19. Chapter 5: The Eclipse Of His Faith.
CHAPTER 5: THE ECLIPSE OF HIS FAITH.
Matthew 11:2-6; Luke 7:19-23. The circumstances attending the incarceration of the Baptist will be more appropriately considered when we come to the tragedy of his death. In the meantime let it suffice to recall the fact that his work of reformation was suddenly and prematurely stopped by his being shut up in prison; and that there he had probably languished for months before we hear of him again.
Imprisonment was not, indeed, in the ancient world exactly the same thing as it is among us. A prisoner frequently enjoyed a great deal of freedom, and he could generally be visited by his friends, as is indicated in the parable which says, “I was in prison and ye came unto me.” Hence the Baptist received information of what was taking place outside, and he was able to send messages to whomsoever he desired. One day he sent by two of his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?” Learned men have taken strange offence at this narrative, as if it contradicted other parts of the Gospel. It is held to be totally irreconcilable with the testimony said to have been borne to Christ by the Baptist; because one who had received such divine tokens as were vouchsafed to John at the baptism of Jesus and had pointed out the Messiah so distinctly could never afterwards have asked such a question as is here attributed to him. But this is one of the instances in which learning overshoots itself, and the plain man or the simple Christian is wiser than his teachers. Those who are taught by experience are well aware that the soul has its fainting-fits, and that one whose faith at one time is so great as to remove mountains may at another time be weak and unbelieving. In the Gospel the Baptist is frequently compared with the prophet Elijah; and, if ever there was a man who was a giant in faith, it was Elijah; yet Elijah had his hour of weakness too. He who on Mount Carmel was able to stand up without flinching in the face of the prophets of Baal and the thousands of Israel was found on another occasion, in a pessimistic mood, far from the confines of the Holy Land, a fugitive from his work, and washing only for himself that he might die. Even our Lord himself had his Gethsemane, when he prayed, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” In the hope of averting from John the reproach of being a doubter, some have supposed that it was not for his own-sake but for the sake of his disciples that he sent the message. He never doubted, it is thought, but his disciples did; they clung too tenaciously to their own master and raised all kinds of objections to the Messiahship of Jesus. In order to convince them John sent them to Jesus himself, being confident that in his immediate neighborhood they would see things which would convince them and receive from the lips of Christ an answer which would be irresistible. But the reply of Jesus seems too directly addressed to John to admit of such an explanation.
Others have seen in John’s question an utterance not of scepticism but of impatience. Jesus was too slow, John thought, and needed to be told what was expected of him. Hence, he sent him a broad hint that, if he was to make any impression on the popular mind, he must change his method and act in a way more characteristic of the Messiah. If this was John’s thought he was not the only one of the friends of Jesus who took upon himself to administer such hints. Others also were disappointed with his slowness and attempted to hurry him. But Jesus always rejected such advice with indignation, and to offer it implied the most serious scepticism; for, if Jesus really was the Messiah, was he not far more capable than any adviser of knowing the times and the seasons?
It is not difficult to understand the causes which led to the obscuration of the Baptist’s faith. He was a child of the desert, accustomed to free movement in the open air, and in a prison he was like a caged eagle. His reformatory work had been abruptly interrupted in full tide; and the impulses of enthusiasm and activity were rolled back cold upon his heart. Besides, Jesus was a Messiah very different from the one he had anticipated; John expected him to take to himself his great power and reign. Might it not, for example, have been taken for granted that the Messiah could not allow his own forerunner to languish in prison? If he were king, the Herods as well as the Romans would have to resign their power, and the victims of their jealousy and injustice would march out of confinement. But month after month passed and Jesus made no sign; it looked as if he had forgotten his friend. The Baptist’s scepticism was real, but it was honest; and we may learn from him how to manage our own doubts.
Observe three things.
First, he put his doubts into words. Doubt is most dangerous when it is vague; condense it into definite questions and immediately the light begins to break. Put it, for example, into John’s questions: “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” “He that should come”—how much faith is in that! When once the heart is persuaded that there is some one who should come—some one who must come because he is indispensable, to loose the bands of sin and to unite to God—it is not far from faith in Christ. For, put the other question, “Look we for another?” if Jesus of Nazareth be not the Man of men, where are we to look for him?
Secondly, John sent directly to Christ. He did not go on devouring his own heart in his cell; nor did he do what would have been worse, grumble to his disciples. Scepticism would be short-lived if we brought our doubts at once to God. He was a wise man who, in religious darkness, cried out, “Save me, O God, if there be a God.”
Thirdly, John never thought of withdrawing his condemnation of the conduct of Herod and Herodias. Some have spoken of his doubt as treachery; but this is quite an exaggeration. It would have been treachery if, believing himself deceived and neglected, he had made this an excuse for renouncing his testimony and so obtaining release from prison. Never is religious doubt so dangerous as when it is made an excuse for giving the reins to the flesh. He who, though perplexed in faith, remains pure in deeds, will ultimately fight his way through doubt and come safely out on the other side.
Jesus did not go far for an answer to John’s question. Apparently the Baptist’s messengers came upon him in one of those moments of holy excitement when he was surrounded by a crowd of the diseased, whom he was healing, and by a still larger multitude of the common people, to whom he was preaching; and, pointing to the double crowd, the Saviour said, “Go your way and tell John what things ye have seen and heard: how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.”
Apparently, in shaping this reply, he had in his mind the words of Isaiah: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped: then shall the lame man leap as an hart and the tongue of the dumb sing.” Thus had the evangelical prophet described the Messianic age; and here, Jesus hints, is the prophecy fulfilled to the letter. This reply shows the importance attached by Jesus to his own miracles. In our day there is a tendency to slight the evidential value of miracles. It is frequently said we believe in the miracles because we believe in Christ, not in Christ because of his miracles. The warning was recently given by a person of eminence to the students of a theological seminary that, if they wished to win the present generation and attract cultivated minds, they must emphasize the ethical elements of Christianity, but keep the miraculous in the background. Now, there is a way of stopping the mouth of inquiry with miracle that is certain to repel thoughtful minds—as, for instance, when the Bible is first proved to be inspired and then the demand is made that everything contained in it be accepted without any attempt to comprehend it. If the Bible is from God then all it contains must be reasonable, because God is the Supreme Reason; and, therefore, the human reason should be invited to apply all its powers to the comprehension of the statements of the Bible. In the miracles attributed to the Saviour there is a divine reasonableness, and, therefore, they ought never to be presented to faith as mere wonders, but in their fine congruity with the character and the work of Christ. But to suppress the miraculous element in the gospel is not the way to win the world or to form a powerful Christianity. The image of Christ which has cast a spell over the human mind, and more and more is drawing all men to him, is one into which miracle enters. Some, indeed, at present, even in the Christian camp, are trying to persuade us that we may safely drop from our conception of Christ both his supernatural birth and his bodily resurrection. But this impaired and mutilated conception of Christ has been often weighed in the balance of experience and always found wanting. This is not “he that should come.” The world requires a divine Saviour; and that Jesus Christ is he is proved partly at least by his miracles, and especially by the miracle of his resurrection.
It may be remarked in passing that one of the most striking evidences in favor of the miracles of Jesus is found in the statement of one of the Gospels that “John did no miracle.” Every theory of the miracles of Christ invented in the present century by unbelief amounts to this—that the age in which Christianity arose was a superstitious one, which almost unconsciously wove round remarkable personages a halo of miracle. Religious minds were especially influenced by the desire to place the leading figures of the Christian movement on a level with the foremost personages of the Old Testament; and, as miracles had been attributed to Moses and other prophets, so the feeding of thousands with a few loaves and the resurrection of dead persons appear as facts in the Christian records. The whole theory, however, breaks down in the case of the Baptist. If this myth-making tendency was so natural it is difficult to see why it should not have applied to him. Indeed, this would have been inevitable, because the idea pervades the Gospels that John was a new Elijah; and the Elijah of the Old Testament is a conspicuous miracle-worker. Why did not Christian tradition invent for John a cycle of wonders to bring him up to the level of his prototype? The very last reason for any statement in the Gospels which it occurs to scholarship of a certain type to think of is that the event recorded actually took place. Yet the Gospel, which records the miracles of Jesus, says with simple veracity of his forerunner, “John did no miracle.” The proof which Jesus submitted of his own claims was an appeal to what he was doing. And this will always be the best evidence of Christianity—when it is able to point to what it can do. Christianity does not, indeed, now miraculously heal deafness, blindness, leprosy, and the like; but, as Jesus promised, it does greater things than these. By the diffusion of the spirit of philanthropy and by the use of scientific skill in the service of charity it not only heals all manner of diseases, but—what is far better—it is learning to prevent disease and to lengthen life on the large scale. It is making men and women new creatures: it is making the brutal wife-beater a tender husband, the drunkard a sober man, the harlot pure, the thief honest. It is transforming savage countries, which have been the abodes of horrid cruelty, into abodes of civilization, and changing the dregs of society into good citizens and members of churches. The scepticism of last century is usually supposed to have received its quietus through the publication of Paley’s “Evidences” and Butler’s “Analogy;” but it may be doubted if this be the correct reading of history. I should attribute the restoration of belief in at least an equal degree to the practical labors of Wesley and Whitefield. The church which saves most souls and does most to sweeten and purify domestic and political life is the church which is doing most to counterwork scepticism. The best evidence of Christianity is a converted man.
Jesus himself, in reply to the Baptist, laid special emphasis on the fact that he preached the Gospel to the poor, bringing in this after the mention of his miracles, as if it were the climax of the whole demonstration. And Christianity can never offer a more impressive evidence of divinity than when it is able to say, “To the poor the Gospel is preached.” Over the entrance to the school of one of the greatest philosophers of Greece the legend was inscribed: “Let none ignorant of mathematics enter here.” This was proof enough that not in philosophy lies the salvation of mankind, for the mass of our race will always be ignorant of mathematics. But by preaching to the poor Christianity shows that it is adapted to all, approaching men at that level where they are all alike and where are found their most cardinal wants; and it proves at the same time that it is animated with the spirit of Him who has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth, and who regards the humblest of his creatures with a Father’s love. To his message to the Baptist our Lord added what may be called a postscript; and, as the postscript of a letter sometimes contains the most important part of the whole communication, so Jesus sent to John one of the weightiest words he ever uttered, when he added, “And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.”
It was a solemn warning, yet the wording of it was managed with consummate skill. Jesus might have said, “And cursed is he whosoever shall be offended in me;” but that way of putting it might have inflamed a hot spirit like John’s; so Jesus, with his perfect tact, put it the other way, yet in words fitted to excite in John’s mind a fear of that which he had not expressed.
John was in a dangerous state of mind. If he had given way to his pessimistic mood he might have stumbled over the stone which he had been sent to lay in Zion as the chief corner-stone. His doubt might have ripened into denial; and he might have come to the conclusion that Jesus was not the Messiah. To prevent this, Jesus warned him not to give way to feeling, but to think: to think, that he who had already fulfilled so large a portion of the Messianic programme, sketched by Isaiah, might be trusted to fulfil the rest; to think, that it was not for him to prescribe the path of One whom he had acknowledged to be far greater than himself, but to leave it to his superior wisdom.
There was another danger to which John was exposed. He was a leader of men; he had many disciples, and his word carried weight with multitudes in every part of the country; if he had gone wrong, and declared against the claims of Christ, he would have led others astray besides himself, and his declaration could not but have been prejudicial to Christ’s cause. The question is sometimes raised, whether men are responsible for their opinions, and whether God will punish men for their unbelief if they have honestly been unable to believe in Christ. This is a much more difficult question than many think. It is easy to take for granted that doubt is honest. But in reality it may not be so. It may be a vague mist of opinion, in which the mind has allowed itself to become enveloped because it has never had the courage to think its doubts through. There may be vanity in it; for skepticism is sometimes worn as a feather in the cap. The claims of Christ are so great and have so much prima facie authority that no one in a right state of mind can reject them without long labor and much pain. The responsibility of communicating doubt to others, that they may be withdrawn from the faith of Christ, is greater still; and those who feel that their duty lies that way may well beforehand ponder this word, “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.” To a vast multitude in Christian lands, however, this word of Christ conveys a different message. They may have no intellectual doubts about Christ, believing him to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the world; but they are offended in him in another way. They are offended by his cross; they are afraid to confess him and to take the consequences. Their convictions about Christ are going one way and their conduct the other. Far oftener Christ addressed himself to this state of mind, and about it he expressed himself more plainly: “Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven; but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”