06. St. John One Of Three.

ST. JOHN ONE OF THREE.

XVIII.

St. John was, first of all, merely a believer in Christ. Then he was drawn into the narrower circle of Christ’s disciples — that is, of those who gave up their occupations, and left all, to follow him whithersoever he went. Finally, he was elected one of the Twelve who were to be with Christ in a still closer way and to act as his heralds and ambassadors. But at this point his progress did not stop: even within the circle of the Twelve there was formed, by divine selection, a still narrower circle: three of the Twelve became, in a special sense, Christ’s confidential friends, and St. John was one of the Three. Are there not such distinctions still? The Christian name is a very wide word, and includes vast multitudes within its circumference. But Christians are not all alike: they are not all equally near to the Saviour; they are not all equally identified with his cause and his work. Some hearts in which the Gospel strikes root bear only thirty-fold, while others bear sixty-fold, and some bear a hundred; there is what may be called minimum Christianity, and there is average Christianity, and there is a Christianity which may be called maximum. A man may begin at the outer circle by being a minimum Christian; but he may pass inwards through one circle after another, still following the attraction of Christ, till he gets as near to him and as like him as it is possible in this world to be. We ought not to be content with merely being able to claim the Christian name: if Christ is our Lord and Master, and if we have chosen him as our ideal and pattern, the true path of life must consist in being more and more absolutely identified with him. The image of this close friendship, as we see it in the experience of the Three, of whom St. John was one, will answer such inquiries as these: Into what situations does such a friendship take men? Where are its trysting-places? By what experiences are men proved to be specially His friends? The first scene in which we find the Three associated with Jesus is at the raising of the daughter of Jairus. The other apostles were in the street with their Master, but, when he arrived at the house, he permitted none to enter but Peter, James and John.

Thus the house of mourning was the first rendezvous. And none will ever be very near to Jesus who do not go to meet him there. Many who bear the Christian name never go. Although in so many of his sayings Jesus has made the visiting of the sick and dying, of the widow and the orphan, of the poor and needy, a conspicuous mark of his religion, yet the number of professing Christians is small who go upon such errands. Multitudes who would be indignant if their Christianity were called in question never, from January to December, enter the house of a poor person. They are not even aware where such persons are to be found; they would not know how to approach them; they would be shocked at the sight of suffering and death; the world of misery is to them a terra incognita. To some Christians, however, it is well known. They are always in it. One case leads on to another. If only you are known as a friend and visitor of the poor appeals will come fast enough. It may appear an undesirable world to know—this world of misery; yet those who go about in it find many features to fascinate. Undoubtedly the most attractive, however, is that Christ is there. Nowhere else are you more certain of finding him or of being found by him. The sight of so stupendous a miracle as the raising of a human being from the dead was a rare privilege, which the Three enjoyed by being with Jesus in the house of mourning. But perhaps it was for something else that he took them there; his own behavior on this occasion was a wonderful illustration of gentleness and delicacy of feeling and action. When he arrived at the house death had already taken place, and the usual Jewish paraphernalia of mourning were in possession. The Oriental gives violent expression to his emotions; in grief he rends his garments, casts dust upon his head and clothes himself in sackcloth. And when the extreme sorrow of bereavement comes he even calls in outsiders to express his woe: professional mourners make doleful music and hired women utter piercing wails. This was all going on when Jesus arrived. But to him it was odious, as was everything unreal. He knew that this professional woe meant nothing; those who were weeping could as easily laugh; indeed, they did laugh the next minute, when he said that the maid was not dead. So, assuming the form of authority which he could wear so irresistibly when occasion required, he put them all forth, and thus produced the silence which, to his feeling, was the proper accompaniment of death.

Then, when peace reigned, he approached the room where death had pitched his tent. He bade the father and mother enter; it was their right. Then he admitted the Three: twelve would have disturbed his sense of congruity. Then he took her cold hand, that, when she awoke, she might be steadied, instead of being terrified, and might look up in his face and be comforted. After the miracle was over he ordered the parents to give her something to eat, that the expressions of wonder might not continue too long; and, under cover of their occupation with this duty, he, along with the Three, retired. By his reverence for death, for maidenhood, for fatherhood and motherhood, and by his dislike of noise, unreality and rumor, Jesus was teaching the Three a part of his secret. It is not enough to do good deeds: to be like Christ, these must be done in the right manner — with delicacy, refinement and reticence. There are those who wish to do good, but they are so boisterous with it, or they talk so much about it, that what they do is robbed of all grace. There are those who display a keen interest in the eternal welfare of their neighbors, but they approach them with so little respect that they offend instead of winning. Such have only learned the one half of the secret of Jesus,

XIX. The next scene in which the Three figure is the Transfiguration. In the evening Jesus took Peter, James and John up to a mountain apart, while the rest of the apostles were left below on the plain. For what purpose were they thus taken into solitude? Knowing their Master’s habits they could have no doubt, as they drew near the top and the shades of night were falling: they were going to pray; and he at least was still praying at the moment when the scenes of the Transfiguration commenced.

Those who live close to Jesus and are like him must often be with him in the school of prayer. All Christians pray; yet there are great differences. The prayers of many are brief and formal; they are a duty rather than a privilege; they are recollections from the past rather than the spontaneous outflowings of present emotion. But to some Christians prayer is vital breath; they talk with God as children with a father; they forget the flight of time, because they are absorbed and delighted. It was to spend a whole night on the height that Jesus invited the Three. In hours of this kind wonderful things occur. To Jesus himself the Transfiguration may be said to have been a reward for the night of prayer. From the state of exaltation to which prayer had already raised him he passed, without a break, into the condition of transfiguration. He had reached a crisis of his life. For a long time at its commencement his ministry in Galilee had been extraordinarily successful—his miracles excited unbounded enthusiasm; his preaching drew countless multitudes; it seemed as if the unanimous voice of the nation were to carry him to the throne of his fathers. But of late a change had taken place—the popular feeling had cooled; opposition had risen in different quarters; Jesus had been compelled to withdraw himself from the impure zeal of the mob. He saw clearly in front the narrow way at the end of which stood the cross. More and more he had been retiring into himself. He was in need of support and encouragement. Often had he sought these in communion with the great spirits of the past, by whom his destiny of suffering had been foreseen and foretold. At length communion with them became so close that Moses and Elias, the representatives of law and prophecy, were drawn across the confines of the world invisible, and they conversed with him, no doubt to his great strengthening and comfort, about the decease which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem — the one event in Christ’s earthly history on which is concentrated the interest of all the redeemed of mankind, and of all heaven itself.

Then ensued greater honor and comfort still, when the bright cloud, the symbol of the divine presence, enveloped the mountain-top, and out of it issued the voice of God himself, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” It was a testimony which must have made his heart glad, that his mode of doing the work of his Father had, up to this point, been perfect and acceptable, and a pledge that the same grace would continue to sustain him during the portion of his obedience yet to come. To the Three it was a great privilege to see their Master in this hour of exaltation. Two of them refer to it in their writings as a crowning mercy of their experience. St. Peter says, “He received from God the Father honor and glory .... when we were with him in the holy mount.” And St.John is probably referring to the same incident when he says: “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.” It was a preparation for them, too, in view of the trials to which their faith was to be exposed in the months when their Master was to be despised and rejected of men. When their Messianic hopes were disappointed, and the career of Jesus took a course totally different from that which they had anticipated, there was put on their faith a tremendous strain; but by what they had seen and heard on the Mount they were enabled to stand it, and to form the nucleus of loyalty round which the rest of the apostles gathered.

All who meet with Christ on the heights will, in some decree, share the same privileges. They will possess evidence of the glory of Christ not to be obtained elsewhere. Faith is in some minds a tradition handed down from the past which they have never doubted; in others it is a conviction laboriously hammered out by argument. But there is a faith which is more quick and powerful than these: it is the faith of experience; and it can hardly be missed by those who are much on the Mount. In such circumstances they receive evidence of God’s existence, his glory and his love, which becomes part and parcel of their own being; and in such intercourse with the Saviour there cannot but occur now and then experiences of exaltation and revelation which are registered among the most precious memories of the past, and can only be taken away by some catastrophe which blots out the records of experience altogether.

XX. The next occasion on which the Three were alone with Jesus was in Gethsemane. If it is natural to wish to have dear friends near in an hour of triumph, it is still more an instinct of the heart to wish this in the season of sorrow. Jesus invited the Three to the mountain- top that they might behold his glory; he invited them into the depths of the garden that they might support him in his hour of agony. The soul of the Saviour was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. The hour to which he had long been looking forward had arrived; but it proved to be intolerably bitter.

Grief has a double instinct: it seeks solitude; and Jesus removed himself a stone’s cast even from the Three into the depths of the grove; yet, at the same time, it seeks sympathy; it is a relief to it to pour itself out into willing ears; and, therefore, Jesus wished them to be near, that he might go to them when the state of his overcharged heart would allow him. The disciples had need, besides, to pray on their own account. They, too, had reached a crisis in their fortunes, where they might suffer shipwreck, and again and again he urged them to watch and pray, lest they should enter into temptation.

It was a golden opportunity for the Three, when they could have obtained insight into the heart of their Master, and might have rendered him service which would have been divinely recompensed, besides preparing themselves for playing the man in the scenes which were about to ensue. But it was a lost opportunity. They were near him in Gethsemane; yet they were not with him. Jesus had invited them to a degree of confidence and intimacy beyond what they had ever yet enjoyed; but they could not enter so far into his secret. We wonder especially at St. John. He at least might have kept awake, although the other two had slept. He should have filled the place of the angel, who had to come from heaven to strengthen the Saviour because there was not a man to do it. St. John’s loving and sensitive heart you would have expected to be all alive and awake, when he saw the state into which his beloved Master had fallen. But even he succumbed to the drowsiness of grief; and Jesus came, seeking sympathy and comfort, and found none. “Sleep on now,” he said, “and take your rest.” The opportunity was passed; and nothing could ever recall it.

Christ still invites us into Gethsemane. When may he be said to do so? When his cause appears to be in desperation; when the world is all against him, and his truth requires to be maintained against the organs of public opinion and the dead weight of conventionalism; when to confess him associates us with the poor and despised, while those whose good opinion we have been accustomed to enjoy wonder at us. In circumstances of this description a rare opportunity is offered of getting near to Christ. Never do we understand him so well, never does his love shine so full upon us, as when we are sacrificing honor, comfort, pleasure for his sake. But too often the opportunity is lost. Self-indulgence in some form comes in. It may not be a gross form: the sleep of the disciples in Gethsemane was very pardonable, and our self-indulgence may be something equally innocent. It may be the reading of a book when we ought to be saving a soul; it may be sitting in the comfort of home when we ought to be on the track of the homeless; it may be acquiescence in the opinions and practices of the respectable set to which we belong when we ought to come out from them and, at the risk of being thought odd, or even mad, offer our protest. A thing in itself entirely innocent may act as a soporific—to dull the sense of duty, and smother the call of Christ—so that the opportunity of being brought close to him through the fellowship of his sufferings is lost for ever.

XXI.

There is one more scene in which the Three appear along with Jesus, though on this occasion there was associated with them a fourth — St. Andrew, the brother of St. Peter; the same who in the lists of the apostles is always associated with the Three in forming the first group of four. On a day in the last week of our Lord’s earthly life we find these four seated with Him on the Mount of Olives over against the Temple — that is, they were looking across the holy city, which lay at their feet, and they were thinking of the doom by which, Jesus had told them, it was to be overtaken—when they asked him, “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?” In thus asking they were exercising a privilege often used by the Twelve, to seek for an explanation of anything in their Master’s doctrine which they had not understood, or the solution of any problem suggested to their minds by remarks which he had made. Probably this privilege had been specially exercised on other occasions by the Three. It was a very precious privilege, and on this occasion Jesus gave a very full and impressive answer.

It is a sign of advancement in the divine life to feel an interest in the mysteries of religion; and in this region Jesus meets those who have his mind. In our day, indeed, the desire is often expressed for a Christianity free from mysteries: would not the Sermon on the Mount, along with a simple outline of the facts contained in the gospels, be enough? can we not get quit altogether of dogmas and doctrines? Well, it is a very fair question how much ought to be demanded as a foundation for Christian union and cooperation. The quantum ought perhaps to be reduced to a minimum. If any man acknowledges Christ as his Lord and Saviour we need not ask much more about his creed before welcoming him as a Christian brother. But, while a minimum of belief may be enough to entitle a man to be called a Christian, a man cannot be an advanced or matured Christian without the necessity asserting itself within him for a more comprehensive creed. The Christian life, as it progresses, raises questions the answers to which are the doctrines of the gospel; and the deeper the life is the deeper will be the doctrines required to express it.

It is true that there is an intellectualism which separates dogma from life and substitutes the reasonings of the head for the experiences of the heart. There is also a prying into religious mysteries which is born only of morbid curiosity. There is, for example, a habit of speculating about the future which sometimes approaches the brink of insanity. But the caricature of a thing is no condemnation of the thing itself. On this occasion Christ did not tell the inquiring spirits by whom he was surrounded that such questions as they had put were of no moment. He gave a solemn and satisfying answer.

There are doctrines which are simply the intellectual equivalents for spiritual experiences, and where the experiences exist the truths which explain them will be understood and relished — while, on the other hand, contempt or impatience of these doctrines is an indication of the absence of the experiences. So a living interest in the progress of the kingdom of God gives an interest in the mystery of the future. You cannot break up a human nature into compartments and say that religion is to reside in some of them and not in others. Where religion is real and progressive it quickens the whole man. And not least does it affect the intelligence. The intellect is a noble faculty, and when, under the excitement of experience, it seeks to penetrate the mystery of life, He who is our wisdom, no less than our righteousness and sanctification, delights to answer its interrogations.