus is the intrinsic
determination of men's destiny by contact with Himself in the
field of human experience. Following up this suggestion, which
comes more from a study of His modes of thought than from an
accumulation of particular utterances, we arrive at the idea that
He is the appointed Judge of all mankind for this reason : at the
long last, when the ultimate destiny of every human being will be
(Jetermined, the one factor which will be decisive must be the
relation of each to Jesus.

^ The place assigned in the last judgment to Himself in the
words of Jesus is recognized by all interpreters to imply that the
ultimate fate of men is to be determined by their relation to Him.
He is the standard by which all shall be measured ; and it is to
Him as the Saviour that all who enter into eternal Kfe will owe
their felicity. But the description of Himself as Judge implies
much more than this : it impHes the consciousness of ability to
estimate the deeds of men so exactly as to determine with
unerring justice their everlasting state. How far beyond the
reach of mere human nature such a claim is, it is easy to see. No
human being knows another to the bottom; the most ordinary
man is a mystery to the most penetrating of his fellow-creatures ;
the greatest of men would acknowledge that even in a child there

414 UNTO ME

are heights which he cannot reach and depths which he cannot
fathom. Who would venture to pronounce a final verdict on the
character of a brother man, or to measure out his deserts for a
single day ? But Jesus ascribed to Himself the ability to deter-
mine for eternity the value of the whole life, as made up not only
of its obvious acts but of its most secret experiences and its most
subtle motives.'-

Thou didst it not unto the least of these,

And in them hast not done it unto Me.
Thou wast as a princess rich and at ease —

Now sit in dust and howl for poverty.
Three times I stood beseeching at thy gate.

Three times I came to bless thy soul and save:
But now I come to judge for what I gave.

And now at length thy sorrow is too late.^

2. Christ interprets our relation to Himself by our conduct
to the least of His brethren. We cannot spend our treasures as
Mary did in ministering to the personal honour or refreshment of
our Divine Lord. He is far withdrawn now beyond need or reach
of human ministry into the serene heaven of His glory. But,
though absent. He has left His proxies behind Him. No disciple
may excuse himself to-day from imitating Mary's open-handed
gratitude on the plea that the Saviour is out of reach. Por every
purpose of devotion — for giving Him pleasure, for testifying
our own thanks, for winning in the end His praise — it is
really all the same if we minister to His poor ones as if
we spent our money on Himself. Through this appointed
channel is our homage to reach Him there where, priest-like,
He stands at the heart of this ailing race, a sharer in each man's
sorrow.

This means that the face of every man and woman and little
child we pass in the street — sin-scarred or careworn or tear-
stained — must be to us as the very face of Christ. Behind that
marred countenance, under that brutalized, besotted husk, lies
hidden a beautiful brother, waiting for the manifestation of the
sons of God. Dare we think cheaply and contemptuously of the
vilest man whom Christ loves, for whom Christ died ? Since He
is not ashamed to call them brethren, for His sake they are sacred

^ J. stalker. The Ohristology of Jesus, 241.
' Christina G. Eossetti, Poetical Works, 148.

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 40 415

and dear. The touch of His nature, the blood of His sacrifice,
make the whole world kin.

Tf The people we know personally, the men we work with, the
women we mix among, our own companions, our own servants,
our own neighbours, have this imperious claim for ministration,
whenever we grow aware of their need. Often they will not, or
cannot, seek us out; it is for us to seek them out. They are
perhaps prisoners of pride or reserve or shyness, and our sympathy
must penetrate to them. The people who most deserve help will
hardly ever bring themselves to ask for it. But it is love's
instinct and prerogative to anticipate Christ's necessities before
ever He makes a request.

I was hungry, and Thou feddest me;

Yea, Thou gavest drink to slake my thirst:
Lord, what love gift can I offer Thee

Who hast loved me first ?

Feed My hungry brethren for My sake;

Give them drink, for love of them and Me:
Love them as I loved thee, when Bread I brake

In pure love of thee.^

^ Edward Irving caused it to be engraved on the silver plate
of his London church, that when the offerings of the people no
longer sufficed for the wants of God's poor, the sacred vessels were
to be melted down to supply the deficiency. He was right. It
is the Master's mind. Christ has expressly transferred to the
honest and suffering poor His own claim on the devotion of His
people. Even while He was warmly defending the action of
Mary of Bethany on that Saturday evening. He hinted that after
He was taken away from the reach of our personal homage
the poor would remain with us in His stead. He made this still
more plain on the following Wednesday. When, in the majestic
passage before us, He foretold with dramatic vividness the awful
transactions of the judgment, He made it for ever unmistakable
that the enthusiastic love of the Church for her absent and
inaccessible Lord is now to pour itself out in deeds of practical
beneficence, finding in the distressed a substitute for Him who
was once the Man of Sorrows.^

^ The saying, " The poor ye have always with you," was
literally true with Lord Ashley, and it remained true to the end

' T. H. Darlow, The, Upward CaUing, 218.

^ J. O. Dykes, Plain Words on Or eat Themes, 160.

4i6 UNTO ME

of his life. The state of the weather, depression in trade, illness,
bereavement, separation from children or friends — these and a
hundred other things suggested to him no extraordinary cause of
complaint as they affected himself personally, but they led him
invariably to think how much more terrible similar circumstances
must be to the poor and friendless. Nor did his sympathy exhaust
itself in merely thinking about the poor and friendless. During
the pauses in the greater labours which absorbed so much of his
time, he would devise schemes for the relief of those within his
reach, and would make the help he gave a thousandfold more
acceptable by the manner in which he gave it. He was never
too proud to grasp the hand of a poor honest man, or take up a
sickly little child in his arms, or sit in the loathsome home of
a poor starving needlewoman as she plied her needle. He never
spoke down to their level, but sought to raise them up to his,
and his kindly words were as helpful as his kindly deeds. The
time had not yet come for that personal devotion to the welfare
of the poor which distinguished his later years ; that was only at
this period occasional which afterwards became continual, but the
principle that inspired it was the same ; it was devotion to Him
who had said, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least
of these, ye have done it unto me." To Lord Ashley, Christianity
was nothing unless it was intensely practical.'-

Look you to serve Me but above?

Nay, rather serve Me here below;
Would you on Me heap out your love?

On want and sin your love bestow;
Have I not said it? What you do

To these. My poor, ye do to Me;
Whatever here I take from you

Sevenfold returned to you shall be.
Doubt not if I am here; with eyes

Of mercy know Me, wan and pale.
What ! hear you not My anguished cries.

My moans and sighs that never fail ! ^

3. Our Lord sets their true value upon the unconscious ser-
vices that we render to our fellow-men. " Ye did it unto me,"
even when ye knew it not. There is a holy art of anonymity, the
giving and doing for His sake and for His eye alone, which is
as beautiful as it is rare, and which imparts to those who have

' The Life and Work of the Seventh Eml of Shaftesbury, 175.
" "W. 0. Bennett.

ST. MATTHEW xxv. 40 417

learned to practise it an inner peace and glory which nothing else
can produce. It is this that determines the value and quality of
every action — is it done for Christ and for His glory alone?
Our debt to Him is payable at the bank of humanity's need, and
He estimates at its eternal worth all that is done to alleviate that
need, even though it be unattended with blare of trumpets and
the limelight of self-advertisement. " By Him actions are weighed."

^ It is said that when Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor,
returned to his native land with those wonderful works of art
which have made his name immortal, chiselled in Italy with
patient toil and glowing inspiration, the servants who unpacked
the marbles scattered upon the ground the straw which was
wrapped around them. The next summer flowers from the
gardens of Eome were blooming in the streets of Copenhagen,
from the seeds thus borne and planted by accident. While
pursuing his glorious purpose, and leaving magnificent results in
breathing marble, the artist was, at the same time, and un-
consciously, scattering other beautiful things in his path to give
cheer and gladness.

So Christ's lowly workers unconsciously bless the world.
They come out every morning from the presence of God and go
to their work, intent upon their daily tasks. All day long, as
they toil, they drop gentle words from their lips, and scatter little
seeds of kindness about them; and to-morrow flowers from the
garden of God spring up in the dusty streets of earth and along
the hard paths of toil on which their feeb tread. The Lord knows
them among all others to be His by the beauty and usefulness of
their lives.^

^ There is one motto which is more Christian than Mr. G. F.
Watts' saying, " The utmost for the highest," and that is, " The
utmost for the lowest." Life's biggest and bravest duties are,
according to the teaching of Jesus, owed to " the least of these my
brethren." While we are all applauding the sentiment that God
helps those who help themselves, the one outstanding Christian
teaching is that God helps those who cannot help themselves;
and that when Christ thrust into the foreground of His pro-
gramme the weak, the helpless, the morally, spiritually, and
economically insolvent, and told an astonished world that the last
should be first, the least should be greatest, and the lost should be
found, He was "setting the pace" for all who aspire to follow
Him.2

1 J. R. Miller, Glimpses Through Life's Windows, 11.

2 0. Silvester Horiie, Pulpit, Flatform, and Parliament, 81.
ST. MATT. — 27

4i8 UNTO ME

Wherever now a sorrow stands,
'Tis mine to heal His nail-torn hands.
In every lonely lane and street,
'Tis mine to wash His wounded feet —
'Tis mine to roll away the stone
And warm His heart against my own.
Here, here on earth I find it all —
The young archangels, white and tall,
The Golden City and the doors.
And all the shining of the floors!

The Blood op the Covenant.

419

Literature.

Barry (A.), The Atonement of Ch/rist, 59.

Brown (C. J.), The Word of Life, 86.

Hammond (J.), The Forgiveness of Sins, 91.

Hoare (J. Q.), The Foundation Stone of Christicm Faith, 199.

Horton (R. F.), The Teaching of Jesus, 109.

Ives (E. J.), The Pledges of His Love, 91.

Kuegele (P.), Country Sermons, New Ser., i. 109.

McGarvey (J. W.), Sermons, 56.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : St. Matthew xviii.-ixviii., 243.

Moody (D. L.), Sermons, Addresses, and Prayers, 156.

Salmon (G.), The Reign of Law, 37.

Smith (D.), The Feast of the Covenant, 41.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxiii. (1887), No. 1971.

Stewart (E. A.), The City Pulpit, iv. 25.

Vaughan (C. J.), Liturgy and Worship of the Church of England, 225.

Wheeler (W. C), Sermons and Addresses, 138.

Church Times, July 2, 1909 (P. G. Irving).

The Blood of the Covenant.

This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission
of sins. — Matt. xxvi. 28.

1. This verse is intensely interesting, because it contains one of
our Lord's rare sayings about the purpose of His death. For the
most part the New Testament teachings on that great theme
come from the Apostles, who reflected on the event after it had
passed into history, and had the light of the resurrection upon it.
Still, it is not just to say that the Apostles originated the doctrine
of the atonement. Not only is that doctrine foreshadowed in
Isa. liii. ; in the institution of His Supper our Lord also distinctly
sets it forth. Before this He spoke of His life being given as a
ransom for many (Matt. xx. 28), and He called Himself the Good
Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep (John x. 15).

2. In the institution of the Supper, Christ distinctly tells us in
what aspect He would have that death remembered. Not as the
tragic end of a noble career which might be hallowed by tears
such as are shed over a martyr's ashes ; not as the crowning proof
of love ; not as the supreme act of patient forgiveness ; but as a
death for us, in which, as by the blood of the sacrifice, is secured
the remission of sins. And not only so, but the double symbol in
the Lord's Supper — whilst in some respects the bread and wine
speak the same truths, and certainly point to the same cross — has
in each of its, parts special lessons intrusted to it, and special
truths to proclaim. The bread and the wine both say, " Eemember
Me and My death." Taken in conjunction they point to that
death as violent; taken separately they each suggest various
aspects of it, and of the blessings that will flow to us therefrom.

T[ It is said that old Dr. Alexander, of Princeton College, when
a young student used to start out to preach, always gave him a
piece of advice. The old man would stand with his grey locks
and his venerable face and say, " Young man, make much of the

* 431

422 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

blood in your ministry." Now I have travelled considerably during
the past few years, and never met a minister who made much of
the blood and much of the atonement but God had blessed his
ministry, and souls were born into the light by it. But a man
who leaves it out — the moment he goes, his church falls to pieces
like a rope of sand, and his preaching has b6en barren of good
results.^

The Covenant.

1. Christ speaks here of a covenant. Most religions pre-
suppose some form of covenant with the object of their worship.
The idea fills and dominates the Old Testament. And thus Christ
found a ready point of attachment, a foundation of rock, on which
He could build up His new order of truth. A covenant is a
compact, an arrangement, an agreement, a contract between two
persons or two parties, involving mutual privileges, conditions,
obligations, promises. The Hebrew word appears to have the idea
of cutting, and hence primitive contracts or covenants were made
by the shedding of blood or the sacrifice of an animal.

2. After God had brought the children of Israel out of Egypt,
He entered into a covenant with them at Mount Sinai. A
covenant is an agreement betwixt two, securing on a certain
condition a certain advantage. The advantage under the covenant
at Mount Sinai was that the Lord should be their God and they
His people ; and the condition was that they should observe His
Law. " And Moses came and told the people all the words of the
Lord, and all the judgements : and all the people answered with
one voice, and said. All the words which the Lord hath spoken
will we do."

But the children of Israel proved unfaithful. In the pathetic
language of Scripture, " they went a whoring after other gods,
and bowed themselves down unto them : they turned aside quickly
out of the way wherein their fathers walked, obeying the com-
mandments of the Lord; but they did not so." And therefore
the covenant was cancelled. "They rebelled, and grieved his

* D. L. Moody, Sermons, Addresses, and Prayers, 161.

ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 28 423

Holy Spirit : therefore he was turned to be their enemy." He
abandoned them to the lust of their hearts, and they suffered
disaster after disaster till they were stricken with the final blow,
the Babylonian Captivity, and laid in the very dust.
But that was not the end.

What began best, can't end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.

His heart still yearned for them. " He remembered the days of
old, Moses, and his people." He could not let them go, and He
turned to them in their misery. He raised up a prophet in their
midst, and charged him with a message of hope. They had broken
the first covenant, but He would grant them a fresh opportunity
and enter into a new and better covenant with them. " Behold,
the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah : not
according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the
day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land
of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an
husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the covenant
that I wilhrnake with the house of Israel after those days, saith
the Lord ; I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their
hearts will I write it ; and I will be their God, and they shall be
my people ; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour,
and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they shall
all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them,
saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin
will I remember no more."

^ Is it not a grand thought that between us and the infinite
Divine nature there is established a firm and unmovable agree-
ment? Then He has revealed His purposes; we are not left
to grope in darkness, at the mercy of « peradventures " and
" probablies " ; nor reduced to consult the ambiguous oracles of
nature or of Providence, or the varying voices of our own hearts,
or painfully and dubiously to construct more or less strong bases
for confidence in a loving God out of such hints and fragments of
revelation as these supply. He has come out of His darkness,
and spoken articulate words, plain words, faithful words, which
bind Him to a distinctly defined course of action. Across the
great ocean of possible modes of action for a Divine nature He

424 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

has, if I may say so, buoyed out for Himself a channel, so that
we know His path, which is in the deep waters. He has limited
Himself by the utterance of a faithful word, and we can now
come to Him with His own promise, and cast it down before Him,
and say, " Thou hast spoken, and Thou art bound to fulfil it."
We have a covenant wherein God has shown us His hand, has
told us what He is going to do and has thereby pledged Himself
to its performance.^

3. This new covenant was to be, so the tremendous promise
runs on, a spiritual one, an experimental and universal knowledge
of God, a covenant of pardon, complete and sure. Jeremiah was
allowed to see the covenant only as Moses saw the promised land
from Pisgah. He never saw it realized, but he knew that every
promise of God is an oath and a covenant. For he had learnt in the
shocks and changes of his life the unfailing pity of Him with whom
he had been privileged to have fellowship and to hold " dialogues."
The old agreement was, "If ye will obey my voice and do my
commandments, then " — so and so will happen. The old condition
was, " Do and live ; be righteous and blessed ! " The new
condition is, " Take and have ; believe and live ! " The one was
law, the other is gift ; the one was retribution, the other is forgive-
ness. One was outward, hard, rigid law, fitly " graven with a pen
of iron on the rocks for ever " ; the other is impulse, love, a power
bestowed that will make us obedient ; and the sole condition that
we have to render is the condition of humble and believing accept-
ance of the Divine gift. The new covenant, in the exuberant
fulness of its mercy, and in the tenderness of its gracious purposes,
is at once the completion and the antithesis of the ancient
covenant with its precepts and its retribution.

This glad era was ushered in by the Lord Jesus Christ, " the
mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted upon
better promises"; and, since it was necessary that a covenant
should be ratified by a sacrifice, He, the true Paschal Lamb, at
once Victim and Priest, sealed the new covenant with His own
precious blood. Thus it was that He interpreted His Death in
the Upper Koom. " He took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave it
to them, saying. Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of the
covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins."

' A. Maclareu.

ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 28 425

|[f The covenant is explicitly declared to be founded on Christ's
expiatory death, and to be received by the partaking of His body
and bloo(i. This importance of the person and work of Jesus,
both for the inauguration and the reception of the covenant,
agrees with the view that the covenant designates the present,
provisional blessedness of believers, for this stage is specifically
controlled and determined by the activity of Christ, so that St.
Paul calls it the Kingdom of Christ in distinction from the
Kingdom of God, which is the final state. The Covenant idea
shares with the ideas of the Church this reference to the present
earthly form of possession of the Messianic blessings, and this
dependence on the person and work of the Messiah (cf. Matt. xvi.
18, xviii. 17). The difference is that in the conception qf the
Church, the organization of believers into one body outwardly, as
well as their spiritual union inwardly, and the communication
of a higher life through the Spirit stand in the foreground,
neither of which is reflected upon in the idea of the
Covenant. The Covenant stands for that central, Godward
aspect of the state of salvation, in which it means the atone-
ment of sin and the full enjoyment of fellowship with God
through the appropriation of this atonement in Christ.^

II.

The Sealing Blood.

1. Christ regards His own blood as the seal and confirmation
of the covenant. Covenants were ratified in different ways;
sometimes, for instance, the contracting parties were held to be
bound by eating salt together ; sometimes by partaking together
of a sacrificial meal ; sometimes by passing between the divided
pieces of slaughtered animals ; and especially by the use, still
prevalent in many parts of the world, of blood, as by each of the
parties tasting each other's blood, or smearing himself with it,
or letting it be mingled with his own, etc., or by both jointly
dipping their hands in the blood of the slaughtered animal. The
idea, therefore, of a covenant in blood would not appear strange
and new to the Apostles, or occur to them as repugnant, as it
does to the minds of men of the Western modern civilization. To
us, however far from the ideal we fall, and whatever compromises
1 Geerliardus Vos, in Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i. 380.

426 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

we adopt, we know our word ought to be our bond, our " yea " yea,
and our " nay " nay. We have our stamped contracts because the
ideal is still beyond the powers of human nature at large. But in
the early days the shedding of blood was a form of ratification which
no other emphasis could equal. It united, it "at-one-d," the
parties concerned with a firmness which no verbal agreement
could accomplish.

Jeremiah's reference to Sinai bids us turn to that wonderful
scene where the high mountains formed the pillars and walls of
a natural temple, and where the first covenant was ratified with
abundance of sacrificial blood. Moses, we are told, read the Book
of the Covenant in the ears of the people ; and, taking the blood,
sprinkled half of it upon the altar with the twelve pillars and
half upon the people. The law was thus given with a covenant
of blood. God thus bound the nation to HimseK. He had offered •
great blessings if the people would keep the words of His law ;
His people had responded: "All that Jehovah hath spoken we
will do."

Now it is impossible to suppose that Christ had no reference
to the promises made through Jeremiah, and, through them, to
the scene at Sinai. His Apostles, at least, so understood His
words, "the new covenant in my blood." The writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews calls Him the new Moses, mediating a
better covenant, founded on better promises. The cross was in
His view, though none of His disciples saw it, in the Upper Koom.
But He saw that His blood was to be the sacrificial blood in
which the " new covenant " was to be sealed, confirmed, ratified.
He was inaugurating a " new people," and was to lead them forth
out of the Egypt of sin and alienation into the Promised Land of
hoUness and the fellowship of God. He was to be the leader of a
new emigration from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom
of light and love. The bonds broken under the old covenant
were to be reknit under the new covenant. The cup is the
pledge, the symbol, of that new bond. And every time we drink
the cup we are renewing the covenant which God has offered to
all men in and through Christ.

11 When the Greeks and the Trojans called a truce pending
the single combat between Menelaos and Paris, they ratified it by
a sacrifice.

ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 28 427

He spake, and the throats of the lambs with pitiless blade

he severed,
And laid them low on the earth all quivering and gasping
For lack of vital breath; for the blade their strength had

stolen.
And anon from the mixing-bowl they drew the wine in

goblets,
And poured it forth and prayed to the gods that live for

ever.
And thus said one and another among the Achseans and

Trojans :
"Whiche'er of us, breaking the oaths, may do harm unto the

others.
Their brains on the ground be scattered e'en as this wine is

outpoured —
Theirs and their sons' — and their wives be a prize unto

others."

The custom was universal. The heathen observed it, and so did
Israel. Thus it is written : " Gather my saints together unto me ;
those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice." ^

2. Christ's death was the consummation of His infinite sacri-
fice, the further reach of His redeeming Love. When He had
yielded His life in steadfast devotion to the Father's honour and
patient travail for the souls of men, what more was possible?
" Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friends." "But God commendeth his love toward
us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The
cross is our Lord's divinest glory; "for this," says Clement of
Alexandria, "is the greatest and kingliest work of God — to
save mankind."

His death was not an isolated event. It did not stand alone.
It was the consummation of His life, the crown of His ministry,
the completion of His redemption. When the New Testament
speaks of His death, it means not simply His crucifixion on
Calvary, but all that led up to that supreme crisis — His steadfast
obedience to the Father's will, which continued all the days of
His flesh and found its ultimate expression when, with the cross
before Him, He said, " Not my will, but thine, be done," and so
freely gave Himself into the hands of wicked men to be mocked
' D. Smith, The Feast of the Covenant, 41.

428 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

and tortured and slain. His entire life was sacrificial — a truth
which St. Paul expresses when he says, " Being found in fashion
as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death,
yea, the death of the cross."

1[ Here is a fundamental truth, essential to a just appreciation
of our Lord's redeeming work ; and in these moving lines the
poet has perceived what theologians have too often missed :

Very dear the Cross of shame
Where He took the sinner's blame,
And the tomb wherein the Saviour lay.
Until the third day came ;
Yet He bore the self-same load.
And He went the same high road,
When the carpenter of Nazareth
Made common things for God.

A life of loving and constant obedience — this is God's require-
ment. This it is that we have failed to render ; and His doing on
our behalf what we have failed to do is our Blessed Lord's Atone-
ment for the sin of the world.^

IIL

The Remission Secured by the Sealed Covenant.

1. "Shed for many unto remission of sins." Eemission
literally means " to throw back, or throw away," and the term is
used simply because, when God forgives our sins, He is contem-
plated as throwing them away, tossing them clear off, outside of
all subsequent thought or concern in regard to them. There is
another expression used in Scripture for the same thought, which
is also figurative. " Eepent and turn," says Peter, " that your sins
may be blotted out." They are contemplated in that expression as
having been written down in some book of God's remembrance, as
it were, and God in forgiving them is figuratively represented aa
blotting out that writing. And blotting out with the ancients
was a little more complete than it is, usually, with us. When we
write something down with ink, and blot it out, there still remain
some marks to indicate that once there was writing there. If
' D. Smith, The Feast of the Covenant, 52.

ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 28 429

you write on a slate and rub it out, some marks are often left.
The ancients used a wax tablet. Take one of our common
slates and fill it with wax even with the frame, and you will have
an ancient wax tablet. A sharp-pointed instrument made the
marks in the wax, and when they wished to blot it out, they
turned the flat end of the stylus and rubbed it over, and there was
an absolute erasure of every mark that had been made. That is
the figure, then, used by Peter for the forgiveness of sins — indi-
cating that when God forgives sins, they are not qnly thrown
away, as in the expression remission, but they are blotted out —
the last trace of them being gone, and gone for ever.

From morn to eve they struggled — Life and Death,
At first it seemed to me that they in mirth
Contended, and as foes of equal worth,

So firm their feet, so undisturbed their breath.

But when the sharp red sun cut through its sheath
Of western clouds, I saw the brown arm's girth
Tighten and bear that radiant form to earth,

And suddenly both fell upon the heath.

And then the wonder came ; for when I fled
To where those great antagonists down fell,
I could not find the body that I sought.
And when and where it went I could not tell ;
One only form was left of those who fought,

The long dark form of Death — and it was dead.^

2. But, it may be asked, how does our Lord's life of " obedience
even unto death " avail for us ? It was His own life, and how is
it linked on to our lives ? What is the nexus between it and
them ? View it as the sacrifice which ratified the New Covenant.
It is the covenant that links our lives to His. Eemember what
the sacrifice at Mount Sinai signified. The victim was presented
in the name of the people ; and the offering of its life at the altar
was symbolic of the surrender of their lives to God. And even
so Jesus is our Eepresentative. He is the second Head of
humanity, and as, by the operation of those mysterious laws which
link the generations, the entail of Adam's sin is the heritage of
his children, so in like manner the righteousness of Jesus touches

' Cosmo Monkhouse.

430 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

us too. He lived His life and died His death in our name and on
our behalf ; and, that we may enter into the covenant and appro-
priate its benefits, we have only to acknowledge Him as our
Eepresentative and say Amen to all that He did and all that He
was. We have only to approach the throne of mercy in our sin-
fulness and weakness and point to that holy life laid, in perfect
devotion to the Father's will, on the altar of Calvary, making it
our offering and presenting it before God as the life which we fain
would live and by His grace shall live. And thus we lay our sins
on Jesus, the spotless lamb of God, and, making His sacrifice our
formula at once of confession and of consecration, win by it
acceptance and peace.

In all nations beyond the limits of Israel, the sacrifices of
living victims spoke not only of surrender and dependence, but
likewise of the consciousness of demerit and evil on the part of
the offerers, and were at once a confession of sin, a prayer for
pardon, and a propitiation of an offended God. And the sacri-
fices in Israel were intended and adapted not only to meet the
deep-felt want of human nature, common to them as to all other
tribes, but also were intended and adapted to point onwards to
Him in whose death a real want of mankind was met, in whose
death a real sacrifice was offered, in whose death an angry
God was not indeed propitiated, but in whose death the
loving Father of our souls Himself provided the Lamb for the
offering, without which, for reasons deeper than we can wholly
fathom, it was impossible that sin should be remitted.

II Let me mention here a circumstance in the last days of the
distinguished Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, who, at an extreme age,
but in full possession of all his rare mental powers, was brought
to the knowledge of the Saviour. He said, " I never used to be
able to understand what these good people meant when they spoke
so much of the hlood, the Hood. But I understand it now ; it's
just Substitution ! " Ay, that is it, in one word, Substitution —
" my blood shed for many for the remission of sins," — Christ's
blood instead of ours, — Christ's death for our eternal death, —
Christ " made a curse, that we might be redeemed from the curse
of the law." Once in conversation, my beloved friend. Dr. Duncan,
expressed it thus in his terse way, " A religion of blood is God's
appointed religion for a sinner, for the wages of sin is death." ^

1 C. J. Brown, The Word of Life, 91.

ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 28 431

3. Theology has long laboured to explain the death of Christ
on the theory that God, not man, was the problem : God's anger
rather than man's cleaving to his sin. God was thought of as
caring supremely for His outraged law, as indeed being bound by
His law, as though law were a Divine Being with independent
rights and a claim to compensation, as though a father could love
a rule more than his own child. The difficulty lies in what we
have made of ourselves. God's task is not to overcome His own
resentment and say " I forgive," but to forgive so as to heal us of
our self-inflicted wounds, to inspire us to forgive ourselves, to trust
and hope for ourselves by trusting and hoping in His eternal love
and patience. His forgiveness is not a word, or an act, but a self-
communication. God Himself is the Atonement. "He is the
propitiation for our sins." We may have done badly, shamefully.
Good men may condemn us, suspect and distrust us, justly, for we
condemn and distrust ourselves. But One believes in us and for us,
hopes for us. God in Christ stands by the soul forsaken of all others.
We " were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or
gold, . . . but with precious blood . . . even the blood of Christ."

^ No one that has ever read Tennyson's Guinevere can have
forgotten the great forgiveness scene with which it closes. The
guilty wife lies prostrate at her husband's feet, and grovels with
her face against the floor. " Lo ! I forgive thee as Eternal God
forgives," said Arthur. " Do thou for thine own soul the rest."
Ah ! but one who forgives like God should do and say something
more. A husband mediating God's forgiveness should show him-
self able to trust a wife that can no longer trust herself, love one
that loathes herself, hope for one that can only despair for herself.
So the atoning love of God takes hold of Arthur, and he pours the
ointment of love on the golden hair that lies so low, and he pours
hope like oil into the dark soul and lights the promise of future
days:

"Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband."

And while she grovell'd at his feet.
She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck,
And in the darkness o'er her fallen head,
Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.

432 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

Does not the human truth of that come to you ? Do you not see
that beyond the wrong done to Arthur was the wrong done to
herself? The task of forgiveness was not to slake the king's
wrath, but to redeem the queen's soul and cure her of being the
thing she had made of herself.-'

4. The blood speaks of a life infused. " The blood is the life,"
says the physiology of the Hebrews. The blood is the life, and
when men drink of that cup they symbolize the fact that Christ's
own life and spirit are imparted to them that love Him. " Except
ye eat the flesh, and drink the blood of the Son of man, ye have
no life in you." The very hearb of Christ's gift to us is the gift
of His own very life to be the life of our lives. In deep, mystical
reality He Himself passes into our being, and the "law of the
spirit of life makes us free from the law of sin and death," so that
we may say, " He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," and
the humble believing soul may rejoice in this ; " I live, yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me." This is, in one aspect, the very deepest
meaning of this Communion rite. As physicians sometimes tried
to restore life to an almost dead man by the transfusion into his
shrunken veins of the fresh warm blood from a young and healthy
subject, so into our fevered life, into our corrupted blood, there is
poured the full tide of the pure and perfect life of Jesus Christ
Himself, and we live, not by our own power, or for our own will,
or in obedience to our own caprices, but by Him and in Him, and
with Him and for Him. This is the heart of Christianity — the
possession within us of the life, the immortal life, of Him who
died for us.

•[[ Whatever life had anywhere been found and lost, whatever
life had never been found, was given to man in Christ. It may be
that this or that portion of the vast inheritance of life has never
as yet been claimed, or has been but doubtfully claimed, because
faith in Him has been too petty or wilful in its scope as well as
too feeble in its energy. But in Christ life was given in its fulness
nevertheless, and in that due subordination which alone secures
that nothing be lost. This is the one character of the Gospel which
takes precedence of all others; its many partial messages are
unfoldings of its primary message of life. Salvation according to
Scripture is nothing less than the preservation, restoration, or
exaltation of life : while nothing that partakes or can partake of

1 J. M. Gibbon.

ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 28 433

life is excluded from its scope ; and as is the measure, grade, and
perfection of life, such is the measure, grade, and perfection of
salvation.^

5. "Shed for many." The terms of the covenant are com-
prehensive. The cup commemorates the supreme moment when
the barrier between God and man was swept away, and the access
to communion with God was opened by "a new and living
way." It bids all men remember that the Divine life and love
are free for all who will receive them. Whosoever will may
come and enter into the covenant of God in Christ. None
are excluded save those who exclude themselves. Here is our
comfort. Salvation does not rest on our goodness of character
or on our worthiness of conduct, but on the covenant relation-
ship in Christ. Such an immense debt will prevent us from
taking liberties with our life, and will continually inspire in
us a devotion to serve as our talents allow and our opportunities
permit.

Tf Jesus died to Iring in the Kingdom of God. That is one
thing we can be sure of. Now, what was this Kingdom of God as
conceived by Him ? Subjectively considered, it was the reign of
God in men's hearts, and to establish it thus involved the bring-
ing of men to God, so that His Spirit should possess their hearts
and they be made the true children and heirs of God. The Cross
was meant to be effectual for this. Its aim was ethical, and
nothing short of that which would lead to an ethical Salvation
would be the bringing in of the Kingdom of God. But the
Kingdom had also an objective aspect. As such, it was the Kingdom
of God's Grace ; it was something that should come from God as
His great gift to men; it was the drawing nigh of God to the
sinful, and as yet unrepentant, world, with the proclamation of
Forgiveness, nay, with the assurance of it as the foundation of a
solemn Covenant made with men ; and it was only through the
coming of the Kingdom in this objective way that it could come
effectually, or, in its power, subjectively. Christ therefore intended
that His Cross should bring to men the assurance of the Divine
Forgiveness. . . . The Divine Forgiveness or Eemission of Sins
that comes to men through the Cross is not the Forgiveness of
individual sinners on their Kepentance (which was always open to
men), but the Forgiveness of God going forth to the whole sinful
world, in order to lead men to Eepentance and to make them
1 F. J. A. Hort, The Way, The Truth, The Life, 100.
ST. MATT. — 28

434 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

members of God's Kingdom. It comes as the proclamation of a
Divine amnesty to men, but it is of no avail unless it is accepted
by them so as to make them loyal members of the Kingdom, and
followers of that Eighteousness which alone can give final entrance
into it.^

» W. L. Walker, Tlie Cross aud The Kiuydom, 241.

Christ's Parting Charge.

435

Literature.

Broughton (L. G.), Table Talks of Jesus, 96.

Brown (0.), The Message of Ood, 46.

Brown (H. D.), Christ's Divinity School, 68.

Campbell (E. J.), New Theology Sermons, 50.

Cross (J.), Old Wine and New, 185.

Dyke (H. van), The Open Boor, 85.

Fremantle (W. H.), The Gospel of the Secula/r Life, 91.

Greenhough (J. G.), Ghristicm Festivals and Anniversaries, 123.

Ingram (A. F. W.), The Gospel in Action, 45.

John (Griffith), A Voice from China, 38.

Liddon (H. P.), Easter in St. Paul's, 393.

Morgan (G. C), The Missionary Manifesto, 29.

Moule (H. C. G.), Christ's Witness to the Life to Come, 135.

Newman (0. E.), The Bible in the Pulpit, 225.

Simpson (J. G.), Christian Ideals, 309.

Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 3.

Stubbs (0. W.), Christus Imperator, 18.

Terry (G. P.), The Old Theology in the New Age, 119.

Vaughan (C. J.), University Sermons, 233.

Virgin (S. H.), Spiritual Sanity, 47.

Welldon (J. E. C), The Fire upon the Alta/r, 54.

Cambridge Review, xx., Supplement No. 510 (F. H. Chase).

Christian World Pulpit, viii. 100 (H. W. Beecher) ; xliii. 300 (R. Rainy) ;

Iv. 248 (C. Gore) ; Ixviii. 67 (J. Foster) ; Ixxi. 309 (0. Brown).
Churchman's Pulpit : Pt. 82, Mission Work, 183 (W. Leitch).
Record of Christian Work, xxxii. (1913) 4^9 (J. H. Jowett).

436

CHRIST'S Parting Charge.

And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, sayingf, All authority hath
been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I commanded you : and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the
end of the world. — Matt, xxviii. 18-20.

1. In Galilee as in Jerusalem the Eisen Saviour manifested
Himself to the representatives of His universal Church. The
brief summary of the history which St. Matthew gives calls up
before our eyes a scene of singular majesty and awe. The time
we are not told ; we may conjecture that it was again a Lord's
Day, the day which even then was becoming hallowed as the
weekly memorial of the resurrection, the birthday of the Lord
into the new life, and the birthday of His people in Him. The
place is " the mountain " — the mountain of the Beatitudes, or the
mountain where once He had fed the crowds. The occasion
differs from all those which had gone before. At other times He
had appeared at most to a handful of His followers. Now, if we
may interpret the hint of the Evangelist by the statement of
St. Paul, there were with the Eleven five hundred of the
brethren. At other times He had come suddenly and un-
expectedly. Now the place is of His appointment, the meeting
of the disciples by His command. It is, to use a phrase of
the Epistles, the first Christian Ecclesia — the conscious gather-
ing of those who belong to Him into His presence as the one
centre and secret of their common life. He comes not suddenly,
as before, but as a looked for friend approaching from the
distance.

When the Eleven saw Him, they, assured now of His resurrec-
tion, " worshipped him." But " the others " — the greater part, it
may be, of the waiting multitude, who as yet had not themselves

seen — "the others doubted." They had expected, we may con-

437

438 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE

jecture, to behold clear tokens of unearthly majesty, signs which
should have compelled belief; and lo, it was "the same Jesus"
whom they had loved and followed in earlier days who was now
drawing nigh. " The others doubted." They had all obeyed their
Master's call ; they were all true to the instincts of sacred fellow-
ship. But they had not all attained to the same measure of faith.
They could not all bear the test of a spiritual crisis. They could
not all at once give the Lord the glad welcome of an unquestion-
ing worship. The fact of their doubt is recorded, but the
Evangelist does not stay to give the details of the sequel.
Doubtless he would have us understand that to them, as to the
Eleven, Christ spoke ; that on them, as on the Eleven, Christ laid
the burden of His great commission ; and that as they listened to
His voice, as they learned something of the work which was to be
the portion of His followers, their misgivings probably did not find
a precise and logical answer, but melted away in the enthusiasm of
service.

2. The text may well fascinate the theologian, for it has some-
thing to say about the nature of God. It throws some light on
the Person of Christ, and is a part of the very significant testimony
which He bears to Himself. The text may also engage the
thoughts of the ecclesiastic, for it has suggestions to make as to
the ministry of the Church and the conditions of admission to the
membership of the Church. But the text is of supreme interest
to the missionary, because it is the charter of his enterprise, and
sets forth four things concerning the enterprise to guide his work,
test his success, quicken his conscience, support his faith, feed his
courage and enthusiasm — its aim, its field, its obligation, and its
encouragement. The aim of missionary enterprise is to make
disciples of Christ, receive them into the fellowship of His Church,
and teach them His will and train them in His grace. The field
of missionary enterprise is the world as represented by " all the
nations " ; the obligation of missionary enterprise rests on the
final command of Him who wields all authority in heaven and on
earth, and has the right to command; the encouragement to
missionary enterprise is the Presence in "all the days" of the
risen Christ who commands all the means necessary for the
establishment of the Kingdom of God.

ST. MATTHEW xxviii. 18-20 439

This great utterance of our Lord falls into three parts :
I. A Great Claim — " All authority hath been given unto me

in heaven and on earth."
II. A Great Commission — " Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations."
III. A Great Assurance — "Lo, I am with you alvyay, even
unto the end of the world."

I.

The Claim.
"All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth."

1. In these words Jesus, standing on the resurrection side of
His grave, in the simplest language made the sublimest claim
when He thus declared Himself to be King by Divine right, and
therefore absolute in His Kingship. The word admits of no
qualification. The claim admits of no limitation. In that
moment He claimed authority in the material, mental, and moral
realms. The application of His claim to this world does by no
means exhaust it. He swept the compass with a reach far wider,
more spacious, and stupendous. Nob only on earth but in heaven
is authority given to Him. The one phrase, "in heaven and on
earth," includes the whole creation of God. It is manifest that
He is excluded who created, and who puts all things under the
feet of His King. It is equally manifest that all is included
which comes within the scope of that comprehensive word, the
creation of God. We may interpret this final claim of Jesus by
the prayer He taught His disciples : " Our Pather which art in
heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy
will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." Having completed His
ministry of teaching ; having accomplished His exodus and resur-
rection, at last He claimed authority in heaven and on earth, thus
assuming the throne of empire over the whole creation of God,
included in the terms of the prayer, and now defined in the words,
" as in heaven, so on earth."

"[J Who is it that dares thus confidently to make this amazing
claim ? Who is it that utters it as if it were a simple matter of

440 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE

fact about which there was no question ? Not merely power or
might (Siimfiig), such as a great conqueror might claim, but
" authority " (l^ovsla), as something which is His by right, con-
ferred upon Him by One who has the right to bestow it (Eev. ii.
27). And " all authority," embracing everything over which rule
and dominion can be exercised ; and that not only " upon earth,"
which would be an authority overwhelming in its extensiveness,
but also " in heaven." Human thought loses itself in the attempt
to understand what must be comprehended in such aiithority as
this. Nothing less than the Divine government of the whole
universe and of the Kingdom of Heaven has been given to the
Eisen Lord. In more than one Epistle, St. Paul piles up term
upon term in order to try to express the honour and glory and
power which the Father has bestowed upon the Son whom He
has raised from the dead. The glorified Christ is " above every
principality and authority and power and dominion, and every
name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which
is to come" (Eph. i. 21; comp. Col. i. 16-21; Phil. ii. 9-11).
Nevertheless, with all his fulness of language, the Apostle does
not get beyond, for it is impossible to get beyond, the majestic,
inexhaustible reach of the simple statement which Christ, with
such serenity, makes here.^

2. The words "hath been given" point to a definite time
when this all-embracing authority was conferred. When was
it given ? Let another portion of Scripture answer the ques-
tion — "Declared to be the Son of God with power, according
to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead." Then
to the Man Jesus was given authority over heaven and earth.
All the early Christian documents concur in this view of the
connexion between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
and His investiture with this sovereign power. Listen to Paul :
"Becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a
name which is above every name." Listen to Peter : who " raised
him up from the dead, and gave him glory." Hear the writer of
the Epistle to the Hebrews : " we see Jesus ... for the suffering of
death crowned with glory and honour." Hearken to John : to Him
" who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the
ruler of the kings of the earth." Look with his eyes to the vision
of the " Lamb as it had been slain," enthroned in the midst of the

■' A. Plummer.

ST. MATTHEW xxviii. 18-20 441

throne, and say whether this unanimous consent of the earliest
Christian teachers is explicable on any reasonable grounds, unless
there had been underlying it just the words of the text, and the
Master Himself had taught them that all power was given to Him
in heaven and on earth. As it seems impossible to account for the
existence of the Church if we deny the resurrection, so it seems
impossible to account for the faith of the earliest stratum of the
Christian Church without the acceptance of some such declara-
tion as this, as having come from the Lord Himself. And so the
hands that were pierced with the nails wield the sceptre of the
universe, and on the brows that were wounded and bleeding with
the crown of thorns are wreathed the many crowns of universal
Kinghood,

^ The resurrection of Christ marked the acceptance of His
work by the Father, and revealed the triumph in which that
work ended. Death and all the power of the enemy were over-
come, and victory was attained. But the resurrection of Christ
was also His emergence — His due emergence — into the power and
blessedness of victorious life. In the Person of Christ life in
God, and unto God, had descended into the hard conditions set
for Him who would associate a world of sinners to Himself. In
the resurrection the triumph of that enterprise came to light.
Now, done with sin, and free from death, and asserting His
superiority to all humiliation and all conflict. He rose in the ful-
ness of a power which He was entitled also to communicate. He
rose, with full right and power to save. And so His resurrection
denotes Christ as able to inspire life, and to make it victorious in
His members.^

3. This claim means the success of His life purpose. He had
told His disciples that He would build His Church; that He
would lead it as an army in conflict against evil and its issues,
and in victory over all, including the very gates of Hades; -that
He would erect a moral standard, and make them. His disciples.
His interpreters thereof, giving them " the keys of the kingdom of
heaven." Immediately following this declaration of purpose, He
had spoken to them of the necessity for the cross, and they, with
faith faltering, had seen Him die. Notwithstanding all He had
foretold them, they looked upon the cross as evidence of His
failure to accomplish His purposes. From their standpoint of
1 R. Eainy, Epistle to the PMUppians, 239.

442 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE

observation, it was impossible for one who died to build a Church,
and lead an army, and insist upon a moral standard. But now
they saw Him in all the glory of resurrection life, and knew that
therein He demonstrated His power to build a Church, having
passed through death and become the firstborn from among the
dead. They knew that He had the power to combat sin and
overcome it, for He had taken hold of death, which is the ultimate
of sin, and in His mastery of death had revealed His ability to
deal with sin. He had lived in perfect conformity with His own
ethical standard, and when His life resulted in His rejection by
men and His being put to death, it had seemed as though the
impossibility of obedience was proved ; but now, standing in the
power of risen life, He claimed authority, and thereby suggested
that His own victories vindicated His right to be the ethical
Teacher of the world.

4. But in this claim we have not merely the attestation of the
completeness of Christ's work, we have also the elevation of Man-
hood to enthronement with Divinity. For the new thing that
came to Jesus after His resurrection was that His humanity was
taken into, and became participant of, "the glory which I had
with thee, before the world was." Then our nature, when perfect
and sinless, is so cognate and kindred with the Divine that
humanity is capable of being invested with, and of bearing, that
"exceeding and eternal weight of glory." In that elevation of
the Man Christ Jesus, we may read a prophecy, which shall not
be unfulfilled, of the destiny of all those who conform to Him
through faith, love and obedience, finally to sit down with Him
on His throne, even as He is set down with the Father on His
throne.

^ No system thinks so condemnatorily of human nature as it
is, none thinks so glowingly of human nature as it may become,
as does the religion of the cross. There are bass notes far down
beyond the limits of the scale to which ears dulled by the world
and sin and sorrow are sensitive ; and there are clear, high tones,
thrilling and shrilling far above the range of perception of such
ears. The man that is in the lowest depths may rise with Jesus
to the highest, but it must be by the same road by which the
Master went. " If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with
him," and only " if," There is no other path to the throne but

ST. MATTHEW xxvm. 18-20 443

the cross. Via crmis, via lucis — the way of the cross is the way
of light. It is to those who have accepted their Gethsemanes and
their Calvarys that He appoints a kingdom, as His Father has
appointed unto Him.^

II.

The Commission.

" Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations."

The all-ruling Christ calls for the universal proclamation of
His sovereignty by His disciples. He craves no empty rule, no
mere elevation by virtue of Divine supremacy, over men. He
regards that elevation as incomplete without the voluntary
surrender of men to become His subjects and champions. With-
out its own consent He does not count that His universal power
is established in a human heart. Though that dominion be all-
embracing like the ocean, and stretching into all corners of the
universe, and dominating over all the ages, yet in that ocean
there may stand up black and dry rocks, barren as they are
dry, and blasted as they are black, because, with the awful
power of a human will, men have said, "We will not have
this man to reign over us." It is willing subjects that
Christ seeks, in order to make the Divine grant of authority
a reality.

•[f This command must appear, when we consider it, to be
simply astonishing. Here is, as it seems, a Jewish peasant,
surrounded by a small company of uneducated followers, bidding
them address themselves in His name to races, ancient, powerful,
refined ; to win their intellectual and moral submission to doctrines
and precepts propounded by Himself. "Go ye therefore, and
make disciples of all the nations." The only idea of empire of
which the world knew was the empire of material force. Wher-
ever the legions of Eome had penetrated, there followed the judge
and the tax-collector: and the nations submitted to what they
could not resist, until at length their masters became too weak
to control or to protect them. As for an empire of souls, the
notion was unheard of. No philosopher could found it, since a
philosopher's usual occupation consisted mainly in making intel-

^ A. Maclaren.

444 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE

lectual war upon his predecessors or contemporaries. No existing
religion could aim at it, since the existing religions were believed
to be merely the products of national instincts and aspirations;
each religion was part of the furniture of a nation, or at most of a
race. Celsus, looking out on Christianity in the second century
of our era, with the feelings of Gibbon or of Voltaire, said that a
man must be out of his mind to think that Greeks and Barbarians,
Eomans and Scythians, bondmen and freemen, could ever have
one religion. Nevertheless this was the purpose of our Lord.
The Apostles were bidden to go and make disciples of all the
nations. Yes ; all the nations. There was no nation in such
religious circumstances, none so cultivated, none so degraded, as to
be able to dispense with the teaching and healing power of Jesus
Christ, or to be beyond the reach of His salvation.^

1. The great aim of the missionary is to make disciples. No
doubt he is a civilizer, but he does not go to heathen lands in the
interests of civilization ; he goes to proclaim salvation by grace.
He is the friend of commerce, education, freedom of every kind,
and rapidly promotes them wherever he goes ; but he does not go
to China, India, and the islands of the South Seas in order to
circulate Western ideas of trade, culture, good government, and
social weal; he goes to represent the character, announce the
will, illustrate the grace, offer the salvation, and promote the reign
of the God whom Christ has made real and saving to us. And
whatever improvements he may help to make in the outward
conditions in which the people live, he has not fulfilled his
distinctive mission until he has given them " the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," and
won them to a trust in and love of God that will free them from
their idolatries, cleanse them from their immoralities, and make
them worshippers with intelligent conviction, zeal and courage in
their devotion. Indeed to give them Western civilization without
Western religion, with its powerful ethic to illumine and discipline
their conscience, would be to multiply their power of sin and
mischief and tend to their corruption. To give China, with her
vast population and material resources, the civilization of Europe
and America without the Christ who is its light and salt would
be to make her the menace of the world, and to create a " yellow
peril " indeed.

' H. P. Liddon, Easter in St, Paul's, 398,

ST. MATTHEW xxviii. 18-20 445

1[ I was hearing the other day the testimony of a Coptic judge
in Egypt as to how the very idea of justice had for the first time
dawned upon the fellah in Egypt when he saw that he, poor
man, was going to get his Nile water, a thing hitherto inconceiv-
able, equally with his rich neighbour. We bring justice, and yet
even the justice of administration, glorious as that gift is, does not
get to the inner heart and conscience of men. It does not give
them the peace to live by in their private life ; it does not create
character ; it does not get to the conscience or the heart.^

2. " Baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost." " Baptism," it has been well said,
" is the oldest ceremonial ordinance that Christianity possesses ;
it is the only one which is inherited from Judaism." Immersion
of the body in water is naturally symbolical and suggestive of
purification ; so, in the sacrament of Baptism, the one essential of
entrance into the Kingdom of God is visibly set forth. It is a
Kingdom into which nothing unclean can enter, yet in Baptism
the right of every man to inherit the Kingdom is declared, and
the condition of admission revealed. Baptism, therefore, is the
token of a universal Church ; it is not the symbol of a sect, or
the badge of a party; it is a visible witness to the world of a
common humanity united in God.

^ Dr. Moritz Busch, the Boswell of Prince Bismarck, relates
this story. It happened some time ago that King Frederick of
Denmark conferred upon the great German Chancellor the Grand
Cross of the Danebrog Order. One of the rules of that order is
that every one who receives the decoration of its cross must set
up his name and arms in the principal church at Copenhagen,
with a motto which must be chosen by himself, and must bear a
double or ambiguous meaning. " So I hit upon this motto," said
Prince Bismarck, " ' In Trinitate rohur,' alluding to the trefoil, the
clover, which was the old device of our family." " And what was
the other meaning ? " said Dr. Busch. " Was it, ' My strength is
in the Triune God' ? " And the answer was given with a solemn
gravity " Yes, just so ; that is exactly what I meant." ^

3. "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I com-
manded you." Those who come under the influence of the pro-
clamation of the Lordship of Jesus, and, yielding to it, pass

1 Bishop Gore.

' J. E. C. Welldon, The Mre wpon the AUa/r, 69.

446 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE

through His death and resurrection into living union with Him,
are to be taught " to observe all things whatsoever I commanded
you." They are to realize in their own fellowship the actuality of
His Kingship, and are to manifest through their corporate life the
glory and grace of the Kingdom of God. This new society is
formed wherever, as a result of the proclamation of His Lordship,
men and women yield thereto ; a society of those who not only
believe in His Lordship, but bend to it, and exhibit to the world
the result of His Kingship in their individual lives and social
fellowship. We hear a great deal in these days about the worth-
lessness of mere dogmatic Christianity. Jesus Christ anticipated
all that talk, and guarded it from exaggeration. For what He tells
us here that we are to train ourselves and others in is not creed
but conduct ; not things to be believed or credenda, but things to
be done or agenda — " teaching them to observe all things whatso-
ever I commanded you." A creed that is not wrought out in
actions is empty; conduct that is not informed, penetrated,
regulated by creed is unworthy of a man, not to say of a
Christian. What we are to know we are to know in order that
we may do, and so inherit the benediction, which is never
bestowed upon them that know, but upon them that, knowing
these things, are blessed in, as well a,a for, the doing of them.

•[I Surely, if there be anything with which metaphysics have
nothing to do, and where a plain man, without skill to walk in
the arduous paths of abstruse reasoning, may yet find himself at
home, it is religion. For the object of religion is conduct ; and
conduct is really, however men may overlay it with philosophical
disquisitions, the simplest thing in the world. That is to say, it
is the simplest thing in the world as far as understanding is con-
cerned; as regards doing, it is the hardest thing in the world.
Here is the difficulty, to do what we very well know ought to be
done ; and instead of facing this, men have searched out another
with which they occupy themselves by preference — the origin of
what is called the moral sense, the genesis and physiology of
conscience, and so on. No one denies that here, too, is difficulty,
or that the difficulty is a proper object for the human faculties to
be exercised upon ; but the difficulty here is speculative. It is
not the difficulty of religion, which is a practical one ; and it often
tends to divert attention from this. Yet surely the difficulty of
religion is great enough by itself, if men would but consider it, to
satisfy the most voracious appetite for difficulties. It extends to

ST. MATTHEW xxviii. 18-20 447

rightness in the whole range of what we call conduct ; in three-
fourths, therefore, at the very lowest computation, of human life.
The only doubt is whether we ought not to make the range of
conduct wider still, and to say it is four-fifths of human life, or
five-sixths. But it is better to be under the mark than over it ;
so let us be content with reckoning conduct as three-fourths of
human life.^

IIL

The Assurance.

•' Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

There are four ways in which this verse has been regarded.
Some say that the words are fiction : that they were never spoken
by the Lord ; that they were born in another man's mind ; that
they have no vital relationship with the thought and purpose of
Jesus, and therefore we should employ a penknife and cut them
out. The second statement made concerning them is that the
report is accurate, but the claim presumptuous. We are told
that, like all other great leaders of men, the Nazarene had
moments of unillumined ecstasy. There were times when, like
Mohammed, like Luther, like John Wesley, He lost the true
perspective and purpose of things. Or, to put it more plainly,
these are the words of a fanatic, and due allowance must be
made for exaggeration. Then there is a third way. The
words were certainly spoken, but they were never intended
to be taken literally. They are symbolic and figurative, and
we must beware not to spoil them by getting away from
the symbolism. We must exercise the imagination and in-
terpret them upon the purely human plane. The fourth way
is this : that the words are simply, naturally, literally and
gloriously true; that the Master said them; that He meant
just what He said, that He — Jesus the Christ, a personal,
conscious, intelligent presence — is for ever abiding with His
disciples, sharing all the difficulties of the pilgrim road, par-
ticipating in their triumphs right away to the end of the world.
That is the witness, the overwhelming witness, of the Christian

Church.

' Matthew Arnold, Literature <md Dogma, chap. i.

448 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE

1. What then do the words signify? First of all, they
promise a personal presence. The assurance of Jehovah's presence
— " certainly I will be with thee " — is repeated ever and again in
the histories and oracles of the Old Testament. To Jacob, to
Moses, to Joshua, to the Judges, to Jeremiah, to Israel in the
land of exile it was vouchsafed as the seal of pardon or as the
pledge of guidance and of needed strength. But the promise then
must have seemed vague and uncertain. Jehovah was far away,
unseen, an awful Judge and King. The Incarnation transfigures
man's whole conception of God's nearness to him. Christ speaks
as Friend to friend, loving and loved. The promise is Divine as
of old, but now it is human also. The Speaker we know has had
His part in flesh and blood, in toils and temptations, in life and
death.

Tf George Eliot said that the Lord Jesus, when He was upon
earth, gave a sort of impulse to the race, and that impulse
remains to our own day and, therefore. He lives. It is some-
thing like an engine, shunting on the railway. The engine gives
the train a sudden impact and then stops. And the trucks
continue on the strength of the impact given, while the engine,
remains dead. And, says George Eliot, and all who believe in her
teaching, it is perfectly true that He is with us now in a dumb,
vague, blessed impulse. Is that your Jesus ? If I may recall my
illustration of the train, I will tell you of my Jesus. When the
Lord came and put Himself on the train He went with it, and He
is with it now. " I am with you, not merely as some dumb,
contributory impulse, a dying dynamic ; I am with you a living
presence, conscious, intelligent, knowing you and offering the
powers of the Infinite to save you and to complete the plan of
your life, and lift you into a life of holiness with God." ^

2. It is an abiding presence: "I am with you alway." The
Lord, using the simple idiom of His native tongue, says " aU the
days." The pledge is precise and detailed. It goes hand in
hand with the Church into all the vicissitudes of her long and
perilous journey. It has never been withdrawn or modified.
The history of the Christian centuries is the record of its fulfil-
ment. It is ours to-day — this critical day of the Church's life —
to make us courageous in face of difficulty and calm in the midst
of controversy.

" J. H. Jowett.

ST. MATTHEW xxviii. 18-20 449

That word " alway " separates Him from every other teacher
the world has ever seen. If you want to know how infinite is the
separation, take down the biographies of some of the superlatively
great leaders of the human race. Listen to their last words, and
when you have their message in your ears come back to this,' and
you will feel that you are in another world. Take that great
book of Plato in which he describes the last few moments when
Socrates is leaving his disciples. It is a beautiful picture, tragic,
pathetic, winsome. But you never find Socrates even whispering
that when he has left his disciples he will remain with them, a
personal attendant spirit among them. Take the Apostle Paul
himself — next to the Lord, perhaps, the greatest man among
men— and read his Second Epistle to Timothy, where you
get his almost farewell word: "I am now ready to be
offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept
the faith : henceforth " — I will remain with you ? Not a sug-
gestion of it. The great men of our race do not come within
an infinite distance of suggesting that they will remain among
their disciples. This makes the Lord unique: "Lo, I am with
you alway."

Tf Charles Lamb said that he sat at his desk in the East India
House till the wood had entered his soul, so wooden were his
duties. When I think of this I think there is nothing that
cannot become monotonous, and again I think of one of the
greatest souls that God ever made, pacing the fringe of the
Sinaitic desert for forty years, the companion of sheep, a solitary
soul ; and for forty years more leading about and about, a march
without a goal, a people more stupid than the sheep, and I read
" he endured." How ? Through Divine companionship. " The
Lord spoke with Moses face to face." Then all monotony went.
" He endured as seeing him who is invisible." And I think of a
greater than Moses — the greatest of all — living for thirty years in
the monotonous routine of an Oriental village, a peasant's cottage,
and a carpenter's shop, and I say. He knows monotony, and He is
with me on the dull bit of road. He may be the companion, and
blessed be drudgery if He be near and I may feel the warmth of
His love.^

Tf Look into any life which has been shaped and fashioned by
living faith in Jesus, and you will see this promise fulfilled.

' 0. Brown, The Message of God, 54.
ST. MATT. — 29

450 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE

Where the many toil and suffer,

There am I among Mine own;
Where the tired workman sleepeth,

There am I with him alone.

Never more thou needest seek Me,

I am with thee everywhere:
Eaise the stone, and thou shalt find Me;

Cleave the wood, and I am there.

3. It is a Victorians presence. The phrase "the end of the
world " may be better rendered " the consummation of the age."
The ultimate victory of the King is implied. There was no fear
of failure in the heart of the King. The age initiated by His first
advent will be consummated at His second ; and through all the
toil He abides with His people, leading them in perpetual triumph
as they abide in fellowship with Him.

^ One of the most frequently quoted of the promises of Christ
he held to be largely a conditional promise. As he interpreted it,
" Lo, I am with you alway," following as it did the great com-
mission, " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature," left the impression that, failing the fulfilment of the
commission, the promise was largely invalidated. On the other
hand, he found a deep and perennial conviction, born of his
experiences in the dangers and difficulties of his missionary career,
that all men and women (and all Churches) that obediently carry
out the command have still the Promise of Omnipotence — the
Everlasting Word — of the Abiding Presence of the Son of God.^

^ When John Wesley had done his work and was even now
passing within the veil, we are told that, gathering up what
strength remained to him, he cried out, " The best of all is, God is
with us." He had put Christ's promise to the test, as few have
done ; and he had found it true. Christ's presence is for all the
days of the Church's history, for each hour of the day of every
Christian man's life — the light of life's solemn evening, but no
less surely the strength of life's strenuous noon, and the Joy of
life's bright morning. " The best of all is, God, God in Christ, is
with us." ^

Tl I was reading the other day that glorious book of Charles
Kingsley's, entitled, Teast. You remember how Nevarga, dirty,
habit-stained, morally and spiritually broken, feeling utterly

' John 0. Paton : Later Years, 85.

' Bishop Chaae, in TJie CamTrridge Beview, zz. p. xciii.

ST. MATTHEW xxviii. 18-20 451

defiled, kneels away in the desert by a furze bush, and lifts up his
heart to God and cries, " Then I rose up like a man and I spoke
right out into the dumb, black air, and I said, ' If Thou wilt be my
God, if Thou wilt be on my side, good Lord who died for me, I
will be Thine, villain as I am, if Thou canst make anything of
me.' " And Charles Kingsley says the furze bush began to glow
with sacred fiame, and there in the desert the Lord Jesus found a
new companion and made a new friend.^

1 J. H. Jowett.

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