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PRINCETON, N. J.
*<i!>5
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Presented by^TC)\7^^\J\ ^ \\(7\r^CTD\AX^ ^'11).
Division ■^■•rt
Section ..r.O..^:fi4
v,3
pi':-
*' Y . - --•
*'■•■:
• - 1
'V .
THE LIFE OE OUR LORD.
By Eev. WILLIAM. HANNA, D.D., LL.D.
In Six Vols. 12mo. Price $1 50 each.
CONSISTING OP
L THE EARLIER YEARS.
n. THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE,
in. THE CLOSE OE THE MINISTRY.
IV. THE PASSION WEEK.
V. THE LAST DAY OF OUR LORD'S PASSION.
VI. THE FORTY DAYS AFTER THE RESURRECTION.
We have before us a life of Clirist, at last, which has all the elements of pop-
ularity in it. In sitting down to this work Dr. Hanna was prepared, by close
scholarship and by personal visits to the scenes of His Ufe, to write very much
as Renan was ; but his method is entirely different in style as well as in state-
ment. His prominent idea was to unfold the individuality of Christ, and to
gain an insight into His spiritual and human character. In doing this he has
avoided all technicalities, all pedantic displays of learning, all examinations of
mere dogmas. He gives the reader no dry forms of logic or syllogistic state-
ments, but, uniting the stories of the four Evangelists into one connected, har-
monious whole, presents only results. In arriving at these results, we have
some admirable portraitures of the Disciples and others, who moved about the
great central figure of the Bible, and very picturesque descriptions of scrip,
tural localities, some of which he has literally photographed, so accurate ana
minute have his observations been. — Chicago Tribune.
ROBERT CARTHR & BROTHERS, New York.
THE
Close of ti-ie Ministry.
BY THE
REV. WILLIAM HANNA, D.D. LL.D.
NEW YOEK:
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS.
530 Broadway.
1870,
CONTENTS.
PAGE
L — ^The Descent of the Mount of Transfiguration 1
H. — ^The Payment of tlie Tribute -money — The
Strife as to who should be Greatest in the
Kingdom of Heaven 21
ni. — Christ and his Brethren 39
rV. — Christ at the Feast of Tabernacles 56
v.— Jesus the Light of the World 75
VI.— The Cure of the Man Born BUnd 94
Vn.— The Good Shepherd 116
VIII. — ^Incidents jn our Lord's Last Journey to Jeru- ^
salem 145 .
IX. — Our Lord's Ministry in Persea 165
X. — The Parables of the Persean Ministry 187
XI.— The Good Samaritan 211
Xn.— The Lord's Prayer 229
XTTT. — Jesus the Eesurrection and the Life 248
XIV.— The Kaising of Lazarus 272
vi Contents.
XV. — The Last Journey througli Persea : The Ten
Lepers — The Coming of the Kingdom—
The Question of Divorce — ^^Little Children
brought to Him— The Yoimg Kuler 292
XVL — Jesus at Jericho — The Request of the Sons of
Zebedee 313
XYIL— The Anointing at Bethany 331
THE CLOSE OF THE MINISTRY.
I.
THE DESCENT OP THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURA-
TION.*
MORNING- has dawned upon the moun-
tain-top which had witnessed the won-
derful night-scene of the transfiguration. Je-
sus and the three disciples begin to descend.
The silence they at first observe is broken by
our Lord turning to his disciples and saying,
" Tell the vision to no man until the Son of
man be risen again from the dead.'" A few
days before, Jesus had straitly charged them
that they should tell no man that he was the
Christ. The discovery would be premature.
The people were not prepared for it. It would
come unsuitably as well as unseasonably from
* Matt. xvii. 9-27 ; Mark ix. 9-32 ; Luke ix. 37-45.
2 The Descent of the
the lips of the apostles. It might serve to in-
terrupt that course of things which was to
guide onward to the great decease to be ac-
complished at Jerusalem. And whatever rea-
sons there were for a temporary concealment
from the multitude of such knowledge as to
their Master's true character and ofiice as the
apostles possessed, still stronger reasons were
there that they should preserve silence as to
this vision on the Mount, the narration of
which would be sure at that time to provoke
nothing but derision. Not even to the other
nine were the three to speak of it till the key
to its true interpretation was in all th'eir hands,
for even by them, in the meantime, it was lit-
tle likely to be rightly apprehended, and it
was not a topic to be rudely handled as a thing
of idle and ignorant talk. The seal thus put
upon the lips of the three, we have no reason
to believe was broken till the time came when
they stood relieved from the obligation it im-
posed. All the more curiously would the mat-
ter be scanned by the three when alone. The
thing that most perplexed them as they did so
was, what the rising from the dead could mean.
They did not venture to put any question to
their Master. Now, upon the mountain side.
Mount of Teansfiguration. 8
as afterwards, they were afraid to ask him
about it, with something perhaps of the feel-
ing of those who do not hke to ask more about
a matter which has saddened them so much to
hear about at all ; from all fuller and distincter
sight of which they shrink.
But there was a question, and that a very
natural one in the existing circumstances, which
they did venture to put to Jesus by the way.
They had just seen Ehas standing by the side
of their Master, to be with him in that brief
interview, and then depart. Was this that
coming of the Great Prophet about which the
scribes spoke so much ? It could scarcely be
so, for that coming was to precede the advent
of the Messiah. But if Jesus were the Christ,
and this which they had just witnessed were
the coming of Ehas, the prescribed prophetic
order would be reversed. In the uncertainty
and confusion of their thoughts they put the
question to their Master, "Why say the scribes
that Elias must first come ?" Jesus had already
— months before — on the occasion of the visit
of the two disciples of the Baptist, said to them
plainly enough, "If ye will receive it, this is
Elias which was to come." They had not fully
understood or received it. In common with
4 The Descent of the
the whole body of their countrymen, theu*
origmal idea had been, that it was to be an
actual return of EHjah himself to the earth
which was to be the precursor of the appear-
ance of their Messiah. This conception the
sayings of Jesus may have served partially to
rectify ; but now, when Elijah comes and pre-
sents himself before their eyes, it returns, and
in returning blinds and confuses them once
more. Our Lord's answer is so far clear
enough, that he confirms the dictum of the
scribes as founded on a right reading of the
ancient prophecies, especially of the one by
Malachi, recorded in the fourth chapter of that
prophet's writings.. Tt was true what these
scribes had said, that Elias must first come.
But they were in error when they looked for a
personal visit from the old prophet as the pre-
cursor of the first advent of the Christ. They
had failed to see in the person and ministry of
John one coming in the spirit and power of
Elias. They had taken too hastily the Baptist
at his word when he said he was not Ehas, as
in a literal sense he was not. And misappre-
hending his character and mission, they had
allowed their natural dislike to such a person
and ministry as his to grow till it culminated
Mount of Transfigubation. 5
in that act of Herod by which the dishked
preacher of righteousness was cut off. Once
more, therefore, does Jesus renew the testi-
mony he had already borne to the Baptist :
I say unto you that Ehas is come ah'eady, and
they knew him not, but have done unto him
whatsoever they Hsted." The treatment they
gave to the forerunner was no inapt symbol of
that which they were preparing for Christ him-
self, for "likewise shall also the Son of man
suffer of them."
Then the disciples understood that "he
spake unto them of John the Baptist." But
did they understand that in his answer to their
inquiry our Lord alluded to another, a future
coming of Elias, of which that of the Baptist
was but a type or a prelude, as well as to
another, a future coming of the Son of man
with which it was to be connected ? Many
think that not obscurely, such an allusion lay
in the words which Christ employed, and that
it is in the two advents, each prefaced with its
appropriate precursorage, that the full and va-
ried language of ancient prophecy receives
alone its fit and adequate accomplishment.
But we must now turn our eye from the lit-
tle group conversing about Elias, as they de-
fil The Descent of the
scended the hill-side, to what was occurring
elsewhere, down in the valley among the villa-
ges that lay at the base of the mountain.
Among the villagers there had occurred a case
of rare and complicated distress. A youth, the
only son of his father, had fallen the victim to
strange and fearful paroxysms, in which his
own proper speech was taken from him, and
he uttered hideous sounds, and foamed, and
gnashed with his teeth, and was cast some-
times into the fire, and sometimes into the wa-
ter, from which he was drawn with difficulty,
and half dead. To bodily and mental distem-
per, occult and incurable, there was added
demoniac possession, mingling itself with and
adding new horrors to the terrible visitations.
With the arrival of Christ and his disciples in
this remote region there had come the fame of
the wonderful cures that he had elsewhere ef-
fected ; cures, many of them, of the very same
kind of malady with which this youth was so
grievously afflicted. On learning that the com-
pany of Galilean strangers had arrived in the
neighborhood of his own dwelling, the father
of this youth thought that the time had come
of relief from that heavy domestic burden that
for years he had been bearing. He brought
Mount of Teansfiguration. 7
to them his son. Unfortunately, it so hap-
pened that he brought him when Christ and
the three disciples were up in the mountain,
and the nine were left behind. It was to them,
therefore, that the application for relief was
made. It does not appear that when in com-
pany with Christ the disciples w^ere in the hab-
it of claiming or exercising any preternatural
power over disease. No case at least of a cure
effected by their hands in such circumstances is
recorded. But in that short experimental tour,
when they had been sent out away from him
to go two by two through Galilee, Jesus had
given them power over unclean spuits — a pow-
er which they had exercised without check or
failure. And now, when they are left alone,
and this most painful case is brought to them,
they imagine that the same power is in their
hands, and they essay to exercise it. In their
Master's name again and again they command
that unclean spirit to go forth, but their words
return to them void. They stand baffled and
covered with confusion before the crowd that
had gathered to witness the cure. They can
give no reason, for they know none, why the
failure had taken place. Nor are they suffered
to skulk away in their defeat. Some scribes
8 The Descent of the
are there ready enough to take advantage of
the awkward dilemma into which they have
been thrown by assuming an authority which
turns out to be impotent — their Master's char-
acter involved in their defeat. We can well
imagine what an instrument of reproach would
be put thus into the hands of these scribes, and
how diligently and effectively they would em-
ploy it ; pressing the disciples with questions
to which they could give no satisfactory replies,
and turning the whole occurrence to the best
account in the way of casting discredit upon
the Master, as well as upon his disciples. A
great multitude had in the meantime assem-
bled ; a profane, and scoffing, and half-malig-
nant spirit had been stealing into the hearts of
many, when Jesus and the three are seen com-
ing down from the hill-side. The suddenness
of his appearance — his coming at the very time
that his disciples were hard pressed, perhaps,
too, the very calmness and majesty of his ap-
pearance, as some of that glory of the moun-
tain-top still lingers around him — produces a
quick revolution of feeling in the fickle multi-
tude. Straightway a kind of awe — half admi-
ration, half alarm — comes over them, and
"greatly amazed," they leave the scribes and
Mount of Teansfigueation. 9
the discomfited disciples, and they run to him
and salute him — not in mockery, certainly, or
hailing him as one whose claims upon their
homage they are ready to set aside — but rather
with a rebound from their recent incredulity,
prepared to pay to him the profounder respect.
And now, as on some battle-field which subor-
dinate officers have entered in absence of their
chief, and in which they have been worsted by
the foe, at the crisis of the day the chief him-
self appears, and at once the tide of battle
turns — so acts the presence of Christ. Bear-
ing back with him the multitude that had run
forth to greet him, he comes up to where the
scribes are dealing with the apostles, and says
to them, ''What question ye with them?"
The questioners are struck dumb — stand silent
before the Lord. In the midst of the silence
a man comes forward, kneels down before Je-
sus, tells him what has happened, how fearful
the malady was that had fallen upon his only
child, how he had brought the child to his dis-
ciples and they had failed to cast the devil out
of him. Too much occupied with his own
grief, too eager to seize the chance now given,
that the Master may do what his disciples could
not, he makes no mention of the scribes or of
10 The Descent oe the
the hostile feeUng against him they have been
attempting to excite. But Jesus knows it all,
sees how in all the various regions then around
him, in the hearts of the people who speak to
him, in the hearts of the disciples from whom
he had temporarily been parted, in the hearts
of those scribes who had been indulging in an
unworthy and premature triumph, the spirit
of incredulity had been acting. Contemplating
the sad picture of prevailing unbelief, there
bursts from his lips the mournful ejaculation,
" 0 faithless, incredulous, and perverse gener-
ation ! How long shall I be with you and 3'ou
remain ignorant of who and what I am ? How
shall I suffer you, as you continue to exhibit
such want of trust in my willingness and
power to help and save you?" Not often does
Christ give us any insight into the personal
emotions stirred up within his heart by the
scenes among which he moves — not often does
there issue from his lips anything approaching
to complaint. Here for a moment, out of the
fullness of his heart he speaketh, revealing as
he does so a fountain-head of sorrow lying
deep within his soul, the fullness and bitter-
ness of whose waters, as they were so constant-
ly rising up to flood and overflow his spirit,
Mount of Transfigueation. U
who can gauge ? What must it have been for
Jesus Christ to come into such close familiar
contact with the misconceptions and incredu-
lities, and dislikes and oppositions of the men
he lived among? With a human nature like
our own, yet far more exquisitely sensitive
than ours to injustice and false reproach, what
a constant strain and burden must thus have
been laid upon his heart ! What an incalcula-
ble amount of patience must it have called him
to exercise !
The brief lament over the faithless and per-
verse generation uttered, Jesus says to the
father, " Bring thy son hither." And now fol-
lows a scene to which there are few parallels
in scriptural or in any other story, for our vivid
conception of which we are specially indebted
to the graphic pen of the second Evangelist.
They go for the youth and bring him. So soon
as he comes into the presence of Jesus, and
their eyes meet, whether it was that the calm,
benignant, heavenly look of Christ operated as
a kind of stimulant upon a worn-out, weak,
unstrung, excitable, nervous system, or that
the devil, knowing that his time was short,
would raise one last and vehement commotion
within that poor distracted frame, the youth
12 The Descent of the
falls to the ground, wallowing, foaming, torn
by a power he is unable to resist. Jesus looks
upon him as he lies, and all who are around
look at Jesus, wondering what he will do. Is
it easy to imagine a conjunction of outward
circumstances more striking or affecting ? The
youth writhing on the ground, Jesus bending
on him a look of ineffable pity, the father
standing on the tip-toe of eager expectation,
the disciples, the scribes, the multitude, press-
ing on to witness the result. Such was the
season, such were the circumstances, that
Jesus chose for one of the shortest but most
memorable of his conversations. Before he
says or does anything as to the son, he says,
quietly, inquiringly, compassionately, to the
father: " How long is it ago since this came
unto him ?" The father tells how long, and
tells how terrible it has been ; but as if some-
what impatient at such a question being put at
such a time, he adds, " But if thou canst do
anything, have compassion on us and help us."
Grenuine and pathetic utterance of a deep-
smitten fatherly affection, identifying itself with
the object of its love, and intent upon the one
thing of getting that child cured ; all right
here in the father's feeling toward his son, but
Mount of Teansfiguration. 13
something wrong, something defective m the
feeling toward Christ, which for the man's own
sake, and for his son's sake, and for the sake
of that gathered crowd, and for the sake of us,
and of all who shall ever read this narrative,
Jesus desired to seize upon this opportunity to
correct. " If thou canst do anything," the
father says. " If thou canst believe," is our
Lord's quick reply. * It is not, as thou takest
it, a question as to the extent of my power,
but altogether of the strength of thy faith, for
if thou canst but believe, all things are possible,
this thing can easily be done.' Receiving the
rebuke in the spirit in which it was given,
awaking at once to see and believe that it was
his want of faith that stood in the way of his
son's cure, sensible that he had been wrong in
challenging Christ's power, that Christ was
right in challenging his faith, with a flood of
tears that told how truly humble and broken
his spirit was, the man cries out, "Lord, I
believe ; help thou mine unbelief." Who is
not grateful to the man who lets us see into
that tumult and agony of soul in which true
faith is born, how it is that out of the dull and
fearful spirit of mistrust the genuine child-like
confidence of the heart m Jesus struggles into
14 The Descent of the
"being. "Lord, I believe." 'I have a trust in
thee. I know that thou hast all power at thy
command, and canst exercise it as thou wilt.
But when I look at that which this power of
thine is now called to do, my faith begins to
falter. Lord, help mine unbelief. Thou only
canst do it. Thou only canst strengthen this
weak and faihng heart of mine. It is thine to
cure the bodily distemper of my son. It is
thine to heal the spiritual infirmities of my soul.'
What a mixture here of weakness and strength
— the cry for help betraying the one, yet in
that very cry the other standing revealed !
Few utterances that have come from human
lips have carried more in them of the spirit
that we should all seek to cherish, nor would it
be easy to calculate how many human beings
have taken up the language this man taught
them to employ, and who have said to Jesus,
"Lord, we believe ; help thou our unbelief."
In answer to this confession and this prayer,
something still further might have been said,
had not our Lord perceived a fresh pressure in
upon them of the neighboring crowd, at sight
of which he delayed no longer, but, turning to
him who still lies upon the ground before him,
in words of sternness and decision he says,
Mount of Transfigukation. 15
** Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee
come out of him, and enter no more into him."
A fresh cry of agony — a last and most violent
convulsion — and the poor afflicted youth lies
stretched out so motionless, that many, looking
at him, say that he is dead. But Jesus takes
him by the hand and lifts him up, and delivers
him perfectly cured to his glad and grateful
father. The work was done, the crowd dis-
persed, " all amazed at the mighty power of
God."
Afterwards, when alone with him in the
house, the apostles asked Jesus why it was that
they could not cast the devil out. He told
them that it was because of their unbelief.
They had suffered perhaps that late announce-
ment which he had made to them of his im-
pending sufferings and death to dim or disturb
their faith, or they had allowed that still more
recent selection of the three, and his withdrawal
from them up into the mountain, to engender
a jealousy whicli weakened that faith. One
way or other, their faith had given way, and
in its absence they had tried the power of their
Master's name, in the hope that it might act as
a charm or talisman. Jesus would have them
know that it was not thus that his name was
16 The Descent of the
rightly, or could ever efifectively, be employed.
Yet at the same time he would have them
know that the kind of spirit by which this
youth had been possessed was one not easy of
ejection— which required, in fact, on the part
of the ejector, such a faith as could only be
reached by much prayer and fasting ; teaching
them thus, in answer to their inquiry, the
double lesson — that the primary source of
their failure lay in the defect of their faith ; and
that the manner in which that faith could alone
be nourished up to the required degree of
strength was by fasting and by prayer, by
weaning themselves from the pursuits and en-
joyments of sense, by repeated and earnest
supplications to the Giver of every good and
perfect gift, whose ofi6.ce it is to work in his
people the work of faith with power. At the
same time Jesus took the opportunity which
this private interview with his disciples afiforded
— as he had taken the opportunity of his inter-
view with the importunate father — to proclaim
the great power, the omnipotence of faith.*
This obviously was the one great lesson which,
in this passage of his earthly history, Jesua
designed to teach.
Matt xvii. 20.
Mount of Transfigubation. 17
Sudden and very striking must have been
the transition from the brightness, the blessed-
ness of that sublime communion with Moses
and Elias on the mount, to the close contact
with human misery in the shape of the pos-
sessed lunatic who lay writhing at his feet ; so
sharp and impressive the contrast that the
prince of painters, in his attempt to picture to
our eye the glories of the Transfiguration, has
thrown in the figure of the suffering child at
the base of the mountain. But more even
than by this contact with human misery does
oUr Saviour seem on this occasion to have
been impressed by his coming into such close
contact with so many forms of human unbelief.
And he appears to have framed and selected
this as the first occasion on which to announce,
not only the need and the benefit, but the
illimitable power of faith.
He could easily have arranged it so that no
application had been made to his disciples in
his absence, but then they had wanted the les-
son the failure carried in its bosom. He could
easily have cured the maniac boy at once and
by a word ; but then this father had missed
that lesson which, in the short preliminary con-
versation with him, was conveyed. And through
18 The Descent of the
both, to us and to all, the great truth is made
known that in this world of sin and sorrow the
prime necessity is, that we should have faith in
God and faith in Jesus Christ — not a faith in
certain truths or propositions about God or
about Jesus Christ — but simple, child-like trust
in God as our Father, in Jesus as our Saviour ;
a faith that will lead us in all times of our
weakness and exposure, and temptation and dis-
tress, to fly to them to succor us, casting our-
selves upon a help that never was refused to
those who felt their need of it. Neither for
our natural nor for our spiritual life is the
physical removal of mountains necessary : if it
were, we believe that it would be given in an-
swer to believing prayer ; but mountains of
difficulty there are, moral and spiritual, which
do need to be removed ere our way be made
plain, and we be carried smoothly and prosper-
ously along it ; corruptions within us to be
subdued : temptations without us to overcome.
These must be met, and struggled with, and
overcome. It is by the might and mastery of
faith and prayer that this can alone be accom-
plished. And it is no small comfort for us to
be assured, on the word of our Lord himself,
that though our faith be small in bulk as the
Mount op Teansfiguration. 19
mustard seed, yet if it be genuine, if it hunibly
yet firmly take Iiold of tlie miglity power of
God and liang upon it, it will avail to bring
that power down to our aid and rescue, so that,
weak as we are in ourselves, and strong as the
world is to overcome us, yet greater shall he be
that is with us than he that is in the world,
and we shall be able to do all things through
him who strengtheneth us. Prayer, it has
been said, moves him who moves the universe.
But it is faith which gives to prayer the faculty
of linking itself in this way with Omnipotence,
and calling it to human aid. And so you find
that, in one of the other two instances in which
Jesus made use of the same expressions as to
the power of faith which he employed upon
this occasion, he coupled faith and prayer
together, "Master," said Peter, wondering at
the effect which a single word of Jesus had
produced, — " Master, behold, the fig-tree which
thou cursedst is withered away. And Jesus
answering said unto them. Have faith in God.
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever
shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed,
and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not
doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those
things which he saith shall come to pass, he
20 The Descent of the Mount:
shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I
say unto you, What thmgs soever ye desire
when ye pray, believe that ye receive them,
and ye shall have them." Wonderful words,
assigning an all-embracing, an absolutely un-
limited efficacy to faith and prayer — words
not to be lightly judged of, as if they were in-
tended to encourage the rash and the ignorant
conceits and confidences of a presumptuous
enthusiasm — but words of truth and soberness,
notwithstanding the width and compass of their
embrace, if only we remember that true faith
will confide in God, or Christ, only for that as
to which he invites, and so warrants, its confi-
dence ; and true prayer will ask for that alone
which is agreeable to the will of God, and will
promote the spiritual and eternal good of him
upon whom it is bestowed. These are the con-
ditions— natural and reasonable — which under-
lie all that Christ has said of the power of faith
and prayer. And within these conditions we
accept all that he has said as true in itself, and
wanting only a firmer faith, and a more un-
doubting prayer than we have exercised or put
forth, to receive its fulfiUment in our own ex-
perience.
n.
THE PAYMENT OF THE TRIBUTE MONEY THE
STRIFE AS TO WHO SHOULD BE GREATEST IN
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.*
FROM his retirement in the neighborhood
of CiBsarea-Phihppi, Jesus returned to
Galilee — not, however, to resume his publie
ministry there. He sought privacy now, even
among the scenes of his former labors — a pri-
vacy that he wished to consecrate to the fur-
ther enlightenment of the twelve as to his own
character and office, and the true nature of the
kingdom he came to institute. f It was in ful-
fillment of this purpose that on the way from
the scene of the Transfiguration to his old
haunts about Capernaum, he made a second
announcement of his impending death and re-
surrection, adding to the details of his passion
* Matt. xvii. 22-27 ; xviii. 1-35 ; Mark ix. 33-41 ; Luke ix. 43-50.
+ Mark ix. 30, 31.
22 The Payment of
formerly given that of his betrayal. So hid
was the meaning of Christ's words, that all that
the apostles appear to have derived from them
was a vague impression that some great and
decisive event, in their Master's history were
drawing near, in contemplation of which they
began disputing among themselves which should
be greatest in the kingdom which they hoped
to see so soon set up — keeping, as they ima-
gined, their disputings about this topic con-
cealed from Christ.
On their arrival at Capernaum the persons
appointed to receive the annual tribute which
was paid for the support of the Temple servi-
ces, came to Peter and said to him, "Doth not
your Master pay tribute ?" Those who put
this question were not the pubhcans or ordi-
nary tax-gatherers who levied the dues laid
upon the Jews by their governors the Romans.
Nor was the question one about the payment
of any common tax, any civil impost. The
very form of the question, had it been literally
rendered, would have indicated this, "Doth
not your Master pay the didrachma ?" a mod-
ern coin then in circulation, equivalent in value
to the old half-shekel, which, having gone out
of use, had become rare. Every Jew of twenty
The Teebute Money. 23
years old and upward was required to give a
half-shekel yearly for the maintenance first of
the Tabernacle, and afterwards of the Temple.
Although this payment was legally imposed, it
does not appear to have been enforced by civil
pains or penalties. It was left rather, like
other of the Mosaic imposts, to the spontane-
ous action of conscience, and a good-will to-
wards the theocracy on the part of the people.
It was to the payment of this didrachma or
half-shekel for the upholding of the Temple
and its ordinances, that the question put to
St. Peter referred. It is impossible for us to
say positively in what spirit or with what mo-
tive the question was put. It certainly was
not the question of the lynx-eyed collectors of
the ordinary revenue, detecting an attempted
evasion of the payment of one or other of the
common taxes. From no civil obligation laid
upon him by law did Jesus ever claim to be
exempt, nor would the argument which he used
afterwards with the apostle, embodying a
claim to exemption in this case, have been ap-
plicable to any such obligation. But why did
those to whom the gatherers of this ecclesiasti-
cal impost was intrusted speak as they did to
St. Peter? Was it from doubt or ignorance
24: The Payment op
j
on their part as to whether Jesus ought to be j
asked or now meant to pay this tax ? Priests, !
Levites, prophets, some tell us, that even Rab- [
bis were held to be free from this payment.
Had Christ's retirement now from pubhc duty |
suggested the idea that he had thrown aside '
that character under which immunity might
have been claimed by him, and that he might
be called upon therefore to submit to all the
ordinary obligations under which every com-
mon inhabitant of the country was laid ? Or
was this a piece of rude impertinence on the
part of the under officials of the hierarchy,
who, seeing this disfavor into which Jesus had
sunk with their superiors, were quick to take
advantage of their commission to obtrude a
question that seemed to cast some reproach on
Christ as if he were a defaulter ? Some color is
given to the supposition that it was in a sinister
spirit that the inquiry was made, from the cir-
cumstance of St. Peter's prompt reply — a reply
in which there may have been indignation at
an implied suspicion, and a scorn at disputing i
about such a trifle — so that without any com-
munication with Jesus he shuts the mouths of ■
these gainsayers by saying, Yes ; his Master
paid or would pay the tribute.
The Tribute Monet. 25
Had the tone in which the question was
asked, and the apostle's reply was given, been
known to us, we might have told whether it
was so or not. As it is, it can only be a con-
jecture that it was in a hostile and malicious
spirit that the collectors of the tribute-money
acted. Peter, however, was too rash and
hasty. It might be true enough that his Mas-
ter had no desire to avoid that or any other
service which he owed to the Temple and to its
worship. It might be safe enough in him to
undertake for his Master so trifling a payment,
which, whether Jesus acquiesced in the engage-
ment or not, the apostle could easily find the
means for meeting. But in such an instant ac-
knowledgment of the obligation there was an
overlooking on Peter's part of the dignity of
Christ's person, and of his position towards the
Temple. To remind him of this oversight, to
recall his attention to what was implied in his
own recent confession at Csesarea-Philippi,
when they were come into the house, without
waiting for any communication from Peter as
to what had occurred, Jesus said to him, "What
thinkest thou, Simon ? of whom do the kings
of the earth take custom or tribute ? of their
own children, or of strangers ?" — those who are
26 The Payment of
not members of their own family — not sons,
but subjects. Peter saith to him, " Of the lat-
ter, of strangers. Jesus saith to him, Then are
the children free." Upon this simple principle
Christ would have Peter to recognize his im-
munity from that tribute which was now
claimed — for was he not greater than the Tem-
ple ? Did he not bear to that Temple the rela-
tion of the son in the house of his Father ?
And did he not as such stand free from all the
obligations which the King and Lord of that
house had laid upon his servants, his subjects ?
It will not be easy to show any pertinence as-
sumed in the plea for immunity thus presented,
without admitting the altogether peculiar rela-
tionship in which Christ stood to the Father.
Accept the truth of his divine Sonship to the
Father, and the plea holds good ; reject that
truth, and the plea seems weak and void.
And was it not for the purpose of still further
illustrating that very Sonship to God which
Peter for the moment had forgotten, that our
Lord directed him to do that which in the issue
carried with it so remarkable a proof that in
the Great Temple of the visible creation Jesus
was not a servant but a son ; that everywhere
within and over that house he ruled ; that all
The Teibute Money. 27
things there were ready to serve him — the
flowers of the field, the birds of the air, the fish
of the sea, — seeing that at Christ's bidding one
of the latter was to be ready to grasp at Peter's
hook, and on being taken up was to have in
its mouth the stater, the four- drachm piece, the
very sum required from two persons for the
yearly Temple tax ? It is as viewed in this
connection that a miracle which otherwise
would look needless and undignified — out of
keeping with the general character of our Lord's
great works, all of which in some way have
something more than mere exliibiting of power
— takes rank with all the rest as illustrative of
the high character and office of the Redeemer.
It was not want which forced our Lord upon
this forth-putting of his divinity. Even had
the bag which Judas carried been for the mo-
ment empty, the sum required to meet this
payment was not so large but that it could
easily have been otherwise procured ; but in
the manner in which the need was met Jesus
would set forth that character on the ground
of which he might have claimed immunity, —
throwing over the depths of his earthly poverty
the glory of his divine riches, and making it
manifest how easy it had been for him to have
28 The Payment op
laid all nature under contribution to supply all
his wants. Yet another purpose was served
by this incident in our Saviour's life. In point
of time it harmonizes with the first occasions
on which Jesus began to speak of that Church,
that separate society which was to spring forth
out of the bosom of Judaism, and to take the
place of the old theocracy. Had he, without
explanation made, at once ratified the engage-
ment that Peter made for him, it might have
been interpreted as an acknowledgment of
his subjection to the customs and laws of the
old covenant. That no offence might be taken
— taken in ignorance by those who were igno-
rant of the ground upon which immunity from
this payment on his part might have been as-
serted— he was willing to do as Peter said he
would. In this it became him to fulfill all the
righteousness of the law, but even in doing so
he will utter in private his protest, and in the
mode wherein that protest is embodied convey
beforehand no indistinct intimation that a
breach was to take place between the Temple
service and the new community of the free of
which he was to be the Head.
It is extremely difiicult to determine what
the exact order of events was on the arrival at
The Tribute Money. 29
Capernaum. If it were while they were on
the way to the house — most hkely that of
Peter, in which Jesus took up his abode — that
the collectors of the Temple tax made their
application, then the first incident after the
arrival would be the short conversation with
Simon, and the despatching him to obtain the
stater from the fish's mouth upon the lake.
In Peter's absence, and after they had entered
the house, Jesus may have said to his disciples,
" What was it that ye disputed among your-
selves by the way ?'' They were so struck by
surprise, had been so certain that their Master
had not overheard the dispute that had taken
place, that they had no answer to give to his
inquiry. Meanwhile, Peter has returned from
his errand, and reported its result, while they
in turn report to him the inquiry that had been
made of them. Let us remember here that
up to the time of the arrival in the neighbor-
hood of Coesarea-Philippi, no instance is on
record of any controversy having arisen among
the personal attendants on Christ as to the
different positions they were to occupy in his
kingdom. All had hitherto been so vague and
indefinite as to the time and manner of the
institution of the kingdom, that all conjecture
30 The Payment op
or anticipation as to their relative places therein
had been kept in abeyance. Now, however,
they see a new tone and manner in their Mas-
ter, He speaks of things — they do not well
know what — which are about to occur in Jeru-
salem. He tells them that there were some of
them standing there before him which should
not taste of death till they had seen the king-
dom of God. Which of them could it be for
whom such honor was in reserve ? He takes
Peter and James and John up with him to the
mount, and appears there before them in so
new an aspect, invested with such a strange
and exceeding glory, that the privilege of be-
ing present at such a spectacle must have ap-
peared to the three as a singular distinction
conferred upon them. They were not to tell
the others what they had seen, but they could
scarcely fail to tell them they had seen some-
thing wonderful beyond anything that had
happened in our Lord's wonderful life, which
they were not permitted to reveal. Would
not the seal of secrecy so imposed enhance in
their estimation the privilege which had been
conferred on them, and would it not in the
same degree be apt to awaken a jealousy on
the part of the nine ? At the very time, then,
The Tribute Monet. 31
that they all began to look out for the coming
of the kingdom as near at hand, by the mate-
rials thus supplied for pride with some, for
envy with the rest, an apple of discord was
thrown in among the twelve. They were but
men of like passions with ourselves. They had
as yet no other notion of the kingdom that
was shortly to appear than that it would be a
temporal one ; that their Master was to become
a powerful and victorious prince, with places,
honors, wealth, at his command. And what
more natural than that they whom he had
chosen to be confidential attendants in the days
of his humiliation should be then signally ex-
alted and rewarded ? Such being their com-
mon expectations, any mark of partiality on
Christ's part would be particularly noted ; and
what more natural than that such a signal one
as that bestowed upon the three, in their be-
ing chosen as the only witnesses of the Trans-
figuration, should have stirred up the strife by
the way as to who should be the greatest in
the kingdom of heaven ?
This first outbreak of selfishness and pride
and ambition and envy and strife, among his
chosen companions, was a great occasion in the
sight of Jesus. It might and it did spring in a
32 The Payment of
large extent from ignorance, and, with the re-
moval of that ignorance, might be subdued ;
but it might and it did spring from sources
which, after fullest knowledge had been con-
veyed of what the kingdom was and wherein '
its distinctions lay, might still have power to
flood the Cliurch with a whole host of evils.
Therefore it was that Jesus would signalize this
occasion by words and an act of particular
imjDressiveness. Peter had returned from the
lake-side With the stater in his hand to pay for
himself and for Jesus. The others told him of
the questions that had been put to them, and
of the silence they had observed. As they do
so, this new instance of Peter's selection for a
separate service stirs the embers of their former
strife, and in their curiosity and impatience one
of them is bold enough to say to Jesus, "Who
is or shall be the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven ? " Jesus sits down, calls the twelve
that they might be all around him, and says to
them, — " If any man desire to be first, the same
shall be last." ' If any man, actuated by self-
ish, covetous, ambitious motives, seek to be
first in my kingdom, he shall be last — the very
efforts that he shall make to climb to the high-
est elevation there being of their very nature
The Tribute Money. 33
such as shall plunge him to the lowest depths.
But if any man would be first within that king-
dom, first in goodness, first in usefulness, first
in honor there, let him be last, willing to be the
servant of others, ready to esteem others better
than himself, prepared to take any place, to
make any sacrifice, to render any service, pro-
vided only that others' w^elfare be thereby ad-
vanced. In humbling himself so, that man shall
be exalted. I give to this great truth a visible
and memorable representation.' Jesus called a
little child to him, set him in the midst, then
took him into his arms, and said, — "Verily I
say unto you, Except ye be converted, and be-
come as little children, ye shall not enter into
the kingdom of heaven." 'Ye are fighting
about places, power, pre-eminence in my king-
dom ; but I tell you that the selfishness, the
pride, the ambition, out of which all such strife
emerges, are so wholly alien from the nature
of that kingdom which I have come to intro-
duce and estabhsh, that unless you be changed
in spirit, and become meek, humble, teachable,
submissive as this little child which I now hold
so gently in my arms, ye cannot enter into that
kingdom, much less rise to places of distinction
there. You wish to know who shall be great-
34 The Steife as to
est in that kingdom. It shall not be the wisest,
the wealthiest, the most powerful, but whoso-
ever shall most humble himself, and in humility
be likest to this little child, the same shall be
greatest in the kingdom of heaven.' ' If that
be true,' we can fancy the apostles thinking
and saying, ' if all personal distinction and pre-
eminence must be renounced by us, if in seek-
ing to be first we must be last, and each be the
servant of all the others, what then will become
of our official influence and authority — who will
receive and obey us as thy representatives ? '
Our Lord's reply is this — ' Your true and best
reception as my ambassadors does not depend
upon the external rank you hold, or the official
authority with which you may be clothed. It
depends upon your own personal qualities as
humble, loving, devoted followers of me. This
is true of you and of all ; for whosoever receiv-
eth one such little child — one of these little ones
which believe in me, in my name — receiveth
me ; and whosoever receiveth me, receiveth not
me but him that sent me.'
This new idea about receiving the least of
Christ's little ones in Christ's name, awakens in
the breast of one of his auditors a troubling re-
membrance. John recollects that he and some
"Who snouLX> be Gkeatest. 35
others of the disciples had once seen a man cast-
ing out devils in the name of Christ, and that
they had forbidden him to do so, because, as
they thought, he had no authority to do so, had
received no commission, was not even openly a
follower of Jesus. Somewhat in doubt noAv,
after what he has heard, as to whether they had
been right in doing so, he states the case to Je-
sus, and gets at once the distinct and emphatic
"Forbid him not, for there is no man which
shall do a miracle in my name that can lightly
speak evil of me." John had judged this man
rashly and severely, had counted him guilty of
presumption in attempting, whilst standing out-
side the circle of Christ's acknowledged friends
and followers, to do anything in his name ;
had doubted or disbelieved that he was a disci-
ple of or a believer in Jesus. Full of the spirit
of officialism, in the pride of his order as one
of the selected twelve, to whom alone, as he
imagined, the power of working miracles in
Chrst's name had been committed, John had in-
terfered to urrest his procedure, — acting thus as
the young man and as Joshua did, of whom
we read in the Book of Numbers, "And there
ran a young man, and told Moses, and said,
Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp.
36 The Stkife as to
And Joshua the son of Nun, answered and
said, My lord Moses, forbid them.'' But Moses,
in the very spirit of Christ, said, " Enviest thou
for my sake ? Would God that all the Lord's
people were prophets, and that the Lord
would put his Spirit upon them!"* "Forbid
him not," said Jesus. ' His doing a miracle in
my name is a far better evidence of his cherish-
ing a real trust in me, being one of mine, than
any external position or official rank that he
could occupy. Be not hasty in deciding as to
who are and who are not my genuine disciples ;
for while that is true which I taught you when
I was speaking of those who alleged that I cast
out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils,
that " he that is not with me is against me, and
he that gathereth not with me scattereth
abroad, "f it is no less true that " he that is not
against us is on our part." Neither of the
two sayings, indeed, can be universally and
unlimitedly applied ; but there are circum-
stances in which absence of open hostility may
of itself be taken as evidence of friendship ;
and there are circumstances in which absence
of open friendship may of itself be taken as
evidence of hostility. Instead of overlooking,
* Numbers xi. 27, 29. t Matt. xii. 30.
Who should be Greatest. 37
as they had done, such a strong condusive evi-
dence as that of workhig mh'acles in Christ's
name, John and the others should have been
ready, as their Master was, to recognize the
shghtest token of attachment. " For whoso-
ever," added Jesus, "shall give you a cup of
water to drink, in my name, because ye belong-
to Christ, verily I say unto you, He shall not
lose his reward."
" The beginning of strife," the wise man said,
"is as when one letteth out water." And that
beginning of strife among the apostles of Christ
as to which of them should be greatest, what a
first letting out was it of those bitter waters of
contention, envy, and all uncharitableness,
which the centuries since Christ's time have
seen flooding the church — its members strug-
gling for such honors and emoluments, or, when
these were but scanty, for such authority and
influence as ecclesiastical offices and positions
could confer ! Slow, indeed, has that society
which bears his name been of learning the les-
son which, first in precept, and then in his own
exalted example, the Saviour left behind him,
that " whosoever exalteth himself shall be
abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be
exalted."
38 The Steite to be Gkeatest.
We have had before iis the first of the two
instances in which John was led away by a
fiery and intemperate zeal — in this instance, to
misjudge and condemn one who, though he had
not faith nor fortitude enough to leave all and
follow Jesus, yet had faith enough to enable him
to work miracles in Christ's name. It is not
told us how John took the check which Jesus
laid upon that spirit of officialism and fanaticism
which had been working in his breast. But we
do know how thoroughly that spirit was at last
subdued in the heart of the meekest and most
loving of the twelve, and how he moved after-
ward through his fellow-men with step of Christ-
like gentleness, and became " the guardian
spirit of the little ones of the kingdom."
III.
CHRIST AND HIS BRETHREN.*
WE like to follow those who by their say-
ings and doings have filled and dazzled
the public eye, into the seclusion of their homes.
We like to see such men in their undress,
when, all restraint removed, their peculiarities
of character are free to exhibit themselves in
the countless artless ways and manners of
daily domestic life. It brings them so much
nearer to us, gives us a closer hold of them,
makes us feel more vividly their kinship to us,
to know how they did the things that we have
all every day to do, how they comported them-
selves in tlie circumstances in which we all
every day are placed. Great pains have been
taken by biographers of distinguished men to
gratify this desire. Quite apart, indeed, from
any object of this kind, we could scarcely sit
* John vii. 1-9.
40 Chkist and his Beethren.
down to write out an account of what we saw
and heard m the course of two or three years'
close intercourse with a friend, without drop-
ping many a hint as to the minor modes and
habits of his hfe.
Is there nothing remarkable in the entire
absence of anything of this kind in the narra-
tive of the four Evangelists ? Engrossed with
what they tell us, we think not of what they
have left untold ; think not, for example, that
they have left no materials for gratifying the
desire that we have spoken of — one so natural
and so strong. It is, as if in writing these nar-
ratives a strong bias of our nature had been
put under restraint. They say not a word
about the personal appearance of their Master ;
there is nothing for the painter or sculptor to
seize on. They give us no details of his pri-
vate and personal habits, of any peculiarities
of look or speech or gesture, of the times or
ways of his doing this thing or that. St. Mark,
the most graphic describer of the four, tells us
once or twice of a particular look or motion of
our Lord, but not so as to indicate anything
distinctive in their manner. Why this silence ?
Why thus withhold from us all means of form-
ing a vivid conception of the Redeemer's per-
Chkist and his Bretheen. 41
sonal appearance, and of following him through
the details of his more familiar daily inter-
course with the twelve ? Was it that the ma-
terials were wanting, that there were no per-
sonal peculiarities about Jesus Christ, that in-
wardly and outwardly all was so nicely bal-
anced, all was in such perfect harmony and
proportion, that as in his human intellect and
human character, there was nothing to distin-
guish him individually from his fellow-men, —
nothing, I mean, of that kind by which all the
individual intellects and characters are each
specially characterized — so even in the minor
habits of his life there was nothing distinctive
to be recorded ? Or was it that the veil has
been purposely drawn over all such materials,
to check all that superstitious worship of the
senses, which might have gathered round mi-
nute pictures of our Lord in the acts and habits
of his daily life ? If, even as it is, the passion
for such worship has made the food for itself
to feed upon, and, living upon that food, has
swelled out into such large proportions, what
should it have been if such food had from the
first been provided? Is it not well that the
image of our Lord in his earthly life, while
having the print of our humanity so clearly
42 Cheist and his Beethken.
and fully impressed upon it, should yet bo lif-
ted up and kept apart, and all done that could
be done to keep it from being sullied by such
rude, familiar, irreverent regard ?
What is true of our Lord's habits generally,
is true of his religious habits — of the time and
manner in which religious duties were per-
formed. We know something of the manner
in which these duties were discharged by a
truly devout Jew of Christ's age, of the daily
washing's before meals, and the frequent fast-
ings, and the repeated and long prayers, of the
attendance at the synagogue, and the regular
going up to the great feasts at Jerusalem.
Seme of these Jesus appears to have neglected.
The scribes and the Pharisees came to him
saying, "Why do thy disciples transgress the
tradition of the elders ? for they wash not their
hands when they eat bread."* Again they
came to him with another similar complaint,
"Why do the disciples of John fast often and
make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the
Pharisees, but thine eat and drink ?" These
charges are brought nominally against the dis-
ciples, who only followed the example of their
* Matt. XT. 2.
Chkist and his Brethren. 43
Master. He neglected the ordinary ablutions
to which in Jewish eyes a sacred character at-
tached. He himself did not fast, and he taught
his disciples that when they did so it was to be
in such a manner that men might not know
that they were fasting. Of the times and the
manner in which our Lord's private devotions
were conducted, how little is revealed ! You
read of his rising up a great while before day,
and retiring into a solitary place to pray.*
You read of his sending the multitude away
and going up into a mountain to pray ; of his
continuing all night in prayer. f You read of
special acts of devotion connected with his bap-
tism, his transfiguration, his agony in the gar-
den, his suffering on the cross. We know that
it was by him, and him alone, of all the chil-
dren of men, that the precept " pray without
ceasing " was fully and perfectly kept — kept by
its being in the spirit of prayer that his whole
life was spent, — ^but when we ask what Christ's
daily habit was, how often each day did he en-
gage in specific acts of devotion, and how,
w^hen he did so, were these acts performed —
* Mcark i. 35.
+ Matt. xiv. 23 ; Luke vi. 12,
44 Christ and his Beetheen.
did lie retire each morning and evening from
his disciples to engage in prayer ? did he daily,
morning and evening pray with and for his
disciples ? — the Evangelists leave us without
an answer. The single thing they tell us, and
it conveys but little precise information, is, that
" it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a
certain place, when he ceased, one of his disci-
ples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as
John also taught his disciples."* This took
place during the last six months of cur Lord's
ministry. It looks as if the disciples had come
upon their Master when engaged in his solitary
devotions, and had been so struck with what
they saw and heard, that one of them, when
the prayer was over, could not help asking him
to teach them to pray. Remembering that this
happened at so late a period in their inter-
course with him, does it not seem as if Jesus
had not been in the habit of daily leading their
devotions ? The very difficulty that we feel in
understanding how at such a time such a ques-
tion came to be put to him, shows us what a
blank there is here in the evangelic narrative,
* Luke xi. 1.
Cheist and his Bretheen. 45
and how ignorant we must be content to re-
main.
If the generally accepted chronology of our
Lord's life be the true one — ^and we see no
reason to reject it — we are not left in such
ignorance as to how another of the religious
duties practised at the time by those around
him was discharged by Christ. His ministry in
Galilee lasted eighteen months. During this
period four of the great annual religious fes-
tivals which the Jews were enjoined to attend
had taken place at Jerusalem — two Pentecosts,
one Passover, and one Feast of Tabernacles, —
at none of which Jesus appeared. There was
indeed a reason for his absence, grounded on
the state of feeling against him existing in Jeru-
salem, and the resolution already taken by the
Jewish leaders there to cut him off by death.
Till his work in Galilee was completed he would
not place himself in the circumstances which
would inevitably lead on to that doom being exe-
cuted. But who of all around him knew of
that or any other good or sufficient reason for
his absenting himself from these sacred festivals?
And to them what a perplexing fact must that
absence have appeared ! Altogether, when
you take the entire attitude, bearing, and con-
46 Christ and his Beethren.
duct of Jesus Christ as to their ablutions,
their fastings, their prayers, their keeping of
the Sabbath, their attendance at the feasts, it
is not difficult to imagine what an inexplicable
mystery he must have been to the great major-
ity of his countrymen. I do not speak now of
the scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, of whom
his teaching and his life was one continued re-
buke, and who hated him with a deadly hatred
from the first, but of the many sincerely devout,
superstitiously religious Jews amongst whom he
lived. What a perfect puzzle to such the char-
acter and career of this man Christ Jesus — one
speaking so much and in such a way of G-od
and of godliness, proclaiming the advent of
God's own kingdom on the earth, unfolding its
duties, its privileges, its blessednesses, yet to their
seeming so neglectful, so undevout, so irreli-
gious ! We may not be able now thoroughly
to put ourselves in these men's position-
thoroughly to understand with what kind of
eyes it was that they looked upon that wonder-
ful spectacle which the life of Jesus pressed
upon their vision ; but we should be capable
of discerning the singular and emphatic protest
which that life was ever raising against all mere
formal piety, the piety of times and seasons
Christ and his Bretheen. 47
and ordinances, the religion of rule and of
routine.
But let us now rejoin our Lord. He is once
more at Capernaum, or in its neighborhood.
A year and a half has elapsed since he joined
the bands in company with whom he had gone
up to Jerusalem to keep the second Passover
after his baptism. It is autumn, and all around
are busy in preparing for their journey to the
capital to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.
But he exhibits no intention to accompany
them. He is going apj^arently to treat this
festival as he had done the four which preceded
it. What others thought of his behavior in
this respect we are left to conjecture. His
brethren, however — those who were either his
actual brothers or his cousins — ^the members
of that household in which he had been brought
up — could not let the opportunity pass without
telling him what they thought of his conduct.
He and they had latterly been separated.
They did not believe in him. They did not
rank themselves among his disciples. Yet un-
interested spectators of what had been going
on in Galilee they could not remain. Now
that Joseph was dead, he was the head of
their family, and they could not but feel that
4:8 Christ ajn'd his Brethren.
their position and prospects were in some way
linked with his. Somewhat proud they could
not but be that he had excited such great atten-
tion, done such wonderful works, drawn after
him such vast crowds. At first, with all their
incredulity, they were half inclined to hope
that some great future was in store for him.
One who spake so highly and with such author-
ity as he did, who claimed and exercised such
power, what might he not be and do in a com-
munity so peculiarly placed, so singularly ex-
citable as the Jewish one then was ? He
might even prove to be the Messiah, the great
princely leader of the people, for whom so
many were waiting. Against that was the
whole style and character of his teaching — in
which, instead of there being anything ad-
dressed to the social or political condition of
the people, anything fitted to stir up the spirit
of Jewish pride and independence, there was
everything calculated to soothe and subdue —
to lead the thoughts and hopes of the people
in quite other than earthly channels. Against it,
too, there was the fact, becoming more appar-
ent as the months ran on, that the natural
leaders of the community — the scribes and Phar-
isees— by and through whom it could only be
Christ and his Bhetheen. 49
that any great civil emancipation could be
effected, were uniting against him in a bond of
firmer and fiercer hostility. Even the crowds
of the common people, which had at first sur-
rounded him, were latterly declining, offended
at the way in which he was beginning to speak
of himself — telling them that except they ate
his flesh and drank his blood they had no life
in them. Emboldened by all this to use the
old familiarity to which in other days they had
been accustomed, his brethren come to him
and say, "Depart hence and go into Judea,
that thy disciples also may see the works that
thou doest. For there is no man that doeth
anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to
be known openly : if thou do these things,
shew thyself to the world." Imputing to him
the common motives by which all worldly,
selfish, ambitious men are animated, they
taunt him with weakness and folly. Who that
possessed such powers as he did would be sat-
isfied with turning them to such poor account ?
If he were what he seemed, was he to hide
himself forever among these hills of Galilee,
and not go up boldly to the capital, and wrest
from the rulers the acknowledgment of his
claims ? It was but a pitiful success to draw
50 Chkist and his Beetheen.
after him some thousands of a gaping multi-
tude, who followed him because they ate of
the bread that he furnished and were filled —
all whose faith in him was exhausted in won-
dering at him as the worker of such miracles.
Let him, if he had ,the spirit of a true courage in
him — if he was fit to take the leadership of the
people — let him aim at once at far higher
game, place himself at once in the centre of
influence at Jerusalem, and show himself to the
world. Then if on that broad theatre he made
his pretensions good, it would be some honor
to claim- connection with him, some benefit to
be enrolled as his followers.
How true is all this to that spirit of a mere
earthly prudence and policy by which the lives
of multitudes are regulated ! Christ's own bro-
thers judge of him by themselves. They can-
not conceive but that he must desire to make
the most for his own benefit and aggrandize-
ment of whatever gifts he possessed. They
count it to be weak in him, or worse, that he
will not do the most he can in this way and for
this end. They measure all by outward and
visible success. And if success of that kind be
not realized, all the chances and opportunities
that are open to him they regard as thrown
Cheist axd his Beetheen. 51
away and lost. In speaking thus to Jesus they
sever themselves by a wide interval from their
great relative. He was not of this world.
Unselfish, unworldly were aU his motives, aims,
and ends. They are of the world, and true
children of the world they are, in thus address-
ing him, proving themselves to be. And this
they must be told at least, if they will not
effectually be taught. It was in a tone of
assumed superiority that they had spoken to
him when they prescribed the course he should
pursue. How far above them does he rise, as,
from that altitude whose very height hid it
from their eyes, he calmly yet solemnly rolls
back on them their rebuke — " My time is not
yet come, but your time is always ready. The
world cannot hate you, but me it hateth, be-
cause I testify of it that the works thereof are
evil. Gro ye up unto the feast. I go not up
yet unto the feast, for my time is not yet full
come." They would have him seize upon the
opportunity of the approaching feast to show
himself to the world, to win the world's favor
and applause. This was their notion of human
life. The stage upon which men play their
parts here was in their eyes but as a mixed
array of changes and chances upon which the
52 Chkist and his Beetheen.
keen eye of selfishness should be always fixed,
ready to grasp and make the most of them for
purposes of personal aggrandizement. For
such as they were the time was always ready.
They had no other reckoning to make — no
other star to steer by — than simply to discern
when and how their selfish interests could be
best promoted, and what their hands thus found
to do, to do it with all their might. The world
could not hate them, for they were of the world,
and the world loveth its own. Let them court
its favor, let them seek its pleasures, its honors,
its profits, and the world would be pleased
with the homage that was offered it, and if
they but succeeded, they might count upon its
applause, for men would praise them when
they did well for themselves.'^' It was not so
with Jesus, but utterly and diametrically the
reverse. His was no life either of random
impulses, of fitful accident, or of regulated self-
seeking. The w^orld he lived in was to him no
antechamber, with doors of aggrandizement
here and there around, for whose opening he
was greedily to watch, that he might go in
speedily and seize the prizes that lay beyond,
* PBalm slix. 18.
Christ and his Beethken. 63
before others grasped them. It was the place
mto which the Father hu,d sent him to do there
that Father's bushiess, to finish the work there
given him to do. And in the doing of that
work there is to be no heat, no hurry, no im-
patience with him. The time, the horn- for
each act and deed was already settled in the
purposes and ordinances of the Father. And
the Father's time, the Father's hour were his,
for which he was always ready calmly and pa-
tiently to wait. The world's hatred he counted
on — he was prepared for. He knew what
awaited him at Jerusalem. He knew what the
hatred cherished against him there would
finally and ere long effect ; but he must not
prematurely expose himself to it, nor suffer it
to hasten by a single day the great decease he
was to accomplish at Jerusalem. His time
was coming — the time of his manifestation to
Israel — -of his showing forth to the world — a
very different kind of manifestation from that
of which his brethren were dreaming. But
it was not yet fully come, and therefore he did
not mean to go up to Jerusalem and openly to
take part from the beginning as one of its cel-
ebrators in thi-s approaching Feast of Taber-
nacles. This, in ways which we can easily
54 Cheist and his Beetheen.
conjecture, but are not at liberty dogmatically
to assert, would have interfered with the orderly
evolution of the great event in which his earthly
ministry was to close. But the time was fixed
— that feast was drawing on- — when his hour
would come, and then it would be seen how
the Son would glorify the Father and the
Father be glorified in the Son.
And now let us remember that the sharp
and vivid contrast drawn here by our Saviour's
own truthful hand — between himself and his
brethren according to the flesh — is the very
same that he has taught us to draw between all
his true disciples and the world. Let us hsten
to the description he gave of his own in that
sublime intercessory prayer offered up on the
eve of his agony, in that supper chamber in
which the first communion was celebrated :
"They are not of the world, even as I am not
of the world." The Tather did not need to
know for whom his Son was then interceding.
The Father did not need to have any descrip-
tion of their character given to him. Yet
twice in that prayer did Jesus say of his true
followers thus: "They are not of the world,
evdi- as I am not of the world." To know and
and feel and act as he did j under the deep
Christ and his Beetheen. 65
abiding impression that, low as our lives are
compared with his — small and insignificant as
the ends are that any of us can accomplish —
yet that our times, our ways, our doings, are
all ordered by heavenly wisdom for heavenly
ends ; that the tangled threads of our destiny
are held by a Father's hand, to be woven into
such patterns as to him seems best ; by the
cross of our Redeemer — by the redemption
that was by it wrought out for us — by the
great example of self-sacrifice that was in it
exhibited — by the love of him who died that
he might live, to have the world crucified unto
us, and we crucified to the world ; — to have
the same mind in us that was in him who came
not to be ministered unto but to minister, who,
though he was so rich, for our sakes became
so poor, that we through his poverty might be
rich : — this would be to realize the description
that our Lord has left behind him of what all
his true disciples ought to be, and in some mea-
sure are. As we take up and apply the test it
supplies, how deeply may we all humble our-
selves before him — under the consciousness of
how slightly, how partially, if at all, the de-
scription is true of us !
IV.
CHRIST AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES.*
GREAT national benefits, civil, social, and
religious, were conferred upon the Jews
by the ordinance that three times each year
the whole adult population of the country
should assemble at Jerusalem. The finest
seasons of the year, spring and autumn, were
fixed on for these gatherings of the people.
The journeyings at such seasons of friends and
neighbors, in bands of happy fellowship, must
have been healthful and exhilarating. Separ-
ated as it was into clans or tribes, the frequent
reunion of the entire community must have
served to counteract and subdue any jealousies
or divisions that might otherwise have arisen.
The meeting together as children of a common
progenitor, living under the same laws, heirs of
the same promises, worshippers of the same
* Johu vii. 11-52.
The Feast op Tabernacles. 67
God, must not only have cultivated the spirit
of brotherhood and nationality, but have
strengthened their faith and guarded from the
encroachments of idolatry the worship of the
country. Among the lesser advantages that
these periodic assemblages brought along with
them, they afforded admirable opportunities for
the expression and interchange of the senti-
ments of the people on every subject that par-
ticularly interested them : what in our times
the press and public meetings do, they did for
the Jews. So far as we know, no nation of
antiquity had such full and frequent means of
testing and indicating the state of public feel-
ing. Whatever topic had been engrossing the
thoughts of the community would be sure
to be the subject of general conversation in
the capital the next time that the tribes as-
sembled in Jerusalem. Remembering how
fickle public feeling is, how difficult it is to
fix it and keep it concentrated upon one sub-
ject for any considerable period, we may be
certain that it was a subject singularly in-
teresting— one which had taken a general and
very strong hold of the public mind, that for a
year and a half, during five successive festivals,
58 Christ at the
came up ever fresh upon the hps of the con-
gregated thousands.
Yet it was so as to the appearance among
them of Jesus Christ. Eighteen months had
passed since he had been seen in Jerusalem,
yet no sooner has the Feast of Tabernacles
commenced than the Jews look everywhere
around for him, and say, " Where is he ?" The
absence of one man among so many thousands
might, we should think, have passed by unno-
ticed. The absence of this man is the subject
of general remark. The people generally speak
of him W' ith bated breath, for it is well enough
known that he is no favorite with the great
men of the capital, and as they speak great
discord of opinion prevails. It gives us, how-
ever, a very good idea of the extent and
strength of the impression he had made upon
the entire population of the country, that at
this great annual gathering, and after so long
an absence, he is instantly the object of search,
and so generally the subject of conversation.
Even while they were thus speaking of him he
was on his way to Jerusalem. Travelling
alone, or but slenderly escorted, and choosing
an unfrequented route, so that no pre-intima-
tion of his approach might reach the city, he
Feast op Tabeenacles. 59
arrives about the middle of the feast, and
throws off at once all attempt at concealment.
Passing, as we might think, from the extreme
of caution to the extreme of daring, he plants
himself among the crowd in the Temple courts,
and addresses them as one only of the oldest
and most learned of the Rabbis might have
ventured to do. Some of the rulers are there,
but the suddenness of his appearance, the bold-
ness of the step he takes, the manner of his
speech, make them for the time forget their
purpose. They can't but listen like the rest,
but they won't give heed to the things about
the divine kingdom that he is proclaiming.
What strikes them most, and excites their won-
der, is that he speaks so well, quotes the Scrip-
tures, and shows himself so accurately ac-
quainted with the law. "How knoweth this
man letters," they say of him, "having never
learned?" They would turn the thoughts of
the people from what Jesus was saying to the
consideration of his title and qualification to
address them so. Who is this ? in what school
was he trained ? at the feet of which of our
great Rabbis did he sit ? by what authority
does he assume this office ? Questions very
natural for men full of all the proud and exclu-
GO Cheist at the
sive spirit of officialism to put ; questions, by
the very putting of which they would lower
him in the estimation of the multitude and try
to strip his teaching of its power. They give
to Jesus the opportunity of declaring, " My
doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me." ' I
am not addressing you either as a self-taught
man, or one brought up in any of our schools.
I am not addressing to you truths that I was
taught by others, or have myself elaborated.
Think not of me, who or what I am ; think of
what I teach, receive it as coming, not from me,
but from him who sent me. You ask about
my credentials ; you would like to know what
right I have to become a teacher of the peo-
ple. There is a far simpler and better way of
coming to a just conclusion about my teaching
than the one that you are pointing to, and,
happily, it is one that lies open unto all. If
any man is truly willing to do the divine will ;
if he wants to know what that will is in order
that he may do it ; if that, in listening to my
teaching, be his simple, earnest aim, he shall
know of the doctrine that I am teaching,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak of
myself No amount of native talent, no extent
of school learning of any kind, will compensate
Feast of Tabeenacles. 61
for the want of a pure and honest purpose.
But if sucli a purpose be cherished, you shall
see its end gained ; if your eye be single, your
whole body shall be full of light.' And still
the saying of our Lord holds good, that in the
search of truth, in the preserving us from ei"ror,
in the guiding of us to right judgments about
himself and his doctrine, the heart has more to
do with the matter than the head — the willing-
ness to do telling upon the capacity to know
and to believe. Jesus asks that he himself be
judged by this principle and upon this rule.
What, in teaching, was his aim ? Was it to
display his talent, to win a reputation, to have
his ideas adopted as being his ? — was it to
please himself, to show forth his own glory ?
How boldly does he challenge these critical
observers to detect in him any symptom of
self-seeking ! With what a serene conscious-
ness of the entire absence in himself of that
element from which no other human heart was
ever wholly free, does he say of himself, " He
that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory :
but he that seeketh his glory that sent him,
the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in
him."
So much is said by Jesus to encourage all
62 Chkist at the
truly desirous to know about him ; so much to
vindicate himself against the adverse judgment
of the rulers ; but how does all this apply to
them ? Have they the willingness to do ? have
they the purity and the unselfishness of pur-
pose ? This feast of tabernacles was the one
peculiarly associated with the reading of the
law. "And Moses commanded them, saying,
At the end of every seven years, in the feast
of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to ap-
pear before the Lord thy God in the jjlace
which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law
before all Israel in their hearing, that they may
hear, and that they may learn, and fear the
Lord your God, and observe to do all the
words of this law."'" It is in presence of the
very men whose duty it was to carry out this
ordinance, that Jesus is now standing. From
the first day they hated him, and from the
time, now eighteen months ago, that he had
cured the paralytic, breaking, as they thought,
the Sabbath, and said that God was his father,
making himself equal with God, they had re-
solved to kill him. This was the way — by
cherishing hatred and the secret intent to mur-
* Deut. xsxi. 10-12.
Feast of Tabernacles. 63
der — that they were deaUng with the hxw.
Rolhng then' adverse judgment of him back
upon themselves, and dragging out to hght the
purpose that in the meantime they would have
kept concealed, Jesus said, "Did not Moses
give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth
the law ? Why go ye about to kill me ?"
Those to whom that question is more immedi-
ately addressed have no answer to give to it ;
but in the crowd are those who, ignorant of
the plot against the life of Jesus, yet sharing in
the rul-ers' contempt and hatred, say to him,
'' Thou hast a devil : who goeth about to kill
thee ?" Christ stops not to deal with such a
speech, but takes up at once what had furnished
so painful a weapon in the hands of the Phari-
sees against him. He refers to that one deed
still fresh in the minds of all those in Jerusa-
lem. The offence of that one act of his in cur-
ing the impotent man on a Sabbath-day, had
been made to overshadow all his other acts, to
overbear all his other claims to attention and
regard. "I have done one work," he said,
" and ye all marvel," as if I thereby plainly
proved myself a breaker of the Sabbath law.
Formerly, before the Sanhedrim, he had de-
fended himself against this charge of Sabbath-
64 Cheist at the
breaking by other and higher arguments.
Now addressing, as he does, the common peo-
ple, he takes an instance famihar to them all.
The Sabbath law runs thus: "Thou shalt do
no work on the seventh day." How was this
law to be interpreted ? If the circumcision of
a man on the seventh day was not a breach of
it, — and no one thought it was, — what was to
be said of the healing of a man upon that day ?
If ye on the Sabbath circumcise a man, and
the law of Moses is not broken, why "are ye
angry at me, because I have made a man every
whit whole on the Sabbath-day?'' The ana-
logy was so perfect, and the question so plain,
that no reply was attempted. In the tempo-
rary silence that ensues, some of the citizens of
Jerusalem who were aware of the secret resolu-
tion of the Sanhedrim, struck with wonder at
what they now see and hear, cannot help say-
ing, "Is not this he whom they seek to kill?
But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say noth-
ing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that
this is the very Christ ?" We might imagine
the words to have come from those who were
ready themselves to see the very Christ in
Jesus, but though they share not their rulers'
persecuting spirit, these men have a prejudice
Feast of Tabernacles. 65
of their own. It had come to be a very gen-
eral opinion about this time in Judea, that the
Messiah was to have no common human origin,
no father or mother, was to be raised from the
dead beneath, or to come as an angel from the
heavens. His not meeting this requirement is
enough with these men to set aside the claims
of Jesus of Nazareth. " Howbeit," they say,
as men quite satisfied with the sureness of the
ground on which they go, "Howbeit we know
this man whence he is : but when Christ
Cometh, no man knoweth whence he is. Then
cried Jesus in the temple as he taught," — such
an easy and self-satisfied way of disposing of
the whole question of his Messiahship, causing
him to lift up his voice in loud and strenuous
protest, — "Ye both know me, and ye know
whence I am ; and I am not come of myself,
but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not.
But I know him : for I am from him, and he
hath sent me." The old and oft-repeated truth
of his mission from the Father, coupled now
with such a strong assertion of his own know-
ledge and of these men's ignorance of who his
Father was, that they are so irritated as to be
disposed to proceed to violence ; but upon
them, as upon the rulers, there is a restraint:
66 Christ at the
"No man laid hands on him, because his hour
was not yet come."
So impressed in his favor have many of the
onlookers now become, that they are bold
enough to say, " When Christ cometh, will he
do more miracles than these which this man
hath done ? " As Jesus had done no miracles
at this time in Jerusalem, the speakers obvi-
ously refer to what he had elsewhere wrought.
Their speech is immediately reported to the
Pharisees and Chief Priests sitting in council in
an adjacent court of the Temple, who, so soon
as they hear that the people are beginning to
speak openly in his favor, send officers to take
him. With obvious allusion to the errand on
which these men come, as if to tell them how
secure he felt, how sure he was that his com-
ings and his goings in the future would be all
of his own free will, — Jesus says, " Yet a little
while am I with you, and then I go to him
that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not
find me : and where I am, thither ye cannot
come ;" words very plain to us, but very dark
to those who have no other interpretation to
put upon them but that he may mean perhaps
to leave Judea and go to the dispersed among
the Gentiles.* Little, however, as they were
Feast of Tabernacles. 67
understood, there was such a tone of quiet, yet
sad assurance about them, that the high priests'
officers are arrested, and return to give this to
their employers as the reason why they had not
executed the order given them, '• Never man
spake hke this man."
So ended our Lord's first day of teaching in
the Temple, a day revealing on his part a wis-
dom, a courage, a serene, sublime, untroubled
trust which took his adversaries by surprise,
and held all their deadly purposes against him
in suspense — and on the part of the multitude
the strangest mixture of conflicting opinions
and sentiments, with which our Lord so dealt
as to win exemption from like interruptions
afterwards, and to secure for himself an unbro-
ken audience on the day when his last and
greatest words were spoken.
The Feast of Tabernacles was instituted to
commemorate the time when the Israelites had
dwelt in tents during their sojourn in the desert.
To bring the remembrance of those long years
of tent-life more vividly before them, the peo-
ple were enjoined, during the seven days that
it lasted, to leave their accustomed homes, and
to dwell in booths or huts made of gathered
branches of the palm, the pine, the myrtle, or
68 Christ at the
other trees of a like thick foliage. It must
have been a strange spectacle when, on the
da}^ before the feast, the inhabitants of Jerusa-
lem poured out from their dwellings, spread
themselves over the neighborhood, stripped the
groves of their leafiest branches, brought them
back to rear them into booths upon the tops of
their houses, along the leading streets, and in
some of the outer comis of the Temple. The
dull, square, stony aspect of the city suffered a
singular metamorphosis as these leafy structures
met everywhere the eye. It was the great Jew-
ish harvest-home — for this feast was celebrated
in autumn, after all the fruits of the earth had
been gathered in. It was within the Temple
that its joyous or thanksgiving character
especially developed itself. Morning and eve-
ning, day by day, during sacrifices more
crowded than those of any other of the great
festivals, the air was rent wdth the praises of
the rejoicing multitudes. At the time of the
libation of water, the voice of their glad
thanksgiving swelled up into its fullest and
most jubilant expression. Each morning a
vast procession formed itself around the little
fountain of Siloam down in the valley of the
Kedron. Out of its flowing waters the priests
Feast op Tabernacles. 69
filled a large golden pitcher. Bearing it aloft,
they climbed the steep ascent of Moriah, passed
through the water-gate, up the broad stairs
and into the court of the Temple, in whose
centre the altar stood. Before this altar two
silver basins were planted, with holes beneath
to let the liquid poured into them flow down
into the subterranean reservoir beneath the
Temple, to run out thence into the Kedron,
and down into the Dead Sea. One priest stood
and poured the water he had brought up from
Siloam into one of these basins. Another
poured the contents of a like pitcher filled
with wine into the other. As they did so the
vast assemblage broke out into the most exult-
ing exclamations of joy. The trumpets of the
Temple sounded. In voice and upon instru-
ment the trained choristers put forth all their
skill and power. Led by them, many thou-
sand voices chanted the Great Hallel (the
Psalms from the 113th to the 118th), pausing
at the verses on which the chief emphasis was
placed to wave triumphantly in the air the
branches that they all bore, and make the wel-
kin ring with their rejoicing. This was the
happiest service in all the yearly ceremonial of
Judaism. "He," said the old Jewish proverb,
70 Christ at the
" who has never seen the rejoicmg at the pour-
ing out of the waters of Siloam — has never seen
rejoicing all his life." All this rejoicing was
connected with that picturesque proceeding by
which the Lord's providing water for his peo-
ple in their desert wanderings was symbolized
and commemorated. And few, if any, have
doubted that it was with direct allusion to this
daily pouring out of the waters of Siloam, which
was so striking a feature of the festival, that on
the last, that great day of the feast, Jesus
stood and cried, " If any man thirst, let him
come unto me and drink." "Your forefathers
thirsted in the wilderness, and I smote the rock
for them, so that the waters flowed forth. I
made a way for them in the wilderness, and
gave rivers in the desert to give drink to my
people — my chosen. But of what was that
thirst of theirs, and the manner in which I met
it, an emblem ? Did not Isaiah tell you, when
in my name he spake, saying, " I will pour
water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon
the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon
thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.
When the poor and needy geek water, and
there is none, and their tongue faileth for
thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of
Feast of Tabeknacles. 71
Israel will not forsake tliein. I will open rivers
in high places, and fountains in the midst of
the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool
of water, and the dry land springs of water ?"
And now I am here to fulfil in person all the
promises that I made by the hps of my servant
Isaiah, and I gather them up and condense
them in the invitation — "If any man thirst let
him come unto me and drink."
"If any man thirst!" Ah! the Saviour
knew it of these rejoicing Israelites, that glad
and grateful as they were for the land tha-t
they had entered into out of the wilderness —
no dry and thirsty land, but one of springs
and of rivers, of the early and the latter rain —
there was a thirst that none of its fountains
could quench, a hunger that none of its fruit-
age could satisfy. And he knows it of us, and
of all men, that a like deep inward thirst dries
up our spirit, a like deep inward hunger is ever
gnawing at our heart. Are there no desires,
and longings, and aspirations in these souls of
ours that nothing earthly can meet and satisfy ?
Not money, not honor, not power, not pleas-
ure, not anything nor everything this world
holds out — they do not, cannot fill our heans
— they do not, cannot quench that thirst that
72 Cheist at the
burns within. Can any one tell us where we
may carry this great thirst and get it fully
quenched ? From the lips of the man Christ
Jesus the answer comes. He speaks to the
crowds in the Temple of Jerusalem, but his
words are not for them alone — they have been
given to the broad heavens, to be borne wide
over all the earth, and down through all its
generations : "If any man thirst, let him come
unto me and drink." Thirsty we know we are,
and thirsty shall remain till we hear these gra-
cious words, and hearing come, and coming
drink, and drinking get the want supplied. Yes,
we beheve — Lord, help our unbelief — that
there is safety, peace, rest, refreshment, joy for
these weary aching hearts in Thee — the well-
spring of our eternal life.
"He that believeth in me, as the scripture
saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
waters." Below the spot on which Jesus stood
when speaking in the courts of the Temple,
there lay vast subterranean vaults, whose sin-
gular recesses liave only recently been explored.
Descending into them, you get a glimpse, by
help of dimly burning tapers, of a vast cistern
below the site of the ancient temple. Whether
this large reservoir be filled wholly from with-
Feast of Tabeenacles. 73
out, or has a spring of living waters supplying
it from below, remains to be ascertained.
Enough, however, has been discovered to stamp
with truth the ancient Jewish stories about the
great cistern, " whose compass was as the sea,"
and about the unfailing waters of the Temple.
Nor can we any longer doubt that it was to
these subterranean supplies of water that the
prophet Joel alluded when he said, "It shall
come to pass in that day that a fountain shall
come forth out of the house of the Lord, and
shall water the valley of Shittim ;" that the
prophet Zechariah alluded to when he said, "It
shall be in that day that living waters shall go
out from Jerusalem, half of them turned toward
the former sea, and half of them toward the
hinder ; " that still more pointedly the prophet
Ezekiel alluded to when he said, "Afterward
he brought me again into the door of the house,
and behold waters issued out from under the
threshold of the house eastward, and the wa-
ters came down from under the right side of
the house, at the south side of the altar.'' And
as little can we doubt that Jesus had these very
scriptures in his thoughts and that cavity be-
neath his feet in his eye when he said, " He
that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, out
74 Christ at Feast of Tabernacles.
of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters."
'He that believeth shall not barely and alone
have his own thirst assuaged, but I in him, by
my Spirit given, moulding him into my own
likeness, shall turn him into a separate well-
head, from whose depths rivers of living water
shall flow forth to visit, gladden, fructify some
lesser or larger portion of the arid waste
around.' Let us know and remember then,
that Jesus, the divine assuager of the thirst
of human hearts, imparts the blessing to each
who comes to him, that he may go and impart
the blessing to others. He comforts us with a
sense of his presence, guidance, protection,
sympathy, that we may go and console others
with that same comfort wherewith we have
been comforted of him. He never gives that
we may selfishly hoard the treasure that we
get. That treasure, like the bread that was
broken for the thousands on the hillside of
Galilee, multiplies in the hand that takes it to
divide and to distribute.
V.
JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.*
JESUS was in the Treasury. It stood at the
north side of one of those large enclosures
called the Court of the Women, which lay out-
side the Temple properly so calhd, and in
which, on all the great annual festivals, crowds
were wont daily to assemble. In the centre
of this court, at the Feast of Tabernacles, two
tall stands were placed, each supporting four
large branching candelabra. As at the time
of morning sacrifice the procession wound its
way up from the fountain of Siloam, and the
water was poured out from the golden pitcher
to remind the people of the supply of water
that had been made for their forefathers dur-
ing the desert wanderings ; so after the even-
ing sacrifice all the lights in these candelabra
were kindled, the flame broad and brilliant
enough to illuminate the whole city, to remind
* John viii. 12-59.
76 Jesus the Light op the Woeld.
the people of the pillar of light by which their
marchiugs through the wilderness were guided.
And still freer and heartier than the morning
jubilations which attended on the libation of
the water, were the evening ones which accom-
panied the kindling ef the lights. It was with
allusion to the one ceremony that Jesus said,
" If any man thirst let him come unto me and
drink." It was with allusion to the other, of
which both he and those around him were re-
minded by the stately chandeliers which stood
at the time before their eyes, that he said, "I
am the light of the world, he that followeth
me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life." In uttering both these say-
ings, Jesus placed himself in a singular and
elevated relationship to the whole human fam-
ily. In the one he invited the entire multitude
of human thirsters to come to him to have
their thirst assuaged. In the other he claimed
to be the one central source of light and life to
the whole world. Is it surprising that as they
looked at him, and heard him speaking in this
wa}'-, and thought of who and what, according
to their reckoning, he was, the Jews should
have seen egotism and arrogance in his words ?
There was in truth the very utmost pitch of
Jesus the Light of the "Would. 77
such arrogance and egotism in them, had the
speaker been such as they deemed him, a man
hke themselves. But one of his very objects
in speaking so was to convince them and us
that he was not such — that he stood towards
the human family in quite other relationship
from that in which any single member of it
could stand to all the rest — that besides his
connection with it he had another and higher
connection, that with his Father in heaven,
which entitled him to speak and act in a way
peculiar to himself. By word and deed, again
and again repeated, Jesus had sought in vain
to convey into the minds of these Jews an idea
of how singular that connection was. He tries
now once again, and once again he fails. In-
stead of their asking ' Who is this that offers
to quench all human thirst, and who proclaims
himself to be the light of the world ?" saying to
themselves in reply, ' He must be more than
human, he must be divine — for who but One
could claim such a prerogative and power?'
they listen only to find something to object to,
and grasping greedily at what lay upon the
very surface of the sayings, they say to him,
"Thou bearest record of thyself; thy record is
not true," Perhaps they had our Lord's own
78 Jesus the Light of the Wokld.
words on the occasion of the former visit to Jeru-
salem on their memory : " If I bear witness of
myself, my witness is not true." He was speak-
ing then of a solitary unsupported testimony,
— a testimony imagined to be borne by him-
self, to himself, and for himself, as one seeking
to advance his own interests, promote his own
glory. Such a testimony, had he borne it, he
had then said would be altogether untrustwor-
thy. His answer now to those who would taunt
him at once with egotism and inconsistency is,
" Though I bear record of myself, yet my re-
cord is true • for I know whence I came, and
whither I go.'' ' Had I not known that I came
forth from the Father, am going back to the
Father, that I am here only as his representa-
tive and revealer, — did the consciousness of
full, clear, constant union with hun not fill my
spirit, — I would not, could not speak as I now
do. But I know the Father even as I am known
by him ; he works, and I work with him ; what-
soever things he doeth I do likewise. It is out
of the depth of the consciousness of my union
with him that I speak, and what man know-
eth the things of a man save the spirit of man
that is in him, and however else are you to
know what can alone be known by my reveal-
Jesus the Light of the World. 79
irig it if I do not speak of myself, or do not
speak as he only can who stands in the rela-
tionship in which I do to the Father.
'But "ye cannot tell whence I come and
Avhither I go." You never gave yourselves
any trouble to find it out. You never opened
mind or heart to the evidence that I laid before
you. What early alienated you from me was
that I came not accredited as you would have
desired, submitted no proofs of my heavenly
calhng to you for your approval, made no obei-
sance to you on entering on my career, came
not up here to seek instruction at your hands,
asked not from you any liberty to act as a
scribe, a teacher of the law — instead of this,
claimed at once this Temple as my Father's
house, condemned the way in which you were
suffering its sacred precincts to be defiled, and
have ever since, in all that I have said and
done, been hfting up a constant, loud, and
strenuous protest against you and your ways.
You sit now in judgment upon me — you con-
demn me. You say that I am bearing record
of myself, and that my record in not true, but
" ye judge after the flesh.'' You have allowed
human prejudice, human passion, to fashion
your judgment. I so judge no man. It was
80 Jesus the Light of the Wokld.
not to judge that I came into this world. I
came not to condemn, but to save it. And yet
if I judge, as in one sense I must, and am even
now about to do, my judgment is true, for I
am not alone, but I and the Father that sent
me judge, as we do. everything, together.
Your own very law declares, "that the testi-
mony of two men is true." I am one that
bear witness of myself, and the Father that
sent me beareth witness of me.'
As if they wished this second witness to be
produced, they say to him contemptuously,
"Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye
neither know me, nor my Father." ' You
think that you know me, you pride yourselves
in not being deceived in me as the poor igno-
rant multitude is — my earthly pedigree as be-
lieved in by you satisfies you as to my charac-
ter and claims. You can scarcely, after all
that I have said, have failed to perceive whom
I meant when I was speaking of my Father.
Him, too, you think you know ; you pride
yourselves on your superior acquaintance with
him ; you present yourselves to the people as
the wisest and best expounders of his will and
law. But "ye neither know me nor my
Father ;" for to know the one is to know the
Jesus the Light op the Wokld. 81
other — to remain ignorant of the one is to re-
main ignorant of the other. It is yom' want
of all true knowledge of me that keeps you
from knowing God. It is the want of all true
knowledge of God that keeps you from know-
ing me. Had you known me, you should have
known him ; had you known him, you should
have known me."
So fared it with our Lord's declaration that
he was the Light of the world as it was at first
spoken in the temple ; so ended the first brief
colloquy with the Jews to which its utterance
gave birth. There was one, however, of its first
bearers upon whom it made a very different
impression from that it made on the rulers of
the Jews, who treasured it up in his heart,
who saw ever as his Master's life evolved itself
before him, more and more evidence of its truth
whose spirit was afterwards enlightened to take
in a truer, larger idea of the place and function
of his Lord in the spiritual kingdom than has
ever, perhaps, been given to another of the
children of men, who, on this account, was
chosen of the Lord to set them forth in his
Gospel and in his Epistles, and who has given
to us this explanation of the words of his Mas-
ter : " In the beginning was the Word, and the
82 Jesus the Light of the Woeld.
"Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was m the beginning with God. All
things were made by him ; and without him
was not anythii'ig made that was made. In
him was life ; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness ; and the dark-
ness comprehended it not." John " came for a
witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all
men through him might believe. He was not
that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that
Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world." " And
the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us
(and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and
truth." "That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with
our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled, of the Word of life (for
the life was manifested,) and we have seen it,
and bear witness, and show unto you that eter-
nal life which was with the Father, and was
manifested unto us." " This is the true God
and eternal life." Such is the description John
has left us of him who spiritually is the sun of
this dark world, the central source of all its life
and light. The life and hght of the soul lie in
Jesus the Light of the World. 83
the love of its Creator, — in likeness to him,
communion with him, — in free, glad service
rendered, the joy of his approval felt. Freshly,
fully was life and light enjoyed by man in the
days of his innocence, — the light of God's gra-
cious presence shone upon his soul and glad-
dened all his heart. Made in his Maker's
image, he walked confidingly, rejoicingly, in
the light of his countenance, reflecting in his
own peaceful, loving, holy, happy spirit as
much as such mirror could of the glory of his
Creator, He disobeyed and died ; the light
went out ; at one stride came the dark. But
the gloom of that darkness, the stillness of that
death, were not suffered to prevail. From the
beginning life and light have gone forth from
Christ ; all the spiritual animation that this
world anywhere has witnessed, all the spiritual
light by which its darkness has been alleviated,
spring from him. The great Son of Righteous-
ness, indeed, seemed long of rising. It was a
time of moon and stars and morning twihgiit,
till he came. But at last he arose with healing
in his beams. And now it is by coming unto
him that death is turned into life, and darkness
into light. He that hath him hath life, he that
84 Jesus the Light of the World.
foUoweth him walketh not in darkness, but has
the hght of hfe.
The short colloquy betwixt Christ and the
Pharisees, consequent upon his announcement
of himself as the light of the world, ended in
their lips being for the moment closed. The
silence that ensued was speedily broken by our
Lord's repeating what he had said before about
his going away — going where they could not
follow. The speech had formerl}^ excited only
wonder, and they had said among themselves,
"Will he go unto the dispersed among the
Gentiles ?" Now their passion against him has
so risen that it excites contempt, and they say
openly, not indeed to him, but of him, " Will he
kill himself? That would indeed be to go where
we could not follow. Perhaps that may be what
he means." The drawing of such distinction
between themselves and him gives to Jesus the
opportunity of setting forth the real and radical
difference that there was between them. The
portraiture of their character and pedigree
which, with truthful and unsparing hand, he
proceeded to fill up, amid many rude breaks
and scornful interruptions on their part, we
shall not minutely scrutinize. One or two
things only about the manner of our Lord's
Jesus the Light of the Woeu). 85
treatment of his adversaries in this word-battle
with them, let us note.
He does not say explicitly that he is the
Christ. His questioners were well aware what
khid of person their Messiah was generally ex-
pected to be, how difierent from all that Jesus
was. They would provoke him to make a
claim which they knew would be generally dis-
allowed. He will not do it. When they say,
" Who art thou ?" he contents himself by say-
ing, ' ' I am essentially or radically that which
I speak, my sayings reveal myself, and tell
who and what I am." In this, as in so many
other instances of his dealing with those opposed
to him at Jerusalem, his sayings were confined
to assertions or revelations, not of his Messiah-
ship, but of his unity of nature, will, and pur-
pose with the Father. This was the great
stumbling-block that the Jews found ever and
anon flung down before them. That in all
which Jesus was and said and did he was to be
taken as reveaUng the cliaracter and express-
hig the will of God, was what they never could
allow, and the more that the idea of a connex-
ion between him and God approaching to ab-
solute identification was pressed upon them,
the more they resented and rejected it. But
86 Jesus the Light or the Woeld.
why ? Jesus himself told them. Their unbe-
lief, he constantly asserted, sprung from a mor-
ally impure source ; from an unwillingness to
come into such living contact with the Father ;
from their dislike to the purity, the benevo-
lence, the godliness that were in him as in the
Father. When driven from the position they
first assumed as children of Abraham, they
claimed a still higher paternity, and said, " We
have one Father, even God." Our Lord's re-
ply was, " If God were your Father, ye would
love me, for I proceeded forth and came from
God ; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
Why do ye not understand my speech ? even
because ye cannot hear my word."
They wore a mask ; behind that mask they
hid a malicious disposition, and so long as de-
ceitfulness and malignity ruled their spirit and
regulated their lives, children of Abraham,
children of God, they were not, could not be.
They might boast what other parentage they
pleased, but their works jDroclaimed that they
were none other than the children of him who
was a liar and a murderer from the beginning.
" Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts
of your father ye will do." Yery plain lan-
guage, and very severe — not language for man
Jesus the Light of the Would. 87
to use to man — suitable alone for him who
knew what was in man, who came as its light
into the world, and discharged one of his offices
as such in laying bare the hidden corruption
with which he came into contact, for " all
things that are reproved are manifest by the
light, for whatsoever doth make manifest is
light."
'* But as he spake these words many believed
on him," and for them, amid all his rebukes of
his enemies, this was his word of encourage-
ment, that if they continued in his word, if they
but followed faithfully the light that shone m
him, they should know the truth, know him
who was the truth, and in him, and by that
truth, they should be made free. These Jews
imagined that simply as the children of Abra-
ham they were free. So fondly did they cling
to this idea that often as the yoke of the
stranger had been on them they were ready
proudly to say, " We were never in bondage
to any man." Notwithstanding this they were
slaves — slaves to sin and Satan. In one sense
they were in God's house, numbered outwardly
as members of its household ; but being actu-
ally such slaves, in that house they could not
abide forever. But if he who was not a ser-
88 Jesus the Light of the World.
vant in the house of another, but an heir in
his own house — his Father's house — if he made
his followers free, then were they free indeed.
And into what a glorious liberty should they
thus be introduced! — freedom from the Law,
its curse and condemnation ; freedom from the
yoke of Jewish and all other ceremonialism ;
freedom from the fear of guilt and the bondage
of corruption ; freedom to serve God willingly
and lovingly, — to be all, do all, suffer all which
his will requires, — this was the liberty where-
with Christ was ready to make free. This
freedom was to be tasted but in imperfect
measure by any here on earth, for still onward
to the end the old tyrant whose subjects they
had been would be making his presence and
power felt ; still onward to the end, while the
mind was serving the law of God, a law would
be in the members warring against the law
of the mind. But the hour of a final and
complete emancipation was to come at death.
Death ! it looked to nature like th-e stop-
page of all life, the breaking of all ties, the
quenching of all freedom and all joy. Not
such was it to be to him who shared the life
that Jesus breathes into the soul. To him it
was to be rather light than darkness, rather
Jesus the Light of the "Woeld. 89
life than death, the scattering of every cloud,
the breaking of every fetter, the deliverance
from every foe, the setting the spirit absolutely
and forever free to soar with unchecked, un-
shadowed wing, up to the fountain-head of all
life and blessedness, to bask in the sunshine
forever. " Yerily, verily, if a man keep my
sayings, he shall never see death."
But now let us look a moment at the special
testimonies to his own person and character
which, upon this occasion, and in the course
of these rough conflicts with scornful and con-
temptuous opponents, Jesus bore. Light is its
own revealer. The sun can be seen alone in
the beams that he himself sends forth. So is
it with him who is the light of the world. It
is in the light of his own revelation of himself
that we can see Jesus as he is. And what, as
seen in the beams that he here sheds forth,
does he appear ? Two features of his charac-
ter stand prominently displayed : his sinless
holiness, his pre-existence and divine dignity.
In proof of the stainless purity of his nature
and his life, Jesus when here on earth made a
threefold appeal. He appealed to earth, to
hell, to heaven, and earth, hell, and heaven
each gave its answer back. Two of these
90 Jesus the Light of the Wokld.
appeals you have in the passage that is now
before us. Jesus appealed to earth when,
looking round upon those men who with the
keen eye of jealousy and hatred had been
watching him from the beginning to see what
flaws they could detect in him, he calmly and
confidently said, ' Which of you convinceth
me of sin, of any sin, the slightest transgres-
sion ? And earth gave her answer when these
men stood speechless before him.
He appealed to hell — to that devil of whom
he spoke so plahily as the father of all liars
and all murderers, who would have accused
and maligned him had he dared. "The prince
of this world cometh and findeth nothing in
me " — nothing of his own, nothing that he can
claim, no falsehood, no malice, no selfishness,
no unholiness in me. And hell gave its answer
when the devil whom Christ's word of power
drove forth from his human habitation was
heard to say, " I know thee who thou art,, the
Holy One of God."
Again, our Saviour carried the appeal to
heaven, and, standing in the presence of the
Great Searcher of all hearts, he said, in words
that had been blasphemous from any merely
human lips, " I do always those things that
Jesus the Light of the Woeld. 91
please him." And thrice during his mortal
career the heavens opened above his head,
and the voice of the Father was heard pro-
claiming, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased."
What shall we think or say of him who
claimed such perfect immunity from sin — the
entire absence of anything that could draw
down upon it the Divine displeasure, the full
presence of all that could draw down upon it
the Divine approval. Was he who knew
others so well, ignorant of himself, or, con-
scious of transgression, did he yet deny it ?
Ignorant beyond other men, a hypocrite worse
than those whom he charged with hypocrisy,
must Jesus Christ have been, if, in speaking of
his sinlessness as he did, his speech was not
the free and natural expression of a self-con-
sciousness of perfect purity, truth, and holiness
of heart and life. In presence of one realizing
such unstained perfection, who never once in
thought or word or deed swerved from the
right, the true, the good, the holy, how hum-
bled should we be under the consciousness of
how different it is with us, and yet with that
sense of humiliation should not the elevating,
ennobhng thought come in, that he in whom
92 Jesus the Light of the World.
the sublime idea of a sinless perfection stands
embodied, was no other than our Lord and
Saviour, who came to show us to what a height
this weak and sinful humanity of ours could
be raised, who became partaker of our nature
that we through him might become partakers
of the Divine, and of wliom we know that
when he shall appear we shall be like him,
when we shall see him as he is.
"Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my
day, and he saw it, and was glad." Chris-t's
day was no other than that of his manifesta-
tion in the flesh. Abraham rejoiced that he
should see that day, and lived his earthly life
cheered by the animating prospect. And he
saw it, as Moses and Elijah did, for he was one
of those who, in Christ's sense of the words,
had not tasted of death, of whom it was wit-
nessed that he liveth, to whom, in the realms
of departed spirits, the knowledge of the Re-
deemer's advent had been conveyed.
Jesus had said that Abraham had seen his
day. They twist his words as if he had said
that he had seen Abraham. "Thou art not
yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abra-
ham ?" The contemptuous query gives to our
Lord the opportunity of lifting the veil that
Jesus the Light oe the Wokld. 93
concealed his glory, and making the last, the
greatest revelation of himself : " Verily, verily,
I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am."
Not simply " Before Abraham was, I was," not
simply a declaration of a being before Abraham,
but a taking to himself of the great, the incom-
municable name, carrying with it the assertion
of self-existence, of supreme divinity. So they
understood it, who instantly took up stones to
stone him as a blasphemer. And so let us un-
derstand it, not taking up stones to stone him,
but lifting up hearts and hands together to
crown him Lord of all.
VI.
THE CURE OF THE MAN BORN BLIND.'^
WITHIN the court of the Temple, in
presence of the Pharisees and their
satellites, Jesus had said, " I am the light of
the world : he that foUoweth me shall not
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of
life." The saying, resented as egotistical and
arrogant, led on to that altercation which
ended in their taking up stones to cast at him,
and in his hiding himself in some mysterious
way and passing out of the Temple, "going
throuo-h the midst of them." At one of the
Temple gates, or by the roadside without, " as
Jesus passed by he saw a man which was
blind from his birth," — a well-known city beg-
gar, whom Jesus and his disciples may have
often passed in their way up to the Temple.
Now at the very time when we might have
* John ix.
The Cube of the Man Born Blind. 95
imagined him more than ordinarily desirous to
proceed in haste, in order to put himself be-
yond the reacli of the exasperated men out of
whose hands he had just escaped, Jesus stops
to look compassionately upon this man. He
sees in him a fit subject for a work being done,
which in the lower sphere of man's physical
nature shall illustrate the truth which he had
in vain been proclaiming in the treasury, that
he was the light of the world. As He stops,
his disciples gather round him and fix their
eyes also upon the man whose case has ar-
rested their Master's footsteps, and seems to
have absorbed his thoughts. But their thoughts
are not as his. They look, to think only of the
rarity and severity of the affliction under which
the man is laboring — to regard it as a judg-
ment of God, whereby some great sin was
punished — the man's own, it would be natural
to suppose it should be ; but then, the judg-
ment had come before any sin had been com-
mitted by him — he had been blind from his
birth. Could it be that the punishment had
preceded the » offence ; or was this a case in
which the sins of the parents had been visited
on their child ? " Master," they say to Jesus
in their perplexity, "who did sin^ this man or
96 The Cuke of the Man Born Blind.
his parents, that he was born bUnd ?"' The
one thmg that they had no doubt about, — and
in having no such doubt, were only sharing in
the sentiment of all the most devout of their
fellow-countrymen, — was that some signal sin
had been committed, upon which the signal
mark of God's displeasure had been stamped.
It was not as to the existence somewhere of
some exceeding fault that they were in the
least uncertain. Their only doubt was where
to lay it. It was the false but deep conviction
which lay beneath their question that Jesus
desired to expose and correct when he so
promptly and decisively replied, " Neither hath
this man sinned nor his parents," neither the
one nor the other has sinned so peculiarly that
the peculiar visitation of blindness from birth
has been visited on the transgression. Xot
that Jesus njeant to disconnect altogether
man's suffering from man's sins. Had he
meant to do so, he would not have said to the
jDaralytic whom he cured at the pool of Beth-
esda, "Go thy way, sin no more, lest a worse
thing come upon thee ;" but tl^at he wanted,
by vigorous stroke, to lay the axe at the root
of a prevalent superstitious feeling which led to
erroneous and presumptuous readings of God's
The Cube of tee Man Born Blind. 97
providences, connecting particular sufferings
with particular sins, and arguing from the rel-
ative severity of the one to the relative mag-
nitude of the other.
Nor was this the only instance in which our
Saviour dealt in the same manner with the
same popular error. But a few weeks from
the time in which he spake in this way to his
disciples, Jesus was in Periea. There had
been a riot in Jerusalem — some petty prema-
ture outburst of that insurrectionary spirit
which was rife throughout Judea. Pilate had
let loose his soldiers on the mob. Some Gali-
leans who had taken part in the riot, or were
supposed to have done so — for the Galileans
were always in the front rank of any move-
ment of the kind— were slain — slain even while
engaged in the act of sacrificing, their blood
mingled with their sacrifices : an incident so
fitted to strike the public eye, to arouse the
public indignation, that the news of it traveled
rapidly through the country. It reached the
place where Christ was teaching. Some of his
hearers, struck perhaps by something that he
had said about the signs of the times and the
judgments that were impending, took occasion
pubhcly to tell him of it. Perhaps they hoped
98 The Cuee of the Man Boen Blind.
that the recital would draw out from him some
burning expressions of indignation, pointed
against the foreign yoke under which the coun-
try was groaning ; the deed done by the Ro-
man governor had been so gross an outrage up-
on their national religion, upon the sacredness
of the holy Temple. If the tellers of the tale
cherished any such expectation they were dis-
appointed. As upon all like occasions, when-
ever any purely political question was brought
before him, Christ evaded it. He never once
touched or alluded to that aspect of the story.
But there was another side of it upon which
he perceived that the thoughts of not a few of
his hearers were fastened. It was a terrible
fate that these slaughtered Gralileans had met —
not only death by the Roman sword — but
death within the courts of the Temple — death
upon the very steps of the altar. There could
be but one opinion as to the deed of their mur-
derers— those rough Gentile soldiers of Pilate.
But the murdered, upon whom such a dreadful
doom had fallen, what was to be thought of
them? Christ's all-seeing eye perceived that
already in the breasts of many of those around
him, the leaven of that censorious, uncharitable,
superstitious spirit was working, which taught
The Cuke of the Man Boen Blind. 99
them to attach all extraordinary calamities to
extraordinary crimes. " Suppose ye," said Je-
sus, " that these Galileans were sinners above
all Gralileans because they suffered such things ?
I tell you nay." To give his question and his
answer a still broader aspect — to take out of
them all that was peculiarly Galilean — he
quotes another striking and well-known occur-
rence that had recently happened near Jerusa-
lem— a calamity not inflicted by the hand of
man. "Or those eighteen," he adds, "upon
whom the tower in Siloam fell, think ye that
they were sinners above all men that dwelt in
Jerusalem ? I tell you nay." He does not
deny that either the slaughtered Galileans or
the crushed Jerusalemites were sinners. He
does not say that they did not deserve their
doom. He does not repudiate or run counter
to that strong instinct of the human conscience
which in all ages has taught it to trace suffer-
ing to sin. What he does repudiate and con-
demn is the application of that principle to
specific instances by those who know so little,
as we do, of the Divine purposes and aims in
the separate events of life — making the tem-
poral infliction the measure of the guilt from
which it is supposed to spring. It is not a
100 The Cure of the Man Boen Blind.
wrong thing for the man himself whom some
sudden or pecuharly severe calamity overtakes,
to search and try himself before his Maker, to
see whether there has not been some secret sin
as yet unrepented and unforsaken, which may
have had a part in bringing the calamity upon
him. It was not a wrong thing in Joseph's
brethren, in the hour of their great distress in
Egypt, to remember their former conduct, and
to say, "We are verily guilty concerning our
brother, therefore is this distress come upon
us," It was not a wrong thing for the king of
Besek, when they cruelly mutilated him, cut-
ting off his thumbs and great toes, to say,
" Threescore and ten kings having their thumbs
and great toes cut off gathered their meat un-
der my table. As I have done, so God hath
requited me." But it was a wrong thing in
the inhabitants of Melita, when they saw the
viper fasten on Paul's hand, to think and say,
that ' * no doubt this man is a murderer, whom,
though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance
suffereth not to live." It was a wrong thing
in the widow of Zarephath, when her son fell
sick, to say to Elijah, "What have I to do
with thee, 0 thou man of God ? Art thou
come to call my sins to remembrance, and to
The Cube of the Man Boen Blind. 101
slay my son ?" It was a wrong thing for tlie
friends of Job to deal with their afdicted
brother as if his abounding misfortunes were so
many proofs of a hke abounding iniquity. It
is a very wrong thing in any of us to presume
to interpret any single dealing of God with
others, particularly of a dark or adverse kind,
for all such dispensations of his providence have
a double character. They may be retributive,
or they may be simply disciplinary, corrective,
protective, purifying. They may come in
anger, or they may be sent in love. And
while as to ourselves it may be proper that
we should view them as bearing messages of
warning, we are not at liberty _as to others to
attribute to them any other character than that
of being the chastenings of a wise and loving
Father.
"Neither hath this man sinned,, nor his
parents, but that the works of God should be
manifest in him." Those works — works of
mercy and almighty power — were given to
Christ to do, and here was an opportunity for
one of them being done. To pause thus by
the way, to occupy himself with the case of
this poor blind beggar, might seem a waste of
time, the more so that the purpose of his per-
102 The Cube or the Man Boen Blind.
secutors to seize and to stone him had been so
recently and so openly displayed. But that
very outbreak of their wrath foretold to Jesus
his approaching death — the close of his allotted
time of earthly labor; and so he says, "I
must work the works of him that sent me
while it is day ; the night conieth, when no
man can work. As long as I am in the world,
I am the light of the world." " I said so to
those proud and unbelieving men from whose
rough violence I have just escaped. I will
prove now the truth of what I said by bringing
the light physically, mentally, spiritually, to
this poor blind beggar."
All this time not a word is spoken by the
blind man himself. Whatever cries for help
he may have raised when he heard the foot-
steps of the approaching company, as they
stop before him he becomes silent. He hears
the question about his own sins and his parents'
sins put by strange Galilean tongues to one ad-
dressed evidently with the greatest respect.
He hears the one thus appealed to say, with an
authority that he wonders at, " Neither hath
this man sinned, nor his parents, "--grateful
words to the poor man's ear. He may have
thought, in common with others, that he had
The Cure op the Man Boen Blind. 103
been signally marked as an object of the Divine
displeasure. The words that he now hears
may have helped to hft a load off his heart ;
already he may be more grateful to the speaker
of these few words than if he had cast the
largest money-gift into his bosom. But the
speaker goes further : he says that he had
been born blind " that the works of God should
be made manifest in him." If it were not the
work of God's anger in the punishment of his
own or his father's sins, what other work could
it be ? And who can this be who is now be-
fore him, who speaks of what he is, and what
he does, and what he is about to do, with such
solemnity and self-assurance? Who can tell
us what new thoughts about himself and the
calamity that had befallen him, what new
thoughts about God and his purposes in thus
dealing with him, what wonderings as to who
this stranger can be that takes such an inter-
est in him, what flutterings of hope may have
passed through this poor man's spirit while the
brief conversation between Christ and his dis-
ciples was going on, and during that short and
silent interval which followed as Jesus "spat
on the ground and made clay of the spittle ?"
This we know, that when Christ approached
104 The Cure of the Man Boen Blind.
and laid his hand upon him, and anointed his
eyes with that strange salve, and said to him,
while 3^et his sightless balls were covered with
what would have blinded for the time a man
who saw, " Go, wash in the pool of Siloam,"
he had become so impressed as quietly to sub-
mit to so singular an operation, and, without a
word of arguing or remonstrance, to obey the
order given, and to go off to the pool to wash.
It lay not far off, at the base of the hill on
which the Temple stood, up and around which
he had so often groped his way. He went and
washed, and lo a double miracle ! — the one
wrought within the eyeball, the other within
the mind — each wonderful even among the
wonders wrought by Christ. Within the same
compass there is no piece of dead or living
mechanism that we know of, so curious, so
complex, so full of nice adjustments, as the
human eye. It was the great Creator's office
to make that eye and plant it in its socket,
gifting it with all its varied powers of motion,
outward and inward, and guarding it against
all the injuries to which so delicate an instru-
ment is exposed. It was the Creator's will
that some fatal defect, or some fatal confusion
of its parts and membranes, should from the
The Cuke of the Man Bokn Blikd. 106
first have existed in the eyeball of this man.
And who but the Creator could it be that rec-
tified the defect or removed the confusion, be-
stowing at once upon the renovated organ the
full power of vision? Such instant recon-
struction of a defective, or mutilated, or dis-
organized eye, though not in itself a greater,
appears to us a more surprising act of the
Divine power than the original creation of the
organ. You watch with admiration the oper-
ation of the man who, with a large choice of
means and materials, makes, and grinds, and
polishes, and adjusts the set of lenses of which
a telescope is composed. But let some accident
happen whereby all these lenses are broken
and crushed together in one mass of confusion,
what would 3^ou think of the man who could
out of such materials reconstruct the instru-
ment ? It was such a display of the Divine
power that was made when the man born
blind went and washed and saw.
But however perfect the eye be, it is simply
a transmitter of light, the outward organ by
which certain impressions are made upon the
optic nerves, by them to be conveyed to the
brain, giving birth there to the sensations of
sight. But these sensations of themselves con-
106 The Cuke of the Man Boen Bund.
vey little or no knowledge of the outward world
till the observer's mind has learned to interpret
them as signs of the position, forms, sizes, and
distances of the outlying objects of the visible
creation. It is but slowly that an infant learns
this language of the eye. It requires the
putting forth of innumerable acts of memory,
and the acquiring by much practice a facility of
rapid interpretation. That the man born blind
should be able at once to use his eyes as we all
do, it was needed that this faculty should be be-
stowed on him at once, without any teaching
or training, and when we fully understand (as
it is somewhat difficult to do) what the powers
were which were thus instantly conveyed, the
mental will appear not less wonderful than the
material part of the miracle of our Lord — that
part of it too of which it is utterly impossible to
give any explanation but the one that there was
in it a direct and immediate putting forth of the
Divine power. The skillful hand of the couch-
er may open the eye that has been blind from
birth, but no human skill or power could con-
fer at once that faculty of using the eye as we
now do, acquired by us in the forgotten days
of our infancy. It may be left to the fanaticism
of unbelief to imagine that it was the clay and
The Cure of the Man Born Blind. 107
the washing which restored his sight to the man
born bhnd, but no ingenuity of conception can
point us to the natural means by which the
gift of perfect vision could have been at once
conferred.
Yet of the fact we have the most convincing
proof. It was so patent and public that there
could be no mistake about it. It was subjected
to the most searching investigation — to all the
processes of a judicial inquiry. When one so
well known as this blind beggar, whom so many
had noticed on their way up to the Temple,
was seen walking among the other worship-
pers, seeing as well as any of them, the ques-
tion was on all sides repeated. " Is not this he
that sat and begged ?" Some said it was ;
others, distrusting their own sight, could only
say he was like him ; but he removed their
doubts by saying, " I am he." Then came the
question as to how his eyes were opened.
He told them. Somehow or other, he had
learned the name of his healer. " A man that
is called Jesus made cla}^ and anointed mine
eyes, and said to me, Go to the pool of Siloan
and wash, and I went and washed, and I re-
ceived my sight," But Jesus had not yet been
seen by him ; he knew not where he was. It
108 The Cube op the Man Boen Blind.
was so very singular a thing this that had been
done — made more so by its having been done
upon a Sabbath-day — that some of those to
whom the tale was told would not be satisfied
tDl the man went with them to the Pharisees,
sitting in council in a side-chamber of the Tem-
ple. They put the same question to him the
others had done, as to how he had received his
sight, and got the same reply. Even had Je-
sus cured him by a word, they would have re-
garded it as a breach of the Sabbath, but when
they hear of his making clay and putting it on
his eyes, and then sending him to lave it off in
the waters of Siloam — all servile work forbid-
den, as they taught — they seize at once upon
this circumstance, and say, " This man is not
of Grod. because he keepeth not the Sabbath-
day." The question now was not about the
cure, which seemed, in truth, admitted, but
about the character of the curer. Such instant
and peremptory condemnation of him as a Sab-
bath breaker roused a spirit of opposition even
in their own court. Joseph was there, or Nic-
odemus, or some one of a like sentiment, who
ventured, in opposition to the prevailing feel-
ing, to put the question, " How can a man that
is a sinner do such miracles ?" But they are
The Cube of the Man Boen Blind. 109
overborne. The man himself, at least, who
is there before them, will not dare to defend
a deed which he sees that the majority of them
condemn. They tm^n to him and say, " What
sayest thou of him that hath opened thine
eyes ?" They are mistaken. Without delay
or misgiving, he says at once, " He is a prophet."
They order him to withdraw. They are some-
what perplexed. They wish to keep in hand
the charge of Sabbath-breaking, but how can
they do so without admitting the miracle ? It
would serve all their purposes could they only
make it out that there had been some deception
or mistake as to the man's having been horn
blind — the peculiar feature of the miracle that
had attracted to it such public notice. They
summon his parents, who have honesty enough
to acknowledge that the man is their son, and
that he was born blind, but as to how it is that
he now sees, they are too timid to say a word.
They know it had been resolved that if any
man confessed that Jesus was the Christ, he
was to be excommunicated — a sentence carry-
ing the gravest consequences, inflicting the
severest social penalties. But they have great
confidence in the sagacity of their son ; he is
quick-witted enough, they think, to extricate
110 The Cube of the Man Boen Blind.
himself from the dilemma. " He is of age,"
they say ; " ask him ; he shall speak for him-
self." He is sent for : appears again in their
presence, ignorant of what has transpired, of
what his parents, in their terror, may have said.
And now, as if their former judgment against
Jesus had been quite confirmed, and stood un-
questionable, they say to him, " Give God the
praise " — an ordinary Jewish form of adjura-
tion. " My son," said Joshua to Achan, " give
glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make
confession to him, and tell me now what thou
hast done." And so now these Pharisees to
this poor beggar. " My son, give God the
praise. We know, and do you confess, that
this man is a sinner." They are again at
fault. In blunt, plain speech, that tells suffi-
ciently that he wiU not believe that Jesus is a
sinner simply because they say it, he answers,
"Whether he be a sinner, I know not ; one
thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I
see." Balked in their first object to browbeat
and overawe him, they will try again whether
they can detect any inconsistency or contradic-
tion in his testimony, and so they ask him to
tell them over again how the thing had hap-
pened. Seeing through all the thin disguise
The Cuke of the Man Boen Blind. Ill
they are assuming in seeming to be so anxious to
get at the truth, he taunts them, saying, ' ' I told
you before, and ye did not hear ; wherefore
would you hear it again ? wiU ye also be his dis-
ciples ?" No ambiguous confession of disciple-
ship on his part. So at least they took it who
replied, "Thou art his disciple ; we are Moses'
disciples. We know that God spake unto
Moses ; as for this fellow, we know not from
whence he is." Poor though he be, and alto-
gether at the mercy of the men before whom
he stands, the healed man cannot bear to hear
his healer spoken of in such contemptuous
terms. With a courage that ranks him as the
first of the great company of confessors, and
with a wisdom that raises him above all those
high-born and well-taught Pharisees, he says,.
'■* Why, herein is a marvellous thing, that ye
know not from whence he is, and yet he hath
opened mine eyes. Now we know that God
heareth not sinners ; but if a man be a wor-
shipper of God, and doeth his will, him he
heareth. Since the world began was it not
heard that any man opened the eyes of one
that was born blind. If this man were not of
God, he could do nothing." So terse, so pun-
gent, so unanswerable the speech, that passion
112 The Cure of the Man Boen Blind.
now takes the place of argument, and the old
and vulgar weapon of authority is grasped and
used. Meanly casting his calamity in his teeth,
they say, " Thou wast altogether born in sin,
and dost thou teach us ?" And they cast him
out — excommunicated him on the spot.
Jesus hears of the wisdom and the fearless-
ness that he had displayed in the defence of
the character and doings of his healer, and of
the heavy doom that had in consequence been
visited on him, and throws himself across his
path. Meeting him by the way, he s:rjz to
him, " Dost thou believe in the Son of God?"
Up to this moment he had never seen the man
who had anointed his eyes with the clay and
bidden him to go and wash in the pool of Si-
loam. He might not by look alone have recog-
nized him, but the voice he never could forget.
As soon as that voice is heard, he knows who
the speaker is. Much he might have liked to
tell, and much to ask ; but all other questions
are lost in the one, that with such emphasis
the Saviour puts — " Dost thou believe in the
Son of God ?" He had heard of men of God,
prophets of God, the Christ of God : but the
Son of God — one claiming the same kind of
paternity in God that every true son claims in
The Cure of the Man Boen Blind. 113
his father — such a one he had never heard of.
"Who is he, Lord?" he asks, "that I might
believe in him? And Jesus said unto him,
Tliou hast both seen him, and it is he that
talketh with thee." Never but once before
that we know of or can remember — never but
to the woman of Samaria — was so clear, so
direct, so personal a revelation of himself made
by Jesus Christ. In both— the woman by the
well-side, the blind beggar by the wayside —
Jesus found simplicity and candor, quickness
of intelligence, openness to evidence, readiness
to confess. Both followed the light already
given. Bothj before any special testimony to
his own character was borne by Jesus himself,
acknowledged him to be a prophet. Both
thus stepped out far in advance of the great
mass of those around them — in advance of
many who were reckoned as disciples of the
Lord. The man's, however, was the fuller and
firmer faith. It had a deeper foundation to
rest on. Jesus exhibited to the woman such a
miracle of knowledge as drew from her the ex-
clamation, " Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet."
Upon the man he wrought such a miracle of
power and love as begat within the deep con-
viction that he was a true worshipper of God
114 The Cure of the Man Boen Blind.
— a faithful doer of the Divine will — a man of
God — a prophet of God ; and to this convic-
tion he had adhered before the frowning rulers,
and in face of all that they could do against
him. He had risked all and lost much rather
than deny such faith as he had in Jesus. And
to him the fuller revelation was imparted.
Jesus only told the woman of Samaria that it
was Messiah — ^the Christ of God — who stood
before her. He told the man that it was the
Son of God who stood before him. How far
the discovery of his Sonship to God — ^his true
and proper divinity — went beyond that of his
Messiahship, we shall have occasion hereafter
to unfold. But see how instantaneous the
faith that follows the great and unexpected dis-
closure. " Who is he, Lord ?" the Son of God
of whom you speak ? "I that speak unto thee
am he. And he said, Lord, I believe, and he
worshipped him ;" worshipped him as few of
his immediate followers yet had done : wor-
shipped him as Thomas and the others did
when they had the great miracle of the resur-
rection and the sight of the risen Saviour to
originate and confirm their faith. What shall
we say of this quick faith and its accompany-
ing worship — evidences as they were of a fresh
The Ouke of the Man Boen Blind. 115
full tide of light poured into this man's mind ?
Shall we say that here another miracle was
wrought — an inward and spiritual one, great
and wonderful as that when, by the pool-side
of Siloam, he washed, those sightless eyeballs,
and as he washed, the clear, pure, bubbling
water showed itself — the first bright object
that met his opening vision — and he lifted
up his eyes and looked around, and the hills
of Zion and of Olivet, and the fair valley
of the Kedron, burst upon his astonished
gaze ? That perhaps were wrong, for great as
the work of God's Holy Spirit is in enlighten-
ing and quickening the human soul, it is not a
miraculous one, and should not be spoken of
as such. But, surely, of the two — the opening
of the bodily and the opening of the spiritual
vision— the latter was God's greater and higher
gift.
VII.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD.*
THE blind beggar of Jerusalem was healed.
How different the impression and effect of
this healing upon the man himself, on the one
side, and the Pharisees, his excommunicators, on
the other ! He a poor, uneducated, yet simple-
minded, simple-hearted man, grasping with so
firrm a hold, and turning to such good account,
the knowledge that he had, and eager to have
more ; reaping, as the fruit of Christ's act of
mercy met in such a spirit, the unfolding by
our Lord himself of his highest character and
office : they, the guides and leaders of the peo-
ple, so well taught and so wise, unable to dis-
credit the miracle, yet seizing upon the circum-
stance that it was done upon the Sabbath, and
turning this into a reproach, their prejudices
fed and strengthened, their eyes growing
• Johnix. 39-41; x. 1-39.
The Good Shepherd. 117
more blinded, their hearts more hardened
against Christ. This contrast appears to have
struck the mind of om- Lord himself. It was
in the Temple, the only place where he could
meet his fellow-men while under the ban of the
Sanhedrim, that the healed man met Jesus.
They may have been alone, or nearly so, when
Christ put the question, "Dost thou believe on
the Son of God?" and having got the answer
which showed what readiness there was to re-
ceive further light, made the great disclosure of
his Divinity. Soon, however, a number of the
Pharisees approach, attracted by the interview.
As he sees, .compares, contrasts the two — the
man and them — he says, "For judgment am I
come into this world, that they which see
not" (as this poor blind beggar) "may see,
and that they which see " (as the Pharisees)
"might be made blind." The Pharisees are
not so blind as not to perceive the drift and
bearing of the speech. They mockingly inquire,
" Are we blind also ?" "If ye were blind," is
our Lord's reply — utterly blind, had no power
or faculty of vision, " ye should have no sin :
but now ye say, We see." * You think you
see ; you pride yourselves on seeing so much
better and so much further than others. Un-
118 The Good Shefheed.
conscious of your existing blindness, you will
not come to me to have your eyes opened : will
not submit to the humbling operation at my
hands : therefore your sin remaineth, abides,
and accumulates upon you. Here was a poor
stricken sheep, whom ye, claiming to be the
shepherds of the flock, have cast out from your
fold, whom I have sought and found. Let me
tell you who and what a true shepherd of God's
flock is. He is one that enters by the door into
the sheepfold, to whom the porter opens readily
the door, whose voice the sheep are quick to
recognize, who calleth his own sheep by name,
going before them and leading them out. He
is a stranger, a thief, a robber, and no true
shepherd of the sheep, who will not enter by
the door, but climbeth up some other way.'
Acute enough to perceive that this was said
concerning human shepherds generally, lead-
ers or pastors of the people : intended to dis-
tinguish the true among such from the false,
and that some allusion to themselves was in-
tended, Christ's hearers were yet at a loss to
know what the door could be of which he was
speaking, and who the thieves and robbers were.
Dropping, therefore, all generality and all am-
biguity, Jesus adds, " Verily, verily, T say im-
The Good Shepherd. 119
to you, I am the door of the sheep." ' I have
been, I am, I ever shall be,, the one and only
door of entrance and of exit, both for shepherds
and for sheep. All that ever came before me,
without acknowledging me, independently of me,
setting me aside, yet pretending to be shep-
herds of the sheep — they are the thieves and
the robbers. I am the door ; by me, if any man
enter in, whether he claims to be a shepherd,
or numbers himself merely as one of the flock —
those who are shepherds as to others being still
sheep as to me — if any man so enter in, he
shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and
find pasture.'
This much being said of the door, the one
way of entrance into God's true fold, the image
of the door is dropped, and without circumlocu-
tion or reserve, Christ announces himself as the
Good Shepherd, and proceeds to describe his
character and work as such. * I am the Good
Shepherd ; not simply a kind or loving shep-
herd, as opposed to such as are unkind or
harsh in their treatment of the flock, but I am
the one, the only one, in whom all the qualities
needful to constitute the true and faithful shep-
herd, meet and culminate in full and harmonious
perfection. I am the Good Shepherd, who has
120 The Good Shepheed.
already done, who waits still to do, that for the
sheep which none other ever did or could do.'
On one or two of the qualities or characteris-
tics which Christ here claims for himself, as
wearing and executing the office, let us now
fix our thoughts.
1. He sets before us the minute personal
interest that he takes in each individual mem-
ber of his flock. " He calleth his own sheep by
name, and leadeth them out." The allusion
here is to the fact that Eastern shepherds did
give a separate name to each separate sheep, who
came in time to know it, and, on hearing it, to
follow at the shepherd's call. It is thus that,
when Isaiah would set forth the relation in which
the Grreat Creator stands to the starry host, he
represents him as leading them out at night as
a shepherd leadeth out his sheep. " Lift up
your eyes, and behold who hath created these
things ; that bringeth out their host by number :
he calleth them all by names." It is no mere
general knowledge, general care, that the Great
Creator possesseth and exercises. There is not
a single star in all that starry host unnoticed,
imguided, unnamed. The eye that seeth all, sees
each as distinctly as if it alone were before it.
The hand that guideth all, guides each as
The Good Shepherd. 121
carefully as if it alone had to be directed by it.
So is it with Jesus and the great multitude of his
redeemed. Singling each out of that vast com-
pany, he says, " I have redeemed thee : I have
called thee by thy name, thou art mine." " I have
graven th}^ name on the palms of my hands, to
be ever there before mine eye. To him that
overcometh will I give a white stone, and on the
stone a new name written, which no man know-
eth saving he who receiveth it." Individual
names are given to mark off individual objects,
to separate each, visibly and distinctly, from all
others of the same kind. A new island is discov-
ered, its discoverer gives to it its new name. A
new instrument is invented, its inventor gives to
it its new name. In that island, as disting-uished
from all other islands, its discoverer takes ever
afterwards a special interest. In that instru-
ment, as different from all others, a like special
interest is taken by its inventor. Another hu-
man spirit is redeemed to God : its Redeemer
gives to it its new name, and forever afterwards
in that spirit he takes a living, personal, peculiar
interest : bending over it continually with in-
finite tenderness, watching each doubt, each
fear, each trial, each temptation, each fall, each
rising again, each conflict, each victory, each
122 The Good Shephekd.
defeat, every movement, minute or momentous,
by which its progress is advanced or retarded,
watching each and all with a sohcitude as special
and particular as if it were upon it that the ex-
clusive regards of his loving heart were fixed.
It was no vague, indefinite, indiscriminate
good will to all mankind that Jesus showed
when here on earth. A large part of the
narrative of his life and labors is occupied
with the details of his intercourse with individ-
uals, intended to set forth the special personal
interest in each of them that he took. Philip
brings Nathanael to him. Jesus says, " Before
that Philip called thee, when thou wast imder
the fig-tree, I saw thee." "Go, call thy hus-
band, and come hither." " I have no husband,"
the woman of Samaria answers. Jesus says,
"Thou hast well said thou hast no husband, for
thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou
now hast is not thy husband ; in that saidst thou
truly." A lone, afflicted woman creeps furtive-
ly near to him, that she may touch but the hem
of his garment ; she is healed, but must not go
away imagining that she was unseen, unrecog-
nized. Zaccheus climbs up into the sycamore
expecting simply to get a sight of him as he
passes by. Christ comes up, stops before the
The Good Shepherd. 123
tree, looks up, and says, "Zaccheus, make haste
and come down, for to-day I must abide at thy
house." " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." " Si-
mon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you,
that he may sift you as wheat, but I have
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Too
numerous to go on quoting thus were the man-
ifestations of personal and particular regard
shown by Jesus before his death. And when
he rose from the sepulchre, he rose with the
same heart in him for special affection. It was
the risen Saviour who put the message into
the angel's lips, " Go tell the disciples and
Peter that he is risen from the dead." And
when he ascended up to heaven, he carried the
same heart with him to the throne. "Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou me ?" There was
not one of those, his little ones, whom Saul
was persecuting, that he did not identify with
himself. No vague, indefinite, indiscriminate
superintendence is that which the great Good
Shepherd still exercises over his flock, but a
care that particularizes each separate member
of it, and descends to the minutest incidents
of their history.
We rightly say that one great object of the
Incarnation was so to manifest the unseen
124 The Good Shepherd.
Divinity, that our weak thoughts and our lan-
guid affections might the more easily compre-
hend and embrace him as embodied in the per-
son of Jesus Christ the Son. But we fail to
realize the full meaning, and to take home to
ourselves the full comfort of the Incarnation, if
we regard not our Divine Redeemer as seeing
each of us wherever we are as distinctly as he
saw Nathanael under the fig-tree, Zaccheus
upon the sycamore-tree — as knowing all about
our past history as minutely as he knew all
about that of the woman by the well-side—
sympathizing as truly and tenderly with all
our spiritual trials and sorrows as he did with
those of Peter and the churches whom Saul
was persecuting.
2. Christ speaks of the mutual knowledge,
love, and sympathy which unites the Shep-
herd and the sheep, creating a bond between
them of the closest and most endearing kind.
" I know my sheep, and am known of mine, as
my Father knoweth me, and as I know the
Father." The mutual knowledge of the Shep-
herd and the sheep is likened thus to the
mutual knowledge of the Father and the Son.
The ground of the comparison cannot be in the
omniscience possessed equally by the Father
The Good Shepherd. 125
and the Son, in virtue of which each fully
knows the other, for no such facuhy is pos-
sessed by the sheep, and yet their knowledge
of the Shepherd is said to be the same in kind
with his knowledge of them, and both to be
the same in kind with the Father's knowledge
of the Son, and the Son's knowledge of the
Father. What possibly can be meant by this
but that there is a bond of acquaintanceship,
affection, communion, fellowship between each
true believer and his Saviour, such in its origin,
such in its strength, such in its sacredness, such
in its present blessedness, such in its glorious
issues in eternity,, that no earthly bond what-
ever— no, not the closest that binds man to
man, human heart to human heart — can offer
the fit or adequate symbol of it, to get which we
must climb to those mysterious heights, to that
mysterious bond, by which the Father and the
Son are united in the intimacies of eternal love ?
This bond consists in oneness of life, unity of
spirit, harmony of desire and affection. In the
spiritual- world, great as the distances may be
which divide its members (and vast indeed is
that distance at which any of us stand from
our Redeemer), like discerneth like even afar
off, like draws to like, like hnks itself to like,
126 The Good Shepheed.
truth meets truth, and love meets love, and
holiness clmgs to hohness. The new-born soul
turns instinctively to him in whom it has found
its better, its eternal life. Known first of him,
it knows him in return ; loved first by him, it
loves him in return. He comes to take up his
abode in it, and it hastens to take up its abode
in him. He dwells in it ; it dwells in him.
And broken and imperfect as, on the believer's
part, this union and communion is, yet is there
in it a nearness, a sacredness, a tenderness
that belongs to no other tie by which the
human spirit can be bound.
3. The manner in which the Good Shepherd
leads his flock. " He calleth his own sheep by
name, and leadeth them out ; and when he
putteth forth his sheep, he goeth before them,
and the sheep follow him." The language is
borrowed from pastoral life in Eastern lands ;
and it is remarkable that in almost every point
in which a resemblance is traced between the
office and work of the Shepherd and that of
Christ, the usages of Eastern differ from those
of our Western lands. Our shepherds drive
their flocks before them ; and, in driving,
bring a strong compulsion of some kind to
bear upon the herd. This fashion of it puts all
The Good Shephekd. 127
noticing, knowing, naming, calling of particu-
lar sheep out of the question ; it is not an
attraction from before, it is a propulsion from
behind, that sets our flocks of sheep moving
upon the way ; it is not the hearing of its name,
it is not the call of its master, it is not by the
sight of him going on before that any single
sheep is induced to move onward in the path.
It is quite different in the East : the Eastern
shepherd goes before his sheep, he draws them
after him — draws them by those ties of de-
pendence, and trust, and affection that long
3^ears of living together have established be-
tween them. He calls them by their name ;
they hear and follow. Hence the language of
the Old Testament — "The Lord is my shep-
herd ; he leadeth me beside the still waters."
" Thou leadest thy people like a flock by the
hand of Moses and of Aaron." " Give ear, 0
Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph
like a flock " — a usage this of Eastern shepherd
life, truly and beautifully illustrative of the
mode by which Jesus guides his people onward
to the fold of their eternal rest ; not by fear,
not by force, not by compulsion of any kind —
no, but by love ; by the attraction of his loving
presence, the force of his winning example.
128 The Good Shepherd.
No guide or pastor he, like those Pharisees
whom Jesus had in his eye when, in contrast to
them, he called himself the Good Shepherd —
men binding heavy burdens, and laying them
on other men's shoulders, whilst they would
not touch them themselves with one of their
fingers. In our blessed Lord and Master \ye
have one who himself trod before us every step
that he would have us tread, bore every bur-
den he would have us bear, met every tempta-
tion he would have us meet, shared every grief
he would have us share, did every duty he
would have us do. Study it aright, and it will
surprise you to discover over what a wide and
varied field of human experience the example
of our Saviour, stretches, how dijfficult it is to
find a position or experience of our common
human life to which you may not find some-
thing answering in the life of Jesus of Naza-
reth.
4. The consummating act of his love for the
sheep, and the perfect voluntariness with which
that act is done. " I am the Good Shepherd —
the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."
The hireling undertakes to guard the sheep as
best he can. It is expected that he should be
vigilant, alert, courageous in their defence, run-
The Gk)OD Shepheud, 129
ning at times, if need be, some risk even of
limb or life. But no owner of a flock ever
bound it upon the shepherd whom he hired, as
a condition of his ofl&ce, that if ever it came to
be the alternative that the sheep must perish,
or the shepherd perish, the latter must give up
his life to save the flock. A human life is too
precious a thing to be sacrificed in such a way.
The owner of the flock would not give his own
life for the she^p ; he could not righteously ask
his hireling to do it. The intrinsic difference
in nature and m worth between the man and
the sheep is such as to preclude the idea of a
voluntary surrender of life by the one, simply
to preserve the other. How much in value
above all the lives for which it was given was
that of God's own eternal Son, we have no
means of computing ; but we can see how far
above all sacrifice, that either the owner of the
flock acting himself as shepherd, or any under-
shepherd whom he hired, ever made or could
be expected to make,, was that which Jesus
made when he laid down his life for the sheep.
Yet how freely was this done! "I lay down
my life that I might take it again : no man
taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.
1 have power to lay it down, and I have power
130 The Good Shepherd.
to take it again."' Life is that mysterious thing
the giving and restoring of which the Creator
keeps in his own hands. No skill or power of
man ever made a new living thing. No skill
or power of man ever rekindled the mystic
light of hfe when once gone out. The power
lies with man to lay down or take away his
own life, but once laid down, what man is he
that can take it up again ? Yet Jesus speaks
as one who has the recovery of his own life as
much at his command as the rehnquishing of it,
speaks of laying it down in order to take it
again. He would have it to be known, that
whatever he might permit the men to do who
had already resolved to take his life, his death
would not be their doing but his own ; a death
undergone spontaneously on his part, of his
own free and unconstrained choice. Most
willingly, through sheer love and pity, out of
the infinite fullness of his divine compassion,
was he to lay down his life for the sheep, that
thus they might, have life, and have it more
abundantly than they otherwise could have —
his death their life — his life from the dead
drawing their life up along with it and linking
their eternity with his own.
So we understand, and may attempt to il-
The Good Shepherd. 131
lustrate this description by himself of himself as
the Good Shepherd ; but to the men who first
listened to it, especially to those Pharisees whose
conduct as shepherds it was meant to expose,
how absolutely unintelligible in many of its
parts must it have appeared. What an assump-
tion in making himself the one and only door,
in raising himself so high above all other shep-
herds, representing himself as possessed of attri-
butes that none of them possessed, making sac-
rifices none of them ever made ! If a shepherd
gave his life for the sheep, one would think
that the sheep would lose instead of gain ;
would, in consequence of his removal, be all
the more at the mercy of the destroyer. But
here is a shepherd, whose death is held out as
not only protecting the sheep from death, but
imparting to them a new life ; who dies, while
yet by his dying they lose nothing — do not
even lose him as their shepherd — for he no
sooner dies than he lives again to resume his
shepherd's office. More than obscure — ambi-
tious, and utterly self-contradictory must this
account of himself have appeared to the listen-
ing Pharisees, their recoil not lessened by
Christ's dropping incidentally the hint that
there were other sheep not of the Jewish fold,
132 The Good Shepheed.
whom he meant to brmg in, so that there
should be one fold, over which he should be the
one shepherd. "There was a division, there-
fore, again among the Jews for these sayings.*'
To many they appeared so presumptuous and
inexplicable, that they said, " He hath a devil,
and is mad ; why hear ye him V' There were
others who, unable to give any explanation of
the sayings, yet clung to the evidence of his
miracles, particularly of the one they had just
witnessed. "These are not the words of him
that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes
of the blind?"
Leaving them to settle these differences
among themselves, Jesus withdrew ; and for
two months — from the time of the Feast of
Tabernacles to that of the Feast of the dedica-
tion— the curtain drops over Jerusalem, and
we see and hear no more of anything said or
done by Jesus there. Where and how were
those two months spent ? Many think that our
Lord must have remained in or near the capital
during this interval. It appears to us much
more likely that he had returned to Galilee.
We are expressly told that he would not walk
in " Jewry because the Jews sought to kill
him." After the formal attempt of the rulers
The Good Shephekd. 133
to arrest him, and after the populace having ta-
ken up stones to stone him, during the Feast of
Tabernacles, it seems little likely that he would
remain so long a time within their reach and
power. When next he appears in Solomon's
porch, and the Jews gather round him, the
tone of the conversation that ensues, in which
there is so direct a reference to his declarations
about himself, uttered at the close of the pre-
ceding festival, is best explained by our con-
ceiving that this was a sudden reappearance of
Jesus in the midst of them, when the thoughts
both of himself and his hearers naturally re-
verted to the incidents of their last interview in
the Temple. "Then came the Jews round
about him, and said, How long d'ost thou make
us to doubt ? If thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly." There was not a little petulance, and
a large mixture of hypocrisy in the demand.
These were not honest inquiries seeking only
relief from perplexing doubts. Whatever Christ
might say about himself, their mind about him
was quite made up. They do not come to ask
about that late discourse of his in which he had
spoken so plainly about his being the one and
only true shepherd of the sheep. They do not
come to inquire further about that door, by
134 The Good Shephekd.
which he had said that the true fold could alone
be entered. They come with the one distinct
and abrupt demand, that he should tell them
plainly whether he was the Christ ; apparently
implying some readiness on their part to be-
lieve, but only such a readiness as the men
around the cross expressed when they exclaimed,
" Let him come down from the cross, and we
will believe." They want him to assert that
he was the Christ. They want to get the evi-
dence from his own lips on which his condem-
nation by the Sanhedrim could be grounded ;
knowing beside that an express claim on his
part to the Messiahship would alienate many
even among those whose incredulity had been
temporarily shaken.
There was singular wisdom in our Lord's re-
ply : "I told you before, and ye believed not."
In no instance had he ever openly declared to
these Jews of Jerusalem that he was the Christ.
Nor was he now about to affirm it in the way
that they prescribed. Nevertheless it was
quite true that he had often told them who and
what he was ; told enough to satisfy them that
he must be either their long-expected Messiah
or a deceiver of the people. And though he
had said nothing, his works had borne no am-
The Good Shepheed. 135
biguous testimony to his character and office.
But they had not received, they had rejected
all that evidence. They wanted plain speak-
ing, and now they get it — get more of it than
they expected or desired — for Jesus not only
broadly proclaims their unbelief, but, revert-
ing to that unwelcome discourse which was still
rino-ing in their troubled ears, he tells them of
the nature and the source of their unbelief:
" Ye believe not, because ye are not of i^iy
sheep, as I said unto you." Without dwelling,
however, upon this painful topic — one about
which these Jews then, and we readers of the
Gospel now, might be disposed to put many
questions, to which no satisfactory answers
from any quarter might come to us — Jesus
goes onto dwell upon what to him, as it should
be to us, was a far more grateful topic — the
characteristics and the privileges of his own
true and faithful flock: "My sheep hear my
voice, and I know them, and they follow me."
That and more he had previously said while
speaking of himself as the good shepherd, and
noting some of the characteristics of his sheep.
But now he will add something more as to
the origin and nature, the steadfast and eternal
endurance, of that new relationship, into which,
136 The Good Shepherd.
by becoming his, all the true members of his
spiritual flock are admitted.
" And I give unto them eternal life." Spir-
itual life, life in God, to God, is the new, fresh
gift of Christ's everlasting love. To procure
and to impart it was the great object of his
mission to our earth. "I am come," he said,
" that they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly." His incarna-
tion was the manifestation of this life in all its
fullness in his own person. "The life was
manifested, and we have seen it, and bear wit-
ness, and show unto you, that eternal life
which was with the Father, and was man-
ifested unto us." " In him was life, and the
life was the light of men." The life not flow-
ing from the light, but the light from the life,
even as our Lord himself had said, " I am the
light of the world ; he that followeth me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light
of life."
There are gifts of Christ's purchase and be-
stowment that he makes over at once, and in
a full completed form, to the believer, such as
pardon of sin, acceptance with God, the title
to the heavenly inheritance. But the chief gift
of his love — the hfe of faith, of love, of meek
The Good Shephekd. 137
endurance, of self-sacrificing service and suf-
fering— comes not to any of us now in such a
form. It is but the germ of it that is planted in
the heart. Its history here is but that of the seed
as it lies in the damp, cold earth, as it rots and
moulders beneath the sod, waiting the sunshine
and the shower, a large part of it corrupting,
decaying, that out of the very bosom of rot-
tenness, out of the very heart of death, the new
life may spring. Could but an intelligent con-
sciousness descend with the seed into the earth,
and attend the different processes that go on
there, we should have an emblem of the too
frequent consciousness that accompanies those
first stages of the spiritual life, in which, amid
doubts and fears, surrounded by the besetting
elements of darkness, weakness, corruption,
death, the soul struggles onward into the life
everlasthig.
But weak as it is in itself, in its first begin-
nings, this spiritual life partakes of the immor-
tality, the immutability, of the source from
which it springs. It is this which bestows
such preciousness on it. Put into a man's
hand the seed of a flower-bearing or fruit-bear-
ing plant, it is not the bare bulb he grasps he
thanks you for. It would have but little worth
138 The Good Shepherd.
in his eyes were it to remain forever in the
condition in which he gets it. It is the capa-
city for after growth, the sure promise of living
flower and fruit that hes enwrapped within,
that gives it all its value. Slowly but surely
does the mysterious principle of hfe that lodges
in it operate, till the flower expands before the
eye and the ripened fruit drops into the hand.
So is it with the seed of the divine life lodged
by the Spirit in the soul ; with this difference,
that for it there is to be no autumn season of
decay and death. It is to grow, and grow for-
ever— ever expanding, ever strengthening, ever
maturing ; its perpetuity due to the infinite
and unchangeable grace and power of him on
whom it wholly hangs. Strictly speaking our
natural life is as entirely dependent on God as
our spiritual one. But there is this great dis-
tinction between the two — the one may run
its course, too often does so, without any abid-
ing sense on the part of him who is passing
through it of his absolute and continued de-
pendence on the great Lifegiver. The other
cannot do so. Its essence lies in the ever con-
sciousness of its origin, its continuance in the
preservation of that consciousness.
You may try to solve the phenomena of life
The Good Shepherd. 139
in its lower types and forms, by imagining that
a separate independent element or principle is
bestowed at first by the Creator, which is left
afterwards, apart from any connection with
him, to develop its latent inherent qualities.
You cannot solve thus the life that is hidden
with Christ in God. Apart from him who
gave it being, it has no vitality. It begins in a
sense of entire indebtedness to him ; it con-
tinues only so long as that sense of indebted-
ness is sustained. It is not within itself that
the securities for its continuance are to be
found.
" My sheep shall never perish, neither shall
any man pluck them out of my hand. My Fa-
ther which gave them me is greater than all,
and none shall pluck them out of my Father's
hands." Are we not entitled to gather from
these words the comforting assurance that all
who by the secret communications of his grace
have had this life transfused into their souls,
shall be securely and eternally upheld by the
mighty power of Christ, so that they shall never
perish ? — not so upheld, whatever they after-
wards may be or do, not so upheld that
the thought of their security may slacken their
own diligence or tempt them to transgress, but
140 The Good Shepherd.
so that the very sense of their having such
a presence and such a power as that of Jesus
ever with them to protect and bless, shall ope-
rate as a new spring and impulse to all holy
activities, and shall keep from ever becoming
or even doing that whereby his friendship
would be finally and forever forfeited and lost.
Do we feel the first faint beatings of the new
life in our heart ? Do we fear that these may
be so checked and hardened as to be finally
and forever stopped ? Let us not think of our
weakness, but of Christ's strength ; of our foith,
but of his faithfulness : of the firmness of our
hold of him, but of the firmness of his hold of
us. The hollow of that hand of our Redeemer
is the one safe place for us into which to put
our sinful soul. Not into the hand of the
Father, as the great and holy Lawgiver,
would the spirit in the first exercises of peni-
tence and faith venture to thrust itself, lest out
of that hand it should indignantly be flung, and
scattered and lost, should be the wealth of its
immortality. It is into the hand of the Son, the
Saviour, that it puts itself. Yet, soon as ever
it does so, the other hand, that of the Father,
closes over it, as if the redoubled might of Om-
nipotence waited and hastened to guard the
The Good Shepheed. 141
treasure. ' ' Neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. . . . No man is able to pluck
them out of my Father's hand." The believer's
life is hid "with Christ." Far up beyond all
reach of danger this of itself would place it.
But further still, it is hid " with Christ in
God." Does this not, as it were, double the
distance, and place the breadth of two infinites
between it and the possibility of perishing ?
" I and my Father are one." It was on his
saying so that they took up stones again to
stone him. He might have claimed to be Christ,
but there had been nothing blasphemous in his
doing so. Many of the people — some even of
the rulers — believed, or half suspected, that he
was the Messiah ; yet it never was imagined
that in setting forth such a claim Jesus was
guilty of a crime for which he might righteously
be stoned to death. The Jews were not expect-
ing the Divine Being to appear as their Messiah.
They were looking only for one in human na-
ture, of ordinary human parentage, to come to
be their king. It is not till he speaks of his
hand being of equal power with the Father's to
protect — till he grounds that equality of power
upon unity of nature — till he says that he and
the Father are one — that they take up stones to
142 The Good Shepheed.
stone him. And their words explain their ac-
tions. While yet the stones are in their hands,
Jesus says to them, " Many good works have I
showed you of my Father, for which of these
works do ye stone me ?" Ready for the mo-
ment to concede anything as to the character
of his works, they answer, "For a good work
we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and be-
cause that thou, being a man makest thyself
God." They understood him as asserting his
divinity. Had they misunderstood his words,
how easy it had been for Christ to correct their
error — to tell them thnt he was no blasphemer
as they thought him ; that in calling himself the
Son of God he did not mean to claim equality
with the Father. He did not do so. He quotes,
indeed, in the first instance, a sentence from
their own Scriptures, in which their Judges
were called gods ; but he proceeds immediately
thereafter to separate himself from, and to exalt
himself above, those to whom, because of their
office, and because of the word of God coming
to them, the epithet was once or twice applied,
and reasons from the less to the greater. He
says, "If he called them gods, unto whom the
word of God came, say ye of him whom the
Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world,
The Good Shepheed. 143
Thou blasphemest ; because I said, I am the
Son of God ?" At first there was some ambi-
guity in the defence. AUhough intimating that
the appellation might be applied with more pro-
priety to him than to any of their old judges, it
might be on the ground only of a higher office
or higher mission than theirs that Jesus was
reasoning. They listen without interrupting
him. But when life adds — "If I do not the
works of my Father, believe me not. But if I
do, though ye believe not me, 3"et believe the
works : that ye may know, and believe, that
the Father is in me, and I in him," they see
that he is taking up the same ground as at the
first — is claiming to be equal with the Father —
is making himself God ; and so once again they
seek to take him — to deal with him as a blas-
phemer ; but he escaped out of their hands.
That neither upon this nor upon any other oc-
casion of the same kind did our Lord complain
of being condemned mistakenly when regarded
as being guilty of blasphemy, nor offer the ex-
planation which at once would have set aside
the charge, we regard as the clearest of all
proofs that the Jews were not in error in inter-
preting his sayings as they did.
We take, then, our Lord's wonderful sayings
144 The Good Shephekd.
at the Feast of Dedication as asserting the es-
sential unity of nature and attributes between
himself and the Father, and as thus assuring us
of the perfect and everlasting security and well-
being of all who put their souls for keeping into
his hand.
YIII.
INCIDENTS IN OUR LORD's LAST JOURNEY TO
JERUSALEM.*
WE are inclined to believe that it was
during the two months' interval be-
twixt the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast
of Dedication that Christ's last visit to Galilee
was paid — his farewell taken of the home of
his youth — the scenes of his chief labors.
Those labors had lasted for about two years,
and in them an almost ceaseless activity had
been displayed. He had made many circuits
through all the towns and villages of the dis-
trict, performed innumerable miracles, and de-
livered innumerable addresses to larger or
smaller audiences. Yet the visible results had
not been great. He had attached twelve men
to him as his constant and devoted attendants.
There were four or five hundred more ready
to acknowledge themselves as his disciples. A
* Luke ix. 51-62 ; x. 1-24,
146 Incidents in Our Lord's
vast excitement and a large measure of public
sympathy had at first been awakened. Multi-
tudes were ready to hail him as the great ex-
pected Deliverer. But as the months rolled
on, and there was nothing in his character, or
teaching, or doings answering to their ideas of
what this deliverer was to be and do, they
got incredulous — their incredulity fanned into
strength by a growing party headed by the
chief Pharisees, who openly rejected and re-
viled him. There had not been much in his
earlier instructions to which exception could
be taken, but when he began at a later period
to speak of himself as the bread of life, and to
declare that unless men ate his flesh and drank
his blood they had no life in them, his favor
with the populace declined, and they were
even ready to believe all that his enemies in-
sinuated, as to his being a profane man — an
enemy to Moses and to their old laws. Not a
few were still ready to regard him as a prophet,
perhaps the forerunner of the Messiah ; but
outside the small circle of his immediate at-
tendants there were few if any who recognized
him as the Christ of God. Of this decline in
favor with the multitude his adversaries greed-
il)- availed themselves, and Galilee was fast be-
Last Journey to Jerusalem. 11?
coming as dangerous a home for him as Judea.
Meanwhile his own disciples had been slowly
awakening from their first low and earthly
notions of him — their eyes slowly opening to
the recognition of the great mystery of his
character, as being no other than the incarnate
Son of God. Till they were lifted up above
their old Jewish notions of the Messiah — till
they came to perceive how singular was the rela-
tionship in which Jesus stood to the Father, how
purely spiritual were the ends which he came to
accomplish — he did not, could not intelligibly
speak to them of his approaching death, resur-
rection, and ascension. The confession of
Peter in the name of all the rest that he was
the Christ, the Son of God, marked at once the
arrival of the period at which Jesus began so
to speak, and the close of his labors in Galilee.
On both sides, on the part alike of friends and
enemies, things were ripening for the great
termination, the time had come "that he
should be received up," and "he steadfastly
set his face to go wp to Jerusalem."
Starting from Capernaum and travelling
southward by the route on the west side of the
Jordan, he sends messengers before his face,
who enter a villaore of Samaritans. We re-
148 iNcroENTs IN OuK Lord's
member how gladly he had been welcomed
two years before in one town of that district,
how ready the inhabitants of Sychar had
been to hail him as the Messiah, and we may
wonder that now the people of a Samaritan
village should so resist his entrance and reject
his claims. It may have been that they were
men of a different spirit from that of the Sych-
arites. But it may also have arisen from this —
that the Samaritans at first had hoped that if
he were indeed the Messiah, he would decide
in favor of their temple and its worship, but
that now, when they see him going up publicly
to the feasts at Jerusalem, and sanctioning by
his presence the ordinances of the sanctuary
there, their feelings had changed from those of
friendliness into those of hostility. However it
was, the men of this village — the first Samari-
tan one that lay in the Lord's path — "would
not receive him, because his face was as though
he would go to Jerusalem." Some marked ex-
pressions of their unfriendliness had been given,
some open indignities flung upon his messen-
gers, of which James and John were witnesses.
These two disciples had been lately with their
Master on the Mount of Transfiguration, and
had seen there the homage that the great pro-
Last Joueney to Jerusalem. 149
phet Elijah had rendered to him. They were
now in the very region of Ehjah's hfe and
labors. They had crossed the head of the
great plain, at one end of which stood Jezreel,
and at the other the heights of Carmel. The
events of the last few weeks had been filhng
their mhids with vague yet unbounded hopes.
Their Master had thrown off much of his
reserve, had shown them his glory on the
mount, had spoken to them as he had never
done before, had told them of the strange
things that were to happen at Jerusalem, had
made them feel by the very manner of his en-
trance upon this last journey from Galilee,
that the crisis of his history was drawing on.
He courts secrecy no longer. He sends messen-
gers before his face. He is about to make a
public triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Yet
here are Samaritans who openly despise him —
will not give him even a night's lodging in
their village. The fervid attachment to Jesus
that beats in the hearts of James and John
kindles into indignation at this treatment.
Their indignation turns into vengeful feeling
towards the men who were guilty of such con-
duct. They look around. The heights of
Carmel remind them of what Ehas had done to
150 Incidents in Our Loed's
the false prophets, and fancying that they were
firecl with the same spirit, and had a still
weightier wrong to avenge, they turn to Jesus,
saying, "Lord, wilt thou that we command
fire to come down from heaven and consume
them, even as Ellas did ?" They expect Jesus
to enter fully and approvingly into the senti-
ment by which they are animated ; they know
it springs from love to him ; they are so confi-
dent that theirs is a pure and holy zeal, that
they never doubt that the fire from heaven
waits to be its minister ; they want only to get
permission to use the bolts of heavenly ven-
geance that they believe are at their command.
How surprised they must have been when
Jesus turned and rebuked them, saying, "Ye
know not what manner of spirit ye are of ;
for the Son of Man is not come to destroy
men's lives, but to save them."
Jesus is not now here for any personal in-
sult to be offered — any personal injury to be
inflicted ; but still he stands represented, as he
himself has taught us, in the persons of all his
little ones, in the body of his Church, the com-
pany of the faithful. Among these little ones,
within that company, how many have there
been, how many are there still, who cherish the
LiVST JOUKNEY TO JERUSALEM. 151
spirit of James and John ? who as much need
our Lord's rebuke, and who would be as much
surprised at that rebuke being given ? There
is uo one thicker cloak beneath which human
passions hide themselves, than that of religious
zeal — zeal for Christ's truth, Christ's cause,
Ciu'ist's kingdom. Once let a man believe (a
belief for which he may have much good reason,
for it is not spurious but real zeal that we are
now speaking of)— once let a man believe that a
true and ardent attachment to Christ, a true and
ardent zeal to promote the honor of his name,
the interests of his kingdom, glows within him,
and it is perfectly astonishing to what extent the
consciousness of this may delude him — shut
his eye from seeing, his heart from feeling —
that, under the specious guise of such love and
zeal, he is harboring and indulging some of the
meanest and darkest passions of our nature —
wounded pride, irritation at opposition, comba-
tiveness, the sheer love of lighting, of having
an adversary of some kind to grapple with and
overcome, personal hatred, the deep thirst to
be avenged. These, and suchlike passions, did
they not, in the days gone by, rankle in the
breasts of persecutors and controversialists ? —
of men who claimed to be animated in all they
152 Incidents in Our Lord's
said and did by a supreme regard to the honor
of their Heavenly Master ? These, and such-
hke passions, do they not rankle still in the
hearts of many, now that the hand of the per-
secutor has, to so great an extent, been tied-
up, and the pen of the controversialist re-
strained? prompting still the uncharitable
judgment, the spiteful remark, the harsh and
cruel treatment. Christ's holy character and
noble cause may have insults offered, deep in-
juries done to them ; but let us be assured
that it is not by getting angry at those who
are guilty of such conduct, not by maligning
their character, not by the visitation of pains
and penalties of any kind upon them, that
these insults and injuries are to be avenged ;
no, but by forbearance and gentleness, and
love and pity — by feeling and acting towards
all such men as our blessed Lord and Master
felt and acted towards the inhabitants of that
Samaritan village.
Perhaps it w^as the gentle but firm manner
in which Jesus rebuked the proposal of the two
disciples — telling them how ignorant they were
of the true state of their own hearts — that led
the Evangelist to introduce here the narrative
of those cases in which our Lord dealt with
Last Journey to Jerusalem. 153
other moods and tempers of the human spirit
which produce often the same self-ignorance,
and too often seriously interfere with a faithful
following of Christ. One man comes — a type
of the hasty, the impetuous, the inconsiderate,
— and, volunteering discipleship, he proclaims,
"Lord, I will follow withersoever thou goest."
Boastful, self-ignorant, self-confident, he has not
stopped to think what following of Jesus means,
or whither it will carry him — unprepared for
the difficulties and trials of that discipleship
which he is in such haste to take on. The
quieting reply, Foxes have holes, and birds of
the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not
where to lay his head," sends him back to re-
flect somewhat more intelligently and deeply
on what his offer and promise imply. Another
is asked by Christ himself to follow him ; but he
Stays, " Suffer me first to go and bury my father:"
a type of the depressed, the melancholic — of
those whom the very griefs and sorrows of this
life and the sad duties to which these call them
stand as a barrier between them and the services,
the sacrifices, the comforts and consolations of
the faith. Such need to be taught that there is
a duty above that of self-indulgence in any hu-
man grief ; and so to this man the Lord's per-
154: Incidents in Oub Lobby's
emptory reply is, "Let the dead bury their
dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of
God." A third man asks, that before obeying
the Saviour's call, he might be allowed first to
go and bid his friends and relatives farewell : a
very natural request — one in which we should
imao;ine there was little that was wronsf ; but
the Searcher of all hearts sees that there is a
hankering here after the old familiar way of liv-
ing— a reluctance of some kind in some degree
to take the new yoke on ; and so the warning
is conveyed to him fii the words, " No man hav-
ing put his hand to the plough and looking
back is fit for the Kingdom of God." So varied
was the spirit in which men approached Jesus,
in whom some readiness to follow him appeared,
so varied was the manner in which our Lord
dealt with such, suiting himself to each particu-
lar case with a nicety of adjustment of which in
our ignorance we are but imperfect judges, but
enabling us to gather from the whole that it is
a deliberate, a cheerful, an entire and uncondi-
tional surrender of the heart and life that Jesus
asks from all who would be truly and forever
his.
Rejected by the Samaritans, Jesus turned to
another village and chose another route to Je-
Last Joueney to Jerusalem. 155
rusalem, in all likelihood the well-known and
most frequented one leading through Pereea, on
the east side of the Jordan. In prosecuting
this journey, he " appointed other seventy also
and sent them two and two before his face into
every city and place whither he himself would
come," Our Lord had gathered around him in
passing from Capernaum to Samaria almost the
entire body of his Galilean discipleship. It
could scarcely furnish more men than were sent
forth on this important mission. Every avail-
able disciple of suitable age and character was
enlisted in the service. It can scarcely be ima-
gined that they were employed for no other
purpose than to provide suitable accommoda-
tion beforehand for their Master. Theirs was
a higher and far more important errand.
For the wisest reasons Jesus had hitherto
avoided any public proclamation of his Messiah-
ship. He had left it to his words and deeds to
tell the people who and what he was. He had,
not long before this time, charged his apostles
" that they should tell no man that he was Je-
sus the Christ.'"^' But the time had come for
his throwing aside this reserve — for seeking
• Matt. xvi. 20.
156 Incidents in Our Lord's
rather than shunning pubUcity — for letting all
men know, not only that the kingdom had
come, but that he, the head of that kingdom,
the Christ, the Son of David, the king of Israel,
was in the midst of them. Before his departure
from among them, the Israelitish nation was to
have this proclaimed through all its borders.
This was to be the peculiar distinction of his
last journeyings towards the Holy City — that
all along upon their course his Messianic char-
acter should be publicly proclaimed, that so a
last opportunity for receiving or rejecting him
might be afforded. And how could this have
been better effected than by the mission of the
seventy ? By the advance of so many men
two by two before him, the greatest publicity
must have been given to all his movements.
In every place and city the voice of his fore-
runners would summon forth the people to be
waiting his approach. The deputies them-
selves could scarcely fail to feel how urgent
and important the duty was which was com-
mitted to their hands. Summoning them
around him before he sent them forth, Jesus
addressed to them instructions almost identical
with those addressed to the twelve at the time
of their inauguration as his apostles. The ad-
Last Journey to Jerusalem. 157
dress to the twelve, as reported by St. Matthew
(chap, x), was longer, bore more of the charac-
ter of an mduction to a permanent office,
carried in it allusions to duties to be done,
persecutions to be endured, promises to be ful-
filled, in times that were to follow the removal
of the Lord ; but so far as that first short mis-
sion of the twelve and this mission of the sev-
enty were concerned, the instructions were
almost literally the same. Both were to go
forth in the same character, vested with the
same powers, to discharge the same office in
the same way ; to the rejecters and despisers
of both the same guilt was attached, and upon
them the same woes were denounced. We
notice, indeed, these slight differences ; that
the prohibition laid upon the twelve not to go
into the way of the Gentiles, nor into any city
of the Samaritans, is now withdrawn, and that
the gift of miraculous power is seemingly more
limited as committed to the seventy, being re-
stricted nominally to the healing of the sick.
But these scarcely affect the question when
comparison is made between the commissions
given to the twelve and to the seventy, as em-
ployed respectively on the two temporary mis-
sions on which Jesus sent them forth. The
158 Incidents in Ouk Lord's
result of that comparison is, that no real dis-
tinction of any importance can be drawn be-
tween the two. Does this not serve, when
duly weighed, to stamp, with far greater sig-
nificance than is ordinarily attached to it,
the mission of the seventy — raising it to the
same platform with that of the apostles ? It is
quite true that the apostles were to be apostles
for life, and the seventy were to have no per-
iTianent standing or office of any kind in the
Church. But it is equally true that in their
distinctively apostolic character and office the
twelve were to have — indeed, could have — no
successors. If, then, the commission and the
directions given to them are to be taken as
guides to those who were afterwards to hold
office in the Church, the commission and direc-
tions given to the seventy may equally be re-
garded as given for the guidance of the mem-
bership of the Church at large ; this, the great,
the abiding lesson that their employment by
Jesus carries with it — that it is not to ministers
or ordained officers of the Church alone that
the duty pertains of spreading abroad amongst
those around them the knowledge of Christ.
To the whole Church of the living God, to each
individual member thereof, the great commis-
jLast Joueney to Jerusalem. 159
sion comes, "Go thou and make the Saviour
known." As the Father sent hhn, Jesus sends
all who own and love him on the same errand
of mercy. Originally the Church of Christ
was one large company of missionaries of the
cross, each member feeling that to him a por-
tion— differing it may be largely both in kind
and sphere from that assigned to others, but
still a portion — of the great task of evangeliz-
ing the world was committed ; and it shall be
just in proportion as the community of the
faithful, through all its parts, in all its members
comes to recognize this to be its function, and
attempts to execute it, that the expansive
power that once belonged to it will return to it
again, and not so much by organized societies
or the work of paid deputies, as by the living
power of individual pity, sympathy, and love,
spirit after spirit will be drawn into the fold of
our Redeemer, and his kingdom be enlarged
upon the earth.
Where the seventy went, — into what places
and cities they entered, how they were received,
what spiritual good was effected by them, — all
this is hidden from our view. The sole brief
record of the result of their labors is what
is told us about their return. They came back
160 Incidents in Ouk Lord's
rejoicing. One thing especially had struck
them, and of this only they make mention —
that, though they had not been told of it be-
forehand, the very devils had been subject
unto them through their Master's name. They
were pleased, perhaps somewhat proud, that
what nine of the Lord's own apostles had
failed in doing they had done. Jesus tells
them that his eye had been on them in their
progress' — that he had seen what they could
not see — how the powers of the invisible world
had been moved, and Satan had fallen as
lightning from heaven. He tells them that it
was no temporary power this with which they
had been invested — that instead of being dimin-
ished, it would afterwards be enlarged till it
covered and brought beneath its sway all the
power of the enemy. But there was a warn-
ing he had to give them. He saw that their
minds and hearts were too much occujoied by
the mere exercise of power — by the most
striking and tangible results of the exercise of
that power. Knowing how faithless an index
what is done b}^ any agent is of what that
agent himself is, of his real worth and value in
the sight of God, he checks so far their joy by
saying, " Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not,
Last Journey to Jerusalem. 161
that the spirits are subject to you ; but rather
rejoice because your names are written in
heaven." There is a book of remembrance in
the heavens, the Lamb's book of hfe, in which
the names of all his true and faithful followers
are written. It may be a great thing to have
one's name inscribed in large, enduring letters
in the roll of those who have done great things
for Christ and for Christ's cause upon this
earth ; but that earthly register does not cor-
respond with the one that is kept above.
There are names to be found in the one that
would not be met with in the other. There
are names which shine bright in the one that
appear but faintly luminous in the other.
There are names that have never been entered
in the one that beam forth with a heavenly
brilliance in the other. The time comes when
over the one the waters of oblivion shall pass,
and its records be all wiped away. The time
shall never come when the names that shall at
last be found wTitten in the other shall be
blotted out.
The joy of the disciples had an impure
earthly element in it which needed correction.
No such element was in the joy which the in-
telligence that the seventy brought with them
162 Incidents in Ouk Lord's
kindled in the Saviour's breast. He was the
man of sorrows ; a load of inward unearthly
grief lay heavy upon his heart. But out of
that very grief- — the grief that he endured for
the sinful world he came to save — there broke
a joy — the purest, the sublimest, the most
blissful — that felt by him when he saw that
the great ends of his mission were being ac-
complished, and that the things belonging to
their eternal peace were being revealed to the
souls of men. " In that hour Jesus rejoiced in
spirit, and said, I thank thee, 0 Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these
things from the wise and prudent^ and hast
revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father,
for so it seemed good in thy sight." Once be-
fore Jesus had offered up the same thanksgiv-
ing, in the same words, to the Father. We
sought then to enter a little into its meaning.*
Now from the very repetition of it let us learn
how fixed the order is, and how grateful we
should be that it is so — that it is to the simple,
the humble, the teachable, the childlike in
heart and spirit, that the blessed revelation
Cometh.
* See '• Ministry in Galilee," p. 118 seq.
Last Journey to Jerusalem. 163
Blessed we have called it, taking the epithet
from Christ's own lips ; for after he had offered
up that thanksgiving to his Father, he turned
to his disciples and said to them privately,
" Blessed are the eyes which see the things that
you see ; for I tell you that many prophets
and kings have desired to see those things which
ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear
those things which ye hear, and have not heard
them,
One closing remark upon the position in the
spiritual kingdom here tacitly assumed or open-
ly claimed by Christ. He prefaced his instruc-
tions to the seventy by saying, " The harvest
truly is great, and the laborers are few : pray
ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He
would send forth laborers into his harvest."
Who was the Lord of the harvest, to whom
these prayers of his disciples were to be ad-
dressed ? Does he not tell them when he him-
self immediately thereafter proceeds to send
forth some laborers, instructing them how the
work in the great harvest field was to be carried
on ? Parting from Galilee he casts a lingering
glance behind upon its towns and villages —
Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, Who
shall explain to us wherein the exceeding privi-
164: The Last Journey to Jeeusalem.
leges of these cities consisted, and wherein theii
exceeding guilt ? Who shall vindicate the sent
tence that Jesus passed, the woes that he de-
nounced upon them, if he was not the Son of
God, into whose hands the judgment of the
earth hath been committed ? "I beheld," said
Jesus, " Satan like lightning fall from heaven.'"'
Was the vision a true one ? If so, what kind
of eye was it that saw it ? "All things are de-
livered to me of my Father, and no man know-
eth who the Son is but the Father, and who the
Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son
will reveal him." With what approach to truth
or to propriety could language like this be used
by any human, any created being ? So is it
continually here and there along the track of
his earthly sojourn, the hidden glory bursts
through the veil that covers it, and in the full
majesty of the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-judg-
ing, all-directing One — Jesus of Nazareth pre-
sents himself to the eye of faith.
IX.
OUR LORD S MINISTRY IN PER^A.^
THE Feast of Tabernacles, at which St. John
tells us that Jesus was present, was held
in the end of October. The succeeding Pass-
over, at which our Lord was crucified, occurred
in the beginning of April. Between the two
there intervened five months. Had we de-
pended alone upon the information given us by
the first two Evangelists, we should have known
nothing of what happened in this interval be-
yond the fact that, when his ministry in Galilee
was over, Christ went up to Jerusalem to die
there. They tell us of two or three incidents
which occurred at the close of this last journey,
but leave us altogether in the dark as to any
preceding visit to Jerusalem or journeyings and
labors in any other districts of the land. True
to his particular object of giving us the details
* Luke ix. 51 to Luke xviii. 16.
166 OuK Loed's MmisTEY m Per^a.
of Christ's ministry in Judea, St. John enables
us so far to fill up this blank as to insert : — (1.)
The appearance at the Feast of Tabernacles ;
(2.) The ajDpearance at the Feast of Dedication,
held, in the latter end of December ; (3.) A re-
tirement immediately after the feast to Pereea,
the region beyond the Jordan ; (4.) A sum-
mons back to Bethany upon the occasion of the
death of Lazarus ; (5.) A retreat to " a country
near to the wilderness, into a city called
Ephraim ;" and (6.) A coming up to Bethany
and Jerusalem six days before the Passover.
These cover, however, but a small portion of
the five months. At the first of the two feasts
Jesus was not more than four or five— at the
second, not more than eight — days in Jerusalem,
His stay at Bethany, when he came to raise
Lazarus from the dead, was cut short by the con-
spiracy to put him to death. Not more than a
fortnight out of the five months is thus account-
ed for as having been passed in Jerusalem and
its neighborhood. Where then was spent the
remaining portion of the time ? The Gospel
of St. Luke — and it alone-^enables us to answer
these questions. There is a large section of.
this Gospel — from the close of the 9th to near
the middle of the 18th chapter — which is occu-
Our Lord's Ministry in Per-sia. 167
pied with this period, and which stands by itself,
having nothing parallel to it in any other of the
Evangelists. This section commences with the
words, "And it came to pass, when the time
was come that he should be received up, he
steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and
sent messengers before his face : and they went,
and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to
make ready for him."* St. Matthew describes
what is obviously the same event — our Lord's
farewell to Galilee — in these words: "and it
came to pass, that, when Jesus had finished
these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and
came into the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan. "f
And similarly St. Mark, of the same movement,
says, "And he arose from thence, and cometh
into the coasts of Judea, beyond Jordan. "J In
the same chapters, and but a few verses after
those in which these announcements are made,
both St. Matthew and St. Mark relate the inci-
dent of little children having been brought to
Jesus. But in the Gospel of St. Luke, the re-
cord of this incident, instead of following so
closely upon the notice of the departure from
Galilee, does not come in till the close of the
♦ Luke ix. 51, 52. f Matt. xix. 1. t Mark x. 1.
168 Our Lord's Ministry in Perea.
entire section already alluded to — so many as
eight chapters intervening. From that point
the three narratives become again coincident,
and rmi on together. We have thus so much,
then, as a third part of the entire narrative of
St. Luke, and that continuous — to which, so far
as the sequence of the story goes, there is no-
thing that corresponds in any of the ether Gos-
pels.
In this part of St. Luke's Gospel there are
so few notices of time and place, that had we
it alone before us, our natural conclusion would
be that it described continuously the different
stages of one long journey from Galilee up
through Peraea to Jerusalem. Taking it, how-
ever, in connexion with the information sup-
plied to us by St, John, we become convinced
that it includes all the journey in gs to and fro
which took place between the time when Jesus
finally left Galilee to the time when he was
approaching Jericho, on going up to his last
Passover. But how are we to distribute the
narrative so as to make its different parts fit in
with the different visits to Jerusalem and its
neighborhood, related by St. John? Our first
idea here would be to start with identifying
the final departure from Galilee, described by
OuE Loed's Ministry in Pee^a. 169
St. Luke, with the going up to the Feast of
Tabernacles, as related by St. John. Looking,
however, somewhat more closely at the two
narratives, we are persuaded that they do not
refer to the same journey. In the one, public
messengers were sent before Christ's face to
proclaim and prepare for his approach ; in the
other, he went up, "not openly, but, as it were,
in secret." The one was slow, prolonged by
a large circuit through many towns and villa-
ges ; the other was rapid — Jesus waited be-
hind till all his brethren and friends had de-
parted, and then suddenly appeared at Jerusa-
lem in the midst of the feast. Did Jesus then
return to Gralilee immediately after the Feast
of Tabernacles, and was it in the course of the
two months that elapsed between the two fes-
tivals that the first part of the journey described
by St. Luke was undertaken ; or was it not till
after the Feast of Dedication that the last visit
to Galilee and the final departure from it took
place ? The absolute silence of St. John as to
any such return to Galilee, and the unbroken,
continuity of his account of what happened at
the two Feasts, seem to militate against the
former of these suppositions. We remember,
however, that such silence is not peculiar to
170 OuE Loed's Ministry in Pee^a.
this case — that there is a similar instance of a
visit paid to Gahlee between the time of the
occurrences, reported respectively in the 5 th
and 6th chapters of St. John's Gospel, of which
not the shghtest trace is to be discovered there.
We remember that if Jesus did remain in Ju-
dea between the Feasts, it must have been in
concealment, for we are told of this very
period, that he would not walk in Jewry be-
cause the Jews sought to kill him.* We re-
member that St. John speaks of his going to
Peroea after the Feast of Dedication as if it
were one following upon another that had re-
cently preceded it, "He went away again be-
3^ond Jordan. "f We reflect besides that if it
were not till the beginning of January that the
journey from Galilee commenced, there would
be but little room for all the occurrences de-
tailed in these eight chapters of St. Luke's
Gospel : and we accept it as being much the
more likely thing that Jesus did retire from
Judea to Galilee instantly after the close of the
Feast of Tabernacles, and it w^as then that the
series of incidents commenced, the sole record
of which is preserved to us by the third Evan-
* John vii. 1. + John x. 40.
Our Lord's Ministry in Per^a. 171
gelist. This, of course, implies that we break
down the portion of his narrative devoted to
the journeys to Jerusalem into portions cor-
responding with the interval between the two
festivals, and those between the latter of these
and the visit to Bethany. This might plausi-
bly enough be done by fixing upon what ap-
pears to be something like one break in the
narrative, occurring at chap. xiii. 22, and
something like another at chap. xvii. 11.
Without resting much upon this, let us (distri-
bute its parts as we may) take the whole ac-
count contained in these eight chapters of St.
Luke, as descriptive of a period of our Lord's
life and ministry, which otherwise would have
been an utter blank, as telling us what hap-
pened away both from Galilee and Judea dur-
ing the five months that immediately preceded
the crucifixion.
Evidently the chief scene or theatre of our
Lord's labors throughout the period was in the
region east of the Jordan. Departing from Ca-
pernaum— turned aside by the inhabitants of the
Samaritan village — he passed along the bor-
ders of Galilee and Samaria, crossed the Jor-
dan at the ford of Bethshean, entering the
southern part of the populous Decapolis, pass-
172 Our Lord's Ministry in Per.ea.
ing by Jabesh-Gilead, penetrating inward per-
haps as far as Jerash, whose wonderful ruins
attest its weaUh and splendor ; then, turning
southward towards Jerusalem, crossing the
Jabbok, pausing at Mahanaim, where Jacob
had his long night-struggle ; climbing or skirt-
ing those heights and forests of Gilead to which,
when driven from Jerusalem by an ungrateful
son, David retreated, and which now was fur-
nishing a like refuge to the Son and Lord of
David in a similar but still sadder extremity.
Much of this country must have been new to
Jesus. He may once or twice have taken the
ordinary route along the eastern bank of the
Jordan, but it is not at all likely that he had
ever before gone so deep into or passed so
leisurely through this district. Certainly he had
never visited it in the same style or manner.
He came among this new population with all
the prestige of his great Galilean name. He
came sending messengers before his face — in
all likelihood the seventy expending their brief
but ardent activities upon this virgin soil. He
came as he had come at first to the Galileans,
at the opening of his mhiistry, among whom
many of the notices of what occurred here
strikingly remind us, for we are distinctly told
Our Loed's Ministry in Per^a. 173
when he came mto the " coasts beyond Jordan
he went through the cities and villages," and
" great multitudes followed him, and he healed
them," and " the people resorted to him, and
gathered thick together ; and as he was wont,
he taught them." "And when there were
gathered together an innumerable multitude of
people, insomuch that they trode one upon
another, he began to say to his disciples."*
Here we have all the excitements, and the
gatherings, and the manifold healings which
attended the earlier part of the ministry in
Galilee. The two communities were similarly
situated, each remote from metropolitan influ-
ence, more open to new ideas and influences
than the residents in Jerusalem. The instru-
mentality brought to bear upon them in the
presence of Jesus and his disciples, in the pro-
clamation of the advent of the kingdom, in the
working of all manner of cures upon the
diseased among them, was the same. Are we
surprised at it, that so many of the very scenes
enacted at first in Galilee should be enacted
over again in Persea, and that, exactly similar
occasions having arisen, the same discourses
* Luke xiii. 22 ; Matt. xix. 2 ; Mark x. 1 ; Luke xi. 29, 42 ; xii. 1.
174 Our Loed's Ministky m Perea.
should be repeated ? that once more we
should hear the same accusation brought
against Jesus when he cast out devils that he
did so by Beelzebub, and that against this ac-
cusation we should hear from his lips the same
defence ?* that once more, as frequently be-
fore, there should be a seeking of some sign
from heaven, and a telling again the evil gen-
eration that so sought after it that no sign but
that of Jonas the prophet should be given ?
that once more, when asked by the disciples to
teach them to pray the Lord should have
repeated the prayer he had recited in the Ser-
mon on the Mount ? that upon another and
equally suitable occasion, about half of that
sermon should now be re-delivered ? that we
should have in this period two cases of healing
on the Sabbath, exciting the same hostility,
that hostility in turn rebuked by the employ-
ment of the same arguments and illustrations ?
These and other resemblances are not sur-
prising, and yet it is the very discernment of
them which has perplexed many so much, that
(in direct opposition to the expressed purpose
of the Gospel as announced in its opening sen-
• Matt. xii. 24 ; Mark iii. 22 ; Luke xi. 14.
Our Lord's Ministry in PEEiEA. 175
tence) they have been tempted to thmk that, in
violation of all chronological order, St. Luke has
imported into what bears to be an account of
what occurred after the departure from Galilee,
many of the incidents and discourses of the pre-
ceding ministry in Galilee. Instead, however,
of our being perplexed at finding these resem-
blances or coincidences, knowing as we do other-
wise, that it was the practice of our Saviour to re-
iterate (it is likely very often) the mightiest of
his sayings, they are such as we should have ex-
pected when once we come to understand pre-
cisely the peculiarities of this brief Peraean min-
istry. But whilst these coincidences as to events
and repetitions as to discourses, do occur, there
occur along with them, mixed up inseparably
with them, many things both in the spirit and
actions of Christ appropriate exclusively to this
particular epoch of his life. No allusions to the
time or manner of his own death, no reference
to the departure and his return, no pressing
upon his disciples of the great duty of waiting
and watching for his second advent, no prophe-
cies of the approaching overturn of the Jewish
economy, came from the lips of Jesus daring his
sojourn in Galilee. It was not till the time of
his transfiguration that he began to speak of such
176 Our Loed's MmisTRy in Per-iia.
matters privately to his disciples, and even then
it was with bated breath. But now all the
reasons for reserve are nearly, if not entirely
gone. Jesus has set his face to go up to Jeru-
salem to die. He waits and works only a little
longer in this remote region beyond Jordan, till
the set time has come. Nothing that he can say
or do here can have much effect in hastening or
retarding the day of his decease. He may give
free expression to those thoughts and senti-
ments which, now that it is drawing near, must
be gathering often around the great event.
And he may also safely draw aside, at least
partially, the veil which hides the future, con-
cealing at once the awful doom impending over
Jerusalem, and his own speedy return to judge
the nation that had rejected him. And this is
what we now find him doing. Herod, under
whose jurisdiction he still was in Perasa, had
got alarmed. Fearing the people too much,
having burden enough to bear from the behead-
ing of the Baptist, he had no real intention to
stretch out his hand to slay Jesus ; but it an-
noyed him to find this new excitement breaking
out in another part of his territories, and he
got some willing emissaries among the Pharisees
to go to Jesus, and to say, as if from private
Our Loed's Ministry in Peilea. 177
information, " Get tliee out, and depart hence,
for Herod will kill thee. And Jesus said, Go
ye and tell that fox " — who thinks so cunningly
by working upon my fears to get rid of me be-
fore my time — "Behold, I cast out devils, and
I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third
day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless, I must
walk to-day, and the day following ; for it can-
not be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.
0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! which killest thy pro-
phets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee ;
how often would I have gathered thy children
together, as a hen doth gather her brood under
her wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your
house is left unto you desolate ; and verily I
say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the
time come when ye shall say. Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord." I have
quoted especially these words, the most mem-
orable of which were repeated afterwards, as
they present a very accurate reflection of the
peculiar mood of our Lord's mind, and the pe-
culiar tone and texture of his ministry at this
period.
First, There was a shortness, a decisiveness,
a strength of utterance in the message sent to
Herod, which belongs to all Christ's sayings of
178 OuE Lord's Ministey in Pee^a.
this period, whether addressed to friends or foes.
His instructions, counsels, warnings to his own
disciples, he expressed in the briefest, most em-
phatic terms. Was he speaking to them of
faith, he said, "If ye had faith as a grain of
mustard-seed, ye would say to this sycamore-
tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be
thou planted in the sea, and it should obey you."
Was he inculcating humility, he said, " Which of
you having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle
will say unto him by and by, when he is come
from the field. Go and sit down to meat ? and
will not rather say unto him. Make ready where-
with I may su]^, and gird thy self, and serve me
till I have eaten and drunken, and afterward
thou shalt eat and drink ? Doth he thank that
servant because he did the things that were com-
manded him ? I trow not. So likewise ye,
when ye shall have done all these things which
are commanded you, say. We are unprofitable
servants, we have done that which was our
duty to do." Was he warning them against
covetousness, he did it in the story of the rich
man who, as he was making all his plans about
throwing down his barns and building greater
ones, had the words addressed to him, "Thou
fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee,
Our Loed's Ministey in Pee^a. 179
then whose shall those things be which thou
hast provided V Was he inculcating the ne-
cessity of self-denial, an entire surrender of the
heart and life to him, he did it by turning to
the multitude that followed him, and saying,
"If any come to me, and hate not his father
and his mother, and wife, and children, and
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also,
he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever
doth not bear his cross, and come after me, he
cannot be my disciple. Whosoever he be of
you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he can-
not be my disciple."*
There was curtness even in our Lord's deal-
ings with those who, influenced with no hostile
feeling, came to him with needless and imperti-
nent inquiries. " Master," said one of the com-
pany, " speak to my brother that he may divide
the inheritance with me. And he said, Man,
who made me a judge or a divider over you ?"
" There were present some that told him of the
Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with
their sacrifices." It was not enough to tell them
* Luke xiv. 26, 57, 33, compared with Matthew x. 37, 38. " He
that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
And he that loveth wife or daughter more than me is not worthy
of me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth me is not
worthy of me."
180 OuE Lord's Ministey in Pee^a.
that they were wrong if they imagined that
these men were sinners above all the Galileans
because they suffered such things. They must
have it also there told to them, "I say unto
you, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise per-
ish." Marked especially by the same feature
was our Lord's treatment of his enemies, the
Pharisees. Their hostility to him had now
reached its height- " They began to urge him
vehemently, and to provoke him to speak many
things ; laying wait for him and seeking to
catch something out of his mouth, that they
might accuse him," and " as they heard all these
things they derided him:"* He gave them in-
deed good reason to be provoked. One of
them invited him to dinner, and he went in and
sat down to meat. The custom, whether ex-
pressed or not, that he had not first washed be-
fore dinner, gave Jesus the fit opportunity, and
in terms very different from any he had em-
, ployed in Galilee, he denounced the whole body
to which his host belonged. " Now do ye Pha-
risees make clean the outside of the cup and
the platter ; but your inward part is full of
ravening and wickedness. Ye fools ! Woe
* Luke xi. 53, 54 ; xvi . 14.
Our Lord's Ministry in Per.ea. 181
unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites !
for ye are as graves which appear not, and the
men that walk over them are not aware of
them." The first notes thus sounded of that
terrible denunciation that rung through the
Courts of the Temple as our Lord turned to
take his last farewell of them, and of his
enemies.
Corresponding with this manner of speaking
was our Lord's manner of action at this time.
The three conspicuous miracles of this period
were the two Sabbath cures and the healing
of the ten lepers. Like all the others of the
same class, the two former were spontaneous
on Christ's part, wrought by him of his own
free movement, and not upon any application
or appeal. In a synagogue one Sabbath-day
he saw a woman that for eighteen years had
been bowed together, and could in no way lift
herself up. And when he saw her, " he said
unto the woman, Thou art loosed from thine
infirmity, and he laid his hands on her, and
immediately she was made straight, and glori-
fied God." Invited on another Sabbath-day
to sup with one of the chief Pharisees, ajs he
entered he saw before him a man which Lad
the dropsy, brought there perhaps on purpose
182 OuE Lord's Ministry in Per.sla..
to see what he would do. Tiirnhig to the
assembled guests, Jesus put a single question
to them, more direct than any he had put in
Galilee. " Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath-
day ?" They said nothing, and he took the
man and healed him, and let him go." Enter-
ing into a certain village, he saw before him ten
lepers, who stood afar off, and lifted up their
voices and said, " Jesus, Master, have mercy
on us." He said to them as soon as he saw
them, " Go show yourselves unto the priests."
' You have what you ask ; you are cured
already. Go, do what the cured are required
by your law to do.' A few words are spoken
at a distance, and all the men are at once
healed. Is there not a quick promptitude dis-
played in all these cases, as if the actor had no
words or time to spare ?
But, secondly, our Lord's thoughts were
fixed nmch at this time upon the future — his
own future and that of those around him. His
chief work of teaching and healing was over.
True, he was teaching and healing still, but it
was by the way. All was done as by one
that was on a journey — who had a great goal
before him, upon which his eye was intently
fixed. With singular minuteness of perspec-
OuK Lokd's Ministry in Pek.ea. 183
tive, the dark close of his own earthly existence
now rose up before him. "Behold," he said
at its close, "we go up to Jerusalem, and all
things that are written by the prophets con-
cerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.
For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles,
and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated,
and spitted on : and they shall scourge him,
and put him to death."'* "I have a baptism
to be baptized with," he said at the beginning
of the period, "and how am I straitened till
it be accomplished !''f " And the third day
he shall rise again," But beyond the days,
whether of his own death or of his resurrection,
that other day of his second coming now for
the first time is spoken of. He is pressing
upon his disciples the great duty of taking no
undue thought for the future — using the same
terms and employing the same images as he
had in the Sermon on the Mount ; but he goes
now a step further than he had done then,
closing all by saying, " Let your loins be
girded about, and your lights burning ; and ye
yourselves like unto men that wait for their
lord, when he will return from the wedding ;
* Luke xviii. 31-33. t Luke xii. 60.
184 Our Loed's Ministry in Per-ea.
that, when he cometh and knocketh, they may
open to him immediately. Blessed are those
servants, whom the Lord, when he cometh,
shall find watching Be ye therefore ready
also : for the Son of man cometh at an hour
when ye think not."* Still in darkness as to
the true nature of the kingdom of God, irritat-
ed, it may have been, that after the announce-
ment that it had come so little should be said
about it, so few tokens of its presence should
appear, the Pharisees demanded of him when
the kingdom of God should come. He told
them that they were looking for it in an alto-
gether wrong direction. " The kingdom of
God," he said, " cometh not with observation ;
neither shall they say, Lo here ! or Lo there !
for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you,"
— for them, for us, for all men, one of the
most important lessons that ever could be
taught — that God's true spiritual kingdom is in
nothing outward, but hes in the inward state
and condition of the soul. Nevertheless, there
was to be much outward and visible enough,
much connected with that kingdom and his
own lordship over it, of which these Pharisees
♦ Luke xii. 35, 36, 37, 40.
Our Loed's Ministey in Perea. 185
were little dreaming, and which was destined
to break upon them and upon their chil-
dren with all the terror of a terrible sur-
prise. This was in his thoughts when, after
having corrected the error of the Pharisees as
to the nature of the kingdom, he turned to his
disciples and said to them, " The days will come
when ye shall desire to see one of the days of
the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. And
they shall say unto you. See here ! or. See
there ! go not after them, nor follow them ;
for as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the
one part under heaven, shineth unto the other
part under heaven, so shall also the Son of man
be in his day. But first must we suSer many
things, and be rejected of this generation.
And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it
be also in the days of the Son of man. Like-
wise also as it was in the days of Lot ....
thus shall it be in the day when the Son of
man is revealed," — our Lord enlarging upon
this topic till in what he said upon this occasion
you have the first rough sketch of that grand
and awful picture presented in his last dis-
course to the apostles upon the ridge of Mount
Olivet, preserved in Matt. xxiv.
That section of our Lord's life and labors,
186 Our Lord's Ministry in Per^a.
of which a short sketch has been presented,
has been greatly overlooked — thrown, in fact,
into the distance and obscurity which hangs
over the region in which it was enacted. A
careful study will guide to the conviction that
in it Christ occupied a position intermediate
between the one assumed in Galilee and the
one taken up by him at Jerusalem in the days
that immediately preceded his crucifixion.
X.
THE PARABLES OF THE PER^AN MINISTRY.
DURING- that ministry in Percea whose
course and character we have traced,
our Lord delivered not fewer than ten parables
— as many within these five months as in the
two preceding years — a third of all that have
been recorded as coming from his lips. The
simple recital of them will satisfy you how fer-
tile in this respect this period was, whilst a few
rapid glances at the occasions which suggested
some of them, and at their general drift and
meaning, may help to confirm the representa-
tion" already given of the peculiar features by
w^hich that stage in our Lord's life stands
marked. We have before us here the parables
of the Good Samaritan, the Rich Fool, the Bar-
ren Fig-tree, the Great Supper, the Lost Sheep,
the Lost Piece of Money, the Prodigal Son, the
Provident Steward, Dives and Lazarus, the
Unjust Judge, the Pharisee, and the Publican.
188 The Parables of
The first of these was given as an answer to
the question, "Who is my neighbor?" and, as
inculcating the lesson of a broad and un secta-
rian charity, might, with almost equal pro-
priet}^ have been spoken at any time in the
course of our Lord's ministry. It gives, how-
ever, an additional point and force to the lead-
ing incident of the story, when we think of it
as delivered a few days after our Lord himself
had received such treatment at the hands of the
Samaritans as might have restrained him — had
he not been himself the perfect example of the
charity he inculcated, — from making a Samar-
itan the hero of the tale.
The second sprung from an application, made
to Jesus, the manner of whose treatment merits
our particular regard. One of the two bro-
thers, both of whom appear to have been pre-
sent on the occasion, said to him, "Master,
speak to my brother that he divide the inheri-
tance with me." A request not hkely to have
been made till Christ's fairness and fearlessness,
in recoil from all falsehood and injustice, had
been openly manifested and generally recog-
nized— a request, however, grounded upon a
total misconception of the nature and objects
of his ministry. The dispute that had taken
The Per^aj!! Ministry. 189^
place between the two brothers was one for
the law of the country to settle. For Christ
to have interfered in such a case — to have
pronounced any judgment on either side,
would have been tantamount to an assump-
tion on his part of the office of the civil magis-
trate. This Jesus promptly and peremptorily
refused. "Man,"' said he, "who made me a
judge over you ?" More than once was Christ
tempted to enter upon the proper and pecu-
liar province of the judge. More than once
were certain difficult legal and political cases
and questions submitted to him for decision,
but he always, in the most marked and deci-
sive manner, refused to entertain them. With
the existing government and institutions of the
country — with the ordinary administration of
its laws — he never did and never would inter-
fere. You can lay your hand upon no one
law — upon no one practice, having reference
purely to man's temporal estate, which had
the sanction of the public authorities, that Je-
sus condemned or refused to comply with.
No doubt there was great tyranny being prac-
tised, there were unjust laws, iniquitous insti-
tutions in operation, but he did not take it
upon him to expose, much less to resist them.
190 The Paeables of
For the guidance of men in all the different re-
lations in which they can be placed to one
another he announced and expounded the
great and broad, eternal and immutable, prin-
ciples of justice and of mercy. But with the
application of these principles to particular
cases he did not intermeddle. He carefully
and deliberately avoided such intermeddling.
It is possible indeed that the demand made
upon him in the instance now before us, may
not have been for any authoritative decision
upon a matter that fell properly to be deter-
mined by the legal tribunals. Had the claim
been one that could be made good at law, it
is not so likely that Jesus w^ould have been
appealed to in the matter. The object of the
petitioner may simply have been to get Christ
to act as an umpire or arbitrator in a dispute
which the letter of the law might have reg-
ulated in one way, and the principle of equity
in another. But neither in that character
would Jesus interfere. " Man, who made me
a divider over you ?" He would not mix him-
self up wdth this or any other family dispute
about property. Willing as he was to earn for
himself the blessedness of the peacemaker, he
was not prepared to try and earn it in this
The PERiEAN MiNISTEY. 191
way. It was no part of his office, as head of
that gre-at spiritual kingdom which he came to
estabhsh upon the earth, to act as arbitrator
between such conflicting claims as these two
brothers might present. To set up the king-
dom of righteousness and peace and love in
both their hearts — that was his office. Let
that be done ; then, without either lawsuit or
arbitration, the brothers could settle the matter
between themselves. But so long as that was
not done — so long as either one or both of these
brothers was acting in the pure spirit of selfish-
ness— there was no proper room or opportunity
for Jesus to interfere ; nor would interposition,
even if it had ventured on it, have realized any
of those ends which his great mission to our
earth was intended to accomplish.
The example of non-intervention thus given
by Christ, rightly interpreted, has a wide range.
It applies to disputes between kings and subjects,
masters and servants, employers and employed.
These in the form that they ordinarily assume
it is not the office of Jesus to determine. That
he who rules over men should be just, ruling in
the fear of the Lord ; that we should obey them
that rule over us, living a quiet and peaceable
life in all godliness and honesty — this he pro-
192 The Paeables of
claims, but he does not determine what just
ruhng is, nor what the hmits of obedience are,
nor how, in any case of conflict, the right ad-
justment is to be made between the preroga-
tives of the crown and the liberties of the sub-
ject ; and if ever discord should arise between
oppressive rulers and exacting subjects who
with equal pride, equal selfishness, equal am-
bition, try the one to keep and the other to
grasp as much power as possible, in such a
struggle Christianity, if true to her own spirit
and to her founder's example, stands aloof, re-
fusing to take either side.
"Masters, give unto your servants that which is
just and equal." Such is the rule that Chris-
tianity lays do-wn ; but what exactly, in any
particular case, would be the just and equal
thing to do — what would be the proper wage
for the master to offer, and the servant to re-
ceive— she leaves that to be adjusted between
masters and servants, according to the varying
circumstances by which the wages of all kinds
of labor must be regulated. It has been made
a question whether, in our great manufactur-
ing cities, capital gives to labor its fair share of
the profits. One can conceive that question
raised by the employed as against their em-
The Per^an Ministey. 193
ployers, in the spirit of a purely selfish and
aggressive discontent ; and that, so raised, it
might provoke and lead on to open collision
between the two. Here, again, in a struggle,
originating thus, and carried on in such a spirit,
Christianity refuses to take a part. She would
that employers should be more liberal. ,more
humane, more tenderly considerate, not only
of the wants, but of the feelings of those by
the labor of whose hands it is that their wealth
is created. She would that the employed should
be less selfish, less envious, less irritable — more
contented. It is not by a clashing of opposing
interests, but by a rivalry of just and generous
sentiments on either side, that she would keep
the balance even — the only way of doing so
productive of lasting good.
After correcting the error into which the
applicant to him had fallen, — as though the
settlement of legal questions, or family disputes
about the division of estates, lay within his
provhice, — Jesus took advantage of the oppor-
tunity to expose and rebuke the principle
which probably actuated both brothers, the
one to withhold and the other to demand.
Turning to the general audience by which he
was surrounded, he said, "Take heed and be-
194 The Paeables of
ware of covetousness." The word here ren-
dered " covetousness " is a pecuUar and very
expressive one ; it means the spirit of greed —
that ever restless, ever craving, ever unsatisfied
spirit, wliich, whatever a man has, is ever
wanting more, and the more he gets still
thirsts for more. A passion which has a
strange history ; often of honest enough birth
— the child of forethought, but changing its
character rapidly with its growth — getting pre-
maturely bhnd — losing sight of the end in the
means — till wealth is loved and sought and
grasped and hoarded, not for the advantages it
confers, the enjoyment it purchases, but sim-
ply for itself — to gratify that lust of possession
which has seized upon the soul, and makes it
all its own. It was to warn against the en-
trance and spread and power of this passion
that Jesus spake a parable unto them, saying,
" The ground of a certain rich man brought
forth plentifully : and he thought within him-
self, saying. What shall I do, because I have
no room where to bestow my fruits ? And he
said. This will I do : I will pull down my barns,
and build greater ; and there will I bestow all
my fruits and my goods. And I will say to
my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up
The Persian Ministry. 195
for many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink
and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou
fool, this night thy soul shall be required of
thee : then whose shall those things be which
thou hast provided ? So is he that layeth up
treasure for himself, and is not rich toward
God."
Beyond the circumstance already noted, that
the request which suggested it was one more
appropriate to a late than to an early period
of our Lord's ministry, we have nothing in the
parable, any more than in that of the Good
Samaritan, which specially connects it with the
ministry in Per^a. It is different with the
two that come next in order — that of the Bar-
ren Fig-tree and of the Great Supper.
Some who were present once told Jesus of
those Galileans whose blood Pilate had min-
gled with their sacrifices. He told them, in
reply, of the eighteen upon whom the tower in
Siloam fell, repeating, as he did so, the warn-
ing, "Except ye repent, ye shall all Ukewise
perish." We miss the full force of the pro-
phetic knell thus sounded in their ears, in con
sequence of the word "likewise" being oftci;
used by us as equivalent to " also," or " as
well." The intimation, as given by Jesus, was
196 The Pakables op
that they would perish m the same manner.
The work done by the Roman sword, the
deaths caused by a smgle falhng tower, were
brought before the mind of Jesus ; and hi-
stantly he thinks of the wider sweep of that
sword, and the faUing of all the towers and
battlements of Jerusalem ; and when that ter-
rible calamity (of which we have here the first
obscure hints or prophecy that came from the
lips of Jesus) descended upon the Jewish peo-
ple, then to the very letter were his words ful-
filled, as thousands fell beneath the stroke of
the Roman sabres — slain as the Galileans
were, in the midst of their Passover sacrifices
— and multitudes were crushed to death be-
neath the falling ruins of their beloved Jerusa-
lem. None but Christ himself, none of those
who listened for the first time to these warn-
ing words, could tell to what they pointed.
Forty years were to intervene before the im-
pending doom came to be executed upon the
devoted city. No sign or token of its approach
was visible. Those around him, some of whom
were to witness and to share in the calamity,
were living in security, not knowing how rap-
idly tlie period of forbearance was running out,
not knowing that the time then present was
The Per^l^n Ministry. 197
"but for them a season of respite. It was to in-
dicate how false that feehng of security was, to
give them the true key to the Lord's present
deahngs with them as a people, that Jesus
told them of a fig-tree planted in a vineyard,
to which for three successive years the owner
of the vineyard had come seeking fruit, and
finding none ; turning to the dresser of the
vineyard, and saying, " Cut it down, why cum-
bereth it the ground?" And the dresser of
the vineyard said to him, " Lord, let it alone
this year also, till I dig about it, and dung it :
and if it bear fruit, well ; and if not, then after
that thou shall cut it down."
And there, at the point of the respite sought
and granted, the action of the parable ceases.
Did the year of grace go by in vain ? Was
all the fresh labor of the dresser fruitless ?
Was the tree at last cut down ? All about this
the parable leaves untold. It had been the
image of the end, as it crossed the Saviour's
thoughts, that had suggested the parable ; but
the time had not j^et come for his going further
in the history of the tree than the telling that
its last year of trial had arrived, and that if it
remained fruitless it was to be cut down. The
story ot the tree was, in fact, a prophetic alia-
198 The Parables of
gory, meant to represent the state and pros-
pects of the Jewish people, for whom so much
had been done m the years that were past, and
so>4iiuch more m the year then present : tlie
story stopping abruptly at the very stage which
was then being described — not without an omi-
nous foreshadowing of the dark doom in reserve
for impenitent Israel — the Israel that refused to
benefit by all the care and the toil that Jesus
had lavished on it. It is, of course, not only
easy, but altogether legitimate and beneficial,
for the broader purposes of Christian teaching,
to detach this parable from its primary con-
nexions and its immediate objects ; but, as it
ever should be the first aim in reading any of
our Lord's sayings to understand their signifi-
cance as at first uttered, in this instance we are
left in no doubt or uncertainty that it was the
generation of the Jews then living, then upon
probation, then in the last stage of their trial —
that the fig-tree of the parable, in the first in-
stance, was intended to represent. Regarded
so, how singularly appropriate to the time of
its delivery, in its form and structure, does the
parable appear ! It is the first of a series of
allegorical prophecies, in which the whole after-
history of the people and age to which Jesus
may be said to have himself belonged, stands
The Per^an Ministry. 199
portrayed, Never before had any hint of the
outward or historical issues of his advent, so far
as the generation which rejected him was con-
cerned, dropped from the hps of Jesus. Such
alhision, we may say with reverence, would have
been mistimed had it been made earlier. It
was suitable that the great trial upon which his
mission to them put that generation should be
somewhat advanced, be drawing near its close,
before the judicial visitations, consequent upon
its treatment of the Messiah, should be declared.
And here, in the narrative of St. Luke, the pro-
phetic announcement meets us, as made for the
first time after our Lord's labors in Galilee are
over, and he is waiting to go up to Jerusalem
to be crucified ; and, as the first hint of the
kind given, it is, as was fitting, brief and limited
in its range, throwing a clear beam of light
upon the time then present, leaving the future
enveloped with a threatening gloom.
The same things are true of the parable that
comes next in order in the pages of St. Luke.
It carries the story of the future a little fur-
ther on ; but it, too, stops abruptly. A great
supper is made, to which many had been in-
vited. The servant is sent out to say to them
that were bidden, "Come, for all things are
now ready." With one consent, but giving
200 The Paeables of
different reasons, they all excuse themselves.
The servants are sent out first to the streets
and lanes of the city, then to the highways and
hedges, to bring others in, that the table may
be filled. The narrative closes with the em-
phatic utterance of the giver of the feast —
" For I say unto you, that none of these men
that were bidden shall taste of my supper."
Here, in the first invited guests, we at once
recognize the Jews, or rather that section of
them which stood represented by their law-
yers and Pharisees, among whom Jesus was
at the time sitting. They had had the invita-
tion long in their hands, and professed to have
accepted it ; but when the time came, and the
call came from the lips of Jesus to enter the
kingdom, to partake of the prepared supper,
they all, with one consent, had made excuse.
And they were to reap this as the fruit of their
doing so — that the poor, the lame, the halt,
the blind, the wanderers of the highways and
hedges, were to be brought in, and they
were to be excluded. Of this result the par-
able gives a clear enough foreshadowing : but
it does not actually reveal the issue. It stops
with the second mission of the servants and
the declaration of a fixed purpose on the part
of the giver of the entertainment ; but it does
The Per-ean Ministry. 201
not describe the supper itself, nor tell how the
last errand of the servant prospered, nor how
the fixed resolution of the master of the house
to exclude was carried out. Over these it
leaves the same obscurity hanging, that in the
preceding parable was left hanging over the
cutting down of the tree. There is a step
taken in advance. Beyond the rejection of the
Jews, we have the gathering in of the Gentiles
in their stead alluded to, but obviously the
main purpose of the parable as indicated by
the point at which it stops and the last speech
of the master of the house, which is left sound-
ing in our ears, is to proclaim that those who
had rejected the first invitation that Christ had
brought should, in their turn, be themselves
rejected of him. Here, then, we have another
parable fitting in with the former, and in com-
mon with it perfectly harmonizing with that
particular epoch at which St. Luke represents
it as having been delivered.
The parable of the Great Supper was spoken
at table, in the house of a chief Pharisee, in
the midst of a company of Pharisees and law-
yers. Soon afterwards, Jesus appears to us in
the centre of a very different circle. " Then
drew near unto him all the publicans and sin-
202 The Parables of
ners to hear him." Jesus welcomed them with
joy, devoted himself with the readiest zeal to
their instruction. The Pharisees who were
present were offended at what they had noted
or had been told about the familiarity of his
intercourse with these publicans and sinners ;
his acceptance of their invitations ; his permit-
ting them to use freedom even with his person.
"And they murmured, saying. This man re-
ceiveth sinners and eateth with them." The
Pharisees in Gralilee had done the same thing -,
and that St. Luke, in the fifteenth chapter, is
not referring to the same incident that St. Mat-
thew, in his ninth chapter, has recorded, but
is relating what happened over again in Persea,
just as it had occurred before in Galilee, is evi-
dent from this, that he himself, in his fifth
chapter, records the previous Galilean incident.
In answer to the first murmurings that broke
out against him for companying with publicans
and sinners, Jesus had contented himself with
saying, " They that be whole need not a physi-
cian, but they which are sick. I came not to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
Now, however, he makes a longer apology
and defence. He will let these murmurers
know what it is in the condition of these pub-
The PEEiEAN MiNISTEY. 203
licans and sinners which has drawn him to
them and fixed on them his regard — why and
for what it is that he has attached himself so
closely to them, — even to bring them to re-
pentance, win them back to God. He will
draw aside for a moment the veil that hides
the invisible world, and let it be seen what is
thought ekewhere, among the angels of God,
of that ready reception of sinners on his part
which has evoked such aversion. Christ does
this in three parables — that of the Lost Sheep,
the Lost Piece of Money, and the Lost Son.
Taken together, these three parables compose
our Lord's reply to the censure passed upon his
conduct by the Pharisees, and they do so by
presenting at once the whole history of that
recovery from their lost condition, which it was
Christ's great object to see realized in those
with whom he associated, and the effect of such
recovery as contemplated by those who, not
themselves feeling their need of it, looked
askance upon the whole procedure by which it
was realized ; for just as clearly as the history
of the loss and the recovery of the one sheep,
and the one piece of money, and the one son,
were intended to represent that conversion to
God which it was the main aim of Christ's con-
204 The Parables of
verse with the pubhcans and sinners to effect,
just as c}early do the ninety-nine sheep, and
the nine pieces of money, and the elder brother,
stand as representatives of these murmuring
Scribes and Pharisees — those just persons, just
in their own eyes, who needed no repentance —
thought they did not need it, and who., not un-
derstanding the nature or the necessity of the
work of conversion in others, condemned the
Saviour when engaged in this work. Tiiere is
a difference, indeed, in the three parables, so
far as they bear upon their character and con-
duct. The ninety and nine sheep and the nine
pieces of money, being either inanimate or un-
intelligent, afforded no fit opportunity of a sym-
bolic exhibition of the temper and disposition
of the Pharisees. This opportunity was afford-
ed in the third parable, and is there largely
taken advantage of. The elder brother — the
type or emblem of those against whom Jesus
is defending himself — is there brought promi-
nently out upon the stage : a full revelation of
his distrustful, spiteful, envious spirit is made.
If thirteen verses are given to the story of the
younger brother, the prodigal son, no fewer
than eight are given to that of the elder brother.
The thirteen verses, too, it is to be remembered,
OuE Lokd's Ministry in Persia. 205
cover the incidents of years ; the eight, those
of a single evening.
NaturaUy and properly, the deeper, livelier,
more universal interest that attaches to the
story of the younger overshadows that of the
elder brother — so deeply, indeed, that we think
and speak of the parable as that of the Prod-
igal Son ; but as originally spoken, and for
the purposes originally contemplated, the part
played by the elder brother had much more
importance assigned to it than we now are dis-
posed to give it. He is out in the field when
his younger brother is so gladly welcomed and
has the fatted calf killed to celebrate his recov-
ery. Returning in the evening, he hears the
sounds of the music and the dancing within the
happy dwelling. He calls one of the servants,
and hears from him what has happened. And
now all the fountains of selfishness and pride,
and envy and malignity, pour out their bitter
waters. He sulkily refuses to go in. His
father comes out and remonstrates with him.
But he will listen to no entreaty. He forgets
for the moment all his family relationships. He
will not call his parent father ; he will not speak
to him as to one to whom he had been indebt-
ed— rather he will charge him with injustice
206 The Parai}les of
and unkindness ; he will not call the once lost,
but now found one his brother — " this thy son "
is the way that he speaks of him. Notwith-
standing all his unfilial, unbrotherly, contempt-
uous arrogance, how kindly, how patiently is
he dealt with ; how mildly is the father's vindi-
cation made ; how gently is the rebuke admin-
istered ! Did it soften him, subdue him ? did
he, too, come to see how unworthy he was to
be the son of such a father ? melted into peni-
tence, did he, too, at last throw himself into
his father's arms, and in him was another lost
one found ? Just as in the parable of the Bax'-
ren Fig-tree and the Great Supper, the curtain
drops as the scene should come upon the stage
in which the final fortunes of those of whom
we take this elder brother as the type should
have been disclosed. And in so closing, this
parable goes far to proclaim its birth-time as
belonging to the period when Jesus was just
beginning to lift the veil which hung over the
shrouded future of impenitent and unbelieving
Israel.
The next parable, that of the Unjust Stew-
ard, was addressed particularly, and we may
exclusively, to the disciples. It contains no
note of time by which the date of its dehvery
Our Lord's Ministry in Perjea. 207
might be determined. We are struck, how-
ever, with finding that throughout the period
now before us, it was as servants waiting and
watching for the return of tlieir master, as
stewards to whom their absent lord has com-
mitted the care of his household during a tem-
porary departure, that the apostles and disci-
ples were generally addressed. And even as
the woes impending over doomed Israel were
now filling the Saviour's eye, the first pre-inti-
mation of them breaking forth from his hps,
even so does the condition of the mother church
at Jerusalem, in the dreary years of persecu-
tion that preceded the destruction of Jerusa-
lem, seem to have lain at this time heavy upon
his heart. It was with reference to the sor-
rows and trials that his servants should in that
interval endure, and to the wrongs inflicted on
them, that the parable of the Unjust Judge was
spoken. Its capital lesson was importunity in
prayer, but the prayer that was to go up so
often, and was at last to be heard, was prayer
from the persecuted whilst suffering beneath
the lash. This parable, therefore, like so many
of its immediate predecessors, exactly fits the
season at which St. Luke reports it as having
been spoken.
208 The Parables of
Were it not for the interest which attaches
to the question whether or not the chapters of
St. Luke's Gospel, from the 9 th to the 18th,
present us with a true, and faithful, and orderly
narrative of a period in our Lord's life of which
no other of the Evangelists tell us anything, I
should not have dwelt so long upon this topic.
I shall have gained the end I had in view, how-
ever, if I have brought distinctly out to view
the five months that elapsed after Christ's fare-
well to Galilee, as spent, for the most part, in
the regions beyond the Jordan, as occupied
with a ministry bearing evident tokens of a
transition period, in which, with his face set
steadfastly towards the great decease he was to
accomplish at Jerusalem, our Lord's thoughts
were much occupied with the future — the
future which concerned himself, his followers,
the nation. The events, the miracles, the
parables of the period, are all in harmony ; and
as a whole we may safely say, that they carry
in their bosom internal evidence of their having
been rightly located by St. Luke, unsuitable as
they would have been either for any preceding
or any posterior section of our Lord's life. It
is but attributing to Christ our humanity in.
true and perfe'ct form to imagine that the end-
Our Lord's Ministry in Per^a. 209
ing of his labors in Galilee and Judea, and the
near prospect of his death, threw him into an
attitude of thought and feeling congenial to
the circumstances in which he was placed. It
was natural that the unseen and the future
should at this time absorb the seen and the
present. It may be a fancy, but I have thought,
while reading again and again the ten parables
which belong to this period, that far more fre-
quently and more vividly than ever before in
his ministry is the invisible world laid bare.
The spirit summoned that night into the imme-
diate presence of its Judge — the angels re-
joicing over each repentant returning sinner —
the bosom of Abraham upon which Lazarus is
represented as reposing — the hell into which
the soul of the rich man in dying sinks — where
in any of the preceding addresses or parables
of our Lord have we the same unfolding of the
world that lies beyond the grave ? Is it not as
one who is himself holding closer fellowship
with that world into which he is so soon him-
self to enter that Jesus speaks ? One thing is
not a fancy, that more frequently and more
urgently than ever before does Jesus press
upon his disciples the duty of holding such
fellowship. By the story of the friend at mid-
210 Our Loeb's Ministey in Pee^a.
night awakened by the contmued and repeated
sohcitations of his neighbor, by that of the un-
just judge moved to redress her wrongs by the
simple importunity of the widow, by that of
the prayer of the poor pubHcan heard at once
and answered, by the appeal to their own gen-
erosity as fathers in the treatment of their
children, did Jesus at this time seek to draw
his disciples to the throne of grace, and keep
them there, praying on in the assurance that
earnest, renewed, repeated petitions offered in
sincerity and faith shall never go up to God in
vain. And who is he that encourages us thus
to pray — that gives us the assurance that our
prayers will be answered ? Is he not our own
great and gracious Advocate, who takes our
imperfect petitions as they spring from our de-
filed lips, our divided and sinful hearts, and
turns them into his own all-powerful, all-pre-
vailing pleadings as he presents them to the
Father ?
XI.
THE GOOD SAMARITAN.*
• • TOEHOLD, a certain lawyer stood up" —
J—' in all likelihood within some synagogue
upon a Sabbath-day. In rising to put a ques-
tion to Jesus, he was guilty of no impertinent
intrusion. Jesus had assumed the office of a
public teacher, and it was by questions put and
answered that this office was ordinarily dis-
charged. This lawyer " stood up and tempted
him, saying. Master, what shall I do to inherit
eternal life ?" His object might have been to
perplex .^nd entangle — to involve Christ in a
difficulty from which he perceived or hoped that
he would be unable to extricate himself. Ques-
tions of this kind were often put to Jesus, their
very character and construction betraying their
intent. But the question of the lawyer is not one
of this nature. Something more than a mere idle
* Luke X. 25-29.
212 The Good Samaritan.
curiosity, or a desire to test the extent of Christ's
capacity or knowledge, appears to have prompt-
ed it. It is not presented in the bare abstract
form. It is not, " Master, what should be done
that eternal life be inherited?" but, "Master,
what should I do to inherit eternal life ? It
looks as if it came from one feeling a true,
deep, and personal interest in the inquiry.
The manner in which our Lord entertained
it confirms this impression. Questions of many
kinds from many quarters were addressed to
Jesus. With one or two memorable excep-
tions, they were all answered, but in different
ways ; whenever any insidious and sinister
purpose lay concealed beneath apparent hom-
age, the answer was always such as to show
that the latent guile lay open as day to his
eye. But there is nothing of that description
here. In the first instance, indeed, he will
make the questioner go as far as he can in
answering his own question. He will tempt —
i. e., try or prove him in turn. Knowing that
he is a scribe well instructed in the law, he
will throw him back upon his own knowledge.
Before saying anything about eternal life, or
the manner of its inheritance, Jesus says,
" What is written in the law ? how readest
The Good Samaritan. 213
thou?" It is altogether remarkable that in
answer to a question so very general as this —
one which admitted of such various replies —
this man should at once have laid his hand upon
two texts, standing far apart from each other
— the first occurring early in Deuteronomy,
the second far on in Leviticus — texts having no
connection with each other in the outer form
or letter of the law, to which no peculiar or
pre-eminent position is there assigned, which
are nowhere brought into juxtapoeition, nor
are quoted as if, when brought together, they
formed a summary or compound of the whole ;
the two very texts, in -fact, which, on an after
occasion, in answer to another scribe, our
Lord himself cited as the two upon which all
the law and the prophets hung. The man
who, overlooking the whole mass of ceremonial
or ritualistic ordinances as being of altogether
inferior consideration, not once to be taken
into account when the question was one as to
a man's inheriting eternal life, who so readily
and so confidently selected these two command- j
ments as containing the sum and substance of
the whole, gave good proof how true his read-
ing of the law was. " And Jesus said to him,
Thou hast answered right : this do, and thou
214 The Good Samaritan.
shalt live." ' Take but thine own right read-
ing of the law, fulfill aright those two great
precepts, Love the Lord thy God with all
thine heart, Love thy neighbor as thyself, and
thou shalt live ; live in loving and in serving,
or if thou readiest not in this way the life thou
aimest at, thou wilt at least, by the very
failure, be taught to look away from the pre-
cepts to the promises, and so be led to the
true source and fountain of eternal life in the
free grace of the Father through me the Son.'
Trying to escape from the awkward position
of one out of whose own lips so simple and sa-
tisfactory a reply to his own question had been
extracted — desiring to justify himself for still
appearing as a questioner, by showing that
there was yet something about which there re-
mained a doubt^ — he said to Jesus, " And who
is my neighbor?" We may fairly assume that
one so well read as this man was as to the true
meaning of the law, was equally well read as to
the popular belief and practice regarding it.
He knew what interpretation was popularly put
on the expression, " thy neighbor," which stood
embodied in the practice of his countrymen.
He knew with what supercilious contempt they
looked down upon the whole Gentile world
The Good Samaeitan. 215
around them — calling them the "unch'cum-
cised," the "dogs," the "polluted/' the "un-
clean,"— with what a double contempt they re-
garded the Samaritans living by their side. He
knew that it was no part of the popular belief
to regard a Samaritan as a neighbor. So far
from this, the Jew would have no dealings with
him, cursed him publicly in his synagogue, would
not receive his testunony in a court of justice,
prayed that he might have no portion in the
resurrection. He knew all this — had himself
been brought up to the belief and practice. But
he was not satisfied with it. Along with that
fine instinct of the understanding which had
enabled him to extract the pure and simple es-
sence out of the great body of the Jewish code,
there was that finer instinct of the heart which
taught him that it was within too narrow bounds
that the love to our neighbor had been limited.
He saw and felt that these bounds should be
widened ; but how far? — upon what principle,
and to what extent? Anxious to know this, he
says, "And who is my neighbor?"
Christ answers by what we take to be the
recital of an incident that had actually oc-
curred. A fictitious story — a parable invented
for the occasion — would not so fully have an-
216 The Good Samabitan.
swered the purpose he had in view. A cer-
tain man went down from Jerusalem to Jeri-
cho. We are not told who or what he was ;
but the conditions and object of the narrative
require that he was a Jew. The road from
Jerusalem to Jericho — though short, and at
at certain seasons of the year much frequented
— was yet lonely and perilous to the last de-
gree, especially to a single and undefended
traveller. It passes through the heart of the
eastern division of the wilderness of Judea,
and runs for a considerable space along the
abrupt and winding sides of a deep and rocky
ravine, offering the greatest facilities for con-
cealment and attack. From the number of
robberies and murders committed in it, Jews
of old called it "the Bloody Road," and it re-
tains its character still. We travelled it,
guarded by a dozen Arabs, who told, by the
way, of an English party that the year before
had been attacked and plundered and stripped,
and we were kept in constant alarm by the
scouts sent out beforehand announcing the dis-
tant sight of dangerous-looking Bedouin. All
the way from Bethany to the plain of the Jor-
dan is utter solitude — one single ruin, perhaps
that of the very inn to which the wounded Jew
The Good Samaeitan. 217
was carried, being the only sign of human hab-
itation that meets the eye. Somewhere along
this road, the solitary traveller of whom Jesus
speaks is attacked. Perhaps he carries his all
along with him, and, unwilling to part with it,
stands upon his defence, wishing to sell life and
property as dearly as he can. Perhaps he car-
ries but little — nothing that the thievish band
into whose hands he falls much value. Whether
it is that a struggle has taken place, or that
exasperatron at disappointment whets their
wrath, the robbers of the wilderness strip their
victim of his raiment, wound him, and leave
him there half dead. As he lies in that con-
dition on the roadside, first a priest, and then
a Levite approaches. A single glance is suf-
ficient for the priest ; the Levite stops, and
talvcs a longer, steadier look. The effect in
either case is the same — abhorrence and aver-
sion. As men actuated by some other senti-
ment beyond that of mere insensibility, they
shrink back, putting as great a distance as
they can between them and the poor naked
wounded man ; as if there were pollution in
j)roximity — as if the very air around the man
were infected — as if to go near him, much
more to touch, to lift, to handle him, were to
218 The Good Samaeitan.
be defiled. To what are we to attribute this ?
To sheer indifference — to stony-hearted inhu-
manity ? That mi^ht explain their passing
without a feehng of sympathy excited or a
hand of help held out, but it will not explain
the quick and sensitive recoil — the passing by
on the other side. Is it then the bare horror
of the sight that drives them back ? If there
be something to excite horror, surely there is
more to move pity. That naked, quivering
body, those gaping, bleeding wounds, the pale
and speechless lips, the eyes so dull and heavy
with pain, yet sending out such imploring looks
— where is the human heart, left free to its
own spontaneous actings, they could fail to
touch ?
But these men's hearts — the hearts of the
priest and Levite — are not left thus free :
not that their hearts are destitute of the com-
mon sympathies of our nature — not that their
breasts are steeled against every form and
kind of human woe — not that, in other circum-
stances, they would see a wounded, half-dead
neighbor lying, and leave him unpitied and
unhelped. No ! but because their hearts — as
tender, it may have been, by nature as those
of others — have been trained in the school of
The Good Samaeitan. 219
national and religious bigotry, and have been
taught there, not the lesson of sheer and down-
right inhumanity, but of that narrow exclusive-
ness which would limit all their sympathies
and all their aid to those of their own country
and their own faith. The priest and the Levite
have been up at Jerusalem, discharging, in
their turn, their offices in the Temple. They
have got quickened afresh there all the preju-
dices of their calling ; they are returning to
Jericho, with all their prejudices strong within
their breasts ; they see the sad sight by the
way ; they pause a moment to contemplate it.
Had it been a brother priest, a brother Levite,
a brother Jew that lay in that piteous plight,
none readier to help than they ; but he is
naked, there is nothing on him or about him to
tell who or what he is — he is speechless, and
can say nothing for himself. He may be a
hated Edomite, he may be a vile Samaritan,
for auglit that they can tell. The possibility
of this is enough. Touch, handle, help such a
man ! they might be doing there b}^ a far
greater outrage to their Jewish prejudices than
they did to the mere sentiment of indiscrimin-
ate pity by passing him by, and so they leave
him as they find him, in haste to get past the
220 The Good Samaeitan.
dangerous neighborhood, to congratulate them-
selves on the wonderful escape they had made
— for the wounds of the poor wretch were
fresh, and bleeding freely — it could have been
but shortly before they came up that the catas-
trophe had occurred ; had they started but an
hour or two earlier from Jerusalem his fate
might have been theirs. Glad at their own
good fortune, they hurry on, finding many
an excuse beside the real one for their neglect.
How then are we exactly to characterize
their conduct? It was a triumph of prejudice
over humanity — the very kind of error and of
crime against which Jesus wished to guard the
inquiring lawyer. And it was at once with
singular fidelity to nature, and the strictest per-
tinence to the question with which he was deal-
ing, and to the occasion that called it forth, that
it was in the conduct of a priest and of a Le-
vite that this triumph stood displayed — for
were they not the fittest types and representa-
tives of that malign and sinister influence which
their religion, — misunderstood and misapplied,
— had exerted over the common sympathies of
humanity ? Had they read aright their own
old Hebrew code, it would have taught them
quite a different lesson. Its broad and genial
The Good Samakitan. 221
humanity is one of the marked attributes by
which, as compared with that of every other
reUgion then existing, theirs was distinguished.
" I will have mercy and not sacrifice," was the
motto which its great Author had inscribed
upon its forehead. Its weightier matters were
judgment and mercy, and faith and love. It
had taken the stranger under its special and
benignant protection. Twice over it had pro-
claimed, " Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass
or thy brother's ox fall down by the way and
hide thyself from them — thou shalt surely help
him to lift them up again." And was a man
not much better than an ass or an ox ? And
should not this priest and Levite — had they
read aright their own Jewish law — have lifted
up again their prostrate bleeding brother? But
they had misread that law. They had miscon-
ceived and perverted that segregation from all
the other communities of the earth which it
had taught the Jewish people to cultivate. In-
stead of seeing in this temporary isolation the
means of distributing the blessings of the Mes-
siah's kingdom wide over all the earth, they
had regarded it as raising them to a position of
proud superiority from which they might say to
every other nation, " Stand back, for we are
222 , The Good Samakitan.
holier than you." And once perverted thus,
the whole strength of then- religious faith went
to intensify the spirit of nationality, and inflame
it into a passion, within whose close and sultry
atmosphere the lights even of common human
kindness were extinguished. It was in a priest
and in a Levite that we should expect to see
this spirit carried out to its extreme degree, as
it has been always in the priestly caste that the
fanatical piety which has trampled under foot
the kindliest sentiments of humanity has shown
itself in its darkest and most repulsive form.
After the priest and Levite have gone by, a
certain Samaritan approaches. He too is ar-
rested. He too turns aside to look upon this
pitiable spectacle. For aught that he can tell,
this naked wounded man may be a Jew. There
were many Jews and but few Samaritans tra-
velling ordinarily by this road. The chances
were a thousand to one that he was a Jew.
And this Samaritan must have shared in the
common feelings of his people towards the Jews
— hatred repaying hatred. But he thinks not
of distinction of race or faith. The sight be-
fore him of a human being — a brother man in
the extremity of distress — swallows up all such
thoughts. As soon as he sees him he has com-
The Good Samaritan. 223
passion on him. He alights — strips ofif a por-
tion of his own raiment — brings out the oil and
the wine that he had provided for his own com-
fort by the way — tenderly binds up the wounds
— gently lifts the body up and places it on his
own beast — moves with such gentle pace away
as shall least exasperate the recent wounds.
Intent upon his task, he forgets his own affairs
— forgets the danger of lingering so long in such
a neighborhood — is not satisfied till he reaches
the inn by the roadside. Having done so much,
may he not leave him now ? No, he cannot
part from him till he sees what a night's rest
will do. The morning sees his rescued brother
better. Now he may depart. Yes, but not till
he has done all he can to secure that he be pro-
perly waited on till all danger is over. He may
be a humane enough man, the keeper of this
inn, but days will pass before the sufferer can
safely travel, and it may not be safe or wise to
count upon the continuance of his kindness.
The Samaritan gives the innkeeper enough to
keep his guest for six or seven days, and tells
him that whatever he spends more will be re-
paid. Having thus done all that the most
thoughtful kindness could suggest to promote
and secure recovery, he goes to bid his rescued
22i The Good Samaeitan.
brother farewell. Perhaps the good Samaritan
leaves him in utter ignorance of who or what
he was. Perhaps those pale and trembling lips
are still imable to articulate his thanks — bvit
that parting look in which a heart's whole swell-
ing gratitude goes out — it goes with him and
kindles a strange joy. He never saw the sun
look half so bright — he never saw the plain
of Jordan look half so fair — a happier man
than he never trod the road to Jericho. True,
he had lost a day, but he had saved a brother ;
and while many a time in after life the look of
that stark and bleeding body as he first saw it
lying on the roadside would come to haunt his
fancy — ever behind it would there come that
look of love and gratitude to chase the spectral
form away, and fill his heart with light and joy.
Here too is a triumph, not one, however, of
prejudice over humanity, but of humanity over
prejudice. For it were idle to think that it
was because of any superiority over the priest
and the Levite in his abstract ideas of the sphere
of neighborhood, and of the claims involved in
simple participation of humanity, that this Sama-
tan acted as he did. No, it was simply because
he obeyed the impulses of a kind and loving
heart, and that these were strong enough to
The Good Samaritan. 225
lift him above all those prejudices of tribe and
caste and faith, to which he, equally with the
Jew, was liable.
And was there not good reason for it, that in
the records of our Christian faith, in the teach-
ings of its Divine Author, one solemn warning
of this kind should be lifted up — one illustrious
example of this kind should be exhibited ? Our
Redeemer came to establish another and closer
bond of brotherhood than the earth before had
known, to knit all true believers in the pure
and holy fellowship of a common faith, a com-
mon hope, a common heirship of eternal life
through him. But he would have us from the
beginning know that this bond, so new, so
sacred, so divine, was never meant to thwart
or violate that other broader universal tie that
binds the whole family of our race together,
that makes each man the neighbor of every
other man that tenants this earthly globe.
Christianity, like Judaism, has been perverted,
— perverted so as seriously to interfere with,
sometimes almost entirely to quench, the senti-
ment of an universal philanthropy ; but it has
been so only when its true genius and spirit
have been misapprehended ; for of all influ-
ences that have ever descended upon our earth,
226 The Good Samakitan.
none has ever done so much to break down
the walls of separation, that differences of
country, language, race, religion, have raised
between man and man, and to diffuse the spirit
of that brotherly love which overleaps all these
temporary and artificial fences and boundary
lines — which, subject to no law of limits, is a
law itself — which, like the air and light of
heaven, diffuses itself everywhere around over
the broad field of humanity — tempering all,
uniting all, brightening all, smoothing asperities,
harmonizing discords, pouring a healing balm
into all the rankling sores of life.
" Whicli now of the three," said Jesus to
the lawyer, " was neighbor to him that fell
among the thieves ?"
Ashamed to say plainly " The Samaritan,"
3^et unwilling or unable to exhibit any hesita-
tion in his reply, he said, "He that showed
mercy on him," Then said Jesus unto him,
" Go, and do thou likewise." It is not " Listen
and applaud," it is " Go and do." If there be
anything above another that distinguishes the
conduct of the good Samaritan, it is its
thoroughly practical character. He wasted no
needless sympathy, he shed no idle tears.
There are wounds that may be dressed, — he
The Good Samaeitan. 227
puts forth his own liand immediately to the
dressing of them. There is a Ufe that may be
saved, — he sets himself to use ever}^ method
by which it may be saved. He gives more
than time, more than money : he gives per-
sonal service. And that is the true human
charity that shows itself in prompt, efficient,
self- forgetful, self-sacrificing help. You can
get many soft, susceptible, sentimental spirits
to weep over any scene or tale of woe. But it
is not those who will weep the readiest over
the sorrow will do the most to relieve it.
Sympathy has its own selfishness ; there is a
luxury in the tears that it loves idly to indulge.
Tears will fill the eye — should fill the eye — but
the hand of active help will brush them away,
that the eye may see more clearly what the
hand has to do. Millions have heard or read
the tale of the Good Samaritan. Their eyes
have glistened and their hearts have been all
aglow in approving, applauding sympathy ;
but of all these millions, how many are there
who imitate the example given, who have
given a day from their business to a suffering
brother, who have waited by the sick, and
with their own hand have ministered to his
wants ?
228 The Good Samaritan.
The beauty and force of that special lesson
which the story of the Good Samaritan was in-
tended to convey is mightily enhanced as we
remember how recently our Lord himself had
suffered from the intolerance of the Samaritans ;
only a few days before, we know not how few,
having been refused entrance into one of their
villages. He himself then gave an exhibition
of the very virtue he designed to inculcate.
But why speak of this as any single minor act
of universal love to mankind on his part ?
Was not his life and death one continuous
manifestation of that love ? Yes, bright as
that single act of the Good Samaritan shines
in the annals of human kindness, all its bright-
ness fades away in the full blaze of that love
of Jesus, which saw not a single traveller, but
our whole race, cast forth naked, bleeding,
dying, and gave not a day of his time, nor a
portion of his raiment, but a whole lifetime of
service and of suffering, that they might not
perish, but have everlasting life.
XIL
«
THE lord's prayer.
AT some time and in some place of which
we must be content to remain ignorant,
Jesus had gone apart from his disciples to pray.
They had noticed his doing so frequently be-
fore ; but there was a peculiarity in this case.
He had either separated himself from them by
so short a distance, or they had come upon him
afterwards so silently and unobserved, that they
stood and listened to him as he prayed. Per-
haps they had never previously overheard our
Lord when engaged iu private devotion. The
impression made on them was so deep, the
prayer that they had been listening to was so
unlike any that they themselves had ever
offered' — if that and that only be prayer, they
feel they know so little how to do it — ^that, on
the impulse of the moment, one of them,
when Jesus had ceased, said to him, " Lord,
* Luke xi. 1-13.
230 The Loed's Peayee.
teach us to pray, as John also taught his disci-
ples." We do not stand in the same peculiar
external circumstances with him who preferred
this request, but the same need is ours. There
is access still for us into the presence of our
Redeemer, nor is there in coming to him one
petition that should spring more quickly to our
lips, one that can come from them more appro-
priately, than this — " Lord, teach us to pray."
To pray is to realize the presence of the Su-
preme— to come into the closest possible con-
nexion with the greatest of Beings. To pray is
to lay our imperfect tribute of acknowledg-
ment at his feet — to supplicate for that which
we know he only can bestow — to bring our sin
to him, so that it may be forgiven — our wants
to him, so that he may supply them as seems
best in his sight. What is our warrant for
making such approach ? how may it best be
made ? what should we ask for ? and how should
we ask for it ? None can answer these ques-
tions for us as Jesus could. How gladly, then,
should we welcome, and how carefully should
we study such answers as he has been pleased
to give !
On bringing together all that Christ has
declared in the way of precept, and illustrated
The Lokd's Pkayer. 231
ill the Avay of example, I think it will appear
that as there is no one duty of the religious
life of such pre-eminent importance in its
direct bearing on our spiritual estate, so there
is no one about the manner of whose right
discharge fuller instructions have been left by
him. Thus, in the instance now before us, in
answer to the request presented to him, he at
once recited a prayer which stands as the pat-
tern or model of all true prayer. Without en-
tering into a minute examination of the separ-
ate clauses of this prayer, let me crave your
attention to three of the features by which
it is pre-eminently distinguished.
1, Its shortness and simplicity. It is very
plain ; not a part or petition of it which, as
as soon as it is capable of praying, a child can-
not easily understand. It is very brief, occu-
pying but a minute or two in the utterance ;
so that there is not a season or occasion for
prayer in which it might not be employed.
There is no ambiguity, no circumlocution, no
expansion, no repetition here. It is through-
out the direct expression of desire ; that desire
in each case clothing itself in the simplest,
compactest form of speech.
In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus
232 The Loed's Peayee.
first repeated this prayer, he offered it in con-
/trast with the tedious amphfications and reiter-
ations of which the Jewish and heathen
prayers were then ordinarily composed. The
Jews, as the heathen of old, as the Mussulmans
still, had their set hours throughout the day
for prayer ; and so fond were they of exhibit-
ing the punctuality and precision and devout-
ness with which the duty was discharged, that
they often arranged it so that the set hour
should find them in some pubhc place. Such
practice, as altogether contrary to the spirit
and object of true devotion, as part of that
mere dead formalism which it was the great
object of his teaching to unmask, Jesus utterly
condemned. " When thou prayest, thou shalt
not be as the hypocrites ; for they love to
pray standing in the synagogues and corners
of the streets, that they may be seen of men.
Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy
closet ; and when thou hast shut the door,
pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy
Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee
openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repe-
titions, as the heathen do ; for they think that
they shall be heard for their much speaking.
The Lord's Peayer. 233
Be not ye therefore like unto them : for your
Father knoweth what things ye have need of
before ye ask him. After this manner pray ye."
It was as an antidote to the kind of prayers
then generally employed, as well as a pattern
specimen for after use within the Church, that
Jesus then proceeded to repeat the prayer
which has been called by his name. It was
not to lie by or be deposited as a mere stan-
dard measure by which other prayers were to
be tried. It was to be used — to be repeated.
When, many months after its first recital, it
was said to Jesus, " Lord, teach us to pray, as
John also taught his disciples," he was not sat-
isfied with saying, " Pray generally in such a
mode or style as this ;" he prescribed the very
words — " When ye pray, say," and he repeated
the very prayer that he formerly had spoken.
Not that he put much or any importance upon
the exact words to be employed. In three out
of the six petitions of which the prayer is made
up, there are variations in the words, not
enough to make the slightest difference in the
meaning, but sufficient to show that it was not
simply by a repetition of the words that the
prayer was truly said. With rigorous exact-
ness, this prayer might be said over and over
234 TIe Loed's Peayer.
again till it became a very vain repetition —
all the vainer, perhaps, because of the very
excellence of the form that was so abused.
But over and over again — day by day — it
might be repeated without any such abuse.
All depends upon how you use it. Enter into
its meaning — put your own soul and their own
sense into the words — let it be the true and ear-
nest desires of your "heart that you thus
breathe into the ear of the Eternal — and you
need not fear how often you repeat it, or think
that because you say the same words over
again you sin. Our Lord himself, within the
compass of an hour, repeated the same prayer
thrice in the garden. Use it, however, as a
mere form, with no other idea than that be-
cause it has been " authoritatively prescribed"
it ought to be employed, — a single such use
of it is sin.
2. The order and proportion of the peti-
tions in the Lord's prayer. It naturally divides
itself into two equal parts ; the one embracing
the first three petitions, the other the three
remaining ones — these parts palpably distin-
guished from each other by this, that in the
former the petitions all have reference to God.
in the latter to man. In the former the
The Loed's Peayee. 235
thoughts and desires of the petitioner are all
engrossed with the name, the kingdom, the will
of the great Being addressed ; in the latter with
his own wants, and sins, and trials. It would
be carrying the idea of the Lord's prayer as a
pattern, or model, to an illegitimate length,
were we to say that -because about one-half of
the prayer is devoted to the first of these
objects, and one half to the other, our prayers
should be divided equally between them. Yet
surely there is something to be learned from
the precedence assigned here to the great things
which concern the name, and kingdom, and will
of our Heavenly Father, as well as from the
space which these occupy in this prayer. You
have but to reflect a moment on the structure
and proportion of parts in any of our ordinary
prayers, whether in private or in public, and
especially on the place and room given in them
to petitions touching the coming of God's king-
dom, and the doing of his will on earth as it is
done in heaven, to be satisfied as to the con-
trast which in this respect they present to the
model laid down by Christ himself Our pray-
ers, such as they are, with all their weaknesses
and imperfections, will not, we are grateful to
remember, be cast out because we yield to a
236 The Loed's Peayek.
strong natural bias, and press into the fore-
ground, and keep prominent throughout, those
personal necessities of our spiritual nature
which primarily urge us to the throne of grace.
Our Heavenly Father not only knoweth what
things we need before we ask them, he knoweth
also what the things are, the need of which
presses first and heaviest upon our hearts.
jSTor will he close his ear to any returning,
repentant, hungering, and thirsting spirit, sim-
ply because these are pressed first and most
urgently upon his regard. Is it not well, nev-
ertheless, that we should be reminded, as the
prayer dictated by our Saviour so emphatically
does, that selfishness may and does creep into
our very prayers, and that the perfect form
of all right approach, all right address, to the
Divinity, is that in which the place of supremacy
w^hich of right belongs to Him is duly and be-
comingly recognized. More especially should
it be so in all prayers that go up from this sin-
ful earth to those pure and holy heavens : for
if it be true — as the whole body of the prayer
prescribed by Jesus teaches us that it is — that
we are livini>; in a world where God's name is
not hallowed as it ought to be, is often dishon-
ored and profaned — in a world where God's
The Lord's Pkayer. 237
kingdom of justice and holiness and love is not
universally established, where another and
quite opposite kingdom contests with it the
empire of human souls — in a world where
other wills than that of God are busily at work,
not always consenting to or working under his,
but resisting and opposing it ; — then surely if
the name, the kingdom, the will of our Father
which is in heaven were as dear to us as they
ought to be, first and above all things besides,
we should desire that his name should be hal-
lowed, his kingdom should come, his will
should be done on earth as it is done in heaven.
Let us tl>en as often as we use this prayer
receive with meekness the rebuke it casts upon
that tendency and habit of our nature which
leads us even in our prayers to put our own
things before the thhigs of our Heavenly
Father ; and let us urge our laggard spirits
onward and upward from the sense and sight
of our personal necessities, till, filled with ado-
ration, and gratitude, and love, before we even
make mention before him of a single individual
want, w^e be ready with a true heart to say,
" Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed
be thy name ; thy kingdom come ; thy will be
done in earth as it is done in heaven."
238 The Lord's Prayer.
And whilst receiving the lesson clearly to be
gathered from the place and space occupied by
the first three petitions of our Lord's prayer,
let its fourth petition, in its sequence, and in its
solitariness, and in its narrowness, proclaim to
us the place even among our own things which
earthly and bodily, as compared with spiritual
provisions, possessions, enjoyments, ought to
have. Is it without a meaning that we are taught
to pray first, *'Thy will be done, "and then im-
mediately thereafter," Give us this day our daily
bread ?" The bread is to be asked that by it
the life may be preserved, and the life is to be
preserved that it may be consecrated to the doing
of God's will. According to the tenor of the
prayer and the connexion of these two petitions,
we are not at liberty to ask for the daily bread
irrespective of the object to which the life and
strength which it prolongs and imparts are to
be devoted. It were a vain and hollow thing
in any of us to pray that God's will be done, as
in heaven, so in earth, if we do not desire and
strive that it should be done as by others so
also by ourselves. And it is as those who do
thus desire, and are thus striving, that we are
alone at all likely to proceed to say, " Give us
this day our daily bread," A natural and
The Lord's Peayeb. 239
moderate request, we may be ready to think,
which all men will at once be prepared to pre-
sent to God, Yet not so easy to present in the
spirit m which Jesus would have us to offer it.
Not so easy to feel our continued and entire
dependence on God for those very things that
we are most tempted to think we have acquired
by our own exertions, and secured to ourselves
and our families by our own skill and prudence.
Not so easy to pray for a competent portion of
the things of this life, only that by the manner
of our Using and enjoying them the will of our
Heavenly Father, his own gracious purpose in
placing us where we are placed, and in giving
us all that we possess, may be carried out. Not
so eas}'' to limit thus our desires and efforts in
this direction, and to be satisfied with whatever
the portion be that God pleases to bestow.
Not so easy to renew this petition, day by day,
as conscious that all which comes each day comes
direct from the hand of God — comes to those
who have no right or title to claim it as their own
— who should ask and receive it continually as
a grft. Not so easy to narrow the petition to
the day, leaving to-morrow in God's hands.
The simplest and easiest, though it seems at
first, of all the six petitions, perhaps this one
240 The Lord's Peayee.
about our daily bread is one that we less fre-
quently than any other present in the true
spirit. It stands there in the very centre of the
prayer — the only one bearing upon our earthly
condition — preceded and followed by others,
with whose spirit it must or ought to be im-
pregnated— from which it cannot be detached.
Secular in its first aspect, in this connexion
how spiritual does it appear !
3. The fullness, condensedness, comprehen-
siveness, universality of the prayer. Of course
it never was intended to confine within the
limits of its few sentences the free spirit of
prayer. The example of our Lord himself, of
the apostles of the Church in all ages, has
taught us how full and varied are the utter-
ances of the human heart, when it breathes
itself out unrestrainedly unto God in prayer.
Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty
— ample the freedom and wide the range that
the Holy Spirit takes when he throws the
human spirit into the attitude, and sustains it
in the exercise of prayer — prompting those
yearnings which cannot be uttered, those de-
sires and affections which words multiplied to
the uttermost fail adequately to express. In
the past history, in the existing condition of
The Lokd's Peayee. 241
every human soul, there is an infinitude of
individual peculiarities. To forbid all refer-
ences to these, all manifestations of these in
prayer — to tie every one down at every sea-
son to pray as every one else — to allow no
minute confession of particular transgressions,
no recital of the circumstances in which they
were committed, aggravations by which they
were accompanied, no acknowledgment of
special mercies, nor glad and grateful recount-
ing how singularly appropriate and satisfying
they had been — to cramp down within one dry
and narrow mould all the plaints of sorrow, the
moanings of penitence, the aspirations of desire,
the beatings of gratitude, the breathings of
love, the exultations of joy and hope, which
fill the human heart, and. which, in moments
of filial trust, it would pour out into the ear of
the Eternal — this were indeed to lay the axe
at the root of all devotion. But w^liile plead-
ing for the very fullest liberty of prayer, let us
not be insensible of the great benefit there is
in ever and anon stepping out of that circle in
which our own personal and particular sorrows
and sins shape and intensify our prayers, into
that upper and wider region in which, laying
all those speciahties for the time aside, we join
242 The Loed's Prayer.
the great company of the prayerful in all ages,
in those few and siuaple, yet all-embracing peti-
tions which they and we, and all that have
gone before, and all that shall come after, miite
in presenting to the Hearer and Answerer of
prayer. And this is what we do in repeating
the Lord's prayer. In it we have, — strijDped
of all secondary or adventitious elements, the
concentrated spirit and essence of prayer, a
brief epitome of all the topics that prayer
should embrace, a condensed expression of all
those desires of the heart that should go up to
God in prayer. It is not a prayer this for any
one period of life — for any one kind of charac-
ter— for any one outward or inward condition
of things — for any one country — for any one
age. The child may lisp its simple sentences
as soon as it knows how to pray ; it comes
with no less fitness from the wrinkled lips of
age. The penitent in the first hour of his
return to God, the struggier in the thick of the
spiritual conflict, the believer in the highest
soarings of his faith and love, may take up and
use alike this prayer. The youngest, the old-
est, the simplest, the wisest, the most sinstained,
the most saintly, can find nothing here unsuita-
ble, unseasonable. It gathers up into one
The Loed's Peayer. 243
what they all can and should unite in saying as
they bend in supplication before God. And
from the day when first it was published on
the mount, as our Lord's own directory for
prayer, down through all these eighteen centu-
ries, it has been the single golden link running
through the ages that has bound together in
one the whole vast company of the prayerful.
Is there a single Christian now living upon
earth — is there one among the multitude of the
redeemed now praising God in heaven, who
never prayed this prayer ? I believe not one.
It is not then, as isolated spirits, alone in our
communion with God, it is as units in that un-
numbered congregation of those who have
bent, are bending, will bend, before the Throne,
that we are to take up and to use this prayer.
Not "my Father," but "our Father," is its
key-note. Let it calm, and soothe, and elevate
our spirits, as, leaving all that belongs to our
own little separate circle of thoughts, and
doubts, and fears, and hopes, and joys, behind,
we rise to take our place in this vast company,
and to mingle our prayers with theirs.
And to what is it that the Lord's prayer
owes especially the universality of its embrace
— the omnipotence of its power ? To the spe-
244: The Lord's Peayeb. •
cial character in which it presents God to all
— the peculiar standing before him into which
it invites all to enter. It is not to him as the
great I am, the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent
Creator, and Lord of All ; it is not to him
as dwelling in the light that no man can ap-
proach to — as clothed with all the attributes
of majesty and power, and justice and truth
and holiness, the Moral Governor of the Uni-
verse— that it invites us to come. No, but to
him as our Father in heaven — a Father regard-
ing us with infinite pity, loving us with an
everlasting love, willing and waiting to bestow,
able and ready to help us. Is is to him who
taught us this prayer that we owe the revela-
tion of God to us as such a Father. More than
that, it is to Christ we owe the establishment
of that close and endearing connection of son-
ship to the Father — a connection which it only
remains for us to recognize, in order to enter
into possession of all its privileges and joys.
He who taught this prayer to his disciples,
taught them, too, that no man can come unto
the Father but through him. It were a great
injustice unto him, if, because he has not
named his own name in this prayer, we should
forget that it is he who, by his Incarnation and
The Lokd's Peayer. 245
Atonement, has so linked God and man, earth
and heaven, together, that all those sentiments
of filial trust and confidence which this prayer
expresses, may and should be cherished by
every individual member of our race. There
is not a living man who may not use this
prayer, for while it is true that no man cometh
to the Father but through Christ, it is equally
true — indeed the one truth is involved in the
other — that all men, every man, may now so
come ; not waiting till he is sure that he is a
child of God, has such faith in God, or grati-
tude to God, or willingness to serve God as he
knows a child should cherish ; not grounding
his assurance of God's Fatherhood to him on
his sonship to God — no, but welcoming the
assurance given to him in and by Jesus Christ,
that God is his Father, and using that very
Fatherhood as his plea in his first and last, his
every approach to him. To each and every
one of the multitude upon the mountain-side
of Galilee — to them just as they were — to
them simply as sons of men, partakers of that
humanity which he also shared, Jesus said,
" God is your Father, treat him as your Father,
commend your future to him, cast all your
care upon him as such." "Take no thought,
246 The Lord's Prayer.
saying, What shall we eat ? or, What shall we
drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ?
Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have
need of all these things." Pray to him as such,
then. "When thou pray est, pray to thy Fa-
ther which seeth in secret.'"' After this manner
pray ye — " Our Father which art in heaven."
And what Jesus said to the multitude on the
mountain-si-d-e, he says to every child of Adam.
Was it not, indeed, upon the existence and
character of that very relationship of God to us
and to all men that Jesus grounded the assu-
rance he would have us cherish that our
prayers shall not, cannot, go up in vain to
heaven ? For it is worthy of remark that on
both occasions when this prayer was recited
within the compass of the same discourse,
shortly after he had repeated it — as if his
thoughts were returning to the subject, and he
wished to fix firm in the hearts of his disciples
a faith in the efficacy of such prayer — he added,
"I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given ;
seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you. For every one that asketh"
— asks as I have told you he should, or for
what I have told you he should — "every one
that asketh, receiveth : and he that seeketh.
The Lord's Peayer. 247
findeth ; and to him that knocketh, it shall be
opened. If a son ask bread of any of you that
is a father, will he give him a stone ? or if he
ask for a fish, will he give him a serpent ? . . . .
If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts to your children, how much more will
your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to
them that ask him ?"
XIII.
JESUS THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.*
CHRIST'S first visit to Peraea, on his way up
to the Feast of Dedication, was one of much
locomotion and manifold activities. His second
was dedicated rather to seclusion and repose. He
retired to one chosen and hallowed spot — the
place where John at first baptized — where he
himself had first entered on his public ministry.
Many resorted to him there, and many believed
on him, but he did not go about as he had
done before. Living in quiet with his disciples,
a message came to him from Bethany. Some
sore malady had seized upon Lazarus. His sisters
early think of that kind friend, who they knew
had cured so many others, and who surely
would not be unwilling to succor them in their
distress, and heal their brother ; but they knew
* John X. 39-42 ; xi. 1-27.
The Kesuerection and the Lite. 249
what had driven him lately from Jerusalem,
and are unwilling to break in upon his retire-
ment, or ask him to expose himself once more to
the deadly hatred of his enemies. The disease
runs on its course ; Lazarus is on the very point
of death. They can restrain no longer. They
send off a messenger to Jesus. No urgent en-
treaty, however, is conveyed that he should
hasten to their relief. No course is dictated,
No desire even expressed. They think it is not
needed. They remember all the kindnesses they
had already experienced at his hands — how
often he had made their house his home — what
special marks of personal attachment and regard
he had shown to themselves and to their bro-
ther. They deem it enough, therefore, to bid
their messenger say, as soon as he met Jesus,
" Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick." Jesus
hears the message, and, without giving any
other indication of his purpose, simply says,
" This sickness is not unto death, but for the
glory of God, that the Son of God might be
glorified thereby." This is all the answer that
he makes to a message so simply and delicately
expressed ; by that very simplicity and deli-
cacy making all the stronger appeal to his sym-
pathy. Nothing more being said by Jesus, nor
. 1
250 Jesus the Kesurkection
anything further apparently intended to be
done, the messenger of the anxious sisters has
to be satisfied with this. It seems to be so far
satisfactory ; " This sickness is not unto death."
Jesus either knows that Lazarus is to recover,
or he is to take some method of averting death
— is to cure him ; may have already done so
by a word spoken — a volition formed at a dis-
tance. Treasuring up the sentence that he has
heard uttered, and extracting from it such com-
fort as he can, the messenger returns to Beth-
any, and Jesus remains still two days in the
place where he was. During these two days
the incidents of the message and the answer
fail not to be the subject of frequent converse
among the disciples. They too might under-
stand it to be the reason of their Master's say-
ing and doing nothing further in the matter
that he was aware that the death the sisters
dreaded was not to happen ; or they too might
think that his great power had already been
exerted on behalf of one whom they knew he
loved so much. So might they interpret the
saying, "This sickness is not unto death ;" but
what can they make of those other words by
which these had been followed up ? How could
it be said of this sickness of Lazarus, whether
And the Lite. 251
it left, him naturally or was removed by a mys-
terious exercise of their Master's powers of
healing, that it was to be '* for the glory of God,
that the Son of God might be glorified thereby?"
This was saying a great deal more of the illness,
however cured, than, so far as they can see,
could be truly and fitly said of it. No further
explanation, however, is made by Jesus, and
they must wait the issue.
Two days afterwards Jesus calmly and
resolutely, but somewhat abruptly and unex-
pectedly, saysito them, " Let us go in to Judea
again." Though nothing was said or hinted
about the object of the proposed visit, it would
be very natural that the disciples should con-
nect it with the message that had come from
Bethany. But if it was to cure Lazarus that
Christ was going, why had he not gone sooner ?
If the sickness that had been reported to him was
not unto death, why go at all ? — why expose
himself afresh to the malice of those who were
evidently bent upon his destruction ? " Master,''
they say to him, " the Jews of late sought to
stone thee, and goest thou thither again ?" a
remonstrance dictated by a sincere and lauda-
ble solicitude for their Master's safety, yet not
without ingredients of ignorance and mistrust.
252 Jesus the Eesurrection
"Are there not," said Jesus in reply, "twelve
hours in the day?" "My time for working, for
the doing the will of my Father which is in
heaven, is it not a set time, its bounds as fixed
as those of the natural day, having, like it, its
twelve hours that no man can take from, and
no man can add to ? The hours of this my
allotted period for finishing my earthly work
must run out their course ; and while they are
running, so long as I am upon the path marked
out for me, walking by the light that comes
from heaven, they cannot be shortened, go
where I may ; so long as I go under my Fa-
ther's guidance, so long as I do what he desires,
my life is safe. True, eleven hours of this my
day may be already gone ; I may have entered
upon the last and twelfth, but till it end a
shield of defence is round me that none can
break through. Fear not for me, then : till
that twelfth hour strike I am as safe in Judea
as here. And for your own comfort, know
that what is true of me is true of every man
who walks in God's own light — the light that
the guiding Spirit gives to every man — kin-
dled within his soul to direct him through all
his earthly work. If any man walk in that
Ught, he will not, cannot stumble, or fall, or
And the Life. 253
perish ; but if lie walk in the night, go where
he is not called, do what he is not bidden, then
he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.
He has turned the day into night, and the
doom of the night-traveller hangs over him."
He pauses to let these weighty truths sink
deep into the disciples' hearts, then, turning to
them, he says, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth,
but T go that I may awake him out of sleep."
In their anxiety about their Master they had
forgotten their absent friend whose love to
Jesus had flowed over upon them, to whom
they also were attached. How humanly, how
tenderly does the phrase "our friend Lazarus"
recall him to their thoughts ! It would seem
as if the ties that knit our Lord to the mem-
bers of that family at Bethany had been formed
for this as for other reasons, to show how open
the heart of Jesus was, not merely to a uni-
versal love to all mankind, but to the more
pecuhar and specific affections of friendship.
Amono^ the twelve there was the one whom he
particularly loved ; among the families he vis-
ited there was one to which he was particularly
attached. Outside the circle of his immediate
followers there was one whom he called his
friend. Had he not already so distinctly said
254: Jesus the Eesukeection
that his sickness was not unto death, the disci-
ples, remembering that he had said of Jairus's
daughter, " she is not dead, but sleepeth,"
might at first have caught the true meaning of
their Master's words ; but the idea of tlie death
of Lazarus is so far from their thoughts, that
tiiey put the first interpretation on them that
occurs, and without tliinking on the worse
than trifling end that they were thus attribut-
ing to Christ as the declared purpose of his
proposed visit, they say, " Lord, if he sleep,
he shall do well." Then said Jesus unto them
plainly, " Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for
your sakes that I was not there, to the intent
ye may believe ; nevertheless let us go unto
him." Glad that he was not there ! Yes, for
it spared him the pain of looking at his friend
in his agony, at his sisters in their grief. Glad ;
for had he been there, could he have resisted
the appeal of such a deathbed over which such
mourners were bending ? Could he, though
meaning afterwards to raise him from the dead,
have stood by and see Lazarus depart ? Glad
that he was not there ! Was he insensible,
then, to all the pangs which that departure
must have cost Martha and Mary? — this one
among the rest, that he was not there, and had
And the Life. 255
not come when sent for ? Was he insensible to
the four days' weepmg for the dead that his
absence had entailed ? Glad that he was not
there ! Had the mourning sisters heard the
words, they might have fancied that his affec-
tion for their family had suffered a sudden chill.
But there was no lack of sensibility to their
sufferings ; his sympathies with them had suf-
fered no reverse. It was not that he loved or
pitied them the less. It was that his sympa-
thies, instead of resting on the single household
of Bethany, were taking in the wider circle of
his discipleship, and through them, or along
with them, the whole family of our sinful, suf-
fering humanity. It was with a calm, delib-
erate forethought that on hearing of the sick-
ness, he allowed two days to pass without any
movement made to Bethany. He knew when
Lazarus died — knew that he had died two days
before he told his disciples of it, for the death,
followed by speedy burial, must have occurred
soon after the messenger left Bethany, in all
likelihood before he reached the place where
Jesus was ; for if a day's journey carried the
messenger (as it might have done to Bethabara),
and another such day of travel carried Jesus
and his disciples back again to Bethany, as
256 Jesus the Eesukrection
Lazarus was four days in the grave when Jesus
reached the spot, his decease must have taken
place within a very short time after the original
despatch of the message. Knowing when it
happened, Jesus did not desire to be present
at it — deliberately arranged it so that it should
not be till four days after the interment that he
should appear in Bethany. He had already
in remote Galilee raised two from the dead —
one soon after death, the other before burial.
But now, in the immediate neighborhood
of Jerusalem, in presence of a mixed com-
pany of friends and enemies, he has resolved,
in raising Lazarus, to perform the great clos-
ing, crowning miracle of his ministry ; and
he will do it so that not the most captious
or the most incredulous can question the
reality either of the death or of the resur-
rection. It was to be our Lord's last public
appearance among the Jews previous to his
crucifixion. It was to be the last public mira-
cle he was to be permitted to work. From the
day that this great deed was done was to date
the formal resolution of the Sanhedrim to put
him to death. This close connection of the
raising of Lazarus with his own decease was
clearly before his eye. His sayings and doings
And the Life. 257
at Bethabara show with what deep mterest he
himself looked forward to the issue. If we
cannot with certainty say that no miracle he
ever wrought occupied beforehand so much of
our Saviour's thoughts, we can say that no
other miracle was predicted and prepared for
as this one was.
" Lazarus is dead .... nevertheless let us
go unto him." Had the disciples but remem-
bered their Master's first words, to which the
key had now been put into their hands, they
might at once have gathered what the object
of that journey was in which Jesus invited them
to accompany him, and the thought of it might
have banished other fancies and other fears.
But slow to realize the glory of the coming and
predicted miracle, or quick to connect it with
the after-risk and danger, they hesitate. One
there is among them as slow in faith as the
slowest — fuller, perhaps, than any of them of
mistrust — yet quick and fervid in his love, see-
ing nothing but death before Jesus if once he
shows liimself at Jerusalem — who says unto
his fellow- disciples, "Let us also go that we
may die with him :" the expression of a gloomy
and somewhat obstinate despondency, sinking
into despair, yet at the same time of heroic and
258 Jesus the Kesurrection
chivalrous attachment. Jesus says nothing to
the utterer of this speech. He waits for other
and after occasions to take Thomas into his
hands, and turn his increduUty into warm and
hving faith.
The group journeys on to Bethany, and at
last comes near the village. Some one has wit-
nessed its approach and goes with the tidings to
where the mourning sisters and those who have
to comfort them are sitting. It may have been
into Martha's ear that the tidings are first whis-
pered— Mary beside her, too overwhelmed with
grief to hear. As soon as she hears that Jesus
is coming, Martha rises and goes out to meet
him. Mary, whether she hears or not, sees her
sister rise and go, yet stays still in the house —
the two sisters, one in her eager movement, the
other in her quiet rest, here as elsewhere show-
ing forth the difference of their characters.
Martha is soon in the Saviour's presence.
The sight of Jesus fills her heart with strange
and conflicting emotions. In his kind look she
reads the same affectionate regard he had ever
shown. Yet had he not delayed coming to
them in their hour of greatest need ? She will
not reproach, for her confidence is still unbro-
ken. Yet she cannot help feeling what looked
like forgetfulness or neglect. Above all such
And the Lite. 259
personal feelings the thought of her dead
brother rises. She thinks of the strange words
the messenger had reported. She knows not
well what they could have meant, to what
they could have pointed ; but the hope still
lingers in her heart, that now that he at last
is here, the love and power of Jesus may find
some way of manifesting themselves — perhaps
even in recalling Lazarus from the dead. And
in the tumult of these mixed feelings — in the
agitation of regret and confidence, and grief
and hope — she breaks out in the simple but
pathetic utterance, "Lord, if thou hadst been
here, my brother had not died " — ' it is what
Mary and I liave been saying to ourselves and
to one another, over and over again, ever
since that sad and sorrowful hour. If only
thou hadst been here ! I do not blame you
for not being here. I do not know what can
have kept you from coming. I will not doubt
or distrust your love — but if thou hadst been
here my brother had not died — you could, you
would have kept him from dying — you could,
you would have raised him up, and given him
back to us in health. Nay, " I know that
even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God,
God will give it thee." '
The reply of Jesus seems almost to have
260 Jesus the Eesuerection
been framed for the very purpose of checking
the hope that was obviously rising in Martha's
breast. "Thy brother," he says, " shall rise
again," — words not indeed absolutely preclud-
ing the possibility of a present restoration of
her brother to life, but naturally directing her
thoughts away from such a restoration to the
general resurrection of the dead. Such at
least is their effect upon Martha, as is evident
from her reply, "I know that he shall rise
again in the resurrection at the last day " — a
reply which, though it proved the firmness of
her faith in the future and general resurrection
of the dead, indicated something like disap-
pointment at what Jesus had said.
But our Lord's great object in entering into
this conversation had now been gained. Instead
of fostering the expectation of immediate relief,
he had drawn Martha's thoughts off for a time
from the present, and fixed them upon the dis-
tant future of the invisible and eternal world.
Having created thus the fit opportunity — here
on the eve of performing the greatest of his
miracles — here in converse with one of sincere
but imperfect faith, plunged in grief, and seek-
ing only the recovery of a lost brother, Jesus
says, " I am the resurrection and the life ; he
that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet
And the Life. 261
shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and be-
lieveth on me shall never die" — as if he had
said, ' Martha, Martha, thou wert troubled once
when I was in your dwelling with the petty
cares of your household, but now a heavier
trouble has come upon your heart. You mourn
a brother's death, but would that even now I
could raise your thoughts above the considera-
tion of the life, the death, the resurrection, of
the perishable body, to the infinitely more mo-
mentous one of the life and the death of the
indwelling, the immortal soul ! You are look-
ing to me with a lingering hope that I might
find some way to assuage your present grief by
giving back to you the brother that lies buried.
You believe so far in me as to have the confi-
dence that whatever I ask of God, God would
give it me. Would that I could get you and
all to look to me in another and far higher
character than the assuager of human sorrow,
the bringer of a present relief ; that I could fix
your faith upon me as the Prince of life, the
author, the bestower, the originator, the sup-
porter, the maturer of that eternal life within
the soul over which death hath so little dominion
— that whosoever once hath this life begun, in
dying still lives, and in living can never die.
262 Jesus the Kesureection
For let us notice, as helping us to a true com-
prehension of these wonderful words of our Re-
deemer, that immediately after their utterance,
he addressed to Martha the pointed question,
" Belie vest thou this ?" It was not unusual for
our Lord to ask some profession of faith in his
power to help from those on whom or for whom
that power was about to be exerted. He did
not need to ask any such profession from Mar-
tha. She had already declared her full assur-
ance that he had the power of Deity at com-
mand. The very manner in which the question
was put to Martha, "Believest thou this?"
plainly intimates that some weighty truth lay
wrapped up in the words just uttered beyond
any to which she had already assented. Had
there been nothing in what Christ now said be-
yond what Martha had previously believed — to
which he had already testified — such an interro-
gation would have been, without a meaning. It
cannot be a mere proclamation of the immor-
tality of the soul and the resurrection of the
body, and of Christ's connexion with them, either
as their human announcer or their Divine au-
thor, that is here made. No such interpreta-
tion would explain or justify the language here
employed. The primary and general assertion,
And the Lite. 263
"I am the resuiTection and the hfe," gets its
only true significance assigned to it by the two
explanatory statements with which it was fol-
lowed up. " I am the life," said Jesus, not in
any general sense as being the great origina-
tor and sustainer of the soul's existence, but in
this peculiar and specific sense, that " whosoever
liveth and believeth on rae" — or rather, liveth
by believing on me — "shall never die." And
"I am the resurrection" in this sense, that
" whosoever believeth on me, though he were
dead, yet shall he hve."
Such language connects, in some peculiar
way, the life and resurrection that Jesus is now
speaking of with believing on him ; it at least
implies that he has some other and closer con-
nexion with the life and the resurrection of
those who believe than he has with that of
those who believe not. Jesus, in fact, is here,
in these memorable words, only proclaiming to
Martha, and through her to the world of sin-
ners he came to save, what the great end of
his mission is, and how it is that that end is
accomplished. Sin entered into this world, and
death — not the dissolution of the body, but
spiritual death — this death by sin. " In the
day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die." And
264 Jesus the Eesurkection
the death came with the first transgression.
The pulse of the true spiritual life, of life in
God and to God, ceased its beatings. Death
reigned in all its coldness ; the warmth of a
pervading love to God had gone, and the chill
of a pervading fear seized upon the soul.
Death reigned in all its silence, for the voice
of ceaseless prayer and praise was hushed. It
reigned in all its torpid inactivity, for no lon-
ger was there a continued putting forth of the
entire energies of the spirit in the service of its
Maker. And the same death that came upon
the first transgressor has passed upon all men,
for that all have sinned. And if to be under
condemnation be death, if to be carnally-minded
be death ; if, amid all the variety of motives
by which we naturally are influenced, there
be, but at lengthened intervals, a weak and
partial regard to that Great Being whom
no creature can altogether banish from its
thoughts, then surely the Scriptures err not in
the representation that it was into a world
of the dead that Jesus came. He came to be
the quickener of the dead ; having life in him-
self, to give of this life to all who came to him
for it. " The life was manifested, and we have
seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you
And the Lite. 265
that eternal life, which was with the Father,
and was manifested unto us." " In this was
manifested the love of Grod toward us, because
that God sent his only begotten Son into the
world, that we might live through him."
" And we know that the Son of God is come.
This is the true God and eternal life." "And
this is the record, that God hath given unto us
eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that
hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not
the Son of God hath not life. These things
have I written unto you that believe on the
name of the Son of God, that ye may know
that ye have eternal life, and that ye may be-
lieve on the name of the Son of God."
Such are the testimonies borne by a single
apostle in one short epistle (1st Epistle of
John). More striking than any other words
upon this subject are those of our Lord himself.
Take up the Gospel of St. John, the special
record of those discourses of our Lord in which
he most fully unfolded himself, telling who he
was, and what he came to this earth to do, and
you will not find one of them in which the cen-
tral idea of life coming to the dead through
him is not presented. Thus, in his conversa-
tion with Nicodemus on the occasion of his
266 Jesus the Kesueeeotion
first Passover, you hear him say : "As Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so
must the Son of man be lifted up : that whoso-
ever believeth in him might not perish, but
have eternal life. For God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son, that who-
soever believeth in him might not perish, but
have everlasting life."* Thus, also, in his con-
versation with the woman of Samaria: "If
thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is
that saith to thee, Give me to drink ; thou
wouldest have asked of him, and he would
have given thee living" (life-giving) "water.
Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst
again : but whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but
the water that I shall give him shall be in him
a well of water springing up into everlasting
life."f Thus, also, in his next discourse at
Jerusalem, on the occasion of his second Pass-
over : " For as the Father raiseth up the dead,
and quickeneth them ; even so the Son quick-
eneth whom he will. Yerily, verily, I say un-
to you. He that heareth my word, and believ-
eth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life,
* John iii. 14-16. t John iv. 10-14
And the Lite. 267
and shall not come into condemnation ; but is
passed from death unto life. Ye will not
come unto me that ye might have life."'*
Thus, also, in the great discourse delivered
after the feeding of the five thousand : "This
is the Father's will which hath sent me, that
every one which seetli the Son, and belie veth
on him, may have everlasting life : and I will
raise him up at the last day. I am that bread
of life. This is the bread which cometh down
from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and
not die. If any man eat of this bread, he
shall live forever : and the bread that I shall
give is my flesh, which I will give for the life
of the world. Verily, verily, I say unto you.
Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and
drink his blood, ye have no life in you. He
that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood,
dwelleth in me, and I in him."t Thus, also,
at the Feast of Tabernacles : "I am the light
of the world : he that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of
life. Yerily, verily, I say unto you. If a man
keep my saying, he shall never see death." J
Thus, also, at the Feast of Dedication: "My
* John V. 21, 24, 40. f John vi. 39, 40, 48, 50, 51, 53, 56.
X John viii. 12, 51.
268 Jesus the Eesueeection
sheep hear my voice, and they follow me, and
I give unto them eternal life ; and they shall
never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand."* And so also on the eve of
his last and greatest miracle : "I am the resur-
rection and the life : he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live, and
whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die." Is there nothing striking in it
that, from first to last^ running through all
these discourses of our Saviour — to be found in
every one of them, without a single exception
— this should be held out to us by our Lord
himself as the great end and object of his life
and death,— that we, who were all dead in
trespasses and sins, alienated from the life of
God, should find for these dead souls of ours a
higher and everlasting life in him ?
The life of the soul lies, first, in the enjoy-
ment of God's favor — in the light of his recon-
ciled countenance shining upon it, in the ever-
lasting arms of his love and power embracing
it. The great obstacle to our entrance upon
this life is conscious guilt — the sense of having
forfeited the favor — incurred the wrath of God.
This obstacle Christ has taken out of the way
* John X. 27, 28.
Am) THE Lite. 269
by dying for us, by bearing our sins in his own
body on the tree. There is redemption for us
through his blood, even the forgiveness of our
sins. Not that the Cross is a tahsman which
works with a hidden, mystic, unknown, unfelt
power — not that the blood of the great sacri-
fice is one that cleanseth past guilt away, leaving
the old corruption untouched and unsubdued.
Jesus is the life in a further and far higher
sense than the opener of a free way of access
to God through the rent veil of his flesh. He
is the perennial source of that new life within,
which consists in communion with God — like-
ness to God — in gratitude, in love, in peace,
and joy, and hope — in trusting, serving, sub-
mitting, enduring. This life hangs ever and
wholly upon him ; all good and gracious affec-
tions, every pure and holy impulse, the desire
and the ability to be, to do, to suffer — coming
to us from him to whose light we bring our
darkness, to whose strength we bring our weak-
ness, to whose sympathy our sorrow, to whose
fullness our emptiness. Our natural life, derived
originally from another, is for a season depend-
ent on its source, but that dependence weak-
ens and at last expires. The infant hangs help-
lessly upon its mother at the first. But the
270 Jesus the Eesukeection
infant grows into the child, the child into the
man — the two lives separate. Not such our
spiritual life. Coming to us at first from Christ,
it comes equally and entirely from him ever
afterwards. It grows, but never away from
him. It gets firmer, more matured ; but its
greater firmness and maturity it owes to -closer
contact with him — simpler and more entire
dependence on him, deeper and holier love to
him. It is as the branch is in the vine, having
no life when parted from it ; not as a child is
in its parent, that believers are in Christ.
There is but one relationship, of Son to Father
— one wholly unique — which fitly represents
this union, which was employed by Christ him-
self to do so. " That they all may be one, as
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they
also may be one in us. I in them and thou in
me, that they may be made perfect in one."
It is indeed but the infancy of that life which
lies in such oneness with the Son and the
Father that is to be witnessed here on earth.
Yet within that feeble infancy are the germi-
nating seeds of an endless, an ever-progressive,
an indestructible existence, raised by its very
nature above the dominion of death ; bound
l)y ties indissolubl-e to him who was dead and is
AxD THE Life. 271
alive again, and liveth for evermore ; an exist-
ence destined to run on its everlasting course,
getting ever nearer and nearer, growing ever
liker and liker to him from whom it flows.
Amid the death-like torpor which hath fallen
upon us, stripping us of the desire and power
to live wholly in God and wholly for God, who
would not wish to feel the quickening touch of
the great Life-Giver, Jesus Christ — to be raised
to newness of life in him — to have our life
bound up with his forever — hid with him in
God ? This — nothing less than this, nothing
lower than this — is set before us. Who would
not wish to see and feel it realized in his present,
his future, his eternal existence ? Then, let us
cleave to Christ, resolved in him to live, desir-
ing in him to die, that with him we may be
raised at last, at the resurrection, on the great
day, to those heavenly places where, free from
all weakness, vicissitude, corruption, and decay,
this life shall be expanded and matured through-
out the bright ages of an unshadowed eternity.
XIY.
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.*
IT is not likely that Martha understood in its
full meaning what Christ had said about
his being the resurrection and the Hfe. So far
however, as she did comprehend she believed ;
and so when Jesus said to her, " Believest thou
this ?" — understandiug that he had spoken
about himself, and wished from her some ex-
pression of her faith — she said to him, "Yea
I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of
Grod, which should come into the world."
With crude ideas of the character and offices
they attributed to him, many were ready to
call Jesus the Christ, to believe that he was the
Messias spoken of by the prophets. Martha's
confession went much further than this ; she
believed him to be also the Son of God, to be
that for claiming to be which the Jews had been
* Jolin xi. 22-54.
The Eaising of Lazaeus. 273
ready to stone him, as one making himself
equal with God. It may have been, regarding
him too much as a mere man having power
with God, that she had previously said, " But
I know that even now whatsoever thou wilt
ask of God, God wiU give it thee ;" but now
that her thoughts are concentrated upon it, she
tells out all the faith that is in her, and in so
doing ranks herself beside Peter and the very
few who at that time could have joined in the
confession, " I believe that thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God."
Had Mary and Lazarus not been in his
thoughts Jesus might have pronounced over
Martha the same benediction that he did over
Peter, and said to her, " Blessed art thou, Mar-
tha, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it
unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."
As it is, he simply accepts the good confession,
and bids Martha go and call her sister.
Mary had not heard at first of the Lord's
coming, or, if she had, was too absorbed in her
sorrow to heed it. But now when Martha
whispers in her ear, " The Master is come, and
calleth for thee," she rises and hastens out to
where Jesus is outside the village. No one had
followed Martha when she went out there.
274: The Eaising of Lazakus.
But there was such an unusual quickness, such
a fresh and eager excitement in this movement
of Mary, that those around her ran with her
and followed, saying, " She goeth to the grave
to weep there." Thus did she draw along with
her the large company that was to witness the
great miracle.
Once again in the Master's presence, Mary is
overwhelmed with emotion. She falls weeping
at his feet ; has nothing to say as she looks up
at him through her tears but what Martha had
said before : " Lord, if thou hadst been here,
my brother had not died." Her grief checks
all further utterance. Nor has Jesus anything
to say. Mary is weeping at his feet, Martha is
weeping at his side, the Jews are weeping all
around. This is what death hath done, desolat-
ing a once happy home, rending with bitter
grief the two sisters' hearts, melting into kin-
dred sorrow the hearts of friends and neighbors.
The calm that had its natural home in the breast
of the Redeemer is broken up : he grieves in
spirit and is troubled. Too heavy in heart him-
self, too troubled in spirit, as he stands with
hearts breaking and tears falling all around him
to have any words of counsel or comfort for
Mary such as he addressed to Martha, he can
The Eaisikg of Lazarus. 275
only say, "Where have ye laid him? They
say to him, Lord, come and see." He can re-
strain no longer. He bursts into tears.
What shall we think or say of these tears of
Jesus ? There were some among those who
saw him shed them, who, looking at them in
their first and simplest aspect — as tears shed
over the grave of a departed friend — said one
to another, "Behold how he loved him!"
There were others not sharing so much in the
sister's grief, who were at leisure to say,
" Could not this man which opened the eyes of
the blind have caused that even this man
should not have died?" "If he could have
saved him, why did he not do it? He may
weep now himself ; had it not been better
that he had saved these two poor sisters from
weeping?" We take our station beside these
men. With the first we say. Behold how he
pities ! See in the tears he sheds what a sin-
gular sympathy with human sorrow there is
withm his heart — a sympathy deeper and
purer than we have ever elsewhere seen ex-
pressed. To weep with others or for others is
no unusual thing, and carries with it no evi-
dence of extraordinary tenderness of spirit.
It is what at some time or other of their lives
276 The Eaising of Lazarus.
all men have done. But there is a pecuUarity
in the tears of Jesus that separates them from
all others — that gives them a new meaning
and a new power. For where is Jesus when
he weeps? a few paces from the tomb of
Lazarus ; and what is he about immediately to
do? to raise the dead man from the grave, and
give him back to his sisters. Only imagine
that, gifted with such a power, you had gone
on such an errand, and stood on the very edge
of its execution, would not your whole soul be
occupied with the great thing you were about
to do, the great joy you were about to cause ?
You might see the sisters of the dead one
weeping, but, knowing how very soon you
were about to turn their grief into gladness, the
sight would only hasten you forward on your
way. But though knowing what a perfect
balm he was so soon to lay upon all the sorrow,
Jesus shows himself so sensitive to the simple
touch of grief, that even in such peculiar cir-
cumstances he cannot see others weeping with-
out weeping along with them. How exquisitely
tender the sympathy manifested in the tears
that in such peculiar circumstances were shed !
Again we take our station beside the on-
lookers, and to the second set of speakers we
The Kaising of Lazabus. 277
would say — he could have caused that this
man had not died. But his are no false tears,
though shed over a calamity he could have
prevented. He allowed Lazarus to die, he
allowed his sisters to suffer all this woe, not that
he loved them less, but because he knew that
for him, for them, for others, for us all, higher
ends were in this way gained than could have
been accomplished by his cutting the illness
short, and going from Bethabara to cure. Lit-
tle did the weeping sisters know what a place
in the annals of redemption the death and
resurrection of their brother was to occupy.
How earnestly in the course of the illness did
they pray for his recovery ! How eagerly did
they dispatch their messenger to Jesus ! A
single beam of light fell on the darkness when
the messenger brought back as answer the
words he had heard Jesus utter — '' This sick-
ness is not unto death, but for the glory of
God, that the Son of God might be glorified
thereby," What other meaning could they
put upon the words, but that either their
brother was to recover, or Jesus was to inter-
fere and heal him ? Their brother died, and
all the more bitterly because of their disap-
pointment did they bemoan his loss. But what
278 The Baising of Lazaeus.
thought they when they got him back again —
what thought they when they heard of Christ's
own death and resurrection — what thought
they when they came to know, as they had
never done before, that Jesus was indeed the
abohsher of death, the bringer of hfe and im-
mortality to hght ? Would they then have
wished that their brother had not died — that
they had been saved their tears, but lost the
hallowed resurrection-birth of their brother to
his Lord, lost to memory the chieftest treasure
that time gave to carry with them into eter-
nity?
Groaning again in spirit, Jesus came to the
grave. It was a cave, and a stone covered the
niche within which the body of the dead was
lying. Jesus said, " Take ye away the stone."
The doing so would at once expose the dead,
and let loose the foul effluvium of the advanced
decomposition. The careful Martha, whose
active spirit ever busied itself with the out-
ward and tangible side of things, at once per-
ceives this, and hastens to interpose a check.
Grently, but chidingly, the Lord said unto
her, *' Said I not unto thee, that, if thou
wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory
of God ?" ' Was it not told thee in the words
The Eaising of Lazarus. 279
brought back by the messenger that this sick-
ness was to be for the glory of God — a glory
waiting yet to be revealed ? Have I not been
trying to awaken thy faith in myself, as the
resurrection and the life ? Why think, then,
of the existing state of thy brother's body ?
Why not let faith anticipate the future, and
put all such lower thoughts and cares away V
The rebuke was gently given ; but given at
such a time, and in such presence, it must
have fallen heavily upon poor Martha's heart.
And now the order is obeyed. Takmg a
hasty glance within, the removers of the stone
withdraw. Jesus stands before the open sepul-
chre. But all is not ready yet. There is to be
a slowness, a solemnity in every step that shall
wind up every spirit to the topmost point of
expectation. Jesus lifts his eyes to heaven and
prays, not to ask God to work the miracle, or
give him power to do so. So might Moses, or
Elijah, or any other of the great miracle-workers
of earlier times have done, proclaiming thereby
in whose name it was and by whose power they
wrought. Jesus never did so. He stands alone
in this respect. All that he did was done indeed
in conjunction with the Father. He was careful
to declare that the Son did nothing of himself,
280 The Eaising of Lazaeus.
nothing independently. It was in faith, with
prayer, that all his mighty works were wrought ;
but the faith was as peculiar as the prayer —
both such as he alone could cherish and pre-
sent. Ordinarily the faith was hidden in his
heart, the prayer was in secret, muttered and
unheard. But now he would have it known
how close was the union between him and the
Father. He would turn the approaching mir-
acle into an open and incontrovertible evidence
that he was the sent of the Father, the Son of
God. And so, in words of thanksgiving rather
than of petition, he says, " Father I thank thee
that thou hast heard me '■ — the silent prayer
had already been heard and answered — "And
I know that thou hearest me always," — that
thy hearing is not peculiar to this case, for as
I am always praying, so thou art always an-
swering— " but because of the people that stand
by I said it, that they may believe that thou
hast sent me." In no more solemn manner
could the fact of his m-ission from the Father,
and of the full consent and continued co-opera-
tion of the Father with him in all he said and
did, be suspended upon the issue of the words
that next come from his lips : ' ' And when he
had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice,
The Eaising of Lazaeus. 281
Lazarus, come forth,'' The hour has come for
the dead to hear and Uve. At once, and at
that summons, the body lives, starts into Ufa
again, not as it had died, the hfe injected into
a worn and haggard frame. It gets back in a
moment all its healthful vigor. At once, too,
and at that summons, from a dreamless sleep
that left it nothing to tell about the four days'
interval, or from a region the secrets of which
it was not permitted to disclose, the spirit re-
turns to its former habitation. Lazarus rises
and stands erect. But he is bound hand and
foot, a napkin is over his face and across his
eyes. So bound, as good as blind, he could
take but a few timid shuffling steps in advance.
"Loose him," said Jesus, "and let him go."
They do it. He can see now all around. He
can go where he pleases. Shall we doubt that
the first use he makes of sight and liberty is to
go and cast himself at the Redeemer's feet.
" Take ye away the stone," " Loose him, and
let him go," Christ could easily by the word
of his great power have removed the stone,
untied the bandages. But he does not do so.
There is to be no idle expenditure of the Di-
vine energy. What human hands are fit for,
human hands must do. The earthly and the
282 The Eaising of Lazabus.
heavenly, as in all Christ's workings, blend
harmoniously together. So is it still in that
spiritual world in which he still is working the
wonders of his grace, raising dead souls to life,
and nourishing the life that is so begotten.
It is not for us to quicken the spiritually
dead. No human voice has power to pierce
the closed ear, to reach the dull, cold heart.
The voice of Jesus can alone do that. But
there are stones of obstruction which keep
that voice from being heard. These we can
remove. The ignorant can be taught, the
name of Jesus be made known, the glad tid-
ings of salvation published abroad. And when
at the divine call the new life has entered into
the soul, by how many bonds and ligaments,
prejudices of the understanding, old holds of
the affections, old habits of the life, is it ham-
pered and hindered ! These, as cramping our
own or others' higher life, we may help to un-
tie and fling away.
But the crowning lesson of the great miracle
is the mingled exhibition that it makes of the
humanity and divinity of our Lord. Nowhere,
at no time in all his life, did he appear more
perfectly human, show himself more openly or
fully to be one with us, our true and tender
The Eaising of Lazakus. 283
elder brother, than when he bursts into tears
before the grave of Lazarus. Ko where, at no
time, did he appear more divine than when
with the loud voice he cried, " Lazarus, come
forth," and at the voice the dead arose and
came forth. And it is just because there meet
in him the richness and the tenderness of an
altogether human pity and the fullness of a di-
vine power, that he so exactly and so com-
pletely satisfies the deepest inward cravings of
the human heart. In our sins, in our sorrows,
in our weaknesses, in our doubts, in our fears,
we need sympathy of others who have passed
through the same experience. We crave it.
When we get it, we bless the giver, for in truth
it does more than all things else. But there
are many barriers in the way of our obtaining
it, and there are many limits which confine it
when it is obtained. Many do not know us.
They are so differently constituted, that what
troubles us does not trouble them. They look
upon all our inward struggles and vexations as
needless and self-imposed, so that just in pro-
portion to the speciality of our trial is the nar-
rowness of the circle from which we can look
for any true sympathy. But even were we to
find the one in all the earth by nature most
284 The Eaisikg of Lazaeus.
qualified to enter into our feelings, how many
are the chances that we should find his sym-
pathy preoccupied, to the full engaged, with-
out time or without patience to make himself
so master of all the circumstances of our lot,
and all the windings of our thoughts and our
affections, as to enable him to feel with us and
for us, as he even might have done ! But that
which we may search the world for without
finding is ours in Jesus Christ. All imped-
iments removed, all limitations lifted off — how
true, how tender, how constant, how abiding
is his brotherly sympathy — the sympathy of
one who knows our frame, who remembers we
are dust, of one who knows all about all within
us, and who is touched with a fellow-feeling of
our infirmities, "having himself been tempted
in all thmgs like as we are." It is not simply
the pity of God ; with all its fullness and ten-
derness, that had not come so close to us,
taken such a hold of us ; it is the sympathy of
a brother-man that Jesus extends to us, free
from all the restrictions to which such sym-
pathy is ordinarily subjected.
But we need more than that sympathy ; we
need succor. Besides the heart tender enough
to pity, we need the hand strong enough to
The Kaising of Lazarus. 285
help, to save us. We not only want one to be
with us and feel with us in our hours of simple
sorrow, we want one to be with us and aid
us in our hours of temptation and conflict,
weakness and defeat — one not only to be ever
at our side at all times and seasons of this our
earthly pilgrimage, but to be near us then, to
uphold us then, when flesh and heart shall faint
and fail, to be the strength of our hearts then,
and afterwards our portion forever. In all the
universe there is but one such. Therefore to
him, our own loving, compassionate. Almighty
Saviour, let us cling, that softly in the bosom
of his gentle pity we may repose, and safely, by
his everlasting arms, may forever be sus-
tained.
Let us now resume the narrative. The rais-
of Lazarus was too conspicuous a miracle, it
had been wrought too near the city, had been
seen by too many witnesses, and had produced
too palpable results, not to attract the imme-
diate and fixed attention of the Jewish rulers.
Within a few hours after its performance Jeru-
salem would be filled with the report of its per-
formance. A meeting of the Sanhedrim was
immediately summoned, and sat in council as to
what should be done. No doubt was raised as
286 The Kaising of Lazakus.
to the reality of this or any other miracles
which Christ had wrought. They had been
done too openly to admit of that. But now,
when many even of the Jews of Jerusalem
were believing in hinij some stringent measures
required to be taken to check this rising, swell-
ing tide, or who could tell to what it may carry
them ? There were divisions, however, in the
council. It was constituted of Pharisees and of
Sadducees, who had been looking at Jesus all
through with very different eyes. The Phari-
sees, from the first, had hated him. He had
made so little of all their boasted righteousness,
had exalted goodness and holiness of heart and
life so far above all ritualistic regularity, had
simplified religion so, and encouraged men,
however sinful, to go directly to God as their
merciful Father, setting aside the pretensions of
t-he priesthood, and treating as things of little
worth the labored theology and learning of the
schools, — he had been so unsparing besides in
exposing the avarice, the ambition, the sensu-
ality that cloaked themselves in the garb of a
precise and exclusive and fastidious rehgionism,
that they early felt that their quarrel with him
was not to be settled otherwise than by his death.
Yery early, on the occasion of his second visit
The Eaising of Lazaeus. 287
to Jerusalem, they had sought to slay him, at
first nominally as a Sabbath- breaker, then after-
wards, and still more, as a blasphemer,* In
Galilee — to which he had retired to put himself
out of the reach of the Pharisees of the capital
— their hostility pursued him, till we read of
the Pharisees and the Herodians then taking
counsel together " how they might destroy
him."f Once and again, at the Feast of Taber-
nacles and at the Feast of the Dedication, stones
had been taken up to stone him to death,
officers had been sent to arrest him, and the
resolution come to and announced, that if any
man should confess that he was the Christ, he
should be excommunicated. But as yet no for-
mal determination of the Sanhedrim had been
made that he should be put to death. The
reason of this delay, for suffering Christ to go
at large even for so long a time as he did, was
in all likelihood the dominance in the Sanhe-
drim of the Sadducean element. The Saddu-
cees had their own grounds for disliking the
person, the character, the pretensions of Jesus,
but they were not so vehement or so virulent
in their persecution of him. Caring less about
• John V. 16, 18. t Mark iii 6.
288 The Eaising of Lazakus.
religious dogmas and observances than the
rival sect, they might have been readier to
tolerate him as an excited enthusiast ; but
now they also got frightened, for they were the
great supporters of the Roman power, and the
great fearers of popular revolt. And so, when
this meeting of the Great Council was called in
haste, Pharisees and Sadducees found common
ground in saying to one another, " What do
we ? for this man doeth many miracles. If
we let him thus alone, all men will believe on
him ; and the Romans shall come and take
away both our place and nation." JSTeither
party believed that there was any chance of
Jesus making a successful revolt, and achieving
by that success a liberation from the Roman
yoke, as it then lay upon them. The Pharisees,
the secret enemies of the foreigner, saw nothing
in Jesus of such a warlike leader as the nation
longed for and required. The Sadducees,
dreading some outbreak, but utterly faithless
as to any good issue coming out of it, saw no-
thing before them as the result of such a move-
ment but the loss of such power as they were
still permitted to exercise. And so both com-
bined against the Lord. But tliere was some
loose talking, some doubts were expressed by
The Kaising of Lazarus. 289
men like Nicodemus, or some feebler measures
spoken of, till the high priest himself arose, —
Caiaphas, the son-in law of Annas, connected
thus with that family in which the Jewish pon-
tificate remained for fifty years — four of the
sons, as well as the son-in-law of Annas, having,
with some interruptions, enjoyed this dignity.
All through this period, embracing the whole of
Christ's life from early childhood, Annas, the
head of this favored family, even when himself
out of office, retained much of its power, being
consulted on all occasions of importance, and
acting as the president of the Sanhedrim.
Hence it is that in the closing scenes of our
Lord's history Annas and Caiaphas appear as
acting conjunctly, each spoken of as High
Priest. Caiphas, like the rest of his family,
like all the aristocracy of the Temple, was a
Sadducee ; and the spirit both of the family
and the sect was that of haughty pride and a
bold and reckless cruelty. Caiaphas cut the
deliberations short by saying impetuously and
authoritatively to his colleagues, " Ye know
nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient
for us, that one man should die for the people,
and that the whole nation perish not." One
life, the life of this Galilean, what is it worth ?
290 The Eaising of Lazaeus.
What matters it whether he be innocent or
guilty, according to this or that man's estimate
of guilt or innocence ; It stands in the way of
the national welfare. Better one man perish
than that a whole nation be involved in danger,
it may be in ruin. The false, the hollow, the
unjust plea, upon which the life of many a
good and innocent man, guilty of nothing but
speaking the plain and honest truth, has been
sacrificed, had all the sound, as coming from
the lips of the High Priest, of a wise policy,, a
consultation for the nation's good. Pleased
with themselves as such good patriots, and cov-
ering with this disguise all the other grounds
and reasons for the resolution, it was deter-
mined that Jesus should be put to death. It
remained only to see how most speedily and
most safely it could be accomplished.
Unwittingly, in what he said Caiaphas had
uttered a prophecy, had announced a great
and central truth of the Christian faith. He
had given to the death determined on too lim-
ited a range, as if it had been for that nation
of the Jews alone that Jesus was to die. But
the Evangelist takes up, expounds, and ex-
pands his words as carrying with them the
broad significance that not for that nation only
The Baising cf Lazaeus. 291
was he to die, but that by his death he " should
gather together in one the children of God that
were scattered abroad." Strange ordering of
Providence, that here at the beginning and
there at the close of our Lord's passion — here
in the Sanhedrim, there upon the cross — here
from the Jewish High Priest, there from the
Roman governor — words should come by which
the unconscious utterers conspired in proclaim-
ing the priestly and kingly authority and oflQco
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ !
xy.
THE LAST JOURNEY THROUGH PER^A : THE TEN
LEPERS THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM
THE QUESTION OF DIVORCE LITTLE CHILDREN
BROUGHT TO HIM — THE YOUNG RULER.*
CHRIST'S stay at Bethany on the occasion
of his raising Lazarus from the dead must
have been a very short one. The impression
and effect of the great miracle was so immedi-
ate and so great that no time was lost by the
rulers in callhig together the council and com-
ing to their decision to put Jesus to death.
Hearing of this, no time on his part would be
lost in putting himself, now only for a short
time, beyond their reach. He retired in the
first instance to a part of the country near the
northern extremity of the wilderness of Judea,
into a city called Ephraim, identified by many
with the modern town of Taiyibeh, which hes
♦ Luke XTii. 11-37, sviii. 15-27 ; Matt. xix. 1-26 ; Mark x. 1-27.
The Last Journey Through Pee^a. 293
a few miles northeast of Bethel. After some
days of rest in this secluded spot, spent we
know not how, the Passover drew on, and Je-
sus arose to go up to it. He took a cu'cuitous
course, passing eastward along the border-line
between Galilee and Samaria, which lay not
more than half a day's journey from Ephraim,
descending into the valley of the Jordan, cross-
ing the river, entering once more into Perasa,
travelling through it southward to Jericho. It
was during this, the last of all his earthly jour-
neys, that as he entered into a certain village
there met him ten men that were lepers, who
stood afar off, as the law required ; but not
wishing to let him pass without a trial made
of his grace and power, lifted up their voices
and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."
" Go show yourselves unto the priests," was all
that Jesus said. He gave this order, and
passed on. The first thing that the leper who
knew or believed that the leprosy had departed
from him had to do, was to submit himself for
inspection to the priesthood, that his cure
might be authenticated, and he be formally
relieved from the restraints under which he
had been laid. And this is what these ten men
are bidden now to do, whilst as yet no sign of
294 The Last Joubney Through Peilea.
the removal of the disease appears. Whether
they all had a firm faith from the first that they
would be cured we may well doubt. Perhaps
there was but one among them who had such
faith. They all, however, obey the order that
had been given ; it was at least worth trying
whether anything could come out of it, and as
they went they were all cleansed. The mo-
ment that the cure was visible, one of them,
who was a Samaritan, ere he went forward to
the priest, went back to Jesus, glorifying God
with a loud voice, and falling at Christ's feet
to give hhn thanks. The other nine went on,
had their healing in due course authenticated,
returned to their families and friends, but in-
quired not for their deliverer, nor sought him
out to thank him. The contrast was one that
Christ himself thought fit to notice. "Were
there not ten cleansed," he said, " but where
are the nine ? There are not found that returned
to give glory to God, save this stranger. And
he said unto him. Arise, go thy way, thy faith
hath made thee whole." But now once more
the Pharisees betake themselves to their con-
genial work, asking him when the kingdom of
God should come. He corrects their errors,
gives them solemn warnings as to a coming of
The Ten Lepers. 295
the Son of Man, in whose issues the men of
that generation should be very disastrously in-
volved, adding the two parables of the Unjust
Judge and of the Pharisee and the Publican.
Once more, however, these inveterate enemies
return to the assault. At an earlier period
they had sought in his own conduct, or in that
of his disciples, to find ground of accusation.
Baffled in this, they try now a more insidious
method, to which we find them having frequent
recourse towards the close of our Lord's min-
istry. They demand his opinion upon the
vexed question of divorce. The two great
-schools of their Rabbis differed in their inter-
pretation of the law of Moses upon this point.
Which side would Jesus take ? Decide as he
may, it would embroil him in the quarrel. To
their surprise he shifted the ground of the whole
question from the only one upon which they
rested it, the authority of Moses ; told them in
effect that they were wrong in thinking that
because Moses, or God through Moses, tolerated
certain practices, that therefore these practices
were absolutely right and universally and
throughout all time to be observed — furnishing
thereby a key to the Divine legislation for the
Israelites, which we have been somewhat slow
296 The Last Journey Theough PER.aEA.
to use as widely as we should ; told them that
it was because of the hardness of their hearts,
to prevent greater mischiefs than would have
followed a purer and stricter enactment, that
the Israelites had been permitted to put away
their wives (divorce allowed thus, as polygamy
had been), but that from the beginning it had
not been so, nor should it be so under the new
economy that he was ushering in, in which,
save in a single case, the marriage tie was to
be indissoluble.
In happy contrast with all such insidious at-
tempts to entangle him in his talk was the
next incident of the last journey through Per£ea.
They brought little children — infants — to him.
It is not said precisely who brought them, but
can we doubt that it was the mothers of the
children ? They brought their little ones to
Jesus that he might touch them, put his hands
upon them, pray for and bless them. Some
tinge of superstition there may have been in
this, some idea of a mystic benefit to be con-
veyed even to infancy by the touch and the
blessing of Jesus. But who will not be ready
to forgive the mothers here, though this were
true, as we think of the fond regard and deep
reverence they cherished towards him ? They
Little Childeen bbought to Hm. 297
see him passing through their borders. They
hear it is a farewell visit he is paying. These
httle babes of theirs shall never live to see and
know how good, how kind, how holy a one he
is ; but it would be something to tell them of
when they grew up, something that they might
be the better of all their lives afterwards, if he
would but touch them and pray over them.
And so they come, carrying their infants in their
arms, first telling the disciples what they want.
To them it seems a needless if not impertinent
intrusion upon their Master's graver labors.
What good can children so young as these get
from the Great Teacher? Why foist them
upon the notice and care of one who has so
much weightier things in hand ? Without con-
sulting their Master, they rebuke the bringers
of the children, and would have turned them
at once away. Jesus saw it, and he was
'' much displeased." There was more than
rudeness and discourtesy in the conduct of his
disciples. There was ignorance, there was un-
belief ; it was a dealing with infants as if they
had no part or share as such in his kingdom.
The occasion was a happy one — perhaps the
only one that occurred — for exposing their
ignorance, rebuking their unbelief, and so,
298 The Last.Joueney Through Perea.
after looking with displeasure at his disciples,
Jesus said to them, "Suffer the little children
to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of
such is the kingdom of heaven." We take the
last words here in the simplest and most ob-
vious sense, as implying that the kingdom of
heaven belongs to infants, is in a measure made
up of them. It is quite true that immediately
after having said this about the infants Jesus
had a cognate word to say to the adults around
him. He had to tell them that "whosoever
should not receive the kingdom of God as a lit-
tle child should not enter therein."' But that
was not said barely and alone as an explana-
tion of his former speech — was not said to take
all meaning out of that speech as having any
reference to the little children that were then
actually in his presence. It might be very
true, and a very needful thing for us to know
that we must be in some sense like to them
before we can enter into the kingdom ; but
that did not imply that they must become like
to us ere they can enter it. If all that Jesus
meant had been that of suchlike, ^. e., of those
who, in some particular, resemble little chil-
dren, is the kingdom of heaven, we can see
much less appropriateness ir the rebuke of the
Little Childken brought to Him. 299
disciples, and in the action of the Lord which
followed immediately upon his use of the ex-
pression,— his taking the little children up
into his arms and blessing them. We ac-
cept, then, the expression as implying not
simply that of suchlike, but of thera is the
kingdom of heaven. It may be thought that a
shade of uncertainty still hangs over it. John
Newton uses the cautious language, " I think
it at least highly probable that in those words
our Lord does not only, if at all, here intimate
the necessity of our becoming as little children
in simplicity, as a qualification without which
(as he expressly declares in other places) we
cannot enter into his kingdom, but informs us
of a fact, that the number of infants who are
effectually redeemed to God by his blood, so
greatly exceeds the aggregate of adult believers,
that his kingdom may be said to consist of lit-
tle children." It is not necessary, however,
while adopting generally the interpretation
which Newton thought so highly probable, to
press it so far, or to infer that the kingdom is
said to be of such because they constitute the
majority of its members ; enough to receive
the saying as carrying with it the consoling
truth, that to infants as such the kingdom of
300 The Last Journey Through Perjea.
heaven belongeth, so that if in infancy they die,
into that kingdom, they enter. We would be
most unwilhng to regard this gracious utterance
of our Lord, and the gracious act by which it
was followed up, as implying something else,
or anything less than this.
It is not, however, upon any single saying of
our Lord that we ground our belief that all
who die in infancy are saved ; it is upon the
whole genius, spirit, and object of the great
redemption. There is indeed a mystery in the
death of infants. No sadder nor more mys-
terious sight upon this earth than to see a little
innocent unconscious babe struggling through
the agonies of dissolution, bending upon us
those strange imploring looks which we long to
interpret but cannot, which tell only of a suffer-
ing we cannot assuage^ convey to us petitions for
help to which we can give no reply. But great
as the mystery is which wraps itself around the
death, still greater would be that attending the
resurrection of infants if any of them perish.
The resurrection is to bring to all an accession
of weal or woe. In that resurrection infants are
to share. Can we believe that, without an
opportunit}- given of personally receiving or
rejecting Christ, they shall be subjected to a
Little Children brought to Him. 301
greater woe than would have been theirs had
there been no Redeemer and no redemption ?
Then to them his coming into the world had
been an unmitigated evil Who can beheve it
to be so ? Who will not rather believe, that
even as without sharing in the personal trans-
gression of the first natural head of our race,
without sinning after the similitude of Adam's
transgression, they became involved in death ;
even so, though not believing here — the
chance not given them, — they will share in the
benefit of that life which the second, the spirit-
ual Head of our race, has brought in and dis-
penses? "Your little ones", said the Lord to
ancient Israel, speaking of the entrance into
the earthly land of promise, — "Your little ones
which ye said should be a prey, and your chil-
dren which in that day had no knowledge be-
tween good and evil, they shall go in thither."
And of that better land into which for us Jesus
as the forerunner has entered, shall we not be-
lieve that our little ones, who died before they
had any knowledge between good and evil,
they shall go in thither, go to swell the num-
ber of the redeemed, go to raise it to a vast
majority of the entire race, mitigating more
than we can well reckon the great mystery of
302 The Last Jouenet Theough Perea.
the existence here of so much sin, and suffer-
ing, and death.
Setting forth afresh, and now in all likeli-
hood about to pass out of that region, there met
him one who came running in all eagerness, as
anxious not to lose the opportunity, and who
kneeled to him with great reverence as having
the most profound respect for him as a right-
eous man, and who said,"G-ood Master, what
good thing shall I do, that I may inherit eter-
nal life ?" Jesus might at once and without
any preliminary conversation have laid on him
the injunction that he did at the last, and this
might equaHy have served the final end that
the Lord had in view, but then we should have
been left in ignorance as to what kind of man
he was, and how it was that the injunction was
at once so needful and so appropriate. It is by
help of the preparatory treatment that we are
enabled to see further than we should other-
wise have done into the character of this peti-
tioner. He was young, he was wealthy, he
was a ruler of the Jews. Better than this, he
was amiable, he was virtuous, had made it from
the first a high object of ambition to be just
and to be generous, to use the advantages of
his position to win in a right way the favor of
The Toung Euler. 303
his fellow-men. But notwithstanding, after all
the successful attempts of his past life, there
was a restlessness, a dissatisfaction in his heart.
He had not reached the goal. He heard Jesus
speak of eternal life, something evidently far
higher than anything he had yet attained, and
he wondered how it was to be got at. No-
thing doubting but that it must be along the
same track that he had hitherto been pursuing,
but by some extra work of extraordinary merit,
he comes to Jesus with the question, " Good
Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may
inherit eternal life ?" Jesus saw at once that
he was putting all upon moral goodness, some
higher virtue to be reached by his own effort
entitling him to the eternal life. He saw that
he was so fully possessed with this idea that it
regulated even his conception of Christ's own
personal character, whom he was disposed to
look upon rather as a pre-eminently virtuous
man than one having any peculiar relationship
to God. Checking him, therefore, at the very
first — taking exception to the very form and
manner of his address, he says, "Why callest
thou me good ? there is none good but one,
that is, God."
Endeavoring thus to raise his thoughts to the
304 The Last Journey Ihrough PERaEA.
true source of all real goodness, rather than to
say anythmg about his own connexion with the
Father, which it is no part of his present ob-
ject to speak about, Jesus takes him first upon
his own ground. There need be no talk about
any one particularly good thing, that behoved
to be done, till it was seen whether the common
acknowledged precepts of God's law had all
been kept. " Thou knowest the command-
ments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill,
Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud
not, Honor thy father and thy mother." As
the easiest instrument of conviction, as the one
that lay entirely in the very region to which
all this youth's thoughts and efforts had been
confined, Jesus restricted himself to quoting the
precepts of the second table of the law, and
says nothing in the meantime about the first.
The young man, hearing the challenge, listens
to the precepts as they are detailed, and
promptly, without apparently a momentary
misgiving, he answers, " All these have I ob-
served from my youth." There was no doubt
great ignorance, great self-deception in this re-
ply. He knew but little of any one of these pre-
cepts in its true significance, in all the strictness,
spirituality, and extent of its requirements, who
The Toung Bdler. 305
could venture on any such assertion. Yet
there was sincerity in the answer, and it point-
ed to a bygone hfe of singular external propri-
ety, and that the fruit not so mucti of constraint
as of a natural amiableness and conscientious-
ness. As he gave this answer, Jesus beholding
him, loved him. It was new and refreshing to
the Saviour's eye to see such a specimen as this
of truthfulness and purity, of all that was mo-
rally lovely and of good report among the rulers
of the Jews. Here was no hypocrite, no fana-
tic, here was one who had not learned to wear
the garb of sanctimoniousness as a cover for all
kinds of self-indulgence ; here was one free
from the delusion that the strict observance of
certain formulas of devotion would stand in-
stead of the mightier matters of justice and of
charity ; here was one who so far had escaped
the contagion of his age and sect, who was not
seeking to make clean the outside of the cup
and the platter, but was really striving to keep
himself from all that was wrong, and to be to-
wards his fellow-men all that, as he understood
it, God's law required. Jesus looked upon
this man and loved him.
But the very love he bore him prompted
Jesus to subject him to a treatment bearing in
306 The Last Joueney Theough Pee-ea.
many respects a likeness to that to which he
subjected Nicodemus. With not a Httle, in-
deed, that was different, there was much that
was ahke in the two rulers, — the one who came
to Jesus by night at the beginning of his min-
istry in Judea ; the onre who now comes to
him by day at the close of his labors in Peraea :
both honest, earnest men, seekers after truth,
and lovers of it in a fashion too, but both ig-
norant and self-deceived ; Nicodemus's error
rather one of the head than of the heart, flow-
ing from an entire misconception of the very
nature of Christ's kingdom ; the young ruler's
one of the heart rather than of the head, flowing
from an inordinate, an idolatrous attachment to
his worldly possessions. In either case Christ's
treatment was quick, prompt, decisive, laying
the axe at once at the root of the evil. Be-
neath all the pleasing show of outward morali-
ties Christ detected in the young ruler's breast
a lamentable want of any true regard to God,
any recognition of his supreme and paramount
claims. His heart, his trust, his treasure, were
in earthly, not in heavenly things. He needed
a sharp lesson to teach him this, to lay bare at
once the true state of things w^ithin. Christ
was too kind and too skillful a physician to ap-
The Young Eulee. 307
ply this or that emolhent that might have power
to allay a symptom or two of the outward irri-
tation. At once he thrusts the probe into the
very heart of the wound. " One thing thou
lackest : go thy way," said he, at once assum-
ing his proper place as the representative of
God and of his claims, — " go thy way, sell
whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor :
and come, take up the cross, and follow me."
The one thing lacking was not the renunciation
of his property in bestowing it upon the poor.
It was a supreme devotedness to God, to duty
■ — a willingness to give up anything, to give up
everything where God required it to be given
up, when the holding of it was inconsistent with
fidelity to him. This was the one thiqg lack-
ing. And instead of proclaiming his fatal de-
ficiency in this primary requirement, without
which there could be no true obedience rend-
ered to any part of the Divine law, Christ em-
bodies the claim which he knew the young ruler
was unprepared to honor — in that form which
struck directly at the idol of his heart, and re-
quired its instant and absolute dethronement.
Not for a moment, then, can we imagine
that in speaking to him as he did, Jesus was
issuing a general command, or laying down a
308 The Last Journey Through Perjia.
universal condition of the Christian discipleship,
or that he was even holding up the relinquish-
ment of earthly possessions as an act of pre-
eminent meritoriousness, which all strivers
after Christian perfection should set before
them as the summit to be reached. There is
nothing of all this here. It is a special treat-
ment of a special case. Christ's object being
to frame and to apply a decisive touchstone or
test whereby the condition of that one spirit
might be exposed, he suited with admirable
skill the test to the condition. Had that con-
dition been other than it was, the test employed
had been different. Had it been the love of
pleasure, or the love of power, or the love of
fame, instead of the love of money that had
been the ruling passion, he would have framed
his order so that obedience to it would have de-
manded the crucifixion of the ruling passion,
the renunciation of the one cherished idol.
The only one abiding universal rule that
we are entitled to extract from this dealing of
our Lord with this appHcant being this — that
in coming to Christ, in taking on the yoke of
the Christian discipleship, it must be in the
spirit of an entire readiness to part with all that
he requires us to relinquish, and to allow no
The Young Eulee. 309
idol to usurp that inward throne, that of right
is his.
Chrisf's treatment, if otherwise it failed, was
in one respect eminently successful. It silenced,
it saddened, it sent away. No answer was at-
tempted. No new question was raised. The
demand was made in such broad, unmitigated,
unambiguous terms, that the young ruler, con-
scious that he had never felt before the extent
or pressure of such a demand, and that he was
utterly unprepared to meet, turned away dis-
appointed and dissatisfied. Jesus saw him go,
let him go, followed him with no importunities,
besought him not to return and to reconsider.
It was not the manner of the Saviour to be
importunate, — you do not find in him any
great urgency or iteration of appeal. When
once in any case enough is said or done, the
individual dealt with is left to his own free
will. Gazhig after this young ruler as he de-
parted, Jesus then looked round about, and
saith to his disciples, " How hardly shall they
that have riches enter into the kingdom of
God !" The disciples were astonished at these
words, as well they might. What! was the
ease or the difficulty of entering into this king-
dom to be measured by the little or by the
310 The Last Joueney Thkough Pee^a.
more of this world's goods that each man pos-
sessed ? A strange premium this on poverty,
as strange a penalty on wealth. Jesus notices
the surprise that his saying had created, and,
aware of the false track along which his disci-
ples' thoughts were running, in a way as affec-
tionate as it was instructive, proceeded to ex-
plain the real meaning of what he had just
said. " Children, how hard is it for them that
trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of
God !" It is not the having but the trusting
that creates the difficulty. It is not the kind
or the quantity of the wealth possessed, but the
kind or quantity of the attachment that is lav-
ished upon it. The love of the penny may
create as great impediment as the love of the
pound. Nor is it our wealth alone that oper-
ates in this way, that raises a mighty obstacle
in the way of entering into the kingdom. It
is anything else than God and Christ upon
which the supreme affection of the spirit is
bestowed. A new light dawns upon the dis-
ciples' minds as they listen to and begin to com-
prehend the explanation that their Master now
has given, and see the extent to which that ex-
planation goes. They were astonished at the
first, but now the astonishment is more than
The Young Euler. 311
doubled ; for if it indeed be true, that before
any individual of our race can cross the thresh-
old of the kingdom such a shift of the whole
trust and confidence of the heart must take
place, — if every earthly living creature, — at-
tachment must be subordinated to the love of
God and of Jesus Christ his Son, vrho then can
be saved ? for who can effect this great revolu-
tion within his own heart, who can take the
dearest idol he has known and cast it down in
the dust, who can lay hand upon the usurper
and eject him, who can raise the rightful owner
of it to the throne ? Astonished out of meas-
ure, the disciples say among themselves, " Who
then can be saved ?" Is the question needless
or inappropriate ? JSTow is the time, if they
have fallen into any mistake, if they are taking
too dark, too gloomy views of the matter, if
there be aught of error or of exaggeration iu
the conceptions out of which this question
springs, — ^now is the time for Jesus to rectify
the error, to remove the misconception. Does
he do so ? Na}^, but assuming that it is even
so — as difficult to be saved as they imagine
— his reply is, "With man it is imposible, but
not with God, for with God all things are pos-
sible." Taught then by our Lord himself to
312 The Last Journey Through Per^a.
know what all true entering into his kingdom
implies and presupposes, let us be well assured
that to be saved in his sense of the word is no
such easy thing as many fancy, the difficulty
not lying in any want of willingness on his
part to save us, not in any hindrance whatever
lying there without. All such outward impedi-
ments have been, by his own gracious hand,
and by the work of his dear Son our Saviour,
removed. The difficulty lies within, in our
misplaced affections, in our stubborn and ob-
stinate wills, in hearts that will not let go
their hold of other things to clasp him home to
them as their only satisfying good. Do you
feel the difficulty, — the moral impossibility of
this hindrance being taken away by ourselves ?
Then will you pray to him with whom this, as
everything, is possible, that he may turn the
possibility into realit3\ He has done so in the
case of multitudes as weak, as impotent as you.
He will do it unto you if you desire that it be
done, and commit the doing of it into his
bauds.
XVI.
JESUS AT JERICHO THE REQUEST OF THE SONS
OF ZEBEDEE.*
NO district of the Holy Land is more unlike
what it once was and what it still might
be than that in which Jericho, the city of
palms, once stood. Its position, commanding
the two chief passes up to the hill country of
Judea and Samaria, the depth and fertility of
its well-watered soil, and the warmth of its
tropical climate, early indicated it as the site
of a city which should not only be the capital of
the surrounding territory, but the protection
of all western Palestine against invaders from
the east. Joshua found it so when he crossed
the Jordan ; and as his first step towards the
conquest of the country which lay beyond, laid
siege to a city which had walls broad enough
to have houses built upon them, and whose
• Matt. XX. 17-34 ; Mark x. 2-52 ; Luke xviii. 35-43, xx. 2-10.
314 Jesus at Jekicho.
spoil when taken, its gold and its silver, its
vessels of brass and of iron, its goodly Babylon-
ish garments, bore evidences of affluence and
of traffic. jSTo town in all the territory which
the Israelites afterwards acquired westward of
Jordan could compete with Jericho. It fell,
w^as reduced to ruins, and the curse of Joshua
pronounced upon the man who attempted to
raise again its walls.* In the days of Ahab
that attempt was made, and though the
threatened evil fell upon the maker, the city
rose from its ruins to enter upon another stage
of progressive prosperity, which reached its
highest point when Herod the Great selected
it as one of his favorite resorts, beautified it
with towers and palaces, becoming so attached
to it that, feeling his last illness to have come
upon him, he retired there to die. Soon after
his death the town was plundered, and some
of its finest buildings were destroyed. These,
however, were speedily restored to all their
original splendor by Archelaus and as he left
* Within two miles of it, sharing in all its great natiiral advan-
tages, stood Gilgal, the first encampment of the Israelites, where
the ark stood till its removal to Shiloh, which we read of as one
of the stations to which Samuel resorted in administering justice
throughout the country, where the tribes so often met in the days
of Saul, to which the men of Judah went down to welcome David
back again to Jerusalem.
Jesus at Jehicho. 315
it Josephus has described it — its stately build-
ings rising up among groves of palm-trees miles
m length, with gardens scattered round, in
which all the chief flowers and fruits of eastern
lands grew up in the greatest luxuriance. The
rarest and most precious among them, the bal-
sam, a treasure " worth its own weight in sil-
ver, for which kings made war,"* " so that he,"
says the Jewish historian, as he warms in his
recital of all its glories, "he who should pro-
nounce the place to be divine would not be
mistaken, wherein is such plenty of trees pro-
duced as is very rare, and of the most excel-
lent sort. And, indeed, if we speak of these
other fruits, it will not be easy to hght on any
climate in the habitable earth that can well be
compared to it."
And such as Josephus has described was Je-
richo and the country around when Christ's eye
rested on them, in descending into the valley
of the Jordan, and above the tops of the palm-
trees, and the roofs of the palaces, he saw the
trace of the road that led up to Jerusalem.
None beside the twelve had gone with him into
the retreats of Ephraim and Perasa. But now
* Martineau,
316 Jesus at Jeeicho.
he is on the track of the companies from the
north, who are going up to the Passover, that
is to be celebrated at the close of the follow-
ing week. The time, the company, the road,
all serve to bring up to the Saviour's thoughts
events that are now so near, to him of such
momentous import. A spirit of eager impa-
tience to be baptized with the impending bap-
tism seizes upon him, and gives a strange
quickness and a forwardness to his movements.
His talk, his gait, his gestures all betoken how
absorbed he is ; the eye and thought away from
the present, from all around, fixed upon some
future, the purport of which has wonder-
fully excited him. His hasty footsteps carry
him on before his fellow-travellers. *' Jesus
went before them," St. Mark tells us, "and
they were amazed ; and as they followed they
were afraid.'" There was that in his aspect,
attitude, and actions that filled them with won-
der and with awe. It was not long till an ex-
planation was ofl'ered them. He took the
twelve aside, and once again, as twice before,
but now with still greater minuteness and par-
ticularity of detail, told them what was about
to happen within a few days at Jerusalem, how
he was to be delivered into the hands of the
Jesus at Jericho. 317
Jewish rulers, and how they were to clehver
him into the hands of the Gentiles, how he was
to be mocked and scourged, and spit upon and
crucified, till all things that were written by
the prophets concerning him should be accom-
plished, and how on the third day he was to
rise again. Everything was told so plainly
that we may well wonder that any one could
have been at any loss as to Christ's meaning :
but the disciples, we are told, " understood none
of these things, and the sayings were hid from
them, neither knew they the things which were
spoken," This only proves what a blinding
power preconception and misconception have
in hiding the simplest things told in the simplest
language — a blinding power often exercised
over us now as to the written, as it was then
exercised over the apostles as to their Master's
spoken words. The truth is, that these men
were utterly unprepared at the time to take in
the real truth as to what was to happen to their
Master. They had made up their minds, on
the best of evidence, that he was the Messiah.
He had himself lately confirmed them in that
faith. But they had their own notions of the
Messiahship. With these such sufferings and
and such a death as were actually before Jesus
318 Jesus at Jericho.
were utterly inconsistent. They could be but
figurative expressions, then, that he had em-
ployed, intended, perhaps, to represent some
severe struggle with his adversaries through
which he had to pass before his kingdom was
set up and acknowledged.
One thing alone was clear — that the time so
long looked forward to had come at last. This
visit to Jerusalem was to witness the erection
of the kingdom. All other notions lost in that,
the thought of the particular places they were
to occupy in that kingdom entered again into
the hearts of two of the apostles — that pair of
brothers who, from early adherence, and the
amount of sacrifice they had made, and the
marked attention that on more than one occa-
sion Jesus had paid to them, might naturally
enough expect that if special favors were to
be dispensed to any, they would not be over-
looked. James and John tell their mother
Salome, who has met them by the way, all that
they have lately noticed in the manner of their
Master, and all that he has lately spoken, point-
ing to the approaching Passover as the season
when the manifestation of the kingdom was to
be made. Mother and sons agree to go to
Jesus with the request that in his kingdom and
Jesus at Jericho. 319
glory the one brother should sit ujoon his right
hand and the other upon his left, a request that
in all likelihood took its particular shape and
form from what Jesus had said but a few days
before, when, in answer to Peter's question,
" Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed
thee ; what shall we have therefore ? And
Jesus said unto them, Yerily I say unto you,
That ye which have followed me in the regen-
eration, when the Son of man shall sit in the
throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon
tw.elves thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
Israel."* What could these thrones, this judg-
ing be ? Little wonder that the apostles' minds
were set a-speculating by what still leaves us,
after all speculating, about as much in the
dark as ever. But while Salome and James
and John were proffering their request, and
trying to pre-engage the places of highest
honor, where was Peter ? It had not come
into his thoughts to seek a private interview
with his Master for such a j)urpose. He had
no mother by his side to fan the flame that was
as ready to kindle in his as in any of their
breasts. That without any thought of one
•Matt.xix. 27, 28.
320 Jesus at Jeeicho.
whose natural claims were as good as theirs,
James and John should have gone to Jesus and
made the request they did, satisfies us at least
of this, that it was not the understanding
among the twelve that when the Lord had
spoken to Peter as he did after his good con-
fession, he had assigned to him the primacy, or
indeed any particular pre-eminence, over the
rest.
" Ye know not what ye ask." They did it
ignorantly, and so far they obtain mercy of the
Lord. What it was to be placed on his right
and on his left in the scenes that awaited him
in Jerusalem, two at least of the three peti-
tioners, John and Salome, shall soon know as
they stand gazing upon the central cross of
Calvary. " Can ye drink of the cup that I
drink of? and be baptized with the baptism
that I am baptized with ? They say, We can."
From this reply it would appear that the disci-
ples understood the Lord as asking them
whether they are prepared to drink along with
him some cup of sorrow that was about soon
to be put into his hands, to be baptized along
with him in some baptism of fire to which he
was about to be subjected. They are prepared,
they think that they can follow him, they arc
Jesus at Jericho. .321
willing to take their part in whatever suffering
such following shall entail. Through all the
selfishness, and the ambition, and the great ig-
norance of the future that their request revealed,
there shone out in this prompt and no doubt
perfectly sincere and honest reply, a true and
deep attachment to their Master, a readiness to
suffer with him or for him. And he is far
quicker to recognize the one than to condemn
the other. " Ye shall indeed drink of the cup
that I drink of ; and with the baptism that I
am baptized withal shall ye be baptized." 'You,
James, shall be the first among the twelve that
shall seal your testimony with your blood.
You, John, shall have the longest if not the
largest experience of what the bearing of the
cross shall bring with it. But to sit on my
right and on my left in my kingdom and my
glory ; ask me not for that honor as if it were
a thing in the conferring of which I am at lib-
erty to consult my own individual will or taste
or humor. It is not mine so to dispense. It
is mine to give, but only to those for whom it
is prepared of my Father, and who by the
course of discipline through which he shall pass
them shall be duly prepared for it.
James and John have to be content with
322 Jesus at Jeeicho.
such reply. Their apphcation, though made
to Christ when alone, soon after became known
to others, and excites no small stir among them.
Which of them indeed may cast the first stone
at the two ? They had all been quarreling
among themselves not long before, as to which
of them should be greatest. And they shall
all ere long be doing so again. Christ's word
of rebuke as he hears of this contention is for
all as well as for James and John. He tells
us that no such kind of authority and power as
is practiced in earthly government — the author-
ity of men, rank, or power carrying it dictato-
rially and tyrannically over subjects and de-
pendents— is to be admitted among his disci-
ples ; greatness among them being a thing to
be measured not by the amount of power pos-
sessed, but by the amount of service rendered,
by their greater likeness to the Son of Man,
" who came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give his life a ransom for
many." The contention is thus momentarily
hushed, to break out again, when it shall re-
ceive a still more impressive rebuke.
Jesus and his disciples, and a great multitude
of people who had joined themselves to him by
the way, now drew near to Jericho. Of w^hat
Jesus at Jerichg. 323
occurred in and near the city I offer no contin-
uous narrative, for it is difficult to frame such
out of the details which the different Evange-
lists present. St. Mark and St. Luke tell us
of one blind man only who was healed. St.
Matthew tells us of two. Two of the three
Evangelists speak of the healing as having oc-
curred on Christ's departure out of town, the
third of its having taken place on his entrance
into it. We may conclude with certainty that
there were two, and we may conjecture that
there were three blind men cured on this oc-
casion. In a city so large as Jericho then was,
computed to contain well-nigh 100,000 inhabi-
tants,— the number swelled by the strangers
on their way to the Passover, — it would not
surprise us that more cases than one of the
kind described should have occurred. One
general remark upon this and all similar dis-
crepancies in the Gospel narratives may be
offered. It is quite enough to vindicate the
entire truthfulness of each separate account,
that we can imagine some circumstance or cir-
cumstances omitted by all, the occurrence of
which would enable us to reconcile them. How
often does it happen that two or three witnesses
each tell what they saw and heard ; their testi-
324: Jesus at Jebicho.
monies taken by themselves present almost
insuperable difficulties in the way of reconcil-
ing them ; yet when the whole in all its minute
details is known, the key is then put into our
hands by which the apparent discord is at once
removed. And when the whole never can be
known, is it not the wisest course to let the
discrepancies remain just as we find them ;
satisfied if we can imagine any way by which
all that each narrator says is true ?
This can easily enough be done in the case
before us. Satisfied with this, let us fix our
attention on the stories of Bartimeus and Zac-
cheus, on the two striking incidents by which
our Lord's entrance into and exit from Jericho
were made forever memorable. How different
in all the outward circumstances of their lot in
life were these two men! — the one a poor
blind beggar, the other among the richest men
in the community. The revenues derived
from the palm-trees and balsam-gardens of
Jericho were so great, that the grant of them
was one of the richest gifts which Antony pre-
sented Cleopatra. Herod farmed them of the
latter, and intrusted the collection of them to
these publicans, of whom Zaccheus was the
chief. His position was one enabling him to
Jesus at Jeeicho. 325
realize large gains, and we may believe that of
that position he had taken the full advantage.
Unhke in other things, in this Bartimeus and
Zaccheus were at one, — in their eagerness,
their earnestness, their perseverance, their
resolution to use all possilDle means to over-
come all obstacles thrown in the way of their
approach to Christ. The poor blind beggar
sits beneath the shade of some towering palm,
waiting to salute each stray passenger as he
goes by, and solicit alms. Suddenly he hears
the tread as of a great multitude approaching.
He wonders what it can be. He asks j they
tell him that Jesus of Nazareth is coming, and
is about to pass by. Jesus of Nazareth ! he
had heard of him before, heard of healings
wrought by him, of blind eyes opened, of dead
men raised. Many a time in his darkness, in
his solitude, as he sat alone by the wayside, he
had pondered who this great miracle- worker
could be, and he had come to the conclusion
that he could be no other than the Son of
David, the Messiah promised to their fathers.
It had never crossed his thoughts that he and
this Jesus should ever meet, when now they
tell him that he is near at hand, will soon be
passing by. He can, he may do that for him
826 Jesus at Jericho.
which none but he can do. The whole faith
and hope of his spirit breathed into it, he hfts
the loud and eager cry, " Jesus, Son of David
have mercy on me." They check him, they
blame him, in every way they can they try to
stop him. He cries "the more a great deal ;"
it is his one and only chance. He will not
lose it, he will do all he can to reach that ear,
to arrest that passer-by. He cries the more
a great deal, "Son of David, have mercy on
me."
So it is with the poor blind beggar, and so
is it with the rich publican. He too hears that
Jesus of Nazareth is coming into Jericho. He
too has heard much about the JSTazarene. He
is living now, he may have been living then, in
the very neighborhood where John the Baptist
taught, where Jesus was himself baptized. The
gospel of the kingdom as preached by both, the
gospel of repentance, of turning from all inquity
and bringing forth fruits meet for repentance,
was familiar to his ears. The Baptist's answer
to publicans when they came to him, " Exact
no more than that which is appointed you,"
had sunk into his heart. That was the kingdom,
the kingdom of truth, of righteousness, into
which now above all things he desired to enter
Jesus at Jeeicho. 327
"With a conscience quickened, a heart melted
and subdued, we know not how, he hears that
Jesus is at hand. What would he not give even
for a sight of one whom secretly he has learned
to reverence and to love ! He goes out, but
there is a crowd coming ; he cannot stand its
pressure ; he is little of stature, and in the bus-
tle and the throng will not be able even to
catch a sight of Jesus. A happy thought oc-
curs : he sees behind him a large tree which
casts its branching arms across the path. He
runs and climbs up into the tree. He cares
not for the ridicule with which he may be as-
sailed. He cares not for the grotesque position
which he, the rich man and the honorable, may
be seen to occupy. He is too bent upon his
purpose to let that or anything stand in the
way of the accomplishment of his desire.
And now let us notice how these two men
are treated. Jesus stands still as he comes
near the spot where poor Bartimeus stands and
cries, points to him, and tells those around him
to go and bring him into his presence. The
crowd halts. The messengers do Christ's bidding.
And now the very men who had been rebuking
Bartimeus for his too loud and too impatient
entreaties, touched with pity, say, "Be of good
328 Jesus at Jericho.
comfort, rise, he calleth thee." He does not
need to be told a second time, he does not wait
for any guiding hands to lead him to the centre
of the path. His own quick ear has jSixecl the
point from which the summons comes. His own
ready arm flings aside the rude garment that he
had worn, which might hinder him in his move-
ment. A few eager footsteps taken, he stands in
the presence of the Lord. Nor has he then to
renew his supplication. Jesus is the first to
speak. " What wilt thou that I should do unto
thee ?" There are not many things among
which to choose. There is that one thing that
above all others he would have done. " Lord."^
says he, " that I might receive my sight.".
And Jesus said, " Receive thy sight, go thy
way ; thy faith hath maide thee whole. And im-
mediately he received his sight."
See now how it fares with Zaccheus. He
has got up into the tree, he is sitting there
among its branches, half hoping that, seeing all,
he may remain himself unseen. The crowd
comes up. He does not need to ask which is
the one he desires so much to see. There he
is, the centre of the throng, his calm, majestic,
benignant look and bearing marking him off
from all around. The eyes of the chief publi-
Jesus at Jericho. 329
can are bent upon him in one fixed concen-
trated gaze of wonder and of love, when a new
ground of wonder and of gratitude is given.
Here too Jesus stops, and looking up he names
him by his name, as if he had known him long
and well, "Zaccheus," he said, "make haste
and come down ; for to-day I must abide at thy
house."
Such is the free spontaneous mercy in either
case exercised by our Lord, such is the way in
which he meets simplicity of faith, ardor of
desire, strenousness of effort, as seen in the
blind beggar and in the rich publican. And
what in either case is the return ? "Go thy
way," said Jesus to Bartimeus. He did not
go, he could not go. His blinded eyes are
opened. The first object they rest on is their
opener. Bright shines the sun above — fair is
that valley of the Jordan — gorgeous the foli-
age of the palm and the sycamore, the acacia
and the balsam-tree. New and wondrous
sights to him, but he sees them not, or heeds
them not. That fresh faculty of vision is ex-
ercised on him by whom it had been bestowed,
and upon him all the wealth of its power is lav-
ished. And him "he follows, glorifying God."
Not otherwise is it with Zaccheus : " Make
330 Jesus at Jemcho.
haste," said Jesus, "and come down. And he
made haste and came down, and received
Christ joyfully," little heeding the derisive
looks cast on him as he made his quick descent
the murmurings that arose from the multitude
as he received Jesus into his house. The
threshold is scarcely crossed when he stands in
all humility before Jesus and says., "Behold,
Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor ;
and if I have taken anything from any man by
false accusation, I restore him fourfold." One
scarce can tell whether he is describing a prac-
tice for some time previously pursued, or a
purpose then for the first time in the presence
of Jesus deliberately taken. In either case
the evidence of a true repentance on his part is
the same. The man among the Jews who gave
the fifth part of his income to the poor was
counted as having reached the height of per-
fection as to almsgiving. Zaccheus gives one-
half, and not one-fifth. The law of Moses re-
quired in one special case alone that a fourfold
restitution should be made. Zaccheus in every
instance in which he can remember that by
any dishonorable practice on his part any man
had suffered loss, promises that restitution to
that extent should be made to him. Jesus,
Jesus at Jericho. 331
accepting the evidence of a true repentance
that is thus presented, makes no criticism upon
the course of conduct indicated, suggests no
change, but says, "This day is salvation come
to this house, forasmuch as he also is a son of
Abraham " — once a lost sheep of the chosen
fold, lost, but now found by the good Shep-
herd, and by him welcomed back, — "for the
Son of man," he adds " is come to seek and to
save that which was lost."
One general feature ©f these incidents at
Jericho let us now glance at, as singularly ap-
propriate to this particular period of our Lord's
history, — the absence of all reserve, the full
disclosure of himself and of his redemption
which he makes. Other bhnd men had called
him the Son of David, but he had straitly
charged them not to make him known. No
such charge is given to Bartimeus. He is per-
mitted to follow him and glorify God as loudly,
as amply as he can. Not till the last stage of
his ministry in the north had he ever spoken
even to his disciples of his death. Now he not
only speaks of them more plainly and explicitly
than ever before, but he goes on to announce
the great intention and object of his death.
The Son of man, he declares, is come "to give
S32 Jesus at Jekicho.
his life a ransom for many, to seek and to save
that which was lost." Thus it is, as the time
is now so near, and as all the reasons for that
reserve which Jesus had previously studied are
removed, that he holds up his death as the pay-
ment of the great price of our redemption, the
ransom given by the Living One for the lost.
Two better instances illustrative of how the
sinner and the Saviour are brought together, of
what true faith is, and what true repentance,
you could not well desire, than those of Barti-
meus and Zaccheus, capable each of manifold
spiritual applications. We can but gather up
the general warnings and great encourage-
ments that they convey. Sinners we all by na-
ture and practice are — as poor, as blind, as
beggared as Bartimeus was — as thoughtless,
careless, reckless, worldly-minded as Zaccheus.
And Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. It is but
a single day we have for meeting with him, that
short day of life, the twelve hours of which arc
so swiftly running out. Let us but be as ear-
nest to see him as those two men were, as care-
less of what others say or do, as resolute to
overcome all difficulties, and we shall find that
he will be as ready to hear, to heal, to come to
us, to take up his abode with us, to bring sal-
Jesus at Jericho 333
vation with him, to gather us, the lost, into the
fold of the saved.
Jericho is changed from what it was. So
little is left of the city, of its hippodrome and
amphitheatre, its towers and its palaces, that it
is difficult to determine its site. Its gardens
and its groves are gone, not one solitary palm-
tree for a poor bhnd beggar to sit beneath, nor
a sycamore for any one to climb. The City
of Fragrance it was called of old. There re-
mains now but the fragrance of those deeds of
grace and mercy done there by him who in
passing through it closed his earthly journey-
ings, and went up thence to Jerusalem to die.
XVII.
THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY.*
IN" the whole bearing and conduct of Jesus
in and about Jericho there was much to
indicate that some great crisis in his history
was at hand. It does not surprise us to be
told of the disciples believing " that the king-
dom of God should immediately appear." It
was because he knew that they were so mis-
conceiving the future that lay before him and
them, that, either in the house of Zaccheus, or
afterwards on the way up to Jerusalem, Jesus
addressed to them the parable of the Pounds.
He would have them know, and could they
but have penetrated the meaning of that para-
ble they would have seen, that so far from any
such kingdom as they were dreaming of being
about to be set up for him in Jerusalem, he
was going through the dark avenue of death to
another, to a far country, to receive the king-
* Matt. xxvi. 6-13 ; Mark xiv. 3-9 ; John xii. 1-8.
The Anointing at Bethany. 335
dom there, and after a long interval to return ;
and that, so far from their being about to share
the honors and rewards of a newly erected em-
pire, they were to be left without a head, each
man to occupy and to labor till he came again.
Anotlier parable, that of the Laborers in the
Yineyard, spoken but a day or two before, had
a kindred object — was intended to check the
too eager and ambitious thirst for the distinc-
tions and recompences that the apostles imag-
ined were on the eve of being dispensed. The
addressing of two such parables as these to his
disciples, with the specific object of rectifying
what he knew to be their false ideas and ex-
pectations, the readiness with which he listened
to the cry of the blind beggars by the wayside,
and the interest that he took in the chief of the
publicans, conspire to show how far from a
mere narrow or selfisii one was the interest
with which Jesus looked forward to what was
awaiting him in Jerusalem. During the two
days' journey from Persea through Jericho to
the holy city, his thoughts were often and ab-
sorbingly fixed on his approaching sufferings
and death, but it was not so much in their
isolated and personal as in their public and
world-wide bearings and issues that he was
336 The Anointing at Bethany.
contemplating them ; nor had the contempla-
tion any such effect as to make him less atten-
tive to the state of thought and feeling prevail-
ing among his disciples, or less ready to be in-
terested in those who, like Bartimeus and Zac-
cheus, threw themselves in his way.
In coming down into the valley of the Jor-
dan, Jesus had joined the large and growing
stream of people from the north and the east,
passing up to the approaching Passover. There
would be many Galileans among the group
who had not seen him now for many months,
and who, if they had not heard of it before,
must have heard now at Jericho of all that had
happened at the two preceding Feasts of Taber-
nacles and Dedication, of his last great miracle
at Bethany, of the great excitement that had
been created, and of the resolution of the San-
hedrim to put him to death. And now he goes
up to face these rulers, to throw himself, as
they fancy, upon the support of the people, to
unfold the banner of the new kingdom, and
call on all his followers to rally round it. His
Galilean friends heartily go in with what they
take to be his design ; they find the people
generally concurring in and disposed to further
them. One can imagine what was thought
The Anointing at Bethany. 337
and felt, and hoped and feared, by those who
accompanied Jesus as he left Jericho. A few
hours' walk would now carry him and them to
the metropolis. It was Friday, the 8th day of
their Jewish month Nisan. The next day was
Saturday, their Jewish Sabbath. On the Thurs-
day following the lamb was to be slain, and
the Passover festival to commence. The great
body of the travellers press on, to get into the
town before the sunset, when the Sabbath com-
mences. Jesus and his apostles turn aside at
Bethany, where the house of Martha and Mary
and Lazarus stands open to receive them.
Here in this peaceful retreat the next day is
spent, a quiet Sabbath for our Lord before
entering on the turmoil of the next few days.
The companions of his last day's journey have
in the meantime passed into Jerusalem. It is
already thronged with those who had come up
from the country to purify themselves for the
feast. With one and all the engrossing topic is
Jesus of Nazareth. Gathering in the courts of
the Temple, they ask about him, they hear
what has occurred; they find that "both the
chief priests and the Pharisees had given a
commandment, that if any man knew where he
was, he should show it, that they might take
338 The Anointing at Bethant.
him." What, m the face of such an order, will
Jesus do? "What think ye," they say to one
another, " that he will not come to the feast?"
But now they hear from the newly arrived
from Jericho that he is coming, means to be at
the feast, is already at Bethany, They hear
that Lazarus, the man whom he so recently
raised from the dead, is also there. He may
not have been there till now. He may have
accompanied Jesus to Ephraim, or chosen some
other place of temporary retreat, for a bitter
enmity had sprung up against him as well as
against Jesus. " The chief priests had consult-
ed that they might put Lazarus also to death,
because that by reason of him many of the
Jews believed on Jesus." Whether he had
retired for a time or not, Lazarus is now at
Bethany. Many, unable to restrain their curi-
osity, go out to the village, '' not for Jesus' sake
only, but that they might see Lazarus also."
It was but a short distance, not much more
than the Sabbath-day's journey. During this
day, while Jesus and Lazarus are there together,
many visitors go forth to feast their eyes upon
the sight, and on returning to quicken the ex-
citement among the multitude.
It was on the evening of the Saturday, when
The AjsomnNG at Bethany. 339
the Sabbath was over, and the next, the first
day of the week, had begun, that they made
Jesus a supper in the house of Simon, who
once had been a leper, some near relative in
all likelihood of the family of Lazarus, and
Jesus sits at this feast between the one whom
he had cured of his leprosy and the other
whom he had raised from the dead. Martha
serves. She had not so read the rebuke be-
fore administered to her as to believe that
serving — the thing that she most liked, to which
her disposition and her capabilities at once
prompted her — was in itself unlawful or im-
proper, that her only duty was to sit and listen.
But she had so profited by the rebuke that,
concerned as she is that all due care be taken
that this feast be well got through, she turns
now no jealous look upon her sistei\ leaves
Mary without murmuring or reproach to do as
she desires. And Mary seizes the opportunity
now given. She has not now Jesus to herself.
She cannot, as in the privacy of her own dwell-
ing, sit down at his feet to listen to the gracious
words coming from his lips. But she has an
alabaster phial of fragrant ointment — her cost-
liest possession — one treasured up for some
unknown but great occasion. That occasion
340 The Anointing at Bethany.
has arrived. She gets it, brings it, approaches
Jesus as he sits reclining at the table, pours
part of its contents upon his head, and resolves
that its whole contents shall be expended upon
this office. She compresses the yielding ma-
terial of which the phial was composed, breaks
it, and pours the last drop of it upon his feet,
flinging away the relics of the broken vessel,
and wiping his feet with her hair. Kingly
guest at royal banquet could not have had a
costlier homage of the kind rendered to him.
That Mary had in her possession so rich a trea-
sure may be accepted as one of the many signs
that her family was one of the wealthiest in the
village. That she now took and spent the
whole of it upon Jesus, was but a final expres-
sion of the fullness and the intensity of her de-
votion and her love.
Half hidden behind the Saviour's reclining
form, she might have remained unnoticed, but
the fragrant odor rose and filled the house, and
drew attention to her deed. Cold and search-
ing and jealous eyes are upon her, chiefly those
of one who never had any cordial love to
Jesus, who never had truly sympathized with
the homage rendered him, who held the bag,
had got himself appointed keeper of the small
The Anointing at Bethany. 341
purse they had m common, who already had
been tampering with the trust, and greedily
filching from the narrow stores committed to
his care. Love so ardent, consecration so en-
tire, sacrifice so costly, as that of Mary, he
could not appreciate. He disliked it, con-
demned it ; it threw such a reproach by con-
trast upon his own feeling and conduct to
Christ. And now to his envious, avaricious
spirit it appears that he has got good ground
for censure. He had been watching the move-
ments of Mary, had seen her bring forth the
phial, had measured its size, had gauged the
quantity, estimated the quality, and calculated
the value of its contents. And now he turns
to his fellow- disciples, and whispers in their
ears the invidious question, " Why was not this
ointment sold for three hundred pence, and
given to the poor ?" Three hundred pence !
equal to the hire of a laborer for a whole year,
— a sum capable of relieving many a child of
poverty, of bringing relief to many a house of
want. Had Judas got the money into his own
hands, instead of being all lavished on this act
of outward attention, had it been thrown into
the common stock, it would not have been
upon the poor that it should have been spent.
342 The Aijointing at Bethany.
He would have managed that no small part of
the money should have had a very different di-
rection given to it. But it serves his mean mali-
cious object to suggest that such might have
been its destination. And by his craft, which
has a show in it of a wise and thoughtful
benevolence, he draws more than one of his
fellow-apostles along with him, so that not
loud but deep, the murmuring runs round the
table, and they say to one another, "To what
purpose is this waste ? this ointment might
have been sold for so much, and given to the
poor."
Mary hears the murmuring, sees the eyes
of one and another turned askance and con-
demningly upon her, shrinks under the detract-
ing criticism of the Lord's own apostles, begins
to wonder whether she may not have done
something wrong, been guilty of a piece of ex-
travagance which even Jesus may perhaps con-
demn. It had been hard for her before to
bear the reproach of her bustling sister, but
harder a thousand times to bear the reproach
of the twelve. But neither then nor now did
she make any answer, offer any defence of
herself She did not need. She had one to
do that office for her far better than she could
The Anointing at Bethany. 343
have done it for herself. Jesus is there to
throw the mantle of his protection over her, to
explain and vindicate her deed. "Let her
alone," he said, "why trouble ye the woman?
she hath wrought a good work upon me." He
might have singled out the first adverse criti-
ciser of Mary's act, the suggester and propaga-
tor of the censorious judgment that was mak-
ing its round of the table. Then and there he
might have exposed the hollowness, the hypo-
crisy of the pretence about his caring for the
poor, upon which the condemnation of Mary
was based. And doing so, he might have
made the others blush that they had given
such ready ear to a speech that such a mean
and malignant spirit had first broached. He
did not do this, at least he said nothing that
had any peculiar and exclusive reference to
Judas. But there must have been something
in our Lord's manner, — a look perhaps, such
as he bent afterwards on Peter in the judg-
ment-hall,— that let Judas know that before
Jesus he stood a detected thief and hypocrite.
And it was not to weep bitterly that he went
forth from that supper, but with a spirit so
galled and fretted that he took the earliest
opportunity that occurred to him to commune
3M The Anointing at Bethany.
with the chief priests and the Temple guard as
to how he might betray his Master, and de-
liver him into their hands.
Losing sight of him, let us return to Christ's
defence of Mary. " She hath done a good
work," he said, ' a noble work, one not only
far from censure, but worthy of all praise.
She hath done it unto me, done it out of pure
deep love — a love that will bring the best, the
costliest thing she has, and think it no waste,
but rather its fittest, worthiest application, to
bestow it upon me.' Upon that ground alone,
upon his individual claims as compared with all
others, Jesus might well have rested his vindi-
cation of Mary's act. Nay, might he not have
taken the censure of her as a disparagement
of himself? All these his general claims, —
which go to warrant the highest, costliest, most
self-^sacrificing services that an enthusiastic
piety can render, — he in this instance is con-
tent to waive, fixing upon the peculiarity of
his existing position and the specialty of the
particular service that she has rendered, as
supplying of themselves an ample justification
of the deed that had been condemned. The
claims of the poor had been set up, as if they
stood opposed to any such expenditure of prop-
The Anoiisting at Bethany, 345
erty us that made by Mary in this anointing of the
ISav^iour. It was open to Christ to say that it was
an altogether needless,, false, injurious conflict
thus sought to be stirred up, — as if to give to
him, to do anything for him, were to take so
much from the poor ; as if no portion of the great
fund of the Church's wealth was available for
any purely devout and religious purpose till all
the wants of all the poor were met and satisfied
— the w^ants, be it remembered, of such a kind
that though we supplied them all to-day, would
emerge in some new form to-morrow — wants
which it is impossible so to deal with as wholly
and permanently to relieve. He is no enlight-
ened pleader for the poor who would represent
them and their necessities as standing in
the way of the indulgence of those warm im-
pulses of love to Christ, out of which princely
benefactions, as well as many a deed of heroic
self-sacrifice, have emanated. The spirit of
Judas, indeed — cold, calculating, carping, dis-
paraging,— ^has often crept even into the Chris-
tian society, and men bearing the name of
Jesus have often been ready, when great dona-
tions on behalf of some strictly religious enter-
prise were spoken of, to condemn them off-
hand on this one ground, that it would have
346 The Anointing at Bethany.
been much better had the money been bestowed
upon the poor. Just as when a large estate
was sold in this country, the proprietor, seized
with a favorite idea, having resolved to devote
the entire proceeds of the sale to Christian
missions in India, there were not wanting those
who said — I quote now the words of one of
them — " What a mad scheme this of Haldane's !
now many poor people might that money
have fed and clothed?" The world, let us
bless God for it, is not so poor that there is
but one way — that, namely, of almsgiving —
for gratifying those generous impulses which
visit the heart and impel to acts of singular lib-
erality. He who put it into the heart of Mary
to do what she did towards the person of
Christ, has put it into the hearts of others
since to do like things towards his cause. And
if in many such like instances there be more of
mere emotion, more of the indulgence of indi-
vidual taste than of staid and wise-hearted
Christian benevolence, let us not join with the
condemners of them, unless we be prepared to
put a check upon all the free, spontaneous ex-
pressions of those sentiments of veneration,
gratitude, and love to Jesus Christ, out of
which some of the most chivalrous and heroic
The Ai^ointing at Bethany. 347
deeds have sprung by which the history of our
race has been adorned.
It is, however, as has been already said, upon
somewhat narrower ground that Christ vindi-
cates the act of Mary. It was one of such per-
sonal attention to him as could be shown to
him only while he was present in the flesh.
"The poor," said he, "ye have with you al-
ways, and whensoever ye will ye may do them
good, but me ye have not always." Further
still, it was one that but once only in all his
earthly life could be shown to Jesus, for " in
that she hath poured this ointment on me, she
is come aforehand to anoint my body for the
burial." Had Mary any definite idea that she
was doing beforehand what Joseph and Nico-
demus would have no time and opportunity for
doing, what the two other Marys would go out
to do to find only that the need for its being
done was over and gone ? It may be assuming
too much for her to believe that with a clearer
insight and a simpler faith in what Jesus had
said than had been yet reached by any of the
twelve, she anticipated the death and burial of
her Master was near at hand. But neither can
we think that she acted without some vague
presentiment that she was seizing upon a last
348 The Anointing at Bethany.
opportunity., that the days of such intercourse
with Jesus were drawing to an end. She knew
the perils to which he would be exposed when-
ever he entered Jerusalem. She had heard him
speak of his approaching sufferings and death.
To others the words might appear to be without
meaning, or only to be allegorically interpreted,
but the quick instinct of her deeper love had
refused to regard them so, and they had filled
her bosom with an indefinite dread. The near-
er the time for losing, the more intense became
the clinging to him. Had she believed as the
others around her did, had she looked forward
to a speedy triumph of Jesus over all his ene-
mies, and to the visible erection of his kingdom,
would she have chosen the time she did for the
anointing ? would she not have reserved to a
more fitting opportunity a service that was more
appropriate to the crowning of a new monarch
than the prepari-ng of a living body for the
tomb ? In speaking as he did, Jesus may have
been only attributing to Mary a fuller under-
standing of and simpler faith in his own pro-
phetic utterances than that possessed at the
time by any of his disciples. Such a conception
of her state of mind and heart would elevate
Mary to a still higher pinnacle than that ordi-
The AjfoiNTiNG at Bethany. 349
narily assigned to her, and we can see no good
reason for doubting that it was even so.
But it does not require that we should
assign to her any such pre-eminence of faith.
It was the intensity of the personal attachment
to Jesus that her act expressed which drew
down upon it the encomium of the Lord.
Thus he had to say of it what he could say of
so few single services of any of his followers —
that in it she did what she could, did all she
could — in that direction there was not a step
further that she could have taken. Of all like
ways and forms of expressing attachment there
was not a higher one that she could have cho-
sen. Her whole heart of love went out in the
act, and therefore Jesus said of it. "Yerily I
say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be
preached throughout the whole world, this also
that she hath done shall be spoken of for
a memorial of her," — ^the one and only case in
which Jesus ever spoke of the after earthly
fame of any service rendered to him, predict-
ing for it such a wide-spread reputation and
such an undying remembrance. Thus said
Chrysostom, when discoursing upon this inci-
dent, " While the victories of many kings and
generals are lost in silence, and many who
350 The Anointing at Bethany.
have founded states and reduced nations to
subjection, are not known by reputation or by
name, the pouring of ointment by this woman
is celebrated throughout the whole world.
Time hath passed away, but the memory of the
deed she did hath not waned away. But Per-
sians and Indians and Scythians and Thracians,
and the race of the Mauritanians, and they who
inhabit the British Isles, publish abroad an act
which was done in Judea privately in a house
by a woman." Fourteen hundred years have
passed and gone since, in the great church of
St. Sophia at Constantinople, Ghrysostom ut-
tered these words, referring to these British
Isles as one of the remotest places of .the then
known world. The centuries that have rolled
by since then have witnessed many a revolution,
not the least wonderful among them the place
that these British Isles now occupy, but still
wider and wider is the tale of Mary's anointing
of her Master being told, the fragrance of the
ointment spreading, yet losing nothing of its
sweetness, such fresh vitality, such self-pre-
serving power, lodging in a simple act of pure
and fervid love.
One single parting glance let us cast upon
our Saviour as he presents himself to our eye
The Anointing at Bethany. 351
upon this occasion. He sits at a festive board.
He is surrounded by men looking joyously for-
ward to days and years of success and triumph.
But he knows what they do not — that on that
day week his body will be lying in the new-
made sepulchre. And he accepts the anoint-
ing at Mary's hand as preparing his body for
the burial. He sits the invited guest of a man
who had been a leper, surrounded in that vil-
lage home by a few humble followers. With
serene eye he looks down into the future, and
abroad over the earth, and speaks of it as a
thing of certainty that this gospel — the gospel
of glad tidings of salvation in his name — was to
be preached throughout the whole world. If it
be true that Jesus thought and felt and spoke
and acted as the Evangelists represent him as
having done that night, I do not need to say
how vain the attempt to explain away his fore-
sight of the future, to reduce it to the dimen-
sions of the highest human wisdom sagaciously
anticipating what was afterwards to occur.
THE END.
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