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  WRITINGS OF ALEXANDER B BRUCE
  by Alexander B. Bruce
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A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by Alexander B. Bruce,
compiled for study and devotional reading.

  Chapters: 68

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 01.0.1. The Parabolic Teaching of Christ
    2. 01.0.2.     Prefatory Note
    3. 01.0.3.     Preface
    4. 01.0.4.     Introductory
    5. 01.0.5.     Prepared by BibleSupport.com
    6. 01.01.     Book 1. Theoretic Parables
    7. 01.02.        Chapter 1. The Sower
    8. 01.03.        Chapter 2. The Tares and the Drag-Net
    9. 01.04.        Chapter 3. The Treasure and the Pearl
   10. 01.05.        Chapter 4. The Mustard Seed and the Leaven
   11. 01.06.        Chapter 5. The Blade, the Ear, and the Full Corn
   12. 01.07.        Chapter 6. The Selfish Neighbour and the Unjust Judge
   13. 01.08.        Chapter 7. The Parable of Extra Service
   14. 01.09.        Chapter 8. The Hours, the Talents, and the Pounds
   15. 01.10.     Book 2. The Parables of Grace
   16. 01.11.       Introductory
   17. 01.12.        Chapter 1. The Two Debtors
   18. 01.13.        Chapter 2. The Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son
   19. 01.14.        Chapter 3. The Children of the Bride-chamber
   20. 01.15.        Chapter 4. The Lowest Seats at Feasts, and the Pharisee and the Publican
   21. 01.16.        Chapter 5. The Great Supper
   22. 01.17.        Chapter 6. The Good Samaritan
   23. 01.18.        Chapter 7. The Unjust Steward
   24. 01.19.        Chapter 8. Dives and Lazarus, and the Unmerciful Servant
   25. 01.20.     Book 3. The Parables of Judgment
   26. 01.21.        Chapter 1. The Children in the Market-place
   27. 01.22.        Chapter 2. The Barren Fig-Tree
   28. 01.23.        Chapter 3. The Two Sons
   29. 01.24.        Chapter 4. The Wicked Husbandmen
   30. 01.25.        Chapter 5. The Wedding-Feast and the Wedding-Robe
   31. 01.26.        Chapter 6. The Unfaithful Upper Servant
   32. 01.27.        Chapter 7. The Ten Virgins
   33. 02.00. The Training Of The Twelve
   34. 02.01.     Beginnings
   35. 02.02.     Fishers Of Men
   36. 02.03.     Matthew the Publican
   37. 02.04.     The Twelve
   38. 02.05.     Hearing and Seeing
   39. 02.06.     Lessons On Prayer
   40. 02.07.     Lessons in Religious Liberty
   41. 02.08.     First Attempts at Evangelism
   42. 02.09.1.     The Galilean Crisis
   43. 02.09.2.     The Galilean Crisis
   44. 02.10.     The Leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees
   45. 02.11.     Peter's Confession
   46. 02.12.     First Lesson On the Cross
   47. 02.13.     The Transfiguration
   48. 02.14.1.     Training in Temper
   49. 02.14.2.     Training in Temper
   50. 02.15.     The Sons of Thunder
   51. 02.16.1.     In Perea
   52. 02.16.2.     In Perea
   53. 02.17.     The Sons of Zebedee Again
   54. 02.18.     The Anointing in Bethany
   55. 02.19.     Firstfruits of the Gentiles
   56. 02.20.     O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
   57. 02.21.     The Master Serving
   58. 02.22.     In Memoriam
   59. 02.23.     Judas Iscariot
   60. 02.24.     The Dying Parent and the Little Ones
   61. 02.25.1.     Dying Charge to the Future Apostles
   62. 02.25.2.     Dying Charge to the Future Apostles
   63. 02.26.     The Intercessory Prayer
   64. 02.27.     The Sheep Scattered
   65. 02.28.     The Shepherd Restored
   66. 02.29.     The Under-Shepherds Admonished
   67. 02.30.     Power From On High
   68. 02.31.     Waiting

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  CHAPTER 1: 01.0.1. THE PARABOLIC TEACHING OF CHRIST
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The Parabolic Teaching of Christ A Systematic and Critical Study OF THE PARABLES
OF OUR LORD BY ALEXANDER BALMAIN BRUCE, D.D.

Professor Of Apologetic And New Testament Exegesis, Free Church College,
Glasgow.

Fourth Revised Edition HODDER & STROUGHTON NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

1884


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  CHAPTER 2: 01.0.2.     PREFATORY NOTE
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Prefatory Note This Third Edition of "The Parabolic Teaching of Christ" has been
carefully revised by me. For the benefit of those who possess the earlier
editions, it may be stated that no material change has been made in the text.
The changes consist chiefly in the correction of errors. I take this opportunity
of returning thanks for the very appreciative manner in which this book has been
received in this country by clergymen and other friends connected with all
denominations. I feel as if I must, in some measure, have succeeded in
reflecting the spirit of Christ our Master and Lord in these studies of His
incomparable sayings. May He continue to bless them in spite of all their
imperfections.

New York, 1886

A. B. Bruce.


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  CHAPTER 3: 01.0.3.     PREFACE
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Preface No apology is deemed necessary for the publication of a new work on the
Parables contained in the Gospels. Books of a devotional or homiletical
character on some or all of these abound; but of works of a more elaborate and
critical description on the subject, the number in the English tongue is small.
Without disparagement to such as exist, it is believed that a fresh attempt to
unfold in a scholarly yet genial manner the didactic significance of these
beautiful sayings of our Lord will not be unwelcome. How far the present
publication supplies what is wanted it is for others to judge. A feature of the
work is the classification of the parables under general heads, making available
thought-affinities for the elucidation of their meaning. Another feature is
strict adherence to the historical method of exegesis as distinct from the
allegorising method pursued by the Fathers, and largely favoured by the chief
English writer on the subject, whose strength and weakness both lie in the
extent to which he has laid patristic literature under contribution for the
interpretation of the parables and the literary enrichment of his pages. The
author of this work has sought help from the moderns more than from the
ancients. He has kept recent commentators steadily in view, while avoiding the
dryness of the commentaries, and abstaining from a parade of authorities. In
appreciating the theological import of the parables he has had regard to the
comparative method of New Testament theology, recognising distinct doctrinal
types, and noting the resemblances and differences between these. In the
ascertainment of the correct text, advantage has been taken of the latest
labours of scholars, including, of course, the Revised Version, and the learned
and most valuable edition of the Greek Testament edited by Drs. Westcott and
Hort. The introduction is confined to a brief explanation of the method adopted
for the distribution of the materials which form the subject of study.
Occasional observations on topics usually included in general dissertations on
the parables will be found scattered throughout the book. The Author.

Glasgow, September, 1883.


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  CHAPTER 4: 01.0.4.     INTRODUCTORY
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Introductory The Parables of our Lord were of an incidental character; and
perhaps the best way of studying them is not to isolate them from the general
history of His ministry for separate consideration, but rather to look at them
as parts of a larger whole in connection with the particular occasions which
called them forth. And yet it is, to say the least, a very natural and
legitimate procedure to take these parables, which form so large, so peculiar,
and so precious a portion of Christ’s teaching, apart by themselves, and make
them the subject of a special study. This, accordingly, has often been done
already, and doubtless it will often be done again while the world lasts. We
propose to add one more to the number of the attempts which have been made to
ascertain the meaning of the parabolic utterances of Incarnate Wisdom. We enter
on the task with much diffidence, yet not without the humble hope of being
useful. Our one desire is to get at the kernel of spiritual truth enclosed
within the parabolic shell: to get at it for ourselves, and to communicate it at
the same time to others The beauty of the parables we, in common with all
readers 01 the Gospels, greatly admire; their fidelity to nature, and to the
customs of the time in which they were spoken, we fully appreciate; but we
should not think of undertaking an exposition of them if we had nothing more
important to do than to play the part of an art-critic showing how skilfully the
parabolic picture is painted in all its details, or of an antiquarian showing
how conformable is the parabolic representation to all customs of the time and
place. In entering on an exposition of the parables, we are confronted at once
with the question of method. In what order shall we consider the subjects of our
study? Shall we take them up as they occur in the several Gospels, beginning
with Matthew, then going on through Mark and Luke, as has been done by some
writers? or shall we attempt a classification on a principle?—and if so, on what
principle is the classification to be made? A merely casual method of
arrangement is certainly not desirable, if there be any thought-affinities
between the parables, any recognisable characteristics common to several of
them, according to which they can be arranged in groups; for disregard of such
affinities means loss of the light which related parables are fitted to throw
upon each other. Now, several writers have thought they could discover certain
resemblances between certain parables, and on the basis of such real or supposed
resemblances have built schemes of classification by which they have been guided
in their exposition. One writer, for example, the author of an elaborate and
voluminous work on the parables, takes note of the fact that some of the
parables have explanations attached to them, while others remain unexplained;
and, asking himself the question what may be the reason of the difference, comes
to the conclusion that the unexplained parables are allegories and prophecies
meant to hide the truth,—the truth hid being not so much a doctrine as a future
event, which before the time is a mystery, arcanum, or secret,—while the
explained parables teach a doctrine or moral lesson having a bearing on present
practice. In this way the writer referred to arrives at a distribution of the
parables into two great classes—the prophetic and the moral,—the former
containing an esoteric and the latter an exoteric system of doctrine. This
classification has met with very little approval, and perhaps its failure has
had a considerable effect in deterring other writers from all attempts at
methodical arrangement as futile. It does not follow, however, that because one
attempt has proved a signal failure, all others. must be equally abortive. We
believe, for our part, that a grouping of the parables based on real and
important resemblances, and at least approximately correct and complete, is
possible; and without staying to enumerate all the methods of grouping which we
have met with in books, we shall proceed at once to indicate the principle of
distribution on which we ourselves mean to proceed.

We observe, then, that the teaching ministry of our Lord falls naturally asunder
into three divisions. Christ was a Master or Rabbi, with disciples whom He made
it His business to instruct; He was an Evangelist, going about doing good among
the common people, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom to the poor; and He
was a Prophet, not merely or chiefly in the predictive sense of the word, but
specially in the sense that He was one who proclaimed in the hearing of His
contemporaries the great truth of the moral government of God over the world at
large, and over Israel in particular, and the sure doom of the impenitent under
that righteous government. Now, the parables may be conveniently, and as we
believe usefully, distributed into three groups, corresponding to these three
departments of Christ’s ministry. Indeed, we might go further, and say that the
whole public life of Jesus, as related in the Gospels, might without forcing be
ranged under the three heads: the Master, the Evangelist, the Prophet. Under the
first head comes all that relates to the training of the twelve for the
apostolate; under the second Christ’s miscellaneous activity as a Teacher and
Healer among the general population, as the Good Shepherd seeking to save the
lost sheep of the house of Israel; under the third, the extensive materials
relating to His bitter conflict as the witness for truth and righteousness with
the unbelieving political and religious leaders of Jewish society. When all that
belongs naturally to these three divisions has been taken up, not much of the
Evangelic narrative remains. But our business at present is with the parables
only, not with the whole public ministry of Jesus; and we repeat the statement
already made, that the parables may be distributed into three groups answering
to the three titles, the Master, the Evangelist, the Prophet. First there is a
class of parables which may be distinguished as the theoretic, containing the
general truth, or what has been called the ’metaphysic’ of the Divine kingdom.
Then there is a large group which may legitimately claim to be called
distinctively the evangelic—their burden being grace, the mercy and the love of
God to the sinful and the miserable—in some more obviously and directly, in
others by implication rather than by express statement, but none the less really
and effectively. Then, lastly, there is a group which may be characterised as
the prophetic; using the term, let it be once more explained, not in the
predictive so much as in the ethical sense, to convey the idea that in this
class of parables Jesus, as the messenger of God, spoke words of rebuke and
warning to an evil time. Proceeding upon this classification, we in effect adopt
as our motto the words of the Apostle Paul: "The fruit of the light is in all
goodness and righteousness and truth," —the last word, ’truth,’ answering to the
first group; the second, ’righteousness,’ answering to the last group; and the
first, ’goodness,’ answering to the middle group. Christ was the Light of the
world; and in His parabolic teaching He let His light shine upon men in
beautiful prismatic rays, and the precious fruit is preserved for our use in
three groups of parables: first, the theoretic parables, containing the general
truth concerning the kingdom of God; second, the evangelic parables, setting
forth the Divine goodness and grace as the source of salvation and the law of
Christian life; third, the prophetic parables, proclaiming the righteousness of
God as the Supreme Ruler, rewarding men according to their works. The foregoing
classification has not been got up for the occasion, but has insinuated itself
into our mind without any seeking on our part, in connection with our studies on
the Gospels. Nor do we lay claim to any originality in connection therewith,
except such as consists in independently arriving at a conclusion which has
commended itself to other minds. We are happy to find that we do not stand alone
in recognising the distinctions indicated, and that there is an increasing
consensus of opinion in favour of a classification based thereon. Differences of
opinion, of course, may obtain as to the precise terms by which the different
classes are to be described, or even as to the number of separate classes to be
recognised, as also in regard to the class under which this or that parable is
to be ranged; but there is a general concurrence among recent writers as to the
reality and the importance of the threefold distinction above indicated. Not
only so; another interesting fact has attracted the attention of many: viz. that
the Evangelists—more definitely Matthew and Luke, for Mark has very few parables
in his Gospel—stand in distinct relations to the several groups of parables.
Most of Matthew’s parables belong to the first and third groups; most of Luke’s
to the second. This fact was signalised long ago by one whose name will ever be
held in honour in connection with the literature of our subject; and it has
recently been proclaimed with remarkable emphasis and felicity of language by
Renan, in his charming chapter on the Gospel of Luke, in the fifth volume of his
work on the ’Origins of Christianity.’ "There is hardly," he remarks, "an
anecdote, a parable peculiar to Luke, which breathes not the spirit of mercy and
of appeal to sinners. The only word of Jesus a little hard which has been
preserved, becomes with him an apologue full of indulgence and patience. The
unfruitful tree must not be cut down too quickly. The good gardener opposes
himself to the anger of the proprietor, and demands that the tree be manured
before it be finally condemned. The Gospel of Luke is by excellence the gospel
of pardon, and of pardon obtained by faith." The fact is unquestionable, though
the use made of it by the Tubingen school of critics, and partly by M. Renan
himself, may be very questionable indeed. We cannot approve of the opinion which
regards the third Evangelist as a theological partisan, who not only selected,
but manufactured or modified, facts to serve the cause he had espoused—that of
Pauline universalism as against Judaistic exclusivism. But we do most cordially
recognise Luke as an earnest believer in the gospel Paul preached—a gospel of
pure grace, and therefore a gospel for all the world on equal terms; and we
perceive clearly traces of his Paulinism, using the word not in a controversial
but in a descriptive sense, throughout his Gospel. In searching among the
literary materials out of which he constructed his story, he manifestly had a
quick eye for everything that tended to show that the gospel preached by Christ
was really and emphatically good news from God, a manifestation of Divine
philanthropy and grace, and a manifestation in which the whole world was
interested. Hence the prominence given to such narratives as exhibited Jesus as
the Friend of the poor; hence the introduction of incidents in which Samaritans
appear to advantage in comparison with Jews, or as attracting Christ’s
compassion while objects of Jewish prejudice and hatred; hence the preservation
in the third Gospel of such parables as those which together constitute Christ’s
apology for loving the sinful: the Two Debtors, the Straying Sheep, the Lost
Piece of Money, and the Prodigal Son; and such others as the Good Samaritan, the
Supper, the Pharisee and Publican, and even, we will venture to add, the Unjust
Steward, and the Rich Man and Lazarus. It is of the utmost importance to
recognise this peculiarity of Luke’s Gospel in all its breadth, not merely as a
fact of literary or critical interest, but as one having a direct practical
bearing on interpretation. One who leaves this fact out of view runs great risk
of frequently missing the right track as an interpreter, while one who ever
keeps it in his eye will often be guided at once to the true meaning of a
narrative. We must, of course, be on our guard against giving a one-sided
predominance to the characteristic in question, as if Luke had only one idea in
his mind in writing his Gospel; and generally in our interpretation of the
different Gospels we must beware of imagining the writers to have been so much
under the influence of a particular purpose as to have excluded everything that
did not directly or indirectly bear thereon. It is characteristic of the
negative school of criticism thus to treat the Gospels as exclusively writings
of tendency, to the great impoverishment of their value; even as it has more or
less been characteristic of believing interpreters to ignore too much the
distinctive features of the Gospels, and to treat them all as colourless
chronicles of the life of Jesus. The truth lies between the two extremes. The
Gospels have their distinctive features, and yet they have much in common: they
have all the great essentials of Christ’s teaching in common. Matthew’s Gospel
is theocratic; Luke’s is Pauline, humanistic, universalistic. But the theocratic
aspect of the Divine kingdom is not wanting in Luke, neither is the universal
aspect thereof wanting in Matthew. Bearing this in mind, we shall not expect to
find only evangelic parables in the third Gospel, but shall be prepared to meet
with others of a different description; neither shall we be surprised if we find
in Matthew not only parables didactic and prophetic, but also such as speak to
us not of judgment but of mercy. This caveat against too rigorous definition of
the different Gospels in relation to the parables requires to be repeated in
connection with the heads under which we propose to classify the latter. It must
not be imagined that every parable so decidedly comes under one head that it
could not with propriety be ranged under any other. This holds good probably of
most, but not of all. Some parables are, if we may so express it, of an
amphibious character, and might be ranged under either of two categories,
because partaking of the nature of both. Such, for example, is the parable of
the Great Supper, which, while full of mercy towards the homeless, hungry
wanderers on the highway, presents an aspect of stern judicial severity towards
those who accepted not the invitations sent to them; and might be classed either
as an evangelic or as a prophetic parable, according as we took for its key-note
the word of mercy, "Compel them to come in," or the word of judgment, "None of
those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper." As another instance, we
may refer to the parable of the "Unprofitable Servants," as it is commonly
called, or, as we prefer to call it, the parable of "Extra Service." If we start
in our interpretation from the words "We are unprofitable servants," we shall
regard the parable as intended to teach that there is no room for merit in the
kingdom of God, that all is of grace,—and so relegate it to the evangelic
category. If, on the other hand, we regard it as the purpose of the parable to
impress on the servants of the kingdom the exacting nature of the service to
which they are called, and that no man is fit for that service who is disposed
to murmur, or who ever thinks he has done enough, then we may not improperly
range the parable under the first of the three categories, and treat it as one
setting forth one of the properties of the kingdom of heaven.

After these explanations we now propose the following distribution of the
parables, to be justified by the exposition.

I. Theoretic or Didactic Parables.—Under this head we include the group of seven
parables in Mat 13:1-58 : The Sower, the Tares and the Drag-net, the Hid
Treasure and the Precious Pearl, the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, with the
parable in Mark 4:26-29, the Blade, the Ear, and the Full Corn—in all forming a
group of eight relating to the general nature of the kingdom of God. And besides
these, the parables of the Selfish Neighbour and the Unjust Judge relating to
the delays of Providence in fulfilling spiritual desires, or to perseverance in
prayer (Luk 11:5; Luk 18:1); the parable of Extra Service (Luk 17:7); and
finally the three parables which relate to the subject of work and wages in the
kingdom: viz. the Hours of Labour (Mat 20:1), the Talents (Mat 25:14), and the
Pounds (Luk 19:12). In all, fourteen.

II. Evangelic Parables.—To this class belong the four parables in Luke’s Gospel
which together constitute Christ’s apology for loving the sinful: the Two
Debtors (Luk 7:40), the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son (Luk
15:1-32); the Children of the BrideChamber (Mat 9:14-17 et parall.), being an
apology for the joy of the children of the kingdom. Under the same category fall
the Lowest Seats at Feasts (Luk 14:7-11), and the Pharisee and the Publican (Luk
18:9-14), teaching that the kingdom of God is for the humble; the Great Supper
(Luk 14:16), teaching that the kingdom is for the hungry; the Good Samaritan
(Luk 10:30); the Unrighteous Steward (Luk 16:1); the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luk
16:19), and the Unmerciful Servant, the two last together teaching which are the
unpardonable sins. In all, twelve.

III. Prophetic or Judicial Parables.—This class includes the following: The
Children in the MarketPlace (Mat 11:16), containing Christ’s moral estimate of
the generation amidst which He lived; the Barren Fig-tree (Luk 13:6), the two
Sons and the Wicked Husbandmen (Mat 21:28-44), and the Marriage of the King’s
Son (Mat 22:1), exhibiting more or less clearly the action of Divine judgment
upon the nation of Israel; the Unfaithful Servant (Mat 24:45), and the Ten
Virgins (Mat 25:1). exhibiting similar judicial action within the kingdom of
God. In all, seven.

It will be observed that the foregoing groups do not include all the parabolic
utterances of our Lord recorded in the Gospels. To those omitted belong the
parabolic conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, consisting of the metaphors of
the wise and foolish builders, the similitudes of the inconsiderate builder of a
tower, and the king who would wage war (Luk 14:28-35), and the Rich Fool (Luk
12:16), which appears in most treatises as one of the regular parables. These
and the like are excluded, not chiefly because they cannot easily be brought
within our scheme of distribution, but more especially because they are of no
independent didactic importance. The parables we propose to consider have all
this in common, that they embody truths deep, unfamiliar or unwelcome—"mysteries
of the kingdom." Such a parable as that of the Rich Fool, on the other hand,
conveys no new or abstruse lesson, but simply teaches in concrete lively form a
moral commonplace. Parabolic utterances of that description were not distinctive
of Christ as a Teacher: they were common to Him with the Jewish Rabbis. He spake
these merely as a Jewish moralist; but the parables now to be studied were
uttered by Him as the Herald of the kingdom of heaven.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 5: 01.0.5.     PREPARED BY BIBLESUPPORT.COM
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e-Sword Module Prepared by BibleSupport.com The text has been changed slightly
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  CHAPTER 6: 01.01.     BOOK 1. THEORETIC PARABLES
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Book 1. Theoretic Parables


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  CHAPTER 7: 01.02.        CHAPTER 1. THE SOWER
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Chapter 1. The Sower Or, the Word of the Kingdom to be Diversely Received
According to the Moral Condition of Hearers.

Sitting in a boat on the Sea of Galilee near the shore, on which a great
multitude was assembled to hear Him, Jesus said[1]: —

Behold! the sower[2] went forth to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell by the
wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them. And other seeds fell upon the
rocky places,[3] where they had not much earth, and forthwith they sprang up,
because they had no deepness of earth; and when the sun was up they were
scorched, and because they had not root they withered away. And other fell upon
the thorns;[4] and the thorns sprang up and choked them. And other fell upon the
good ground, and brought forth fruity some[5] an hundredfold, some[6] sixty
fold, and some[7] thirtyfold. Who hath ears, let him hear.—Mat 13:3-9.

[1] We give the parable and its interpretation as contained in Matthew; all
points of importance in the other Gospels will be noticed as we proceed.

[2] ὁ σπεἰρων—the man whose function it was to sow, or the sower of my parable.

[3] ἐπἰ τά πετρώδη—not soil mixed with loose stones (which might be good), but
soil resting on a rocky substratum a little below the surface.

[4] Upon a soil with thorn or thistle seed in it, which afterwards sprang up

[5] δ μὲν, δ δὲ, δ δὲ—in this case, in that, and in a third case.

[6] δ μὲν, δ δὲ, δ δὲ—in this case, in that, and in a third case.

[7] δ μὲν, δ δὲ, δ δὲ—in this case, in that, and in a third case.

Christ’s hearers would have no difficulty in understanding the letter of this
parable. At their side, as modern travellers who have been on the spot tell
us,[6] they might see an agricultural scene which would enable them to
comprehend all the details of the picture at a glance. They would know perfectly
what was literally intended by the four kinds of ground distinguished in the
parable: that the way-side signified the hard-trodden path running through the
cornfield; that the rocky places signified that part of the field where the soil
was shallow, and the rocky stratum below came near the surface; that the thorns
denoted, not thorn bushes actually growing in the field at the time of sowing,
but soil with thorn seeds latent in it, which in due course sprang up, disputing
possession with the grain; and that the good ground meant that portion of the
field which was free from all the faults of the other parts, and was at once
soft, deep, and clean. They would know also that the fate of seed falling upon
these different places respectively would be just such as described in the
parable: that the seed falling on the hard path would never even so much as
germinate, but either be picked up by the birds or trodden under foot; that the
seed falling on shallow soil, with rock immediately beneath, might germinate,
and even spring up rapidly for a short while, but for want of sap and depth of
earth must inevitably wither under the heat of the sun, and so come to nothing;
that the seed which fell on soil full of thorn or thistle seeds might not only
germinate and spring up, but continue to grow with vigour till it reached the
green ear—the fault of the ground not being poverty, but foulness—but would
never ripen, being choked, smothered, and shaded by the overgrowing thorns; and
finally, that seed which fell on good, generous soil, soft, deep, and clean,
could not fail, under the genial influences of fostering sap beneath and of a
bright sun above, to yield a bountiful harvest, richly rewarding the
husbandman’s pains.

[6] Vide Stanley, ’Sinai and Palestine,’ p. 425, in a chapter on the local
connections and allusions of Christ’s teaching. But what might the spiritual
meaning of the parable be? Why did Jesus speak this parable? What did He mean to
teach? These questions His hearers were not able to answer. That the parable was
designed to teach something, that it meant more than met the ear, they would of
course understand; for common sense would teach them that Christ was not likely
to describe a sowing scene for its own sake, and the closing words, "Who hath
ears, let him hear," was a hint at a hidden meaning that could not fail to be
understood even by the most obtuse. It is even possible that the people standing
on the shore had a shrewd suspicion that the preacher was speaking about
themselves, and describing the various sorts of hearers of the word of the
kingdom who were mingled together in that great crowd, and the correspondingly
diverse issues of the preaching of the word. But beyond that point we may be
sure their comprehension did not go. They might have a dim impression that the
various sorts of soil signified spiritual states; but they could not
discriminate the spiritual soils on which the word of the kingdom fell, as they
could at once and with ease apprehend the literal points of the parable. How
should the multitude at large understand what even the disciples, the twelve,
and others who had been constantly in Christ’s company, failed to understand?
That even they were puzzled, the record informs us. When they were alone, we are
told, the disciples asked their. Master what might this parable be.[1] One of
the Evangelists gives the question thus: "Why speakest Thou unto them in
parables?"[2]—meaning, in such a parable as this of the Sower. The two forms of
the question convey a pretty definite idea of the state of mind of those who put
it. It was a state intermediate between perfect knowledge and total ignorance.
They did not know clearly the meaning of the parable, else they would not have
asked for an interpretation; they were not totally ignorant of its meaning, else
they would not have asked, "Why speakest Thou unto them in parables?" They knew
enough to be surprised that their Master addressed such a parable to the
eagerly-listening multitude—a parable not setting forth any truth concerning the
kingdom, like that of the Precious Pearl, which teaches the incomparable value
of the kingdom—but animadverting on the various classes of hearers. That, as we
believe, was the cause of surprise: not the general fact of teaching in a new
way (viz. in parables) taken abstractly and by itself, but that fact taken in
conjunction with the peculiar character of the parable by which the new method
was inaugurated.

[1] Luk 8:9.

[2] Mat 13:10.

If such was indeed the feeling in the minds of the disciples, we cannot wonder
at their question. For even now we who understand the parable, as they could not
before it was explained to them, are constrained to ask ourselves the question,
Why spake Jesus such a parable as that of the Sower to the crowd of people
assembled on the shore of the Sea of Galilee—a parable in which the Speaker
preached not to the people, but at them, or over their heads; not about any
important truth of the kingdom, but about the reception truth was likely to meet
with; not glad tidings to men, but very sombre, depressing tidings concerning
men in their relation to the gospel? One could at once understand how such a
parable as this might at any time have been spoken to the disciples; because to
them it was given "to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven," and
specially because it was desirable that they, as the future apostles of the
kingdom, should know what reception they were to meet with, to prevent
disappointment when they learned by experience, as their Master had already
learned, that the effect of the word was conditioned variously by the moral
state of the hearer. Antecedently to experience, men of sanguine temper,
ardently devoted to the kingdom, might anticipate a very different result, and
expect the intrinsic excellence of the doctrine to insure in all cases a harvest
of beneficent effects. A warning to the contrary was therefore by no means
superfluous. But was it not wasting a precious opportunity thus to speak to the
common people? and if the Preacher must speak in parabolic form, why not utter
an "evangelic" parable, reserving didactic parables for the twelve, and
prophetic parables for unbelieving hostile Pharisees and Sadducees? We put the
question strongly, because we wish to force ourselves and our readers to reflect
and go in quest of an answer; believing that the answer, when found, will lend
greatly enhanced interest to the parable, and help us to understand its import,
and may even lead to discoveries as to the design and what we may call the
psychological genesis of the whole parabolic teaching of our Lord.

Without doubt, then, to answer our question at once, the reason why Jesus spoke
such a parable as that of the Sower, and such other parables as these of the
Tares and the Net, in the hearing of the multitude is to be sought in the moral
situation of the hour.[1] Travellers and interpreters have been at great pains
to explain the physical situation—the natural surroundings of the Speaker that
day when He began to open His mouth in parables. And this is well, though it is
possible to have too much of it, leading to a sentimental style of treating the
parables which is rather tiresome and unprofit able. The moral situation is
undoubtedly the principal thing to be determined; for we cannot believe that
Christ was led to speak as He did by merely picturesque influences, any more
than we can believe that He then and there opened His mouth in parables from a
merely intellectual liking for that symbolic manner of expressing thought. The
motive must have come from the spiritual composition and condition of the crowd.
Jesus must have lifted up the eye of His mind, and seen, not a literal field,
with the characteristics described in course of being sown with grain, but a
spiritual field with analogous characteristics, which had been sown with the
seeds of Divine truth by Himself,—even that very crowd which was assembled
before Him. But have we any evidence that the spiritual condition of that crowd
was such as this hypothesis requires? We have. First there is the statement made
by Jesus Himself, in reply to the question of His disciples, which presents a
very gloomy picture of the spiritual condition of the people: "For this people’s
heart is waxed gross," etc.[2] When Jesus said that, He did not merely quote a
prophetic commonplace in a haphazard, pointless way, without meaning to imply
that it had any very definite applicability to the multitude before Him. He
believed, and He said, that in the case of that very multitude the spiritual
state described by the prophet Isaiah was very exactly fulfilled or realized.[3]
Then, secondly, there is the great historical melancholy fact of the Capernaum
crisis recorded in John vi., in which the Galilean revival came to a deplorable
end: "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with
Him."[4] And, finally, the minute particulars of information supplied by the
Evangelists as to the circumstances amid which Jesus spake our parable, show
that the Galilean enthusiasm is at its height, and therefore that the crisis,
the time of reaction, must be near. Matthew tells us that so great were the
multitudes who gathered together unto Jesus that He was obliged to go into a
ship in order to escape pressure, and have a position from which He could be
seen and heard of all.[5] Mark says: "And He began again to teach by the
seaside,"—implying eagerness in the people thereabouts to hear; and he
characterises the audiences not merely as great, but as very great.[6] Luke
informs us that the congregation assembled was composed of people coming "out of
every city,"[7]—that is, from all the towns and villages by the shores of the
lake.

[1] Farrar, in his ’Life of Christ,’ takes this view; "The great mass of
hearers," he remarks, "must now have been aware of the general features in the
new gospel which Jesus preached. Some self-examination, some earnest, careful
thought of their own, was now requisite, if they were indeed sincere in their
desire to profit by His words" (vol. i. p. 322)

[2] Mat 13:15.

[3] Mat 13:14. Καὶ ἀναπληροῦται. The ἀνά is intensive.

[4] John 6:66.

[5] Mat 13:2.

[6] ὄχλος πλεἵστος (Mat 4:1).

[7] Mat 8:4. τῶν κατὰ πόλιν ἐπιπορευομένων πρὸς αὐτόν The crisis, then, is
approaching, and it is in view of that crisis Jesus speaks the parable of the
Sower. He sees it coming, and is sad, and He speaks as He feels. The present
enthusiasm, because He knows how it is likely to end, gives Him no pleasure,—it
rather causes Him trouble. He wishes to be rid of it. We might almost say He
speaks the parable for that end; using it, as He used the mystic sermon on the
Bread of Life, in the synagogue at Capernaum, as a fan to separate wheat from
chaff.[1] At the least, we may say He speaks the parable to foreshadow the end.
The parable is a prelude to the sermon, uttered to satisfy the Speaker’s sense
of truth; to throw hearers back on themselves in self-examination; to warn
disciples against being imposed on by fair appearances, and cherishing romantic
expectations doomed to bitter disappointment; and to insure in all ages, for an
’enthusiasm of humanity’ not blind to the weakness of human nature, a respect
which it is impossible to accord to a shallow philanthropy without moral
insight.[2] [1] For our view of the effect of that sermon see ’The Training of
the Twelve,’ cap. ix., section 4.

[2] Godet says: "The end of Jesus is first to show that He Is under no Illusion
in view of that multitude in appearance so attentive; next to put His disciples
on their guard against the hopes which the present enthusiasm might inspire;
lastly, and above all, to fortify His hearers against the perils to which their
present religious impressions were exposed" (’Comm. sur l’Evangile de St. Luc,’
i. 396). The last remark in the sentence in the text to which this note refers
may be illustrated by an anecdote told of Frederick the Great. When one of the
apostles of eighteenth-century Illuminism spoke to him with enthusiasm of the
results to be expected from an education based on the assumption of the goodness
of human nature, his reply was, "You don’t know the race." Christ did know the
race, and yet loved man with an ardour and steadfastness to which no
philanthropy, deistic or other, can be compared.—Vide Kahnis’ ’History of German
Protestantism,’ p. 49. So we account for the utterance of the parable of the
Sower, and of at least some others of the group contained in Mat 13:1-58.[1] But
can the same or a similar account be given of the parabolic teaching of Christ
in general? A remark of Jesus to His disciples reported by Mark seems to imply
that it can: "Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all the
parables?"[2] The remark, taken by itself, might be understood to mean that men
who could not comprehend so simple a parable would be still more at a loss with
other parables, spoken or to be spoken, more difficult of comprehension. But,
taken along with the reference going before to the words of Isaiah, it seems
rather to signify that the parables in general are to be regarded as associated
more or less with the mood of mind which these prophetic words express. And
close observation of the parables recorded in the Gospels shows that this is
really to a large extent the case. It will be found, on inspection, that very
many of the parables are of an apologetic or defensive character. The position
of Christ when He uttered them was that of one found fault with, misunderstood,
or despairing of being understood; conscious of isolation, and saddened by the
lack of intelligence, sympathy, and faith on the part of those among whom He
exercised His ministry. Such seem to have been the psychological conditions
under which the mind of the Saviour betook itself to parable-making. The
question why He spoke in parables as a public teacher is a wide one, to which a
full answer is not given in the Gospels. Doubtless temperament and the genius of
race had something to do with it; and a certain class of writers would emphasise
such causes. But while they may be admitted to have been joint causes, we do not
believe they were sole causes. There is not only a parabolic temperament and a
parabolic genius that delights to wrap thoughts up in symbolic envelopes; but
there is, moreover, a parabolic mood, which leads a man now, rather than then,
to present his thoughts in this form. It is the mood of one whose heart is
chilled and whose spirit is saddened by a sense of loneliness, and who, retiring
within himself, by a process of reflection frames for his thoughts forms which
half conceal, half reveal them,—reveal them more perfectly to those who
understand, hide them from those who do not: forms beautiful, but also
melancholy, as the hues of the forest in late autumn. If this view be correct,
we should expect that speaking in parables would not form a feature of the
initial stage of Christ’s ministry. And such, accordingly, was the fact. Jesus
opened His mouth first, not in parables, but in plain speeches; or if He used
parables previously, it was only such as were common among Jewish teachers:
figures meant to enliven moral commonplaces, like that of the wise and foolish
builders at the close of the Sermon on the Mount. He uttered beatitudes before
He uttered similitudes, and He uttered similitudes because the beatitudes had
not been understood or appreciated.[3] In His own words, as reported by the
first Evangelist, Jesus began to speak in parables because His hearers, seeing,
saw not, and hearing, heard not, neither did they understand. They had seen His
miracles, and had been led by them to form false conceptions of His mission;
they had heard His teaching on the mount and elsewhere, and had formed erroneous
ideas of the kingdom; and therefore now He wraps His thoughts in forms by which
those who do see shall be enabled to see more clearly, and to him who hath light
shall come a still higher measure of illumination, and those, on the other hand,
who see not shall be made still more blind,[4] simply mystified and perplexed as
to what the strange Speaker might mean.

[1] The question whether all the parables in Matt. xiii. were spoken at one time
will be noticed in a future chapter.

[2] Mark 4:13.

[3] Ebrard maintains that the parables in Mat 13:1-58 were spoken before the
Sermon on the Mount; but this view has met with little or no approval. See his
’Gospel History.’

[4] Mat 13:12; Mark 4:25.

Such, doubtless, were the results in many instances of Christ’s parabolic
teaching: some who so far already understood Him were led into a clearer
comprehension of His mind; others who understood Him not were conducted into
deeper darkness. Take, e.g., the parables which contain the apology for loving
sinners. One who understood the motive of Jesus in frequenting the company of
sinners would get a most instructive glimpse into the heart of the Son of Man on
hearing those charming, pathetic parables of the Lost Sheep the Lost Coin, and
the Lost Son. But what effect would these beautiful poetic parables have on the
mind of unsympathetic, hostile Pharisees? Not to make them comprehend at last
the true spirit of a much misunderstood and calumniated man, but to harden them
into more intense antipathy,—the very beauty and poetry and pathos of the
sayings making them hate more bitterly one with whom they were determined not to
be pleased. Such were the results in that case, and doubtless in many others.
But were these results—was the latter result, that is to say—intended? Did Jesus
Christ, the Saviour of men, speak parables that blind men might be made blinder,
and deaf men deafer, and hard hearts harder? According to the report of what He
said to the disciples in answer to their question "Why speakest Thou in
parables?" given by two of the Evangelists, we may seem forced to the conclusion
that He did. For while Matthew makes Him say, "Therefore speak I to them in
parables, because they seeing, see not"[1]—suggesting the thought that the
parabolic mode of instruction was adopted that men who saw not might see at
least a little, since they had failed to see on any other method, Mark and Luke
ascribe to Him the sentiment, "To others (I speak) in parables, in order that
seeing, they might not see, and nearing, they might not understand."[2] Some
critics, deeming the two accounts irreconcilable, prefer Matthew’s as the more
correct, and regard the aim ascribed to Christ by the other two Evangelists
simply as "the hypochondriac construction put upon His words in Gospels written
in a pessimistic spirit by men despairing of the Jewish people."[3] But that the
two points of view are not mutually exclusive may be inferred from the fact that
even Mark, who puts the darker view most strongly, winds up his record of
Christ’s parabolic teaching by the lake-side with a reflection which plainly
implies that the design of that teaching was not to produce blindness, but, if
possible, vision. "And with many such parables spake He the word unto them, as
they were able to hear it."[4] And we may lay it down as a fixed principle that
what is implied in Mark’s reflection is the truth. The direct primary aim of all
Christ’s teaching was to illuminate human minds and to soften human hearts. Such
was both the aim and the tendency of His parabolic teaching in particular. The
parable of the Prodigal Son, e.g., was surely both fitted and intended to
enlighten the minds of even scribes and Pharisees as to the motive of the
Speaker in associating with the sinful, and to soften their hearts into a more
kindly tone of feeling towards Himself! But, on the other hand, that very
parable might have just the opposite effects on minds full of prejudice and on
hearts full of bitterness, and produce a more complete misunderstanding and a
more inhuman and pitiless antipathy. And in uttering the parable Jesus could not
but be aware of the possibility of such a result, and yet might utter it with
that possible result consciously in view. Nay, we can conceive Him erecting the
possible and undesirable result into the position of an end, and saying, "I
speak such and such parables in order that they who see not may become more
utterly blind." Only we must be careful not to misunderstand the temper in which
such words might be spoken by Jesus, or by any true servant of God. No true
prophet could utter such words in cold blood as the expression of a deliberate
purpose. All prophets desire to illumine, soften, and save, not to darken,
harden, and destroy; and without entering into the mystery of Divine decrees, we
may add, God sends His prophets for no other purpose, whatever the foreseen
effects of their labour may be. But a prophet like Isaiah may nevertheless feel
as if he were sent, and represent himself as sent, for the opposite purpose. And
when he does so it is not in the way of expressing direct aim or deliberate
intention, but in irony, and in the bitterness of frustrated, despairing love.
Baffled love in bitter irony announces as its aim the very opposite of what it
works for, and it does so in the hope of provoking its infatuated objects to
jealousy, and so defeating its own prophecy. "I go," says Isaiah in effect, "to
prophesy to this people, that hearing they may understand not, and seeing may
perceive not, that I may make their hearts fat, and their ears heavy, and their
eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand
with their hearts, and convert and be healed;"[5] and he goes forth to fulfil
these strange ends by using means fitted and designed to produce just the
opposite effects, warning them of the consequences of persisting in evil ways,
and preaching unto them a gospel of rest for the weary with such plainness,
emphasis, and iteration, as to expose himself to the mockery of drunkards, who
said: "With this prophet it is ’precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line
upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little,’—wearisome iteration
of lessons fit only for children."[6] In the light of these observations we can
understand in what spirit Jesus appropriated to Himself the harsh terms in which
the prophet expressed his Divine mission, and how we are to view His parabolic
teachings. He served Himself heir to Isaiah’s commission in the ironic humour of
a love that yearned to save, and was faithful to its purpose even to death. He
spoke parables,—one now, another then; here a little, there a little,—if by any
means He might teach men the truth in which they might find rest to their souls.
The parables were neither deliberate mystifications, nor idle intellectual
conceits, nor mere literary products of aesthetic taste: they were the
utterances of a sorrowful heart. And herein lies their chief charm: not in the
doctrine they teach, though that is both interesting and important; not in their
literary beauty, though that is great; but in the sweet delicate odour of human
pathos that breathes from them as from Alpine wild flowers. That He had to speak
in parables was one of the burdens of the Son of Man, to be placed side by side
with the fact that He had not where to lay His head.

[1] Mat 13:13.

[2] Mark 4:12; Luk 8:10.

[3] So Keim, after Strauss, in ’Jesu von Nazara,’ ii. 439.

[4] Mark 4:33.

[5] Isa 6:9-10.

[6] Isa 28:9-12. The words in the original are at once a clever caricature of
elementary teaching for children, and an imitation of the thick, indistinct
speech of an intoxicated person: Ki tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav; kav-la-kav,
kav-la-kav; zeēr-shàm, zeēr-shàm.

We proceed now to the interpretation of our parable. Christ’s own interpretation
was as follows:

Hear ye then the parable of the sower. In the case of every one hearing the word
of the kingdom and not understanding it, cometh the wicked one and catcheth away
that which has been sown in his heart. This is the one sown by the wayside.[1]
But the one sown upon the rocky places is he who heareth the word and anon with
joy receiveth it. But he hath not root in himself but is only temporary,[2] and
when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, straightway he is
made to stumble. And the one sown among the thorns is he who heareth the word,
and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and
he becometh unfruitful. And the one sown upon the good ground is he who heareth
the word and understandeth it, who accordingly[3]

[1] Elliptical for "he who is meant in the part of the parable which speaks of
seed sown by the way." Similarly in all the other cases.

[2] πρόσκαιρος.

[3] δἡ, expressive of self-evident result. See p. 36. bringeth forth fruit and
produces now an hundredfold, now sixty, now thirty.—Mat 13:18-23. The parable,
according to this authoritative interpretation, Is meant to teach that among
those to whom the word of the kingdom is spoken are diverse classes of
hearers—four at least[1]—corresponding to the four sorts of ground on which the
seed falls. A record of observation in the first place, it is, moreover, a
prophetic picture of the future fortunes of the kingdom. In relating under a
parabolic veil His own sad experience, Jesus forewarned His disciples what they
had to expect when they were called on as apostles to sow the word of the
kingdom. They should find among their hearers classes of persons of which these
sorts of ground were the types. Now, the matter of chief importance here is, to
form just conceptions of these classes, that the moral lesson may come home to
all. Many interpreters grievously offend here. Greswell, e.g., makes the wayside
hearer one characterised by an absolute hardness, whose state of mind "may be
the most deplorable to which human frailty is exposed and the most horrible to
which human wickedness is liable to be reduced,— the last stage in a long career
of depravity, and the judicial result of perseverance in obstinate wickedness
with impunity and impenitence."[2] This is surely to confound weakness and
wickedness, and so to render the parable useless for the purpose of warning to a
very common class of hearers. We must remember, in the quaint words of a wiser
expositor, that "the trodden path is after all not a rock,"[3] and generally
give heed to the remark of a greater than either: "In order that the admonitions
of the parable may benefit us the more, it must be kept steadily in view that no
mention is made therein of despisers of the word, but only of those in whom
appears a certain measure of docility."[4] Doubtless there were ’wayside’
hearers in the crowd to whom the parable was addressed; yet all present had come
with more or less desire to hear Christ preach, and learn at His lips the
doctrine of the kingdom.

[1] Greswell labours to prove that there can be no more than four classes. Such
discussions are not in the spirit of the parable, which expresses facts that had
come under the Speaker’s observation, not necessary psychological truth.

[2] ’Parables,’ vol. ii. 37.

[3] Stier, ’Reden Jesus,’ ii. 83.

[4] Calvin, ’Comment. in Quatuor Evangelistas,’ in loc.

We shall best learn to discriminate accurately the different classes of hearers
by giving close attention to the manner in which they are respectively
characterised by our Lord.

I. The wayside hearer hears the word, but does not understand it,—or, to use a
phrase which expresses at once the literal and the figurative truth, does not
take it in.[1] Thoughtlessness, spiritual stupidity, arising not so much from
want of intellectual capacity as from preoccupation of mind, is the
characteristic of the first class. Their mind is like a footpath beaten hard by
the constant passage through it of "the wishes of the flesh and the current
thoughts"[2] concerning common earthly things. For a type of the class we may
take the man who interrupted Christ while preaching on one occasion, and said:
"Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me."[3] He had
just heard Christ utter the words, "And when they bring you into the synagogues,
and unto magistrates and powers,"[4] and these suggested to him the topic on
which his thoughts were habitually fixed—his dispute with his brother about
their patrimony. And so it happened to him according to the parable. The truth
he had heard did not get into his mind, hardened as it was like a beaten path by
the constant passage through it of current thoughts about money; it was very
soon forgotten altogether, caught away by the god of this world, who ruled over
him through his covetous disposition. It may be regarded as certain that there
were many such hearers in the crowd by the lake,—men in whose minds the doctrine
of the kingdom merely awakened hopes of worldly prosperity,—who, as Jesus
afterwards told them, laboured for the meat that perisheth, not for the meat
that endureth unto everlasting life.[5] Such were they who "received seed by the
wayside."

[1] "Our language is capable in this instance, like the Greek, of expressing by
one phrase equally the moral and the material failure: ’Every one that hears the
word of the kingdom and does not take it in (μὴ συνιἑντος).’" Arnot, ’The
Parables of our Lord,’ p. 52.

[2] So Mr. M. Arnold renders the Apostle Paul’s phrase τὰ θελήματα τῆζ σαρκὸς
καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν (Eph 2:3). Vide ’Literature and Dogma,’ p. 202

[3] Luk 12:13.

[4] Luk 12:11.

[5] John 6:27.

2. He that received seed into stony places, on the other hand, is he that
heareth the word and anon with joy receiveth it. The characteristic of this
class is emotional excitability, inconsiderate impulsiveness. They receive the
word readily with joy; but without thought. The latter trait is not indeed
specified, but it is clearly implied in the remark concerning the effect of
tribulation, persecution, or temptation on this class of hearers. They had not
anticipated such experiences, they did not count the cost, there was a want of
deliberation at the commencement of their religious life, and by implication a
want of that mental constitution which ensures that there shall be deliberation
at all critical periods of life. It is this want of deliberation that is the
fault of the class now under consideration, not the mere fact of their receiving
the word with joy. Joy by itself does not define the class; for joy is
characteristic of deep as well as of shallow natures. Absence of joy in
religious life is a sign, not of depth, but of dulness. The noble, devoted heart
that attains to high measures of faithfulness has great rapturous passionate joy
in connection with its spiritual experiences. But the joy of the good and honest
heart is a thoughtful joy, associated with and springing out of the exercise of
the intellectual and the moral powers upon the truth believed. The joy of the
stony ground hearer, on the contrary, is a thoughtless joy coming to him through
the effects of what he hears upon the imagination and the feelings. Joy without
thought is his definition. Of course a religious experience of this character
cannot last: it is doomed to prove abortive. For tribulation, persecution,
temptation in some form, will come, not to be withstood except by those whose
whole spiritual being—mind, heart, conscience—is influenced by the truth; and
even by them only by the most strenuous exertion of their moral energies. A man
who has been touched only on the surface of his soul by a religious movement,
who has been impressed on the sympathetic side of his nature by a prevalent
enthusiasm, and has yielded to the current without understanding what it means,
whither it tends, and what it involves,—such a man has no chance of persevering
under the conditions of trial amidst which the divine life has to be lived in
this world. He is doomed to be πρόσκαιρος, a temporary Christian, to be
scandalised by tribulation, to apostatise in the season of temptation. For he
hath not root in himself, in his moral personality, in the faculties
constituting personality—the reason, conscience, and will—which remain hard,
untouched, unpenetrated by the fibres of his faith; his root is in others, in a
prevalent popular enthusiasm; his religion is a thing of sympathetic imitation.
He is not only πρόσκαιρος in the sense of being temporary, but likewise in the
sense of being a creation of the time, a child of the Zeitgeist.[1] He comes
forth as a professor of religion "at the call of a shallow enthusiasm, and
through the epidemic influence of a popular cause."[2] And this fact largely
explains his temporariness. When the tide of enthusiasm subsides, and he is left
to himself to carry on single-handed the struggle with temptation, he has no
heart for the work, and his religion withers away, like the corn growing on
rocky places under the scorching heat of the summer sun.

[1] So Lange, ’Bibelwerk’; and also Volkmar, ’Die Evangelien,’ p. 284.

[2] Edward Irving, ’Sermons on the Parable of the Sower.’ Collected writings,
vol. i. p. 169.

If a type of this class is sought for in the Gospel records, it may be found in
the man who said unto Jesus, "Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou
goest," and to whom Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have
roosts, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head."[1] The reply clearly
implies that this would-be disciple was under some sudden impulse proposing to
follow Christ, without considering what the step involved. He had received the
word of the kingdom with joy, and came to offer himself as a disciple in a
spirit of romantic enthusiasm, without the smallest idea what he was
undertaking, utterly unaware of the hardships of disciple life. But what need to
point to the scribe as if he were a solitary instance of inconsiderate
profession! Was not the crowd by the lake to which the Parable of the Sower was
spoken full of such professors? There was a great religious enthusiasm—what in
these days might be called a ’great revival’—in Galilee, and there were many in
that crowd who had come under its influence. Infected by the spirit of the time,
they followed Jesus, by whose preaching of the kingdom the movement had been
created, whithersoever He went; delighted to hear Him speak, feeling as if they
could never hear enough of the precious words which fell from His lips. But
alas! their religion consisted largely in sympathy with their fellows, and in
vague romantic dreams concerning the kingdom that was coming; and so when the
time of disenchantment came, and they learnt that their dreams were not likely
to be realised, they "went back and walked no more with Him."[2] How often has
the same tragedy been repeated in the history of religious movements of a
popular character! It is persons whose spiritual natures resemble the rocky
ground who are chiefly influenced by such movements. Others of deeper character
and more promise may be touched in small numbers, but these are sure to be
touched in large numbers.[3] And so it comes to pass that the melancholy history
of many hopeful religious movements is this: many converts, few stable
Christians; many blossoms, little fruit coming to maturity.

[1] Luk 9:57; cf. Mat 8:19.

[2] John 6:66.

[3] "Such men," says Godet, "form in almost every awakening a considerable
portion of the new converts."—’Comment. sur Luc,’ i. 399. Deeper natures are
less influenced by sympathy, and their religious decisions are come to for the
most part in solitude and after earnest consideration of the subject on all
sides.

3. He that received seed among the thorns is so described as to suggest the idea
of a double-minded man—the ἀνὴρ δίψυχος of St. James.[1] This man is neither
stupid, like his brother nearer of the first class, nor a mere man of feeling,
like those of the second class. He hears in the emphatic sense of the word,
hears both with thought and with feeling, understanding what he hears and
realising its solemn importance. The soil in his case is neither hard on the
surface nor shallow; it is good soil so far as softness and depth are concerned.
Its one fault (but it is a very serious one) is that it is impure: there are
other seeds in it besides those being sown on it, and the result will be two
crops struggling for the mastery, with the inevitable result that the better
crop will have to succumb. This man has two minds, so to speak,—we might almost
say he is two men. His will is divided—not decided for good and against evil,
but now on one side, now on the other; serving God to-day, serving mammon
to-morrow; very religious, and also very worldly. Such he is at the beginning,
though not very obviously; such he will be more manifestly in the after course
of his religious career; such he will be to the end. To the end, we say; for it
is not this man’s nature to begin with enthusiasm and by and by to leave off. He
is too grave, too serious, too strong-natured a man, to be guilty of such
levity. What he begins he will go through with. He will not apostatise, as a
rule (for there may be exceptions); he will keep up a profession of religion
till he dies. His leaf will not wither,—it will continue growing till it reach
the ear; but the ear will be green when it should be ripe. Only in this sense is
it said of him that "he becometh unfruitful."[2] He bringeth forth fruit, but he
bringeth "no fruit to perfection."[3] He never attains to ripeness in his
personal character. Any one can see that he is a misthriven Christian, a man not
victorious over the world, but defeated by the world in one form or another,—by
carking care, by the vanity and pride of wealth, by some form of selfish or
sensual indulgence, such as inordinate affection for things lawful, sloth, or
excessive use of stimulants.[4] You may hope for his salvation notwithstanding;
nevertheless you pronounce him a spiritual failure. He is unfruitful also in his
Christian activity, unfruitful in the sense of bringing no fruit to perfection.
He busies himself, probably, in good works; perhaps takes a prominent part in
devotional meetings, and appears duly on philanthropic and religious platforms.
But his influence is zero, or worse—mischievous; for honest men know him, and it
gives them a disgust to see such as he figuring as promoters of any good work or
as patrons of any worthy cause.

[1] Jas 1:8. Double-mindedness in this text is not to be confounded with
hypocrisy.

[2] Mat 13:22. Mark 4:19.

[3] Luk 8:14. Καὶ οὐ τελεσφοροῦσιν. Vide Robertson of Brighton on this point:
’Sermons,’ first series, on the Parable of the Sower. The whole sermon is
instructive.

[4] All these forms of worldliness are referred to in the records: Matthew
specifies the care of the world (μέριμνα τοὺ αἰῶνος) and the deceit of riches (ἡ
ἀπάτῃ τοῦ πλούτου); Mark to these adds the desires concerning other things (αἱ
περὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ἐπιθυμίαι). Luke also gives these categories: cares, riches, and
pleasures of life (ὑπὸ μεριμνῶν καὶ πλούτο καὶ ἡδονῶν τοῦ βίου).

It may be asked, Who has a chance of bringing forth fruit unto perfection, for
what character is free from thorns?[1] But the question is not, who is free from
evil desires, or from temptation to inordinate affection? but what attitude you
assume towards these. There are roots of bitterness in every man, which, if
allowed to grow up, will trouble and defile him. But the attitude of the
double-minded man towards these roots is very different from that of the
single-minded man. The former never makes up his mind to be resolutely against
evil, and to bring to bear all his moral energy to put it down; the latter, on
the contrary, does make up his mind to this, and abides habitually of this mind.
The singleminded man adopts as his principle the motto, "Seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and food and raiment shall be added unto you;" and in adopting
and acting on this principle he becomes a perfect man, and brings forth fruit
unto perfection. For the perfect man in Scripture does not mean the faultless
man, but the man of single mind, who loves God above all else; and the fruit of
such a man’s life, though not absolutely corresponding to the ideal, will be
acknowledged by all competent judges to be good, his character noble, his work
such as shall stand. Of the thorny ground hearer, the man of divided mind and
double heart, we have an example in him who came to Jesus and said, "Lord, I
will follow Thee; but first let me go bid them farewell which are at home at my
house." Apparently a most reasonable request; but Jesus discerned in it the sign
of a divided heart, and therefore replied: "No man having put his hand to the
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."[2] The example is all
the more instructive that the man’s temptation arose, not from lust after
forbidden pleasure, but from inordinate affection for things lawful. How
natural, how excusable that hankering after home and household! Yet just such
hankerings, and nothing worse, are in many instances the thorns which, springing
up, choke the word and render it unfruitful. How many men are wasting their
lives at home, who might go forth to a life of abundant fruitfulness in mission
fields, were it not for an attachment like that of John Mark[3] for fathers or
mothers, or native land!

[1] Lisco starts this difficulty: vide ’The Parables of Jesus,’ p. 61.

[2] Luk 9:61-62.

[3] Acts 12:25; Acts 13:13; Acts 15:37-39. John Mark was one who looked back,
and therefore was deemed by Paul not fit for the work of the kingdom in which he
was engaged. Mark appears afterwards to have regained Paul’s confidence—a fact
which reminds us that a thorny ground hearer is under no fatal necessity of
continuing such.

4. He that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word and
understandeth it. The description is intended to express the idea of a perfect
hearer, and for that purpose seems inadequate. For the perfect hearer ought to
have all the good characteristics of a hearer of the previous class, and over
and above, that which he lacks—a pure will, a single mind. Now, even the thorny
ground hearer understands the word, and is impressed by it, and only comes short
by not giving to that to which the word relates, the kingdom of God, its proper
place of supremacy. It does not therefore sufficiently distinguish a hearer of
the last class to say of him that he hears and understands, or even that he
hears with understanding and feeling. The authors of the Authorized version
betray a certain consciousness of this fact in their rendering of the clause
relating to the fruitfulness of the fourth class—"which also beareth fruit"—as
if the words were meant to express an additional characteristic of the class;
while in truth they express the sure, necessary result of the characteristics
already specified. We naturally turn to the other Evangelists, to see whether
the apparent defect is supplied in their accounts. For the ’understandeth’ of
Matthew, Mark gives ’receive,’[1] and Luke, ’keep’;[2] and these are important
words, but neither do they bring out fully the characteristic distinction of the
perfect hearer. For the thorny ground hearer also receives the truth, takes it
into his mind and heart; and he not only receives it, but retains it; his only
fault is that he does not receive and retain it alone, but allows the cares of
this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things to
enter into and abide in his heart alongside of the truth. The precise
distinction of the perfect hearer, on the other hand, is this,—that he does
receive and retain the word alone in his mind. He is characteristically
single-minded and whole-hearted in religion. The kingdom of God has the first
place in his thoughts, and everything else only the second. His motto is taken
from the words of the Psalmist: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is
within me." He loves God, and seeks the kingdom of God in accordance with the
high requirement, "with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
might."[3] He is wholly given up, devoted, to the kingdom; for him, as for the
Preacher, to "fear God and keep His commandments" is "the whole of man."[4] That
the perfect hearer must be a man of this sort, we know from the nature of the
case; for nothing short of this will yield the result desired; and we further
know from the whole teaching of our Lord, which throughout sets forth
single-minded, whole-hearted devotion to the kingdom as the cardinal virtue of
all genuine citizens. The only question is whether we can by fair exegesis bring
the idea of such a man out of the interpretation of the parable given by Christ,
or whether we do not rather bring the idea with us and put it into His words.
Now, we admit that, so far as the words to which we have as yet adverted are
concerned, such an allegation might plausibly be made. The idea of single-minded
devotion cannot be taken out of the words ’understand,’ ’receive,’ ’retain.’ At
most we can only justify ourselves for putting that idea into them by the
consideration that they are meant to discriminate the perfect hearer from the
one going before, and can do so only when they are so emphasised as to imply
that nothing but the seed of truth is received and retained. But what is lacking
in these words is supplied in a phrase given by the third Evangelist, to which
we have not yet adverted. In the case of the perfect hearer the word is received
and retained in a noble and good heart.[5] Here is what we have been in quest
of—a perfectly definite and adequate characteristic of the class of hearers who
attain unto real and abundant fruitfulness. It is worthy of notice that the
remarkable expression occurs in the Gospel of Luke, the Evangelist of the
Gentiles, to whom it would be no objection that the phrase was one in familiar
use among the Greeks to denote the beau-ideal of manhood,—the man in all
respects as he ought to be. It is not assuming too much to suppose that Luke was
acquainted with the Attic sense of the phrase, and that he attached to it, as
used by himself in this place, a meaning akin to the idea of καλοκαγαθία as
understood by the Greeks. In any case we are justified, even by New Testament
usage, in taking out of the expression the idea of a man whose aim is noble and
who is generously devoted to his aim. The epithet καλός has reference to aims or
chief ends, and describes one whose mind is raised above moral vulgarity, and is
bent, not on money-making and such low pursuits, but on the attainment of
wisdom, holiness, righteousness. The epithet ἀγαθὄς denotes generous
self-abandonment in the prosecution of such lofty ends—large-heartedness,
magnanimous, overflowing devotion. Of the use of the former epithet in the sense
explained we have an instance in the eulogium pronounced by Jesus on the act of
anointing performed by Mary of Bethany. "She hath wrought," He said, "a noble
work (ἔργον καλὸν) upon me."[6] Mary’s act had been blamed as wasteful, and such
it was when tested by vulgar utility. Jesus defended it by calling it noble as
distinct from useful in the obvious vulgar sense, and holding it up as worthy to
receive throughout the whole world an admiration to which only noble things are
entitled. Of the use of the latter epithet in the sense explained we have an
instance which possesses peculiar weight, as occurring in the Acts of the
Apostles. We refer to the character given to Barnabas in connection with the
part he took in the new movement which had commenced at Antioch. Barnabas had
been sent by the Church at Jerusalem to see, and, if he approved, to assist in
the work; and it is reported of him that when he came and had seen the grace of
God he was glad, and exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would
cleave unto the Lord. Then to explain his conduct, the author, Luke, our
Evangelist, adds: "For he was a good man (ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς), and full of the Holy
Ghost and of faith."[7] His goodness manifestly consisted in a generous
sympathy, free from all mean narrow suspicion, with the cause of Gentile
evangelisation. He believed the work to be of God, though it was a strange,
startling, unlooked-for phenomenon; and he entered into it with his whole heart.
If we desire still further light as to the idea attached by Luke to the epithet
’good,’ we have but to recall to our recollection two other facts recorded by
him concerning Barnabas: the sale of his estate for the benefit of the
Church,[8] and his generous recognition of Paul—first as a convert, when he was
still an object of suspicion and fear, and then as the fit man to carry on the
work at Antioch when he abode in his native city, inactive and eager for an
opportunity of service.[9] A good man, in Luke’s vocabulary, meant a man capable
of self-sacrifice for the kingdom of God—a man of large, expansive sympathies,
and magnanimously trustful and generous in his relations to his brethren—one who
could forget himself and his personal interest to serve God, or to help a new
struggling cause, or a friend in time of need. And the man who in a noble and
good heart hears and retains the word is just such an one as Barnabas. He is a
man devoted to the kingdom of God with his whole heart and soul and mind, who
could part with all for its sake, who could even at Christ’s bidding, though
with a keen pang, leave the dead to bury the dead, even were the dead his own
father.[10] [1] Mark 4:20 : παραδέχονται.

[2] Luk 8:15 : κατέχουσιν.

[3] St Bernard has some excellent remarks on this requirement in his ’Sermons on
Canticles.’ Discoursing on the duty of loving Christ "dulciter, prudenter,
fortiter," he goes on to say: "Zelum tuum inflammet charitas, informet scientia,
firmet constantia. Sit fervidus, sit circumspectus, sit invictus. Nec teporem
habeat, nec careat discretione, nec timidus sit. Et vide ne forte tria ista tibi
et in lege tradita fuerint, dicente Deo: Dilige Dominum Deum tuum ex toto carde
tuo, et ex tota anima tua, et ex tota virtute tua, Mihi videtur amor quidem
cordis ad zelum quemdam pertinere affectionis, animæ vero amor ad industriam seu
judicium rationis; virtutis autem dilectio ad animi posse referri constantiam
vel vigorem. Dilige ergo Dominum Deum tuum toto et pleno cordis affectu; dilige
tota rationis vigilantia et circumspectione; dilige et tota virtute, ut nec mori
pro ejus amore pertimescas."—Sermo xx. 4.

[4] Ecc 12:13, literally translated. St. Bernard says: "Propter temetipsum,
Deus, fecisti omnia, et qui esse vult sibi et non tibi, nihil esse incipit inter
omnia. Deum time, et mandata ejus observa: hoc est omnis homo. Ergo si hoc est
omnis homo, absque hoc nihil omnis homo."—Sermo xx. 1.

[5] Luk 8:15.

[6] Mat 26:10.

[7] Acts 11:24.

[8] Acts 4:37.

[9] Acts 9:26-27; Acts 11:25.

[10] That ἀγαθὸς bears the meaning assigned to it in the text in the New
Testament appears from Luk 23:50, where Joseph of Arimathea is called ἀνὴρ
ἀγαθὸς καὶ δίκαιος. The latter epithet is explained by the clause following: "he
had not consented to their counsel and deed;" the former was shown to belong to
him by his generous act in burying Jesus. A similar distinction between these
words is taken in Rom 5:7, though Jowett denies it The same distinction is made
in the ’ Clementine Homilies,’ xviii. 1-3. Both Simon Magus and Peter agree that
the words denote different attributes, only Simon maintains they are
incompatible. Peter defines ἀγαθὺς thus: ἐγώ φημί ἀγαθόν εἴναι τὸν παρεκτικὸν =
largitor, giver. Eusebius, ’Theophania,’ Book iv. cap. 33, referring to this
parable, and to the souls that bring forth fruit, describes the latter as men
whose heart is pure and whose mind is devoted, which is just our idea of the two
epithets κάλος and ἀγαθὸς. The words of Eusebius are: οἱ δὲ ἐναντίως ἐκείνοις
διακείμενοι, καθαρᾷ ψυχᾷ καὶ προαιρέσει γνησ᾿ᾳ τὸν σωτήριον ὑποδεξάμενοι σπόρον,
κ. τ. λ. The demand that the kingdom be put first could not be stated in
stronger terms than it was in the reply of Jesus to the disciple who asked
permission to discharge the last office to a deceased parent. And the man who
can comply with the hard requirement therein expressed may be taken as the type
of the fruitful hearer, as the man who volunteered to become a disciple may be
taken as the type of the stony ground hearer, and the man who desired leave to
go and bid farewell to his friends as the type of the thorny ground hearer.[1]

[1] Luk 9:59-60 That such a man should be fruitful is not to be wondered at; any
amount of fruitfulness may be expected of him—thirty, sixty, even an hundred
fold. The fruitfulness of such a hearer Jesus regarded and represented as a
matter of course. Such is the force of the words rendered so feebly in the
Authorized version, "which also beareth fruit." The words mean "who of course,
certainly, without fail, heareth fruit."[1] The Greek particle δή conveys the
idea that the result is one which hardly needs to be specified, and which any
one might anticipate. We have a similar use of the word by Paul in the
well-known text "Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price, therefore
(δή) glorify God in your body."[2] To glorify God the apostle considered the
self-evident duty of men who have been redeemed by Christ; and he was impatient
at the very thought of any Christian needing to be told what was his duty.

[1] Mat 13:23 : δς δὴ καρποφορεῖ. The rendering of the R. V., "who verily," is
better, but not satisfactory. Passow finds the key to all the meanings of δὴ in
δῆλος, regarding the two words as derived from the same root. Hartung
(’Partikel-lehre’) derives δή from ἤδη, whom Meyer and Morrison follow, the
former rendering δς δὴ "and this was the one who," the latter "who at length."
Besides this place in Matthew and thai in 1Co 6:1-20 referred to above, the
particle occurs in three other places in the New Testament—in Luk 2:15, Acts
13:2, Acts 15:36. In the first of these the A. V. and the R. V. both render δὴ
now. The shepherds say one to another," Let us now go even unto Bethlehem." In
the second they both leave it untranslated; in the third the A. V. reads
’again,’ the R. V. now. The best rendering in all three cases, that which brings
out the emotional colouring, is come,—"come, let us go to Bethlehem;" "come,
separate for me Barnabas and Saul;" "come, let us visit the brethren in every
city where we preached." The particle also occurs combined with ποῦ in Heb 2:16,
when both in A. V. and R. V. it is rendered ’verily’; not happily, for verily
conveys the idea of a very solemn assertion, whereas what is said is of the
nature of a truism thrown in to relieve the argument. The meaning is: "For, you
see, it is not of angels he taketh hold."

[2] 1Co 6:19-20.

Such, then, are the four classes of hearers pointed at in the parable of the
Sower: the spiritually stupid, without thought or feeling in relation to the
kingdom, in whom the seed of truth does not even germinate; the inconsiderately
impulsive, whose feelings are easily moved, in whom the truth germinates and
springs up, but quickly withers away; those who receive the truth into both mind
and heart, but not as the one supremely important thing to which everything else
must be subordinated, in whom the seed germinates, springs up, and continues to
grow even to the green ear, but never ripens; and lastly, those who receive the
doctrine of the kingdom with their whole heart, soul, and mind, in whom the
truth takes root, grows, and in due season produces an abundant harvest of ripe
fruit.

Whence these differences between hearers? and how far is it possible that one
may pass from one class of hearers to another? Such questions Christ does not
answer. He would teach one thing at a time: the fact of the difference in
hearers, and the corresponding difference in the result of hearing. It is no
part of an expositor’s duty to discuss these questions, though in omitting to do
so he is not to be regarded as denying their importance. Specially interesting
is the question, whence the noble and good heart,—a topic on which some have
expatiated at great length, though in some instances proceeding on a mistaken
understanding of what is signified thereby.[1] There can be little doubt what
answer the Evangelist, to whom we owe the preservation of the striking phrase,
would have given to the question. We may learn this from the manner in which he
relates the history of Lydia, who may be associated with Barnabas as a good
sample of the fourth class of hearers. Luke describes Lydia as one "whose heart
the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of
Paul."[2] The fact about Lydia was, not that up till then she had been
peculiarly unsusceptible; the contrary is implied in the very fact of her, a
Gentile by birth, being present at the meeting, worshipping God as a proselyte.
The fact rather was that she was distinguished by a peculiar openness and
receptivity of mind. She brought that openness with her to the meeting,—it was
manifest in her very countenance while Paul spoke,—and the historian tells us
where she got it. It was from the Lord.

[1] We refer specially to Edward Irving, who, in his ’Sermons on the Parable of
the Sower,’ already alluded to, goes at great length into the question of the
preparation of the soil by a slow secular process in nations and in individuals
for the reception of the truth. He takes the phrase "good and honest heart" as
denoting a sort of natural goodness before faith, evading the charge of
Pelagianism by maintaining that such goodness is the product of God’s working.
The discussion is very interesting, and the truth taught,—viz. that there is a
Providential preparation without which Christianity is not likely to come to
much, either in individuals or in nations,—in its own place very important. On
this subject there are some suggestive remarks in Martensen’s ’Dogmatics.’ The
Providential preparation this author calls the drawing of the Father, and his
doctrine is that it profits a people little that the gospel is preached to it,
that the Son draws it to the Father, unless it has come to such a point in Its
development that the Father in turn can draw it to the Son (p. 347).

[2] Acts 16:14.


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  CHAPTER 8: 01.03.        CHAPTER 2. THE TARES AND THE DRAG-NET
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Chapter 2. The Tares and the Drag-Net Or, a Mixture of Good and Evil to be in
the Kingdom Till the End. The question whether the seven parables contained in
the thirteenth chapter of Matthew were all spoken at one time is one on which
opinion has been much divided. If the existence of a connection more or less
intimate between these parables could settle the question there would be no room
for dispute. For, while setting aside as a mere exegetical extravagance the view
of those who find in this group of parables, in prophetic form, an epitome of
the Church’s history from the time of our Lord till the end of the world,[1] we
must admit the existence of a connection between them to this extent at least,
that they exhibit mutually complementary aspects of the kingdom of heaven in its
general nature, and in its progress and fortunes on this earth. The first,
second, and seventh of the group—the parables of the Sower, the Tares, and the
Net—teach us that the kingdom of God, as a phenomenon taking its place in the
world’s history, is destined to be in various respects and for various reasons
an imperfect and disappointing thing, coming far short of the ideal. In the
first parable the shortcoming takes the form of an unsatisfactory abortive
reception of the Word of the kingdom by many individual hearers, due to the
moral condition of the recipients; while in the second and the seventh it takes
the form of a mixture of good and evil not in the hearts of individuals, but in
the society composed of the collective body of professed believers, some being
genuine citizens of the holy commonwealth, and others counterfeit The third and
fourth parables of the series—those of the Mustard-seed and the Leaven—exhibit
the history of the kingdom on its bright side as a spiritual movement destined
to advance, by a steady onward course of development, from a small beginning to
a great ending, worldwide in its extent, and thoroughgoing in its intensive
pervasive effect. The remaining two parables—those of the Hid Treasure and the
Precious Pearl—exhibit the kingdom in its own ideal nature as a thing of
absolute, incomparable worth, the highest good, worthy to be received, loved,
and served with the whole heart as the summum bonum, whatever reception it may
in fact meet with at the hands of men.

[1] Bengel, Greswell, etc. The fact of a connection is thus apparent, but it
does not settle the disputed question alluded to. Two alternatives are possible.
The connection between the parables might have led Christ to speak them all at
one time, but it may also merely have led Matthew to relate them all in one
place, though not all spoken at the same time; in accordance with his habit of
grouping together materials connected by affinity of thought. That we are not
shut up to the former of these alternatives, is sufficiently evinced by the fact
that other parables can be pointed to which are undoubtedly closely connected in
their subject-matter, and which nevertheless we have no reason to regard as
uttered together; as for example, those relating to the subject of work and
wages in the kingdom, the parables of the Talents, the Pounds, and the Hours.[1]
These together constitute a complete doctrine on the subject to which they
relate,—and a teacher of methodic habit would probably have spoken them all at
once; but Christ uttered them as occasion required. And that they fit into each
other is due to their truth, not to their being parts of one lesson given in a
single didactic effort.

[1] Mat 25:14; Luk 19:12; Mat 20:1.

While thus content to leave the question undecided as regards the whole group of
seven taken collectively, we are strongly of opinion that at least three of the
seven were spoken at one time; even on the day when Jesus opened His mouth in
parables sitting in a boat on the Galilean Lake. The three are—the parable of
the Sower and the two to be considered in the present chapter. These three are
connected not merely in a general way, as relating to the chequered fortunes of
the kingdom in this world, but specially, as all illustrating the aspect of the
kingdom then present to the Saviour’s thoughts,—the dark, melancholy side of
things; and as suitable alike to the moral and the physical situation: to the
moral, as addressed to a multitude comprising examples of all the various
classes of hearers described in the parable of the Sower, and exhibiting the
mixture of good and evil, of genuine and counterfeit discipleship, typified by
the wheat and tares in the same field, and the good and bad fish in one net; to
the physical, as spoken amid scenes where agricultural and piscatorial
operations were daily carried on.[1]

[1] Keim takes the same view. He thinks that parables 3 and 4 (Mustard-seed and
Leaven) went originally together; also 5 and 6 (Treasure and Pearl); likewise 1
and 2; perhaps also 7 (Sower, Tares, and Net),—thus forming one group visibly
related closely in fundamental view and expression. He thinks it not improbable
that the Treasure and the Pearl went along with the last group of three, because
it was not Christ’s way in a popular discourse to give merely the facts or the
metaphysics of the kingdom, but to aim at calling forth a movement of the human
will, which would be done by the parables of the Treasure and the Pearl. On the
other hand, he thinks the parable of the Mustard-seed and the Leaven were
certainly spoken at another time; founding not only on the fact that they occur
in different historical connections in Luke’s Gospel, but also on their hopeful,
triumphant character, so different from those of the Sower, the Tares, and the
Net (Vide ’Jesu von Nazara,’ ii. 446-9). Farrar thinks that along with the Sower
went no other parables, "except perhaps the simple and closely analogous ones of
the Grain of Mustardseed, and of the Blade, the Ear, and the Full Corn in the
Ear,... perhaps with these the similitude of the Candle" (’Life of Christ,’ i.
324-5).

Tolerably sure as to the historical connection of these three parables, we are
still more confident as to the propriety of grouping together for joint
consideration the latter two of the three—those of the Tares and the Net. They
are so like that on a superficial view one might be inclined to pronounce their
didactic import identical. They do certainly teach the same general truth, viz.
that a mixture of good and evil will prevail in the kingdom of God on this earth
while the world lasts; and that this mixture, while in itself to be deplored, is
nevertheless a thing which for wise reasons is to be patiently borne with in
view of the great final separation. This being the leading lesson of both, the
two parables really constitute but one theme; and to treat them in separate
chapters were simply to repeat thoughts that can be most effectively uttered
once for all. These parables, however, are not without their distinctive
features, which forbid us to regard the one as a mere repetition of the other. A
minor point of difference is that in the parable of the Tares the presence of
evil in the kingdom is regarded as due to the deliberate action of an
evil-minded agent, while in the parable of the Net it appears due rather to
accident. A more important distinction is that while in the former parable the
separation of the evil from the good is represented as for certain reasons not
desirable, in the latter it is tacitly treated as impossible. The good and the
bad fish must remain together in the net till they have been dragged to land.
This difference if pressed would lead to another, viz. as to the character of
the evil element. The tares might be held to represent manifested recognisable
evil, the bad fish unmanifested hidden evil—a distinction answering to that
taken by the Apostle Paul in the words: "Some men’s sins are open beforehand,
going before to judgment, and some men they follow after."[1] Another point of
distinction has been indicated, viz. that while both parables teach a present
mixture of evil and good, and an eventual separation, they differ as to the
truth emphasised in each respectively, the foreground of the one picture showing
the temporary mixture, that of the other the ultimate separation. It is,
however, possible to exaggerate this distinction; for in the parable of the
Tares the future judgment is very distinctly described, and in the parable of
the Net the idea that the mixture must last till the process of development is
completed is not without recognition. The net is not drawn to the shore till it
is full. The filling of the net answers to the ripening of the grain as the sign
that the crisis has come. It is, doubtless, a far less apt sign; still the thing
to be noted is that it is intended to serve that purpose. The net is not to be
pulled prematurely to shore; it must be let fully out and allowed to have its
full sweep, that it may catch as many as possible.

[1] 1Ti 5:25 We now proceed to the interpretation of the two parables. Our
attention shall be first and principally occupied by the Parable of the Tares
The place and the time being probably the same as in the case of the parable of
the Sower, Jesus put before His hearers another parable, saying: The kingdom of
heaven is likened unto a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men
slept, his enemy came and sowed ’tares’[1] among the wheat, and went his way.
But when the blade sprang up and brought forth fruit, then appeared also the
tares. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not
thou sow good seed in thy field? Whence, then, hath it tares? And he said unto
them, An enemy[2] did this. And the servants say unto him, Wilt thou, then, that
we go and gather them up? But he saith, No; lest while ye gather the tares, ye
root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and
in the season of harvest I will say to the reapers, Collect first the tares, and
bind them into bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.—Mat
13:24-30.

[1] The word tares is a most misleading rendering of τὰ ζιζάνια, and we have
printed it within inverted commas to indicate the fact. The R. V. retains the
rendering of the A. V., probably from the difficulty of finding another word
that exactly conveys the meaning. For remarks on the nature of the plant
intended see further on.

[2] ἐχθρὸς ἄνθρωπος, a hostile man. This is one of the most difficult in the
whole series of our Lord’s parables. As Luther remarks, it appears very simple
and easy to understand, especially as the Lord Himself has explained it and told
us what the field and the good seed and the tares are; but there is such
diversity of opinion among interpreters that much attention is needed to hit the
right meaning.[1] The expositor’s task is none the less arduous that the parable
has been mixed up with great controversies on such momentous topics as Church
discipline and religious toleration, and the duty of civil and ecclesiastical
rulers in reference to heresy and heretics. On such questions a man’s opinions
are very apt to be influenced by the time in which he lives and the community to
which he belongs, and his interpretation of any portion of Scripture that has
been made to do service on either side is only too likely to exhibit manifest
traces of the bias thence received. With reference to the parable before us it
may be said that no one has any chance of understanding it who is not prepared
to admit that the Christian Church in general is in many respects very different
from what her Head desired, and that the particular branch of the Church to
which he himself belongs—nay, that he himself as an individual office-bearer
therein—may have sinned grievously against the spirit of wise patience which the
parable inculcates.

[1] Hauspostillen, ’Predigt über das Evangelium Mat 13:24-30.’

Trying to bear these things duly in mind, let us inquire what is the primâ facie
impression produced by the parable. Is it not this? That a mixture of good and
evil men—of genuine and counterfeit disciples—is to be expected in the kingdom
of God on earth, and to be regarded, as inevitable, with patience, though not
with complacency; and that as this mixture is in itself, if not in all respects,
yet at least in the main, an evil, the children of the kingdom are to comfort
themselves under it with the expectation of an eventual separation, which they
are assured will certainly come to pass in due season. Thus far the parable
seems plain enough, but there are points on which one would gladly receive
explanations. The tares, who precisely are they? Then, as to the toleration of
the tares, is there to be no limit thereto? and if there is, where is the line
to be drawn? Then what does the toleration amount to? Does it exclude Church
discipline for errors in opinion and faults in conduct? or is Church discipline
to take its course even to the extent of thrusting offenders out of the Church,
the toleration prescribed consisting simply in permitting the excommunicated to
remain in the world? We eagerly turn to Christ’s own explanations for a solution
of our doubts, but only to be disappointed. These explanations are too
elementary to meet the wants of those who, like ourselves, look back over a long
course of historical development, and wish to know how far that course is in
accordance with Christ’s mind as expressed in the parable. They were meant for
those who had no idea of the import of the parable, and therefore contain little
more than the mere alphabet of interpretation. A slight inspection will suffice
to convince us of this. After dismissing the multitude, Jesus, in answer to a
request from His disciples, gave the following interpretation of ’The Parable of
the Tares of the Field.’

He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; and the field is the world; and
the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; but the tares are the sons of
the wicked one,[1] and the enemy that sowed them is the devil; and the harvest
is the end of the world, and the reapers are angels. As then the tares are
collected and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world. The
Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom
all things that offend, and those who do iniquity, and they shall cast them into
the furnace of fire; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.[2]
Then shall the righteous shine out as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
Who hath ears, let him hear.—Mat 13:37-43.

[1] Or of wickedness. The R. V. here, as in the Lord’s Prayer, renders τοῦ
πονηροῦ "the evil one." Goebel (’Die Parabeln Jesu,’ p. 80) adduces in favour of
its being neuter, that οἱ υἱοὶ τ. π. is parallel to οἱ υἱοἱ τῆς βασιλείας; also
that a special clause is introduced to indicate the devil as the source of the
wild growth.

[2] The articles indicate that these were familiar features in the picture of
Gehenna. From this explanation, we learn that in the present parable the wheat
and the tares are persons, while in the last parable—that of the Sower—the wheat
is the word of the kingdom; and that the soil is the world in which such persons
live, while in the Sower, the soil is the mind of those who hear the word. We
learn, further, that the tares are the children of the wicked one, the good seed
being the children of the kingdom. Now this is a very general, and indefinite
statement, which leaves us free to regard the tares either as spurious
Christians, or as evil men, whether professing Christianity or not. If the more
general meaning be taken, then the juxtaposition of wheat and tares is in the
world, as the common abode of all sorts of men, not in the Church; and the
lesson to Christians is the very general one of patience under the trials
inseparable from life on earth. Yet, again, we learn from this explanation of
the parable given by Christ, that the reapers who make the final separation are
the angels; but we are not told who the servants were who inquired Whence these
tares? Are the angels the servants also? If so, then the parable contains no
direct instruction as to the duty of the Church, but simply an intimation of
God’s purpose in providence to permit a mixture of good and evil men in the
world until the end of this dispensation. The only lesson for the Church is the
implied one of acquiescence in God’s will. The only thing in the explanation
which turns the scale in favour of a more specific conception of the drift of
the parable is the expression, "gather out of His kingdom?[1] If the things that
offend, and they who do iniquity, are to be gathered out of the kingdom, it is a
natural inference that they were previously in it; in other words, that the
tares are Christians at least in profession.

[1] Mat 13:41. συλλέξουσιν ἐκ τῆς βασιλείας.

We are thus thrown back on the parable itself to see whether we cannot find more
precise indications of the character of the evil element. And on looking
narrowly, we do find certain particulars which tend to prove that the evil
element consists not of bad men in general co-existing with Christians in the
same world till the state of probation closes, but of counterfeit Christians.
First and chief, there is the name of the noxious plant which spoils the
crop—ζιζάνια; than which none better could be found, if the intention were to
describe counterfeit sons of the kingdom, and none less felicitous, if the
design were merely to denote bad men in general. The word is one for which it is
difficult to find an English equivalent—the nearest approach to it is darnel;[1]
but there can be no doubt as to the kind of plant it is employed to designate.
It is a plant so like wheat, that in the early stages of its growth the two can
scarcely be distinguished; so like that it could even be imagined that the
stalks of it, which appeared in fields sown with wheat, sprang not from separate
seed, but from wheat grains that had suffered degeneracy through untoward
influences of soil or season. This opinion actually was entertained by the
inhabitants of Palestine in our Lord’s day, as it is still; and it is reflected
in the Hebrew name for the plant in question, from which the Greek word is
formed. The Talmudic equivalent for ζιζάνια is ‏זובִין‎ signifying the Dastard
plant, from ‏דָבָה‎, to commit adultery; the idea underlying the word being that
the earth, in producing from good seed such a degenerate crop, played the
harlot, so to speak. Those who have the best means of knowing, say that this
idea is a mistaken one;[2] but it is at least of value as a testimony to the
close resemblance between the wheat and the ’tares’ implying, as it does, that
the plants are so like, that the theory that tares are simply wheat in a
degenerate form, sprung from good wheat seed, might be plausibly entertained.

[1] Greswell thinks we have no equivalent, and simply transfers the Greek word,
putting it into English form—zizan. Scripture botanists identify ζιζάνια with
lolium temulentum, so called because it produces vertigo.

[2] Thomson, ’The Land and the Book,’ p. 421, argues against the notion as
incredible. This theory is certainly not proceeded upon in the parable, which
represents the tares as springing from separate seed sown after the wheat seed
had been cast into the ground. But a resemblance is implied in the description
of the tares not less close than if the theory were true; and this is the second
point to which we ask attention. "When the blade," we read, "was sprung up, and
brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also."[1] In other words, when the
wheat and the tares had got the length of being in ear, then, and not till then,
did the tares appear as tares, and were clearly seen to be tares. This
description, which well-informed travellers declare to be very exactly in
accordance with fact,[2] surely suggests a closer connection between the two
classes of men, represented by the two crops respectively, than subsists between
good and bad men living together in the same world. If by the bad crop had been
meant merely bad men in general, why emphasise so pointedly the
non-distinguishableness of the two crops till the time of the earing? and we may
add, why select a plant to represent the evil element so like wheat in the early
stage of growth? why not be content with the thorns, which in the parable of the
Sower choked the good seed, and prevented it from bringing forth fruit unto
perfection? It is impossible for any unbiassed mind to refuse acquiescence in
the opinion so well expressed by Lightfoot,[3] that the wheat and the tares
signify not simply good and bad men, but good and bad Christians—both distinct
from other men as wheat grain is distinct from all other seeds, but distinct
from each other as genuine is distinct from bastard wheat.

[1] Mat 13:26. τότε ἐφάνη καὶ τὰ ζιζανια. They then appeared as tares.

[2] Thomson, ’The Land and the Book,’ p. 420, says: "In those parts, where the
grain has headed out, they have done the same, and there a child cannot mistake
them for wheat or barley; but where both are less developed, the closest
scrutiny will often fail to detect them. I cannot do it at all with any
confidence."

[3] Horæ Hebraicæ, in Evangelium Matthæi. The subsequent sowing of the field
with tares,[1] and the ascription of this act to an enemy, are two additional
features of the parable which point towards the same conclusion. What need of an
additional sowing in order to get a crop of bad men in the world, living side by
side with the children of the kingdom? Bad men abounded before the kingdom of
God, which Christ came to found, appeared; and they were certain to abound after
its appearance, without one taking pains for that purpose. But if what was meant
by Jesus, when He spoke of tares as likely to arise when His kingdom was
planted, was counterfeit forms of Christianity—forms of evil which would not
have appeared had not Christianity appeared, and manifesting themselves as
perversions of Christian truth—then we can understand why He spoke of an
after-sowing of the field. Then, too, we can understand why He said with such
emphasis "an enemy"—or still more strongly in the interpretation, "the
devil"—"hath done this." For it is characteristic of an enemy animated by
diabolical malice, not only to do mischief, but to do it in the most vexatious
possible manner. But what more vexatious than to have one’s crop of wheat
spoiled, not merely by a crop of noxious plants growing up in the midst of it,
but by a crop which mocks the husbandman’s hope by its specious resemblance to
the crop of genuine grain he has taken all needful pains to raise? To do this is
a feat worthy of him who for wicked ends transforms himself into an angel of
light, and who, in the quaint words of Luther, cares not to dwell in waste dry
places, but prefers to sit in heaven.[2]

[1] That the tares were sown after the wheat is evident even from the T. R.,
which represents the enemy as sowing them among the wheat; but it is made
specially prominent when, in place of the ἔσπειρε of the T. R. in Mat 13:25, we
substitute the reading ἐπέσπειρεν approved by critics, rendered in the Vulgate
superseminavit—sowed upon the wheat previously sown.

[2] Hauspostillen, ’Predigt über Mat 13:24-30.’

Taking these features of the parable, then, along with the statement in the
interpretation that the scandals are to be gathered out of the kingdom, we
cannot doubt that the mixture of good and evil elements spoken of is a mixture
to be exhibited, not in the world merely, but in the kingdom itself as it
appears on this earth; and that the evil element is not bad men in general, but
counterfeit Christians; or, if you please, anti-Christian tendencies,
perversions of Christian truth into forms of error kindred in appearance,
utterly diverse in spirit; as, for example, of spiritual authority into
priestcraft, of salvation by grace into Antinomian licence, or of self-denying
devotion into a gloomy asceticism. We do not, of course, mean that the tares are
to be restricted to corruptions in doctrine. It is more probable that Christ had
in view chiefly, not to say exclusively, men of evil life, by their conduct an
offence and stumbling-block to faith. It is indeed a natural enough suggestion
that the two expressions, "the scandals," and "those that do iniquity," refer to
two classes of evil; the former to heresies, the latter to all forms of
un-Christian practice: possibly united in the same persons, men at once
errorists and evil livers.[1] But we admit that we learn to put this double
construction on the words from history rather than from the words themselves.
The dogmatic idea of heresy is a creation of a later age; the word in the New
Testament denotes a moral offence. At the same time it has to be remembered that
there are some opinions which have their root in a corrupt moral condition,
which may therefore be included under the scandals alluded to.

[1] So Grotius. He remarks that after the first pure stage of the Church’s
existence there began to mix themselves with Christians: "Duo hominum vitiosorum
genera, alii prava docentes, alii puram professionem vita turpi dehonestantes.
Prioris generis homines σκάνδαλα hic vocantur."—Annotationes in Novum
Testamentum. Goebel finds in the text a reference only to evil life. The
scandals are the deeds of wicked men. The tares then are in the kingdom. But if
so, how is the direction to let the tares alone until the harvest to be
construed? absolutely or relatively, to the exclusion of Church censures, or,
these being assumed as in their own sphere valid, at once lawful, beneficial,
and obligatory? This is the quaestio vexata—a question all the harder to answer
that the conflicting interests of purity and patience are both worthy of all
respect, so that no solution of the difficulty which sacrifices either interest
to the other can satisfy any earnest mind. Various attempts, at once
historically and exegetically interesting, have been made to solve the problem.
We may note some of the more outstanding.

I. First comes the Donatist solution. The Donatists, whose aim was to make the
Church as pure in reality as it is in idea, got over the difficulty very simply,
by denying the view of the tares which creates it, viz. that they signify
spurious Christians known to be such, yet for certain reasons to be tolerated.
The point in the parable and its interpretation on which they laid chief stress,
was the statement, "the field is the world," and the lesson they drew from the
parable was, Bear patiently the evil that is in the world,—a duty involving no
obligation to tolerate evil in the Church. When their opponents pointed to the
parable of the Net in proof that Christ contemplated a mixture of good and evil
in the Church as a characteristic of its state antecedent to the end, they
admitted that such a mixture was implied in that parable, but they evaded the
force of the fact as an argument against their position by saying that it was
only such a mixture as was due to ignorance on the part of the Church
authorities. No one can tell what sort of fish are in a net while it is under
the water, and in like manner there may be men in the Church of unholy character
not known to be unholy, and their presence argues nothing in favour of
tolerating within the Church men known to be unholy.[1] For the reasons already
given we cannot acquiesce in this solution. The tares, we have seen, are
counterfeit Christians subsisting side by side with genuine Christians within
the kingdom. Nor does the statement "the field is the world" in the least
invalidate the argument in support of that position. The field indeed is the
world, and the statement is one of the numerous passages in the teaching of
Christ which show that in His conception the kingdom of God, whose advent He
announced, was designed to cover the whole earth, and the gospel He preached
good news for all mankind. But while the field to be sown is the whole world,
the field actually sown is the kingdom of God, as it exists in the earth at any
given time, and the tares are within it; not of the kingdom as it is in God’s
sight, but in the kingdom as a visible society.

[1] Augustine gives an account of this controversy as to the interpretation of
the parable between the Catholics and the Donatists in the tract ’Ad Donatistas
post Collationem.’

2. We notice next the Catholic solution of later times. This view, while
admitting that the mixture spoken of in the parable exists in the kingdom and
not merely in the world, and yet contending that heretics might not merely be
excommunicated but be put to death, sought to reconcile existing practice with
the prohibition against pulling up the tares by laying chief stress on the
reason assigned for the prohibition—"lest while ye gather the tares ye root up
also the wheat with them;" which was interpreted to mean, Then and then only
must the tares be left alone when there is a risk of the wheat being uprooted;
in other circumstances the tares may be gathered up at once. Aquinas, in stating
this view, adopts the language of Augustine to the following effect: "Where that
fear (of uprooting the wheat) has no place, but there is perfect security for
the certain stability of the wheat, that is, when the offence of every one is so
known, and appears execrable to all, that it either has no defenders, or none
such as might cause a schism, let not the severity of discipline slumber."[1]
Whether this conversion of an apparently absolute into a conditional prohibition
be legitimate or not is a question for serious consideration, but there can be
no doubt that the words quoted from Augustine by the great mediæval doctor point
out a real and most important limitation of Church discipline. Where there is a
risk of a schism being caused by severe dealing with offenders, whether in
matters of faith or in matters of conduct, the Church is not only entitled but
bound to consider the question—Which of the two evils is most to be feared, the
toleration of reputed corruption in doctrine or practice, or a rupture in the
body ecclesiastical? It is not difficult to imagine other instances in which a
prudent regard to the Church’s highest interests might dictate the policy of
letting the exercise of ecclesiastical censures fall into abeyance. Jerome
points out one, when, commenting on the prohibition against uprooting the tares,
and on the reason annexed, he says: "We are exhorted not quickly to cut off a
brother, because it can happen that he who to-day is depraved by noxious
doctrine may to-morrow repent and begin to defend the truth."[2] It is well for
the Church when its office-bearers are able to apply wisely these two principles
enunciated by two of the most esteemed among the ancient Fathers.

[1] "Cum metus iste non subest, sed omnino de frumentorum certa stabilitate
certa securitas manet, id est, quando ita cujusque crimen notum est, et omnibus
execrabile apparet, ut vel nullos prorsus vel non tales habeat defensores, per
quos possit schisma contingere, non dormiat severitas disciplinæ." ’August,
contra Epistolam Parmeniani,’ lib. iii., cap. ii., 13. The words are quoted by
Aquinas in the ’Summa’ 2a 2as Ques. x., Art. viii.

[2] Comment in Matthæum.

3. Coming down to the time of the Reformation, we may select for notice the
interpretations given respectively by Luther and Beza. Luther, in a sermon on
the parable, asks two questions—whether the Church may use her authority and
excommunicate those who create scandal, and whether the civil magistrate may use
the sword against heretics. The former question he answers in the affirmative;
and he reconciles his view with the prohibition in the parable by remarking that
what is prohibited is the destruction of the tares. Those who exercise authority
in the Church may excommunicate but not kill heretics. His second question
Luther also answers in the affirmative, reconciling his answer with the parable
by remarking that the Lord, speaks of the kingdom of God, and of what those who
exercise authority there may do; so that the prohibition does not mean heretics
shall not be slain, but merely they shall not be slain by the ministers of the
Gospel.[1] This interpretation of the great German reformer needs no elaborate
refutation. It may be answered in a single sentence. What the Master in the
parable prohibits is not, as Luther alleges, the destruction of the tares, but
their removal from the field, their separation from the wheat.

[1] Hauspostillen, Predigt über das Evang. Mat 13:24-30.

4. Beza, while acquiescing in Luther’s doctrine that heretics may be proceeded
against by the censures of the Church and the sword of the civil magistrate,
adopted an entirely different method of harmonising that doctrine with the
teaching of the parable. He expounded his views of the parable in a tract in
defence of the use of the sword against heresy by the civil magistrate, in
connection with the burning of Servetus; his purpose being to reply to an
argument drawn from the parable by his opponents in favour of religious
toleration. These were, in brief, as follows:—The tares are not heretics merely,
but all sorts of offenders, and therefore if the parable contains a prohibition
against the killing of heretics by the civil magistrate, it equally contains a
prohibition against the execution of all sorts of evil-doers,—which is absurd.
But the parable in reality contains no prohibition, at least none directed
either to ecclesiastical authorities or to the civil magistrate: the servants
are the angels, and the parable represents God as telling them on what method He
is to conduct His ordinary providential government. "As in the beginning of the
history of Job, so here, the Lord is shown conversing with His angels concerning
the future state of His Church in this world." That state in general is to be
one of tribulation, the children of the kingdom mingling in the intercourse of
life with unbelieving and ungodly men, and enduring much at their hands. The
only lesson for Christians to be inferred from the parable is the duty of
bearing patiently with this general condition of things. Against the appropriate
punishment of individual evil-doers, whether in Church or in State, it says not
a word. It is assumed that such punishment is to be inflicted as far as
possible; only we are given to understand that when ecclesiastical and civil
officers have done their utmost, the world will after all be a most ungenial
home for the children of the kingdom. After the remarks already made in
discussing the question who are the tares, we deem it quite unnecessary to enter
into detailed criticism of this interpretation. We only observe how unlikely it
is that Christ should utter a parable teaching so very general and commonplace a
truth at the time and in the circumstances in which there is reason to believe
the parable was spoken; and how unlikely, if He desired to convey such a lesson,
that He would put the truth in so unsuitable a form. Why call wicked men in
general tares?—why not rather, as on other occasions, speak of them as wolves,
to whose violence His sheep are to be exposed in this world? If we desire to
know how our Lord spoke to His disciples of the tribulations they should
encounter in the world, we must turn not to this parable, but to His discourse
to the twelve in connection with the Galilean mission,[1] or to His farewell
address to them on the eve of His Passion.[2]

[1] Mat 10:16.

[2] John 16:1-33.

5. Only one other solution of the problem now under consideration calls for
mention, viz. that hinted at by Jerome and favoured by many modern theologians
of high reputation. This view finds the key to the interpretation of the parable
in the likeness of the tares to the wheat and the risk thence arising of pulling
up wheat by mistake.[1] The words, "lest while ye gather up the tares ye root up
also the wheat with them," it takes to mean, not "lest ye pull up that which
though tares to-day may be wheat to-morrow," but "lest in pulling up that which
ye fancy to be tares ye uproot that which in reality is wheat." The reason for
the prohibition being thus understood, it is of course assumed that when there
is no room for doubt as to the noxious character of the plants mixed with the
wheat, they may at once be removed. Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a
close resemblance between the tares and the wheat, and that there is an
intention in the parable to emphasise the fact. It is meant that we should note
that tares, as Bengel remarks, have a much better appearance than thorns and
thistles.[2] It may also be admitted, as the same writer observes, that from the
toleration of tares we may not argue for the toleration of thorns[3] and
thistles, which, as we are told by another patron of this view, only a wretched
farmer would suffer in his fields.[4] Nor is it difficult to imagine forms of
spiritual evil answering to the tares which have to be tolerated, as distinct
from forms answering to thorns and thistles which may not be tolerated. We are
quite willing to accept the description of the spiritual tares given by the
author last referred to: "They are the false brethren," the "dogs," the
"concision," the "lying apostles who, like the devil himself, transform
themselves into angels of light—men, in short, whose corrupt conduct is not
altogether hidden from the true servants of the Lord, but who yet, with all
their badness, show a certain skill and moderation, so that no truly Christian
society has the courage to subject them to Church censures."[5] But the
difficulty which stands in the way of our accepting this interpretation is that
in the parable it seems plainly implied that at the stage of growth at which the
crop had arrived, the difference between wheat and tares could be plainly
recognised, so that if it had been desirable the servants could have taken out
each individual stalk of tares without mistake, at least without mistake arising
from ignorance, for of course mistakes through carelessness would be very likely
to happen. And further, the evil apprehended does not appear to be that wheat
may be pulled up by mistake, but that wheat may be pulled up along with the
tares, owing to the intertwining of their roots in the soil. It is not said,
Lest ye root up wheat instead of tares, but, Lest ye uproot the wheat along with
them.[6] We cannot avoid the conclusion, therefore, that whatever lesson our
Lord desired to teach, He meant to apply not merely to forms of evil of doubtful
tendency, but to forms of evil whose character and tendency can no longer be
doubted.[7]

[1] Jerome says: "Inter triticum et zizania, quod nos appellamus lolium, quamdiu
herba est, et nondum culmus venit ad spicam, grandis similitudo est, et in
discernendo aut nulla aut perdifficilis distantia."—’Comment. in Matthæum.’

[2] "Zizania majorem speciem habent quam cardui et spinae."—Gnomon.

[3] "A tolerantia illorum ad horum non valet consequential—Gnomon.

[4] De Valenti, ’Die Parabeln des Herrn.’

[5] De Valenti, i., p. 163.

[6] ἅμα αὐτοῖς: ἅμα is not a preposition but an adverb. Meyer translates the
words "at the same time by them" (zugleich durch sie),—taking αὐτοῖς as an
instrumental dative. The idea is that the uprooted tares carry along with them
the wheat, owing to the solidarity of the two in the soil.

[7] Besides Bengel and De Valenti, may be mentioned as supporting the foregoing
interpretation, Tholuck, who in an interesting discussion of the parable in the
’Literarischer Anzeiger’ for 1847, in a review of Trench’s work on the Parables,
goes very fully into the history of opinion. Trench himself favours this
interpretation, though not adopting it exclusively. But how, then, are we to get
over the difficulty with which all the foregoing interpretations unsuccessfully
grapple? Simply by bearing duly in mind this very elementary consideration, that
Christ is not here laying down a rule for the regulation of ecclesiastical
practice, but inculcating the cultivation of a certain spirit—the spirit of wise
patience; a spirit to be cherished by all men in all spheres, civil and
ecclesiastical, but especially by Christians, the children of the kingdom. What
has been well said concerning the Sermon on the Mount applies to this parable:
everything in this discourse refers us to the world of temper and
disposition.[1] Beza was not wrong in saying that the lesson of the parable is a
lesson of patience; his error lay in restricting the scope of the lesson to the
tribulations Christians encounter in the world. The lesson applies not only to
the evils in the world, but also, and more particularly, and chiefly, to the
evils in the Church; it applies to the bearing and behaviour of Christians
towards these evils, however exhibited, whether in formal Church discipline, or
in private and social intercourse. The parable neither prohibits nor fixes
limits to ecclesiastical discipline, but teaches a spirit which will affect that
part, as well as all other parts, of religious conduct; and which, had it
prevailed in the Church more than it ever has prevailed, would have made the
Church’s history very different from what it is. A recent writer on the
parables, who interprets this parable as Beza did, while of course having no
sympathy with the persecuting principles advocated by the sixteenth century
divine, tries to shut into a corner those who hold that the parable inculcates a
tolerant attitude towards evil in the Church by a peremptory logic of
alternatives, thus: the prohibition against pulling up the tares is absolute;
therefore either Church discipline is absolutely prohibited, or it does not bear
upon discipline at all.[2] The futility of this Either-or logic may be very
easily shown by a parallel case. In the Sermon on the Mount the Preacher says,
"Swear not at all." Are we to say, This is either an absolute prohibition of
oath-taking, or it has no bearing on the subject of oaths? Certainly not. The
precept does not absolutely prohibit oaths, and yet it does bear most closely on
the subject of oaths. It means, let there be no occasion, so far as you are
concerned, for swearing oaths; let your utterances be absolutely truthful, your
yea, yea, and your nay, nay. It is a precept whose importance every Christian
acknowledges, yet few dream of its being incompatible with the actual swearing
of oaths on proper occasions for confirmation of one’s word, and to put an end
to doubt and strife. For however truthful I may be, I know that there are many
false men in the world, and that therefore distrust is excusable—distrust even
towards myself, seeing it is hard to know true men from knaves. Even so, while
the world lasts, there will be need and room in the Church for the exercise of
discipline, that the reality of Christian life in the holy commonwealth may come
as near as possible to its high ideal; and yet the lesson of our parable will
always be valid as a protest against all Church censures springing out of an
impatient view of the evils inseparable from the kingdom of God in its present
earthly state, and as an admonition to those who have authority in the kingdom
to exercise their authority in accordance with the rule so well expressed by
Augustine: "Let discipline preserve patience, and let patience temper
discipline, and let both be referred to charity, so that on the one hand an
undisciplined patience may not foster iniquity, and on the other hand an
impatient discipline may not dissipate unity."[3] [1] Martensen, ’Christian
Ethics,’ p. 382.

[2] Arnot on the ’Parables of our Lord,’ p. 95. This respected author accuses
Dr. Trench of an Erastian bias in his way of applying the parable to the subject
of discipline. But bias in an opposite direction is very manifest in his own
case. He assumes that the ecclesiastical practice of his own Church in such
matters is unquestionably right: the possibility of the contrary does not seem
to have entered into his mind. This is the secret of his partiality for the
Donatist interpretation of the words, "the field is the world." This example may
illustrate what we said at the commencement, that a man has no chance of
understanding this parable who is not prepared to admit the possibility of his
own Church, yea, of himself, sinning against the Lord’s mind as set forth
therein. There are certainly two sides to the question how far a jealous
exercise of discipline is wise or unwise.

[3] ’Ad Donatistas post Collationem,’ iv. 6. The philosophy of this patience
with evil prevalent in the visible Church is not fully given in the parable; at
most we have but a hint of the rationale, though it is a hint which suggests
much more than it says to those who understand. Before remarking on this
pregnant hint we cannot but advert in passing to the marked contrast between the
implied teaching of the parable of the Sower and that of this parable, as to the
mode of dealing with evil appearing in connection with the work of the kingdom.
The implied teaching of the former parable, in reference to the thorns, is: Get
rid of them, else there will be no crop of good grain. The expressed teaching of
the present parable with reference to the tares is: Let them alone till the good
grain is ripe. Whence this difference? Hence: the evil in the one case is within
ourselves, in the other case it is without us, in other men. The doctrine of the
one parable is, Tolerating evil in ourselves is deadly to our spiritual
interest; that of the other, Tolerating evil in others is not necessarily so—may
even be profitable as an exercise promoting the growth of the graces of patience
and charity. Thus viewed, the lessons of the two parables are not only mutually
compatible, but in harmony with the whole tenour of our Lord’s ethical teaching.
On the one hand, He ever inculcated inexorable severity in self-judgment,
saying, e.g. in the Sermon on the Mount, "If thy right eye or thy right hand
offend thee, pluck it out, or cut it off and cast it from thee;"[1] on the
other, with reference to our fellow-men, He gave this counsel in the very same
discourse, "Judge not, that ye be not judged."[2] Many are slow to understand
the grounds of these diverse counsels, and appear to think themselves as
responsible for the sins of their brethren as for their own; not to say more,
for there are some of whom more could be said, viz. that they behold a mote in
their brother’s eye, and consider not the beam that is in their own eye.[3] It
is, indeed, a question deserving serious consideration on the part of all
Christians, what are the limits of responsibility in connection with the sins of
fellow-members of the same religious communion? That there is a certain amount
of responsibility cannot be denied, for the Church is not an hotel in which men
may sit side by side at table, without knowing, or caring to know, anything
about the character of a fellow-guest. But, on the other hand, the
responsibility is a strictly limited one, coming far short of the responsibility
lying on each man for his own conduct; for if the Christian Church is not an
hotel, as little is it a club whose members may claim and use the right of
excluding from membership every one who is not in all respects a person
according to their taste and fancy. This club theory of Church fellowship,
however, is much to the liking of many. It was the theory in favour with the
Donatists, who held that mixed communions were infectious, and that the pious
were polluted by fellowship with the profane. Against this ultra-puritanic
theory the quaint observations of Fuller may aptly be cited: "St. Paul saith,
’But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread,’ but enjoins
not men to examine others, which was necessary if bad communicants do defile. It
neither makes the cheer or welcome the worse to sit next to him at God’s table
who wants a wedding garment; for he that touches his person, but disclaims his
practices, is as far from him as the east from the west, yea, as heaven from
hell. In bodily diseases one may be infected without his knowledge, against his
will: not so in spiritual contagions, where acceditur ad vitium corruptionis
vitio consensionis, and none can be infected against their consent."[4] [1] Mat
5:29-30. See also Mat 18:8-9, where the counsel is repeated in the sermon on
Humility.

[2] Mat 7:1.

[3] Mat 7:13.

[4] Thomas Fuller: ’The Profane State,’ bk. v. chap ii., on The Rigid Donatists.
The Latin quotation in the above extract is from Augustine ’Contra Donatistas
post Collationem.’ In the same tract Augustine expresses the principle of
limited responsibility in terms first used by the Donatists in self-defence, and
then turned against them by the Catholics: "Nec causæ causa, nec personæ persona
præjudicat."

Let us now look at the hints contained in the parable at a philosophy of the
patience it inculcates towards the evil existing in the visible Church. "Nay,"
said the householder to the servants who proposed that the tares should at once
be gathered out; "lest while ye gather up the tares ye root up also the wheat
with them." Then, to explain wherein the harm of such a result lay, he added:
"Let both grow together until the harvest." That is, the uprooting of the wheat
is an evil when it happens during the process of growth. When that process is
complete no harm can be done, the time for uprooting or cutting down having
arrived. The doctrine of the parable therefore is: The matter of prime
importance is not that the tares be got rid of, but that the wheat pass through
the natural course of development till the process of growth reach its
consummation. If both ends cannot be accomplished together, beware of
sacrificing the more important to the less important.[1]

[1] Keim says, "The parable shows the deep wisdom of Jesus forbidding all
violent attacks against evil as an interference not only with the Divine order
of judgment, but with the order of the earthly development in good and evil; the
fine thought being quietly insinuated that the undeveloped good can easily
appear to the human eye as bad, and the bad as good, so that both can assume a
fixed definite character only through the tolerating of the process of
development." ’Jesu von Nazara,’ ii. 450. But headlong zeal for purity is ready
to ask, Why cannot the two ends be accomplished together? how should the growth
of the wheat be imperilled by the uprooting of the tares? Thoughtful minds have
suggested various answers to these questions. Perhaps the case in which the risk
is most obvious is that in which the tares are represented not by a few
individual instances of men holding unwholesome opinions, and indulging in
unchristian practices, but by an evil tendency, widespread in society, such as
the rationalism which prevailed so extensively in the churches in the eighteenth
century. It is such a case that is contemplated in the parable. The wild crop is
so abundant as to make the question of the servants "Didst thou not sow wheat?",
implying a shade of doubt, not an impertinence. The corresponding state of
things in the kingdom indicated thereby is such as to be a stumbling-block to
faith, and to give rise to doubt whether it be the kingdom of God at all, and
not rather the kingdom of darkness and evil;[1] such as to demand Satanic
influence for its explanation, This must be borne in mind in connection with the
prohibition to uproot the tares, which has reference to the special case
supposed, that of a crop of tares growing from seed sown over the whole field,
and is compatible with a contrary practice when the tares are merely stray
stalks growing accidentally in the field. In such a case they are actually
gathered out of a growing crop at the present hour,[2] and probably were also in
our Lord’s time, as the proposal of the servants to uproot them implies. If so,
then we must conclude that an exceptional case is supposed in the parable, to
convey an adequate idea of the extent to which corruption would prevail in the
Church, and also the special need for care in the spiritual sphere not to uproot
anything good.

[1] This is implied by the expression τὰ σκάνδαλα, v. 41. So Goebel. No stress
is to be laid on the etymological meaning of the word—trapstick, as if the evil
men in the kingdom were deceivers.

[2] So Stanley reports, ’Sinai and Palestine,’ p. 426. My esteemed friend, Dr.
Robertson Smith, late Professor of Hebrew in the Free Church College, Aberdeen,
now Lord Almoner’s Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge, and
Librarian of that University, informs me that during a recent visit to the East
he ascertained the present practice to be as stated above. I cannot refer to his
name without expressing my deep regret that his great talents have been lost to
the Scottish Church. For such a state of things as that implied in the parable
the only remedy is patience—a patience inspired and sustained by the hope that a
new time will come, bringing a new spirit, a new faith, and a new life; a hope
that maketh not ashamed, and which has never been disappointed from the
beginning of the Christian era till now. In such a state of things impatience,
prompting to stamping-out measures, is folly, and has been condemned as such by
the wisest in the Church from the time of Augustine downwards. Such a policy of
impatience forgets the solidarity of men living together in the same religious
community: the many ties, spiritual and social, by which they are knit together;
and the penalty of its heedlessness is dismemberment, schism,—the extensive
uprooting of wheat and tares together. Far better tolerate the evil, even if it
were in your power to get rid of it, than uproot it at such a cost. And if the
evil should be so prevalent as to outnumber and overpower the good—and this is
quite a possible case—equally to be condemned is the form which the policy of
impatience is then apt to assume; that, viz. of the wheat pulling up, not the
tares, but itself, even when the tares are quite willing to live side by side
with it. In such a case the wheat should remain among the tares, and grow there
as long as the tares will permit it. The Donatistic spirit dictates another
course. It says, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate." Alas that it
should have found so many at all times ready to obey its summons, and forsake
the Church in disgust because all goes not according to their wish, and because
nowhere appears absolute purity;[1] heedless of the warning that "they may fly
so far from mystical Babylon as to run to literal Babel, bring all to confusion,
and founder the commonwealth!"[2]

[1] Calvin says: "Plerique zeli praetextu, plus aequo morosi, nisi omnia ad
eorum votum composita sint, quia nusquam apparet absoluta puritas, tumultuose ab
ecclesia discedunt vel importuno rigore eam evertunt ac perdunt."—’Comment. in
Harmoniam Evang.’

[2] Thomas Fuller; ’Profane State,’ bk. v. chap. ii. In pursuing this policy of
impatience, whether in the way of pulling up the tares or in the way of pulling
up itself, the wheat does itself much spiritual harm, quite distinct from the
external evil of separation into sects. The policy tends to foster pride and
uncharitableness, and so prevents the wheat from ripening, or causes it to
degenerate into something not better than tares, whose fruit is poisonous. The
children cf the kingdom become too conscious of being the wheat, boast of their
purity, thank God they are better than others, and by doing so make themselves
worse, banish from their hearts the spirit of Christ, and bring on their souls
the curse of impoverishment and barrenness. How small the harm done by the mere
juxtaposition of the tares to that which self-righteous zealots thus inflict
upon themselves! For such reasons as these ought the tares to be borne with even
when there is no room for doubt as to their being tares,—which is the case
supposed in the parable. It is evident that from the injunction to practise
tolerance even in such a case an argument à fortiori may be drawn in favour of
the toleration of plants whose character is doubtful. There is an additional
reason for tolerance in such a case—viz. that the wheat may be pulled up not
along with but instead of the tares; that being mistaken for a noxious plant
which is in reality a stalk of genuine grain. This danger is not imaginary; the
mistake has often happened, and it may often happen again. There is a constant
risk of committing the mistake arising out of this circumstance, that every new
visitation of God in His grace to His Church is apt, when new, to appear
anything but a good gift to those familiar with the grace of the kingdom under
its old forms. "Every new thing," it has been well said, "which appears in the
life of the Spirit, every thought which moves the world for the first time,
looks dangerous; one knows not what to make of it, and is troubled. Even Christ
with His apostles appeared to the Jews and heathens as an impious rebel against
Divine and human right."[1] For this reason we should be slow to suspect new
things and in no haste to judge them. "Judge nothing before the time,"—allow it
to develop itself, and to reveal its character; and if it turn out to be tares,
it will be time enough then to consider what is to be done with it. This seems
so obvious a dictate of reason, that those who act otherwise may be suspected of
being actuated by by-ends, or even of being themselves tares; for there is truth
in the shrewd observation of Bengel, "Often tares pass themselves off as wheat,
and endeavour to eradicate wheat as if they were tares."[2] At the least they
are chargeable with great folly; for who that is wise would act like those
empirics "that would cut off a man’s head if they see but a wart upon his cheek,
or a dimple upon his chin, or any line in his face to distinguish him from
another man."[3] [1] Arndt, ’Die Gleichnissreden Jesu Christi.’ ii. 204.

[2] "Saepe et pro tritico se venditant, et triticum tanquam zizania eradicare
conantur."—Gnomon, in loc.

[3] Jeremy Taylor, ’Epistle Dedicatory to the Liberty of Prophesying.’ To these
arguments in favour of a policy of patience towards evils prevalent in the
visible Church on earth, must be added one that will carry more weight with all
true Christians than all the rest, viz. the example of Christ. He who spake this
parable, Himself complied with its teaching, and took patiently the marring of
His work as the Founder of the kingdom by Satanic influences; of which we have a
witness in His behaviour towards the counterfeit disciple Judas, whom He bore
with meekly till the hour came when He was ready as a grain of wheat to fall
into the ground and die. How significant in connection with this patient bearing
of our Lord the name which He gives Himself in the interpretation of our
parable. "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man."[1] It is the name we
all know and value so much as the symbol and pledge of Christ’s meekness and of
His sympathy with men, the name appropriate to His state of humiliation and to
His work as the Saviour of the lost. The use of the name here suggests an
argument in support of the doctrine of the parable to this effect: "I, the Son
of man, find an enemy busy sowing bad seed in the field where I have sown the
good seed. It is saddening and disappointing, but I know it will be, and I am
content that it should be, till the end. When the end comes, then the Son of
man, who is now humbled by the counterworking of the evil one, will be glorified
by being placed at the head of a kingdom wherein shall be none that offend or
that commit iniquity. Be ye like Me in this: beat patiently the mixture of evil
with the good in the kingdom, and the obscuration thence arising to the children
of the kingdom from the difficulty of knowing who are such indeed. The time will
come when ye shall at length along with Me shine out as the sun shines out from
behind a cloud[2] in the kingdom of your Father." How happy for the Church if
all the children of the kingdom felt the power of this appeal! But, alas! it is
hard to imitate the patience of Christ I Need we wonder at the impatience of
many young Christians, who are naturally prone to severity, and even of not a
few old ones, in whom patience might have been expected to have had its perfect
work, when we think of the immense contrast between Jesus and His contemporary
and forerunner John in this respect? Jesus is content that good and evil should
grow together during the long course of development through which He knows His
kingdom has to pass. John demands an instant severance of good from evil, of
wheat from chaff, and conceives of Messiah as coming with a fan in His hand for
this judicial purpose, and on finding that He has come without the fan, sends to
Him to ask the doubting question, "Art thou He that should come, or do we look
for another?"[3]

[1] Mat 13:37

[2] ἐκλάμψουσιν (Mat 13:43). Calvin has a fine thought here: "Nec dubium est
quin ad locum Danielis respexerit quo magis ad vivum afficeret auditores: acsi
dixisset, Prophetam ubi de futuro splendore concionatur, simul notare temporalem
caliginem; ideoque ut locus detur vaticinio patienter ferendam esse mixturam quæ
electos Dei reprobis ad tempus involvit."—’Comment. in Harmoniam Evang.’ The
Jews had a doctrine concerning the shining bodies of the righteous in the life
to come. Vide on this Langen, ’Judenthum in Palästina zur Zeit Christi,’ p. 507,
where reference is made to our parable, as also to Paul’s doctrine in 1Co
15:1-58 But in the parable the glory is ethical, being the shining forth of the
true character of the righteous, obscured in this world by their being mixed
with counterfeits.

[3] Mat 11:3. The Drag-Net

Having discussed at such length the parable of the Tares, a very few sentences
will suffice to complete the exposition of the kindred parable of the Net, which
is as follows:

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and
gathered of every kind; which, when it was filled, they drew upon the beach; and
they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad[1] away. So
shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth and sever the
wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there
shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.—Mat 13:47-50.

[1] τὰ σαπρὰ: literally, putrid; more generally, worthless, useless for food:
"σαπρὰ sunt nugamenta et quisquiliæ piscium, quod genus ut servatu indignum
videmus a piscatoribus abjici."—Grotius, ’Annotationes in Nov. Test.’

After what has been said it is unnecessary to discuss the debated question
whether the mixture of good and evil spoken of in this parable be within or
without the kingdom. No one convinced by the reasoning whereby we have attempted
to show that the mixture is within in the case of the parable of the Tares, will
think it worth while to contend for the thesis that it is without in the case of
the parable of the Net. To show how pointless and inapposite to the affairs of
the kingdom the parable becomes in the hands of those who maintain that
position, nothing more is needed than to allow one of its most strenuous recent
advocates to state it in his own words. "The net is not the visible Church in
the world, and the fishes good and bad within it do not represent the true and
false members of the Church. The sea is the world. The net, almost or altogether
invisible at first to those whom it surrounds, is that unseen bond which by an
invisible ministry is stretched over the living, drawing them gradually,
secretly, surely, towards the boundary of this life, and over it into another.
As each portion or generation of the human race are drawn from their element in
this world, ministering spirits, on the lip of Eternity that lies nearest Time,
receive them, and separate the good from the evil."[1] A very graphic and solemn
representation, but what has it to do specially with the kingdom of God? The
process described, the drawing of human beings out of the sea of Time to the
shore of Eternity, goes on all the world over, in pagan as well as in Christian
lands. Doubtless the parable contains the important doctrine of an Eternal
Judgment,—the only doctrine which on this view it teaches. But that doctrine is
not a specific truth of the kingdom of God; it is a doctrine of natural
religion, and as such was taught in the religions of Egypt, Persia, and Greece.
To make it a specific doctrine of the kingdom it would be necessary to point out
the principle on which the final separation takes place,—as is done, for
example, in the parabolic representation of the last judgment in the
twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, where men’s eternal destiny is made to turn on
the way in which they treat Christ, in the person of His representatives, the
poor and needy. But the parable now under consideration enunciates no
specifically Christian principle of judgment,—no principle of judgment at all,
indeed, beyond the very general one that men shall be disposed of according to
their moral characters. The parable, therefore, becomes one relating to the
kingdom only when it is assumed that the casting of the net has reference to the
work of the kingdom, and the goodness and badness of the fish to the moral
qualities of those who are the subjects of that work.

[1] Arnot, ’The Parables of our Lord,’ p. 170. This parable asserts even more
emphatically than that of the tares that not now but at the end of the world is
the time for separation of the good and evil mixed together in the kingdom. It
so puts the matter that separation is seen to be not merely undesirable but
impossible; for till the fish are landed it cannot be known which are good and
which are worthless. The graphic representation has a manifest tendency to act
as a wholesome sedative on impatience and anxiety. Why fret over a mixture of
the evil with the good, which is pronounced on authority to be in present
circumstances inevitable in some form, if not in the form of open scandal, at
least in the form of hypocritical religious profession on the part of men who
have a form of godliness without the power? We might be better employed than in
fretting over what cannot be helped—viz. in casting a net and in striving to
bring as many as possible within the kingdom. That is the business of the
present hour; not to judge or sift, but to catch fish, using a large net and
giving it as wide a sweep as possible. The proportion of good fish to bad may be
very small,—it was so in Christ’s own experience; for of that crowd on the shore
which listened to His parables, and which represented the result of His past
labours, all but a few, when the day of crisis and sifting came, "went back, and
walked no more with Him." It is a sad spectacle, and all the more that it may be
taken not as an isolated but almost as a typical case; nevertheless, the duty of
Christians is plain. It is not to ask wistfully shall many or few be saved, but
to strive with might and main to bring into the Church as many as possible of
such as are at least in the way of being saved.[1] In this connection it is
important to note the kind of net referred to in the parable. It is a
seine-net[2] of vast length, such as men use in the sea where there is ample
scope for a wide sweep with a view to a great haul. The word is aptly chosen so
as to be in congruity with the Catholic aim and hopeful spirit of Christianity,
which is a religion for the world, and the Author of which gave it as His last
injunction to those whom He had chosen to be fishers of men: "Go ye into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature."[3] Of the final separation so
solemnly asserted and described in those two parables we do not here speak. We
close with a single word concerning a notion of sceptical critics as to the
alleged ecclesiastical party tendencies of the parables, which scarce deserves
notice save for the great names with which it is associated. The Tubingen
school, who find tendency everywhere in the New Testament, will have it that
traces of the great struggle between Pauline and Antipauline views of
Christianity are clearly discernible here. The parable of the Tares is directed
against Paul, who is the enemy that came by night and sowed bad seed in the
field.[4] On the other hand, the parable of the Net is Propauline; the capacious
net taking in all sorts of fish being intended as a justification for Paul’s
two-leaved door of universalism thrown wide open to admit all comers.[5] Surely
this is criticism gone mad. The two parables are in perfect accord, and they
both bear the stamp of one mind,—the mind of Him who soared above petty party
strifes and dwelt habitually in the serene region of Divine wisdom and charity.
The spirit of the two parables is the same,—it is the spirit of universalism,
not in the controversial sense, but in the sense in which we ascribe that
attribute to all Christ’s teaching. The Kingdom of God as Jesus preached it was
a kingdom whose blessings were designed for the whole human race. In perfect
accord with the whole drift of His teaching is the doctrine contained in these
parables. The field is the world, the net is cast into the sea, and the net
itself is the largest possible, to be employed for the purposes of a gracious
economy by men animated by Christ’s own catholic spirit.

[1] Acts 2:47. The Lord added daily to the community of Christians (ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό)
such as were being saved (τοὐς σωζομἑνους).

[2] Σαγήνη (Acts 2:47). Vide Trench’s note on this word in his work on the
Parables, p. 140.

[3] Mark 16:15.

[4] So Volkmar and Hilgenfeld, also Renan (in ’Les Evangiles,’ p. 273). Keim
refers to this opinion with disapproval, vide ’Jesu von Nazara,’ ii. 449.

[5] Renan, ’Les Evangiles,’ p. 201.


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  CHAPTER 9: 01.04.        CHAPTER 3. THE TREASURE AND THE PEARL
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Chapter 3. The Treasure and the Pearl Or, The Kingdom of God the Summum Bonum.

These two parables constitute together but one text, and teach the same general
lesson, namely, the incomparable worth of the kingdom of God. They show us how
the kingdom ought to be esteemed, in whatever esteem it may in fact be held.
They are thus an important supplement to the parable of the Sower. That parable
teaches that the kingdom of heaven is far enough from being the chief good to
many. To some it is simply nothing at all, the word of the kingdom awakening no
interest whatever in their minds; to others it is but the occasion of a
short-lived excitement; to a third class it is only one of many objects of
desire; only to a chosen few is it the first thing worthy to be loved above all
things, with pure, undivided, devoted heart. The two parables now to be
considered teach us that the kingdom deserves to be so loved by all. It is a
treasure of such value that all other possessions may reasonably be given in
exchange for it; a pearl of such excellence that he who sells all his property
in order to obtain it may not justly be accounted a fool. How quietly and simply
is this momentous truth insinuated in those two little similitudes! One is
tempted to say that so important a doctrine should have been taught with more
emphasis and at greater length. We might have said this with some show of reason
had these two sayings been the only texts in the recorded teaching of Christ
containing the doctrine in question. But they are not; they are simply the only
recorded instances in which the Great Teacher set forth that doctrine in
parabolic form. The truth that the kingdom of heaven is the summum bonum to
which everything else must be subordinated, and if necessary sacrificed,
occupied the foremost place in His doctrinal system. He taught that truth on
many occasions, to many persons, to individual followers, to the collective body
of disciples, to the multitude at large, and often in most startling terms. "Let
the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God."[1] "If
thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow Me."[2] "If any man will come
after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."[3] "If
any man come to Me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and
brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple."[4]
What are these, and many other kindred sayings, but an emphatic proclamation of
the truth taught in our parables that the Kingdom of heaven or its King (the two
are practically one) is entitled to the first place in our regard, as at once
man’s chief good and chief end?

[1] Luk 9:60.

[2] Mat 19:21.

[3] Mat 16:24.

[4] Luk 14:26. When and to whom these parables were spoken cannot with perfect
certainty be decided. From the manner in which they are recorded by the
Evangelist, there is, of course, a presumption in favour of the view that they
were uttered at the same time as the preceding four, but to the disciples, after
the multitude to which the parable of the Sower was addressed had been
dismissed. But it is quite possible that they belonged originally to another
connection, and formed part of a discourse having for its aim to enforce the
precept, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." The abrupt and disconnected way in
which, according to the reading approved by critics, the former of the two is
introduced, seems to favour this view. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a
treasure hid in a field;" so, without any mediating word like the πάλιν in the
received text, does the narrative pass from the interpretation of the parable of
the Tares to the wholly dissimilar parable of the Hidden Treasure, suggesting
the idea of a water-worn pebble which has been rolled away by the stream from
its original bed. And as the parable might have been uttered on a different
occasion, so it might have been addressed to a different audience than Matthew’s
narrative seems to imply; not to the disciples, but to a miscellaneous group of
hearers like that which listened to the parable of the Sower. Such a view,
indeed, would be inadmissible if we could attach as much importance as Origen
did to the circumstance that the last three parables in the group of seven are
not called parables.[1] That Father, in his commentary on the passage, suggests
as the reason of the fact stated that the last three were spoken to the
disciples, not to the multitude; proceeding on the assumption that parables were
meant exclusively for those without, and therefore holding that we ought not to
call the three last figurative representatives of the Divine kingdom parables,
but similitudes.[2] If this opinion were correct, we might infer, from the
simple fact that the name parable is not applied to these similitudes, that they
were spoken not to a miscellaneous audience, but to a closer circle of the
disciples. But it is not true that parables were spoken to the multitude alone,
and therefore the non-use of the name in the case of the last three parables can
have no such significance as Origen alleges. It is indeed incredible that the
Evangelist can have seriously meant to withhold the name from these parables as
inapplicable, when he had previously applied it to the equally brief similitudes
of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven. The omission of the name must be regarded as
purely accidental.

[1] They are introduced with ὁμοία ἐστὶν.

[2] ὁμοιώσεις from ὁμοία.

We proceed to the consideration of our two parables—those of the Treasure and
the Pearl, placing them as of kindred significance side by side, and treating
them in the first place as one text in the exposition of the great truth which
they teach in common, reserving for the close observations on the points in
which they differ.[1] The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hid in the
yield,[2] which a man having found hid, and in his joy[3] he goeth and selleth
all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman[4] seeking goodly
pearls, who when he had found one pearl of great price went and sold all that he
had, and bought it.—Mat 13:44-46.

[1] The same method of treatment is adopted by Greswell and Arndt.

[2] ἐν τῶ ἀγρῷ; "in the field in which it lies" (Meyer). "The field in which the
finder was working" (Greswell). "The article implies that in the mind of hearers
the idea of a hidden treasure would be associated with that of a field as the
usual hiding-place" (Goebel).

[3] The αὐτοῦ is genit subj., not obj. So Meyer. Vide also Trench.

[4] ἀνθρώπῳ ἔμπορῳ. The idea of travelling is involved in the term ἔμπορος.
Bengel defines ἔμπορος as one "qui mercaturæ causâ peregrinatur et navigat."
Greswell says, "His proper character is that of a collector of pearls, and
probably of a trader in them, though this is no necessary supposition" (vol. ii.
p. 226). For additional remarks see p. 88. The two emblems here employed by
Jesus were fitly chosen to impress an ancient Eastern audience, and to serve in
their case the purpose intended—that of representing the kingdom of heaven as
the Absolute Good, and as such worthy that all should be given in exchange for
it. In our day and land such emblems would be less appropriate. The finding of a
treasure hid in a field is so rare an occurrence in modern European experience
that to employ it as a parabolic representation of the finding of the Divine
kingdom would be to commit the mistake of making that which ought to be an
object of desire and hope to all appear so improbable as to be practically
unattainable. It was otherwise in the age. and country when and where the
parable was spoken. Then to hide treasure in the earth, in sepulchres, or any
other place where the owners deemed their property would be secure, was a not
uncommon practice; and to find such a hidden treasure was by no means an
unexampled felicity.[1] Equally apt to the circumstances of the time is the
emblem employed in the second parable. In our day a pearl could not properly be
selected as the fittest representative of the highest good. The diamond is our
most precious stone. But in ancient times the diamond, though not unknown, and
though highly valued, was too rare to be a suitable emblem of the kingdom of
heaven in a popular discourse. The pearl was the more appropriate object for
such a purpose, because it was to the ancients what the diamond is to us—well
known, highly prized, and, when of large size and pure quality, exceeding
costly. The romantic theory current in ancient times respecting the origin of
pearls served to enhance their fitness to body forth the things of the kingdom.
It was believed that the pearl was formed by the dew of heaven entering into the
shell wherein it was found, the quality and form of the pearl depending on the
purity of the dew, the state of the atmosphere, and even the hour of the day at
the time of its conception.[2] There is reason to think that the true cause of
pearl formation is of a much more prosaic character; the probable account
offered by modern science being that pearls are the result of a process of
animal secretion provoked by the intrusion of a foreign substance, such as a
grain of sand, within the shell, the fish covering the alien particle with
pearly matter to protect itself from irritation. But the ancient theory, however
baseless, is still full of interest as serving to show the esteem in which
pearls were held. Worthless as science, it is valuable as poetry, as a standing
evidence that the pearl was to the ancients an object of admiration, wonder,
almost of worship; for it is only noble, precious, worshipful things that the
human mind seeks to glorify by bringing into play the resources of its
imagination.

[1] On this view that the treasure was hidden needs no special explanation. A
hid treasure was simply in those days a natural emblem of a thing of great
value. Goebel thinks the kingdom is compared to a hid treasure, to describe its
character in opposition to the outward and sensuous ideas of the kingdom current
among the Jews.

[2] For an account of the opinions of the ancients on the origin of pearls, vide
Origen’s commentary on the parable.

Here then were two emblems fitly chosen to set before an ancient Jewish audience
the absolute worth of the Divine kingdom,—a hidden treasure, and a very precious
pearl, the best of a precious kind. The former of the two is indeed not so
apparently apt to the purpose, as a treasure may be great or small, and it is
not said that the treasure was a great one. But that is only not said because it
is taken for granted. The presumption is that a hidden treasure will be of great
value—something worth hiding, and also worth finding. That the treasure in the
parable was of great value is further implied in the joy of the finder. He sees
at a glance the vast extent of his treasure-trove, and his cunning in hiding it,
and his joy in going to take steps towards securing it for himself, unerringly
reveal the estimate he has formed. The second of the two emblems is
self-evidently fitly chosen. The best and Most precious of all existing pearls
signified an immense, almost fabulous sum of money. The two famous pearls
possessed by Cleopatra, according to Pliny the largest known, were valued each
at about ₤80,000 in our money. Surely a, sum fit to represent infinite wealth to
the popular mind, though the profligate Queen of Egypt could afford to drink one
of the pearls dissolved in a menstruum at a supper given to her lover![1]

[1] For numerous particulars respecting the value of pearls in ancient times,
consult Greswell’s note in his work on the Parables, vol. ii. p. 220. The
comparisons of our parables, while naturally suggesting the thought that the
kingdom of heaven is the summum bonum, at the same time felicitously demonstrate
the reasonableness of the demand that all be sacrificed for the kingdom. The
conduct of the actors in the two parables was thoroughly reasonable. Both were
gainers by the transaction of selling their all for the sake of obtaining the
precious object. The buyer of the field containing the hid treasure was
manifestly a gainer; for the field itself, apart from the treasure, assuming
that the bargain between him and the seller was a fair one, was a full
equivalent for the whole of his property which he realised in order to purchase
it. The hidden treasure, whose existence was unknown to the seller, and
therefore not taken into account, he had into the bargain. Provided the purchase
of the field made his right to the treasure-trove secure,[1] loss in that
transaction was impossible. The buyer of the high-priced pearl was likewise a
gainer from a mercantile point of view. It might indeed seem a precarious
proceeding to put all one’s property (not merely all his other jewels, but all
he had[2]) into one single article, however precious. But the very preciousness
of that one article implies that pearls of excellent quality were much in
demand, so that a purchaser might safely be counted on. The merchantman was sure
of his money whenever he wished to realise, and in all probability would receive
for the pearl a sum far exceeding what he had paid for it; for he had gone to a
far-off land to buy it from the pearl-fisher, at a moderate though great cost,
and had brought it, let us say, from India[3] to the Western centres of wealth,
where rich men abounded and luxury prevailed. In saying this we go upon the
assumption that the purchaser of the pearl in the parable was really a merchant.
If he was no merchant, but only a pearl-fancier and collector, who went to the
ends of the earth in quest of the rarest samples, and having found one of
incomparable excellence, hesitated not, in his passion for such valuables, to
give all that he had that he might become its possessor, the case is altogether
different He was then a fool from the mercantile point of view; if he was a
gainer at all, it was certainly not in money, but in the. gratification of
æsthetic taste and romantic desire. We shall not now decide peremptorily between
these two views of the pearl-collector’s conduct, for in either aspect it might
serve as a parable of the kingdom. He who gives all for the kingdom of God is
truly wise, but in the world’s view he is a fool; and of his folly a man with a
craze for collecting pearls for the bare pleasure of possessing them were no
unapt emblem.

[1] That it did so seems implied in the incident recorded of R. Emi, referred to
by Meyer in his commentary, that he bought a rented field in which he had found
a treasure, "ut pleno jure thesaurum possideret omnemque litium occasionem
præcideret." Of the treasure-finder, Alford remarks, "he goes, and selling all
he has, buys the field, thus (by the Jewish law) becoming the possessor also of
the treasure."

[2] Οὐκ εἴπεν ὄτι πἐπρακε πάντας οὔς εἰχεν οὐ γὰς μόνους, οὒς ὁ ζητῶν καλους
ραργαρίτας ἐώνηται, πέπρακεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντα ὅσα εἰχεν. Origen, ’Comment. in
Evangelium Matthew’

[3] The best pearls were found there or in the Red Sea. On the localities where
pearls were found, see Origen, as above; also Greswell’s note, already referred
to. Among the localities is our own land or its environing sea. Origen says the
second best were found here. Δευτερεύουσι δὲ ὡς ἐν μαργαρίταις οἱ ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ
βρεττανίαν ὠκεανοῦ λαμβαόμενοι.

If now men could only be convinced that the kingdom of heaven is like the
treasure hid in the field and the precious pearl, and that in giving up all for
its sake they were only acting as the buyers of the field and the pearl acted,
all would be well. They would then go and do likewise. For men never hesitate to
sacrifice all for what they believe to be the chief good. Devotion all the world
over is reckless of expense, and acts as if it reckoned the demand of the loved
object, that it be first and all else second, no grievous commandment, but a
perfectly reasonable requirement. No matter what the object of devotion may be,
whether earthly or heavenly, material or mental, its language is that of the
impassioned lover:

"By night, by day, afield, at hame, The thoughts of thee my breast inflame, And
aye I muse and sing thy name:

I only live to love thee." The devoted disciples of the Rabbis so loved the law
which they studied, because they reckoned knowledge of it the chief good. Their
masters expressed the sovereign claims of the law in terms not less severe than
the severest ever employed by Jesus to assert the claims of the kingdom. In
addressing to a certain disciple the apparently harsh injunction, "Let the dead
bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God," our Lord did, in
truth, but report a saying current in Rabbinical circles.[1] And how faithfully
did some disciples of the Rabbis comply with such hard requirements in their
pursuit of legal lore! Think of the famous Hillel, come all the way from Babylon
to Jerusalem to learn wisdom; of whom it is recorded that he was so poor he
could not pay the porter’s fee to gain admission into the school, and so was
obliged to listen at the window, till on a severe winter night he was almost
frozen to death, and had certainly lost his life had. not the darkening of the
window by his body, heaped over with falling snow, attracted the attention of
those within.[2] Here was one willing to part even with life itself in his
devotion to the study of the law. And was not Socrates another of kindred
spirit, seeking wisdom with pure elevated heart, and cheerfully subordinating
all to the knowledge of the true, the good, and the fair! Listen to his prayer,
pagan in form, but thoroughly Christian in import: "O dear Pan and all ye other
Gods here! grant me to be beautiful within; and may my external possessions not
be hurtful to those which are internal; and may I esteem him rich who is wise;
and may my treasure be such as none can carry away save one who is of sober
mind."[3] But we are under no necessity to seek illustrations among celebrities.
Multitudes of instances of self-sacrificing devotion to wisdom as the chief good
might be found among the ranks of poor obscure students attending our schools of
learning, whose motto is "To scorn delights and live laborious days," and who
would gladly part with their last ten shillings to procure some favourite book,
with whose contents they had long desired to become acquainted.

[1] See Cunningham Geikie’s ’Life of Christ,’ vol. ii. p. 160.

[2] See Barclay, ’The Talmud,’ p. 15; also Jost, ’Judenthum,’

[3] Plato, Phaedrus, at the close. The difficulty is to get men to see that the
kingdom of God is indeed the summum bonum, and therefore worthy to be loved as
Hillel loved the law, and as Socrates loved wisdom, and as every true student
loves knowledge. They are prone to ask in sceptical mood, What is this kingdom
of heaven that we should seek it as men seek hidden treasure, or buy it at any
price as merchantmen buy costly jewels? And we might here attempt a detailed
answer to their question; but we shall not. We are not required to do so as
expositors of the parables; for the two parables under consideration do not
explain to us the nature of the kingdom of heaven, or tell us why it is entitled
to be regarded as the chief good; they simply teach that it is entitled, as a
matter of fact, to be so regarded. And moreover the attempt were vain; if at
least its object were not merely to state truth already well enough known to an
ordinarily instructed Christian, but to produce conviction. For it is not man
but the Spirit of God that can make any one see the kingdom of heaven and its
King in their peerless beauty and worth, so that he shall be willing to part
with all for their sake. Christ Himself as a human teacher could not achieve
such a result. The very parables before us are possibly a result of his
consciousness of inability to do so. For why did He speak to the people in
parables but because they seeing saw not; because the things of the kingdom were
hidden from their view, and because He all but despaired of opening their eyes?

Instead therefore of repeating common-places of Christian knowledge in the vain
hope of communicating spiritual vision, we prefer to confine attention to one
point in which the doctrine of these parables seems inconsistent with one of the
best ascertained attributes of the kingdom whose advent Jesus announced. We
refer to the attribute implied in the title—the kingdom of grace. That the
kingdom of heaven, as Christ preached it, was emphatically a kingdom of grace is
abundantly evident from the Gospels. It is implied in the fact that Christ
called the announcement of the kingdom good tidings. The proclamation of its
advent was in His view the Gospel. Hence the burthen of His preaching from the
beginning of His ministry was: "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at
hand; repent ye and believe the good news."[1] The same truth, that the kingdom
announced was a kingdom of grace, is implied in the fact that those who received
Christ’s message were a glad company, resembling a wedding-party, while John’s
followers resembled a band of pilgrims wending their weary way with sad looks
toward some shrine doing penance for their sins. The cause of this difference
was this: The kingdom, as John preached it, was awful news, a kingdom of law and
retribution; while the kingdom as Jesus preached it was good news, a kingdom of
grace and of pardon. The same truth is further implied in the familiar facts
that the kingdom, as Jesus preached it, was emphatically a kingdom for the poor,
the outcast, the morally degraded, the humble, the child-like: which is only to
say in other words that it was a free gift of God’s grace to those who had no
wealth, no merit, no consciousness of desert, no pride of virtue.

[1] Mark 1:15. But how then are we to reconcile with this outstanding attribute
of the kingdom the representations of the parables, in both of which the
material goods, which are emblems of the kingdom, are represented as obtained by
purchase? The point is one which forces itself on our attention, for the buying
is not a minor, accidental, or insignificant trait, but a leading feature in the
parables.[1] It is especially noticeable in the former of the two, where it
almost seems as if the speaker gave an artificial turn to the story with express
intent to introduce the act of buying. One is inclined to ask, Why not at once
appropriate the treasure found; why that roundabout process of buying the field
in order to get possession of the hidden store of gold? Would not the direct
appropriation of the treasure have been far more in harmony with the genius of
the kingdom as a kingdom of grace? Of course the reply which will be given to
our query is: The buying of the field was necessary to set the finder right with
the law.[2] That may be so, but we question if the answer goes to the root of
the matter. For in the first place the process of buying, if it set the finder
right with the law, certainly did not set him right with equity: and therefore
it was not worth while to ascribe to the actor a conscientiousness which after
all was formal not real. Then if, as we admit, it was not necessary for the
purpose of the parable to represent the man as having a regard to equity, but
simply as determined by all means to obtain the desired boon, there could be no
more harm in making him reach his object by a direct breach of equity than by an
indirect one. Why could he not carry away his treasure-trove and say nothing
about it, but quietly spend it for his own comfort? Undoubtedly the speaker
wished to make the treasure-finder a buyer, even when buying was not
indispensable in order to possession as it was in the case of the pearl-seeker;
as if with express intent to teach that in all cases there must be a buying in
order to possession of the kingdom of heaven.

[1] Goebel thinks the didactic drift of the parables is to teach the way in
which men must make the kingdom their own. It is rather that they must make it
their own at any price. It is worthy of this. But that it has to be bought is
also taught by implication.

[2] Vide on this point note on p. 73. But how, we again ask, reconcile this
doctrine with the nature of the kingdom as a kingdom of grace, and with its
catholicity as a kingdom offered to all? If the kingdom is of grace why buy, and
if it is for all what of those who have not wherewith to purchase the field in
which the treasure is hid, of whom the number is at all times great? The
solution of the puzzle is simple. Buying, translated into other language, means
showing by action that we really do esteem the kingdom of God to be the chief
good; and that all who are to receive the kingdom must do, and that moreover
all, however beggared in purse or character, have it in their power to do. The
kingdom must be subjectively as well as objectively the summum bonum, and
wherever it is so, means will be found to make the fact evident. That such
subjective appreciation manifested in action is quite compatible with the nature
of the kingdom may be proved by a reference to the parable of the Supper.[1]
There the highest good is represented as eating bread in the kingdom of God, as
the result of accepting an invitation to a feast. That the kingdom is a gift of
grace could not be more clearly taught than by such a form of representation.
Yet even here there must needs be a buying; the prophetic paradox finds its
fulfilment, for even he that hath no money, the outcast of the highway and
hedges, buys and eats; buys wine and milk without money and without price.[2]
The men who were first bidden did not partake of the feast because they did not
buy; that is to say, because they were unwilling for a season to leave off
farming operations and forego connubial bliss to enjoy the hospitality of the
neighbour who issued the invitations. They did not value the feast enough to be
willing to make such a sacrifice for it. And the men who were last bidden and
who came, with what did they buy? With a victory over the temptation to think
that so great a bliss could not possibly be meant for such wretches as they
were. They had to be compelled, not because they were indifferent, but because
the invitation seemed too good news to be true. And the price they paid was the
renunciation of their doubts, and the exchange of the humility of unbelief for
the deeper, truer humility of faith, which could dare to believe that God’s
grace could reach even unto such as they. And as none can be poorer than they,
it thus appears that it is always possible for one who is in earnest to buy the
kingdom. In the spiritual world there is no risk of a man, who greatly values
the hidden treasure, finding himself so poor that he cannot purchase the field
in which it lies. Though the parable seems to have no consideration for the
poor, it is only on the surface. Rightly understood, it is quite in harmony with
the spirit of Him who declared it to be His mission to preach the Gospel to the
poor. All may have wherewithal to buy the field. For all men have hearts, and he
who loves the hidden treasure with all his heart can show his love, and that is
all the price that is needed. The presence of the love in the heart shows itself
very variously in different men; the All which is sacrificed is very diverse in
degree and in kind for one from what it is for another. The price which the
fishermen of Galilee paid for the kingdom of God was their fishing boats and
nets; a very humble all, but quite sufficient to buy the field and the precious
pearl. The price which the young man, who came peeking eternal life, was asked
to pay, was his large fortune, a much larger all, yet not more than sufficient.
The price paid by Saul of Tarsus was his carefully elaborated system of legal
righteousness. Augustine, on the other hand, bought the kingdom by a price
different from all these, viz. by parting with the darling object of a guilty
passion. The price, we repeat, is various in degree and in kind. But the poorest
in purse or reputation can find a price of some sort wherewith to buy the
kingdom. For the kingdom, when it comes to men, finds every one of them either
loving something that ought not to be loved at all, or loving some legitimate
object of affection too well; and its demand is that such sinful or inordinate
attachment should cease in its own favour, and when the demand is complied with,
the price which buys the chief good is paid.

[1] Luk 14:15.

[2] Isa 55:1. From the foregoing explanation of the buying of the kingdom it
will be seen that it is quite compatible not only with the nature of the latter
as a kingdom of grace, but with the joyous spirit which ought to characterise
the citizens of such a kingdom. The sacrifice by which the kingdom is bought is
made not by constraint but willingly: not in forced obedience to an outward
commandment, but in free obedience to the inward constraint of love. The
sacrifice is made cheerfully, gaily, whenever the kingdom is seen to be the
summum bonum—when we know in their priceless worth the things that are freely
given to us of God. The genuine citizens of the kingdom all say of it "all my
springs are in Thee," not lugubriously but with singing and dancing;[1] albeit
one has come from Egypt, another from Babylon, and a third, a fourth, and a
fifth from Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia; cheerfully forgetting their old
country for the sake of the newfound fatherland. It will be observed how
carefully the parable is constructed so as to exclude a legal cheerless view of
the sacrifice as something arbitrarily exacted. The sacrifice is made to appear
the natural outcome of the joy over the discovery just made of the treasure. "In
his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field." This is an
important touch in the picture, and it is all the more worthy of notice that it
serves to correct a false impression that might easily be made by the
description of the stony ground hearer in the parable of the Sower, as one who
receives the word with joy, but when tribulation arises is offended. This may
very readily be mistaken for a disparagement of joy as the mark of a superficial
nature, and as seldom accompanied or followed by heroic fidelity. That no such
insinuation was meant is manifest from this parable, which not only represents
intense joy as characteristic of the treasure-finder, but further represents
that joy as the direct source of self-sacrifice. From this instance we may learn
to be on our guard against hasty inferences from isolated or accidental features
in parabolic embodiments of spiritual truth. And the caution may be applied not
only to the joy ascribed to the stony ground hearer, but to the secrecy or
cunning ascribed to the treasure-finder. Some interpreters of the parables have
taken this as a feature to be emphasised, drawing from it the doctrine that
silence or secrecy at the commencement of the Christian life is necessary in
order to make conversion thorough and stable, and pointing to Christ’s
withdrawal into the wilderness after His baptism, or to Paul’s three years’
seclusion in Arabia by way of illustration.[2]. Now it is true that secrecy and
silence are sometimes advantageous, and also that they often characterise men of
earnest thoughtful temper at the commencement of their religious life. But In
the first place it cannot be laid down as a universal rule, that wherever there
is religious genuineness and thoroughness there will be such secrecy and
silence; and in the second place, when these characteristics appear they have a
different source from that implied in the parable. The treasure-finder hid the
treasure in fear lest he should lose it. But the man who has begun to think
seriously on religion hides his thoughts deep in his heart, not from fear of
losing them, but from delicacy and shyness. Newborn religion, like youthful
love, is a shy, retiring thing, which shamefacedly withdraws from observation.
The shyness is in some respects beneficial, and in some respects it is the
reverse. It is not a thing to be prescribed as part of a necessary method for
insuring salvation.

[1] Psa 87:7. This verse of the Psalm is rendered by Delitzsch, "and singing and
dancing" (they say) "all my springs are in thee," that is, in Zion, viewed as
the metropolis of the Divine kingdom. The new-born citizens go about in the
streets of the mother-city of the Divine kingdom expressing in dance and song
their joy, the burthen of their song being, "all my springs in thee." What a
graphic picture!

[2] So Arndt and De Valenti. Conf. Trench on the same point

We pass now from the common to the distinctive lessons of the two parables. And
here it may be well to begin with a caveat against the assumption that these
parables must necessarily be intended to teach distinct doctrines concerning the
things of the kingdom. The assumption is one which we are naturally inclined to
make from the mere fact of there being two parables and not one; especially when
it is taken for granted that the two parables were originally spoken at the same
time. Why speak two parables on the same theme at one time unless because, while
both set forth the same general truth, each exhibits that truth under a
different phase? The question is a very natural one, and yet for our part we do
not deem it prudent to lay too much stress on the argument it contains, or even
to be sure that the premises on which the inference rests are well-founded. We
would bear in mind the possibility that these two parables which come together
in Matthew’s narrative were spoken on different occasions, and that therefore
the difference between them may be picturesque rather than doctrinal, due to the
changing forms under which a creative mind, able to bring forth out of its
treasure things new and old, contemplated the same truth at different times.
While we say this, however, we are not only willing but anxious to recognise
whatever distinctive lessons may seem fairly deducible from the twin parables;
and, though averse from over-confident dogmatism, we think that on two points
their peculiarities have didactic significance.

First, it seems legitimate to emphasise, as all expositors have done, the fact
that in the one parable the material good which is the emblem of the summum
bonum, is found by accident, while in the other it is obtained as the result of
a methodic persistent search. The spiritual import of this distinction has been
diversely apprehended. A recent writer expresses the opinion that both traits
point to the difficulty of recognising in the kingdom offered to men the highest
good, the difference being that in the one case the difficulty arises from the
inherent nature of the kingdom as a hidden thing; in the other from the exacting
demands which the quest of the chief good involves.[1] On this view there is no
reference to a distinction between diverse classes of recipients. Most
interpreters, however, have regarded the fact in question as intended to point
at such a distinction, and to divide the recipients of the blessings of the
kingdom into two classes: those to whom the kingdom comes without any previous
thought on their part, and those to whom it is given as the reward of an earnest
foregoing search. Nathaniel and the woman of Samaria have been referred to as
examples of the one class, and Augustine in his intensely interesting and
eventful religious history, as described by himself in his famous ’Confessions,’
as an outstanding example of the other.[2] Now that there is such a distinction
between Christians as to the manner of their coming into the kingdom of God is
certain—there are finders and there are seekers in the kingdom of heaven. Both
are finders of God and the chief good,[3] or rather are found of them, for in
all cases there is something in religious experience which does not depend on
man’s will; but the one class find without much or any previous quest, while the
other class first seek earnestly, and it may belong, and then eventually find.
And the emblems of the chief good in the two parables answer very well to this
distinction between the two classes of finders. A hidden treasure is not a thing
that one can well set himself to seek for, though men have given themselves
occasionally to such an apparently hopeless quest. But goodly pearls are things
to be sought after and obtained as the result of a continued search; and one may
reasonably hope at length to find the best after having previously found many
good. Such finding of the best is not only probable but certain in the spiritual
world, though it is not more than a probability in the natural. A literal
pearl-seeker may never find the one best pearl in all the world. But in the
kingdom of heaven they that seek shall find. Their quest may be long, painful,
wearisome, and they may experience many disappointments; meeting now here, now
there, what seems on first view a very precious pearl, but on closer inspection
is found to have flaws which depreciate its value. But one day they shall find
Him whom unconsciously they seek, and in Him get rest to their souls. So found
the Pearl of Price Justin Martyr, so found Him Augustine, so find Him shall
every faithful soul who hungers after righteousness and passionately longs for
the knowledge of God and of truth.

[1] Goebel.

[2] So Trench, pp. 125-6.

[3] The actors in both parables are described as finding: ὁν εὑρὼν ἄνθρωπος, Mat
13:44, εὑρὡν δὲ. Mat 13:46. But to return to the distinction between finders and
seekers. We recognise the reality of the distinction, but we doubt whether it is
intended in the parables to teach the existence of such a distinction; at least
in so far as it is understood to imply a moral difference between the two
classes. For, let it be observed, the treasure-finder is not represented as
indifferent to the discovery he has made. He rejoices over the happy discovery.
He at once recognises its value as one who does not now for the first time learn
the use of money. He would have been a seeker for such a treasure, not less
earnest and persistent than the pearl merchant, had there been any reasonable
hope of finding one. It seems therefore quite beside the mark, as some have
done, to make this man represent the spiritually careless, who are suddenly
arrested on their godless career—of those who go to church to laugh and remain
to pray, of youths who leave their country homes for great cities there to make
their fortune, and find what they had not sought, conversion and salvation.[1]
In point of fact, the actors in the two parables seem to differ not so much in
spirit as in circumstances; and the question forces itself upon the mind whether
after all the design be not to make an objective distinction between men as to
their respective positions, rather than a subjective distinction between them as
to their respective dispositions. Does not the one parable show us the kingdom
of God as a good beyond human hope and expectation, coming as a surprise to men
who are not looking for it, but who gladly welcome it—all the more gladly
because it was unexpected; and does not the other parable show us the kingdom,
not as something unique, unexampled, and unlooked for, but as the best of its
kind, the like of which in kind already exists and is known, so as to raise an
expectation that something better of the same kind than has ever yet been seen
may yet be found? In the two representations there is no apparent difference
between the parties concerned except in position. They act differently because
they are differently situated; either would act like the other if he were in his
circumstances.

[1] So Arnot, p. 137. On this ground we incline to think that the parables point
to a distinction between men as to position, not as to disposition, and show us
how men of the same spirit will behave towards the kingdom of heaven in their
respective situations. They will both make it welcome when found,—the one as a
good he had not looked for, the other as a good after which he had long been in
quest. And it is not difficult to illustrate the difference in situation implied
in the parables. Who were the men in our Lord’s day (for it is thence we must in
the first place seek our illustrations) to whom the kingdom of heaven was as a
treasure hid in a field? They were such as Zacchæus the publican,—men who had
not been seeking the kingdom simply because they had been accustomed to be
treated by those who deemed themselves the children of the kingdom, as persons
who had no concern or interest therein, until they had come themselves to
believe this. What a surprise it was to the pariahs of Jewish society to find,
that Jesus took an interest in them, and to hear Him speak to them of the
kingdom as if it were specially their affair! Here indeed was a treasure these
poor despised ones had not been looking for! not because they set no value on
it, but because they had not ventured to hope, had not been able even to
entertain the thought, that God loved them. And who were they to whom the
kingdom of heaven was as the precious pearl found after lengthened quest? They
were those who waited, as they who wait for the dawn, for the consolation of
Israel; devout men who diligently read the ancient Scriptures in search of the
pearls of wisdom, and who had learned from the words of the prophets to look for
one Pearl more precious than all—Messiah, the incarnate Wisdom of God,—and who
recognised Him in Jesus of Nazareth. Equally easy is it to illustrate the
distinction in question from the apostolic age. The men to whom the kingdom of
heaven was as a treasure hid in a field were the Gentiles who had been aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise,
having no hope, and without God in the world, up to the time the Gospel was
preached to them, and who yet at once welcomed that Gospel as good tidings when
it was proclaimed to them; their hearts having been prepared for its reception
by the very misery inseparable from a life without hope. The appropriateness of
a hidden treasure as an emblem of the kingdom of heaven in their case is evinced
by the fact that the Apostle Paul, whether with conscious reference to our
parable we cannot tell, represents the admission of the Gentiles to
participation in the blessings of salvation as a mystery hid in God.[1] And of
the pearl-seekers of that time we may find good samples in such as the Eunuch of
Ethiopia and Lydia: Gentiles by birth, but proselytes to the Jewish religion,
who in that religion and its sacred literature had already found many goodly
pearls, but yet felt that there must be better still to be found, and who did at
length find the best possible in Jesus the crucified.

[1] Eph 3:9.

These illustrations from the beginning of the Gospel suffice to show the reality
of the distinction implied in the two comparisons of the kingdom of heaven to a
hidden treasure whose existence was unsuspected, and to a pearl which was an
object of persistent quest. But we are not shut up to draw our illustrations
from the distant past. We may find parallels to the two classes, diversely
situated, as described, in every age and in our own time. The Gospel comes as a
hidden treasure to all converts from heathenism who had previously been yearning
in dull despair for the good they comprehended not and never hoped to see; and
to all among our own ’lapsed masses,’ as we somewhat heartlessly call them, who,
having spent years in ignorance and wretchedness, have at length, in some happy
hour, come to learn that in Jesus they have a friend, in God a father, and in
heaven a home. And the Gospel is the pearl of great price to those who, having
received a Christian nurture, which has fostered in them all noble affections,
on reaching young manhood devote themselves to the pursuit of truth, wisdom, and
righteousness, not immediately convinced that all these are to be found by
retaining the faith in which they have been reared, perhaps for a time rejecting
that faith, and going to other masters than Christ in quest of the true, the
good, and the fair; but at length, after much wandering and earnest search,
always well intended, however fruitless in result, find rest to their souls in
accepting Christ as Master, Lord, and Saviour, in whom are stored all the
treasures of wisdom, knowledge, and grace.[1]

[1] The above view is in principle identical with that advocated by Greswell. He
says: "To the first of these descriptions, that is, to the idea of the kingdom
of heaven as represented by the treasure, I think it may be shown will
correspond the privilege of becoming a Christian; and to the second, in which
the kingdom of heaven is adumbrated by the pearl, the profession of
Christianity, or the continuing a Christian on principle." He adds: "By the
privilege of becoming a Christian, I understand the acceptance of the first
offer of Christianity, the option of the Gospel terms of salvation; an offer and
an option which would consequently be inseparable from the being and
promulgation of Christianity, but could have no existence until it began to be
preached."—Vol. ii. p. 234. In all the instances alluded to we have felt
justified in assuming that the difference is one of situation rather than
disposition. All alike welcome and love the good when it is presented to their
view. We must not leave this topic, however, without remarking that welcoming
the highest good in either class of cases is by no means a matter of course. In
both parables the actors are represented as rejoicing in the discovery of the
chief good, but it is not intended thereby to teach that there was no temptation
to act otherwise. In both situations indicated by the two parables, there is
temptation so to act as to lose the good that is attainable. In the case of the
treasure-finder there is the danger of being prevented by abject fear from
appropriating the good within reach; in the case of the pearl-seeker, of being
too easily satisfied with what has already been obtained, and giving up the
quest. How ready is one in the position of the class called ’publicans and
sinners’ to regard the Gospel of the kingdom as too good news to be true, to
treat the invitation to the feast as a jest, and not seriously meant; not
because he would not gladly go, but because he cannot believe he is wanted. And
how ready is one who is already in possession of goodly pearls of wisdom and
virtue—admired and envied by others—to congratulate himself on his treasures,
and to stop short prematurely in his quest; a philosopher, a man of science, a
man of culture, but not a Christian. How many among the diverse classes of our
society—the cultured and the uncultured—may be committing these sad mistakes
even now! Happy is the man who avoids both, and is able to say amen to the
sentiment of the Apostle Paul: "This is a credible saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,"—credible
not too good news to be true, though certainly very surprising; worthy of all
acceptation more to be valued than all other knowledge or wisdom. The other
distinction between the two parables as to didactic import, we shall do little
more than hint at, because we are by no means sure that it is not a fancy. It is
this, that in the former of the two parables the summum bonum seems to be
exhibited under the aspect of the useful, and in the latter under the aspect of
the ornamental. A treasure is valuable as supplying the means of purchasing
commodities; a pearl is valuable as an ornament. That the kingdom of heaven
should be presented under such various aspects is not incredible, for as the
summum bonum it must satisfy all man’s legitimate wants; and man is not only a
being who craves happiness, but also a being who has a sense of the beautiful.
The beau ideal must embrace at once the true, the good, and the fair. And the
kingdom of heaven does meet these various wants of human nature. It not only
aims at putting man in a happy, saved condition, but at beautifying and
ennobling him as the possessor of wisdom and righteousness. But it may be said
there is no foundation for such a distinction in the parables, because the
pearl-collector is a merchant, and is interested in his acquisitions not as
ornaments, but out of regard to the price he will get for them. That, however,
is a point open to question. The word ἔμπορος does not necessarily, though it
may usually, denote a merchant; and even though it were conceded that a merchant
is intended, merchants have been known who were more than merchants, and were so
enamoured of some article they had purchased as to be unwilling to sell it
again. In favour of the view that the collector in the parable is a
pearl-fancier rather than a mere trader is the statement that he is seeking
goodly pearls. Of course a trader, as well as an amateur collector, would seek
only goodly pearls; for to what end buy small, unshapely, discoloured specimens,
which could not be expected to attract purchasers? But why expressly mention
what might be taken for granted, unless to indicate that the man had a peculiar
exceptional love for rare and excellent specimens,—a love due to personal
tastes, not to trading propensities? But it may be objected, How absurd to
suppose that a man would give all he had for a single pearl he did not mean to
sell again, and make a profit by! "If, after giving all that he had for the
pearl, he had hung it on his neck, where could the poor man have found food and
clothing?"[1]. A very plausible, if somewhat vulgar question; yet it is but the
question which the world asks in reference to the demand made to leave all for
the kingdom: "What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we
be clothed?" Ask no such questions, replies Christ. Seek first, and at all
hazards, the kingdom of God, and these things shall be provided for you. And
this is the law by which the true citizen of the kingdom is guided. It is not a
rule to be mechanically acted on, but it is nevertheless the law of the spirit
of a Christian life. In acting on such a law a Christian exposes himself to a
charge of folly. What a fool was the man who parted with all to obtain a single
pearl, which he meant to keep in his possession! It was the act of one who had a
craze, who had gone mad in the pursuit of a hobby! True, yet such folly is
characteristic of the seekers after God. It is the folly of the wise [1] Arnot,
p. 156


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  CHAPTER 10: 01.05.        CHAPTER 4. THE MUSTARD SEED AND THE LEAVEN
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Chapter 4. The Mustard Seed and the Leaven Or, the Kingdom of God Destined to
Grow to Greatness in Numbers and in Influence. In three of our Lord’s parables
the kingdom of heaven is represented as the subject of growth. These parables
are the two above-named, and the parable of the Blade, the Ear, and the Full
Corn, preserved in Mark’s Gospel. The first of the three teaches that the
kingdom is destined to increase in outward bulk as a visible society; the
second, that it will manifest itself as a spiritual power exercising a
progressive moral influence, and gradually transforming the character of the
individual or the community by whom or which it has been received; the third,
that in its growth the kingdom will resemble corn which groweth secretly,
spontaneously, gradually, passing in the course of its growth through various
stages in accordance with a fixed law which cannot be set aside, and yielding
fruit only in the proper season, which cannot be hurried on, but must be
patiently waited for. The three parables might very legitimately be considered
in one chapter, as together exhibiting Christ’s teachings on one important
theme. That the Evangelists regarded them as of kindred import appears from the
manner in which they connect them in their narratives, the first and third
Evangelist joining together the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, and
the second connecting the former of these with the parable of the seed growing
gradually, which he alone has recorded. And a hasty glance suffices to show that
as the three parables have a common didactic purpose, so they serve one
practical aim. They are designed to inspire hope and patience amid circumstances
fitted to breed despondency and discouragement. In presence of the small and
insignificant beginnings of the kingdom, Jesus says to His disciples: Fear not,
that which now appears so small and weak will one day be a great fact and a
mighty power.[1] And lest disciples should despair of that day ever appearing
because it tarried longer than they expected, or should seek to hurry it on by
impatient earnestness, their Master speaks to them the third parable to teach
them what to expect in regard to the kingdom of heaven from the analogy of
growth in the kingdom of nature.

[1] His parabolis (Mustard Seed and Leaven) discipulos suos animat Christus, ne
humilibus evangelii exordiis offensi, resiliant—Calvin, Comment.’

It will be convenient to confine our attention for the present to the first two
of the three parables concerning the growth of the kingdom, reserving the third
for a future chapter. The two parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven form a
pair which have for their common object to exhibit the prospects of the kingdom
on the hopeful side, in contrast to the parables of the Sower and the Tares,
which present the dark side of the picture. Both proclaim the important truth
that the kingdom of heaven is destined to advance from a small beginning to a
great end. But the two parables present this common truth under diverse aspects.
The one predicts the extensive, the other the intensive growth of the kingdom.
Each parable, also, has Its own way of conceiving the kingdom answering to its
peculiar mode of viewing the growth. In the one parable, that of the Mustard
Seed, the kingdom is conceived of as a visible society, which is susceptible of
increase in its bulk by addition to the number of its membership. In the other
parable, that of the Leaven, the kingdom is conceived of as a moral or spiritual
power, which is susceptible of increase in the transforming influence which it
exerts on those who are subject to its operation. From the point of view of the
one parable, the disciples of Jesus, few in number, a "little flock," are the
kingdom in its initial stage, destined to grow from that nucleus, small as a
grain of mustard seed, into the dimensions of the Christian Church. From the
point of view of the other parable, not the disciples themselves, at least in
the first place, but rather that which makes them disciples, the faith in their
hearts, is the kingdom, they being in the first instance at least the mass to be
leavened by its renewing influence. For the parable of the Leaven admits of two
applications, a narrow and a wide, an individual and a social. The mass to be
leavened may be a single Christian or a whole community, just as we have
occasion to regard it; because what is intended to be taught in the parable is
the transforming power of Christianity, and that may be illustrated either in
the individual man or in society at large. The parable of the Mustard Seed, on
the other hand, admits properly only of the wider application, for the point of
the parable is, that the kingdom of heaven as a phenomenon taking its place in
the world is destined to increase in outward bulk, which can take place only by
addition to the numbers of a society already existing, though small and
insignificant to the world’s eye as a grain of mustard seed. We may, of course,
easily make this parable also susceptible of application to the individual, if
with some we make the mustard seed represent the same thing as the leaven, that
is, not the insignificant company of Christ’s disciples, but the faith through
which they became disciples. For such a view plausible ground may be found in
those gospel texts in which faith is compared to a grain of mustard seed. We are
persuaded, however, that the best way to understand these two parables and to
extract the greatest amount of instruction from them is not to run them into
each other, but to keep their points of view as distinct as possible;
understanding the one to represent the kingdom as a society destined to extend
itself more and more over the earth, and the other to represent the same kingdom
as a spiritual influence destined to pervade, with ever-increasing completeness,
the whole of human life whether individual or social. Thus viewed, these
parables teach not only distinct, but mutually supplementary lessons, which must
be taken together in order to yield a view of the Divine kingdom and its
prospects which can satisfy intelligent and earnest minds. For neither an
extensive society of imperfectly sanctified men, nor a small society of men
completely sanctified, answers to our ideal of what the kingdom should be. What
we desiderate is a commonwealth, at once vast in extent and holy in its
character. Such a society it is which is offered to our hope in these two
parables. The one predicts that the kingdom of heaven will eventually be a
society of great dimensions, taking rank in this respect with the kingdoms of
this world; the other that it will be a society animated in all its parts by the
Holy Spirit, and in this respect not of this world. The Mustard Seed The parable
as it stands in Matthew is as follows: The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain
of mustard seedy which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the
least of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and
becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches
thereof.—Mat 13:31-32; parall.: Mark 4:30-32, Luk 13:18-19. The variations in
the other Gospels are of no great importance. In Mark’s version we observe a
tone of exaggeration in reference both to the smallness of the seed and to the
greatness of the plant which springs from it. The seed is said to be the least
of all the seeds that are upon the earth,[1] and the tree is represented as
shooting out great branches,[2] so that the fowls of the air can lodge under its
shadow. These peculiarities may be set down to account of the pictorial graphic
style, characteristic of the second Evangelist. Luke on the other hand, makes no
mention of the smallness of the seed, but adverts only to the growth of the
plant into a tree large enough to be a lodging-place for the birds. This may be
due in part to the connection in which he introduces the parable. Immediately
before stands a narrative which exhibits Jesus triumphing over Pharisaic censors
of one of His Sabbatic miracles, and winning by His reply to their objections
the hearty applause of an ingenuous multitude. In the honest joy of the people
over the marvellous works wrought by Jesus, and the unanswerable words of wisdom
spoken by Him in self-defence, the Evangelist sees a good omen of the future,
and he is reminded thereby of the parable in which Jesus had foreshadowed the
growth of His kingdom from its small beginnings to a great magnitude; only, as
there was nothing in the circumstances which recalled the parable to his
recollection leading him to emphasise the smallness of the beginning, he gives
exclusive prominence to that side of the parable which predicts the greatness of
the end. But, indeed, in the case of the third Evangelist, the one-sided
prominence given to the ultimate greatness of Christianity scarce needs so
minute explanation. It is sufficiently accounted for by the one consideration
that he is the Evangelist of the Gentiles, and that he magnifies his office. His
specialty is to note carefully all that points towards the grand consummation of
Christianity becoming the religion of the world. In view of this familiar fact
one is strongly tempted to accept as genuine the reading δένδρον μέγα found in
some codices,[3] as well as in the textus receptus, though rejected by critical
editors. It would certainly come very natural to Luke, if at all admissible, to
say "it grew, and waxed a great tree." It is true that that would be an
exaggeration, but so also is the phrase in Mark’s Gospel," and shooteth out
great branches," about the genuineness of which there is no room for doubt. The
much more probable supposition, however, is that the μέγα is a marginal gloss
introduced into the text by some copyist who, failing to catch the precise drift
of the parable, thought it required the tree to be great Whatever may be the
truth as to the correct text of Luke’s version of the parable, there can be no
question that in Matthew’s version, as compared with that of either Luke or
Mark, we have the most exact account of what our Lord actually said, so that we
may with all confidence make it the basis of our observations. Turning then to
the parable as we find it there recorded, we remark first, that therein the
declaration that the kingdom is destined to advance from a small beginning to a
great end is made by Jesus in a characteristically meek and sober manner. The
smallness of the beginning is much more emphatically asserted than the greatness
of the end; characteristically we say, for in this parabolic utterance Jesus but
repeats what we find Him elsewhere saying in other terms. In comparing the
kingdom of heaven in its present initial stage to a grain of mustard seed, He
says in effect the same thing as when He called the humble band of men who
followed Him a "little flock,"[4] and spoke of them as, in comparison with the
wise and prudent, "babes."[5] All the three sayings were the utterances of a
lowly mind that shrank not from the frankest and fullest acknowledgment of all
circumstances pertaining to His present state of humiliation. Of the three, that
contained in our parable presents the most intense expression of the mean
condition of the kingdom in its initial phase. For no apter emblem of
insignificance could possibly be found than a grain of mustard seed, it being,
as is declared in the parable, "the least of all seeds." In order to justify our
assertion it is not necessary to take this statement in the text strictly, as if
it meant that it is not possible to find anywhere upon the earth a smaller seed
than that of mustard. Smaller seeds do exist, such as those of the poppy and the
rye. It is not even necessary to maintain that the mustard seed is, or was at
the time when and in the country where the parable was spoken, the smallest of
all seeds in proportion to the size of the plant which springs from it.[6] Even
this proposition may be doubtful; it may fairly be questioned, for example,
whether the disproportion between the mustard seed and the mustard tree be
greater than that between the acorn and the oak. It is enough to say that the
mustard seed passed in our Lord’s day, and among the Jews, for an emblem of the
superlatively little.[7] "As small as a grain of mustard seed" was a proverbial
phrase current at that time, of which we have evidence in the teaching of our
Lord Himself, in the reproachful word which He spake to His disciples on
descending from the Mount of Transfiguration: "If ye have faith as a grain of
mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and
it shall remove."[8] Whatever answer, therefore, natural history may have to
give to the question which is the smallest of all seeds, or which is the
smallest in proportion to the size of the plant which springs from it, it is
certain that Jesus could not more frankly have admitted the utter insignificance
of the Divine kingdom in its initial state, as it appeared in Himself or in His
disciples, than by comparing it to a seed which in common speech passed for the
smallest of all.

[1] μικρότερον ὂν πμντων τῶν σπερμάτων ἐπἰ τῇς γῆς (Mat 13:31).

[2] ποιεῖ κλάδους μεγάλους.

[3] Of the great uncials the Codex Alexandrinus has this reading.

[4] Luk 12:32.

[5] Mat 11:25.

[6] So Bengel, his comment onμικρότερον being "Non absoluta, sed spectata
proportione seminis ad germen."

[7] In Adagium vulgare abiit ‏בזרע חרדל‎ = Pro quantitate grani sinapis..
frequentissime apud Rabbinos, rem vel quantitatem minutissimam
innuentes.—Lightfoot, ’Horæ Hebraicæ.’

[8] Mat 17:20. When we turn from the beginning to the end, and ask ourselves how
far the mustard plant after it has reached its full growth is a fit emblem of
the kingdom grown to greatness, we are constrained to acknowledge that the
aptness of the parable at this point to express the truth intended to be taught
is by no means so manifest. For the plant at its best is only a great herb; and
it can be called a tree only by a latitude in the use of words. If it be a tree
at all, it is certainly not a great tree as the cedar is great, neither are its
branches great as are the wide-spreading branches of the oak. In the East, where
it attains monstrous proportions, it may be the greatest of all herbs, and
create surprise by reaching such a size as to entitle it almost to rank among
the trees of the forest. But even there it is after all a thing of puny
proportions compared with the cedars of Lebanon or the oaks of Bashan. Stories
are told of mustard trees so tall that a man could climb up into their
branches[1] or ride beneath them on horseback, and modern travellers, to give us
an idea of their height, tell that they have seen samples of the tree "as tall
as the horse and his rider."[2] Accepting these stories as free from
exaggeration, what do they amount to? Simply to this, that the mustard plant in
Palestine attains to a remarkable height for a garden herb, and especially for
an herb springing from so small a seed. If they were offered as proof that the
plant in question was worthy to be regarded as the equal of forest trees, they
would simply remind us of the fable of the frog striving to inflate itself into
the dimensions of an ox.

[1] R. Simeon ben Chalaphta dixit, Caulis sinapis erat mihi in agro meo, in quam
ego scandere solitus sum, ita ut scandere solent in ficum.—Lightfoot, ’Horæ
Hebraicæ.’

[2] Thomson, ’The Land and the Book,’ p. 414. He makes the statement with
reference to the plain of Akkar, where the soil is rich.

Must we then say that the mustard plant is wholly unfit to be an emblem of the
kingdom in its advanced stage when it has attained to greatness? Not so; we must
tear in mind the difficulty of finding one thing which would serve both
purposes, and be content if, while a specially fit emblem of the early stage of
the kingdom’s history, the object selected be a sufficiently apt emblem of the
later stage. It would have been very easy to do justice both to the beginning
and to the end by making use of two emblems, the one to represent the beginning,
the other the end; likening, e.g., the kingdom in its beginning to a grain of
mustard seed, and in its end to a cedar of Lebanon. But the truth to be taught
would be far more felicitously and impressively set forth if one natural object
could be found which might serve as an emblem of the kingdom in both stages; and
even if the emblem should not serve both purposes equally well, it were enough
if it served them both sufficiently well. Now this is the actual state of the
case as regards the mustard seed. It emblems the initial stage of the Divine
kingdom excellently well, and it emblems the final stage sufficiently well. It
would not have been difficult to find a natural object whose emblematic
capabilities would have been the inverse of the one actually adopted. An acorn,
for example, would have been better fitted to convey an idea of the vast
magnitude of the Christian Church in its advanced stage of growth; for out of
the acorn comes the oak. But an acorn would not have served so well to convey an
idea of the utter insignificance of the beginnings of the Church. It is a
greater marvel that out of a mustard seed should come a mustard tree, than that
out of an acorn should come an oak. Possibly the relative proportions between
seed and tree may not be very unequal, but the outgrowth excites more surprise
in the one case than in the other. We do not wonder much that the acorn grows
into an oak; we do wonder when we are told that a seed so tiny as that of the
mustard plant, which in its own nature is only an herb, grows to something like
the dimensions of a tree. Probably such wonder helped to give currency to the
proverb, "Small as a grain of mustard seed." Men were surprised that a thing so
small should grow to be anything so considerable, and by the contrast between
seed and plant were led to emphasise, and evert to exaggerate, the smallness of
the former. And this wonder was just the cause why our Lord selected the mustard
seed as the emblem of the kingdom, in preference to an acorn or any other seed
from which large trees grew.[1] He preferred an emblem whose defect, if defect
there must be, should lie rather in the direction of inadequate representation
of the end, than in the direction of inadequate representation of the beginning.
He did so partly because it was congenial to His meek and lowly spirit, but
specially because it suited the mental condition of His hearers. Adapting His
lesson to the spiritual capacity of His pupils, He is careful to select an
emblem which shall fully recognise the mean aspect of the kingdom He has come to
found in its present state, and at the same time show by a natural analogy that
even a movement so contemptible in appearance might yet come to be a
considerable phenomenon, commanding general attention and respect. He is not so
anxious to convey an exact or adequate idea of the ultimate greatness of the
kingdom. He is content with indicating that it will not always be so
insignificant, that it will one day be an institution which the world can no
longer treat with disdain, that it will grow till it be not only a very large
herb, but even not unworthy to be classified as a tree. That it will be the
greatest of trees He does not assert. He does not even say that it will rival
other trees in respect of size; He deems it enough to tell disciples unable to
entertain large hopes that it will outgrow the dimensions of a garden plant and
attain to something like the dimensions of a tree. Even that was an unlikely
event then, and quite hard enough for weak faith to believe, without making any
further demand on it. To the eye of sense, judging from present appearances, it
seemed impossible that the movement to which Christ gave the name of the Kingdom
of heaven could ever become a considerable phenomenon in the history of the
world. The statement that it nevertheless would become such was likely to
provoke, even in believing minds, incredulous surprise. How could such a state
of mind be better met than by pointing out that the wonder in the spiritual
world which awakened incredulity had its parallel in the natural world? This
accordingly is precisely what Jesus did in uttering this parable: pointing out
in the case of the mustard seed a natural object proverbially small, which grows
into a plant of astonishing dimensions No happier selection could have been made
for the purpose. The mustard seed, viewed as the parent of the mustard tree, is
"the most characteristic emblem, among natural objects, especially of its own
class, to mark the disproportion between the first beginning and the final
result of any process,"[2] and in particular of that which it was Christ’s aim
to illustrate, the growth of the kingdom of God. In making this selection for
the purpose of parabolic instruction on this topic, the great Teacher showed not
only humility and sobriety of mind, but conspicuous wisdom and considerate
sympathy with those whom He would instruct.

[1] "The rule ex minimo maximum, which is the rule of all growth in nature, is
here signalised in the growth of the mustard seed; specially in it, because in
virtue of its proverbial peculiarity, the rule is illustrated in its case with
striking effect."—Goebel.

[2] Greswell ’on the Parables,’ vol. ii. p. 166. When we look at the parable in
the light of the use it was probably intended to serve in the personal ministry
of Christ, we are delivered from all temptation to catch at any means of making
the emblem of the kingdom grown to greatness a greater thing than it really is,
if the common mustard plant be what is intended. Attempts of this kind have been
made in recent years by travellers and men of science. It has been contended
that not the mustard plant, which is properly not a tree, but only a garden herb
and an annual, but a real tree of considerably larger dimensions, found in some
parts of Palestine, and widely diffused in the East, is the object pointed at in
the parable. The tree referred to is that which in Syria goes by the name of the
khardal (the Arabic for mustard), and in botanical language is called the
Salvadora Persica The first to suggest the hypothesis were the travellers Irby
and Mangles, who found the khardal growing in the neighbourhood of the Dead
Sea.[1] The conjecture was ingenious, and not without plausibility, for in its
favour could be alleged not only the name of the tree, but the facts that the
seed from which it springs is comparatively small, possesses pungent qualities
like those of mustard, and is used for the same purposes. It is therefore not
surprising that the opinion hazarded by the two travellers was afterwards
espoused and strenuously advocated by scientific writers,[2] and regarded with
favour by biblical scholars such as Meyer and Stanley.[3] It is now, however,
generally set aside on sufficient grounds; of which the chief are, that there is
grave reason to doubt whether the khardal ever existed or even could exist in
the neighbourhood of the Sea of Galilee, the leading scene of our Lord’s
ministry,[4] and that the plant of the parable is expressly represented as being
in its nature a garden herb, the very point of the parable being that what is in
its nature an herb, becomes in dimensions something approaching a tree. We do
not pretend to be able to speak with authority on the point, nor do we entertain
any feelings but those of sincere respect for efforts to ascertain precisely
what natural objects are pointed at in Scripture allusions; but we may be
permitted to express the doubt whether the opinion in question would ever have
been seriously entertained had men been as alive to the moral as to the
scientific conditions of correct interpretation. Doubtless the khardal answers
better to the designation ’tree,’ for it really is a tree in nature, and it
attains a height of some twenty-five feet, while the mustard plant does not
reach more than half that elevation. But realise the moral situation, and you
see at once that the khardal, though twice as tall, is not half so appropriate
as the mustard plant to be an emblem of the kingdom of God in its developed
state. It is no marvel that a plant of the tree species should grow to the
height of twenty-five feet, it is rather remarkable that it should grow no
taller; but it is a marvel that a plant, which is by nature an herb, should in
its growth even so much as approximate the dimensions and aspect of a tree. And
what is required by the moral situation is just such a marvel in physical nature
to inspire faith in the possibility of a like marvel in the spiritual world—a
religious movement in its present aspect despicably mean, becoming one day a
great fact of such proportions that men could no longer despise it.

[1] ’Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria and Asia Minor, during the years 1817 and
1818.’ The passage relating to the subject is as follows: "There was one curious
tree which we observed in great plenty, and which bore a fruit in bunches,
resembling in appearance the currant, with the colour of the plum: it has a
pleasant though strong aromatic taste, exactly resembling mustard, and if taken
in any quantity, produces a similar irritability in the nose and eyes to that
which is caused by taking mustard. The leaves of this tree have the same pungent
flavour as the fruit, though not so strong. We think it probable that this is
the tree our Saviour alluded to in the parable of the Mustard Seed, and not the
mustard plant which we have in the north—for although in our journey from Bysan
to Adjeloun we met with the mustard plant growing wild, as high as our horses’
heads, still being an annual it did not deserve the appellation of a tree;
whereas the other is really such, and birds might easily, and actually do, take
shelter under its shadow" (p. 255).

[2] Prominent among these is Dr. Royle, who first set forth his views on the
subject in a paper read before the Royal Asiatic Society in 1844, and published
in vol. viii. of their Transactions.

[3] Vide Meyer’s Commentary, and Stanley’s ’Sinai and Palestine.’

[4] Tristram says: "There is no reason to believe that at any time it grew by
the Sea of Galilee, and very strong grounds for doubting that it could flourish
there at all. It is in fact one of the many tropical plants whose northern limit
is in these sultry nooks by the Dead Sea, and which spread no farther
north."—’Natural History of the Bible,’ p. 473. The parable then, viewed as
having reference to the common mustard plant, is altogether worthy of our Lord’s
wisdom, whether we consider its bearing on the beginning or on the end of the
kingdom. Christ showed His wisdom in selecting a grain of mustard seed to be an
emblem of the kingdom in its obscure beginnings, because the emblem was not only
true to fact, but to the law or principle of the case. Worldly-minded Jews could
not believe that so mean a thing. as the movement with which Jesus and His
disciples were identified could possibly be the kingdom of God come. But the
meanness and the smallness of the movement were no argument against its
Divinity, but rather a presumption in favour of its being Divine. It is the way
of Divine movements in the world’s history to begin obscurely and end
gloriously; and it not unfrequently happens that there is more Divinity in the
obscure beginning than in the glorious ending. For while the movement is obscure
men are not likely to join it, except as moved by the spirit of truth and
goodness; but when it has become famous, worldly men may join it from by-ends,
and so make what at first was a Divine, heavenly thing, undivine and earthly
enough. Therefore we may say that Jesus showed His wisdom also in making the
mustard plant at its full height an emblem of the kingdom in its advanced stage,
not merely in so far as He thereby accommodated His teaching to the spiritual
wants and capacities of His hearers, but more especially because He thereby
presented to view a kingdom large enough to satisfy the hope of devout souls,
but not so large as to awaken ambitious desires and worldly expectations, and so
attract unclean ravenous birds to take up their abode among the branches of the
tree of life. The allusion in the closing words of the foregoing paragraph
reminds us that we have not yet noticed that part of our parable in which our
Lord speaks of the birds of the air as coming to lodge in the branches of the
mustard tree. The question at once arises, what amount of significance are we to
attach to this feature? In answering the question it is possible to err both by
excess and by defect. The least that can be said is that the fact of the birds
frequenting the branches of the mustard plant is mentioned as a mark that the
plant has become a tree. The construction of the sentence makes this manifest:
"It becometh a tree, so that[1] the birds of the air come and lodge in the
branches thereof." The size of the plant, so to speak, deceives the winged
creatures, and makes them mistake a garden herb for a forest tree. The feature
is not introduced merely for the sake of picturesque effect, but to define the
character of the plant. There may possibly be a latent allusion to Old Testament
texts, in which birds and trees are associated together, as, e.g., those in that
beautiful psalm of nature, the 106th, which speak of the birds singing among the
branches and making their nests among the cedars of Lebanon; or the well-known
passage in Daniel which describes the tree of Nebuchadnezzar’s vision in these
poetic terms: "The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached
unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth: the leaves
thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all: the
beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in
the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed upon it."[2] It would, however, be
going beyond the sober truth to lay much stress on these texts, as if Christ
meant to suggest that the tree of His parable resembled in size the cedars of
the Psalmist, or the mystic tree of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, or that the birds
resorted thereto for precisely the same reason. The tree of the parable is not
large enough to harbour birds of all sizes, but only small birds like linnets
and goldfinches; and what they seek therein is not a place to build their nests,
but the food it supplies in its seed, which they devour with avidity. The Greek
word translated in the English version "lodge," does not signify "to make nests
in," but simply "to settle upon."[3] We must, therefore, as strict expositors,
deny ourselves the pleasure of finding in this parable a prophecy of a time when
the kingdom of heaven, now so insignificant, should become a vast empire
rivalling that of Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, when the tiny seed of the kingdom
should develop into a great forest tree, overshadowing the whole earth, and
affording harbourage for all the nations. At most it contains a slight hint at
the possibility of such a consummation, suggesting by the words employed more
than it says, or than the parabolic envelope of the thought admits of being
said: by the word "tree" suggesting a forest tree, though the tree actually
spoken of is little more than a large bush, and by the reference to the birds of
the air suggesting the idea of men coming from every quarter of the heavens and
taking up their abode in the Divine commonwealth. So far as this parabolic
utterance strictly interpreted is concerned, the prophetic eye of Jesus cannot
be said to look beyond the time when the company of His disciples should have
received large accessions within the limits of Judaea, the garden in which the
grain of mustard seed was originally planted. We may not stretch our horizon
much beyond Pentecost, when the number of disciples was increased by thousands;
scarcely, though we gladly would, as far as to the later movement in Antioch,
when the kingdom of Christ became so considerable a phenomenon as to require a
new name, so that the disciples were there for the first time called Christians.
It is quite legitimate within these limits to give to the birds of the air a
symbolic significance and make them represent converts to the new religion. It
is not absolutely certain that the birds were intended to have such symbolic
significance assigned to them, but it seems probable that the third Evangelist
at least regarded them in that light. When we read in his narrative how the
people rejoiced in the wondrous works of Jesus, and then observe how he takes
occasion therefrom to record the parable of the Mustard Tree, in whose branches
the fowls of heaven lodged, we cannot help feeling that in his mind the fowls
are identified with the well-affected multitude. He seems to say to himself:
"Behold the Lord’s parable fulfilling itself: see how the birds fly to the
branches of the mustard tree."

[1] ὥστς, with the infinitive.

[2] Dan 4:11.

[3] This disposes of one objection to the mustard plant being the object
intended in the parable, viz. that at the time when birds build their nests it
is too small to be used for such a purpose.

We have now noticed all the points apparent on the surface of the parable. Other
points not apparent derived from the known properties of the mustard seed—its
heat, its pungency, the fact that it must be bruised ere it yield its best
virtues, etc.—we do not feel called to remark on, agreeing as we do with those
who think that analogies based on these properties are foreign to the purpose
for which the parable was spoken. We may, however, briefly advert to an opinion
strenuously maintained by Greswell, that it is intended in the parable to
represent the spread of Christianity as of a miraculous character. To make this
out stress is laid on the contrast between the smallness of the mustard seed,
and its vegetative vigour as manifested in the size to which the plant attains;
and the right to do this is proved by a reference to the other passages in our
Lord’s teaching in which the seed of mustard is spoken of. The author’s
contention is, that the expression "faith as a grain of mustard seed," twice
employed by Christ, does not mean faith as small as a grain of mustard, but
faith as vigorous in its vital power. Our Lord, it is held did not mean to say
that any degree of faith would suffice to do the wonderful things of which the
removal of a mountain into the sea is an emblem, as that would involve that the
disciples had no faith at all—seeing they were unable to do the things referred
to—which, however, was not the fact. The faith that can remove mountains is a
special kind of faith, viz. that which can produce miracles. It is the sort of
faith which Jesus had in view when He said to His disciples: "Verily if ye have
faith, and do not hesitate, not only shall ye do the miracle of the fig tree,
but should you even say unto this mountain, Be thou lifted up, and be thou cast
into the sea, it shall come to pass."[1] It is the faith which, the following
morning, Jesus called faith of God,[2] a Divine faith, describing its character
and power in similar terms. If then the mustard seed in Christ’s teaching
elsewhere be an emblem of a faith whose specific characteristic it is to possess
Divine miraculous power, we are entitled to assume that it retains that
significance in the parable, though it is there used not as an emblem of faith,
but of the kingdom of God in its obscure beginnings. In comparing the kingdom to
a grain of mustard seed, Jesus meant to say: The kingdom of heaven is now in
appearance insignificant and impotent, but it has within it a Divine power,
which will enable it to triumph over all hindrances, and make it ere long great
and mighty. Such is the argument. It is plausible, and of course the doctrine
which it seeks to establish is true, but whether the parable be intended to
teach it or not is another question. On that point we will not dogmatise; only
we must remark that in our judgment the exegesis of the other texts, on which
the argument is based, is very doubtful. Faith, small as a grain of mustard
seed, is the interpretation which would naturally be put upon Christ’s words by
hearers living in a land where the smallness of the mustard seed was proverbial.
The objection that this interpretation implies that the disciples had no faith
at all, is of no weight. It is simply a prosaic inference, from a poetic
impassioned utterance. There is more force in the consideration that the
statement concerning faith, even thus interpreted, implies that faith is a thing
of such inherent vitality and power, that even a little of it can do great
things; and as the same thing is true of the mustard seed, it is not unnatural
to suppose that Christ’s full thought was this: If ye had but faith even of the
dimensions of a grain of mustard, ye could work wonders, such is its power, even
as the tiny seed has vital force sufficient to produce a plant reaching to the
size of a tree. That the paraphrase contains a just and valuable thought we
admit, only we cannot pretend to be quite sure that all this was suggested, or
was meant to be suggested, by the words of our Lord to those to whom they were
addressed.

[1] Mat 21:21, as rendered by Greswell, vide his work on the Parables, p. 162.

[2] Mark 11:22. πίστιν θεοῦ is the expression in the Greek, rendered in our
version "faith in God," which the R. V. retains. The Leaven The kingdom of
heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of
meal, till the whole was leavened.—Mat 13:33; cf. Luk 13:20-21. This parable
relates not to the outward, visible increase which the kingdom is destined to
undergo, but to the inward transformation which it will effect, which is not
discernible by the physical organ of vision, but by the moral sense. The action
of leaven on the dough in which it is deposited is not so much to change its
bulk as its condition, and the change is perceived, not by the eye, but by
taste. The kingdom of heaven in this connection signifies the doctrine of the
kingdom which exercises a moral influence on the heart and life of those who
receive it. It is quite compatible with this view that the recipients of the
doctrine should themselves be regarded as a leaven. Christians are a leaven in
the world, as they are the light of the world. But they are a leaven in virtue
of the truth which they believe, and the spirit which animates them; and they
act on the world through these in precisely the same way as these act on
themselves. In likening the kingdom of heaven to leaven, Jesus in effect
proclaimed a great truth, which pervades all His teaching, viz. that that
kingdom is in its nature spiritual. Leaven works from the centre to the
circumference, and it works by the method of contagion, and the comparison may
be held to imply an analogy in these respects between the emblem and the thing
emblemed; that is to say, the parable teaches that the kingdom of heaven first
takes possession of the heart, the seat of life, and thence proceeds outwards,
to exercise sway over conduct, and communicates itself from mind to mind by the
contagious power of sympathy. In these respects the Divine kingdom differs from
the kingdoms of this world, which concern themselves chiefly with the outward
life, and employ force, or laws with penalties annexed, to establish their
authority. But it is not peculiar to the Divine kingdom to work in this way; all
spiritual influence, whether good or evil, acts in the same manner. The mere
fact of a religious movement resembling leaven in its mode of spreading itself
settles nothing as to its truth or moral tendency. Leaven may fitly be used to
denote an evil moral influence as well as a good; and in fact, in the larger
number of instances in which it is named in the New Testament, it is employed in
a bad sense. Hence some have inferred that it must be so understood always, and
therefore also in this parable. In that case the parable would contain a
prophecy of a corruption of Christianity through the introduction into the
Church of evil tendencies, doctrinal and practical. But this idea is precluded
by the simple consideration that it is the kingdom itself that is compared to
leaven. It is also entirely out of keeping with the familiar facts of domestic
life on which the parable is based. Leaven, as used by the housewife, is not an
evil thing, but a means by which palatable food is produced from insipid dough.
If, indeed, we insist on introducing into the interpretation of the parable our
knowledge of the chemical character of leaven, we may produce a plausible
argument in favour of the opinion referred to. Leaven is simply a piece of sour
dough in which putrefaction has begun, and which, on being introduced into fresh
dough,[1] produces by contagion a similar condition in the whole mass. Now
putrefaction is an offensive word, suggestive of a state not pleasant to think
of, and we may hastily conclude that an object in which such a state is found is
necessarily and essentially evil. But it is not only our privilege, but our
duty, to consider this parable of our Lord, not from a chemical, but from a
popular point of view. From that point of view we are entitled to regard
everything as good which produces a good effect. In studying this comparison of
the kingdom of heaven to leaven we must put the putrefaction out of sight, and
think only of its action in causing the dough to swell, so as to be more
accessible to the heat of the oven, and in imparting to it when ready to be
eaten the palatable qualities of leavened bread. We may therefore dismiss the
eccentric notion in question as unworthy of serious consideration.

[1] The relation between the dough and the leaven is well brought out in the
German language, the names for the two objects respectively being Teig and
Sauerteig. The hiding of the leaven in the mass of dough is a point deserving
special notice. The woman took the leaven, and hid it[1] in three measures of
meal. The insertion of the piece of sour dough called leaven into the mass of
fresh dough is a matter of course in the physical process of baking, but we
ought not on that account to treat the hiding of the leaven in the parable as a
thing of no emblematic significance. The word employed seems chosen with a view
to provoke thought. Does it not point to the silent, unobserved, stealthy manner
in which the doctrine of the kingdom was introduced into the world by the Son of
man? In another place the Evangelist quotes as descriptive of Christ’s manner of
carrying on His ministry the prophetic words: "He shall not strive, nor cry;
neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets."[2] The quotation is most
apposite. Jesus, as the Founder of the kingdom of heaven, worked noiselessly, as
the dew or the light. The kingdom, in His hands, came indeed not with
observation, but in a quiet, inward manner. His doctrine dropped as the rain,
and His speech distilled as the dew; as the small rain upon the tender herb, and
as the showers upon the grass. As the result of His ministry of grace and truth
the kingdom was there, hidden in the hearts of a few simple fishermen,
tax-gatherers, and sinful women turned from their sins; and men did not know,
but kept inquiring when the kingdom should come, not suspecting that it was come
already, and was coming more and more by its secret but powerful influence on
human spirits. It is not necessary in interpreting the parables to be always
asking who is the actor—who is the Sower in the first parable, or who the Woman
in this one. A woman is the actor in this case simply because the operation
described is woman’s work. Yet one cannot help taking occasion from this parable
to remark on the womanlike character of Christ’s ministry. No masculine
ambitions or passions are noticeable there, but only the quiet, incessant,
patient, retiring industry of one who is never in a hurry and yet never idle;
who is content with his limited, obscure sphere, and utterly indifferent to the
stir and strife of the great world without. "My kingdom is not of this
world,"[3] He says to Pilate, provoking from the worldly-minded governor a smile
at His simplicity. His brethren, seeing His works in Galilee, say to Him:
"Depart hence, and go into Judaea, 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, show Thyself to the
world."[4] But Jesus has no desire to advertise Himself into celebrity in
Jerusalem, the seat of government and of religious ceremonial, but is content to
remain in the northern province, busily occupied in that humble but congenial
sphere in inserting the leaven of His doctrine into the susceptible minds which
yield themselves to His influence. It is not that His doctrine is esoteric, or
that any cunning or cowardice characterises his method of working. He could say
with perfect truth, as He did say at His trial to the high priest: "I spake
openly to. the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither
the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing."[5] But while His
doctrine was open and not cryptic, His spirit was humble and wise. He loved
quiet, unostentatious ways of working, and He believed that these would in the
long run prove the most effective. The words of the kingdom, hid in the hearts
of a few babes, would work there like a leaven, till it resulted in their
illumination and sanctification; and from them it would be communicated by
contagion to others, till the little leavened mass had leavened the whole lump
of Jewish and even pagan humanity. In his intercessory prayer Jesus offered up
for the eleven disciples this petition: "I have given them Thy word... Sanctify
them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth. As Thou hast sent Me into the world,
even so have I also sent them into the world."[6] The words are a brief but
luminous commentary on our parable, viewed as a figurative description of our
Lord’s own ministry and its aim. He taught His disciples the doctrine of the
kingdom; through that doctrine, by the blessing of the Divine Spirit, they were
at length sanctified; and when their minds had been duly enlightened, and their
hearts filled with the grace of the kingdom, they became through their words and
their lives a leaven to the world.

[1] ἐνἐκρυψεν, Mat 13:33, found only here in N. T. The corresponding word in
Luke is ἔκρυψεν.

[2] Mat 12:19.

[3] John 18:36.

[4] John 7:3-4.

[5] John 18:20.

[6] John 17:14; John 17:17-18.

Till the whole was leavened: That is another point in the parable demanding
particular attention. The question naturally arises, what is the ’whole’
referred to? In the parable it is the three measures of meal, which seems from
an induction of Scripture instances,[1] to have been the usual quantity prepared
for use at one time, amounting to rather more than four English pecks. But is
this all that is to be said? have the three measures no emblematic significance?
is the number simply a part of the natural realism of the parable? It is hard to
reconcile ourselves to such conclusions, especially considering the tempting
analogies suggested by the three measures. If we think of the individual man as
the subject of the leavening process, we have answering to the three measures,
the three parts of human nature, body, soul, and spirit, as the subjects of
sanctification; the renewing process commencing at the centre, the spirit,
passing through the soul with all its affections and faculties, and at length
reaching the circumference of the man, the body with its appetites and habits.
If we think of man collectively, the number three repeats itself under all the
various aspects from which we regard the subject of the leavening process.
Viewing man socially, there are the three forms of social existence, the family,
the Church, the State; viewing him ethnographically, there are the three sons of
Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—from which all nations of the earth have descended.
To some minds the main fact that the number three re-appears under so many
diverse forms will seem conclusive evidence that it was designed to have
emblematic significance, while to others the circumstance that the number admits
of so many interpretations will go far to show that none of them was intended.
In such questions men are very apt to be influenced by their temperament, and in
absence of conclusive evidence either way it is becoming to abstain from
over-confident dogmatism. A man of matter-of-fact juristic mind, like Grotius,
will prefer the severely literal, prosaic interpretation,[2] while a dreamy,
idealistic commentator, like Lange, will as certainly incline to the
allegorical; and it would be presumptuous in us to decide authoritatively
between them. We will not therefore say positively that the idealists are right,
though our sympathies are with them, nor lay it down as a certain truth that the
three measures represent the world, and that this parable is one of those
utterances of Christ in which the universal destination of the Gospel is clearly
taught. We may, however, without presumption say this much, that leaven is one
of the three symbols employed by our Lord to represent the action of His kingdom
in the world, and that in the other two instances that action is expressly
represented as having relation to the whole world. The three symbols are leaven,
salt, and light. We find the latter two employed in the Sermon on the Mount,
both in a universalistic way. Of His disciples as the children of the kingdom,
animated by its spirit, enlightened by its truth, Jesus there says, "Ye are the
salt of the earth. Ye are the light of the world."[3] If, therefore, He had
said, "Ye are the leaven of the world," it would only have been a statement of
the same kind, in perfect sympathy with His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount;
and it is at least probable that He meant to suggest such a thought by expressly
naming three measures of meal as the amount to be leavened.[4] To this view it
may appear an objection that the whole, whatever it is, is represented as being
leavened, so that if the whole signify the whole world of mankind at large, the
parable teaches not merely the universal destination of the Gospel as a message
to every human creature, but the ultimate universal salvation of all men.
Without entering here into that question, we simply observe that this is
pressing the words beyond what they can bear. Assuming that our Lord has in view
the world as the subject of the leavening process, we must take His words as a
broad statement of tendency, not as an exact statement of the historical result.
The three statements, Ye are the salt of the earth, Ye are the light of the
world, and the one implied in this parable, Ye are the leaven of the world, must
all be interpreted in one way, as indicating function and not effect. Doubtless
we have in the case of the leaven what we have not in the case of the other two
emblems, an express declaration as to the effect. The process goes on till the
whole is leavened. But the purpose of the declaration is to indicate the nature
of the leaven, which is to work on incessantly till it has more or less infected
the whole mass in which it has been deposited;[5] and in this respect leaven is
a very apt emblem of Christian truth, or indeed of any spiritual influence
whatsoever. It is the tendency of all spiritual influence, good or evil, to
diffuse itself more and more throughout society till its presence can be traced
in a greater or less extent everywhere. And it may be granted that in some
sense, and to some extent, it is the destination of Christianity to pervade the
whole of society, and to influence in some way, and to certain effects, the
whole human race. But it does not follow that the leavening process must in all
cases be complete and thorough. A given quantity of leaven will not leaven
thoroughly any lump of dough however large, but only the mass which is in
proportion to its amount.[6] It would influence a larger mass more or less, as a
piece of sugar would tend to sweeten a whole river of water, or a candle tend to
illuminate the whole world. We do not presume to prescribe limits to the
influence of Christianity, we simply enter a caveat against too sweeping
inferences from the words of our parable. The doctrine there taught is that it
is the genius of the kingdom of God to work outwards from the centre, where it
is first deposited, towards the circumference. It is a doctrine which justifies
large hopes in reference to the elevation of the individual, and to the imbuing
of society and the world at large with Christian principle. But these hopes must
be qualified by the recollection that Christianity does not raise even all
individuals who receive it to the same moral level, and that, as a matter of
fact, it has not found all peoples equally amenable to its influence. On the
other hand, the children of the kingdom ought not to allow such considerations
to depress their spirits, or to make them settle down contentedly in the
conviction that it is only a few that are to be saved, and that all attempts to
save others are vain. They are the elect of God, it is true, called out of the
world. But they must remember that they have not been called for their own sakes
merely, but for the sake of others. They are called to be the salt of the earth,
the light of the world, the leaven of humanity, and they should ever live under
the inspiring influence of their high vocation, seeking earnestly and always two
things, the perfect sanctification of their own characters that their influence
on others for good may be as great as possible, and the conversion of the whole
world to the Christian faith. It was, in all probability, to inspire this mind
that Jesus spake this parable to His disciples. He desired the small band of
followers who had received His doctrine, especially the twelve, to entertain
large expectations as to what might be accomplished through their
instrumentality. He said to them in effect: Ye are but a little leaven hid in
the bosom of the world, so small in bulk that men are scarce aware of your
existence. But, remember, a little leaven can leaven a large lump. See that you
undervalue not your importance as the leavened portion of the lump of humanity,
through which the rest is to be leavened. Fear not, the future is yours; it is
your Father’s pleasure to give you in ample measure the kingdom. I have chosen
and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit. Aim at bringing forth
much fruit, for that is not impossible. In the light of this paraphrase we can
see that the parable of the Leaven is, equally with that of the Mustard Seed,
admirably fitted to inspire hope even in the day of small things and obscure,
uninfluential beginnings.

[1] Conf. Gen 18:6; Jdg 6:19; 1Sa 1:24. An ephah was equal to three seahs, so
that the quantity in all three instances was the same.

[2] Σάτα τρία: tantum enim simul misceri solebat.—Vide his ’Annotationes.

[3] Mat 5:13-14.

[4] This view commended itself to the sound exegetical judgment of Bengel. He
says: Videtur hoc pertinere ad totum genus humanum, quod refert tria sata, ex
tribus Noachi filiis propagatum in orbe terræ.

[5] Stier (’Reden Jesu’) says that ὅλον is equivalent to ὅλως, and gives as
alternative renderings of the wordsἕως οὔ ἐζυμώθη ὅλον, till the whole meal was
leavened, or till the meal was wholly leavened. But whether ὅλον be taken
adverbially or otherwise, the statement must be understood quantitatively, not
qualitatively.

[6] The universalistic interpretation is objected to by Hofmann, ’Das Evangelium
des Lukas.’ The foregoing are the principal points in the parable which call for
notice. The following thoughts, suggested rather than taught therein, we append
to illustrate a feature of the Parables to which we will have frequent occasion
to refer, and which we may call their felicity. When we recall the etymological
meaning of the Greek word for leaven, and of its Latin and English equivalents,
all three—ζύμη, fermentum, leaven[1]—pointing to the effect of the substance
denoted in causing upheaving and fermentation in the mass in which it is
deposited, we are naturally led to reflect on the analogous action of the
kingdom of heaven upon those with whom it comes into contact. For there is a
real analogy at this point. Where the truth of the kingdom comes with power,
whether in the individual or in society, it produces a moral fermentation, and
the amount of fermentation it produces is the measure of its influence. The more
stir it causes in the heart and mind and conscience, the more completely does it
ultimately bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Christ
Himself referred to the tendency of His teaching to act as a ferment in society
when He said: "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you,
nay; but rather division: for from henceforth there shall be five in one house
divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided
against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the
daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her
daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."[2] Nor is
the fermenting process, so graphically described in its social aspect, confined
to the family or the community; it goes on in the bosom of every believing man.
The new iife of the kingdom not only divides a country or a house against
itself; it divides a man against himself, so that a man’s foes shall be not only
they of his own household, but even his very self—the old man fighting against
the new man, the natural desires and affections resisting the claim of the
kingdom to the place of sovereignty in the heart. Such fermenting processes in
individual experience and in the history of nations are by no means pleasant to
pass through, but they are the price that has to be paid for sanctified
character, and for Christian civilisation. On no other terms can these precious
blessings be obtained.

[1] ζύμη, from ζέω, to boil; fermentum, contracted from fervimentum, from
ferveo; leaven, from levare, to lift up.

[2] Luk 12:51; Luk 12:53. The comparison of the kingdom of heaven to leaven,
duly reflected on, might serve to correct crude notions as to the effect of
regeneration and sanctification on human nature. Judging from the artificial,
unnatural character which the profession of religion sometimes engenders, it
would almost seem as if, in the opinion of many, the new birth and the new life
produced by Christian faith involved the extirpation at once of the common
characteristics of human nature, and of the idiosyncrasies of the individual.
But this ought not to be the case if the kingdom of heaven be indeed like
leaven. For leaven does not destroy the characteristics of meal in general, or
the peculiarities of particular kinds of meal. It leaves the leavened meal
essentially as it found it, and there is no difficulty in distinguishing one
sort of leavened meal from another, wheat from barley, and barley from rye.[1]
Naturalness is a mark of Christian maturity, the sign of a completed
sanctification. In saying this we do not mean to condemn everything savouring of
artificiality in religion as spurious and hypocritical. Here again our parable
is helpful in checking onesidedness. There is a stage when the dough, in which
leaven has been deposited, seems unlike itself, viz. when it is passing through
the upheaving process of fermentation. In like manner we ought not to expect
either naturalness or geniality in a Christian when he is in the fermenting
stage of the spiritual life. His experiences then are not pleasant to himself;
why should we be surprised if they be still more unpalatable to others? Wait
till the fermenting process and the baking process are complete, and then see
how the bread tastes. If the character of a Christian possesses the charm of
sweetness when the process of sanctification is complete, we have no right to
complain that it does not exhibit it sooner,—which, however, many do, for want
of due consideration of such analogies as that suggested in this parable, and,
we may add, in the parable next to be studied, that of the Blade, the Green Ear,
and the Ripe Corn.

[1] "The meal, although leavened in all parts, retains after, as before, its own
distinctive character (’Art und Gattung’), according as it is barley, rye, or
wheat meal."—Arndt.

Finally, one in quest of arguments to prove the supernatural character of
Christianity might easily found one upon our parable. The leaven is a thing
extraneous to the meal. The woman took it from another place and put it into the
dough, to produce effects which the dough itself could never bring about. In
like manner, it might be argued, it has often been argued, the kingdom of heaven
was brought down from above, from heaven, by the Son of God, and deposited in
the lump of humanity, there to produce moral results, which human nature by
itself unaided is utterly incompetent to achieve. That the doctrine is true
needs no elaborate proof; its truth is attested by the experience of individual
Christians, as well as by a comparative study of the effects produced in the
world at large by Christianity on the one hand, and by all other religions on
the other. That it was Christ’s purpose to teach this doctrine, or either of the
two preceding, when He uttered this parable of the Leaven, we cannot positively
affirm. But if these important lessons do not belong to the primary didactic
drift of the parable, they do at least attest its felicity; for surely a parable
must be admitted to be felicitously constructed which suggests so much beyond
what it expressly teaches.


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  CHAPTER 11: 01.06.        CHAPTER 5. THE BLADE, THE EAR, AND THE FULL CORN
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Chapter 5. The Blade, the Ear, and the Full Corn Or, Growth in the Kingdom
Gradual and Slow. In the culture of grain there are two busy seasons, the seed
time and the harvest. Between the sowing and the reaping intervenes a period of
comparative inactivity, during which the husbandman is very much a mere
spectator looking on while the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the
blade, then the ear, and finally the full ripe corn in the ear. Is there any
analogy, one naturally asks, in this respect between the kingdom of nature and
the kingdom of heaven? The Great Teacher gives us to understand that there is.
Jesus said: So is the kingdom of God as if a man should cast the seed into the
ground and should sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed should spring and
grow, how knoweth not he.[1] Spontaneously the earth bringeth forth fruit, first
blade, then ear, then is full corn in the ear[2] But when the fruit permits,[3]
immediately he putteth forth[4] the sickle, because the harvest is at hand.—Mark
4:26-29.

[1] On this clause vide remarks at p. 124.

[2] The true reading seems to be πλήρης σῖτος, ἐστι being understood. The
reading in the T. R., πλήρη σῖτον, has all the appearance of a grammatical
correction by scribes. The R. V., however, retains it, also Westcott and Hort,
who think that all the variations would be accounted for if the original reading
were πλήρης σῖτον, πλήρης being indeclinable in the accusative, as "in all good
MSS. of Acts 6:5 except B." For the import of the change of construction vide
the exposition.

[3] That is, by being ripe. This rendering of πapaδοῖ (or παραδῶ) is suggested
by Meyer and approved by Weiss (’Das Markus-Evangelium,’ p. 159), Bleek
(’Synoptische Erklärung’), Bisping (’Exegetisches Handbuch’), and Volkmar (’Die
Evangelien,’ p. 289). The rendering can be justified from classical usage. Meyer
cites the expression τῆς ὥρας παραδιδούσης—the season of the year permitting,
from Polybius, 22, 24, 9. The majority of commentators prefer the rendering,
"when the fruit yields" (supple. ἐαυτόν), a sense of the word for which no
certain voucher can be cited from Greek authors, but to which a parallel can be
cited from Latin, e. g. the line: Multa adeo gelidd melius se nocte dederunt,
from Virgil’s Georgics, I. 287. Unger (’De Parabolarum Jesu natura,
interpretatione, usu,’ p. 110) alludes to a similar usage in the German
language. In a note he remarks: Verbum vexatum neque cum Fritsch. suppleverim
voce ἑαυτόν neque cum Winero, θερισμόν vel καιρόν, sed voce σῖτον vel grana,
quam quidem nostrates etiam ita omittunt, ut tanquam verbum impersonale dicant:
es giebt her.

[4] So in R. V., and approved by Dr. Field, (’Otium Norvicense,’ pars Tertia).
He refers to Joe 3:13, where the verb occurs in the Sept. as = ‏שָׁלַח‎, which
means not only to send but to put forth, as the hand.

According to a recent writer, the didactic aim of this parable was to teach the
disciples not to expect the complete development of the new life springing out
of the word of the kingdom, as the result of the exercise of an external power
on the part of the Messiah, but rather to regard it as a problem for the
spontaneous moral activity of the believing hearer.[1] This, however, is by no
means the whole, or even the chief, doctrinal significance of the parable. It is
meant to teach a doctrine of passivity not merely with reference to Christ, the
First Sower of the word, but also with reference to those whose minds are the
soil into which the seed of truth is cast; a doctrine to the effect that growth
in the kingdom proceeds spontaneously by fixed laws, over which the subject of
growth has little or no control. Of course, in uttering a parable of this
import, Jesus did not mean to teach that men have nothing whatever to do in the
way of promoting growth in themselves and others. In proof of this it is enough
to refer to the parable of the Sower, in which total or partial failure of the
spiritual crop in certain cases is attributed to preventible causes, such as the
cares of life, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things. And
even without the aid of that parable we might have been sure that it could not
be the intention of Christ to teach a doctrine which would encourage men in
vices to which they are only too prone, viz. indolence, indifference, and
thoughtless security. But why then, it may be asked, speak a parable which even
seems to look that way? To check vices of a different description to which men
of earnest spirit are prone. Active devoted labourers in the kingdom are tempted
to exaggerate their own importance as instruments; they are apt in a busybody
spirit to interfere when it were wiser to stand still and see God work; they are
prone to despondency if they see not immediate results, and to impatience when
they discover how slowly growth in the kingdom proceeds onward towards its
consummation. And Jesus desired by this parable to check such evil tendencies in
His disciples, and to foster in them the virtues of humility, dependence, faith,
and patience.

[1] Goebel. That this parabolic gem, so natural and so significant, should be
found only in Mark, is one of the surprises of the Gospel history. But we are
not therefore to doubt either its genuineness or its importance. It is evidently
a genuine logion of Jesus, and one too at first hand, in its original form, not
a modification of some other parable such as that of the Tares.[1] It is also a
parable of great didactic value, indispensable to a full doctrine concerning the
nature of the Divine kingdom, and of much practical utility to its citizens. How
important to know what to expect in reference to the growth of the seed of the
Word, whether in the individual or in the community, to prevent Christians being
scandalised when things turn out altogether contrary to expectation! None the
less important is the parable, that it proclaims a truth men are slow to
understand or be reconciled to; a fact whereof we have sufficient evidence in
the way in which this portion of Christ’s parabolic teaching has often been
handled. The law of growth in the spiritual world not being duly laid to heart,
has therefore not been found here; and the parable consequently has been
misinterpreted, or rather scarcely interpreted at all. Few of our Lord’s
parables have been more unsatisfactorily expounded, as there are few in which a
right exposition is more to be desired for the good of believers. It may seem
presumptuous to say this, by implication censuring our brethren and commending
ourselves. But a man’s capacity to expound particular portions of Scripture
depends largely on the peculiarities of his religious experience; for here as in
other spheres, it holds true that we find what we bring. Suppose, e.g., that the
experience of a particular Christian has made him intimately acquainted with the
momentous business of waiting on God for good earnestly desired and long
withheld. The natural result will be an open eye for all Scripture texts, and
they are many, which speak of that exercise, and a ready insight into their
meaning. The case supposed is the writer’s own, and therefore the parable now to
be studied has been to him for many years a favourite subject of thought and
fruitful source of comfort, viewed as a repetition in parabolic form of the
Psalmist’s counsel: Wait, I say, on the Lord.[2]

[1] So Hilgenfeld after Strauss; vide his ’Einleitung in Das neue Testament,’ p.
516. Volkmar (’Die Evangelien,’ p. 288), on the other hand, holds Mark’s parable
to be an original utterance of Jesus which Matthew could not accept without
modification; the necessary transformation being supplied in the parable of the
Tares. With him agrees Holtzman, ’Die Synoptische Evangelien,’ p. 107. These
differences of opinion are connected with the views entertained by the writers
as to the order of time in which the Gospels were written; Hilgenfeld contending
for the priority of Matthew, Volkmar and Holtzman for the priority of Mark.
Volkmar represents the three parables of the Sower, the Mustard, and the Seed
growing gradually, as an original group which together teach the spirituality of
the kingdom. Neander remarks: "This parable wears the undeniable stamp of
originality both in its matter and form; so that we cannot consider it as a
variation of one of the other parables of the growing seed." ’Life of Christ,’
Bonn’s Edition, p. 346.

[2] Psa 27:14. In this light we have ever regarded this parable. That the
progress of growth in the Divine kingdom, in all spheres, is such as to call for
waiting, being gradual and slow, and fixed down to law, seems to us its scope
and burden. Hence our title for the parable, the blade, the ear, and the full
corn, which suggests progress according to natural law, and by stages which must
be passed through in succession, none being over-leapt. And though it is often
true that there is little in a name, in this case we deem it important to direct
attention even to the title. For the title usually given to this parable in
English books is unfortunate, as tending to set the mind off on a wrong tack. It
is, The seed growing secretly, which emphasises a true but subordinate feature
in the parable, with most pernicious effect upon the interpretation. In
illustration of the mischief wrought by this falsely-placed emphasis, we may
refer to the fact that Greswell treats the part of the parable which describes
the spontaneous growth of grain[1] as a parenthesis,[2] though that it is in
reality the very kernel is sufficiently shown by the deliberate and pointed
enumeration of the stages through which the grain has to pass.[3] Equally
instructive illustrations may be found in the pages of Trench and Arnot, whose
exceptionally meagre discussions are mainly devoted to the question, Who is the
person who sows the seed, Christ, or an ordinary minister of the word?—a
question which the very opening of the parable shows to be altogether
unimportant; the formula, "So is it with the kingdom of God," signalising the
fact that the agent is not in this case the centre—that the stress lies not on
the person, but on the objective facts of the case.[4] The former of these two
writers finds himself in a dilemma on the point, from which he frankly confesses
he "can see no perfectly satisfactory way of escape."[5] His perplexity is
caused by the twofold statement concerning the husbandman, that he knoweth not
how the grain grows, and that he putteth in the sickle when the grain is ripe,
the former appearing to the writer not to suit Christ; and the latter to suit
Him alone. The Scotch commentator, on the other hand, finds an escape from the
dilemma by denying what the English commentator had assumed, viz. that the
"reaping means the closing of all accounts in the Great Day," which makes it
"the exclusive prerogative of the Lord;" and maintaining that it rather means
the ingathering of souls in conversion, a function within the competency of
ordinary ministers of the word.[6] If the harvest consist in conversions, one
naturally wonders what is to be understood by the appearing of the blade! It is
surprising that writers who are driven to such shifts, or who have to confess
themselves shiftless, should not be led by their perplexities to suspect that
they have missed their way altogether in the exposition of the parable.[7] Such
unquestionably is the fact These idle, barren discussions as to the agent in the
parable all arise from misapprehending the main point, which we repeat is not
the secretness of the growth, but its gradualness in accordance with natural
law. The key to the interpretation is to be found, not in the expression "he
knoweth not how," but in the statement that "the earth bringeth forth fruit of
herself, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear."
The truth of this assertion will appear from a cursory examination of the
leading clauses of the parable.

[1] Mark 4:28.

[2] ’The Parables,’ vol. ii. p. 125.

[3] So Weiss, ’Das Markus-Evangelium,’ p. 159.

[4] So Nippold, ’Die Gleichnisse Jesu von der Wachsenden Saat, vom grossen
Abendmahl, und vom Sterbenden Weitzenkorn,’ p. 12.

[5] ’Notes on the Parables,’ p. 290.

[6] ’The Parables of our Lord,’ p. 316.

[7] Still another instance of the perplexity produced by the false point of view
from which the parable has been contemplated, may be found in the suggestion of
Grotius that οὐκ οἴδεν αὐτός should be rendered it, i. e. the grain, knoweth not
how, to avoid the ascription of ignorance is Christ! The first point to be
noticed is the description of the farmer’s behaviour after he has finished the
work of seed-sowing. And should sleep and rise, night and day. It is not to be
supposed that these words serve no purpose except to give verisimilitude and
picturesqueness to the parable; they are essential to its didactic drift. They
happily describe a physical and mental habit in accordance with the situation,
that of one who has to pass through a protracted period of comparative idleness.
The farmer sleeps and rises, sleeps and rises, night and day, and day after day,
for many days in succession. There is plenty of time for the monotonous
repetition of these actions. And there is, comparatively speaking, little else
to do but sleep and rise; time hangs heavy on the husbandman’s hands. He rises
in the morning because he has had as much sleep as he can take; otherwise he
might as well lie in bed all the day long for all that he has to do. Having
passed through the waking hours in a listless mood, he retires to rest in the
evening again, glad to take refuge for a while from the ennui of an idle life in
the unconsciousness of sleep. Then the mood of the man corresponds to his
circumstances. He knows that his part is done, and that the rest must be left to
the soil; therefore he resigns himself contentedly to an easy-minded passivity,
leaving the earth to bring forth fruit of itself. He knows also that growth is a
process that cannot be hastened; therefore he is patient, or, as St James
expresses it, "hath long patience for it."[1] Finally, he believes that the
harvest season will come eventually, having faith in the soil and the seasons;
therefore he is free from feverish anxiety, and is in a state of happy, healthy
security as to the result of his sowing, which allows him to sleep soundly by
night. And it is this mood of mind, corresponding to the physical habit so
felicitously described, which the parable is intended to inculcate. Christ would
have His disciples understand that they must study to resemble the farmer in
these respects, and that they will have need and opportunity to do so in
connection with the progress of the kingdom in themselves and in the world; need
and opportunity for passivity, patience, and faith. While the kingdom progresses
they will find it takes its own time, and proceeds according to its own laws;
and finding this it will be their wisdom, instead of fretting or trying to force
on growth, to have an easy mind, and, like the husbandman, sleep and rise night
and day. The mood recommended is not utter indifference or carelessness, but
that which is natural to one who is interested in a process whose completion
requires time. And in this mood Christ could be and was an example to His
disciples; so that this part of the parable at least imposes on us no need to
inquire whether the Head of the Church, or one of His servants, be the agent
referred to. Christ’s behaviour as the founder of the kingdom, during His
earthly ministry, was in the spirit of the farmer. He sowed the seed of the
kingdom, and waited patiently for the result, not expecting it soon. No need, in
order to make the parable applicable to Him, to interpret this part of it as
signifying that between the sowing of the seed during His sojourn on earth and
the reaping time at the end of the world, He should no longer be visibly present
in the field.[2] During the earthly ministry itself we can see Jesus playing the
part of the man who sowed the seed, then slept and rose, night and day. We can
see Him playing that part in all departments of His ministry, and very
especially in that most important department which consisted in the training of
the twelve. How patient He was with those men! His manner towards them was that
of one who did not expect the ripe fruit of enlightened and sanctified Christian
character to appear in them forthwith, but was fully aware that between the ripe
fruit and the beautiful blossom of enthusiastic devotion, under whose
inspiration they left all and followed Him, must intervene a more or less
protracted period during which they should be as green ears, or crude fruit, of
no value except as a promise of something better to come.

[1] Jas 5:7.

[2] So Grotius: Sensus mihi videtur perspicuus, Christum a facta semente ad
messis tempus agro adspectabiliter non adfuturum. The next important feature in
the parable is the representation of the growth of grain as a thing of which the
farmer has no cognizance. And the seed should spring, and grow up, he knoweth
not how. The point intended to be emphasised here is not the mere fact of the
farmer’s ignorance, but his contentment therewith. This clause simply adds
another trait in the description of the manner or mood of the man. Apart from
any consideration of the terms employed this is antecedently probable. In a
description of a farmer’s way of life one hardly expects to find a grave
statement to the effect that he is ignorant of the laws by which seed sown in
the earth springs and grows. Of course he is, but why make so superfluous an
observation? Scientific knowledge of the laws of growth is not in his line. Life
and growth are to a large extent mysteries to all, learned or unlearned, but
especially to the practical-minded agriculturist, to whom it probably never
occurs once in his whole life-time to ask himself, How does the seed I have
sowed germinate and braird?—what is the physical cause of growth? And when we
come to consider closely the words of the parable, we find reason to conclude
that it is no such grave statement concerning the scientific ignorance of the
farmer that they are intended to convey. The words may be rendered either "when
he knoweth not," or "how, knoweth not he."[1] In the former case they simply
mean that the husbandman does not observe the growth. The seed springs and grows
up, he taking little or no notice; which is just what we should expect of a man
in the easy mood ascribed to the farmer in the previous clause. The words so
taken simply repeat in a different form of language the statement that between
the sowing and the reaping the farmer is in a listless frame of mind. Taken the
other way, the words do seem at first to contain a grave statement to the effect
that the farmer is ignorant as to the cause of growth; but on closer
consideration one discovers that they more probably contain a reference to an
ostentatious indifference on his part to all such questions. How knoweth not he,
so run the words; the pronoun standing at the end and being emphatic there, "as
much as to say, Whoever else may know it, it is all unknown to him by whom, and
for whose benefit, the seed was sown."[2] The sower of the seed is stolidly, we
may- say ostentatiously, indifferent to the cause of growth; only that the
ostentation is not conscious, but is betrayed unconsciously in his manner. And
what is the cause of this indifference? It is the consciousness that the growth
of the seed is not under his control. The farmer is a practical man, and the
only consideration that would lead him to take an interest in the question as to
the cause of growth would be the possibility of his influencing the process. If
it could be shown that it was in his power to accelerate growth, the air of
stolid indifference would speedily vanish; but as that is not possible, he takes
no thought of the matter; and his carelessness is the sign that he is aware of
the impossibility. And it is in this point of view that that carelessness is
referred to in the parable. The statement, "the seed springeth and groweth up,
how knoweth not he," really means, "the seed springeth and groweth up
independently of him, and he being conscious of the fact taketh no heed."[3] The
farmer’s indifference is signalised as the visible index of habitual and
unqualified recognition of the truth that growth is subject to a natural law
entirely beyond his control.

[1] The ὡς may be taken in the sense either of quum or of quomodo. The former
rendering is favoured by Kuinoel. ὡς, he says = cum, ut in Luc. iv. 25; and the
phrase, per participium reddendum est, ipso nesciente, non animadvertente.

[2] ’The Gospel according to Mark Explained,’ by Joseph Addison Alexander, D.D.

[3] Principal Campbell, ’The Four Gospels/ translates, without his minding it.
The motive of the parabolic representation at this point is to inculcate the
duty of practically recognising a similar truth in the spiritual sphere.
Christ’s purpose was not merely to proclaim the general truth that the
beginnings and progress of life in the kingdom of God are mysterious. This, of
course, is true, and in a purely homiletic treatment of this parable it would be
quite legitimate to make that truth a topic of discourse. We do well at times to
meditate on the mysterious miraculous character of all life, and especially of
the Divine life in the soul of man, and more particularly of the beginning of
that life in the new birth. Christ Himself invites us to such meditation in
another of his sayings, that spoken to the Jewish ruler: "The wind bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit." And we
should contemplate the mystery of a new Divine life in the soul of man with the
feelings with which it becomes us to contemplate all miracles; with awe, yet not
with incredulity, but rather with believing wonder. When a human being begins to
seek after God, to concern himself about salvation, to hunger after
righteousness and wisdom, let us behold with reverent, awestruck eye a spiritual
miracle being wrought before our face. We may not look on the spectacle
listlessly as if it were a thing of course, or of little significance. On the
other hand, we are to beware of so magnifying the mystery as to become
unbelievers in it; to take heed lest by allowing our minds to dwell unduly on
the greatness of the change which takes place in regeneration we become at
length unwilling to admit that in any particular case a regenerating work has
been wrought, because what we observe seems small, insignificant, and far from
overwhelmingly wonderful. In all probability what we observe is very small
indeed, resembling the tiny blade which springs up through the earth from the
seed buried beneath; but we must not forget that even the blade is in its way as
wonderful as is the appearance at a later stage on the top of the stalk of a
hundred grains in place of the one which has been thrown into the ground.

Such thoughts are very edifying, and practically very useful; but it was not, we
imagine, such thoughts that Christ wished to suggest when He uttered this
parable, and in particular that part of it now under consideration. His aim
rather was to impress on his hearers that as in the kingdom of nature, so in the
kingdom of God, there is a law of growth and a fixed order of development which
must be recognised and respected by them, as it is by the farmer when he takes
little notice of the growth of his grain, because he knows that it is entirely
beyond his control. He himself habitually recognised and respected that law and
order; so that the words "how knoweth not he," in the sense explained, may with
perfect propriety and truth be applied to Him. He ever acted as one who knew
that there was a fixed order, a course of nature, so to speak, in the Divine
kingdom which could not be materially modified or set aside even by His will. He
showed his respect for law and order on various occasions and in various ways.
When the two sons of Zebedee desired the places of distinction in His kingdom He
replied: "To sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, except to
those for whom it is prepared of my Father."[1] In this case He showed respect
for the moral order of the kingdom. When asked to do works of mercy beyond the
bounds of the chosen people, He declined, saying, "I am not sent but unto the
lost sheep of the house of Israel."[2] Here was respect for the political order
of the kingdom. He was fully aware that His religion was destined to be the
religion of humanity, but He knew also that in order to an eventual spiritual
conquest of the world a firm footing must first be gained in Palestine; and He
acted accordingly. Once more, Christ’s whole conduct and His whole teaching were
influenced by the belief that the kingdom which He was engaged in founding was
to have a lengthened history, and to pass through a gradual, secular process of
development onwards, towards its final consummation; and here we see His respect
for what we may call the physical order of the kingdom. He was not surprised,
disappointed, or chagrined because the success attending His personal ministry
was small; consisting in little more than the collection of "a little flock" of
twelve men, in spiritual understanding and character "babes." He looked to the
future for His reward, and saw there fields white to the harvest, the outgrowth
of the seed which He had sown. It is unnecessary to prove that His teaching is
pervaded by the idea that the kingdom of God should ’come’ only slowly,
gradually, as the result of a development proceeding according to law. We find
the thought in this parable, and in the two parables which inculcate
perseverance in prayer, and in all the texts, and they are not few, which
contain exhortations to watch.

[1] Mat 20:23.

[2] Mat 15:24. But what the Master ever bore in mind, the disciples were slow to
understand and lay to heart, and hence the parable before us. They were ready to
ask at all times the question. Why cannot the kingdom come at once, in
ourselves, or in the world? They did ask at the close of their intercourse with
their Lord: "Wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel?"[1]—as
if feeling that after years of weary waiting, now at length the time for the
fulfilment of their hope had arrived. The thought contained in our parable does
not appear ever to have got a firm lodgment in their minds even in the period of
their apostolic activity; and the same statement may be made with regard to the
whole Christian Church during the first apostolic generation.[2] The lapse of
ages has opened our minds to the truth which was hidden from the apostles, so
far as the duration of the Christian dispensation at large is concerned. But
there is reason to believe, that the bearing of the doctrine of the parable on
the sanctification of the individual, is yet far from being generally
understood. Recognition of, and respect for, the law of growth in this sphere,
are still desiderata of the average Christian intelligence. The thoughts of many
in regard to this subject are like those of children who cannot grasp the idea
of growth subject to law, and see no reason why out of an acorn should not at
once, as if by magic, come a full-sized oak. They have yet to learn that
sanctification is a work carried on after the analogy of the works of nature, in
which the law of slow insensible growth, development, or evolution universally
obtains.

[1] Acts 1:6.

[2] Greswell thinks the point of the parable is, that the Christian Church
should continue to exist and thrive through its own vitality and the providence
of God; but the aim of the parable is rather to remove a feeling of surprise
that in its earthly state it should last so long. The next important part of our
parable is that which enunciates the great law of growth with reference to the
production of grain. "Spontaneously the earth produceth fruit, first blade, then
ear, then is full corn in the ear." This is but the explicit statement of a
truth which on a right view of the parable has already been implicitly taught in
the previous clause. The sentence just quoted simply gives the formal
explanation of that feature in the farmer’s behaviour vividly and quaintly
expressed by the words "how knoweth not he." It answers the natural question,
why is he so indifferent to the growth of his grain? He who spake the parable
might have left his readers to divine the answer for themselves, as we have
already done. But He knew how slow His hearers were to understand the analogous
truth in the spiritual sphere; therefore He takes the trouble to state with the
utmost deliberation the familiar fact with regard to the natural sphere, saying
in effect: "The farmer is so indifferent to the growth of his grain because he
knows, as you all know, that he has no control over, that he cannot accelerate,
the growth, seeing that the earth of its own accord bringeth forth fruit, first
the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. Understand ye that
the same law holds in the kingdom of God, and cultivate the temper of the
farmer, that naturally produced by a due recognition of and respect for the law
of growth." When this, the true connection of thought, is pointed out, it
becomes apparent how far this part of the parable is from being a mere
parenthesis; how, on the contrary, it is the very kernel of the parable in
reference to its didactic import. But in order to recognise the true connection
of thought, men must be willing to receive the truth, which unfortunately many
are not, with the inevitable result that the teaching of the parable is evaded
rather than unfolded. A distinguished American theologian, who has done more
than perhaps any other writer to throw light on "the true problem of Christian
experience," remarks with reference to the text from which he discourses on that
important theme: "There are some texts of Scripture that suffer a much harder
lot than any of the martyrs, because their martyrdom is perpetual; and this, I
think, is one of the number. Two classes appear to concur in destroying its
dignity—viz. the class who deem it a matter of cant to make anything of
conversion, and the class who make religion itself a matter of cant, by seeing
nothing in it but conversion."[1] To the class of martyred texts belongs this
verse of our parable, not to say the parable altogether. Men will persist in
treating the verse as a parenthesis, or as an irrelevance, telling us that "in
this respect there is not uniformity: the spiritual growth from spring to
maturity sometimes requires more than one natural season, and sometimes is
accomplished in less,"[2] all because they have not the courage to grasp and
boldly proclaim the truth, that in the kingdom of God, as it reveals itself in
the individual soul, growth is slow not less than in the sphere of nature; nay,
not only not less, but, as another distinguished American theologian has pointed
out, more; it being a law that the higher the thing which grows in the scale of
being, the slower its growth.[3] We must insist, therefore, that in respect of
the slowness of growth there is an analogy between the kingdom of nature and the
kingdom of God, and that it was our Lord’s direct purpose to teach that there
is. Not only so; we must further insist that there is an analogy not only in
regard to the rate of growth, but also in regard to the stages through which the
grain passes from its initial condition to maturity. This is implied by the very
circumstance of the stages being so carefully enumerated, and also by the manner
in which the last stage is referred to. Christ says, the earth produces, first
blade, then ear; then, changing the construction, he adds, then is full corn in
the ear: meaning evidently to say, then, and not till then, not till the blade
and the green ear have been passed through, does the stage of the full ripe ear
come. The full ripe ear is what the husbandman desires, it is the end of all his
labours, of all that precedes—blade, and green ear, being merely means towards
that end; and its importance as the end of all is fully recognised by the manner
in which it is spoken of. But because it is the end, we are not to be impatient
of the preliminary stages which lead up to it, but must be content to reach the
end step by step, passing on from blade to green ear, and from green ear to ripe
ear. That is what the Lord would teach us in this verse with reference to the
things of the kingdom in general, and specially with reference to the
sanctification of the individual.

[1] Bushnell, ’The New Life,’ p. 161, cheap edition.

[2] Arnot, ’The Parables,’ p. 321.

[3] H. W. Beecher, in a Sermon on Waiting on God. Our view, then, is that the
analogy between growth in the natural world and growth in the spiritual world
must be maintained in its integrity, with regard at once to spontaneity,
slowness, and gradation. Growth in the spiritual world as in the natural is
spontaneous, in the sense that it is subject to definite laws of the spirit over
which man’s will has small control. The fact is one to be recognized with
humility and thankfulness. With humility, for it teaches dependence on God; a
habit of mind which brings along with it prayerful-ness, and which, as honouring
to God, is more likely to insure ultimate success than a self-reliant zeal. With
thankfulness, for it relieves the heart of the too heavy burden of an undefined,
unlimited responsibility, and makes it possible for the minister of the Word to
do his work cheerfully, in the morning sowing his seed, in the evening
withholding not his hand; then retiring to rest to enjoy the sound sleep of the
labouring man, while the seed sown springs and grows apace, he knoweth not how.
Growth in the spiritual world, as in the natural, is, further, a process which
demands time and gives ample occasion for the exercise of patience. Time must
elapse even between the sowing and the brairding; a fact to be laid to heart by
parents and teachers, lest they commit the folly of insisting on seeing the
blade at once, to the probable spiritual hurt of the young intrusted to their
care. Much longer time must elapse between the brairding and the ripening. That
a speedy sanctification is impossible we do not affirm; but it is, we believe,
so exceptional that it may be left altogether out of account in discussing the
theory of Christian experience. Once more, growth in the spiritual world, as in
the natural, is graduated; in that region as in this there is a blade, a green
ear, and a ripe ear. Those who demur to this view may ask us to specify the
distinctive marks of the several stages, so that our hypothesis may be verified.
We accept the challenge, and shall endeavour to discriminate the successive
phases of experience which manifest themselves in the life of a Christian in the
course of his growth in grace; though conscious that in the performance of the
task we shall receive small help from the commentators. But before we proceed to
this topic we must make a few observations on the last sentence of the parable.
But when the fruit permits (being ripe), immediately he putteth forth the sickle
because the harvest is at hand. The point of importance here is not the question
what or when is the harvest, but rather the marked change in the manner of the
farmer from listlessness to energetic activity.[1] The man who erewhile slept
and rose and walked about during waking hours, so to speak, with his hands in
his pockets, is now all alive, moving about with nimble feet, giving his orders
to his servants, saying, Go forth, with sickle in hand, for, lo, the harvest is
upon us; see there the whitened fields ready to be reaped. In connection with
this change of mood and manner the word παραδοῖ taken in the sense of permits,
is very significant. It implies that the advent of harvest removes a restraint
from pent-up energy, and lets it at length escape in action; and thus it throws
an interesting light on the nature of the antecedent indifference. It was, after
all, not a real radical indifference or apathy. It was latent energy biding its
time; it was fervent desire well controlled by the patience of hope. That
seeming listlessness was but the sluggishness of dammed-up waters, which rush
forth in an impetuous current when the temporary embankment is removed; or the
languor of the race-horse, who flies like an arrow in the race when the signal
to start is given.

[1] The verse, however, taken along with the preceding part of the parable, does
point at a great truth concerning the moral order of the world. Growth slow,
harvest sudden (εὐθέως), holds good of all Divine action in Providence.
Historical movements are slow in progress but sudden in their crisis. On this
truth we shall have occasion to speak in next chapter And such is the patience
of Christians during that time in their spiritual history when they wait on God
for the fulfilment of their desire in an enlightened and sanctified character.
Their mood may seem to others, and even to themselves, apathy, indifference,
death; but at worst it is but the mood of the man in whom hope deferred maketh
the heart sick. They wait not in real indifference, but as they who in darkness
wait for the dawn; as Paul and his shipwrecked companions waited in the Adriatic
Sea that night when they cast out four anchors and wished for the day.[1] How
much spiritual life and energy were latent in them all along becomes apparent
when the spiritual harvest season arrives, the time of illumination and
enlargement Then the apparently apathetic one becomes active in all good. Then
the man who seemed to care for nothing but himself gives himself up in
self-abandonment to a life of love. Then the Church, for the law applies on the
great scale as well as on the small, awakes from seeming sleep, shakes herself
from the dust which has gathered about her, looses herself from the bonds of
human ordinances and traditions, puts on the beautiful garments of holiness, and
clothes herself with the strength of a new creative time in which she reaps the
results of forces which have been slowly and secretly working, and also sow the
seeds of a future harvest. For it is in such great epochs that the harvest
spoken of in our parable is to be sought, not merely at the end of the world.
The harvest is the result of any historical development whether in the
individual or in society; and there may be as many harvests in the history of
the Church as there are definite spiritual movements in her career.

[1] Acts 27:29. And now we return to the topic of the Stages, that we may
characterise them more definitely than we have yet done, though we have thrown
out stray hints here and there. And here we shall confine ourselves to the
experience of the individual, though sensible that the history of the kingdom of
God at large is a far greater theme than that of any individual Christian, and
ready to admit that it was probably the former which our Lord had chiefly in His
thoughts when He uttered the parable. Our apology for restricting our inquiry to
the minor subject is, first, that we understand it better; second, that while
the larger subject is the more inviting theme to the speculative mind, the
lesser may prove the more useful to ordinary Christians; and third, that while
the parable in its first intention may have the wider scope in view, it does not
exclude the narrower. That Christ in uttering this parable had the spiritual
growth of the individual in view, as well as the larger growth of the kingdom as
a whole, will seem improbable to no one who considers these three things: first,
the very general terms employed in the introduction of the parable, "So is the
kingdom of God," without qualification or limitation; the implied doctrine
being, that wherever the kingdom of God appears there growth is in accordance
with the representation in this parable; second, the fact that in the first
parable, that of the sower, the growth contemplated is exclusively that which
takes place in the individual hearer of the word; third, that in the lesson on
perseverance in prayer, recorded in the eleventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel,
reference is made to the Holy Spirit[1] as an object of desire to individual
disciples; showing that the sanctification of His disciples individually was a
topic which occupied Christ’s thoughts.

[1] Vide on this next chapter.

First the blade—or, the blossom: for it is convenient in considering the stages
of spiritual growth to employ both emblems, the second having its root in
Scripture not less than the first, as e.g. in that suggestive expression in the
first Psalm, fruit in his season. Blade, green ear, ripe ear; blossom, green
fruit, ripe fruit: such are the alternative series of stages. What we have now
to do is to determine the characteristics of the incipient stage, that of the
blade or the blossom. The blade or the blossom signifies the conscious apparent
beginning of the Divine life in the soul. We use the epithets conscious and
apparent to qualify beginning, because we do not hold that Divine life
necessarily dates from the moment when it becomes a matter of consciousness and
observation. There may be grace in the heart before it is understood by the
subject of its influence, or recognised by others as such. This is the case in
most instances of sanctification from childhood, and the fact should be borne in
mind by parents and teachers more than it is. For there is a very common and
increasingly prevalent tendency to disbelieve in gracious influence unless when
it is seen under its ordinary form as exhibited in adults; and those who have
the charge of children, taking for granted the absence of grace from the absence
of marked manifestation, set themselves with a kind of desperate earnestness to
develop prematurely, by a system of forcing appliances, the usual symptoms of
conversion as they exhibit themselves in persons of mature years. The result of
this system in the after history of children so manipulated we believe to be
calamitous, consisting in effect in the premature consumption of all the
spiritual fuel in the soul of a child, leaving for manhood nothing but ashes.
When the life that is in the soul begins to appear it does not manifest itself
always in the same manner. It appears sometimes as a corn-blade, and sometimes
as a fruit-blossom. In the former case it attracts less notice than in the
latter. It may be observable to those who look attentively, but it does not
arrest attention; it does not catch the eye of even the inobservant, as the
blossom of an apple tree attracts the notice of even the most careless wayfarer.
"The signs of new life are not obtrusive, consisting merely in a certain quiet
thoughtfulness, a deepening seriousness, a tendency to shun society and court
solitude congenial to meditation and prayer. There is a feeling of emptiness, a
longing after the object of infinite love, a melancholy craving for love, a deep
drawing of the spirit towards the unknown Divine which can satisfy the craving,
an indifference towards the world, a delight in earnest. reading, instruction,
and meditation, a liking for the company of pious men."[1] When the kingdom of
God comes like the blossom on the fruit tree the signs of its coming are much
more marked. There is in such cases greater emotional excitement; great sorrow
it may be first, then great joy, the joy of the soul’s espousal to the mystic
Bridegroom, accompanied with a love full of rapture. "The love is consciously
first love, a new revelation of God in the soul, a restored consciousness of
God, a birth of joy and glorified song in the horizon of the soul’s life, like
that which burst into our sky when Jesus was born into the world."[2] And as the
blossom is beautiful, so this beginning of the new life is altogether lovely,
and may easily create the impression of an already completed sanctification.
Hence the notion that spiritual maturity may be attained per saltum, without any
process of growth; hence the conceit of perfection in some who are merely
beginning the Divine life. When one considers that the watchword of the mature
and experienced Christian is aspiration, and his motto "I press on," it may seem
strange and presumptuous in the beginner to be otherwise minded, and to think he
has already attained. But, in truth, it is quite natural, that "in this
flowering state of beauty" the soul should discover and even have "in its
feeling the sense of perfection,"[3]. because the flower is perfect in its way,
and the beginner has no means of knowing that this is not the kind of perfection
which he is called to reach as his goal. Inexperienced, initial Christianity is
but a blossom, and what it is to come to is ripe fruit, and it is to come to
that through sourness and unripeness. But the blossom knows nothing of fruit
either ripe or unripe; it is conscious only of itself. And ft is conscious of
itself as something beautiful, really perfect in its kind, even fairer to look
on than the ripe fruits which hang on the tree of life in the old age of
Christian experience. How beautiful the first love of the heart for Christ, the
newborn passion for Christian virtue, the devotional spirit which constantly
dwells in the breast, sending the youthful disciple to solitary spots to pray,
and setting him on efforts to think holy, heavenly thoughts all the day long I
Who that has felt this, possibly at a very early period of life, does not look
back en it as something hallowed, though, alas, he knows too well that it cannot
be relied on as a guarantee against the commission of many faults, and the
entrance into the mind of many unbelieving, bitter, bad thoughts. Across the
interval of years, in spite of much that is humbling and disappointing, in spite
of lapses, backslidings, heresies, scepticisms, blasphemies, he looks back on
that time as an Eden in his spiritual history, as a soft balmy spring-tide when
the soul blossomed into Christian faith and feeling, and the tongue was attuned
to new songs. If then, even after the sobering influence of experience, a mature
Christian thinks thus tenderly of his earlier state, what wonder if the
inexperienced should mistake the beginning for the end, the blossom for the
fruit, spring for harvest, holy feeling for holy living, ideals for
performances, gushing first love for stern fidelity temptation-proof? It is a
mistake, and a very great one, but do not laugh at it; do not be angry at it; do
not waste time preaching against it. It is a mistake that will be soon enough
corrected by experience.

[1] Arndt, ’Die Gleichnissreden.’ In his treatment of this parable, this
thoughtful and eloquent German author shows more insight than we have met with
in any other writer on the parables.

[2] Bushnell, ’The New Life,’ p. 162.

[3] Bushnell, ’The New Life,’ p. 163 For the second stage, that of the green
ear, or green fruit, will certainly come; whereof we must now speak, with no
assistance from the commentators, for scarcely one of them gives a single hint
as to what is meant by the green ear. All one can glean from their pages is a
stray remark by one that the intermediate time between the brairding and the
leaping is often a time of trial;[1] and by another, that the time when there is
no apparent growth is a time of inward growth.[2] Now as to the characteristics
of this second stage, it follows of course from the simple fact of its being the
time of waiting, of unfulfilled desire, of unrealised ideals, of green ears and
crude, sour, unpalatable fruit, that it is a time which brings experiences more
profitable than pleasant. The fruit of the Spirit tastes very acid at this
stage. Its experiences are such as Bunyan’s pilgrim had in his passage through
the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death; such as Bunyan
himself had in the years of gloom before he attained to cleat light and settled
peace, and abundant joyful Christian fruitfulness. It is a time of temptation
and struggle, of doubts and fears, of sadness, depression, and gloom, of
stagnation and torpor. It is that phase in the believer’s history whereof Newton
sings, when prayers for growth in faith, and love, and every grace are answered
in such a way as almost to drive one to despair.[3] The author of the hymn
represents the bitter experiences described in it as an answer to his prayer for
growth. And so it really is. The green ear, the crude fruit, is really a stage
in advance of the blossom, which looks so much better, as is confessed by all,
in regard to natural growth. No one looking on an apple tree after the blossom
is deadened and the fruit set, thinks of remarking, What a degeneracy! But men
are very ready to commit such a mistake in regard to spiritual growth. The
tendency is to regard transition from the blossom to the green fruit as a simple
declension, or falling away from grace, and to characterise the antecedent
experience as a merely temporary excitement; which in many cases is about as
wise as if one were to say with regard to an apple tree when the flowering stage
is past, it was only a little temporary blossom. From ignorance of the law of
growth young Christians at this stage are apt to form very unfavourable
judgments of themselves. As it is characteristic of the incipient and final
stages to entertain hopeful views of one’s condition, so it is equally
characteristic of this stage to take desponding gloomy views. The fruit of the
Spirit’s work is so bitter and unpalatable that it is readily mistaken for
poisonous fruit of the devil’s growing. The mind clouded with sceptical and evil
thoughts, the conscience afflicted with all manner of morbid scruples, the heart
cold and self-centred, too engrossed with its own miseries to interest itself in
anything beyond, how unlike these spiritual phenomena to the love, joy, and
peace of which the apostle speaks!—how natural that one in whose soul they
manifest themselves should think himself an unbeliever, an apostate, even a
blasphemer guilty of sin utterly unpardonable! The subject of these experiences
being so liable to mistake their true character, it is all the more to be
desired that others should be able to judge them more correctly. Yet how often
is it otherwise! Bunyan’s history supplies an instructive illustration. When he
was in that stage of his religious experience which answers to the green ear, he
believed he had committed the unpardonable sin, and in his distress consulted a
Christian friend who was thought to be endowed with superior spiritual insight,
with what result may best be told in his own words. "About this time I took an
opportunity to break my mind to an ancient Christian, and told him all my case.
I told him also that I was afraid I had sinned a sin against the Holy Ghost; and
he told me he thought so too. Here, therefore, I had but cold comfort; but
talking a little more with him, I found him, though a good man, a stranger to
much combat with the devil."[4] What an egregious blunder to mistake the painful
discipline by which Bunyan was being prepared to write the ’Pilgrim’s Progress,’
for blasphemy against the Holy Ghost! How many mistakes of a similar kind may be
committed in every generation by men of reputed wisdom and sanctity, but
"strangers to much combat with the devil." In the light of Bunyan’s story we can
see the utility of more acquaintance with such warfare, were it only to fit
Christians for speaking a word in season to him that is weary.

[1] Olshausen, ’Commentar.’

[2] Arndt, ’Die Gleichnissreden.’

[3] In the well-known hymn, "I asked the Lord that I might grow."

[4] Vide ’Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.’

Yet there is some excuse for perplexity in judging of such experiences as are
incident to the stage of the green ear. For while these experiences are not to
be resolved into simple declension or apostasy, they are very apt to be
accompanied by, and even to produce, moral retrogression. In a joyless state it
is not easy to hold one’s ground. When doubts assail one either as to the
fundamental truths of religion, or as to personal relations with God, it is not
easy to hold fast a good conscience, and to keep oneself unspotted from the
world. Hence, as a matter of fact, few do get into a dull, cheerless, doubting
state of mind, without losing ground spiritually. And when the conscience is
troubled the Christian can see nothing in his own case but sin. His doubts are
sin; his dryness and deadness in religious duties, his joylessness, depression,
and inactivity are all sin. And, on the whole, this is a safe view for one to
take of himself, provided he do not so utterly misunderstand the course of
religious experience as to be without hope concerning himself, like Bunyan. But,
while a practically safe view, it is far from being a complete account of the
matter. The word backsliding does not by any means sum up the experience of one
who is passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death; and to speak as if it
did, as is too often done, is simply to break the bruised reed, and quench the
smoking taper. It is quite possible that there may be very little sin in the
whole experience, but only the morbidity inseparable from the stage of
development in which it appears; as in the case of Bunyan, who was never more in
earnest in the fear of God, and the love of Christ, than when he thought himself
guilty of blasphemy. He thought there was no fruit of the Spirit in him then,
because there was none yet ripe. But there was that in him, only in crude form,
whose natural outcome in due course was to be a rich harvest of wisdom and
love—the fruit of which still remains treasured up in his immortal volume.

Only one remark more need be added on this topic. It may be supposed that the
experiences described as incidental to the second stage are exceptional. We
believe the contrary to be the fact. The experiences peculiar to this phase are
indeed by no means stereotyped in their form, but manifest themselves under very
diverse aspects in different men. But something of the kind happens to all men
of definite decided religious character. And let it not be supposed that the
more piety the less of these experiences. This were in effect to say, that the
cause of the green ear is the presence of thorns in the soil, so that if the
soil were perfectly clean, the heart altogether good and noble, the seed would
reach maturity without passing through the green stage. But the true distinction
between the thorny soil and the good soil is not that in the one the green ear
appears, while in the other it is never seen, but rather that in the one the
grain never gets beyond the green ear, while in the other it passes on from
greenness to maturity. It is no sin to be in the green ear: the sin is never to
pass beyond it; and as it is no sin to be in the green ear, so neither is it any
privilege to be conferred on faithful souls, to escape passing through it. No;
it is not the privilege of faithful noble souls to overleap the green ear.
Rather it is their lot to know more of its peculiar experiences than others, as
all religious biography attests. They who reap in greatest joy sow most in
tears. They who know best what it is to mount up on wings like eagles, to run
and not weary, to walk and not faint, know also better than others what it is to
have to wait on the Lord. For those who faithfully and patiently wait the full
corn in the ear comes without fail. But how shall we describe this last highest
stage, so as at once to convey an adequate and yet a sober view of its peculiar
characteristics? It is not easy; but in a few broken sentences let us try at
least to suggest a rudimentary idea of what has been variously named Christian
perfection, Christian maturity, the Higher Christian Life. Bunyan gives us his
idea of the state in that part of his allegory where he represents the Pilgrim
as arriving at the Land of Beulah, where the sun shines night and day, the land
lying beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and out of the reach of Giant
Despair, and from which one cannot so much as see Doubting Castle; where
Christians are within sight of the city they are going to—that is, have a lively
hope of eternal life—where they renew their marriage contract with their God,
where they have no want of corn and wine; but meet with abundance of what they
have sought for in all their pilgrimage. In the day when a Christian arrives at
this stage the promise of Jesus to His disciples is fulfilled: "Ye now,
therefore, have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice,
and your joy no man taketh from you."[1] The early joy of a believer is
passionate and transient, this final joy is tranquil, and abides. It is the joy
of a conscience enlightened, and freed from bondage to scruples without loss of
tenderness, of a mind established in religious conviction, and in which faith
and knowledge are reconciled, and of a heart delivered from concern about self
and its interests, whether temporal or eternal, to serve God and man with
generous devotion, and taught by sorrow to sympathise. Now at length there does
appear the ripe fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. A well-known writer on the
religious affections says: "The Scripture knows no true Christians of a sordid,
selfish, cross, and contentious spirit; nothing can be a greater absurdity than
a morose, hard, close, high-spirited, spiteful true Christian."[2] The statement
indicates a lack of due discrimination between sincerity and maturity. There are
sincere Christians of the character described, but there are certainly no mature
Christians of such a character. For the mature are loving, wise, benignant,
humble, patient, rich in well-doing, willing to communicate, heartily and
supremely interested in the progress of the Divine kingdom, and loyal subjects
of its King. Yet, withal, the mature Christian is characteristically free from
self-complacency. It is not possible for him, as it is possible for the immature
disciple, to think that he hath attained the goal of perfection. His ideal of
the Christian life is pitched too high to allow such a fancy to enter his mind.
"I know not how to describe the grandeur and simplicity of the state that is no
longer self-bounded, self-referring; how great a thing to such a freed rejoicing
spirit the life in Christ Jesus seems!—a temple truly ’not of this building,’
too great to be mapped out and measured; too great to be perfect here?"[3]

[1] John 16:22.

[2] Jonathan Edwards, ’Treatise on the Religious Affections,’ Part iii. sect. 8.

[3] ’The Patience of Hope,’ p. 102. This little work by the late Miss Greenwell
is full of true insight into the law of growth in the spiritual world. From
these brief hints it. will be seen that the last stage of Christian growth
cannot be regarded as a mere repetition of or return to the first, as if the
Divine life consisted in a perpetual see-saw between falls and conversions.
There is an affinity but not an identity; for that which springs out of
experience can never be identical with a state which precedes experience. A
writer already referred to puts the relation between the two thus:—"The real
object of the subsequent life as a struggle of experience is to produce in
wisdom what is then begotten as a feeling, or a new love; and thus to make a
fixed state of that which was initiated only as a love. It is to convert a
heavenly impulse into a heavenly habit. It is to raise the Christian childhood
into a Christian manhood—to make the first love a second or completed love; or,
what is the same, to fulfil the first love and give it a pervading fulness in
the soul; such that the whole man, as a thinking, self-knowing, acting,
choosing, tempted, and temptable creature, shall coalesce with it, and be for
ever rested, immovably grounded in it."[1] But, perhaps, the relations between
the initial and final stages by way both of resemblance and of contrast can be
better understood by examples than by any abstract statement. We shall therefore
conclude with a few extracts from the autobiography of one in whose religious
history all the three phases of spiritual growth were well marked, and than whom
no one was ever more competent to speak on the subject of Christian
sanctification, or has ever spoken more wisely. In a section of that work, the
author, Richard Baxter, draws a contrast between his earlier and his later
views, which is altogether very instructive, and in which the following
passages, taken at random, occur:—"In my younger years my trouble for sin was
most about my actual failings in thought and deed, but now I am much more
troubled for inward defects." "Heretofore I placed much of my religion in
tenderness of heart, and grieving for sin, and penitential tears, and less of it
in the love of God, and studying His love and goodness, and in His joyful
praises, than now I do." "I was once wont to meditate most on my own heart, and
to dwell all at home and look little higher. I was still poring either on my
sins or my wants, or examining my sincerity; but now, though I am greatly
convinced of the need of heart acquaintance, yet I see more of a higher work;
that I should look oftener upon Christ, and God, and heaven, than upon my own
heart. I would have one thought at home upon myself and sins, and many thoughts
above upon the high, and amiable, and beatifying objects." "Heretofore I knew
much less than now, and yet was not half so much acquainted with my own
ignorance. I had a great delight in the daily new discoveries which I made, and
of the light which shined in upon me (like a man that cometh into a country
where he never was before). But I little knew either how imperfectly I
understood these very points whose discovery so much delighted me, nor how much
might be said against them, nor how many things I was yet a stranger to." "At
first I was greatly inclined to go with the highest in controversies on one side
or the other. But now I can so easily see what to say against both extremes,
that I am much more inclinable to reconciling principles." "I am not so narrow
in my special love as heretofore. Being less censorious I love more as saints
than I did heretofore." "My soul is much more afflicted with the thoughts of the
miserable world, and more drawn out in desire for their conversion, than
heretofore. Yet am I not so much inclined to pass a peremptory sentence of
damnation upon all that never heard of Christ." "I am deeper afflicted for the
disagreements of Christians than I once was. Except the case of the infidel
world nothing is so sad to my thoughts as the case of the divided churches." "I
do not lay so great stress upon the external modes and forms of worship as many
young professors do. I cannot be of their opinion that think God will not accept
him that prayeth by the Common Prayer Book, and that such forms are a
self-invented worship which God rejecteth. Nor yet can I be of their mind who
say the like of extempore prayer." "I am much more sensible than heretofore of
the breadth, length, and depth of the radical, universal, odious sin of
selfishness, and of the excellency and necessity of self-denial and of a public
mind, and of loving our neighbour as ourselves." "I am more solicitous about my
duty to God, and less solicitous about His dealings with me."[2] In these
precious fragments we recognise the marks of spiritual maturity: a conscience
tender, yet free from superstition and legalism; a heart, which to brotherly
kindness adds charity; an understanding enlightened with sober, well-balanced
views of truth, refusing to call any human teacher master, yet in harmony in all
essentials with the wise and good of all ages.

[1] Bushnell, ’The New Life,’ p. 166.

[2] ’Reliquiæ Baxterianæ,’ Part I.


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  CHAPTER 12: 01.07.        CHAPTER 6. THE SELFISH NEIGHBOUR AND THE UNJUST JUDGE
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Chapter 6. The Selfish Neighbour and the Unjust Judge Or, the Certainty of an
Ultimate Answer to Persistent Prayer for the Coming of the Kingdom. At what
precise periods in the ministry of our Lord these parables were delivered we
have no means of determining. There is no ground for assuming that they were
uttered at the same time, or that either of them was spoken in close proximity
to the parable last considered. But the kindred character of the two parables
obviously justifies us in studying them together, and their didactic import
equally justifies us in taking them up at this point They form a most
appropriate sequel to the parable of the blade, the ear, and the full corn,
which teaches that growth in the kingdom of God, whether in the individual or in
the community, is gradual and slow. For the progress of the kingdom in both
spheres may be said to be the great subject of all Christian prayer, and thus
retarded progress will mean delay in the answering of prayer. And it is the
experience of such delay in the case of those who earnestly desire the progress
of the kingdom, and the temptation thence arising to cease from praying, with
which these two parables have to do. That experience is the occasion of their
being uttered, and to meet the temptation springing therefrom is their common
aim. Understanding this we have the key to the true interpretation of these
parables; failing to understand it we shall miss the mark. The expositor must
start with the assumption that an experience of delay in the answering of prayer
is presupposed in both parables; that the men to whom they are spoken are men
who have discovered that God has to be waited on for the fulfilment of spiritual
desire. We state this categorically at the outset, because the fact may escape
the notice of one who looks merely on the surface of the parables, and has
regard only to their express statements. No mention is made of delay in the
earlier parable; and while in the later words occur which imply the idea of
delay when rightly interpreted,[1] they are words capable of a different
interpretation, and likely to receive it from one who does not come to the
parable with the conviction in his mind that what makes exhortations to
perseverance in prayer needful is, and can be, nothing else than experience of
Divine delay in granting the things sought after. Such a conviction, therefore,
it must be the first business of the interpreter to furnish himself with. And
surely this ought not to be very difficult! It requires little reflection to see
that no devout man can be seriously tempted to cease from prayer merely because
he does not obtain what he asks in a few minutes or hours or even days. The
temptation can arise only after a sufficient time has elapsed to leave room for
doubts as to the intention of the Being to whom prayer is addressed to grant the
desires of supplicants. In the case of the man who knocked at the door of his
neighbour seeking bread, a few minutes sufficed to produce such doubts. But in
the spiritual sphere a much longer time must elapse; even years may be required
to put a Christian in a state of mind analogous to that of the man who stood at
his neighbour’s door—in the state of mind which makes such counsel as our Lord
gives in these parables eminently seasonable. How long it will require Jesus
does not state; we are supposed to learn that from experience; and in point of
fact those who need the comfort of these parables do so learn, and have no need
that any one should tell them.

[1] Luk 18:5; last clause, καἰ μακροθυμεῖ (or ων) ἐπ αὐτοῖς—though ho delay in
their cause: vide the exposition of the parable.

While both directed against temptations to cease from prayer arising out of the
tardiness with which growth in the Divine kingdom proceeds, these two parables
have nevertheless in view two distinct classes of experiences. The one
contemplates experiences of delay in connection with individual sanctification,
the other addresses itself to similar experiences in connection with the public
fortunes of the kingdom. That the parable of the Selfish Neighbour has in view
mainly and primarily the spiritual interest of the individual may be inferred
from the closing words of the great lesson on prayer of which it forms a part:
"How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
Him."[1] The supposed object of desire is the Holy Spirit as the enlightener and
sanctifier of individual disciples. Some critics indeed, having regard to the
fact that in the parallel passage in Matthew the general expression "good
things"[2] takes the place of the more definite phrase in the third Gospel,
question the authenticity of the latter, and see in it only an instance of the
colouring which Luke’s report of our Lord’s teaching received from his
familiarity with and predilection for the Pauline system of doctrine.[3] And we
admit that this reference to the Holy Spirit as the immanent ground of Christian
sanctity, an almost solitary instance in the Synoptic Gospels, is fitted to
arrest attention. This ethical conception of the Divine Spirit, as distinct from
the Old Testament view of Him as the transcendent source of charismata, is, as
Pfleiderer has pointed out, a characteristic feature in the Pauline system of
thought. And probably it was due to Pauline influence that Luke recognised its
importance by introducing it into his view of Christ’s teaching. But we need not
therefore doubt the originality of the saying as given in the text quoted. The
representation of the Holy Spirit as the supreme object of desire is in keeping
with the whole circumstances in which the lesson on prayer was given. The
evangelist tells us that it was after hearing their Master pray that the
disciples requested Him to instruct them in the holy art. The request implied a
consciousness of spiritual defect; and Jesus, knowing the religious condition of
His followers better than they did themselves, proceeded to make provision for
their wants by suggesting subjects of prayer to meet the lack of thoughts, by
putting into their mouths forms of words to meet the need of dumb souls, and
finally by furnishing inducements to perseverance in prayer to meet the need of
men tempted to cease praying by the discouraging consciousness that the kingdom
of God was coming in their hearts at a very slow pace. We cannot doubt,
therefore, that the earlier of the two parables on perseverance in prayer has in
view chiefly, we say not exclusively, the disappointing spiritual experiences of
individual disciples. That the later parable, on the other hand, has a wider
scope, and contemplates the general interests of the kingdom, is evident from
the application: "And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and
night unto Him, though He bear long with them?"[4] The situation supposed is
evidently that of the elect Church of God as a collective body, in a condition
of widowhood, harassed and evil entreated by an unbelieving world, and receiving
no succour from Providence; to all appearance abandoned to her fate by a God
who, far from behaving towards her as a husband, does not even maintain the
character of a just judge in her behalf.

[1] Luk 11:13.

[2] ἀγαθὰ: Mat 7:11.

[3] So Hilgenfeld, who characterises the phrase πνεῦμα ἄγιον as Gut Paulinisch.
’Einleitung,’ p. 503.

[4] Luk 18:7. The more exact rendering and interpretation of the words will be
given in the sequel.

Wherever doubts concerning the utility of prayer engendered by delayed answers
are felt, there painful misgivings regarding the reality of Divine love must
force themselves on the mind. Hence these parables may be regarded as an attempt
to reconcile with the facts of experience the doctrine of a paternal Providence.
This doctrine, we know, Jesus taught with great emphasis and unwearying
iteration, applying it both to ordinary life and to the higher sphere of the
Divine life. As taught by Him the doctrine of a heavenly Father is very
beautiful; but one conversant with the facts of life may be tempted to ask, Is
it true? Beautiful words are those spoken by Jesus about a Father who will
provide for those who devote themselves to His kingdom, and will give them all
they need both for body and soul; words full of pathos and poetry, the bare
reading of which exercises a soothing influence on our troubled spirits in this
world of sorrow and care; yet are not these lyric utterances but a romantic
idyll standing in no relation to real life? It may be right that we be thankful
for them as springs in the desert. Nevertheless, the world is a desert all the
same. Providence is anything but paternal; if there be, indeed, a Providence at
all, which often seems more than doubtful. Jesus knew that such doubting
thoughts would arise in good men’s minds, and He spake not a few words designed
to heal them, and among these a chief place must be assigned to our two
parables. These parables are, in intent, a defence of a doctrine which
Christians often find hard to believe—the doctrine of God’s fatherly love; and
as such they illustrate and vindicate the apologetic character which, in the
commencement of these studies, we ascribed to the parables generally.

Much of the interest of the parables before us lies in their pathos as apologies
for the doubted love of a heavenly Father, the deep sympathy with which the
speaker enters into the moral situation supposed, and identifies Himself with
and so mediates between both parties, the doubting and the doubted. Jesus,
through the insight of love, knows perfectly the thoughts of His tried ones, and
how God appears to them in the hour of trial; and He dares to describe the God
of appearance as He seems in the midnight of temptation, taking the tempted up
at the point where He finds them, and seeking to inspire hope even in desponding
minds by suggesting a distinction between the God of appearance and the God of
reality. And what Jesus has dared to do we must not hesitate to say that He has
done. We must not shrink from saying that the selfish neighbour in bed and the
unjust judge represent God as He appears to faith tried by delay. It is a great
fault in an expositor to be over-anxious to say that God is not really selfish
or unjust. Of course He is not, but only seems. But the point to be emphasised
is that He does seem. The expositor who fails to emphasise this point is like
Job’s friends, who in their stupid, prosing, didactic way defended God, saying,
"Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the
righteous cut off?"[1] And resembling them in their stupidity, he is apt also to
resemble them in their injustice to the tried one. Too anxious to vindicate God,
he does wrong to the tempted, instead of helping them with sympathy and counsel,
by indulging in reflections to the effect, "Thus God appears to unbelief."[2]
No, not to unbelief only, but to faith also in times of trial; to elect ones
when deserted; to an elect Church widowed, helpless, desolate, her Maker for the
time not her husband, or only a husband that is dead; to a Jeremiah asking leave
to reason with God about His judgments;[3] to a Psalmist whose feet well nigh
slipped when he saw the prosperity cf the wicked and the hard lot of good
men.[4] By all means let commentators have sympathy with God, but let it not be
a one-sided sympathy; let them have sympathy with God’s people also, as Jesus
had when He uttered these parables; and let them not stand between His faithful
ones and the comfort He designed for them in their hours of darkness and
despondency.

[1] Job 4:7.

[2] So the learned but pedantic Stier (’Die Reden Jesu’). Very differently
Olshausen remarks: The Saviour here places Himself on the standpoint of those
who experience that God oft delays long with fulfilment of prayer, and describes
Him as an unrighteous Being in accordance with the subjective feeling of the
praying one, and gives his counsel in conformity therewith.

[3] Jer 12:1.

[4] Psa 73:1-28. With pathos often goes humour, and so it is in the parables
before us. The spirit of Jesus was too earnest to indulge in idle mirth, but
just because He was so earnest and so sympathetic He expressed Himself at times
in a manner which provokes a smile; laughter and tears, as it were, mingling in
His eyes as He spoke. It were a false propriety which took for granted that an
expositor was necessarily off the track because in his interpretation of these
parables an element of holy playfulness appears blended with the deep
seriousness which pervades them throughout. With these preliminary observations
we proceed to the exposition of the parables, spoken to teach that men ought
always to pray, and not to faint. And first the parable of The Selfish Neighbour

Jesus said unto His disciples, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go
unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a
friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing which I can set
before him? And he from within shalt answer and say, Don’t trouble me: the door
is already shut, and my children are with me in bed; I can’t rise and give thee.
I say unto you, Even if he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend,
yet at least[1] because of his shamelessness he will rise and give him as many
as he needs.—Luk 11:5-8.

[1] On the force of the particle γὲ see further on.

It has been remarked of this parable, as of the Unjust Judge and many others
peculiar to Luke, that in it the parabolic character is not strictly maintained,
the fable passing into an example of the doctrine taught.[1] It has also been
pointed out that the grammatical structure of the parable undergoes a change as
it proceeds. Commencing with the interrogative form, it passes into the form of
a narrative. Had the initial form been maintained throughout, the parable would
have run thus: Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go and say to him
thus and thus, and (if) this one shall reply so and so, (will not persist
knocking and demanding until) he shall be glad to give him what he asks to get
rid of him.[2] These defects in literary form and grammatical structure do not
in the smallest degree detract from the value of the parable for the purpose in
hand. It admirably illustrates the power of importunity, by showing how it can
gain its end even in the most unpromising situation. The curiosa felicitas of
the parable will best be made apparent by entering into a little detail, first
in reference to the situation, and next in reference to the means by which
importunity makes itself master of it.

[1] Weizsäcker, ’Untersuchungen,’ p. 209.

[2] So Godet, who further points out that if the narrative form be adopted
throughout, the parable will run thus: If one of you has a friend, and say to
him, &c., and this one reply, &c. (nevertheless), I tell you, &c. Unger (’De
Parabolarum Natura,’ &c.) makes the Τίς ἐξ ὑμών the refuser and giver, not the
asker; so that the parable runs: Who is there among you, who if a friend come
and make such and such a demand, though at first annoyed, will not at length, on
account of his importunity, give him what he asks? In order to show how
extremely discouraging the situation is, it will not be necessary to lay stress
on the hour of the night at which the petitioner for bread finds himself called
on to provide for his unseasonable visitor. Travelling in the night is common in
the East,[1] and it may be said to belong simply to the natural realism of the
parable that the incident related is represented as happening at midnight. One
cannot but remark, however, in passing, that it belongs to the felicity of the
parable to suggest what it does not expressly teach, viz. that the comfort it is
designed to convey to tried faith is available to those who find themselves in
the very darkest hour of their spiritual perplexities.[2] But passing from this,
we note the discouraging circumstances in which the man in need finds himself on
arriving at his neighbour’s door. The difficulty which confronts him is not a
physical one; that, viz., of finding his neighbour so profoundly asleep that it
is impossible by any amount of knocking, however loud, to awaken him. His
discouragement is, as the nature of the argument required it to be, a moral one;
that, viz., of finding his neighbour, after he has succeeded in arousing him to
consciousness, in a. state of mind the reverse of obliging, utterly unwilling to
take the trouble necessary to comply with his request. The mood of the man in
bed is most graphically depicted. It is the mood of a man made heartless and
selfish by comfort. Comfortable people, we know, are apt to be hard-hearted, and
comfortable circumstances make even kind people selfish for the moment. Jesus
holds up to our view an illustrative example. And the picture is so sketched to
the life that we cannot repress a smile at the humour of the scene, while fully
alive to the deep pity and pathos out of which the whole representation springs.
The man is made to describe himself, and to show out of his own mouth what an
utterly selfish creature he is. First an ominous omission is observable in his
reply. There is no response to the appeal to his generous feelings contained in
the appellation ’Friend’ addressed to him by his neighbour. The man who needs
his help calls him φίλε, but he takes good care not to return the compliment.
How true is this touch to human nature as it shows itself in every age! The
rich, who need nothing, have many friends, but the poor is hated even of his own
neighbour.[3] The first words uttered by the man in bed are a rude, abrupt,
surly "Don’t bother me." For so undoubtedly ought they to be rendered. We find
the phrase, or one very similar, occurring several times in the New Testament:
as in the parable of the Unjust Judge; in Christ’s speech in defence of Mary of
Bethany against the censure of the disciples, who blamed the extravagance of her
noble work, the anointing of her Lord;[4] and in the closing words of Paul’s
Epistle to the Galatians.[5] In the two last places the words must be rendered
in a dignified way, in keeping with the solemn tone of the speaker and writer.
Jesus says, Do not vex Mary by finding fault with what she has just done. Paul,
utterly weary of the carnality of religious contention, closes his Epistle with
the sentence, Henceforth let no man cause me annoyances: for I bear in my body
the marks of Jesus. "I too am a crucified man; let me have a crucified man’s
privilege, and be done for ever with the troublers of Israel, and enter into the
rest of the weary." But it would be out of keeping with the whole situation to
put a dignified speech into the mouth of a man irritated by unseasonable
disturbance of his nightly repose. We must make him speak as men usually do when
they are out of humour, employing a vocabulary redolent of slang, and spiced
with words not worthy to find a place in dictionaries. When he said μή μοι
κόπους πάρεχε, he felt just as those do now who say in colloquial English,
"Don’t bother me," or "Don’t fash me;"[6] and the same remark applies to the use
of a similar phrase by the unjust judge.

[1] The journey homewards of the wise men of the East commenced during night,
likewise the flight of Joseph (vide Mat 2:12-14). Kuinoel, in his commentary on
this passage, refers to Hasselquist’s ’Reise nach Palästina’ in proof that the
practice still prevails.

[2] On the spiritualising of μεσονυκτίου Olshausen remarks, that as Christ’s
parables imply a fine intuition, it is a safe canon that no trait should be
overlooked if it do not disturb the image of the whole. With this I concur; only
we must always distinguish between the teaching of a parable and what I have
called its felicity.

[3] Pro 14:20.

[4] Mat 26:10.

[5] Gal 6:17.

[6] So Farrar. His remarks on the parable are very racy. "He does not return the
greeting φίλε; the expression μή μοι κόπους πάρεχε, ’Don’t fash me,’ is an
impatient one: the door κέκλεισται, ’has been shut for the night;’ οὐ δύναμαι ’I
can’t,’ meaning ’I won’t.’"—’Life of Christ,’ vol. i. p. 453, note.

Next comes a comically serious detailed description of the difficulties which
stand in the way of complying with the needy neighbour’s request: "The door is
already barred, and my children are with me in bed." Poor man, he is to be
pitied! If it were only the mere matter of getting out of bed, it would be no
great affair, now that he is awake.[1] But the unbarring of the door is a
troublesome business, not so easily performed as the turning of a key handle,
which is all we Europeans and moderns have to do in similar circumstances.[2]
And then the dear children are in bed asleep: if one were to waken them, what a
trouble to get them all hushed to rest again.[3] Really the thing is out of the
question. And so he ends with a peevish, drawling "I can’t rise to give thee."
His "I can’t" means "I won’t." The circumstances which hinder, after the most
has been made of them, are utterly frivolous excuses, and it is simply
contemptible to refer to them seriously as reasons for not helping a friend in
need. But the very fact that he does this only shows how utterly unwilling he
is, how completely comfort and sleep have deadened every generous feeling in his
heart. And that he is capable of adducing such considerations as grounds of
refusal is the most discouraging feature in the situation of the poor suppliant.
It is a poor outlook for Need when Abundance so easily excuses herself for
refusing succour. Alas, how sad to think that so much misery exists in the world
unrelieved for no better reason! It is not that physical resources adequate to
the purpose do not exist; it is that there is so much comfortable selfishness,
which regards the smallest trouble or sacrifice as an insurmountable obstacle.

[1] And yet it is probably the rising out of bed that he really objects to. This
crops out unconsciously in his concluding words: I am not able rising to give
thee (οὐ δύναμαι ἀναστὰς δοῦναί σοι). On ἐγερθεὶς in Luk 11:5, Bengel remarks,
Amicitia ad dandum impellere poterat: impudentia pulsare perseverans ad laborem
surgendi impellit.

[2] On κέκλεισται Bengel remarks, Vecte olim, qui majore labore removetur.

[3] The idea of some commentators, that τα παιδία refers to servants, is not in
keeping with the simple, homely character of the parable. Grotius, while
rendering παιδία children, thinks that the idea meant by the reference is that
there is no one at home who can without inconvenience give bread to the man at
the door. But the purpose seems rather to be to suggest the risk of disturbing
the children. But in the case of the parable comfortable selfishness for once
finds itself over-matched by importunate want. The situation is desperate indeed
when the person solicited for aid finds it in his heart to refuse it on such
paltry grounds, But the petitioner has the matter in his own hands; he can make
the unwilling one fain to give him whatever he wishes, be it three loaves or
thirty:[1] not for friendship’s sake certainly, for of that there can be little
hope after that contemptible "I can’t rise and give thee;" but for very
selfishness’ sake to get rid of the annoyance and be free to relapse into
slumber. How then? What are the means by which need is able to make itself
master of the situation? One word answers the question. It is shamelessness,
ἀναίδεια. Shamelessness, not in knocking at the door of a neighbour at such an
hour,[2] for that may be excused by necessity, and at all events it has failed.
The shamelessness meant is that which consists in continuing to knock on after
receiving a decided and apparently final refusal. Think of it! the petitioner
pays no heed to the excuses advanced and to the denial given. He knocks on
without mercy and without delicacy, continues to knock louder and louder, hoping
to compel his neighbour to rise and give him what he wants even out of a regard
to that very comfort which he loves so dearly. How indecent! But necessity knows
no restraints of a merely conventional kind, and success covers a multitude of
sins. And of course the shameless one succeeds. For comfort’s sake his neighbour
at first refused his request, and for comfort’s sake at last he will be fain to
grant it. For how can he sleep with such a noise going on without; and what
chance is there even of the children, deep and sweet though their slumber be,
sleeping on through it all? The best thing to be done is just to rise and do
reluctantly and tardily what should have been done voluntarily and at once.[3]

[1] Bengel on ὅσων remarks, Quotquot, vel si plures sint panes, quam quos summa
necessitas postulat. Non incommodius est multos jam dare quam tres, unumve.
There is a various reading here, some MSS. having ὅσον. With δσον the proper
rendering is "as much as he wishes," with ὅσων "as many as he needs."

[2] So Bengel, noctu venientis.

[3] Christ’s purpose is not to assert dogmatically that the neighbour will not
help his friend for any other reason, but to assert that he will certainly do it
for the reason specified. This is the force of the particle γἐ in the clause διά
γε τὴν ἀναίδειαν αὐτοῦ. Klotz (in Devarium) derives γὲ from ΓΕΩ = low, or from
ἄγε, which renders the reader or hearer attentive, and so gives more importance
to the word excepted. He says that wherever anything is affirmed by γὲ a certain
opposition is implied; not such, however, that it opposes things contrary, inter
se, but so that it distinguishes and makes one thing stand out more than
another. Thus if we say of one of two ἐκεῖνός γε ἤκει, we do not mean the other
does not come, but this one certainly comes. The use of the future tense in the
previous clause, however (εἰ καὶ oὐ δώσει), implies that relief on the score of
friendship is very improbable. The particle γὲ has the same force in the other
parable (Luk 18:5). The words of the unjust judge are to be paraphrased: Though
I fear not God, nor regard man, and therefore little is to be expected from me
on that score, yet at least on account, &c.

How expressive that one word shamelessness, and how instructive! It teaches us
the nature of true prevailing prayer. The prayer which gains its end is prayer
which knocks till the door is opened, regardless of so-called decencies and
proprieties, which seeks till it obtains, at the risk of being reckoned
impudent, which simply cannot understand and will not take a refusal, and asks
till it receives. In the parable importunity is completely successful, and we
see for ourselves that it cannot fail to be. The seeker has only to continue
knocking to gain his point. That very love of comfort evinced by his neighbour,
which constitutes the initial difficulty, supplies him with the sure means of
achieving a triumph. But when we come to apply the parable to the case of prayer
addressed to God, it appears to lack cogency as a persuasive to perseverance,
for want of parallelism in the circumstances. The spirit of doubt will have no
difficulty in evading the implied argument. It may say, "This parable certainly
shows that importunity may prevail in very unlikely and discouraging
circumstances. But the circumstances supposed cannot occur in the case of prayer
addressed to the Divine Being. We can never have God in our power, as the
petitioner in the parable had his neighbour; we cannot put God in a dilemma
between granting our request and losing the thing which He values more than all
else, viz. His own comfort or felicity. If God be really a Being who cares more
for His own felicity than for man’s good, One living high up in heaven a life of
ease careless of mankind, it is not in my power to disturb His serene existence
by any prayers of mine, however urgent. I may cry, but He does not hear, or
hears as one who heareth not. He is too remote from this world to be disturbed
by its noise, or to be interested in its concerns; He stands upon the vault of
heaven and looks down calmly with His arm in His bosom, a passionless spectator
of the tragedies and comedies of time. And my perplexity is to know whether this
be indeed the character of Deity. To me it now seems as if it were; for I cry,
and receive no answer: I knock, and no door of relief is open to me. And the
parable does not solve my doubt, it simply leaves me where it found me." All
this is perfectly true, and Jesus in effect admitted it to be so. For after
uttering the parable He went on immediately to make a solemn declaration on His
personal authority, on which, and not on the parable, He desired the tried soul
to lay the stress of its faith: "And I say to you, Ask, and it shall be given
unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
Jesus pledges His word that those who act in accordance with this counsel shall
find the event justify it. The καγὼ with which the sentence begins is all the
more emphatic that the ὑμῖν λέγω which follows occurs for the second time here,
being found in the previous sentence which forms the concluding part of the
parable. One might have expected the emphatic personal pronoun to be used in the
first instance rather than in the second. There must be a reason why the reverse
is the case, and it is not difficult to discover. The first I say to you is
unemphatic because the statement which follows rests not on the Speaker’s
authority, but on the reason of things. Any intelligent person could say what
Christ says there, for it is obvious to every one on reflection how the scene
described must end. The man in bed must get up and serve his neighbour. But the
second statement, to the effect that those who pray to God shall likewise be
heard, rests absolutely on Christ’s authority. It is not given as a fact which
is self-evident, but as a fact which He, the Speaker, knows to be true.
Therefore in this case He says, "And I say to you, Ask, and ye shall receive."
But it may be asked, If we are to take this momentous matter on Christ’s word,
why speak the parable at all, why argue; why not simply assert? In reply we say,
Because the parable is not good for everything, it is not therefore good for
nothing. It serves at least to put doubting ones into better spirits, to cast a
gleam of hope athwart the landscape, to induce them to pray on in spite of
discouragements, until faith has surmounted her doubts, and come to see that God
is not the selfish, indifferent, heartless One He seems, but what Jesus called
him in the end of this lesson on prayer—a heavenly Father. From the sentence in
which that blessed name is used we have already learned that throughout this
lesson on prayer Jesus supposes the Holy Spirit, or personal advancement in
spiritual life, to be the chief object of desire. Hence it follows that even
that best gift is not given forthwith, though certain to be given eventually; an
inference in entire accordance, it will be observed, with the teaching of the
parable considered in the last chapter. It will be found, that is to say, in
experience, that God, the Father in heaven, seems for a time unwilling to grant
to those who seek first the kingdom even the very thing they above all things
desire, viz. righteousness. There will be phases of experience in which it shall
seem to disciples that they ask for bread and get only a stone, or for fish and
get a serpent, or for an egg and get a scorpion. The possibility or even
probability of such experiences is implied in the simple fact that Jesus thought
it necessary to refer to such hypothetical cases. It is because there are times
when God seems to play the cruel part described that Jesus puts the questions:
"If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a
stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? or if he
shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?" He knew that such dark thoughts
concerning God lurked unavowed in even good men’s hearts, and therefore He put
them into words, in the hope that by bringing them into the full light of
consciousness doubters might see it to be utterly incredible that God could do
what even evil men are incapable of, and so be prepared for accepting with
cordial faith the argument à fortiori with which the doctrine winds up: "How
much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?"
The Unjust Judge And he spake to them a parable to the effect that it is
necessary that they[1] should always pray, and not lose heart,[2] saying, There
was in a certain city, a certain judge, who feared not God, nor regarded man:
and there was a widow in that city; and she kept coming[3] to him, saying,
Avenge me of mine adversary. And he was not willing for a time: but afterwards
he said in himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet on account of
this widow causing me trouble, I will avenge her, lest at last, coming, she
strike me.[4] And the Lord said, Hear what the judge of unrighteousness saith.
And shall not God avenge His elect, who cry unto Him day and night, and He
delays (to interpose) in their cause?[5] I tell you that He will avenge them
speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the
earth?—Luk 18:1-8.

[1] Many MSS. have αὐτοὺς after προσεύχεσθαι. It is wanting in T. R.

[2] ἐγκακεῖν, a Pauline word; vide Eph 3:13; 2Th 3:13; Gal 6:9, &c.

[3] ἥρχετο, imperfect.

[4] The words εἰς τέλος may be connected either with ἐρχομένη or with ὐπωπιάζῃ.
The construction depends on the sense assigned to the verb. Vide exposition.

[5] There are two readings here: καὶ πακροθυμῶν, as in T. R., and και
μακροθυμεῖ, generally preferred by critics on such good grounds that I feel
justified in adopting it For further particulars vide exposition. In this
parable the Hearer of prayer is appropriately represented by a judge, not as in
last parable by a private individual, the prayers which He seems to disregard
being ex hypothesi addressed to Him by the collective body of His people in His
capacity of Divine Ruler, exercising a providence and government over all. The
present parable shows not less felicitously than the preceding the power of
importunity to prevail even in the most discouraging situation. No situation
could be conceived more unfavourable than the one depicted here, whether we
regard the man who occupies the seat of justice or the individual who appears
before him as a petitioner. The judge is described as one who neither fears God
Almighty, nor regards men worthy of esteem,[1] terms proverbially current among
Jews and Greeks alike to denote a person of utterly unprincipled character.[2]
He is an unprincipled, lawless tyrant, devoid of the sense of responsibility and
of every sentiment of humanity and justice. The picture is not an ideal one;
there were such judges in those days; there are such judges in the same quarter
of the world still, if we may trust a recent writer on Palestine, who, after
describing the Pasha of Damascus as an obese, gluttonous, sensual, slothful,
indifferent mortal, remarks, "It is the misfortune of Turkey that the majority
of the governing class are men ignorant and fanatical, sensual and inert,
notoriously corrupt and tyrannical, who have succeeded only in ruining and
impoverishing the countries they were sent to govern."[3] The judge of our
parable is certainly a bad sample of a low kind, for he not only is one who
fears not God, nor regards man, but describes himself as such: "Though I fear
not God, nor regard man."[4] It is true he says this not toothers, but to
himself; but it is a sign of deep depravity that he can even go this length.
Ordinary villains try to hide their character even from themselves, but this
consummate villain with profligate frankness acknowledges to himself that he is
quite as bad as other people think him. He does not heed the evil opinion
entertained of him by other men and by his own conscience; he promulgates its
truth and laughs at it as a good joke. There could not possibly be a worse
character, or a more hopeless tribunal than that over which such a man presides.
This judge you have no chance of influencing except through his self-love. If he
can be made to feel that it will be more advantageous or less troublesome to do
right than to do wrong, he will do right, but for no other reason.

[1] Bengel distinguishes the two verbs φοβοῦμαι and ἔντρέπομαι thus Solemus
φοβεῖσθαι potentiam, ἐντρἐπεσθαι existimationem.

[2] For examples in Greek authors vide Wetstein.

[3] Conder, ’Tent-work in Palestine,’ i. p. 251.

[4] Weizsäcker in the place already referred to mentions soliloquising on the
part of the actors in the parables as another characteristic of the later
parables of Luke’s Gospel. The petitioner who appears before this corrupt judge
is, primâ facie, a very unlikely person to prevail with him. She is a
friendless, destitute woman, too weak to compel, too poor to buy, justice; or to
say all in a single word, a widow, who in the East was a synonym for
helplessness, a prey to oppressors and knaves of every description, pious or
impious, as many a pathetic text of Scripture proves. Witness that stern word of
the prophet Isaiah against the degenerate rulers of Israel: "Thy princes are
rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth
after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the
widow come unto them;" and that bitter, indignant word of Christ concerning the
Pharisees of His time: "Ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long
prayers."[1]. For some good remarks on the forlorn position of widows in the
East, vide Trench, pp. 492-3. A widow was one who was pretty sure to have plenty
of adversaries if she had anything to devour, and very unlikely to find any one
on the seat of judgment willing to take the pains to look into her cause and to
grant protection and redress. She is therefore most fitly selected to represent
a petitioner for justice who has the worst possible prospect of success in his
plea, most fitly chosen to represent the Church or people of God in their most
forlorn plight, overborne by an unbelieving, godless world, and apparently
forgotten even of their God.

[1] Isa 1:23; Mat 23:14

Yet, as the parable goes on to show, there is hope even here. Desperate as the
situation is, even a widow may find means of obtaining redress even from such a
profligate administrator of injustice and perpetrator of iniquity under forms of
law. Corrupt judges in the East, as elsewhere, may be influenced in three ways;
by intimidation, by bribery, and by bothering. The poor, friendless widow could
not wield the first two modes of influence, but the third was open to her. She
had a tongue, and could persecute the judge with her clamour until he should be
glad to be rid of her by letting her have what she wanted. And this judge,
profligate though he was, feared a woman’s tongue made eloquent by a sense of
wrong and extreme misery. He has experienced it before, and he knows what is
possible. Therefore he thinks it best not to drive the widow to extremities, and
gives in in good time. He is deaf to her entreaties for a while, too indolent to
listen, perhaps accustomed to treat all complaints at first with apathy, and to
wait till he has roused the furies, as mules sometimes refuse to start on their
journey till they have been sufficiently thrashed by the driver. He waited till
he saw the storm beginning to rise, the subdued, respectful tone of supplication
rising into the shriller key and more piercing notes of impatience and passion.
Then he began to say to himself, "I care nothing for justice; I am neither
pious, righteous, nor humane; I regard solely my own pleasure and comfort; but
this widow threatens to be troublesome; her reiterated entreaties have already
begun to bore and bother me; I will give a verdict in her favour, lest at last
she, coming, strike me." And so the widow gains her cause, not through regard to
justice, but through the very love of ease which at first stood in her way.

It will be observed that in our free version of the judge’s soliloquy, in which
he prudently made up his mind to surrender, we have put a strong sense on the
words ὑπωπιάζῃ με, rendered in the English version "weary me." In doing so we
are not guided simply by the dictionary sense of the verb, for it may be
rendered either way, but by what seems required by the situation.[1] For we must
hold that the word denotes something apprehended in the future worse than
anything that has yet happened. Now the judge already feels bored. He assigns as
a reason for granting the widow’s request that she plagues or worries him with
her demands. If, therefore, we render the term in question by some such mild
word as ’weary’ or tease, we get something like a tautology: She worries me; I
will do her right, lest by her continual coming she annoy me. How much more
expressive and characteristic to make the judge say, "She bothers me; I will do
her right, lest at last she, coming, go the length of using her fist instead of
her tongue." This rendering, therefore, we, with Bengel,[2] Meyer, and Godet,
decidedly prefer, preferring also what goes along therewith, the construction of
εἰς τέλος with the verb, not with the participle ἐρχομένη, and rendering it not
’continually,’ as it requires to be in the latter case, but ’at length.’ To this
rendering it may be objected that it is not credible that the judge really
feared physical violence on the part of the widow. This is a very prosaic
objection. For, as Godet observes, there is pleasantry in the word.[3] The judge
humorously affects to fear the exasperated widow’s fists. There is also
pictorial expressiveness in the word. Striking is the symbol of a passion that
spurns all control, which, however it manifests itself, whether by words or by
blows, is the thing the judge really fears. The whirlwind of a passion roused to
its height by a keen sense of wrong is a thing no man cares to encounter. As for
the question of fact, whether such a passion could even at last lead to physical
violence, it is one we do not care to decide very confidently in the negative.
It is hard to say what a poor widow provoked beyond endurance by the unrighteous
indifference of a judge, will do.

[1] It occurs again in 1Co 9:27, where it clearly should be rendered ’beat.’ I
beat my body as a boxer beats an antagonist.

[2] Bengel says ὑπωπίαζῃ, suggilet. Hyperbole, judicis injusti et impatientis
personæ conveniens. He adds: Huc refer, εἰς τέλος, nam ἐρχομἐνη est quasi
παρέλκον quo prætermisso sententia tamen quodammodo integra est, quod tamen,
adhibitum, orationem facit suavem, moratam, &c. Field (’Otium Norv.’) objects to
this view that it demands the aorist of the verb instead of the present, because
it points to a concluding act, while the present expresses continuous action.

[3] Il y a dans cette parole, une teinte de plaisanterie. In the case supposed
in this parable then, not less than in that supposed in the other, it is evident
to every one that importunity must inevitably triumph. We are therefore prepared
to pass on to the consideration of the application made by the Speaker to the
case of a suffering Church praying to God. We observe that the evangelist
introduces the epilogue by the formula, "And the Lord said." It is a formula of
frequent occurrence in his Gospel, and it has attracted the notice of critics,
especially in connection with the title ’Lord,’ used where the other evangelists
would employ the name Jesus, and not unnaturally regarded as one of the traces
in this Gospel of the influence of the faith of the apostolic Church on the mind
of its author. Here the formula seems intended to mark the important character
of the statement which follows. The evangelist is not content that it should
come in simply as the conclusion of a parable; he desires it to stand out
prominently as a substantive part of Christ’s teaching. Looking then into this
statement as one thus proclaimed to be of great importance, we find that the
nota bene of the evangelist is fully justified. The application of the parable
is in effect an argument à fortiori. If even an unjust judge can be moved to
grant redress to a forlorn widow, what may not be expected of a righteous God by
those who stand to Him in the relation of an elect people, chosen out of the
world to be the heirs of His kingdom? They ought to feel assured that God will
not allow His purpose in their election to be frustrated, but will certainly and
effectively give them the kingdom, and so possess their soul in peace, though
they be but a little flock in a wilderness swarming with wolves and ravenous
beasts of every description. But unhappily the ’little flock,’ the ’elect’ race,
in their actual position are not able to appreciate the force of this à fortiori
argument, because God seems to them the opposite of righteous, and the very idea
of their election an idle, fond dream. Deep down in their hearts there may be a
faith both in God’s righteousness and in His gracious purpose, but it is a faith
bewildered and confounded by the chaotic condition of the world, which seems
incompatible with the reality of a moral order maintained by a righteous and
benignant Providence. They are in a state of mind similar to that of the prophet
Habakkuk when he penned those sublime words: "Thou art of purer eyes than to
behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore then lookest Thou upon
them that deal treacherously, and holdest Thy tongue when the wicked devoureth
the man that is more righteous than he? And makest men as the fishes of the sea,
as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?"[1] The prophet was
distracted by the glaring contradiction between his idea of God and facts. He
regarded God as a Being who could not look on with indifference while an
iniquity was being perpetrated like that wrought by Babylonian tyrants, who
threw their net of conquest into the sea of the world and drew whole nations as
captives away from their native land; and yet God does actually look on, a
passive spectator, while that very thing is being done to Israel, His elect
people. Precisely similar is the state of mind of the ’elect,’ whom Christ has
in view. For men in this mental condition the à fortiori argument suggested can
have little force, for they stand in doubt of the very things on which the à
fortiori element rests: the righteousness or faithfulness of God, and the
reality of the covenant relation implied in election. And Christ was perfectly
well aware of this, and showed that He was by what He said. For He is not
content, we observe, with merely asking the question, "Shall not God avenge His
elect ones?" as if there were no room for reasonable doubt in the matter, or as
if doubt were impious. He adds words which clearly show how sensible He is of
the difficulty of believing in God’s judicial interposition, in the
circumstances. The added words contain three virtual admissions of the
difficulty. The first is contained in the description given of the elect ones as
a people in the position of crying unto God day and night, and of not being
heard by Him. Such we take to be the import of the second half of the seventh
verse, rendered in our version, "which cry day and night unto Him, though He
bear long with them." We adopt the reading μακροθυμεῖ, found in the chief
uncials, and approved by the critics, as the more probable just because the less
obvious, and we take it as depending not on oὐ μὴ ποιήση, the construction
required if we adopt the reading μακροθυμῶν, but on τῶν βοώντων. The whole
sentence from this point onwards is in effect a relative clause descriptive of
the situation of the elect. Their position is that of persons "who cry to Him
day and night, and yet He delays interposing in their cause" (ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς).[2]
The same meaning comes out if we adopt the other reading and construction. What
is then said is, "Shall not God eventually avenge His elect, although He delays
in their case, while they cry unto Him day and night?" Thus on either reading or
construction the words undoubtedly contain the thought that there is such a
delay in answering prayer as is extremely trying to faith. The elect ones are in
the position of David when he complained, "O my God, I cry in the daytime, but
Thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent."

[1] Hab 1:13-14.

[2] For the suggestion that μακροθυμεῖ is dependent on βοώντων I am indebted to
Dr. Field, who kindly communicated his opinion in a letter to my colleague, Dr.
Douglas, Principal of the Free Church College, Glasgow. Dr. Field’s view of the
whole passage, since published in ’Otium Norvicense,’ is the same as that given
above. In support of the use of the verb μακροθυμεῖ in the sense of delay (moram
facere) he refers to Sir 35:18, and also to the following passage in
Chrysostom’s works: οὐκ οἰκτείρει τὸ γύναιον (the Syroph. woman) ἀλλὰ
μακροθυμεῖ, βουλόμενος τὸν λανθάνοντα θησαυρὸν ἐν τῆ γυναικὶ κατάδηλον ἅπασι
ποῖησαι.—Opp. T., iv. p. 451, A. Ed. Ben. The solution of the grammatical
difficulty is at once simple and satisfactory, and it is confirmed by the
reference made by Dr. Field, and introduced in the text, to the experience of
David, expressed in very similar terms. The passage in Ecclus. is still more
closely parallel. It runs, "For the Lord will not be slack (οὐ μὴ βραδύνῃ),
neither will the Mighty be patient towards them" (οὐδὲ μὴ μακροθυμήση ἐπ᾿
αὐτοῖς—said with reference to the prayers of the poor). Dr. Field proposes this
translation of the clause: "Who cry unto Him day and night, and He deferreth His
anger on their behalf." The second admission of the difficulty of believing in
God is contained in the asseveration which follows in the next verse: "I tell
you that He will avenge them speedily." It is very significant that Jesus deems
it necessary to make this strong assertion. It is evident that He relies more
for the inspiration of faith into doubting spirits on His own personal assurance
than on the à fortiori argument. It is a repetition in effect of the emphatic "I
say unto you" in the former parable. It is one seeking by the emphasis with
which He declares His own belief to communicate faith to other minds, even as
David sought to inspire courage and hope in the breasts of his brethren by the
hearty counsel "Wait, I say, on the Lord." We must bear this in mind in
interpreting the closing expression of this declaration, ’speedily’ (ἐν τάχει).
If, as some think, the phrase signifies ’soon,’ ’without delay’ it must be
understood rhetorically, not as a prosaic statement of fact. In any case the
exclusion of delay implies delay, the excuse implies that there is ground for
accusation. The Speaker means to say that whatever delay there may have been in
the past, there will be no further delay. But we doubt whether the phrase is
thus correctly rendered. It means, we think, not soon, but suddenly. So taken,
the expression conveys a truth which we find elsewhere taught in Scripture, viz.
that however long the critical action of Divine providence is delayed, it always
comes suddenly at last, "as a thief in the night." Slow but sure and sudden at
the crisis, such is the doctrine of Scripture as expressed in the proverbial
phrase just quoted, in reference to the action of God in history. It is a
doctrine confirmed by the historic records of nations, as exemplified in the
case of Israel herself, whose awful doom, foretold by ancient prophets and long
delayed, at last overtook her literally like a thief in the night. It was
probably to this very doom impending over Israel that Jesus referred when He
said, "I tell you that He will avenge them ἐν τάχει·."[1]

[1] Godet also takes ἐν τάχει in the sense of suddenly: "non bientot mais bien
vite." That this phrase does not necessarily exclude delay in the future any
more than in the past appears from the final words, which contain the third
implicit admission that there is much in the experience of God’s people to try
their faith in His righteousness and love. "Nevertheless when the Son of man
cometh, shall He find faith upon the earth?" The question amounts to an
assertion of the negative.[1] It does not mean that there will be no
Christianity, no piety in the earth or in Palestine when the Son of man comes to
judge the enemies of His gospel and to vindicate the rights of His followers. It
means that the faith in demand, the faith He wishes to inspire, faith in God’s
providence, will have all but died out in the hearts even of the godly, even of
the elect. So long will the Judge delay His coming, that it will come to this.
What an ample admission of trial involved to faith in God’s peculiar manner of
acting in providence! And there is no exaggeration in the statement. It is often
the case that God’s action as a deliverer is delayed until His people have
ceased to hope for deliverance. So it was with Israel in Egypt; so was it with
her again in Babylon. "Grief was calm and hope was dead" among the exiles when
the word came that they were to return to their own land; and then the news
seemed too good to be true. They were "like them that dream" when they heard the
good tidings.

[1] Bengel on ἄρα finely remarks: magnum ἤθος habet, oratione negante per
interrogationem temperata. This method of Divine action—long delay followed by a
sudden crisis—so frankly recognised by Christ, is one to which we find it hard
to reconcile ourselves. These parables help us so far, but they do not settle
everything. They contain no philosophy of Divine delay, but simply a
proclamation of the fact, and an assurance that in spite of delay all will go
well at the last with those who trust in God. It is very natural that we should
desire more, that we should seek the rationale of the mystery, so strikingly
expressed in those words, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a
thousand years as one day." Why is the Divine temper so calm that He can regard
events when they happen as we regard those which happened a thousand years ago,
and yet so impulsive that at the end of a thousand years He acts as suddenly and
hotly as we men do when our purposes are just freshly formed in our hearts?
Unbelief will reply, Because God is simply a synonym for a stream of tendency
which silently moves on like the river Niagara till it approaches its natural
consummation, when it makes its mighty plunge, to the astonishment of all
spectators. Christians cannot accept this solution. They must find a way of
reconciling delay with the reality of a Divine purpose, and with the
graciousness of that purpose. And it is not impossible to find such a way. Delay
is not incompatible with grace. It is simply the result of love taking counsel
with wisdom, so that the very end aimed at may not be frustrated by too great
haste to attain it. Men must be prepared for receiving and appreciating the
benefit God means to bestow on them, and delay is an important element in the
discipline necessary for that purpose. The child cannot at once enter on its
inheritance; it must be under tutors and governors in order that it may at
length enjoy and rightly use the freedom to which it is destined.


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  CHAPTER 13: 01.08.        CHAPTER 7. THE PARABLE OF EXTRA SERVICE
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Chapter 7. The Parable of Extra Service Or, the Exacting Demands of the Kingdom,
and the Temper Needful to Meet Them. On a certain occasion Jesus said to His
disciples, Which of you is there, having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle;
who will say to him on his returning from the field, Go straightway[1] and sit
down to meat? And will not rather, on the contrary, say to him, Make ready
wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me till I have eaten and
drunken; and after that thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank the servant
because he hath done the things commanded him? I trow not.[2] So likewise ye,
when ye shall have done all the things commanded you, say, We are unprofitable
servants: we have (but) done that which it was our duty to do.—Luk 17:7-10.

[1] The εὐθέως is to be taken with παρελθὼν following, not as in A. V., with
loft going before. Bengel truly remarks that whatever the master said He would
say it at once, so that εὐθέως is superfluous as joined to ἐρεῖ.

[2] The words οὐ δοκῶ are omitted in some MSS., probably by mistake of the
transcriber through similar ending (αὐτῳ δοκῶ).

Little or no help in the interpretation of this parable can be got from the
previous context. There is no apparent connection between it and what goes
before, and it would only lead us out of the track which conducts towards its
true meaning to endeavour to invent a connection. Critics who are ever on the
outlook for traces of tendency in the Gospels tell us that the parable and the
two preceding verses are connected by the Pauline bias of both. As in these two
verses Jesus, in true Pauline fashion, teaches the omnipotence of faith to
disciples who had asked Him to increase their share of that grace, so in the
parable He inculcates the not less Pauline doctrine of the insufficiency of
works.[1] We will not deny that the Pauline character of these two sections may
very possibly have been what chiefly interested the evangelist’s mind, and led
him to introduce them into his narrative in juxtaposition. In that case, if we
were bound as expositors to have supreme regard to Luke’s motive as a reporter,
we should have to relegate the present parable to the second head in our
classification of the parables, and to treat it as a parable of grace, designed
to teach that in the kingdom of God all is of grace, and not of debt, or that
merit in man before God is impossible, the key-note of the whole being the
closing words, "We are unprofitable servants." But we do not feel bound to adopt
as our clue the private feelings of the evangelist. It is quite conceivable that
what chiefly interested his mind in reporting the parable was its bearing on the
doctrine of salvation, and that nevertheless the purpose of our Lord in uttering
it was more comprehensive in its scope. As the Spirit of God often meant more by
a prophecy than the prophet was aware of, so Christ might mean much more by a
parable than an evangelist was aware of. In this sense there is truth in the
remark of Mr. Matthew Arnold, that Jesus was over the head of His reporters. It
will be best, therefore, to lay little stress either on the external connections
of the narrative or on the supposed private thoughts of the narrator, and to
regard this parable as a precious fragment which Luke found among his literary
materials, "at the bottom of his portfolio," as a recent commentator expresses
it,[2] and which he put into his Gospel at a convenient place that it might not
be lost. If by this mode of viewing it we lose the benefit of a guide to the
sense in the context, we have a compensation in the reflection made by the same
commentator, that the very fragmentariness of this precious morsel is a
guarantee of its originality as a genuine logion of Jesus.[3] [1] So Hilgenfeld,
’Einleitung.’

[2] Godet.

[3] Schleiermacher tries to make out a connection between Luk 17:5-6, and Luk
17:7-10. He thinks it was quite natural that, after saying that faith would
enable them to do all things required of them, Christ should go on to teach that
they were not to expect outward stimuli and privileges as a reward. ’Uber die
Schriften des Lukas,’ p. 154.

What then is the doctrinal drift of this striking fragment? On the surface it
wears a harsh and, if one may venture to say so, unChrist-like aspect. It seems
to give a legal, heartless, inhuman representation of the relations between God
and man, and of the nature of religion. God appears as an exacting taskmaster or
slave-driver, who requires His servants, already jaded with a full day’s toil in
the fields, to render Him extra household service in the evening, before they
get the food and rest which their bodies eagerly crave. And the Master is
ungracious as well as unmerciful. He doth not thank His weary slaves for their
extra service in the form of attendance at table, but receives it as a matter of
course. Then, finally, those servants are required to submit to this merciless
and ungracious treatment without complaint or surprise, as quite right and
proper; nay, they must even go the length of making the abject acknowledgment
that in all their toil, day and night, they have been unprofitable servants, and
at most have done no more than their statutory duty. Now we may be sure that if
we could only penetrate to the heart of our Lord’s meaning, we should find it to
be thoroughly like Himself, and thoroughly consistent with His other teaching.
It is indeed a strange, hard saying, but it is not the only hard saying which
fell from His lips; and just because it is so strange we may be sure it really
was spoken by Him; and just because it was spoken by Him we may be sure that,
like many other of His sayings, with a very hard shell on the outside, this
saying has within the shell a very sweet kernel. Let us try to break the shell
and to get at the kernel.

Some interpreters of note have sought an escape from the difficulties of the
parable by finding in it not a prescription, but a description, of legal
religion. We are told, that is, not how we ought to serve God, but how men of a
legal spirit, hirelings, mercenaries, such as the Pharisaic Jews, do serve God,
and how their service is estimated by God. The parable is in fact a picture of
the kind of religion which Jesus saw around Him. Religious people were acting
like men hired to do a certain work, in return for which they were to receive
their meals. They did their ’duty,’ the things expressly enjoined, in the spirit
of drudges rather than in the generous spirit of devotion, and their work so
done was of little value, and not deserving of thanks: they really were
unprofitable servants. And such men are pointed at as persons not to be
imitated. Jesus says in effect, "Be ye not like these; serve God in a different
fashion, and ye shall receive very different treatment. Men of servile,
mercenary spirit God treats as slaves; serve God liberally, and ye shall be
treated as sons."[1]. On this view the parable teaches the same lesson as the
parable of the labourers who entered the vineyard at different hours of the day,
in which those who entered in the morning and did a full day’s work, and bore
"the burden and heat" of the day, are represented as being paid last, and
without any thanks; while those who entered at the eleventh hour are paid first,
as if the master had pleasure in paying them, and are paid as much as those who
had worked the whole day. Another expedient for getting out of the difficulty,
proposed by a different class of expositors, is to suppose that the parable
teaches not how God does deal with any of His servants, but how He might deal
with all. He might treat all in justice as worthless slaves; but that He does
not we know, not indeed from this parable, but from other places of Scripture.
The object of the parable is not to set forth the whole truth about God’s
relations to men, but merely to negative the idea of human merit, and to beat
down human pride.[2] Neither of these interpretations hits the mark. The one
errs in assuming that the parable has no application to the devoted servants of
the kingdom; the other in assuming that the parable gives us no information as
to how God does deal with men. In opposition to the former, we believe that the
parable has truth for all servants of the kingdom, especially for the most
devoted; and in opposition to the latter, we believe that it teaches not how God
might act, but how He does act with His servants; in other words, that it shows
a real phase of the actual experience of the faithful in this present life. They
are treated in providence as the parable represents. Jesus spake the parable to
the twelve, as the future apostles of Christianity, to let them know beforehand
what to expect, and so to prepare them for their arduous task.

[1] So Grotius [2] So Trench, controverting the view of Grotius.

We believe then that the purpose of this parable is neither by implication to
condemn servile religion, nor to inculcate humility for its own sake; but to set
forth the exacting character of the demands which the kingdom of God makes on
its servants, and to inculcate on the latter humility only that the work of the
kingdom may be better done, and may not be hindered by self-complacency. We take
the extra service of the slave in the parabolic representation to be the key to
the interpretation, and assume that Christ meant to suggest that something
analogous to such extra service will be found in the Divine kingdom. On this
reasonable assumption, the direct object of the parable will be to teach that
the service of God, nay, of Christ Himself, is a very exacting and arduous one;
much more arduous than human indolence cares to undertake; far exceeding in its
demands the ideal of duty men are prone to form for themselves. Christ would
have His disciples understand that the Christian vocation is a very high one
indeed; that for those who give themselves to it, it not merely brings hard toil
in the fields through the day, but also, so to speak, extra duties in the
evening, when the weary labourer would fain be at rest; that it has no fixed
hours of labour, eight, ten, twelve, as the case may be according to agreement,
but may summon to work at any hour of all the twenty-four, as in the case of
soldiers in time of war, or of farm labourers in the season of harvest, when the
grain must be secured when weather is propitious. He would have His disciples
lay this to heart, that they may be on their guard against impatience when they
find, in the course of their experience, that new demands of service are made
upon them beyond what already seemed a fair day’s work; and against such a
self-complacent satisfaction with past performances, however considerable, as
might indispose them for further exertion.

Such being the drift of the parable, there is of course no intention revealed in
it to represent God in an ungracious light. Christ’s purpose is not to teach in
what spirit God deals with His servants, but to teach rather in what spirit we
should serve God. Doubtless the language put into the master’s mouth does convey
the impression that the demand for additional service arises out of a despot’s
caprice rather than out of a real necessary occasion. But any one acquainted
with our Lord’s method of teaching knows how to interpret this sort of language.
Christ was ever very bold in His representation of God’s apparent character,
knowing as He did that God’s real character could stand it, and knowing well
also what a hard aspect the Divine character sometimes wears to our view As in
the parables last considered He drew pictures of a selfish neighbour and an
unjust judge, meaning these to represent God as He appears to His people when He
delays answers to their prayers; so here He depicts God not according to the
gracious reality of His character, but according to the stern facts of Christian
life. As on other occasions Jesus spake parables to teach that men ought always
to pray and not faint, showing how importunity would ultimately prevail; so here
He speaks a parable to teach that men ought always to work and not faint,
schooling themselves into a spirit of severe dutifulness which yields not
readily to weariness, nor is prone to self-complacent contentment with past
attainments and performances, seeing that such a spirit is demanded by the
course of providence from all who serve the Lord. The doctrine implied in our
parable, that the kingdom of God makes very exacting demands on its servants, is
not one that will startle any one familiar with our Lord’s general teaching. How
many words He uttered bearing the same import! "Seek ye first the kingdom of
God." "Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God."
"If thou wouldst be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and come and follow
Me." "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and He
that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me." These are hard
sayings; so hard that we are strongly tempted to exercise our wits in polishing
off their sharp angles, in discovering some way by which, without setting them
aside as Utopian, we may ease their pressure on the conscience. One way of doing
this was very early found out. It was to convert those sayings of Christ, which
seem to require renunciation of property and abstinence from domestic ties, into
"counsels of perfection," as distinguished from positive commandments obligatory
on all. Let all who would be perfect, who would take honours, so to speak, in
the Divine kingdom, part with their property and practise celibacy. It is not
necessary to do these things in order to have admission into the Divine kingdom;
but those may do so who choose, and if they do it will be put to their credit.
As for the common herd of Christians, all they need to mind is the keeping of
the commandments of the Decalogue in their plain, obvious sense. In this way
Christianity was made easy for the multitude, and those who went in for a higher
style of piety had the pleasure of thinking that they were doing more than was
commanded, and were therefore very far indeed from being unprofitable servants.
Voluntary poverty and celibacy were the extra service after the day’s work of
commonplace morality and religion was over, and, as such, received a higher rate
of payment, in the form of praise and honour in earth and heaven. A most
ingenious and plausible theory, but not true. Monkish asceticism is not the
extra service of the Christian life. The over-time duty consists rather in
extraordinary demands on God’s servants in exceptional times and unusual
emergencies; when Christian men, already weary, must continue to work though
sentient nature demands repose; when old men, who have already served God for
many years, cannot enjoy the comparative exemption from toil which their failing
powers call for, but must toil on till they die in harness; when liberal men,
who have already given much of their substance for the advancement of the
kingdom, are called on to give still more—it may be to give their all; when
young men have to renounce the felicity of domestic life "for the kingdom of
heaven’s sake," that they may be free from family cares and find it easier to
bear hardship when it is restricted to their own person, and falls not upon any
loved ones. In ordinary circumstances such extra service may not be called for.
The servant after he has done his day’s work may at once sit down to meat and
enjoy rest; the veteran soldier may retire on a pension; the man of wealth may
retain his means; the young man may marry. But when the emergency arises which
calls for extra service, then the extra service is obligatory on all. That such
emergencies do arise every one knows. Extreme emergencies, times of persecution,
for example, are rare; but minor emergencies are frequent; in fact, it may be
said that to every Christian there come opportunities which test his patience
and his obedience: times when, if he be half-hearted, self-indulgent, or
self-complacent, he will say, "I have done enough;" but when, on the other hand,
if he be of a dutiful mind, he will say, "I may not look on the things which are
behind, or speak of past performances; my Master bids me gird myself for further
service, and I must run at His call."

We can now see how appropriate is this parable as a representation of an actual
experience in the life of godliness. The parable is true at once to natural life
and to spiritual life. In societies where slavery prevails the slave is treated
as the parable represents—as one who has no rights, and who therefore, do what
he will, can be no profit to his master, and can have no claim to thanks. The
assertion implied in the phrase "unprofitable slaves," so far from being an
exaggeration, is rather a truism. The emphasis is to be placed on the word
slaves: they are unprofitable because slaves; unprofitableness is a matter of
course in a slave. And as slaves deserve no thanks, they receive none; and so
long as they are slaves in spirit it is best they should not. This may seem a
harsh statement, but we can cite a curious illustration of its truth from a
recent book of African travel. The writer, giving some of his experiences in
connection with his servants, says, "Afterwards when travelling with Arabs I
found that we had treated our men with too much consideration, and they in
consequence tried to impose on us, and were constantly grumbling and growling.
Our loads were ten pounds lighter than the average of those carried for the Arab
traders. And since they do not employ askari (soldiers, servants,
donkey-drivers), their pagazi (porters), besides carrying loads, pitch tents and
build screens and huts required for the women and cooking, so that they are
frequently two or three hours in camp before having a chance of looking after
themselves. With us the work of our porters was finished when they reached camp,
for the askari pitched our tents, and the task of placing beds and boxes inside
was left to our servants and gun-bearers."[1] [1] Lieutenant Cameron, ’Across
Africa,’ vol. i. pp. 107, 108. The parable may be transferred to the spiritual
sphere with one important exception. It is not needful or desirable that the
servants of the kingdom be treated in the thankless manner in which Arab traders
deal with their slaves. For God’s servants are not slaves in spirit, they are
free men, and their service springs out of entirely different motives from those
which influence slavish natures. And this observation leads us to notice the
temper needful in order to compliance with the exact demands of the kingdom. Of
what spirit must they be who shall prove themselves capable of rising to the
heroic pitch when called on?

Two virtues at least are indispensable for this purpose—patience and humility.
Patience, lest when the demand for new service comes we be unwilling to respond,
and so either refuse the service or do it in a grudging humour; humility, lest
we think too highly of what we have already done, and so be ignobly content with
past performances and attainments. Of the two vices, impatience and
self-complacency, the latter is the more to be feared. There is doubtless in all
a tendency to grow weary in well-doing; but when the sense of duty is strong the
temptation will be resisted. The word of God will be like a fire in the bones,
and will make it impossible to refrain from action. But the spirit of
self-complacency is specially to be feared just because its tendency is to drug
conscience, deaden the sense of duty, lower the very ideal of life, and make us
think we have done exceeding well when we have done very indifferently. There is
no enemy to all high attainment so deadly as self-satisfaction. On the other
hand, and for a similar reason, there is nothing more favourable to progress
than a humility which expresses itself thus: "We are unprofitable servants."
This may seem servile language, not fit to be used by a spiritual freeman,
however humble. But it is not servile language. It is true of slaves that they
are unprofitable, but it is not true of them that they confess themselves to be
such, except it may be by way of a mere façon de parler. It is only the freeman
who makes such a confession, and in the very act of making it he shows himself
to be free. And whence springs this confession of the free, self-devoted spirit?
Is it out of an abject sense of personal demerit, or an exaggerated sense of
Divine majesty? No, but rather out of a sense of redemption. It is a deep sense
of Divine grace which makes a man work like a slave, yet think little of his
performance. The French have a proverb noblesse oblige, which means that rank
imposes obligations; so that a true noble does not require to be told his duty,
but is a law unto himself. In like manner, it may be said of a true Christian
that the consciousness of redemption obliges, grateful love constrains, taxes
energies, time, possessions very heavily; has the greatest possible difficulty
in satisfying itself—in truth, never is satisfied; makes one work like a slave,
refusing to be limited by hours and fixed measures and proportions, and yet
pronounces on all actual performances the verdict, ’unprofitable,’ ’nothing to
boast of.’ And thus it appears that our parable, though on the face of it
ignoring or even denying the gracious character of God, and turning Him into a
slave-driver, has for its unseen foundation the very grace which it seems to
deny. Nothing but a belief in Divine grace can make it possible for a man to
work with the devotion and the temper required of him by the service of the
kingdom. A legal relation between God and man never could achieve such a result,
never could make a man in spirit and conduct a hero. Legal relation can make men
unprofitable servants; but it cannot make them supremely profitable, yet all the
while so humble that they can honestly think and call themselves unprofitable.
That moral phenomenon in which the extremes of devotion and modesty meet can be
found only where God is conceived of as a God of love, freely giving, not
severely exacting; in the lives of men like Paul and Luther, and the genuine
offspring of their faith. Said we not truly at the commencement, that if we
could only break the shell of our parable we should find it contain a very sweet
kernel? The implied doctrine is that the kingdom is a kingdom of grace, and that
devotion is the cardinal virtue of its citizens; a devotion rendered possible by
the grace of the kingdom, and necessary by its imperial tasks.


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  CHAPTER 14: 01.09.        CHAPTER 8. THE HOURS, THE TALENTS, AND THE POUNDS
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Chapter 8. The Hours, the Talents, and the Pounds Or, Work and Wages in the
Kingdom of God. The parable of Extra Service considered in the last chapter,
when superficially viewed, makes, as we saw, the unpleasant impression that in
the kingdom of heaven service is rendered to a thankless, unappreciative Master,
who receives all work done for Him as a matter of course, possessing no merit,
and entitled to no reward. The hastiest glance at the three parables now to be
studied suffices to show that this impression is a very false one. From these
parables we learn that the kingdom of God is a kingdom of perfect equity; that
the Lord of this kingdom is one who knows how to value and repay all faithful,
devoted labour, and in all His dealings with His servants approves Himself to be
at once just and generous; and that in this kingdom rewards are bestowed on
principles which commend themselves to right reason as in entire accordance with
the eternal laws of righteousness.

All three parables manifestly relate to the problem of Work and Wages. Their
common theme is the political economy of the kingdom. On this account alone they
might fitly be made the subject of one connected study. But we have a better
reason than this for taking them up together as forming conjointly a single
topic The parables do not merely bear upon the same general theme; they are
mutually complementary, and constitute together a complete doctrine on the
important subject of work and wages in the kingdom of God. To see this we have
but to remember that three things must be taken into account in order to form a
just estimate of the ethical value of men’s work: viz. the quantity of work
done, the ability of the worker, and the motive. Where ability is equal,
quantity determines relative merit; and where ability varies, then it is not the
absolute quantity of work done, but the ratio of the quantity to the ability,
that ought to determine value. But however great the diligence and zeal
displayed or the amount of work done may be, no work can have any real value in
the kingdom of God which proceeds from an impure motive. In this world men are
often commended for their diligence irrespective of their motives, and it is not
always necessary even to be zealous in order to gain vulgar applause. If one
does something that looks large and liberal, men will praise him without
inquiring whether for him it was a great thing, a heroic act involving
self-sacrifice, or only a respectable act, not necessarily indicative of
earnestness or devotion. But in God’s sight many bulky things are very little,
and many small things are very great; for this reason, that He seeth the heart
and the hidden springs of action there, and judges the stream by the fountain.
Quantity is nothing to Him unless there be zeal, and even zeal is nothing to Him
unless it be purged from all vainglory and self-seeking—a pure spring of good
impulses, cleared of all smoke of carnal passion; a pure flame of heaven-born
devotion. A base motive vitiates all.

Each of the three parables now to be considered gives prominence to a distinct
element in this complex doctrine of moral value. The parable of the Pounds
illustrates the proposition that where ability is equal quantity determines
relative merit. In this parable each servant receives one pound, but the
quantity of work done varies; one servant with the one pound gaining ten, while
another gains only five. In right reason the rewards ought to vary accordingly,
and so in fact they do in the parable. The first gets ten cities to govern, the
second only five. Not only so, but, what is more remarkable, words of
commendation are uttered by the master in addressing the first servant which are
not repeated to the second. To the former he says, "Well, thou good servant,
because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten
cities;" to the second no praise is given, but only the bare commission, "Be
thou also over five cities." The parable of the Talents, on the other hand,
illustrates the proposition that when ability varies, then not the absolute
quantity of work done, but the ratio of the quantity to the ability, ought to
determine value. Here the amount of work done varies as in the parable of the
Pounds, but the ability varies in the same proportion, so that the ratio between
the two is the same in the case of both servants who put their talents to use.
One receives five and gains five, the other receives two and gains two. In right
reason the two should be held equal in merit, and so they are represented in the
parable. The same reward is given to each, and both are commended in identical
terms; the master saying to each in turn, "Well done, good and faithful servant;
thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things:
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." The purpose of the parable of the
Labourers in the Vineyard, or, to use a briefer expression, the parable of the
Hours, is to emphasise the supreme importance of motive as a factor in
determining moral value. It teaches in effect that a small quantity of work done
in a right spirit is of greater value than a great quantity done in a wrong
spirit. One hour’s work done by men who make no bargain, but trust to the
generosity of their employer, and who seek by ardent devotion to make up for
lost time, is of more value than twelve hours’ work done by men who regard their
doings with self-complacency, and who have laboured all along as hirelings. That
this is the drift of the parable will appear more clearly hereafter; meantime we
content ourselves with briefly stating our opinion, our present purpose being to
point out how, on the hypothesis that the view just given is correct, the
parable of the Hours completes the doctrine of Christ concerning the relation of
work to wages in the kingdom of heaven, by setting forth that not the quantity
of work done alone, nor even quantity combined with zeal, but above all things
quality, pure motive, right affection, determines moral value. The fact just
pointed out, that the three parables before us constitute together a complete
doctrine on the subject of rewards, suffices to settle the question as to the
originality and independence of these parables; to prove, that is, that they are
three distinct parables, and not two. The question concerns the parables of the
Talents and the Pounds, for the originality and distinctness of the parable of
the Hours is not disputed. It is held by many interpreters that the two former
parables are simply different versions of one and the same parable, opinion
being divided as to which of the two comes nearer to the original form as spoken
by Jesus. The most plausible view is that of those who maintain that Matthew’s
version approaches nearest to the primitive form, and that Luke’s parable is
simply Matthew’s transformed, and combined with another parable about a king and
his subjects, which was spoken at a different time, and appears in Luke’s
narrative only in a mutilated state.[1] With all deference to the learned
commentators who treat the two parables as one which had assumed two different
forms in the course of tradition, we must express our firm belief that they are
two, spoken by our Lord on different occasions and for different purposes. That
the parables are very similar we do not deny; we will even admit that they are
simple variations on the same theme. But they are, in our judgment, variations
originating with the Master Himself,[2] not due to the blunders of reporters, or
to the modifying influence of inaccurate tradition. And we base this judgment on
the remarkable manner in which the three parables as they stand fit into each
other, and together form a complete doctrinal whole. It is not by accident or
blundering that variations arise which fit so well to each other and to the
didactic significance of a third parable. Such fitness bears witness to a single
mind in which the three parabolic representations took their origin, and formed
together a whole. In saying this we but apply to these parables the well-known
argument of design. Even as the theist in enforcing the teleological argument
maintains that by the adaptations of the different parts of an organism to each
other, and of the whole organism to its environment, he is constrained to rise
above the action of chance or mere mechanism to a designing mind, in which the
idea of this organism pre-existed, and by which its function was pre-determined;
so we, having regard to the indubitable fact that these three parables as we
find them in the Gospel records do form as it were an organism of thought on the
subject to which they relate, feel constrained to conclude that they owe their
origin not to the accidents of tradition, but simply to the fact that they
constituted a unity in the mind of the Great Teacher, and were each and all
spoken by Himself as occasions occurred.

[1] This is the view of Unger. He thinks that the image of the king and his
subjects does not agree with the remaining image, either in itself (princeps
enim bellum gesturus, et negotiatores porro, hi atque urbium præfecturæ, minus
congruunt) or in illustrating the matter in hand. He makes an attempt at
restoring the mutilated parable of the king and his subjects. The king goes to a
distant land, to return afterwards (λαβεῖν βασιλείαν he thinks belongs only to
the story, not to its meaning). He commits his kingdom to his servants; to one
more, to another fewer cities. The citizens rebel. On his return he takes
account or his vicegerents, and gives them power accordingly.—’De Parabolarum
Jesu natura,’ p. 130. Among more recent writers who concur in this view are
Strauss, Bleek, Ewald (who also attempts to construct the lost parable somewhat
differently from Unger), and Meyer, and to a certain extent Reuss in ’Histoire
Evangelique.’ Calvin also held that the parables of the Pounds and the Talents
are essentially one. Matthew he thinks more suo inserts this parable among
others, neglecting the order of time, which he supposes to be given by Luke.

[2] So also Schleiermacher, who regards the inequality of endowment as an
essential feature of the one parable, and equality of endowment as an equally
essential feature of the other.—’Über die Schriften des Lukas.’

While maintaining with some measure of confidence that these parables form a
didactic whole, and on that ground asserting their originality, we do not
therefore feel justified in asserting that the sole design of the Speaker in
each case was simply to make a contribution to a scientific doctrine on the
subject of work and wages in the Divine kingdom. Had Christ been animated by a
purely theoretic interest, He might have uttered all three parables at one gush,
as all bearing on one theme, and have taken care so to construct them that they
should all be strictly confined to one topic, and serve only one end. But such
was not His way as a teacher. He was never guided by a purely theoretic or
scientific interest; His utterances, however capable of being systematised, were
not systematic in method, but occasional; and the motive to speech being often
not simple, but complex, the words spoken frequently served more than one
purpose. So it was in the case of these parables. They were in all probability
spoken at different times, to different audiences, and from mixed motives, and
were meant to teach not one truth only, but several;[1]

[1] This statement applies chiefly to the parables of the Talents and the
Pounds. and not merely to teach, but to warn, admonish, comfort, stimulate.

Having regard to these facts, we will not pursue what might be called the
scientific order in studying our parables, which would require us to consider
first the parable of the Talents, then that of the Pounds, and lastly that of
the Hours; setting forth in connection with the first the function of ability in
determining value, in connection with the second the function of diligence, and
in connection with the third the function of motive. We will rather take them up
in the order in which they occur in the evangelic records, which may with some
degree of probability be regarded as also the order in which they were
delivered,[1] beginning with

[1] On such questions it is unsafe to dogmatise, but there seems no good reason
to doubt that Matthew gives us the parable of the Hours in its proper historical
connection, though some have been led to think otherwise by the difficulty of
finding in the parable an illustration of the saying, "Many that are first shall
be last, and the last first" (Neander, Bleek, Reuss). There seems also good
reason to regard the other two parables, from their contents, as belonging to a
later time; and of the two, Matthew’s is probably the earlier, though it is
brought in by him at a later period. This is the opinion of Schleiermacher, who
thinks that the parable of the Talents cannot be regarded either as an imperfect
understanding of that of the Pounds, or as a remodelling by Christ Himself of
the latter on a later occasion. The contrary he thinks the more natural. He
thinks, further, that the parable in Mat 25:1-46, where it stands, does not suit
the connection. The probability, according to Schleiermacher, is that Christ, on
an unknown occasion, spoke the parable of the Talents, in which unequal
endowment was an essential feature, and then took it up again, introducing the
noteworthy difference of equal endowment.—’Uber die Schriften des Lukas.’ The
Labourers in the Vineyard; Or, the Supreme Value of Motive in the Divine Kingdom
For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that was an householder, who went
out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had
agreed with the labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
And going out about the third hour, he saw others standing idle in the
market-place, and said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever
is right I will give unto you. And they went their way. Again going out about
the sixth and the ninth hour, he did likewise. But going out about the eleventh
hour, he found others standing,[1] and saith to them, Why stand ye here all the
day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye
also into the vineyard (and whatsoever is right that shall ye receive).[2] So
when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the
labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And
when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received each a
denarius. But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more;
and they likewise received each a denarius. And having received it, they
murmured against the goodman of the house, saying, These last wrought but one
hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, who have borne the burden of the
day and the heat. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I wrong thee
not: didst not thou agree with me for a denarius? Take up thine,[3] and go. It
is my pleasure to give to this last even as to thee. Is it not lawful to do what
I will with mine own? Or is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall
be first, and the first last (for many be called, but few chosen).—Mat 20:1-16.

[1] The best MSS. omit ἀργούς here.

[2] A doubtful reading, omitted in R. V. and by Westcott and Hort.

[3] ἄρον τὸ σὸν. The verb implies either that the money had been laid down by
the steward to be taken up by the labourers, or that it had been thrown down by
the latter in disgust. The former is the view of Morrison, the latter of
Greswell. The ’for’ with which the parable is introduced connects it with the
saying with which the previous chapter concludes, and plainly implies that the
parable is, in the view of the evangelist at least, an illustration of that
saying. This connection supplies us with a clue to the interpretation of the
parable whereof we stand much in need; for in truth the parabolic explanation of
the saying immediately preceding is harder to understand than the saying itself.
Apart from the parable, there would probably have been a tolerable amount of
agreement as to the meaning of the moral apophthegm. The idea it naturally
suggests is that of a change of places between those who in a certain respect
are first, and those who in the same respect are last. The first in one respect
become last in another, the last taking their place and becoming first. The
respect in which the reversal of position takes place is sufficiently clear from
the connection in which the saying was spoken by Jesus. Peter had asked the
question, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed Thee; what shall we have
therefore? and had received a very inspiring answer to the substance of his
question, to this effect: They who make sacrifices for Me and My cause shall
receive an hundred-fold of the things renounced, and in the world to come
eternal life. But the spirit of Peter’s question required an answer too. It was
a spirit of self-consciousness, self-complacency, and bargain-making, and a
faithful master could not allow such a spirit to appear in his disciples without
a warning word. The warning word is to be found in the saying which forms the
motto of our parable. "But," said Jesus, as if with upraised finger, and in a
grave, monitory tone, "many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be
first;" manifestly meaning to hint, Think not that the mere fact of having made
a sacrifice, or even a great sacrifice, for the kingdom necessarily insures the
great reward I have spoken of: all depends on the spirit in which sacrifices are
made; and it is possible for one who is first as to the extent of his sacrifice
to be last in the esteem of God and in the amount of reward, because his
sacrifice is vitiated by the indulgence of a mercenary, self-righteous,
self-complacent temper. A small sacrifice made in a right, i. e. a humble,
self-forgetful, devoted spirit, is of more value in God’s sight than a great
sacrifice made in such a spirit as seems to have prompted your question.

Such is the meaning which one naturally puts upon the moral saying with which
Mat 19:1-30 closes, viewing it in connection with all that goes before. But when
the reader passes on to the parable in the next chapter, which seems designed to
illustrate that saying, he is tempted to doubt the correctness of his first
impression. For what he finds on the surface of the parable is not a change of
places, but an abolition of distinctions by putting all on one level; not first
ones in one respect becoming last in another, and last ones in the former
respect becoming first in the latter, but first and last in respect of length of
service becoming equal in respect of pay. This, we say, is what one finds on the
surface; and the superficial aspect has misled many interpreters into the
opinion that the design of the parable is to teach the doctrine that in the
kingdom of God all shall be rewarded alike.[1] But if that be indeed its design,
then one of two things must follow. Either the parable as originally spoken by
Christ stood in no connection with the proverbial saying in question, or that
saying must be made to bear a different meaning from that which it naturally
suggests. Not a few interpreters have felt themselves shut up to the adoption of
one or other of these alternatives; those who adopt the latter putting upon the
gnome this sense: the first shall be as the last, and the last shall be as the
first; that is, first and last shall be alike, all distinctions of first and
last shall disappear.[2]

[1] So most recently Reuss in ’Histoire Evangelique.’ He thinks the parable is
not in its true place or setting, and that it is designed to teach the equality
of Divine grace in face of the inequality of the human condition in respect of
the gospel promises—diversity in hours of labour, but above all in the fact of a
covenant in the case of one of the parties (the Jews).

[2] So Unger: per se probabiliter explicantur: postremi atque primi pari loco
erunt. Meyer takes the same view.

Either of these courses appears to us violent, and not to be followed except
under direst compulsion. For our own part, we much prefer trying to bring the
parable into conformity with the gnome as naturally understood, than to force
upon the gnome a meaning which shall bring it into accord with the supposed
didactic import of the parable. For of the two things, the import of the parable
and the import of the proverb, the latter seems to us much the clearer. There is
little room for doubt that the proverb points not at a levelling of
distinctions, but at an exchange of places. Several considerations might be
adduced in support of this position. In the first place, the word many is in its
favour. "Many that are first shall be last." Why not all, if the purpose of the
proverb be to teach the general truth that in God’s sight the distinctions
between men vanish into nothing? Does the term many not suggest the thought that
what actually happens too often is what ought not to be; that it is a departure
from the normal and desirable state of things due to the action of some
disturbing cause; that if all things were as they ought to be, the first in
respect of sacrifice would also be first in respect of reward; that in fact
there is no law in the Divine kingdom that all must share alike? Then, secondly,
it is only when thus understood that the saying has any relevancy to the
question of Peter. The words are a pointless commonplace in the connection in
which they stand if they signify, all shall be alike in respect of the reward;
not to say that they are in manifest contradiction to the terms of the foregoing
promise: for these are "shall receive an hundred-fold," an expression implying a
proportion between the reward and the sacrifice. So manifest is the incongruity,
that a recent commentator, who understands the saying when it recurs at the
close of the parable as teaching the doctrine of equality, finds it necessary to
invent a meaning for it in its first position different from either of those
already indicated, to the following effect: Many who are first (in a worldly
point of view) because they have not forsaken their goods, will be last when
they lose salvation in Messiah’s kingdom; while such as through sacrifice of all
have become last (in a worldly point of view), will be first because they attain
unto the highest salvation.[1] That this is not the sense of the saying is
proved by the simple fact that it is not introduced by a ’for’ (γάρ), as a
reflection confirmatory of the foregoing statement, but by a ’but’ (δὲ), as a
thought looking in a different direction, and qualifying the promise going
before. The interpretation is interesting and valuable simply as showing what
shifts men are driven to who, despairing of bringing the proverb into harmony
with the parable following, desire at least to adjust it in some not quite
intolerable manner to the conversation going before. Once more, in interpreting
this striking saying we are entitled to attach some weight to the general
ethical teaching of Scripture. Now one great thought we find running through
Holy Writ, viz. that God giveth grace to the lowly, and knoweth the proud afar
off; a truth of which we find many echoes in the teaching of Christ Himself, as
in that word which closes the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican: "Every
one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be
exalted."[2] Here is taught just such a change of places as on first thought we
found in the saying now under consideration; and our second and final thought
concerning that saying is that our first impression was right, and that in it we
ought to find a moral reflection kindred to that illustrated by the parable of
the Pharisee and the Publican, and in sympathy with that vein of moral doctrine
which more than all other doctrines pervades the Scriptures, to the effect that
God’s favour is in proportion to man’s humility.

[1] Weiss, ’Das Matthäus-Evangelium,’ p. 441.

[2] Luk 18:14.

We regard it as a settled point then, that what the apophthegm points to is not
a levelling of distinctions, but an exchange of places, by which the first in
the amount of service and sacrifice becomes, through pride, or vainglory, or
self-seeking, last in the esteem of God; and what we have now to do is to
ascertain by careful examination whether the parable cannot be brought into
harmony with the saying thus understood, so as to serve as an illustration of
the doctrine that quality, not quantity, determines the value of work in the
Divine kingdom.

1. First we must fix our attention very closely on the householder; as we may
find that to understand him is the nearest way to an understanding of the
parable. This man is no ordinary employer of labour; by no means the first man
of the kind you happen to meet. Before the kingdom of heaven can be likened to a
man who possesses a vineyard, the man has to be assimilated to the kingdom; and
the man in the parable has actually been so assimilated. Such men as he may
possibly be found among this world’s employers of labour, but they are rare; men
like the gifted author of a charming tractate on political economy, which takes
its title from a sentence in our parable, and which has for its burthen that in
the business relations of men you cannot without fatal results ignore the social
affections, and for its unconscious scope to turn the commercial world into a
kingdom of God.[1] Our householder is not of this world, any more than Plato’s
republic, nor are his ways the ways of the world, or likely to be approved by
the world, but rather certain to be found fault with; as in point of fact they
are represented as having been found fault with by the parties who were most
closely related to him, who doubtless thought they did well to be angry. Were
such a man to appear among us, he would probably give similar offence to parties
similarly related; and to the outside world he would, in all likelihood, appear
an eccentric humorist, to be laughed at rather than to be imitated. And this
judgment would not be very much to be wondered at For in truth our householder
is a humorist, and his ways are in some respects very peculiar. Two
peculiarities especially are notable in his character. One is, that besides
hiring men in the ordinary way, and at the ordinary time, to work in his
vineyard, he now and then takes it into his head to go at an advanced time of
the day in search of labourers, from benevolent motives; not for his own
advantage, but for the advantage of those who have the misfortune to be
unemployed. For what other motive could move any one to go to the marketplace at
the eleventh hour, when the working portion of the day was about to close? What
evidence is there that in this procedure our householder followed ordinary
usage? Commentators have been able to cite from books of Eastern travel passages
proving that the parabolic picture of an employer of labour going out in the
morning to hire labourers, is in accordance with Oriental custom.[2] But we have
not met anywhere with anything tending to prove that the quest of workers at the
close of the day is in accordance with the customs of any part of the world. The
learned Lightfoot indeed quotes certain phrases from the Talmud which he thinks
may tend to throw some light on this feature in the parable. The Talmudists
distinguish between persons hired for the day, and persons hired for so many
hours,[3] and they direct hirers of labour to note whether those to be hired
come from various places; for, say they, there are places where people come
earlier to work, and other places where they come later.[4] The author of the
’Horæ Hebraicæ’ suggests that the fact referred to in this last observation may
serve to explain how there came to be persons in the market-place to be hired at
such different times of the day. But in any case, the fact stated cannot explain
the hiring of workers at the eleventh hour, for it is not credible that it was
the custom of any place to begin work at so late an hour; and besides, both the
question of the master addressed to those then hired, and their reply, imply
that they had been present in the market-place all the day, ready to work for
any one who engaged them. The compassionate tone of the master’s question
suggests the true explanation of his conduct. Not custom, and not need of more
labourers, but pity for the idle moved this eccentric landlord to go at the
eleventh hour in search of new labourers.[5] The very manner in which this part
of the narrative is introduced, reveals a purpose on the part of the Speaker to
signalise the action of the master as something peculiar and exceptional,
indicative of a moral characteristic deserving attention. The sentence begins
with the adversative particle (δὲ) as if to say, Note especially what follows,
and consider well what it imports as to the character of the chief actor.

[1] ’Unto This Last,’ by John Ruskin.

[2] Trench quotes ’Morier’s Travels in Persia’ to this effect, p. 177, note.

[3] Distinguunt canones Hebræorum de conducendis operariis, prout ratio
postulat, inter conductos in diem, et conductos in horas quasdam.

[4] Observandum an veniant ex locis variis; sunt enim loca ubi citius ad opus
pergitur, et sunt ubi serius.

[5] So Olshausen, with his usual insight: "Less out of need than out of pity for
the idle, did the true Hausherr from time to time call new labourers into his
vineyard." Similarly Goebel says: "An unusual proceeding, which shows that the
master is concerned not merely about the amount of work, but about employing as
many as possible." The other peculiarity of our householder is that he seems to
attach importance not so much to the work done as to the spirit in which it is
done. He delights in the spirit of grateful devotion, and he abhors with equal
intensity the spirit of envious, selfish calculation. The parable supplies
evidence of this assertion. The master’s abhorrence of the mercenary spirit
comes out very clearly in his reply to the murmuring of those first hired, in
which every word breathes indignation and disgust. But not less truly, though
less obviously, does the narrative reveal the action of an opposite feeling of
delight in the spirit of uncalculating devotion. For, to this feeling in the
breast of the employer we must ascribe the fact of his paying the last hired
first, and also the fact of his paying them a full day’s wage. The commentators
indeed endeavour to rob both facts of all moral significance. As to the former,
one commentator tells us that the expression, "beginning from the last unto the
first," signifies: No order being observed among them, but so that no one may be
omitted.[1] Others assure us that the sole reason why the last are paid first,
is that the first hired might observe what was done, and have their expectations
awakened.[2] But they forget that the motive leading the Speaker of the parable
to tell His story in a certain way is one thing, and the motive of the actor in
the parable is another. It may be that the Speaker’s reason for telling the
story as He does is, that He may be able to exhibit a certain class of workers
behaving in a particular way. But the landlord must be conceived to act from a
motive of his own, all unconscious of the use that is to be made of his action
to point a moral. And what could his motive be but a desire to manifest special
interest in those who, having come into the vineyard at the close of the day,
must have cherished very humble expectations as to what they were to receive,
although they had done their best during their one hour of work to show their
grateful appreciation of the master’s kindness?[3] And if this was indeed his
motive, then the action was not so insignificant as some would have us believe.
In itself, to be paid first was a small advantage to the last hired; too small
to bear the chief stress in the illustration of the principle: the last first,
and the first last. But the paying of the last first was a very significant
circumstance as an index of the master’s mind, for in that connection we have to
consider not merely the action itself, but what it may lead to.

[1] Grotius.

[2] So Calvin and Bleek.

[3] Morrison refers to Löfler, author of a monograph on this parable, published
in the early part of last century, as suggesting that the words of the murmurers
concerning the last hired, οὔτοι οἱ ἔσχατοι μίαν ὥραν ἐποίησαν, are meant to
convey the idea that their work was not worthy to be called work, but was a mere
consumption of a little time. This is not probable, as the verb was quite
commonly used to denote working for so long. But in any case, the bitter remark
of envious fellow-workers cannot be taken as a reliable statement of fact. The
significance of the other fact above alluded to, the paying of the last hired a
full day’s wage, cannot well be denied; yet here too some commentators seem bent
on making the householder’s action appear as commonplace as possible. Greswell,
for example, adduces from Josephus, doubtless as the result of much learned
research, what he regards as an instance of similar payment made to the builders
of the temple by King Herod. The words of the Jewish historian are to the
effect: If any one worked one hour of the day, he received straightway the
reward of this; which our commentator interprets to mean that he was paid a
whole day’s wage for one hour’s work.[1] There is reason to believe that he has
made a mistake in rendering the Greek, and his mistake is due not to any want of
scholarship, but to a perverse desire to bring the action of the owner of the
vineyard into harmony with ordinary practice. An instance must be found of
similar conduct, and the needful example is discovered in the most unlikely
quarter. Who can believe that Herod would act so generously towards the builders
of his temple; and what rational being, however generous, would make a habit of
paying one hour’s work with a whole day’s wage; a habit which, as Alford well
remarks, could only have the result of preventing work from being done? What
egregious errors learned and ingenious men fall into when they miss the track of
true interpretation! That track, in the present instance, does not lead in the
direction of making our householder as like other people as possible, but rather
in the direction of recognising boldly and decidedly his peculiarity and
originality, or, if you will, his eccentricity. He chooses for a reason of his
own to pay one hour’s work with a whole day’s wage. And what is his reason? It
is not benevolence, at least not exclusively; for he does not seem to have
intended it at first, for when he engaged those who entered the vineyard at the
eleventh hour, he said to them, as to the others, "Whatsoever is right, that
shall ye receive." The reading here, it is true, is doubtful; but the omission
of the words may be due to a desire to remove an apparent incongruity between
the terms of engagement and the actual payment made at the end of the day. And
even if, in deference to the canons of criticism laid down by the highest
authorities, we regard the clause as an expansion by copyists, we may assume
that it expresses correctly the understanding on which the late-hired workers
were allowed to enter the vineyard. The master seems to have decided to pay the
last a whole day’s wage after seeing them at work. The heartiness of their
endeavours pleased him much, and he was in the mood to bestow on them an amount
of pay out of all proportion to the amount of work done, paying them not so much
for their work as for their good will.

[1] The passage cited is from ’Antiq. Jud.,’ xx. ix. 7, and is as follows:—καὶ
γὰρ εἰ μίαν τῆς ὥρυν τῆς ἡμέρας εἰργάσατο, τον μίσθον ὑπὲρ ταύτης εὐθέως
ἐλάμβανεν. Greswell thinks that the use of ὁ μισθὸς absolutely requires it to be
understood of the wages of a day.

"An eccentric man, most unlike other people, and by no means to be imitated!"
Yes; but how like is this man, with his strange humours, to the Divine Being as
depicted by the sweet singer of. Israel: "With the merciful Thou wilt show
Thyself merciful; with an upright man Thou wilt show Thyself upright; with the
pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure; and with the froward Thou wilt show Thyself
froward. For Thou wilt save the afflicted people; but wilt bring down high
looks."[1] How true to this poetic picture of God is the character of our
householder in the parable I He, too, is froward with the froward. How sharp and
curt his words to the grumbling churls. "Friend, I wrong thee not: didst thou
not agree with me for a penny? Lift thine, and go;" the last words accompanied,
we may imagine, with an imperative wave of the hand. Then how good he is to the
meek, the afflicted people who had hung about all day in the marketplace till
they had become utterly disheartened because no man had hired them, and who work
during the last hour like men mad with joy! His conduct towards them well
entitles him to apply to himself the august title ἀγαθός.[2] For whereas he had
promised at first merely to do what was just (δίκαιον), or at least abstained
from giving any hint of a purpose to do more, he far exceeds the limits of
justice, and rises to the level of heroic benignancy and magnanimity.

[1] Psa 18:25-27.

[2] The use of the word here (Mat 20:15) supplies the best evidence possible
that it really represents a different idea from δίκαιος, which Jowett in his
work on the Epistle to the Romans disputes; vide remarks on the meaning of
ἀγαθός at page 35. Bengel’s remark on ἀγαθός is: qui etiam plus praestat quam
justitia (ver. 4) infert.—Rom 5:7.

Such then, according to our reading of his character, were the characteristics
of the householder in our parable; characteristics not only admirable, but
useful, if the possessor’s chief aim in life were the culture of right
affections in those about him. For benevolence tends to produce in its objects
gratitude, and grateful devotion generously rewarded rises to still higher
heights of devotion. But if the possessor’s chief aim in life were the culture
of grapes, these characteristics, however admirable, are not so obviously
useful. For in that case chief importance must be attached to the work, not to
the spirit of the worker; and it may be as well not to be too sentimental, lest
the indulgence of good feeling breed disaffection in men who, however defective
in temper, have nevertheless proved themselves good workers, and borne well the
burden of a long day, and the scorching heat of a broiling sun.[1] Manifestly it
is right affections rather than grapes that this householder is mainly concerned
about, and it is this peculiarity which fits him to be an emblem of the kingdom
of God.

[1] Τὸ βάρος τῆς ἡμέρας signifies the labour of the whole day; τὸν καύσωνα the
intense heat of the middle portion of the day.

2. Having ascertained with tolerable certainty the character of the householder,
we shall find little difficulty in proving that the aim and effect of the
parable is to illustrate the supreme importance in God’s sight of motive as a
measure of value. Two objections may be taken to this view. First, that the
parable itself contains no trace of right motive in those who are favoured; and,
second, that all receive the same sum, whereas the supposed design of the
parable requires that the last should be not merely put on a level with the
first, but placed above them.

Now as to the former of these objections, it is true that the parabolic
representation contains no express allusion to the existence of right feeling in
the last hired, or to the influence of such feeling on the master’s conduct. But
was such express mention really necessary? That such feeling existed goes
without being said. It was probable, natural, almost inevitable in the
circumstances. Then we must assume its existence in order to render the master’s
conduct intelligible and reasonable. Reasonable, we say; for although this
householder was from the world’s point of view eccentric, he was not foolish. He
must be assumed to have acted from motives thoroughly rational, regarded from
his own point of view. But if we assume that his action had no relation to the
state of mind of those whom it concerned, then it ceases to be rational, and
becomes purely arbitrary. But surely it is not Christ’s intention to represent
the principal actor as arbitrary, though He does make him use language which has
a sound of arbitrariness in rebutting the pretensions of unreasonable men, when
He puts into his mouth the question, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will
with mine own?"[1] We cannot, therefore, agree with the opinion expressed by a
respected commentator, that "when we rise above the particular sphere of ideas
with which the parable deals the quality element of character comes into
account; but the parable itself does not lift us into this sphere, it leaves us
simply in the sphere of the negative ideas that the time consumed in working and
the quantity of work performed do not determine absolutely the amount of glory
that shall be enjoyed."[2] It seems to us plain that the parable does lift us
into this sphere. The principal actor in the parable rises into this sphere, and
has his being in it, and he lifts the parable itself and all the subordinate
actors therein along with him. In order that the situation may suit his
character, we must assume that the first and last hired represent two classes of
men morally distinct: the first being the self-complacent and calculating; the
last the humble, self-forgetful, trustful, grateful. The first are the Simons,
righteous, respectable, exemplary, but hard, prosaic, ungenial; the last the
women with alabaster boxes, who for long have been idle, aimless, vicious,
wasteful of life, but at last, with bitter tears of sorrow over an unprofitable
past, begin life in earnest, and endeavour to redeem lost time by the passionate
devotion with which they serve their Lord and Saviour. Or, once more, the first
are the elder brothers who stay at home in their father’s house, and never
transgress any of his commandments, and have no mercy on those who do; the last
the prodigals who leave their father’s house and waste their substance in
riotous living, but at length come to their senses and say, "I will arise and go
to my father," and having met him, exclaim, "Father, I have sinned, and am no
more worthy to be called thy son."

[1] Mat 20:15. The force of this question is increased if we insert the ή at the
beginning of the sentence found in many MSS. It then means, Do you dispute what
I had thought was indisputable?

[2] Morrison, ’Commentary on Matthew,’ in loc. The other objection to our view
of the parable may also be disposed of without much difficulty. It is true that
all receive the same sum, the denarius, which was the ordinary pay for a day’s
work in those times. But this fact is not fatal to the view that the purpose of
the parable is to illustrate the truth that diversity of spirit may cause men to
change places, so that the first in the amount of work or sacrifice shall be
last in the reward, and vice versa. In making this assertion we do not insist
either on the fact that the last were paid first, which in itself is of no great
moment, or on the fact that the last were paid at a far higher rate than the
first, which nevertheless deserves serious consideration; but simply on this,
that the point of importance is not what each received at the end of the day,
but the will of the master manifested in making payment, and what that will
involved and must lead to. In the sentence "I will give unto this last even as
unto thee," the part to be accentuated is not the "even as," but the "I will"
(θέλω ἐγὼ). The denarius is not the centre of the story, as some have imagined,
but the will of him who gives it to each of his labourers. The denarius is not a
fixture for that will; equality of payment is not a law by which it is bound.
The master might have given more than the denarius to the last, but he
sufficiently asserted his freedom and sovereignty in giving so much; and there
was a certain appropriateness in fixing on the particular sum—it was a day’s
wage for an hour’s work. And then it must be remembered that the master’s will
is not limited in its action to one day. It is so limited in the parabolic
representation, and hence the illustration of the apophthegm with which it
begins and ends is necessarily defective; for one day is too short to exhibit
fully the action of the forces which the parable sets in motion. But the
master’s will will burst the bonds of to day, and act to-morrow, and produce
results in advance of those of to-day. The murmurers of to-day will not be
employed at all to-morrow unless they change their mood; for the ominous "Go thy
way" is in reality an order to quit the service, and the last-hired of to-day
will be morning workers to-morrow; working in an altogether different spirit
from the murmurers of yesterday. And so at length the last shall be first,[1]
and the first last, to a degree not visible within the narrow space to which the
parabolic representation is confined.

[1] The use of the future (ἔσονται) in the repetition of the apophthegm at the
close of the parable is worthy of notice. One would have expected rather, So the
last in this case were first. May the reason not be that the parable shows a
process of reversal begun, but not finished, and pointing into the future for
its consummation? It cannot be said that the sentence is merely a repetition of
the one at the close of the previous chapter, and that therefore the tense of
the verb has no significance. It is not a case of exact repetition, for the
important word πολλοὶ is omitted. This omission is made to adapt the saying to
the parable; so also is the inversion of the clauses. Why then was the tense not
changed for the same purpose, so that the sentence might stand, Thus the last in
the parable became first, and the first last?

It only remains to add that no parable could possibly supply an adequate
illustration of the action of the great moral law enunciated by Jesus in the
close of His reply to Peter’s question, for the results therein pointed at are
realized only gradually, through the slow but sure operation of tendencies. In
making this remark we have in view such fulfilments of the law as fall within
our observation in this present life. We do not of course mean to limit the
operation of the law to this life. The question has been much discussed by
commentators, What does the denarius denote? Does it refer to the life eternal,
or to something experienced in this world? In our way of looking at the parable
the question is not of such cardinal importance as some suppose. But if we must
answer it, our reply is, The denarius denotes what ever comes under the category
of reward, and that, as we see from our Lord’s own words to Peter, embraces both
the life eternal and experiences of this present life. And we believe that the
law, the last first and the first last, applies to the eternal as well as to the
temporal side of the reward. We do not believe in the equality of men’s
conditions in the life to come any more than in the life that now is. The
general felicity of the life eternal common to all the saved will embrace much
variety of special condition corresponding to the spiritual histories of
individuals: some will receive a full reward, others a less ample recompense;
and then, too, it will be seen that some last ones will take precedence of some
who in this life were reputed to be first. But of the life to come and its
conditions our thoughts are dim, and we are perplexed when we attempt to apply
to eternity the graduated distinctions of time. The category, of the absolute
dominates all our thoughts of the eternal world. We think of the good as
absolutely good, and of the evil as absolutely evil, and of the blessedness and
misery of the two classes as admitting of no degrees. Therefore it is easier for
us to understand the application of the law to this present life, where the
distinction of good and evil is relative, and where the action of spiritual law
reveals itself in the form of tendencies. Under this form we may confidently
expect to find every law, valid for the eternal world, exercising its influence
unceasingly. For with respect to the action of moral law, the two spheres, the
eternal and the temporal, are virtually one. As the blue sky is but the
omnipresent atmosphere projected by the eye to an indefinite distance in space,
so the eternal judgment is the incessantly active moral order of the world,
projected by the conscience to an indefinite distance in future time. This
general observation applies in full force to the law now under consideration. It
is a law amply illustrated in history. In the parable the will of the
householder has a very narrow platform on which to exhibit itself, but God’s
will has the whole history of the world in which to display its purposes. The
moral order of the world serves that will, and unfolds to view its contents. And
to a wise observer the law, first last and last first, can be seen slowly but
certainly fulfilling itself both in individuals and in communities. It is
possible even to classify the cases in which the first tend to become last. The
law fulfils itself in such cases as these: when those who make sacrifices for
the kingdom of heaven manifest the spirit of self-devotion in occasional acts
rather than in a fixed habit; when any particular species of Christian activity
has come to be in fashion, and therefore in high esteem among men, involving
consequently temptations to vanity, spiritual pride, and presumption; or when,
as in the case of the ascetics, self-denial is reduced to a system practised,
not for Christ’s sake, but for its own sake.[1] When we consider how much
Christian activity comes under one or other of these heads,—occasional spasmodic
efforts, good works in high esteem in the religious world, and good works done,
not so much from interest in the work, as from their reflex bearing on the
doer’s religious interests,—we must feel that Christ did not speak too strongly
when He said many that are first shall be last. Far from charging His language
with exaggeration, we rather admire its moderation in virtually admitting that
there are exceptions. Exceptions unquestionably there are. There are some first
ones who shall not be last; and there are some last ones who shall not be first.
If it were otherwise—if to be last in length of service, in zeal, or in devotion
gave one an advantage invariably and of course, it would be ruinous to the
kingdom of God; as in effect putting a premium on indolence and encouraging men
to stand all the day idle. But it is not so. It is no advantage in itself to be
last, and it is no disadvantage to be first. The first in sacrifice may also be
first in reward; the Church’s noblest ones are men who have been first in both
respects. But the number of such is comparatively few. "For many are called, but
few are chosen." Many, that is,—for so we, with Bengel and others, understand
the reflection wherewith the parable concludes,—many are called to work in God’s
vineyard, and many are actually at work; but few are choice workers, few work
for God in the spirit of the precepts taught by Jesus; with ardent devotion, yet
with deep humility.[2] [1] For more extended observations on this topic, vide
’The Training of the Twelve,’ cap. xvi. sec. 3.

[2] The words in question are of doubtful authority, and Calvin thought they
should be omitted. If retained they must bear the meaning given to them in the
text, as the only one in harmony with the connection of thought It is the sense
put on the words by Bengel, Grotius, Unger, Olshausen, &c. Bengel says: ἐκλεκτοὶ
exquisiti præ aliis. Videtur hoc loco ubi primum occurrit, non omnes salvandos
denotare, sed horum excellentissimos. Grotius observes that the Greeks also used
the word ἐκλεκτόν to denote what is distinguished in anything (τὸ ἐξαίρετον) and
quotes as a parallel saying, πολλοὶ μὲν ναρθηκοφόροι, παῦροι δὲ τε βάκχοι.
Kuinoel, who adopts the same view, cites as a parallel sentiment from Virgil:
Pauci, quos æquus amavit Jupiter, atque ardens evexit ad sidera virtus.—’Æn.,’
vi. 130. Olshausen says the κλητοί are all workers, even the πρῶτοι. The
ἐκλεκτοί are the ἔσχατοι, who occupy a freer position to the kingdom, and work
out of inner pleasure and love. Arnot, who takes the same view, refers to Rev
17:14 for a similar use of the word ἐκλεκτοί, where the Lamb’s followers are
spoken of as κλητοὶ καὶ ἐκληκτοδ καὶ πιστοί; picked men, spiritual heroes so to
speak.

Taking the householder in this parable, benevolent towards those whom no man had
hired, and showing favour to those who gratefully appreciated his kindness, as a
type of God, the lesson taught by the parable is that God is a God of grace, and
that He giveth His grace to the lowly. The lesson is a perfectly general one,
susceptible of many historical illustrations, no one of which is entitled to be
regarded as the one principally intended. Some think the parable refers
especially to the case of the Jews and the Gentiles; the Jews being represented
by the men hired in the morning, the Gentiles by the men engaged at the eleventh
hour. It has been suggested by others that the parable primarily relates to
grudges within the circle of disciples on the part of the first called against
those called at a later period.[1] Such suggestions are legitimate and useful
when they are put forth simply for the purpose of exemplifying the operation of
a principle, but they ought not to be regarded as exhausting the scope of the
parable.

[1] So Weizsäcker, ’Untersuchungen,’ p. 429. The Talents; Or, Equal Diligence in
the Use of Unequal Endowments Equally Rewarded in the Divine Kingdom For [the
kingdom of heaven is][1] as a man travelling into a far country,[2] who called
his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five
talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his
several ability; and then he took his journey. Then he that had received the
five talents went straightway[3] and traded with the same, and made other five
talents. And likewise he that had received the two, he gained other two. But he
that received the one went away and dug in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.
And after a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with
them. And he that received the five talents came and brought other five talents,
saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained five
talents more. His lord said unto him. Well done, thou good and faithful servant:
thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things:[4]
enter thou into the joy of thy lord. And he also that received the two talents
came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: lo, I have gained
other two talents. His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful
servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many
things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. Then he also that received the one
talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where
thou didst not sow, and gathering where thou didst not scatter: and I was
afraid, and went away and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, thou hast thine own.
But his lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou
knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I scattered not: thou
oughtest therefore to have put my money to the bankers, and at my coming I
should have received back my own with interest. Take the talent from him, and
give it to him who hath the ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be
given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken
even that which he hath. And cast ye out the unprofitable servant into the outer
darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.—Mat 25:14-30.

[1] There are no words in the original answering to those within brackets. We
may fill up the hiatus either as in the A. V. or, as some prefer, the return of
the Son of man will be, so connecting the parable closely with the previous
verse. The formula of the A. V. is to be preferred, as it takes nothing for
granted as to the historical connection.

[2] Rather into a foreign country, leaving his own.

[3] Vide further on for justification of this arrangement of the words.

[4] This does not signify a change of sphere, as in the parable of the Pounds
(from traders to rulers), but advancement within the same sphere. The rendering
in the A. V. betrays the influence of the other parable. The alternative title
above indicated is not proposed as an exhaustive statement of the didactic
significance of the parable of the talents. The parable manifestly springs out
of two motives, and we run no great risk of too much subtlety in our analysis if
we represent it as the outcome of three. It teaches these three distinct if not
equally important truths concerning work for the kingdom of God:—

1. The consummation of the kingdom will be long enough deferred to leave ample
time for work.

2. The kingdom imperatively demands work from all its citizens.

3. The work done will be valued and rewarded according to the principle above
enunciated: equal diligence in the use of unequal endowment receiving an equal
reward.

I. Certain features in the parable seem intended to teach that there will be
time to work—to work as well as to wait.[1] The chief points bearing on this
topic are the following:—(a) The householder travels into a far country, and
returns not till after a long time.[2] The phrase is an elastic one, and may
denote either a large portion of the life of an individual, or an age in the
history of the world. We now naturally put the latter interpretation on the
words, but it is probable that they suggested the former sense to the first
hearers of the parable.[3] Even on the narrower interpretation they contained an
important hint to those who belonged to the first Christian generation. The mind
of that generation was fixed, with an intensity which we have difficulty in
conceiving, on the second coming of the Lord; and some seem to have expected
that event so soon that they abandoned all worldly business, and gave themselves
up to an attitude of passive waiting, or to feverish, restless excitement. The
demoralising effect of the belief in the near approach of the second advent
manifested itself to such an extent in the Church at Thessalonica, that the
Apostle Paul found it needful to interpose, and to endeavour by seasonable
counsels of Christian wisdom to bring the fanaticised community to a soberer
state of mind. The sum of his advice was, Work, and do not merely idly wait. The
disease and the remedy are admirably hit off in a couple of verses: "We hear
that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are
busy-bodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus
Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread."[4] Nowhere does
the apostle’s good sense appear more conspicuously than in his manner of dealing
with the spiritual malady that had broken out in that community. We know not
whether he was acquainted with our parable when, at an early stage in his
apostolic career, he wrote his Epistles to the Thessalonians, but in any case he
was in full sympathy with the mind of Christ as revealed in the parable. For by
the use of the suggestive phrase after a long time Jesus significantly hinted
just what Paul afterwards more plainly said: that the day of the Lord would not
come so soon that there would be no use setting oneself deliberately to any
task; that, while ever watching, disciples must also ever cultivate a sober
temper, and give themselves earnestly to Christian work, as if all things were
to follow their wonted course till the end of their lives.

[1] Trench has some good remarks on the affinities and contrast between this
parable and that of the ten virgins (Mat 25:1-12), the object of which is to
inculcate the duty of watching and waiting. As we deem it undesirable to be
over-confident as to the historical connection, we refrain from indulging in a
similar line of reflection, while sensible of its fruitfulness in edification.

[2] μετὺ πολὺν χρόνον, Mat 25:19.

[3] Olshausen says the phrase does not exclude a return of the Lord in the time
of the apostles.

[4] 2Th 3:11-12.

(b) There will be time enough, according to the parable, for diligent servants
to double the capital entrusted to them.[1] How long that process may take
depends on circumstances; it may be a year, or it may be well on for a lifetime.
But beforehand the longer period is more likely than the shorter one; and a
prudent trader who starts with a capital equal to about a thousand pounds
sterling[2] will think of such a substantial increase only as the result of a
long-continued course of industry.

[1] Mat 25:16-17.

[2] The value of a talent was in round numbers about £200, so that five talents
would amount to about £1000.

(c) The lapse of a considerable period ere the master’s return is implied in the
absence of all reference to a speedy return in the excuse of the slothful
servant. It may be taken for granted that that servant would have been glad to
excuse himself in a less impudent way if he could. He could not but know the
risk he ran in speaking of one who had absolute power over him, to his face, as
he did, calling him an hard man, reaping where he had not sowed, and gathering
where he had not strawed;[1] in other words, as an arbitrary, exacting tyrant,
who expects his servants to perform impossible tasks; to make bricks without
straw, to produce a harvest of results where he had not supplied them with the
seed out of which such a harvest might naturally grow. It was not in wanton
recklessness that he thus spoke, but because nothing more plausible in the way
of excuse occurred to him at the moment. How gladly would he rather have
pleaded, I was just about to begin to work when your arrival took me by
surprise; I did not expect your return so soon;[2] or, I did not think it worth
while to begin trading, for I knew that you would return so soon that there
would be no time to buy and sell and make gain—that is to say, make the very
same excuse for idleness with which the religious busy-bodies of Thessalonica
justified to their own consciences their neglect of the ordinary duties of their
calling.

[1] It is doubtful whether the two parts of this proverbial saying employed to
describe a curmudgeon mean the same thing or different things. Trench
paraphrases the second clause, "gatherest with the rake where others have
winnowed with the fan," thus finding in it a reference to threshing. Weiss is of
the same opinion; also Olshausen. It seems likely that the proverb contains
reference to two forms of keen dealing: one drawn from reaping, another from
winnowing. So viewed it has a greatly intensified strength.

[2] The fact that such an excuse is not represented as being advanced is used by
Schleiermacher as an argument to prove that the parable is not in its proper
historical place. He thinks if the parable had been spoken to enforce the duty
of watching, such an excuse would have been put into the mouth of the
unprofitable servant.

2. The second lesson—that the kingdom imperatively demands work from all its
citizens—is taught by several outstanding features of the parable.

(a) First[1] we note the minute but significant touch about the servant who had
received five talents proceeding straightway to trade with the money lent him.
For we cannot but agree with those interpreters who think that the adverb
(εὐθέως) is to be taken along with the verb following (πορευθεὶς),[2] rather
than with the verb going before (ἀπεδήμησεν). By this arrangement the word is
charged with immensely increased significance. To what end say of the master
that he straightway took his journey? It has been suggested that the end served
is to convey the idea that the lord gave no further instructions how to use the
money, but left his servants to use the talents according to their own
discretion.[3] But to this it has been effectively replied that the clause "to
each man according to his ability" rendered that unnecessary; and, moreover,
that in that case the idle servant would have referred to the fact as an
excuse.[4] On the other hand, take the εὐθέως along with what follows, as even
usage requires us to do,[5] and how full of important meaning it becomes! It
then teaches the great lesson of urgency and promptitude. It says to us, The
demands of the kingdom are very pressing; to work then at once without delay; to
be prompt in action is a cardinal virtue in the kingdom.

[1] We do not make a point of the fact that the talents were given to trade
with, for that is not said in this parable, though a similar statement is made
in Luke’s parable of the Pounds. But in reality what is not said is implied in
the nature of the case. The talents were not gifts to friends, but loans to
slaves, who belonged themselves to the master, and traded solely for his
benefit. Such a procedure as the parable supposes was in accordance with custom.

[2] Mat 25:16.

[3] So Meyer.

[4] Weiss, ’Matthäus-Evang.’ Fritsche takes the same view of the verbal
connection.

[5] Weiss points out that in Matthew εὐθέως always stands before the verb which
it qualifies.

(b) The rigour with which the unfaithful servant is judged points In the same
direction. The epithets applied to him are very significant in this connection.
He is called wicked (πονηρός), slothful (ὀκνηρός),[1] and unprofitable
(ἄχρειος).[2] The first epithet refers not so much to the injurious opinion
expressed by the unfaithful one of his master, as to the unrighteousness of his
conduct in not following a course that was open to him, even if all he said of
the master were true. So far as mere personal feeling is concerned, the master
can bear to be evil thought of and evil spoken of. He calmly repeats the
injurious, insolent words, and instead of complaining of them, or being roused
to indignation by them, or endeavouring to show how unfounded they are, he
proceeds rather to point out what the servant ought to have done if he believed
his own opinion of his master to be true. It is the interest of the work, not
the personal insult to himself, that the lord thinks of when he calls his slave
wicked. It almost seems as if he felt that there was something, if not to
justify, at least to excuse the unfavourable opinion of himself cherished by the
servant. He knows there is that about his requirements which may not unnaturally
wear an aspect of hardness to certain men, especially to those who have received
small endowments; nay, even to those who have been most liberally endowed. And
his very tolerance of hard thoughts is another index of the exacting demands of
his service. There is just one thing he cannot tolerate—waste of opportunity,
keeping his money lying idle, neglecting to make the most of things, sloth,
unprofitableness. Mere indolence is in his view wickedness, for it is
selfishness, and selfishness, as the moral opposite of that self-devotion which
is the cardinal virtue of the Divine kingdom, is to the Lord of the kingdom the
very essence of evil.

[1] Mat 25:26.

[2] Mat 25:30.

Then observe, as another index of rigour, the declinature to sustain any excuse
on the part of the unprofitable servant. If a servant fear his master’s anger in
case he lose his money in some unfortunate venture, and on that account shrink
from running ordinary business risks, he must find out and follow some other
method of turning his capital to account. He may not content himself with
digging a pit in the earth and burying his talent there, where it will be safe
at least, if not in the way of making increase. If the master is to be regarded
as a hard man, he must get the benefit of his bad character, and his money must
be laid out to usury at least, if it is not to be employed in commerce.[1] This
stern rejection of excuses is specially instructive when it is considered that
the excuses are offered by the man who received only one talent. It is natural
to inquire why he is selected to play the part of the unprofitable servant. The
explanation which most readily occurs to one is, that those who receive small
endowments are most tempted to negligence by a depressing sense of the
insignificance of their powers and the valueless-ness of any results which they
may be able to achieve. And there is certainly some truth in this view. Yet
second thoughts breed doubt as to whether this be indeed the true rationale of
the matter. For one who reflects on the history of mankind cannot but feel that
sloth is by no means confined to the poorly endowed; that indeed some of the
most tragic examples of negligence and unprofitableness have been exhibited
among the most highly-gifted of men. Probably the true reason of the selection
is to enforce the doctrine of universal and exceptionless obligation. The man of
one talent is represented as playing the part of idler, just because he is the
man who would be thought most easily excusable; the purpose being to teach that
excuse for negligence will be accepted in no case, not even in the case of those
whose power of service is a minimum.[2]

[1] On τοίς τραπεζίταις Grotius remarks: ne dicas invenire te non potuisse
quibus pecunia esset opus. Argentarii ab omnibus pecunias sumunt fœnore. The
words ἐγὼ ὲκομισάμην, &c. (I would have received mine own with usury, Mat 26:27)
he paraphrases ὴλθον κομίζεσθαι, i. e. exegissem, and gives as the sense, non
est etiam quod in collocanda pecunia periculum obtendas: mea erat. Ego eam
exegissem non tuo sed meo periculo. Tuti enim sunt qui res alienas administrant
quoties eis credunt quorum fidei publice creditur. It was a way by which the
servant might benefit the master without incurring any risk himself. Meyer
points out that the expression (βαλεῖν τοῖς τραπ.) conveys the idea of an action
involving no trouble. The servant had only to throw the gold on the table.
Lightfoot (’Horæ Hebraicæ’) anxiously defends Christ from the charge of
approving of the custom of taking usury by pointing out that the lord did not
give the talents at first to be put to usury, but merely referred to the
money-changers in self-defence and by way of argumentum ad hominem.

[2] So Unger.

(c) Another most significant feature in this connection is the taking of the
talent from the unprofitable servant and giving of it to him that had ten. It is
taken from the one because he is unprofitable, because he has already shown that
he can make no use of it; and it is given to the other because he has shown that
he can make most use of it. Both facts indicate most forcibly the urgency of the
demand for work and profit; and, we may add, both facts are in most exact accord
with the moral order of the world as revealed in human history. It is not merely
in the parable that unto every one that hath much is given more, so that he hath
abundance, and from him that hath nothing which he can show as the fruit of his
own industry is taken away even that which he hath in the form of stock in
trade.[1] This stern law verifies itself with inexorable rigour in the history
of individuals and of communities, and in giving utterance to the remarkable
saying Christ but read off accurately one of the great moral conditions of human
life.

[1] The sentence is thus explained by Weiss.

(d) Note finally under this head the doom of the unprofitable servant. "And cast
ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and
gnashing of teeth." An awful doom, however mildly interpreted. A commentator
whom we often quote with approval remarks thereon, "The punishment of the
slothful one is not eternal damnation. The Bible is very exact in its speech on
the subject. The unfaithful children of light are cast into darkness; the
children of darkness are cast into eternal fire, each being punished through his
own opposite."[1] Another commentator of sound judgment and unimpeachable
orthodoxy says, "Outer darkness is opposed to domestic light; for as in ancient
times feasts were held commonly in the night, Christ represents those who are
cast out of the kingdom of God as thrust forth into the darkness."[2] Be it so;
the least doom of the unprofitable one is to be left out in the cold and the
darkness of night, while the faithful ones who have done well share the joy of
their returned lord within the bright festive halls; and while they enjoy the
good cheer, there is for him, poor wight, nothing but "weeping and gnashing of
teeth"—tears of regret over a wasted life and lost opportunities, and bitter
chagrin at thought of the joy he too might have had, had he only been faithful.
And all this for no greater offence than burying his talent in the earth. He has
not squandered it in riotous living, he has simply been timid, over-cautious,
too nervously afraid of responsibility, too gloomy in his views of God’s
character and of life’s risks. How hard that the "fearful,"[3] the cowards,
should fare as the vilest of sinners! How needful, this being so, to remember
that God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of
a sound mind; how valuable the virtue of manly courage to face the stern
responsibilities of life and the inexorable demands of the Divine kingdom!

[1] Olshausen.

[2] Calvin.

[3] Vide Rev 21:8, where the cowards (δειλοῖς) are classed with murderers,
adulterers, liars, &c.

(e) One other reflection may here be added. Nothing can more strikingly evince
the intense desire of Christ, in uttering this parable, to impress upon His
hearers the sense of obligation than the manner in which the religious
application breaks through the parabolic form of representation. Three times
over in the replies of the master to his servants the figurative manner of
expression appropriate to the parable is replaced by language belonging to the
spiritual interpretation. "To enter the joy of the Lord, and to be cast into
outer darkness, are phrases which have nothing in common with the affairs of the
bank."[1] [1] Reuss, ’Histoire Evangelique.’ But let us not exaggerate the
severity of the demands which the kingdom makes. While certainly exacting, these
demands are at the same time reasonable. First, to each man is given and of each
man is required only "according to his several ability." This is a very
suggestive expression. If we assume that the talents signify spiritual
endowments, gifts directly fitting for service in the kingdom of God,[1] then
the phrase in question suggests the idea that the spiritual is shaped by the
natural, so that the lowest in the scale of natural ability is also the lowest
in the scale of grace. That this is the actual fact observation attests, and
though at first sight it may appear a hard law, on deeper consideration it will
be seen to be merciful. For "the degree of the gift is the measure of
accountability. Whether is it fairer to give to a man possessed of one degree of
ability five talents or one? Is it fairer to endow him according to his ability
or beyond his ability? It is enough to say that in the one case failure is
crime, in the other necessity."[2]

[1] This is the usual view; but Weiss thinks that the talents have no reference
either to spiritual gifts or to the exercise of a spiritual calling, but are
perfectly general, embracing all manner of endowments. Their meaning is
explained, he thinks, by the gnome "unto him that hath," &c., and the lesson is
that the right use of gifts and goods, both in nature and in the kingdom of God,
is rewarded with more, and the neglect with deprivation. That this is true there
can be no doubt, and it is an instance of the deep wisdom of Jesus that He thus
enunciates a far-reaching moral law. But the primary reference is to spiritual
gifts, else what is meant by κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν δύναμιν?

[2] ’The Stewardship of Life’ (p. 52), by the Rev. James Stirling, an admirable
study on this parable, and a model of homiletic treatment; published by Hodder
and Stoughton, 1873.

Next, for the timid and unventuresome there is always an alternative. There are
the money-changers (τραπεζιται) for those who shrink from the risks of trade.
Here it is unnecessary to inquire what precisely Christ had in view when He used
this remarkable expression. All we can be sure of is that He meant to teach that
no man in this world is absolutely doomed to inactivity and uselessness, that
there will be opportunity to every one that is willing to use his talent in a
humble, obscure, if not in a heroic and conspicuous way. We may, if we choose,
occupy ourselves in suggesting possible meanings for the money-changers and the
bank,[1] such as that they denote in our day the machinery of religious and
charitable societies;[2] only we must remember that in making such suggestions
we are not, strictly speaking, interpreting the parable, but merely making our
contribution to a proof that the general doctrine of the parable is true, viz.
that opportunities of using our gifts in the service of the kingdom will never
be wanting. This is the truth which we have to lay to heart. It is a very
cheering truth, as tending to show that the service of the kingdom, if exacting,
is also reasonable and considerate; a service in which not merely the heroic,
but the timid may take part. If any one ask, How shall I know where to find the
bank in which I may deposit my talent? we may use for reply the opinion of an
esteemed commentator as to what the bank in the parable of the pounds signifies,
viz. that the bank is Divine omnipotence, whereof we can avail ourselves by
prayer. "Of him who has not worked the Lord will demand, Hast thou at least
prayed?"[3] This may be a fanciful interpretation, but it contains a valuable
hint to those who are perplexed concerning their responsibilities. Let such pray
for guidance, and the Spirit of truth will show them how they can avoid the sin
and the doom of the unprofitable servant.

[1] Τράπεζαν, the expression in Luke’s parable of the pounds (Luk 19:23).

[2] So Alford and Godet. The author of ’The Stewardship of Life,’ already
quoted, makes the bank the Christian Church, and thinks that the idea intended
is that the slothful servant might have retired from the position of leader, and
fallen into the ranks of ordinary membership. "We must bear in mind," he says,
"that he occupied a representative place, otherwise we are thrown into the
perplexities which have vexed interpreters of the τραπεζἰται, bankers. Fearing
the great peril that surrounded the teacher and leader, he failed to fall into
the ranks, where ordinary powers mingle with the currency of related forces. He
might have retreated to a secondary place, a line of service lower in reward and
less exposed to danger, without breaking loose from the living body of Christ.
There is the guild of medium endowment where men of lowest grade may be woven
into muscle running into higher will. The talent divorced from kindred talents
is unproductive; the associated talents constitute a power; their confederation
is a bank, and that bank is the Christian Church" (p. 254). This is certainly
the most definite and suggestive view we have met with. Goebel’s; view is
somewhat similar. Assuming that the talents refer to the ministry of the word,
he makes delivery of the talent to the bankers signify retiring from the
ministry which one is unable to occupy with advantage, and so leaving the office
to more competent parties.

[3] Godet on Luke.

3. We come now to the most specific feature of the parable, its indirectly
conveyed yet most definite teaching concerning the principle on which faithful
service is valued in the Divine kingdom. The principle is that equal diligence
in the use of unequal endowment shall have an equal value set upon it. This
principle we infer from the repetition in identical terms of the encomium
pronounced on the first servant in addressing the second. To the servant who
received five talents and gained other five the Lord said, "Well done, good and
faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee
over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." To the servant who
received two talents and gained other two he said the same thing, word for word.
What now does this imply? Does it signify that both these servants are in future
to be put on a level, not only as to joy, but as to power and position, no
regard being henceforth had to the difference between them in respect of natural
ability? We might fairly enough put this construction on the expression "I will
place thee over many things." But it has to be considered that many is an
indefinite term, which might mean different things for different men; and that
the idea it is intended to express may be the disproportion between the past and
the future position of either party, rather than the equality of the future
positions of both. In both cases it might be said, "Thou hast been faithful over
a few things, henceforth thou shalt have an opportunity of being faithful over
many things," though the many things of the future differed in the same
proportion as the few things of the past. Then, seeing that a part of the reward
of faithful ministry here is opportunity of exercising a higher ministry
hereafter,—for such seems to be the import of the word in question, the
interests of the Divine kingdom may require that the largest scope for service
should be afforded to him who has shown greatest capacity for service. It is in
fact on this very ground that the talent is taken from the unprofitable servant
and given to him that has ten talents. We cannot, therefore, press the view that
many must be held to denote equality of position in all respects. The most we
are justified in saying is that the language is so chosen as to throw into the
shade any inequality which may still exist. If there is to be inequality in the
future, as in the past, the speaker has no wish to emphasise it; the truth to
which he desires now to give exclusive prominence is that the two men are in a
spiritual point of view peers. On this point we are left in no doubt. If many be
a vague word, there is no vagueness or ambiguity in the terms of commendation
bestowed in common on the two servants. Both are pronounced to have done well,
and both receive the honourable appellation good and faithful servant. There can
be no mistake as to what the words mean. The exclamation εὐ is an expression of
admiration. The master, hearing the reports of his two servants, is satisfied
that they have done their utmost, that they have performed an amount of work
which supplies indisputable evidence of steadfast application, unflagging
energy, and enthusiastic devotion, and he generously allows his feelings to
appear in the utterance of that expressive monosyllable. Though not a word more
had been said, we should have known what to think of the two servants. But we
are not left to conjecture the character of the men. It is drawn for us by two
significant adjectives, good and faithful (ἀγαθὲ καὶ πιστὲ). The former means
here, as in the parable of the Sower, devoted, enthusiastic, single-hearted.
That being the import of the one epithet, the other goes along with it as a
matter of course. One who is good, ἀγαθός, in the sense of putting his whole
heart and soul into his work, cannot fail to be faithful, πιστὸς, for the very
secret of fidelity is single-heartedness, and the sole cause of unfaithfulness
is a divided heart. No fear of neglect when the whole heart is engaged. No need
of a taskmaster’s eye to keep the devoted man at his work. Love is its own
taskmaster. Such then is the common character of the two men. The discerning eye
of the master detects the precious characteristics in both, and he pronounces on
both the same eulogium in identical terms, with equal warmth of tone. For keen
and sharp as he seems to be in looking after his interest, he does not value men
merely by the amount of money they bring in. It is no drawback in his view that
the second servant brings only two talents more, having received only two. He is
pleased with him not less than with the other, because he too has done what he
could; and he confers on him the badge of the legion of honour, in which
distinctions of rank are lost sight of, and all belong to the one order of
Heroes. The judgment is according to equity, and it is a faithful reflection of
the judgment of Him with whom the citizens of the Divine kingdom have to do. For
the Lord of that kingdom judges not men after the vulgar fashion of the world,
by the mere magnitude of the results achieved. He has regard to the diligence
and devotion displayed, whether the results be great or small, and He will
pronounce the encomium "good and faithful" on many whom the world has regarded
as comparative failures. If there be a willing mind, it is accepted by Him
according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not. The widow’s
mite is more to him than the large gifts of the wealthy, because it is the
offering of a devoted spirit. How blessed to serve a Master who is utterly
superior to the vulgar worship of success and quantity! How blessed, moreover,
to serve one who is as generous as He is equitable! For that any servant should
be praised as both these servants are, is not less noteworthy than that the one
is praised as much as the other. In this respect also the parable is faithful to
the Spirit of God and of Christ as exhibited in the Bible. The God of the Holy
Scriptures is characteristically generous in His moral estimates of His
servants. He pronounces perfect and good men in whom we have no difficulty in
seeing moral defect. The epithets are freely applied wherever there is
single-hearted devotion to the cause of God—to a Moses, a David, a Job, a
Barnabas. And those who serve the Lord of the kingdom ought to bear this truth
in mind. It is well that we think humbly of ourselves, but it is not well that
we imagine that God thinks meanly of the best endeavours of His servants. It is
injurious as towards Him, and it is degrading in its effect on our own
character. Religion, to be an elevating influence, must be a worship of a
generous, magnanimous God. Therefore, while in the language of a former parable
we say of ourselves we are unprofitable servants, so disclaiming all
self-righteous pretensions to merit, let us remember that we serve One who will
pronounce on every single-hearted worker, be his position distinguished or
obscure, or his success great or small, the honourable sentence Well done, good
and faithful servant. What the joy of the Lord into which the faithful are to be
admitted may be we can only dimly guess;[1] in what the higher ministries of
eternity, with which the ministries of time are to be rewarded, consist, and
under what conditions they are to be exercised, we can but feebly attempt to
imagine; but the cordial approval of the Lord is something we can understand, is
something to look forward to, is something which all faithful souls shall share,
and share alike.

[1] Goebel makes it promotion from a servile condition to the friendship of the
Lord, and to participation in his position of possession and power.

We conclude our study of this parable by drawing a contrast which enhances our
sense of its beauty and wisdom. In the Talmud are found parables similar to this
one and to that of the labourers in the vineyard, but similar only as a dead,
leafless, barkless tree of stunted dimensions is to a great forest tree with
wide-spreading branches clothed with foliage. The Rabbinical parable analogous
to that of the labourers in the vineyard is so meagre as not to be worth
quoting, and the motive is as petty as its conception is mean. The purpose is to
praise a certain Rabbi who made as much progress in the law in twenty years as
others could in a hundred.[1] What an insignificant aim compared with that of
Christ to illustrate the truth of the wide-reaching moral law that the first may
be last and the last first! The other Rabbinical parable analogous to that of
the talents is to this effect: "A certain king gave a deposit to each of his
three servants. The first guarded it safely, the second lost it, the third
defiled it and committed a part of it to another to keep. After a certain time
the king came to demand the deposit Him who guarded it he praised, and made
prefect of his house. Him who lost it he visited with capital punishment, and
ordered that neither his name nor his possessions should remain. To the third
the king said, Retain him till we see what the other will do in whose hands he
left a part, and meantime let him not depart from my house. If he has treated
the deposit rightly, let this one be restored to liberty, but if not let him be
punished." The observations of the author from whom we take this miserable
sample of parabolic narratives are so just, that we feel constrained to quote
them at length. "What more frigid than this parable? what more insipid can be
conceived? Almost the same things are related as in the parable of Jesus; but no
ornaments are added which give alacrity, so to speak, and a certain vivid
movement to the whole. Jesus exhibits a picture; the Talmudist presents the
barest outline—not a picture, but a caricature. And the things are so compared
as to injure rather than assist verisimilitude and the imagination. A king gave
a deposit to his three servants. For what reason? No reason is given; but Jesus
says that the master went away into a far distant region. And what sort of
deposit was it, and how great? It does not appear. Jesus says ’his goods,’ and
accurately indicates the number of the talents. Had the king of the Talmudist’s
parable any regard to the disposition or ability of his servants in distributing
the deposits? None. Our king gives five to one, two to another, to a third one,
to each according to his several ability. With what view was the deposit given?
That they might keep it. Our parable says that they might trade with it. And
what sentence is pronounced on the servants? For simply keeping the deposit the
first is praised and promoted; for losing it the second is put to death; the
treatment of the third is made dependent on the behaviour of another man. What
prodigality in rewarding, what cruelty in punishing, what injustice in all! Who
could believe such trifles, and what influence can they have on the minds and
hearts of men?"[2] Such senilities do not deserve to be rescued from the dust of
oblivion, but they help to deepen our impressions of the literary charm, and,
what is more important, of the profound insight into moral and spiritual truth,
displayed in the inimitable parables of Jesus.

[1] For this parable vide Lightfoot, ’Horæ Hebraicæ.’

[2] Limburg Brouwer, ’De Parabolis Jesu Christi.’ The Pounds; Or, Unequal
Diligence in the Use of Equal Endowments Unequally Rewarded A certain man noble
born went into afar country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And
he called ten servants of his, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto
them. Occupy till I come.[1] But his citizens hated him, and sent an ambassage
after him, saying, We do not wish this person to reign over us. And it came to
pass that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, he commanded these
servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might
know what they had made by trading. And the first presented himself, saying,
Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds. And he said unto him, Well, thou good
servant, because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority
over ten cities. And the second came, saying, Thy pound, lord, hath gained five
pounds. And he said also to this one, Thou also, be thou over five cities. And
another came, saying, Lord, behold thy pound, which I had, laid up in a napkin.
For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou
layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow. He saith to him, Out of
thine own mouth I will judge thee, wicked servant. Thou knewest that I am an
austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow. Why
then gavest not thou my money into the bank, and I on coming would have required
it with usury? And he said to those standing by, Take from him the pound, and
give it to him that hath ten pounds. (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten
pounds.) For I say unto you, that unto every one that hath shall be given, and
from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away.[2] But those mine
enemies, who would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay
them before me.—Luk 19:12-27.

[1] Πρανματεύσασθε, occupy yourselves in business, engage in trade.

[2] This saying is found also in Luk 8:18, slightly altered, ὁ ἔχοι being
changed into ὁ δοκεῖ ἔχειν; the former suits material possessions, the latter
spiritual possessions—such as understanding of Divine truth, in which possession
in the case supposed is only imaginary. This parable is of a more subjective and
personal character than the kindred parable of the talents. It is obviously but
a veiled parabolic history of the present and future fortunes of the Speaker,
and so possesses all the pathetic interest attaching to the actual humiliation
and the prospective hopes of the Son of man. He is the noble-born man who goes
to seek a kingdom; but is hated by His rightful subjects, and loved by only a
faithful few. If we keep this fact well in mind it may help us to understand the
peculiarities of this parable, and solve difficulties connected with it which
have been stumbling-blocks to many.

1. Foremost among the peculiar and difficult features of the parable is the
union in it of two points of view, which has suggested, not only to negative
critics like Strauss, but even to sober and believing interpreters, the
hypothesis that, in its present form, it consists of two parables originally
distinct blended into one—a lost parable concerning a king and his subjects, and
Matthew’s parable of the talents transformed. It cannot be denied that the
hypothesis possesses considerable plausibility. For the parable as given by Luke
combines traits so diverse, that on first thoughts one is tempted to regard them
as incompatible. The main actor appears to be at once a king and a private
person, a nobleman and a tradesman; the persons to whom he is related are partly
subjects and partly servants; the sum he gives the latter seems unworthy of a
king, and the reward he bestows on them, while such as becomes a king, seems
inappropriate to the character they have hitherto sustained, which is that of
traders. In presence of these incongruities it appears excusable to ask,[1] Can
such heterogeneous traits have been brought together by Jesus, all whose other
parabolic representations are characterised by unity, harmony, and fitness? Yet
we venture to think that, if only the situation be steadily kept in view, the
objections to the originality of the parable, which appear at first so
formidable, may to a large extent be removed.

[1] As is actually done by Reuss: vide his ’Histoire Evangelique.’ As to the
chief difficulty, that respecting the double point of view, the fact is
indisputable, and the only question is as to its psychological truth. This
question resolves itself into two: first, is it likely that Jesus would attempt
in one parable to express His relations to the two sections of Jewish society,
those who were hostile to Him and those who were attached to Him? and, second,
is it likely that He would use the precise figures which we find employed in the
parable before us? The circumstances amid which the parable appears to have been
spoken go far to answer the first question in the affirmative. Jesus found
Himself surrounded by a mixed multitude of people of diverse tendencies, and
variously affected towards Himself. On one side were men of Pharisaic
sympathies, to whom it was an offence that He had gone to be a guest with a man
like Zacchæus, who, being a chief publican, was therefore of course a chief
sinner; on the other side were many who had followed him from Galilee, full of
the admiration awakened in their minds by His ministry in that region, and
confidently believing that the journey towards Jerusalem portended the near
approach of the long and ardently expected kingdom. From the lips of the one
class came sullen murmurs; in the countenances of the other were visible the
traces of enthusiastic and romantic expectation. By both classes Jesus was
utterly misunderstood; the one having no comprehension of, or sympathy with, the
yearning love for the lost which was the key to his conduct towards Zacchæus,
the other being equally ignorant of the nature and future history of the kingdom
whose coming they eagerly desired. He was alone in the midst of that great
crowd. Here was a situation fitted to evoke the parabolic mood; for it was, as
we pointed out in our introductory observations, when made conscious of
isolation, by the stupid or malignant misapprehensions of men, that Jesus spake
in parables, A parable, therefore, might be looked for in the circumstances. But
if a parable is to be the outcome of the situation, we expect that it will be a
faithful reflection of the situation; that it will show on the one hand what the
murmurs of the disaffected will come to, and on the other hand, how far the
hopes of friends would be fulfilled Or frustrated by coming events. We are not
surprised, therefore, to find in the evangelic record a parable said to have
been spoken at: this time of the two-sided character which the circumstances
called for, with one side turned towards foes, another side towards friends;
warning the one of a fearful doom awaiting them if they persisted in their
present mind, and seeking to moderate the ignorant enthusiasm of the other by a
sober picture of the future that lay before them. But the question remains, Were
the figures employed in this two-sided parable appropriate to the purpose on
hand? Now there can be little doubt as to the appropriateness of one of the
tableaux, that, viz. of a king and his rebellious subjects. That picture was
true to the claims of Jesus to be the Messianic King, and to the future doom of
Israel, which was indeed to be destroyed before the face of the Lord. It was
also true, as has been pointed out by several commentators, to the external,
geographical situation; for the parable was spoken in the neighbourhood of
Jericho, where was the palace of Archelaus, who had done the very thing the king
in the parable is represented as doing, viz. gone to a far country, to Rome, to
seek a kingdom; not without opposition on the part of the Jews, who, tired of a
dynasty of adventurers, besought the emperor rather to convert their country
into a Roman province.[1] But what are we to think of the other picture, that of
a man noble born, and expectant of a throne, giving to his servants a pound
apiece to trade with? Is it suitable to the dignity of a man of royal birth and
hopes to be a trader, or even to be in any way connected with trade? Now here we
might plead that the act is the act of a nobleman, not of a trader, and that its
purpose is not even to make the servants traders, but simply to test their
fidelity. But it must be admitted that the transaction is a most unusual one for
a nobleman, suggestive of trade rather than of royalty, and fitted to compromise
a high-born person’s dignity. But what then? Was not this very incongruity and
indignity most suitable to Christ’s actual position? Was not His life on earth
filled with incongruities between His intrinsic dignity and His outward lot? Was
not this Nobleman born in the home of a village carpenter? Did He not Himself
become a carpenter when He grew to the years of manhood? If He had to endure
this extreme indignity, He might well bear the miner indignity arising out of
trade associations. Those who are in quest of crowns must not be too fastidious,
for they are liable to encounter strange turns of fortune on their way to
sovereignty.

[1] Josephus, ’Antiq.,’ 17, 11, 1 But we may be called to vindicate the
appropriateness of the figure with reference even to the followers of Jesus. It
may be asked, Might not their position have been indicated in connection with
the same figure of a king and his subjects by representing them as a minority of
loyal subjects who had to endure oppression at the hands of the majority during
the prince’s absence? Such, in fact, is the opinion of Ewald, who sees no
necessity for the two figures, and thinks that Luke mixed the two together for
no other reason than because they both referred to a journeying lord, and
because they probably lay side by side in his sources.[1] But this view, in the
first place, assigns a more subordinate position to the faithful portion of the
Jewish people than seems intended, if we may judge from the parable in which the
place of prominence is given not to foes, but to friends. Moreover, a parable
constructed as Ewald suggests, while teaching disciples one important lesson
often inculcated, viz. that the joys of the kingdom could be reached only
through suffering, would have failed to convey another lesson not less
important, viz. that the way to the kingdom lay through a life of strenuous
activity. For this purpose Jesus must have deemed the other emblem not unapt,
for He certainly employed it once (in the parable of the talents); and if once,
why not a second time? In the form which it takes in the parable of the pounds
the fiction is peculiarly well fitted to dissipate idle dreams, and bring the
thoughts of enthusiastic disciples down from the cloud-land of romance to the
ground of sober reality. In this connection the paltriness of the sum given to
the servants to trade with is significant, as suggesting that what lay before
them in the immediate future was a life not merely of activity, but of obscure,
inglorious activity, amid hard, necessitous circumstances. By this parable
Christ says to His faithful followers, Ye are to be rulers eventually, but ye
must be traders first, and for a long time,[2] and in a very small way—village
tradesmen, itinerant pedlars, so to speak. I give you each a pound; do with it
what you can, use it as opportunity offers, so as to earn a livelihood, and if
possible make a fortune. Hard lines surely to have to live upon such a pittance,
not to speak of earning money for the master’s benefit! Certainly the lot
appointed to these servants is one involving a severe discipline; and the end
contemplated is evidently not money-making, but character-making—the development
of a hardihood of temper and a firmness of will which can be turned to good
account when the obscure traders shall have been transformed into distinguished
rulers. Strange transformation doubtless, yet not unexampled even in our own
land. How many in this great commercial country have risen from mean obscurity
and utter poverty first to wealth, and then to positions of authority, beginning
with the pound, and multiplying it into ten, and repeating the process; times
without number; and not always bringing to the high position ultimately reached
the petty vices of narrowness and hardness which are apt to be contracted in the
process of building up a fortune from small beginnings, but sometimes exhibiting
a truly princely spirit of generous, free-handed benevolence!

[1] ’Die drei ersten Evangelien,’ pp. 419, 420

[2] Long enough to allow the one pound to be multiplied into ten, which implies
a longer period than the doubling of the capital in Matthew’s parable.

2. These observations have already in part disposed of a second difficulty that
has been found in this parable, viz. the smallness of the sum given to each of
his servants by the nobleman, which seems altogether unworthy of a man in his
position.[1] It might be enough to say, as we have already in effect said, by
way of reply to this objection, that it was good tor those who were ultimately
to be promoted to positions of authority that they should first pass through a
discipline of severe hardship. But another explanation may be offered. What if
the smallness of the sum given be due to the necessitous condition of the prince
himself? Candidates for crowns, however noble by birth, are apt to be needy. The
Nobleman of our parable is in this case. He has the highest prospects, but His
present state is one of abject humiliation and poverty; and in this veiled
history of Himself Jesus takes care that the picture at this point shall be in
keeping with reality. To which we may add, that in any case the very smallness
and meanness of the sum given to the servants is an argument for the
authenticity of the parable. No one but Christ would have dared to name so small
a sum, appropriately described in the parable as a very little. He alone knew
how to value the superlatively small, and to estimate the moral worth of those
who have been faithful in that which is least. Christian tradition would
magnify, not diminish, the amount. We could imagine tradition increasing the
pound to a talent; we cannot imagine it reducing the talent to a pound.

[1] The Attic pound was in value somewhat less than four pounds sterling, and
the sixteenth part of a talent. Kuinoel refers to an opinion of Michaelis that
the translator of this parable from Hebrew into Greek had confounded the Hebrew
word for portion (‏מָנָה‎) with the word for a minæ (‏מָנֶה‎), and that the
parable spoke not of ten minæ, but of ten portions. This is another instance of
learning going egregiously astray through want of insight into the moral import
of the parables. Some men would be better expositors if they had less learning,
as they might then take more pains to understand ideas as distinct from words.

These remarks, we trust, suffice to show the natural propriety of the parabolic
representation at this point. But what, it may now be asked, is represented by
the pound? Various answers have been given to the question. The pound, according
to one, is the common grace of salvation bestowed on all believers;[1] according
to a second, it is the mission of all Christ’s disciples to advance His
kingdom;[2] according to a third, it is the word which Jesus had committed to
His believing followers,[3] and which Paul in his Epistles to Timothy speaks of
as the trust, the noble trust,[4] and which is spoken of in the Acts of the
Apostles as increasing and multiplying.[5] The two last opinions are nearly
coincident, and may be accepted as the most probable interpretation. What the
servants of the nobleman have to trade with and seek to multiply is the word of
the kingdom. This association of the Divine word with the idea of trade is
legitimated as Scriptural by a text in Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians,
rendered in our English version, "We are not as many, which corrupt the word of
God"; but which may be more exactly translated, We are not as many who deal
after the fraudulent manner of huckstering merchants with the word of God.[6]

[1] Godet.

[2] Reuss.

[3] Hofmann, ’Das Evangelium des Lukas,’ p. 462.

[4] 1Ti 6:2; 2Ti 1:14 : ἡ παραθήκη, ἡ καλὴ παραθήκη.

[5] Acts 12:24.

[6] 2Co 2:17. The expressive word is καπηλεύοντες. Paul claims to be a fair
trader, who deals in unadulterated wares, in all simplicity and godly sincerity.
In the Clementine Homilies Peter calls the apostles good merchants of the true
religion, as if offering to men’s choice the seeds of Plants, Hom. ix. 8.

3. A third peculiarity in this parable is the equality of endowment—all the
servants receiving the same sum; whereas in the kindred parable of the Talents
the servants receive each a different sum. This feature can cause no difficulty
when it is considered what is meant by the pound; for the word of Christ and the
commission to teach it was one and the same for all. But without seeking aid
from the spiritual interpretation, we may learn from the parable itself, taken
in connection with the circumstances amid which it was spoken, the rationale of
this equality. The time of trading is a time of preparation for the higher
occupation of ruling, when they who have been with Christ in His temptations
shall receive kingdoms,[1] and sit on thrones.[2] It is therefore a time of
trial, when it has to be ascertained what they are fit for in. the higher
ultimate state, to which the lower transitory one is a stepping-stone. But the
best way to ascertain this is to put all on a level to begin with, and leave
them to determine by their own exertions what place they are worthy to
occupy.[3] In a race which is to settle who is to win the prize for greatest
speed, all must start in a line, and at the same moment.

[1] Luk 22:28.

[2] Mat 19:28.

[3] So Schleiermacher, ’Uber die Schriften des Lukas.’

4. This brings us to what may be called the theoretic feature of the parable,
which, though it comes in only incidentally, is worthy of the prominence we have
given it in taking from it our alternative title. The servants equally endowed
make an unequal use of their endowments, and unequal use of equal endowment is
unequally rewarded. He who with one pound gained ten is made ruler over ten
cities, and he who with the same sum gained only five pounds is made ruler over
only five cities. It may be said indeed that in bestowing unequal measures of
power upon his servants the king does not indicate unequal approbation, but
simply adapts their appointments to the ascertained capacity of each, in other
words, that this parable ends where the parable of the Talents begins, viz. by
treating men according to their several ability.[1] But this view, though in the
abstract legitimate, is excluded by another feature in the parable, which
plainly shows that what had been ascertained by the time of probation was not
the varied ability of the servants, but the unequal measure of their zeal and
industry and force of will. What we allude to is the withholding of all
expressions of praise in addressing the second servant. He is not said to have
done well, and he is not called good. Let it not be supposed that this happens
as it were per incuriam. Christ was not likely to commit the mistake of
withholding approbation when it was due. He was habitually careful in His use of
moral epithets. He was characteristically generous in bestowing them when they
were deserved; and, on the other hand, He would not only not ascribe the quality
of goodness to others who possessed it not, but He would not even allow it to be
ascribed to Himself by persons who were not in a position to speak with
intelligence and conviction, and who meant merely to pay a flattering
compliment. Why callest thou Me good? He said sternly to the young ruler who
inquired concerning eternal life; and from the second servant in this parable He
withholds the epithet not inadvertently, but deliberately, because in His
judgment he had not earned it. And what does this imply? That the second servant
had not done all that it was possible for him to do; that he had been lacking in
devotion, perseverance, steadfastness; that his whole heart had not been in the
business he had on hand; that he had not been a hero in the struggle of life;
that he had acquitted himself only fairly, respectably, not nobly. That the
first servant had possessed all the virtues opposed to these defects is
signified by the title ἀγαθός ascribed to him; and that the second servant was
chargeable with all these defects is not less surely signified by the
withholding of the title from him. Therefore we may legitimately represent this
parable as teaching that in the kingdom of heaven unequal zeal in the use of
equal ability will be unequally rewarded; a principle just in itself, and, when
added to the principles set forth in the two other parables previously
considered, completing the doctrine of Christ on the great subject of the
relation between work and wages.[2]

[1] So in effect Weiss, who remarks that the ίδία δύναμις in Luke comes into
view in the use of the common gift, while in Matthew it is kept in view in the
distribution: ’Das Matthäus-Evangelium.’

[2] The view we take as to the didactic import of the two parables of the
Talents and the Pounds is advocated among others by Dr. Gray, author of a work
entitled ’A Delineation of the Parables,’ published about the beginning of this
century. He says, "In the one parable we see the two industrious servants are
represented as equally diligent in their respective trusts, and therefore were
entitled to the same commendation and reward. But in the other, where a greater
degree of industry under the same advantages is supposed to produce greater
success, we see the reward assigned to each bears a proportionable respect to
his diligence and improvement." Gray was parish minister of Abernethy in
Perthshire.

5. It remains to advert in a sentence or two to yet another feature in this
parable, viz. that in its doctrine of rewards and punishments it seems to have
in view chiefly if not exclusively the temporal aspect. The rebellious subjects
are slain before the eyes of the king, the allusion being obviously to the ruin
which, a generation later, overtook the Jewish people; the faithful are rewarded
with appointments to rule over cities, no mention being made of the joy of the
Lord spoken of in Matthew’s parable; and the unprofitable servant is punished
simply by being deprived of an endowment which he had not known how to use, but
had tied up in a napkin, whose proper use was to wipe the sweat from his
brow.[1] We read not here of the outer darkness where is weeping and gnashing of
teeth. In all these respects the parable is obviously political rather than
religious; and it is only a perverse ingenuity which seeks to find out what its
expressions mean in reference to eternity, as when it is said that the ten or
five cities represent beings who are yet in an inferior moral position, but whom
the faithful in glory have a mission to elevate to their destination; or the
words, To him that hath shall be given, are made to bear the meaning, Such and
such a pagan people, which that young Christian might have evangelised, but did
not, remaining here below the slave of ease, will be intrusted in the future
economy to the devoted missionary who had here used all his powers in the
service of Jesus.[2] As to what that law may mean in reference to the world to
come we prefer to confess our ignorance. It is a law as mysterious as it is
certain in its operation even in this world. The remark of the bystanders,
"Lord, he hath ten pounds," was a very natural expression of surprise that to
him who had so much already more should still be given. Who has not in his heart
made the same remark many a time! The law on both sides of its operation seems
partial, unjust, inhuman. But it is idle to complain of the laws of the moral
universe. We shall be better employed in endeavouring to accommodate ourselves
to the conditions of our existence as responsible beings, and striving so to
live that they shall be for us, not against us. Let us study to be faithful in
that which is least, and then we also may have an opportunity granted us of
showing fidelity on the great scale, and shall be prepared to make the most of
such an opportunity when it comes.

[1] Σουδάριον is the Latin word sudarium imported into the language of the East.
The unprofitable servant wraps his money this time in a napkin, instead of
burying it in the earth, because it is a small sum.

[2] So Godet.


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  CHAPTER 15: 01.10.     BOOK 2. THE PARABLES OF GRACE
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Book 2. The Parables of Grace


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  CHAPTER 16: 01.11.       INTRODUCTORY
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Introductory In an early chapter of his Gospel Luke tells of a discourse
delivered by Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth on the Acceptable Year of the
Lord, and records that His hearers wondered at the gracious words which
proceeded out of His mouth.[1] That scene was thoroughly congenial to the taste
of the Pauline Evangelist, and he took it out of its historical connection and
put it in the forefront of his narrative of our Lord’s public ministry,
assigning to it the same place in his Gospel which is occupied by the Sermon on
the Mount in Matthew’s, that he might introduce Christ to his readers at the
very outset as the preacher of glad tidings. Not less congenial to his liking
was the phrase he employs to describe the character of the Nazareth discourse:
Words of Grace, λόγοι τῆς χάριτος. One recommendation of it doubtless was that
it suggested a connection between the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of
Paul, in which the idea of grace occupies a very prominent place. But it was,
apart from that consideration, a well-chosen title or motto. For though the word
grace, χάρις, is of very rare occurrence in the Gospels, the thing signified is
manifest in every page: Jesus as He appeared among men in His public ministry
was indeed, as the fourth evangelist says, full of grace. And of all the
evangelists Luke has done most to justify the representation by the account he
has given of our Lord’s teaching; for many words of Jesus that are peculiarly
and emphatically words of grace have been reported by him alone. Among the words
of grace spoken by Jesus a prominent place belongs to the group of parables now
to engage our attention, much the larger number of which are peculiar to Luke,
among that number being some which are the very poetry and quintessence of the
gospel of pardon and of Divine love; very specially those to be studied in the
next two chapters, to which may be justly given by way of eminence the title of
the Parables of Grace.[2] [1] Luk 4:16-30.

[2] Godet gives this title to the three parables in Luke xv., but the parable of
the Two Debtors may well be classed along with these. The four form a distinct
group connected together by one aim, as shall appear forthwith. A peculiar charm
surrounds the doctrine of grace as taught by Jesus, not in dogmatic formulae
defended by controversial dialectics as in Paulinism, but in poetic utterances
of exquisite simplicity and beauty, yet infinitely suggestive. The doctrine is
of course less developed, less dogmatically complete, but just on that account
the more attractive. To the gospel of grace as preached by Jesus belongs the
charm of the dawn, which is a delight to all mankind, which our Aryan ancestors
in their childish wonder even went the length of worshipping under the name of
Ushas. Christ’s preaching was the dawn of the era of grace, when the Dayspring
from on high visited this world, to give light to them that sit in darkness and
in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.[1]

[1] Luk 1:78-79. Let us turn our eyes towards the mild sweet light of this
morning of our eternal hope with awestruck humble gratitude. In many of the
parables belonging to the class now to be considered there is a striking union
of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Jesus appears in them the Artist, the
Sage, the Philanthropist, and the Hero, all in one. From the parables of grace
we may learn the genius of genuine evangelic piety, the beau ideal of a truly
evangelic ministry. The term ’evangelical’ ought to signify a Christ-like spirit
of love for the ’lost,’ combined with a wide, genial culture, and a manly type
of character. In actual use the term sometimes denotes something widely
different—a type of religion which combines strenuous advocacy of the doctrines
of grace with an attitude of hostility or at least of indifference to culture,
and with an ethical character which, in respect of scrupulosity, censoriousness,
and narrowness of sympathy, bears a painfully close resemblance to Pharisaism as
we know it from the Gospels. Going to the fountain-head of evangelic life we
discover that this unattractive combination is not necessary, but only an
accident; due probably to the circumstance that the evangelical faith united to
such heterogeneous attributes has been received not as a revelation from heaven,
but by tradition from a former generation. The parables of grace are in their
substance intensely evangelical. But in the form of thought homage is done to
æsthetics; taste, culture, art receives due recognition, not perhaps intentional
but only instinctive, but for that very reason the more effectually vindicating
for these things a place of their own. Whether from deliberate design or from
the unconscious action of a happy genius matters not, the fact is that in these
parables we find displayed a literary taste and grace unsurpassed, inimitable.
Then, when we consider the occasions which called forth many of these parables,
we see how utterly antagonistic to Pharisaism the true evangelic spirit is. The
most remarkable were spoken in self-defence—in defence of a habitual disregard
of superstitious scruples, and of an unconventional charity and width of
sympathy most offensive to the Pharisaic mind; were, in short, Christ’s apology
for a way of life utterly anti-Pharisaical; holy, but not severe towards the
unholy; pure, but not puritanic; conscientious, but unfettered by the
commandments of men; wearing a noble aspect of liberty, and breadth, and power.
This is only what we should expect from One in whom dwelt Divine charity in all
its fulness. For charity brings liberty to the conscience, and largeness to the
heart, and light and beauty to the mind; banishes feebleness, narrowness, and
fear, and endows the character with health, vigour, and courage. The Parables of
Grace may be distributed into groups as follows:

1. The Two Debtors, and the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son—four,
constituting Christ’s apology for loving sinners.

2. The Children of the Bride-chamber (including the New Patch on an Old Garment,
and New Wine in Old Skins) being Christ’s apology for the joy of disciples.

3. The Lowest Seats at Feasts, and the Pharisee and the Publican; or the kingdom
of God for the humble.

4. The Great Supper, or the kingdom for the hungry and the needy.

5. The Good Samaritan, or charity the true sanctity.

6. The Unrighteous Steward, or that charity covers a multitude of sins.

7. The Rich Man and Lazarus, and. the Unmerciful Servant, or implacability and
inhumanity the unpardonable sins. Twelve in all. The first group being the
evangelic parables par excellence, some general observations on them may here be
added as a contribution towards the illustration of the genius of the whole
class. These four parables, as already hinted, are connected together by a
common aim, that being to furnish an answer to those who found fault with Jesus
for associating with the disreputable classes of Jewish society. They are
Christ’s apology for loving sinners, and only when this fact is steadily kept in
view can they be fully understood and successfully expounded. It is somewhat
difficult for us to keep the fact in view, so completely has Christian
civilization advanced beyond the stage at which such conduct as was found fault
with in Jesus could be regarded as needing defence. We can hardly realise that
the Founder of our faith was seriously put upon His defence for an "enthusiasm
of humanity" which we now regard as His glory, and as the most effective
evidence of the Divinity of His doctrine. And when we do by an effort succeed in
realising it, we are apt to think that the fault-finders were a peculiarly
barbarous and heartless class of men. But in truth it was perfectly natural that
they should find fault; they had a perfectly good conscience in doing so; they
thought they did well to be angry with Jesus, and with the ideas then current in
the world they could hardly do otherwise. For the charity of Jesus was a new
thing under the sun, alien not only to the spirit of Pharisaism, but also to the
aristocratic genius of ethnic religion. Hence Christ’s love for the lost
appeared a fault quite as much to the heathen philosopher Celsus as to the holy
men of Judaea. In his attack on Christianity he alluded to it as a
characteristic fact that the chosen companions of Jesus were disreputable
persons, publicans and sailors, and he represented the preachers of the gospel
in his own day as saying in effect: Let no one who is wise or educated approach;
but if any one is illiterate, foolish, or untaught, a babe in knowledge, he may
confidently come to us; and as aiming at making converts of the silly and
senseless, of slaves, women, and children. In honest amazement and disgust he
asked: "Whence this preference for the sinful?" contrasting with this strange
procedure of Christians the more rational practice of Pagans in inviting to
initiation into their mysteries only men of pure and exemplary lives. "While
Christians address to men this call: Whosoever is a sinner, whosoever is unwise,
whosoever is a babe, in short, whosoever is a κακοδαίμων, him the kingdom of God
will receive—we, calling men to participation in our sacred rites, say: Whoso
has pure hands and is wise of speech, whoso is clean from all impiety, whoso has
a conscience void of offence, whoso liveth a just life, let him come hither."[1]
If Origen had to defend Christianity against such a charge brought by a
philosopher of the second Christian century, we cannot wonder that Christ had to
meet a similar charge as advanced by his Jewish contemporaries, who deemed it a
positive religious duty to keep themselves aloof from the unholy, in accordance
with the negative notion of holiness which not unnaturally had been bred in
their minds by the election and the whole past history of Israel, and the
peculiar character of her religious institutions. All new things have to fight
for their right to existence, and there never was a greater novelty, never a
more audacious innovation, than the charity of Jesus; and therefore it was, as a
matter of course, violently and repeatedly assailed, and the question often
asked: Why eatest thou, why consortest thou, with publicans and sinners?

[1] Origen, ’Contra Celsum,’ lib. i., c. 62.

Jesus was ready with His answer; and as the incapacity of those who interrogated
Him to understand His conduct was great and their ignorance deep, the answer he
gave was ample, and his apology varied. It is to be gathered from the four
parables of the first group, and from another word which may be called a
parable-germ, a proverbial saying needing only to be expanded into a history to
become a parable; that, viz., spoken at Matthew’s feast, in reply to those who
expressed surprise at Jesus being a guest among a gathering of publicans: They
that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.[1]

[1] Mat 9:13. The apology embraces three great ideas, which in general terms may
be expressed thus:

1. Christianity is a remedial system, and therefore it busies itself with those
who most manifestly need remedy.

2. It has faith in the redeemableness of human beings however sunk in sin and
misery; nay, it believes in the possibility of extremes meeting, of the last
becoming first, of the greatest sinner becoming the greatest saint.

3. It thinks the meanest and lowest of mankind worth saving, has such joy in
saving the: lost, that it can take delight in saving one sinner repenting, not a
picked sample, but any one taken at random. In other words, man at his worst is
a being of priceless worth in God’s sight, as a moral personality. The first of
these thoughts was the truth hinted at by Jesus in the word spoken in the house
of Matthew, under the form of a personal apology. The point of the saying lies
in the suggested comparison of Himself to a physician. That comparison accepted,
all the rest follows as a matter of course. No one wonders at a physician
visiting most frequently the houses of those who are afflicted with the gravest
maladies. In doing so he is only showing a becoming enthusiasm in his
profession, an enthusiasm which all regard as a virtue, the want of which would
cause him to be lightly esteemed as one whose heart was not in his vocation.
Neither is any one surprised that a physician, though refined in his personal
tastes and habits, is not nice and dainty in the pursuit of his calling,
avoiding with disgust loathsome diseases; but goes without hesitation wherever
duty calls, though every sense should be offended. All that is in the spirit of
his profession. He is a physician, and therefore cannot afford to be fastidious.
Even so would men have thought of Christ’s behaviour, had it occurred to them to
regard Him as a Spiritual Physician, and the religion He came to establish as
before all things redemptive. A spiritual physician must visit those who are
spiritually diseased, and a religion of redemption cannot consistently be
exclusive and dainty, but must address itself to the million, and be ready to
lay its healing hand even on such as are afflicted with the most repulsive moral
maladies. Had Christ come to be a mere rabbi or teacher of the law, then He
might consistently have said of the ignorant multitude: This people that know
not the law are accursed. Had He come as a philosopher, He might appropriately
enough have addressed Himself exclusively to the cultivated, disregarding the
illiterate vulgar. Had He come offering to initiate men into a system of
religious mysteries, then He might have confined His invitations to the
privileged few, neglecting the many as unworthy of initiation, as Celsus thought
He and His followers should have done. But He came not as a rabbi, or a
philosopher, or a mystagogue, but as a Healer of human souls; and that was an
occupation with which the world was unfamiliar, and hence the need for those
apologetic proverbs and parables. The parables of the Two Debtors spoken at
another feast, taken along with its application, has for its didactic kernel the
second of the three foregoing truths. That Jesus, while ostensibly defending the
woman against the evil thoughts of His host, was in reality on His own defence
on that occasion also, for the same offence of loving the sinful, there can be
no reasonable doubt. The evangelist evidently introduces the story in the place
where it occurs to illustrate by what kind of conduct He earned for Himself the
sneering epithet, or nickname, "the friend of publicans and sinners,"[1] to
which he alludes in the immediately preceding context, and how He justified that
conduct when it was called in question. And the parable must be studied from
this point of view, and when so studied it will be found to contain a most
important contribution to the apologetic of redeeming love. Its drift is to
teach that vast capacities for discipleship are latent in the depraved and
despised classes of society, that thence in truth may be obtained the best
citizens for the Divine kingdom. A very good reason for attending to these
classes, if true; and the virtue of the parable is to show how easily it may be
true; for what more likely than that those who are forgiven most should love
most?

[1] Luk 7:34. The three parables concerning the joy of finding things or persons
lost complete the apology of Jesus for loving the sinful, by emphasising the
truth that the lowest of men are worth saving. After you have said the worst of
these "publicans and sinners," whom all morally-respectable persons shun, what
does it amount to? Simply to this, that they are lost; lost to God, to
righteousness, to wisdom, to all the chief ends and uses of life. But if so,
what a joy if they could be found! All men have joy in finding things lost;
shepherds in finding lost sheep, housewives in finding lost pieces of money,
fathers in finding lost sons: why then should there not be joy also in finding
morally-lost men? It is the desire of such joy that moves me to mix with the
depraved and the disreputable. Surely a very good reason, if there be a
tolerable hope of success in the quest.

These preliminary hints will prepare us for studying sympathetically the whole
class of parables which are next to engage our attention, and specially the four
which come first.


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  CHAPTER 17: 01.12.        CHAPTER 1. THE TWO DEBTORS
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Chapter 1. The Two Debtors Or, Much Forgiveness, Much Love. The parable is so
deeply embedded in its historical matrix that we must take as our text the whole
narrative as it stands in Luke’s Gospel.[1] It is as follows:— And one of the
Pharisees desired Him that He would eat with him. And He went into the house of
the Pharisee, and sat down[2] to meat. And, behold, a woman who was in the city,
a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought
an alabaster vase of ointment, and standing at His feet behind Him weeping,
began to wet His feet with her tears, and did wipe them with the hair of her
head, and ardently kissed[3] His feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now
when the Pharisee which had bidden Him saw it, he spake within himself, saying:
This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman
this is that toucheth Him, that she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said unto
him: Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on. A
certain creditor had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other
fifty. And as they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Which of
them, therefore, will love him most? Simon answered and said: I suppose that he
to whom he forgave most. And He said unto Him: Thou hast rightly judged. And
turning to the woman, He said unto Simon: Seest thou this woman? I entered into
thine own[4] house, thou pouredst no water upon My feet: but she with her tears
wetted My feet, and with her hair she wiped them. A single kiss thou gavest Me
not; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased kissing My feet. My head
with oil thou anointedst not; but she with spikenard[5] anointed My feet.
Wherefore I tell you, forgiven are her sins, her many sins,[6] for she loved
much; but he to whom little is forgiven, loveth little. Then He said to her: Thy
sins are forgiven. And His fellow-guests[7] began to say within themselves, Who
is this who also forgiveth sins? But He said to the woman: Thy faith hath saved
thee, go into peace.—Luk 7:36-50.

[1] On this account Goebel has not deemed this parable a suitable theme for an
independent discussion, thereby missing a most outstanding feature in our Lord’s
parabolic teaching.

[2] κατεκλίθη, literally lay down on the couch, the reclining posture being in
use; the head towards the table, the feet stretched out behind, so that the feet
of Jesus were easily accessible to the woman.

[3] κατεφίλει; the κατα is intensive, kissed tenderly; and, as appears from Luk
7:45, repeatedly.

[4] σου emphatic, to suggest that he had neglected the duty of a host.

[5] μύρῳ (so Luk 7:38), in contrast to the more common olive oil (ἐλαίῳ).
Grotius remarks that though the Hebrews, like the Greeks, were wont to call all
sorts of ointments by the name of oil, it cannot be doubted that in this place
common oil is meant by ἐλαίῳ, because a contrast runs through the whole verse
(est enim perpetua ἀντιστοιχία).

[6] Such is the order in the original; the significance of it will be brought
out in the exposition.

[7] οἱ συνανακείμενοι.

Where, when, and by whom, this, anointing of Jesus was performed, whether by
Mary of Bethany, or by Mary of Magdala, or by any other Mary, are questions
which cannot be answered, and which therefore it is idle to discuss. All we know
of the time and place of the remarkable scene is, that it occurred in a certain
city or village in the house of a Pharisee named Simon, and that the story is
told by Luke at this point in his narrative because it served to illustrate how
Jesus earned the honourable nickname of the sinner’s friend. And all we know of
the heroine of the scene is, that she had been a woman of evil life in that
town, and was still in evil repute, the secret of her repentance being as yet
known only to God—a ’sinner’ in a sense needing no explanation, there being only
one form of sin which the world takes special note of in woman.[1] That a female
of such a character should have gained an entrance into the house of a
respectable member of society may seem surprising, evert when we recollect the
customs of the country. It was, we know, no breach of good manners for uninvited
persons to enter a house when a feast was going on, and sitting down by the wall
to observe and even converse with the guests; travellers report such invasions
of privacy, as they appear to us, as happening in Palestine in our own day.[2]
But a woman who was a ’sinner,’ how could she venture upon such a liberty?—what
chance of her presence being tolerated even if she dared to intrude herself?
Possibly her sin was an open secret known to all, yet which all could ignore if
they chose: the sin not of a harlot, but only of a woman of frail virtue.[3] In
that case it was perhaps not much more surprising that she should appear in
Simon’s house as a spectator, than that Jesus should appear there as a guest;
for there were not many Pharisees who thought well enough of Him to be willing
to do Him such an honour. Both events were somewhat out of course, not every-day
occurrences; but unlikely things do happen occasionally to interrupt the
monotony of ordinary existence; and these were of the number, perfectly credible
as matters of fact, and things to be thankful for on account of the animated
scene to which they gave rise. When two such persons meet the company is not
likely to be dull.

[1] For examples in Greek and Latin authors of the use of the generic term
’sinner’ to denote the special sin of unchastity in women, see Wetstein, in loc.

[2] Vide Farrar’s ’Life of Christ,’ vol. i. p. 298, where the author speaks of
the custom from personal observation.

[3] So Grotius: non publicae libidinis victima, sed alioqui vitae parum pudicæ.
Against this view, however, is the reading in Luk 7:37, approved by critical
editors: γυνὴ ἥτις ἠν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἁμαρτωλός, which seems to imply that she
practised a shameful calling in the city, whereas the reading in the T. R.,
which places ᾕτις ᾔν after πὸλει, implies merely that she was a woman of evil
reputation. So Godet; but the moral import of the two readings is not so certain
as he represents. The woman had a definite purpose in coming into the house of
Simon. She came not to be a mere spectator, but to anoint her benefactor with a
box of precious ointment. Her benefactor we must assume Jesus to have been,
though we know nothing of the previous relations. It were easy to invent a past
history which should account for the present situation. Jesus lived in public;
He went about the land doing good, preaching the good tidings of the kingdom,
and healing the sick; all had opportunities of seeing Him and hearing Him. Many
of the degraded class did see and hear Him with blessed effects on their hearts,
and we may safely assume that this sinful woman was of the number, and that she
is here to do honour to One whose gracious words and benignant aspect have
changed the current of her affections, and possibly "to give to Him and to
herself a pledge of her resolution to change her life."[1] But in proceeding to
carry out her purpose she does more than she intended. As she approaches the
object of her devoted regard her heart begins to swell with contending emotions
of shame, sorrow, love, and fear; she bursts into a flood of passionate tears
which fall upon the feet of Jesus; the feet so wetted with ’heart-water’[2] she
dries with her flowing hair, having nothing better at hand for the purpose;[3]
then pressing them to her lips she covers them with fervent kisses; and only
after her transports have thus been calmed, and she has somewhat recovered her
composure, does she at length perform the more ordinary act of homage.

[1] Reuss, ’Histoire Evangélique.’

[2] Luther’s expression, Herzenwasser. Vide ’Hauspostillen. Bengel’s phrase is,
Lacrimæ aquarum pretiosissimæ.

[3] Godet suggests, not without probability, that she unbound her hair for the
purpose.

Conduct so unusual could not fail to create a general sensation in the
guest-chamber, and especially to arrest the astonished attention of the host.
Had the woman come in quietly and taken a place apart, as a spectator, her
presence though unwelcome might have been overlooked by Simon. But behaviour so
bold, so impudent, how could he regard otherwise than with amazement,
disapprobation, and disgust? And then what was he to think of Jesus for
suffering such attentions? He could not think so ill of Him as to believe Him
capable of receiving these with complacency had He known the character of the
person bestowing them; but at the least he must gravely doubt His prophetic
insight. What he felt was apparent in his face and manner to any eye of ordinary
discernment. The intruder appeared to him to be simply acting her characteristic
part as a ’sinner,’ and the behaviour of his guest cast him into a state of
painful perplexity. The woman was unhesitatingly condemned, and Jesus was put
upon His defence. Now to us, who are in the secret, these hard suspicious
thoughts seem of course altogether groundless. Yet we must do the Pharisee the
justice to say that in his circumstances, and from his point of view, they were
very natural. How was he to know that a great moral change had come over this
woman, whom he had hitherto known only as a person of evil life? Doubtless he
might have observed those tears, which were suggestive of another hypothesis
than that by which he accounted for her strange behaviour. But then how unlikely
that other hypothesis! how improbable that the frail one is here in the capacity
of a penitent! how rare an event is such a moral transformation! Celsus said,
"to change nature perfectly is very difficult;"[1] and holding such an opinion
he was very naturally surprised at the interest taken by Christians in the
vicious. Simon doubtless shared the heathen philosopher’s scepticism regarding
conversion, as does the world in general, and therefore we cannot wonder if the
penitence-hypothesis did not even so much as occur to his mind. He grievously
misjudged in consequence; but his mistake was at least quite as excusable as
that of Eli, who deemed that Hannah was drunk, when she was only a woman of a
sorrowful spirit.[2] It needs an unusually delicate and sympathetic mind to
judge rightly in such cases, and Eli and Simon were commonplace men.

[1] Origen, ’C. Celsum,’ lib. iii. C. 65. Φύσιν γὰρ ἀμεὶψαι τελέως παγχάλεπον.

[2] 1Sa 1:14-15.

Happily for the object of Simon’s harsh judgment, there was one present who
could divine the real situation. The quick loving eye of Jesus detected what
escaped the observation of a Pharisee whose vision was blunted by prejudice and
custom; and, reading at the same moment with equal rapidity and certainty the
thoughts of His host, He forthwith proceeded to put the true interpretation on
the phenomena, and so to defend at once the woman and Himself. Nor was He sorry
to have the opportunity of offering the double apology. For He had felt the
coldness of Simon’s manner towards Himself on entering his house as a guest. He
saw at once on what footing He stood; that He was regarded as a social inferior,
and that He was there to be patronised by one who thought he showed
condescension in inviting Him to his house, and might therefore excuse himself
for neglecting the ordinary attentions paid by a host to guests of his own
rank.[1] Such indignity the lowly Son of man could meekly endure, nor did He
resent it in the present instance, for the tone of the words which He spake at
this time is not that of anger, but of one who, feeling His own moral
superiority, can with easy self-possession say what fits the occasion. "Simon, I
have somewhat to say unto thee:" what composure is in that beginning! But though
He cherishes no resentment against Simon for the treatment He has received, He
deems it right to avail Himself of a legitimate opportunity of setting it also
in its true light, in the hope that he who has hitherto been occupied in judging
others, may enter upon the more profitable occupation of judging himself. And
with exquisite felicity, He contrives to accomplish this purpose at the same
time that He is pursuing the other, that viz. of defending the woman and Himself
against Simon’s; unjust suspicions. One brief, simple parable serves both
ends—at once apologising for the accused, and bringing a countercharge against
the accuser. Were it not, indeed, for the interpretation given by Jesus Himself,
in which He makes a complaint of Simon’s coldness, we might not be perfectly
sure that the parable was meant to have an offensive as well as a defensive
bearing. We might think that the second debtor did not necessarily represent
Simon or any one in particular, but was merely introduced as a foil to the first
and for the sake of contrast. But even apart from the interpretation following,
there are little touches in the parable itself which seem to indicate a purpose
to attack as well as to defend. There is the pointed manner in which the Speaker
intimates to Simon His desire to say something to him.[2] Then there is the
question with which the parable winds up, Which of them now will love him most?
which looks very like a device to entrap Simon into a judgment on himself after
the manner of Nathan with David.[3] One would say, beforehand, even without
reading the application, that the woman being of course the greater debtor in
the parable, Simon is represented by the other, and that Jesus meant to
insinuate that if the woman had loved Himself so ardently, Simon had sinned in
the opposite direction, though in what precise respects he had come short we
should not have known unless we had been informed.

[1] Meyer remarks that the custom of feet washing was not an absolute rule, but
was observed chiefly towards persons arriving off a journey. But there can be
little doubt that a difference had been made between Jesus and other guests of
higher social rank.

[2] Σίμων, ἔχω σοί τι εἰπεῖν.

[3] On ᾿Ορθῶς ἔκρινας, v. 43, Godet well observes, that it is the Πάνυ ὀρθῶς of
Socrates, when he had caught his interlocutor in his net. This parable of the
Two Debtors is so simple in its structure, that it needs hardly any explanation.
The case put is plain, and the inference suggested is equally so. The answer of
Simon to the question, Which will love him most? is the judgment of common
sense. He to whom most is forgiven will certainly love most; that is, on the
assumption that the two debtors are in other respects alike; for we know, of
course, that a man of a generous disposition will be more grateful for a small
favour than a man of selfish nature will be for a greater. The only feature that
may seem a little surprising is the smallness of the sums owed, especially when
compared with those named in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant. The purpose
may have been to insure an unbiassed judgment on the part of Simon, by
preventing the suspicion arising in his mind that he was aimed at. So important
a person was not likely to think of himself as concerned in a transaction where
such paltry sums were involved as fifty and five hundred pence. If this was what
was designed, the device was perfectly successful. The air of languid
indifference with which Simon gave his judgment, as if the case supposed were
too insignificant to awaken any interest in his mind, shows that he had no
thought of its having a reference to himself. Then while the pettiness of the
amounts served this purpose beforehand, the utter insignificance of the smaller
amount served another purpose after-hand, when Jesus had given His own
interpretation of the parable, that viz. of letting Simon see what value his
lightly-esteemed guest set upon his love. You have loved me, it said in effect,
as one who has been forgiven fifty pence; as one, that is, who has received a
scarcely appreciable favour. On the other hand, the larger sum, though in itself
of no great amount, was sufficiently great to be a measure of the penitent’s
gratitude both by comparison and absolutely. By comparison, for it was ten times
greater than the smaller sum; absolutely, for it was a considerable amount in
relation to the social position of the humbler debtor.[1]

[1] The smallness of the sums owed may be an indirect indication of the
prevalent poverty of the country. Hausrath, in his ’Neutestamentliche
Zeitgeschichte’—’History of the New Testament Times’—has gathered together the
many indications in the Gospels of the prevalence in Palestine of impoverishment
produced by excessive taxation. "The most frequent images in the utterances of
Jesus are those of the creditor, the debtor, and the debtor’s prison. In one
parable, everybody except the king is bankrupt; the steward is in debt to the
king; the servant to the steward (Mat 18:23); the rich who remit to their
debtors fifty or five hundred pence are rare indeed (Luk 6:34; Luk 7:41); the
unmerciful creditor who always has the bailiff at hand is much more frequent. In
the street, the creditor seizes the poor debtor, and the judge’s officer casts
him into prison, out of which he does not depart before he has paid the very
last farthing (Luk 12:58); and if he cannot pay, his lord commands him to be
sold, and his wife and children, and all that he has, and payment to be made
(Mat 18:25). Oil and wheat, the first necessaries of life, are furnished on
credit (Luk 16:6-7); buildings that have been commenced remain unfinished for
want of money (Luk 14:29); the merchant puts all his means, in order to keep
them safe, into a single pearl (Mat 13:46); in digging in the field, one finds
the treasure which another has buried to keep it from the rapacious hands of the
oppressor (Mat 13:44); speculators keep their corn back from the markets, and
enlarge their storehouses (Luk 12:18). With this impoverishment is connected the
parcelling out of estates; in place of the plough, appears on the smaller
allotments spade husbandry. "What shall I do?" says the ruined steward; "I
cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed" (Luk 16:3). The result of this want of money is
usury. The bank of exchange flourishes (Luk 19:23); in a short time (?) the
speculator multiplies his capital five-fold and ten-told (Luk 19:16; Luk 19:18).
This is the economic background of the evangelic history which comes to light in
a hundred places."—Vol. I. pp. 188, 189. English translation, Williams and
Norgate. The one matter regarding this parable which needs careful consideration
is its aim. What purpose or purposes was it designed to serve? Now, as we have
already indicated, the parable was spoken with a threefold aim; first, to defend
the conduct of the woman by suggesting the point of view under which it ought to
be regarded; second, to impugn the conduct of the Pharisee; and third, to defend
the conduct of Jesus Himself in accepting the homage rendered. We will consider
the parable in these three points of view in succession.

I. When the whole circumstances are duly borne in mind, it becomes clear that
the first thing to be done was to put a right construction on the strange
behaviour of the woman. That she loved Jesus, loved Him much, was evident; but
the quality and motive of the love were not so apparent; they had in fact been
grievously misunderstood by Simon. These therefore must first be set in their
true light. And how is this done? Simply by constructing a story of two debtors,
and thereby suggesting that the case of the woman is the case of a moral debtor
forgiven. As in the saying, "They that be whole need not a physician," the point
lies in the suggestion that Jesus was a physician; so in this parable the
emphasis lies in the suggestion that the accused is not merely a sinner, but a
sinner forgiven, and that her love proceeds from gratitude for the remission of
her debts. It is true no express mention is made of the quality of the love, but
only of its quantity, but the quality is involved in the relevancy of the
parable. It had been a mere impertinence to speak a parable of two debtors,
unless it were meant to convey the idea that the woman was a debtor forgiven,
and her love a debtor’s love to her generous creditor. This indirect way of
saying the thing chiefly intended is incidental to the parabolic style, and when
that is remembered it is very forcible. We then see the point of the parable, as
we see a star glimmering into view in the evening twilight, most clearly, by
looking a little to one side of it. Unfortunately many commentators have not
looked a little to one side, but have gazed too directly at the object, and so
have failed to see it, and in consequence have fallen into error in the
interpretation of the sentence in which our Lord explained His leading purpose
in uttering the parable: "Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many,
are forgiven; for she loved much."[1] These words have been a stumblingblock to
many, logically and theologically; the latter because they seem to teach the
Romish doctrine of justification by charity, as opposed to the Protestant
doctrine of justification by faith; the former because, so understood, they
stand in no relation to the connection of thought either before or after The
logical difficulty is the more serious of the two; for one might manage to
overcome the other, either by magnanimously conceding the point to the Catholic
interpreter, and contenting ourselves with the philosophic reflection that in
these enlightened times "we have surmounted the polemical antithesis to
work-holiness,"[2] or by ingeniously endeavouring to attach to the verb "loved"
a sense approximating to the idea of faith, making it e.g. equivalent to
’longed,’ so that the didactic import of the words should be somewhat like this:
He who is to believe in forgiveness must have that longing for pardon which is
love in its passive or receptive side, and is at the same time substantially
faith.[3] Such ingenious devices for reducing love to faith, and so squaring
Christ’s doctrine with Protestant orthodoxy, do certainly leave on the mind an
impression of artificiality; but one could reconcile himself to that if no
better way out of the difficulty could be found. But the logical difficulty
remains, the irrelevance of the words so interpreted to the situation and the
connection of thought. Thus; understood, the words do not contribute to the
explanation of the parable, but simply contain an independent didactic thought,
to the effect that the woman will receive forgiveness of her many sins, because
she has a great yearning for forgiveness, as evinced by her whole behaviour. It
is very hard to believe that any such incoherence characterised the utterances
of Christ on this occasion. But we are not reduced to such an unwelcome
necessity. If we only keep in mind the situation, the meaning, point, and
appositeness of the disputed sentence become perfectly clear. Christ’s purpose
in uttering these words is to suggest to Simon the true point of view from which
the woman’s conduct is to be regarded. He says here plainly what he has already
said parabolically: the case of this woman is the case of a debtor forgiven. The
solemn manner of address, "Wherefore I say unto thee," indicates a purpose to
correct a wrong impression, indicates that as the chief purpose of the Speaker,
though it is not the first thing spoken of.[4] The order of the words which
follow points in the same direction: "Forgiven are her sins, her many sins; for
she loved much." The idea of forgiveness is put in the forefront, to suggest a
way of regarding the woman’s conduct which Simon had never thought of. "She is a
moral debtor forgiven, Simon "—Jesus would say: "she is forgiven—that is the key
to the strange behaviour you have so grievously misconstrued. Her sins have been
forgiven, her many sins: for you are not wrong in thinking of her as a great
sinner—that is manifest from her behaviour: for in all these acts which have
awakened so much surprise, ’she loved much,’ and that is the way of those who
have been forgiven much." Thus paraphrased, the saying which has created so much
perplexity fits naturally into the whole situation. The first clause, "forgiven
are her sins," corrects Simon’s misconstruction and reveals the character of the
woman’s love; the second clause, "her many sins," concedes all that Simon can
say as to the woman’s past life; the third clause, "for she loved much," at once
indicates the source of the knowledge that her sins were many, and the existence
of a connection between the multitude of her sins and the excess of her love.
For this last clause does not depend on the first clause, but on the second, not
on ἀφέωνται, but on πολλαί;[5] and so connected it contains by implication the
didactic statement which we expect as the counterpart to that which follows:
"but to whom little is forgiven, the same also loveth little." Expanded,
Christ’s whole meaning is this: "Now then, Simon, let me tell you the truth
about this poor woman: Her whole conduct means that she is a penitent who has
been led by me to entertain the hope that her sinful life may be forgiven. That
life in your opinion has been very full of sin. I can see that there you are not
mistaken: that her sins are many her behaviour towards myself attests, for in
all these acts she showed much love;[6] and that much love is the sure sign of
much forgiven, just as little love, exemplified in your own conduct, is the sure
sign of little forgiven."[7]

[1] Luk 7:47.

[2] So De Wette; as if feeling that the tense was against him he says, we may
add to ἠγάπησε ἀγαπᾷ.

[3] So Olshausen, who views faith as love receptive or the negative pole,
forgiving love as the positive pole. Similarly Trench, who finds comfort in the
fact that Theophylact identifies the love referred to in Luk 7:47 with faith.
Having stated in the text that the woman’s yearning love "in fact was faith," he
appends the note, "very distinctly Theophylact in loc., ὄτι ἠγάπησε πολύ, ἄντι
τοῦ πίστιν ἐνεδείξατο πολλήν." It is true that Theophylact does say this, but
his saying so does not settle the matter. It only shows that he felt the
pressure of the difficulty.

[4] I take οὔ χάριν as connected with λέγω σοι, not with what follows, and
understand it as mediating a return to the principal thought in the mind of the
speaker, from the detailed contrast between the conduct of the woman and that of
Simon. Taken with the clause beginning with ἀφέωνται the phrase must be rendered
"on this account"—because of the love displayed as aforesaid, her sins are
forgiven.

[5] The interpretation of this verse by Grotius is not the same as ours, but he
recognises that πολλαί is emphatic. He gives to the verse this turn: God pardons
sin, great sin, in the hope of producing such great love as this woman has
shown. The woman’s sin was pardoned in the foresight of such love as the natural
effect. This idea corresponds to the text, "there is forgiveness with thee, that
thou mayest be feared," and coincides with our view as to Christ’s motive in
receiving publicans and sinners.

[6] The aorist ἠγάπηαε implies a reference to the acts enumerated in the
previous verses.

[7] The view above given, according to which ὅτι in last clause of Luk 7:47,
points out that by which a certain fact is; known, not that on account of which
a certain thing is done, is that taken by Unger; Meyer (ὅτι, vom
Erkenntnissgrunde zu fassen); Kuinoel (who holds that the other view, even if
true, is an irrelevance); Bengel (ὅτι, Remissio peccatorum, Simoni non cogitata,
probatur a fructu); Reuss, Stier, Godet, and most recent commentators (not
Keim). The greater number make ὅτι depend not on πολλαί, but on ἀφέωνται. The
old Protestant interpretation which took ὅτι as equivalent to διό is entirely
out of date, and may be referred to merely as an instance of exegesis occupying
a position of servile subordination to the dogmatic interest.

2. The parable was spoken not only in defence of the woman, but as an attack on
the fault-finder. It is in a particular instance the judgment of Pharisaism, as
an ungenial soil in which the gospel of the kingdom had little chance of taking
root. It is a judgment pronounced in a fair and candid spirit through a
favourable sample of the class, for such Simon seems to have been. This Pharisee
was of a milder spirit than the majority of his co-religionists. He cherished no
unkindly feelings towards Jesus. When puzzled by His conduct, as at this time,
he did not think the hardest thoughts of Him, for many would have plainly said
something much more injurious than, "He cannot be a prophet." Simon was a sort
of Nicodemus; he had respect enough for Jesus to invite Him to dinner, though
too hampered by pride and prejudice to be cordial in his hospitality; as
Nicodemus had respect enough for Jesus to visit him, but only by night In this
light Jesus seems to have regarded him. He was willing to recognise him as one
who cherished towards Himself at least a little love. If He animadverted on the
littleness of the love, it was in no vindictive spirit, not to gratify private
resentment, but for a higher purpose. The very frankness of the complaint
testifies to the absence of perturbing passions from the mind of the Speaker.
The description of a little debtor’s love, as exemplified by Simon, is pervaded
by a triumphant buoyancy of spirit and a. happy play of humour which exclude the
supposition that injured feeling was the source of inspiration. Far from being
angry with his host, Jesus pitied him as a soul in bonds, unable to break away
from conventionalism in thought and action, and He described his state in hope
to set him free. And how significant as well as graphic the description! "Thou
gavest Me no water for My feet; thou gavest Me not a kiss; My head with oil thou
didst not anoint." Cold civility, no heart, no cordiality, no spontaneity, no
free play of natural affection. This in the matter of hospitality, and the same
thing of course in all other departments of conduct; for the ruling spirit of a
man reveals itself in all he does. The ruling spirit in this Pharisee, and in
all his class, is pride, protecting from sinful excess on the one hand, but
disqualifying also for heroic virtue on the other, and dooming them to moral
monotony and mediocrity. The pride of virtue binds their souls in the ice of a
perpetual winter, so that in their life are seen neither the devastating floods
of passion nor the fertilizing streams of charity. How certain that the kingdom
of heaven will draw few citizens from the ranks of Pharisaic society, and what
poor citizens even the few are likely to make! Why, this man is so enslaved by
caste prejudices that he dares not treat Jesus, socially his inferior, and
suspected by his class, with gentlemanly courtesy and right hospitable welcome,
but must needs receive Him in a style which is a miserable compromise between
civility and insult. What chance is there of such an one condescending to become
a disciple of Jesus, and identifying himself wholly with His cause?[1] As we
read this indictment for inhospitality we feel that Pharisaism is hopeless, and
that if Jesus desires to make disciples, He must seek them not among the men
that need no repentance, but among the erring and lost, who neither can boast of
’Pharisaic virtue, nor are enslaved by Pharisaic pride.

[1] Hofmann states it as the aim of the evangelist in introducing at this point
in his narrative the scene in Simon’s house, to show by an example how the
Saviour of sinners could not be their Saviour, viz. because wanting the sense of
sin they had no desire for forgiveness (’Das Evang. des Lukas,’ p. 203). This is
a defective account of the design of the narrative, but it is true so far as it
goes. To show the hopelessness of the Pharisaic class as a field for
evangelistic effort, and the hopefulness of the classes they despised, and so to
justify in both directions the public action of Jesus, is the full purpose and
effect of the narrative.

3. To say just this in His own defence was the third purpose Jesus had in view
in uttering this parable. This purpose is indeed not so apparent on the surface
of the parable, and it has been very little noticed by interpreters,
nevertheless that Jesus had it in view may be considered certain. For in the
first place He was put on His defence by Simon’s uncharitable thoughts. Then,
that He meant to defend Himself may be inferred from the question with which the
parable ends, "Which of them will love Him most?" the question clearly implying
that the amount of debt remitted and the amount of grateful love are connected
by a general law. It is in effect predicted that every debtor who is forgiven
much will love much.[1] But if this be indeed the law of the case, what more
natural than that Christ, as the recipient of the gratitude, should be
influenced by that law in His conduct, and pay most attention to those who,
being forgiven, would have most love to give Him, as having been forgiven most,
and that having a good opportunity of justifying Himself for so acting, as in
the present case, He should avail Himself of it? Further, is it not sufficient
evidence of intention to defend conduct impugned that the parable serves the
purpose so admirably, saying in effect: I repel not this woman, I accept gladly
those demonstrations of devoted love, for I desire to be much loved: and for
this very reason it is that I am drawn by powerful attraction to company which
you Pharisees shun, and if the truth must be told prefer it to yours, for I find
that when they have been brought to repentance and to faith in the forgiveness
of sins, their love is as great as their previous sinfulness. But it becomes if
possible still more certain that a purpose of self-defence was in Christ’s mind,
when we take into consideration the pointed contrast between the penitent and
the Pharisee in the application of the parable. "Water for My feet thou gavest
not, but she with tears did wet My feet, and with her hair she wiped them. A
single kiss to Me thou gavest not, but she, from the time I came in, hath
incessantly kissed My feet. With common oil My head thou didst not anoint, but
she with costliest ointment anointed My feet." Who, as he reads these
impassioned sentences, does not say to himself, No wonder that Jesus Christ
preferred the society of publicans and sinners to the society of Pharisees I Who
would not take pains to earn such love as that of the woman? Who would not
rather be excused from being the recipient of such cold love as that of Simon?
And who can doubt that Jesus meant to suggest such thoughts as a part of His
apology for loving sinners, not merely in self-defence, but in self-revelation,
that all men might know where His preferences lay?

[1] τις... ἀγαπήσει; the predictive future.

It is matter of regret to us, that in ascribing to Jesus this aim we part
company with the commentators, few of whom, as already noticed, allude to it. We
take comfort, however, from the fact that we have an our side one who, though no
learned commentator, was as likely as any to grasp the particular truth we now
insist on. Bunyan saw it, and proclaimed it with all his characteristic force
and felicity. In his famous sermon on "The Jerusalem sinner saved," he specifies
as one of the reasons why Jesus would have mercy offered in the first place to
the biggest sinners, that "they when converted are apt to love Him most,"
appealing in proof to the words spoken by Jesus in the house of Simon. We would
gladly give our readers the benefit of the whole paragraph, all the more that in
these days few probably will think of turning to such a quarter for light upon a
parable. But we can find space for only one or two sentences. "If," shrewdly
remarks our author, "Christ loves to be loved a little, He loves to be loved
much; but there is not any that are capable of loving much, save those that have
much forgiven them." He then cites Paul as an illustration; and having given a
graphic description of the apostle’s intense devotion to Christ and to the
gospel, he adds the quaint reflection: "I wonder how far a man might go among
the converted sinners of the smaller size, before he could find one that so much
as looked anything this wayward. Where is he that is thus under pangs of love
for the grace bestowed upon him by Jesus Christ? Excepting only some few, you
may walk to the world’s end and find none." Next follows another illustration,
drawn from the very narrative now under consideration, but told as a story
concerning Martha and Mary, which Bunyan had read in a religious book some
twenty years before. The story as told is homely enough, but the moral is
admirably put. "Alas! Christ has but little thanks for the saving of little
sinners. ’To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.’ He gets not water
for His feet, by His saving of such sinners. There are abundance of dry-eyed
Christians in the world, and abundance of dry-eyed duties too: duties that were
never wetted with the tears of contrition and repentance, nor even sweetened
with the great sinner’s box of ointment." And the conclusion of the whole is:
"Wherefore His way is oftentimes to step out of the way, to Jericho, to Samaria,
to the country of the Gadarenes, to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and also to
Mount Calvary, that He may lay hold of such kind of sinners as will love Him to
His liking."[1]

[1] Weizsäcker is of opinion that the parable of the Two Debtors does not fit
into its present surroundings, and that it was spoken on some other occasion.
But he thinks that its original sense certainly throws light on the procedure of
Jesus with the classes of people who are represented as approaching Him in the
narrative of the palsied man, and the feast in Levi’s house. "He draws gladly to
Himself the distinctively sinful and the apostates from the law
(Gesetzesabtrunnigen=publicans, &c.), because such, from the sense of their
guilt, have also a strong sense of their deliverance, and therefore can be won
in a deeper, more enduring manner."—’Untersuchungen,’ p. 386. This declared
preference of Christ is certainly very comfortable news to those whom it
concerns—to ’Jerusalem sinners,’ to sinners, so to speak, writ in large
capitals. But moralists may suggest the expediency of treating both the
preference and the ground on which it rests as esoteric doctrines, to be
whispered in the ear of the select few, lest the open proclamation of them
should give rise to licentious abuse, by leading men to think that the best way
to qualify themselves for being eventually great saints is in the first place to
be great sinners. In their laudable zeal for the interests of morality, they may
even suggest a doubt whether we have correctly understood Christ’s
meaning—whether He really intended to say that He expected the most devoted
disciples to come from among those who had greatly erred, and on this very
ground exercised His ministry chiefly among this class. Is it not permissible,
they may ask, to interpret the maxim "Much forgiven, love much," subjectively,
so that it shall mean, he who hath the greatest sense: of sin, being forgiven,
shall love most, thus making the difference between men turn not upon the
comparative amount of their outward transgressions, but upon the comparative
sensitiveness of their consciences, which may quite easily be found in its
highest degree in him who has outwardly offended the least.[1] Now we have the
greatest respect for such scruples and for the motives from which they arise.
And we admit, as Bunyan admitted, that the doctrine in question, like the
kindred doctrine of justification by grace, may be abused by evil-minded men to
their own hurt We acknowledge further that great devotion does not necessarily
imply great antecedent misconduct, and that in point of fact, many notable
Christians never were notable offenders in outward conduct against the laws of
morality; as an example of whom may be cited Luther, who was not remarkable
among men for crime or vice, like Augustine before his conversion, but only for
the morbid intensity of his moral consciousness. And we accept it as a corollary
from this fact, that Christ’s words must not be so strictly interpreted as to
exclude from the category of great debtors, who are greatly grateful for
forgiveness, such men as the German reformer. He to whom much is forgiven may
mean he who feels himself to be a great debtor, and he to whom little is
forgiven may mean he who feels himself to be a small debtor; and the latter may
in fact be the greater sinner of the two, as we know that many of the Pharisees
were really worse men than the very publicans and harlots. Still the fact
remains that the original debtors of the parable were, in the broad outward
sense, great and small debtors respectively, the woman being the great debtor,
and Simon the small. The further fact remains, that Jesus did really seek and
find disciples chiefly among those whose lives were far from correct and
exemplary, instead of among those who, as regards outward conduct, needed no
repentance. Therefore, if, on the one hand, the subjective interpretation of the
parable may not be altogether excluded, neither, on the other, may the
objective. It must be recognised as a fact that among those who have gone
furthest wrong the kingdom of God not only may find, but is likely to find, its
best citizens, so that the ministers of the kingdom are justified in paying
special attention to that class. And if the rationale of this fact be demanded,
it is not very hard to give. In the first place, it is much easier for one who
has been a transgressor, to attain unto a strong sense of his moral shortcoming,
than for one in whom the sinful principle has remained comparatively latent.
Given the same native strength of conscience, the man who has been carried
headlong into evil action, will, when moral reflection commences, have a keener
sense of demerit than the man who has not been assailed by, or has not yielded
to, the same temptation. Then, secondly, the natural constitution of those
erring ones who have great need of repentance must be taken into account. They
are children of passion: endowed with powerful impulses, good and bad,
unharmonised, warring against each other, the flesh against the spirit, the
spirit against the flesh, the law in the members against the law in the mind,
and vice versâ. Such natures are capable of going far wrong, but they are also
capable, when a moral crisis comes, often brought about by their very excesses,
of, being very decided for the right. Men of this stamp, of whom Paul may be
taken as the type, being converted, become the most devoted Christians. It is
not merely that, having abundant materials in their previous life to supply a
strong sense of sin, they feel themselves more than other men indebted to Divine
grace, and are therefore more intensely grateful. It is that they have a natural
faculty of loving, of throwing themselves with abandon into all they undertake,
beyond that of ordinary men. The passionate energy formerly employed in doing
evil is now brought to the service of righteousness. The sinful woman hitherto
the slave of unlawful passion, now transfers the whole wealth of her affections
to her Saviour, and loves Him with a love purified, but not less fervent than
the sinful love of other days.[2] Saul, the fierce persecutor, becomes the
equally energetic apostle of the faith he once destroyed.[3] Surely Jesus, in
seeking to make disciples among such, rather than among men of frigid natures
not likely to do either much evil or much good, acted wisely. Let us not
hesitate to say so, out of fear lest some abuse the doctrine. We cannot afford
to conceal the truth out of regard to such. It is misspent anxiety to have so
much regard to them. For as Bunyan well remarks: "These will neither be ruled by
grace nor by reason. Grace would teach them, if they knew it, to deny ungodly
courses: and so would reason too, if it could truly understand the love of God.
Doth it look like what hath any coherence with reason or mercy, for a man to
abuse his friend? Because Christ died for men, must I therefore spit in his
face?"[4] [1] For the above view vide Trench.

[2] "See," says Euthymius Zigabenus (’in Quatuor Evangelia’): "How with those
things wherewith she was wont to hunt after (ἐθήρευε) her own destruction, she
now hunted after (ἐθήρευσε) salvation; for with amatory tears and curiously
plaited hair and myrrh, she bewitched youths, but what were before the
instruments of sin she now makes the instruments of virtue" (τὰ πρὶν ὄργανα τῆς
ὰμαρτίας ὄργανα νῦν πεποίηκεν ἀρετῆς).

[3] That Paul was once a Pharisee, may seem to militate against the view that
from the ranks of Pharisaism good samples of Christians were not likely to come.
But exceptio probat regulam. Saul of Tarsus was by education and profession a
Pharisee, but he had not the Pharisaic nature and temperament. It was inevitable
that a man of his moral energy should one day break with Pharisaism, bursting
its bonds, as Samson burst the green withs of the Philistines.

[4] ’The Jerusalem Sinner Saved.’

It thus appears that in the words which He spoke in the house of Simon the
Pharisee Jesus gave, in the form of a defence of the sinful woman, and of a
censure on His host’s unkindness, a complete vindication of his habitual policy
as the Founder of the Divine kingdom. The Son of man came eating and drinking,
living in a fashion which threw Him into contact with the less reputable portion
of Jewish society, and produced an ever-widening alienation between Him and the
socially and morally respectable class. For this He was much blamed, but the
results quaintly hinted at in the parable of the two debtors proved that he took
the course best fitted to advance the great aim of His life. The wisdom of His
conduct was justified at once by the great love of the sinful woman, and by the
little love of Simon. And the vindication of Christ is at the same time the
vindication of the course taken by Christianity at all great epochs of its
history, and very specially in the apostolic age. Speaking of the progress of
Christianity in such cities as Alexandria, Antioch, and Corinth, Renan remarks:
"Like the socialisms of our day, like all new ideas, Christianity germinated in
what is called the corruption of great cities." The observation is just, and the
reflection appended to it is not less so: "That corruption, in truth, is often
only a life more full and free, a more powerful awakening of the innermost
forces of humanity."[1] All is not bad that is to be met with among "publicans
and sinners;" there lies waste a wealth of moral energy which, properly
directed, will do excellent service for the kingdom of God. Therefore, the
followers of Jesus, when they understand their true interest, are not grieved
when the kingdom suffereth violence at the hands of those whom the wise and
prudent and morally respectable regard askance, and the violent take it by
force, knowing that the force displayed in storming the kingdom will all be
available for its advancement.[2] [1] ’Saint Paul,’ p. 334.

[2] When one considers how much profound far-reaching thought is hidden in this
simple parable, he cannot but be sensible of the incomparable excellence of
Christ’s parables as contrasted with those of the rabbis. The rabbis also had
their parable of Two Debtors to explain how it came to pass that Israel, while
loved by God more than all other nations, was most punished for her sins. In the
rabbinical parable the creditor accepts payment from one of his debtors in small
instalments, and so facilitates payment in full From the other he exacts nothing
till he fails, and then he demands the whole at once. The question is thereon
put, Which of the two is most favourably treated? The parable in itself is
passable, but its moral is commonplace. The excellence of our Lord’s parables,
on the other hand, is that by the most obvious analogies truths unfamiliar and
hard to be believed are made to appear intelligible, rational, and credible
Rabbinical parables are nuts which on being cracked are found to be empty. For
the above parable see Weill, ’Le Judaisme,’ vol. i. p. 158.

Having finished his eloquent panegyric on the sinful woman’s love, Jesus turned
to her and said: "Thy sins are forgiven."[1]. From this it has been inferred
that up to the moment when these words were spoken the woman did not know that
her sins were forgiven.[2] The inference indicates a very inadequate conception
of the position in which the poor penitent was placed in the house of Simon,
which was such as to make confirmation of her faith or hope of pardon very
needful, even assuming that she had cherished such before, as the parable
implies she had. How chilling and discouraging to the contrite heart, the
unsympathetic, or even loathing, looks of the company! How hard in such a
company on earth, where is no joy over a sinner repenting, to believe that there
is such joy even in heaven! By our sympathy, or the want of it, we can much help
or hinder faith in the forgiveness of sins. For this woman there was no sympathy
in Simon’s house, save in the heart of Jesus. Therefore Jesus, knowing this full
well, felt it all the more necessary that He should make a decided demonstration
of His sympathy and assure the penitent that though there was no forgiveness
with men, there was forgiveness with God; and so, with a firm, cheerful,
sympathetic voice, He said, "Thy sins are forgiven."[3]

[1] Luk 7:48 [2] So Trench, p. 306.

[3] Arndt says: "This word was needed as consolation for the humiliations
experienced in the house of Simon." This friendly word, like all the words
spoken by Jesus, and His whole bearing on this occasion, were out of harmony
with the spirit of the company. His fellow-guests showed by their looks that the
thought of their heart was: Who is this who also forgiveth sins, so committing a
greater offence than is that of receiving sinners, the one being an offence
against piety, while the other is only an offence against morality? Treating
this new exhibition of the censorious spirit with magnanimous disdain, and
caring only for the spiritual well-being of the penitent, Jesus repeated his
assurance in another form, and bade her farewell with the cheering words: "Thy
faith hath saved thee; go in peace."[1] Certain critics, it is true, tell us
that these words must be set down to the credit of the evangelist, and that we
ought to see in them, as in some other features of this narrative, traces of his
Paulinist tendency.[2] Now the sentiment is certainly thoroughly Pauline, but it
is also thoroughly in keeping with the teaching of Jesus. Jesus not less than
Paul, according to the concurrent testimony of all the evangelists, gave great
prominence to faith, and repeatedly expressed His delight in signal
manifestations thereof, and this is only what we should expect when we consider
that the kingdom of God, as presented to view in the teaching of our Lord, is
essentially a kingdom of grace. The ideas of faith and of grace are kindred, and
He who knew so well how to exhibit the gracious aspect of God was sure to
magnify the importance and the power of faith. And we have here one of the
instances in which Jesus did most signally magnify faith’s power to save. The
statement is not to be restricted to the one blessing of the forgiveness of
sins. Jesus meant to say that faith would do, had already done in principle, for
the sinful mortal before Him all that needed to be done in order to a complete
moral rescue. Faith, working by love, would purify her heart, ennoble her life,
and, what was very necessary, protect her against the demoralising influence of
social scorn which dooms so many ’sinners’ to perdition. It was a bold assertion
to make, but the confidence of Jesus in the power of faith was justified by what
it had already done. Had not a believing reception of the glad tidings filled
her soul with inexpressible love to the Preacher and to the Father in heaven
whose grace He revealed: had it not transformed her into a poet, a devotee, a
heroine, capable of conventionality-defying demonstrations—those gushing tears,
the drying of the feet of her Redeemer with her hair, the fervent kissing of His
feet, and the anointing of them with ointment? Here already was a new spiritual
creation all due to faith, producing through the nature of the thing believed
and its priceless value to the recipient intense gratitude, which by deeds more
eloquent than words said: "O Lord, truly I am thy servant, I am thy servant;
thou hast loosed my bonds."[3] Well might Jesus say, "Thy faith hath saved
thee," for a more complete demonstration of the recuperative ennobling power of
that faculty through which we let God’s grace flow into our hearts cannot be
imagined. And what faith had done it might easily continue to do. The main
difficulty lies in the beginning. Faith has already cast out the devils of evil
passion and put Christ in their place; has already dared to face Pharisaic
contempt. It will be able hereafter to keep out the demons of desire which have
been cast out by the expulsive power of a new affection, and to bear with
equanimity the light esteem of a world which regards the sins of the past as
unpardonable. Therefore we may not doubt that when she left that house she went
away into abiding peace, very probably to join the company of those of whom the
evangelist speaks in the commencement of the next chapter as following Jesus and
ministering unto him of their substance.[4]

[1] Luk 7:50.

[2] Vide Hilgenfeld, ’Einleitung,’ p. 560.

[3] Psa 116:16.

[4] Luk 8:1-3. It is noticeable that the evangelist begins this chapter as if he
were continuing the previous narrative. He does not name Jesus but uses the
pronoun: "It came to pass after words that He went," &c.


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  CHAPTER 18: 01.13.        CHAPTER 2. THE LOST SHEEP, THE LOST COIN, AND THE LOST SON
========================================================================

Chapter 2. The Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son Or, the Joy of
Finding Persons and Things Lost. The manner in which Luke introduces these three
parables is such as to indicate, not the particular occasion, but the kind of
occasion on which they were spoken. The words, "Now there were approaching Him
all the publicans and the sinners, to hear Him," could scarcely be used with
reference to any one time. What is described is a prominent feature in the
ministry of Jesus, ever growing more conspicuous, and arresting the attention
and provoking the criticism of unsympathetic observers, viz. the interest
awakened thereby in the minds of the classes in evil repute, and the gracious
manner in which Jesus regarded those by whom that interest was manifested.[1]
That the Evangelist has correctly indicated the general nature of the occasion
of the parables recorded in the fifteenth chapter of his Gospel, is evident at a
glance. On the very face of them these charming parables are an apology for
loving and receiving the sinful—forming a part, and, we may add, the crowning
part of Christ’s inimitable defence for that noble crime committed by Him
against the conventional law and custom of contemporary Jewish society. The use
made by Matthew[2] of the first of the three parables—that of the Lost Sheep—in
introducing it into the discourse on Humility, to teach the truth that God cares
for the lowly and insignificant, is legitimate; but it is easy to see that the
parable, in that connection, falls short of its full significance and pathos, as
also, and perhaps just in consequence of that, of its original literary grace.
For Divine love is seen at its maximum, not in caring for the lowly, but in
caring; for the low; and it was when speaking of this intensest and most
pathetic manifestation of love, that the mind of Jesus was likely to conceive
the parabolic representation of love’s gracious impulses in its most felicitous
form, including the feature of the shepherd carrying the erring sheep on his
shoulders, omitted by Matthew, which we cannot doubt belonged to the parable as
originally spoken.[3] [1] Vide Hofmann, ’Das Evangelium des Lukas,’ p. 382.

[2] Mat 18:12.

[3] Ewald remarks that Matthew’s form of the parable wants den schönen
Farbenschmelz, which it has in Luke. Weizsäcker, on the other hand, thinks
Matthew gives the parable in at least the original connection; its design,
according to him, being to apologise for despised ones against the grudges of
Christ’s own disciples.—’Untersuchungen,’ p. 501.

We have as little doubt that these three parables, related by Luke at one gush,
were all spoken at the same time; albeit the third is introduced in a very loose
way with the vague phrase, "And He said,"[1] suggesting the idea that what
follows is an annex to what goes before. Accumulation of parables teaching one
lesson was certainly not a usual practice with Christ, but on the present
occasion it was fitted to serve an important apologetic purpose. Multiplication
of instances of rejoicing over things or persons lost tended to convey the
impression that such joy was universal, a touch of nature in which the whole
world was kin. Jesus thereby arrayed against his critics all mankind, people of
all ranks, conditions, and relations: men, women, shepherds, housewives,
fathers, householders, domestics; saying in. effect to the sour, cynical
fault-finders: Are ye not men?—have ye not human hearts that I should need to
explain to you so simple a matter? Multiplied illustration was thus an essential
part of the argument.[2] [1] εἴπεξ δὲ, Luk 15:11.

[2] Hofmann thinks the third parable was spoken on a similar, but not on the
same, occasion.—’Das Evang. des Lukas,’ p. 386. Assuming that they were all
spoken on the same occasion, the effect would be to suggest that such
illustrations might be multiplied ad libitum. Augustine, in his Confessions,’
cap. viii. 3, supplies a sample of how this might be done. One might have
expected more from him, a prodigal returned to his father’s house, than this
commonplace service in such a book. This consideration may be regarded as
conclusive in favour of the view that a plurality of parables, exemplifying the
law of human nature according to which a peculiar joy is felt in connection with
the finding of things lost, was à priori to be expected. But it may be asked, On
what principle is the second of the three parables to be justified, which, in
comparison with the first, seems inferior, and as coming after it superfluous?
By itself it might be well enough, but placed beside the other two, is it not
deprived of all interest, so as to make it very doubtful that it was uttered at
the same time? Such an objection would indicate a very imperfect comprehension
of the moral situation. The very paltriness of the second parable is what gives
it its value. The story of the housewife finding a piece of money worth little
more than a sixpence, and rejoicing over the discovery, serves to suggest the
thought, that it does not require things of great value to call into play the
tendency of human nature to rejoice in finding things lost. And, be it noted,
such a suggestion was most pertinent to the purpose for which all these parables
were spoken, viz. to defend the conduct of Jesus in taking a warm interest in
the moral recovery of the degraded. For, in the view of the fault-finders,
publicans and ’sinners’ were infinitely insignificant. The conversion of one
belonging to these classes to wisdom and righteousness was, in their esteem, all
but an impossibility, and even should it occur, of no consequence. That Christ
did not share their despair and indifference was what they could not comprehend,
was so incomprehensible that they felt shut up to account for the fact by
imputing to Him sinister motives. As addressed to such an audience, the parable
of the lost sheep was not unlikely to fail of its purpose; for in Pharisaic
esteem a man of the despised classes was not so valuable as a sheep.[1] If there
were such a thing in the history of humanity as joy over the finding of a lost
sixpence, a parable to that effect might serve the turn better, for probably the
Pharisees would allow that a small coin was not unfit to represent the value of
a publican. That joy of the kind described was by no means unexampled in Judaea
in those days we may well believe, when we consider the many indications of
abject poverty contained in the Gospels to which this same parable of the lost
coin may be added.[2] The parable, therefore, did not violate natural
probability; and if not, it certainly was in other respects most apposite, as
virtually involving the argument: many poor housewives have genuine joy in
finding a lost coin of small amount; is it so very surprising that I should
experience similar joy when a lost sinner, no matter how insignificant socially,
repents, that I should deem the meanest of mankind worth saving, and his
salvation a cause of satisfaction?[3]

[1] Goebel thinks the parable of the lost sheep contains an argument à fortiori,
on the principle: "How much better is a man than a sheep." Unfortunately the
principle was practically denied, so that the argument would not be felt lo be à
fortiori.

[2] Vide note in last chapter containing extract from Hausrath on this subject

[3] Unger takes this view of the argumentative import of the second parable: in
quâ auctior adeo apparet probans illa gradatio quatenus intendit, solitam in
exiguâ adeo re perditâ curam.—’De Parab.’ p. 148. The two foregoing
considerations—the cumulative force of the three parables, and the peculiar
appositeness of the second to the moral situation—are of prime importance as
enabling us to understand the general drift and exact point of these parables,
regarded, as they ought in the first place to be, from the apologetic point of
view. If the chosen point of view were the didactic or dogmatic, we might set
ourselves, after the fashion of some interpreters, to discover reasons for there
being three parables, and three just such as those recorded; one about a
shepherd, a second about a housewife, and a third about a father; and to
ascertain the recondite theological lessons distinctively taught by each. We
have no objections to such lines of study, and are willing to allow that here,
as elsewhere, they may serve the good purpose of bringing out into relief the
felicity of the parables in suggesting thoughts which they are not primarily
intended to teach. But for our own part, we prefer the historical to the
dogmatic or mystic method of interpretation, and therefore mean to keep close
throughout to the original apologetic aim, and to give greatest prominence to
those thoughts which serve to show how the parables bear thereon. We do not,
therefore, ask ourselves, Why precisely these parables? We are content to regard
the first parable as the standard one, as it is most akin to Christ’s professed
character as a Shepherd who was in quest of the lost sheep of the house of
Israel; and the second as a supplement to the first, rendered necessary by the
contemptuous feelings of the Pharisees towards the lower orders, and meant to
teach that the law of joy over things lost obtains in reference even to things
of little value; and the third as meant to exemplify the action of the same law
in the human sphere, and to suggest the great truth, that even the meanest of
mankind is, at the worst, only a degraded son of God, whose repentance ought
therefore to be an occasion of joy to all who love God. Nor do we find any
mystery in the numbers—one hundred, ten, two. The hundred sheep are the property
of a shepherd of ordinary average wealth; the ten pieces of money the pecuniary
possession of a woman in humble life; the two sons signify a family just large
enough to supply illustrations of the two contrasted characters, and concentrate
attention upon them. In one respect only do we feel disposed to accentuate the
distinctive didactic significance of the parables, viz. in regard to the
different senses of the term ’lost’ employed in them all. We reserve our remarks
on this point till the close.

There is one aspect of these parables closely connected with their apologetic
use to which we have not yet referred, and of which we must here take notice. In
all three there is apparent not merely a defensive, but an offensive, attitude.
Christ not only apologises for His misunderstood love, but rebukes the Pharisees
for their want of sympathy with such love as inspired His conduct, and the
inhumanity therein revealed. The shepherd not only himself rejoices over his
lost sheep, but he calls on his neighbours and friends to sympathise with his
joy, and it is taken for granted that they do so. The same holds true of the
woman who lost and found the piece of money. These two parables showed the
Pharisees how they ought to have acted towards Jesus as the friend of the
publicans and sinners. The third parable assails them in another way, not by
showing them how they ought to have acted, but by showing them how they did act.
The elder brother in the parable is the Pharisee’s picture, and the elaboration
of this part of the story shows how distinctly the purpose to attack and rebuke
was present to Christ’s mind.[1] But having pointed this out, we must at the
same time point out another fact in a preliminary way, reserving details for a
more advanced stage. The exposure of Pharisaic inhumanity, though unavoidably
severe, is markedly mild and conciliatory in tone. Jesus had no wish to
exasperate His critics; His heart was too sad to indulge in bitterness.
Throughout, He aims, on the one hand, so to depict the publicans and sinners as
to awaken pity, and on the other, so to speak of the Pharisees as, while
pointing out clearly to them their characteristic vice, if possible to win them
to a better mind. The Saviour spoke these exquisite parables in a tender,
gracious mood, as one who would by the very words he uttered be a healer of
social breaches, and reconciler of alienated classes. These parables, and
especially the last of the three, are thus, as it were, a prelude to the cross.
Heavenly charity enacts in word the part of a peace-maker, which it afterwards
enacted in the death on Calvary. When we read these parables we wonder not at
the spectacle presented in the crucifixion; for the love which could inspire
such touching utterances in the interest of redeeming love could also, if
needful, die. Jesus said of the anointing in Bethany, "she did it for My
burial." We may say of these irenical parables that they were spoken against the
day of the Passion.

[1] Goebel’s exposition has the merit of duly emphasising the offensive aspect
of the three parables. With these remarks we proceed to the consideration of the
individual parables, and first that of— The Lost Sheep

He spake to them this parable, saying: What man of you having an hundred sheep,
and having lost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the
wilderness,[1] and go after the lost one, until he find it? And having found it,
he layeth it upon his shoulders rejoicing. And on arriving at his house, he
calleth together his friends and neighhours, saying to them: Rejoice with me,
for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that likewise joy
shall be in heaven over one sinner repenting, more than over ninety and nine
just persons such as have not need of repentance.—Luk 15:3-7.

[1] ἐν τῇ ἐρήμω, in the pastoral country where sheep might feed, but where grain
was not cultivated. In Matthew the phrase is ἐπὶ τὰ ὄρη, on the mountains.

There is much latent pathos in this short parable which it is desirable we
should make an effort to perceive, that we may be prepared to understand the
shepherd’s demand for sympathy, which, on a superficial reading of the story,
before we have penetrated to its heart, may appear exaggerated. The chief
interest, of course, centres in the shepherd, and his behaviour on one of his
sheep being found missing. And in the first place, it is taken for granted that
any shepherd to whom this happens will immediately set off in quest of the
erring sheep. "What man of you having a flock of sheep, and losing one, will not
go after it?" asks Jesus, confident that here at least He will meet with no
contradiction, virtually asserting that it is a universal human instinct to go
in quest of lost property. This implied assertion is in truth the radical part
of His apology for His own conduct. As in the earliest instance in which He was
put on His defence he vindicated Himself by the suggestion, "I am a Physician,"
so in the present instance He offers as His apology the suggestion, "I am a
Shepherd;" and as in the former case so in the latter, the suggestion being once
accepted all the rest follows of course. No one wonders that a shepherd goes
after his straying sheep, any more than one wonders that a physician visits the
sick rather than the whole, and visits most frequently those whose ailments are
most serious. Neither is any one surprised at the joy of a shepherd on finding
his sheep, which is the special feature insisted on in the present parable; the
most cynical will admit that the finding of a lost sheep is a most legitimate
occasion of satisfaction to the finder himself at least, and therefore a
perfectly reasonable motive for seeking the lost. Such joy in a shepherd, and we
may add similar joy in a physician on succeeding in restoring a patient to
health, Christ’s Pharisaic censors were not so stupid as to condemn. Their want
of sympathy with Him as the friend of publicans and sinners sprang from their
failure to recognise in Him a Physician and a Shepherd. And that failure again
was due to their own want of love for their fellow-men. Their hearts were
hardened against the social outcasts by prejudice and pride, and therefore when
they saw the common people scattered and torn[1] like a flock of sheep without a
shepherd, the spectacle did not make their hearts bleed as it made the heart of
Jesus bleed. And that made all the difference. Jesus, seeing the miserable
plight of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, sought to be a Shepherd to them
and associated with Himself in the pastoral care of the people His disciples;[2]
while the Pharisees, on the other hand, neither cared themselves for the lost,
nor sympathised with, or even so much as believed in, the loving care of others.

[1] Mat 9:36.

[2] Mat 10:1-42., which relates the mission of the twelve to the people of
Galilee. The next feature in the shepherd’s conduct is that he seeks till he
finds.[1] He is thoroughly in earnest in the search; he is determined to recover
his lost property, and will spare himself no trouble for that end. This touch is
omitted in Matthew’s version of the parable, where we read instead the
expression, "if he happen to find it;"[2] but who can doubt that it belongs to
the original form of the parable as first uttered? Jesus was a very earnest
Shepherd Himself, who spared no pains to find the lost sheep of God’s fold, and
he was not likely to omit this trait in the portrait of the shepherd’s
character. It is true that the most earnest quest may after all, end in failure,
and therefore such a phrase as "if so be he find" is perfectly legitimate and
appropriate. Jesus Himself knew too well what such failure was, and therefore it
is quite possible that in repeating the parable, if He did repeat it, He gave
prominence to that aspect. But it is certain that if there is to be failure it
will not be for want of effort and pains on the shepherd’s part. There will be
persistent search in every quarter where there is the least chance of the lost
being found. How true is this of Christ Himself! He could say for Himself as the
Shepherd of Israel, "How often would I have gathered thee!"[3] and His failure
after all His efforts broke His heart and made Him shed bitter tears. This
phrase, until he find it, is a touch we owe to the pastoral love of the speaker,
as the spiritual Shepherd of men.

[1] ἕως εὕρῃ αὐτό.

[2] ἐὰν γένηται εὑρεῖν. (Mat 18:13.)

[3] Mat 23:38.

Having found the straying sheep, the shepherd layeth it upon his shoulders. This
possibly he would do in any case, however short the distance the sheep had
strayed from the fold, to make sure of his captive; but this feature in the
picture most probably points to exhaustion produced by long-continued wandering,
exposure, and lack of food. The erring sheep needs to be carried, it cannot
return on its own feet; the shepherd finds it with torn fleece, lying on the
ground, emaciated, helplessly weak. This is intrinsically probable, even had we
nothing but the language of the parable itself to guide us; it becomes almost
certain when we bear in mind the terms in which Jesus described the state of the
people at the time of the Galilean mission. To His compassionate eye the lower
masses of Jewish society appeared torn and scattered about,—weary, worn,
abject,[1]—like sheep without a shepherd; therefore he sent His disciples among
them to preach the good tidings of the kingdom and to heal their diseases,
deeming it better they should have the benefit of inexperienced care than that
they should continue longer utterly uncared for. He had the same people in the
same miserable condition in view when He spake this parable. The straying sheep
of our parable represents the neglected, perishing masses of the people, is one
of the scattered and torn. Jesus thinks of it now, as He thought of the people
on that other occasion—would have His hearers so think of it, as found by the
shepherd in a pitiable plight; for His own heart is now as full of compassion as
it was then, and He desires to awaken compassion in the hard hearts of His
audience, that they may cease to blame Him, and begin rather to imitate Him by
compassionate consideration for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

[1] Mat 9:36. ἐσκυλμένοι καὶ ἐῤῥιμμένοι. So the shepherd has to carry his
captive all the way back to the fold, and has to carry it a long way.
Nevertheless he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing, heeding not the weight, nor
the fatiguing journey before him, for gladness over the recovery of his lost
property. Love makes the burden light, and the way short. This feature is true
to natural life, and not less true to the character of the Good Shepherd, the
author of the parable. The Son of man had heavy burdens laid on His heart by
that unspeakable sympathy with the woes of humanity which is so conspicuous in
His history. The diseases of men, their poverty, their sins, their ignorance,
their pains, their hopeless misery—all pressed on His spirit "Surely he hath
borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows," and so was a "Man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief." Yet withal there was a wondrous gladness in the heart of
Christ. He experienced a perfect rapture of delight when He found a lost sheep:
witness His bearing at the well of Sychar, when His joy over the repentance of
the woman of Samaria made Him forget hunger, insomuch that the disciples
wondered if any man had given Him to eat.[1] That joy, hoped for or experienced,
made all His burdens light; made even the cross itself, abhorrent to His
sentient nature, more than bearable. Therefore, in drawing the picture of a
faithful shepherd, He might with a good conscience put in this trait,
’rejoicing.’

[1] John 4:31-34. The weary, fatiguing journey at length comes to an end; and
naturally, on arriving at his home, there is a new rush of emotion in the
shepherd’s heart, and an eventful story to tell, and a craving for friendly
neighbourly sympathy. This accordingly is the next feature in the parable: "When
he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours saying unto them,
Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost." This is the point in
the parable at which our sense of its fitness or naturalness is apt to be
weakest. Is there not, we are ready to ask, something resembling effeminate
sentimentalism in that calling of friends and neighbours together, and that
demand for sympathy with the joy of finding the lost sheep? Would it not have
been more manly and more shepherd-like to have returned quietly to ordinary
duties as if nothing had happened? Have we not reason to suspect that at this
point the natural realism of the parable has been sacrificed to the feelings of
the speaker smarting under a keen sense of the general lack of sympathy with His
own aims, and eager to reproach the Pharisees on that account? Now in meeting
these objections we assume the truth of the interpretation we have put on the
previous points of the parable; that is to say, that the parable has reference
to a serious occurrence, and not merely to an insignificant everyday case of
wandering for a short distance from the fold. We are entitled to assume this,
for the simple reason that a trivial case would not be parallel to the
circumstances which created the need for a parable. That which made apology
necessary was Christ’s interest in men who, in the opinion even of His critics,
had gone far astray, and the parable, to serve its purpose, must put a case
analogous to that of those whom the straying sheep represents. This would be
perfectly understood by the parties to whom the parable was addressed.

But, even in that case, was not the shepherd’s demand for sympathy overdone? We
think not, and in saying so we take no account of difference of temperament
between Eastern shepherds and those of our own land, though doubtless this might
somewhat affect the manner of parties similarly situated. Two considerations
suffice to redeem the shepherd’s behaviour from sentimentalism. On the one hand,
it was perfectly natural that there should be a desire, at the end of an
eventful journey, to give expression to the pent-up feeling connected with its
object, and to talk to acquaintances about the incidents of the way; all the
circumstances connected with the search, and the finding of the lost sheep. His
whole interest has been concentrated upon, his whole mind absorbed by, that one
sheep; it has cost him much thought, anxiety, and effort; and now that all is
happily ended, there is a rush of emotion which seeks relief in the narration of
the story to sympathetic hearers. All men may not speak as the shepherd is
represented speaking, but all men feel as he felt, in similar circumstances. The
secret thought of every human heart, on the recovery of something lost after
much and painful anxiety and effort, is, "Rejoice with me, for I have found that
which was lost;" and Christ makes the shepherd say what all men think, because
one chief purpose of the parable is to accentuate the joy of finding things
lost. Then, on the other hand, the shepherd’s desire to unburden himself to his
neighbours would be greatly intensified by the assurance that his tale would
greatly interest the listeners. On that he might safely reckon; not merely
because of the innate curiosity of mankind, or of the craving for news to
relieve the dull monotony of life in a thinly peopled, pastoral country, or of
the interest which human beings take in each other, especially in rural
districts, where the feeling of neighbourliness is strong, making the simple,
honest denizens of hills and dales mutually communicative and sympathetic; but
more particularly because of the bearing of the tale on their own personal
interest. For the case of their friend and neighbour might be their own, and it
would greatly interest them to know the track of the wanderer, the risks it ran,
where it was found, and in what condition; for such knowledge would be useful to
themselves in case any of their own sheep should stray from the fold. Therefore
the returned shepherd, in asking neighbours to come and hear his story, was but
giving them an expected opportunity. And we are not to think of the invitation
as formal, as of a host inviting guests to a feast. The words put into the
shepherd’s mouth scarce needed to be spoken. The home-coming of one who had been
absent for days on so interesting an errand said to all the dwellers around:
Come hear my story; come congratulate me on the success of my quest. And the
point of importance here is, that the neighbours would certainly gather around
their fellow-shepherd to hear his tale, and would hear it with sympathetic ears.
That is not expressly stated, but it is more impressively said by being taken
for granted. Jesus pays human nature the compliment of treating neighbourly
sympathy in the circumstances as a thing of course. In the application of the
parable, which we have now to notice, neighbourly sympathy could not be treated
as a thing of course, for it was precisely the absence of it that had given
occasion to the parable being spoken. It is therefore to this side of the
subject that prominence is given. Jesus passes over in silence His own feelings
as the Shepherd of morally lost men, His joy over finding even one, and His
desire that others should rejoice along with Him, delicately leaving these to be
inferred from the behaviour cf the shepherd in the parable; and emphasises the
sympathy which He receives in the prosecution of His work—receives, however, not
from men, but from the inhabitants of the upper world. There is wonderful pathos
and pungency in this reference to heaven as the scene of sympathetic joy over
the restoration of erring sinners to the fold of God. It implies that Jesus
meets with no such joy on earth. It is a virtual complaint against his Pharisaic
critics, which is none the less effective that it is indirectly conveyed in the
form of a contrast between their conduct and that of celestials. The Son of man,
who was ever busy seeking the lost, finds Himself utterly isolated and
misunderstood; and with His back to the wall, as it were, He is fain to go to
heaven in quest of beings who shared His feelings towards the sinful. To heaven,
since He could not find backing nearer hand. Where shall I go, He asked Himself,
to find beings who feel as I do? To the righteous men of Israel? No! they have
no joy over poor vulgar publicans and sinners repenting; they joy only in the
fact that they are not as other men. To cultivated Sadducees? No! they think men
well enough as they are, and look on repentance as much ado about nothing, an
unnecessary disturbance of one’s happiness during his brief tenure of existence.
To the world outside Judaea? No! the day will come ere long when they will be
thankful to hear of Him whose countrymen brought it as a heavy charge against
Him that He received sinners; but as yet the heathen know neither the joy of
saving, nor the joy of being saved. Nowhere on earth can I find sympathisers. In
heaven then? Yes! in heaven they understand Me; in heaven they feel as I feel;
there is joy in heaven, I tell you, over sinners repenting; yea, even over one
of these despised sinners repenting, more than over ninety and nine just persons
that need no repentance. The Pharisaic fault-finders might well feel ashamed for
compelling the object of their censure to go so far in quest of sympathy, and
they might also well feel self-condemned if they reflected for a moment on the
startling declaration their cynicism had provoked. For it was by no means an
improbable statement, however strange it might appear; no mere justifiable jeu
d’esprit, uttered on the spur of the moment by one who felt himself hard
pressed. A jeu d’esprit it certainly is; for the occasion is one of those in
which Christ’s words were apt to be full of poetry and passion; not merely rays
of light, but flashes of lightning. But it is more, even sober truth. For, take
the kernel of the statement—that there is joy in heaven over the repentance of a
sinner, is that incredible? The denizens of heaven are the good; and what better
occasion for joy can good beings have than the turning of a sinner from evil to
righteousness? Ask not sceptically:

"Is there care in heaven? and is there love In heavenly spirits to these
creatures base That may compassion of their evils move?"

Why not? The angels have the same occupation as Jesus: they are ministering
spirits to those who are about to inherit salvation, and they have therefore a
fellow-feeling with the Good Shepherd, like the neighbours of the shepherd in
the parable. Nay, hath not the Eternal Himself a most real joy over a sinner
repenting? God is love, therefore He hath no pleasure in the death of a sinner,
therefore He hath pleasure when a sinner turns from his evil ways; yea, even if
that sinner be the meanest of mankind. For consider what a difference it would
make to ourselves if that meanest one were related to us as a son or a brother!
Now the blessed truth is, that in the meanest member of the human race
repenting, God sees a prodigal child of His returning to his Father’s house.
That is the truth implied in the golden saying with which the first and second
of these three parables end, and it is the truth expressly taught in the third.
It is the great Christian doctrine concerning God which the world never has
believed, and which the Church has only half-believed, and which God knew from
of old men would ever be slow to believe; hence the protestation by the mouth of
prophecy: "My thoughts are not your thoughts," following the declaration: "Let
the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him
return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He
will abundantly pardon."[1]

[1] Isa 55:7-8.

There may appear to be more difficulty in understanding this declaration of our
Lord’s, taken as referring to God, when regard is had to the comparative form in
which it is put—more joy over one sinner repenting than over ninety-and-nine
just persons who need no repentance—the reason being the peculiarly sweet
pleasure connected with finding things lost. It may appear that this peculiar
experience is due to the constitution of human nature, and that it therefore
savours of anthropopathism to ascribe such joy to the Divine Being. We need not,
however, trouble ourselves with this metaphysical problem; for if we are going
to be sensitive about anthropopathism, we must go further back, and inquire
whether we can legitimately ascribe joy in any form, or any emotion whatsoever,
to God. We shall, therefore, rather ask what this comparative statement made by
Christ signifies for men; or, to be more definite, for Christ Himself. What does
our Lord mean, when he says in effect: I have more joy in one of these poor
sinners repenting, than in ninety-and-nine just men who need no repentance? Is
He sneering at the sham righteousness of the Pharisees? No! He is in too tender
a mood for sneering, not to say that He has too much love in His heart, even for
Pharisees, to sneer at any time. He argues with His censors on the assumption
that they are as good as they think themselves. He means to say, that there is a
sense in which a man may rationally rejoice more over the repentance of a
notable sinner than over the righteousness of many men who have all their days
lived in an exemplary manner, if not absolutely, yet comparatively, sinless.
This greater joy over the penitent sinner needs no more explanation than the joy
of the shepherd over the sheep which was lost It is simply an illustration of
the great law, according to which all human beings have peculiar joy over lost
things found. If the Pharisees had only made use of their own human instincts as
a guide to their judgment in the affairs of morals and religion, they would not
have thought the statement surprising. Nay, if they had but recollected their
own theoretical views, even within the moral sphere, they would have sympathised
with Christ’s conduct and feelings, instead of putting Him on His defence by
captious criticism. For it was a doctrine of the Talmudists of after-days, and
was probably an opinion current in Rabbinical schools even in our Lord’s time,
that a man who had been guilty of many sins might by repentance raise himself to
a higher degree of virtue than the perfectly righteous man who had never
experienced his temptations.

1 Vide on this Lightfoot, ’Horæ Hebraicæ,’ and Schwab, ’Traité des Berackhoth,’
introduction, p. xxxii. There is not perfect consent as to what the Rabbinical
doctrine was; but Schwab’s view is that in the case of sins against God and
sobriety, a man might by repentance make himself equal or superior to the
perfectly just man, Zadic gamour; but in the case of sins against men,
repentance, while obtaining pardon from God, and regaining the esteem of men,
could not make the penitent equal or superior to the perfectly good man. If this
were so, surely it was reasonable to occupy oneself in endeavouring to get
sinners to start on this noble career of self-elevation, and to rejoice when in
any instance he had succeeded. But it is one thing to have correct theories, and
another to put them in practice. These Pharisaic faultfinders believed in a
coming Messiah, but they rejected Jesus; they searched the Scriptures as
writings in which they expected to find eternal life, and they listened not to
Him who had the words of eternal life; they reckoned it possible for a penitent
sinner not only to equal, but to excel, one that by comparison needed no
repentance, and they found fault with one who not only held this view as an
abstract doctrine, but acted on it, and sought to bring those who had strayed
furthest from the paths of righteousness to repentance, believing that though
last they might yet be first The Lost Drachma Or what woman having ten drachma,
if she lose one drachma, doth not light a lamp, and sweep the house, and seek
carefully till she find it; and, having found it, she calls together her female
friends and neighbours,[1] saying: Rejoice with me, because I have found the
drachma which I lost.—Luk 15:8-10.

[1] τὰς φίλας καὶ γείτονας, feminine, the corresponding expression in the first
parable being τοὺς φίλους καὶ τοὺς γείτονας. This parable suggests the case of a
poor woman, living possibly in widowed loneliness, in a humble cottage in a
country village, and possessing very scanty means of livelihood; and its special
lesson is that the joy of finding things lost may be experienced and sympathised
with even in connection with things of little intrinsic value. A housewife who
loses one piece of silver out of ten, which constitutes her stock of money,
quite naturally rejoices when she recovers it, and she will receive neighbourly
congratulations from her acquaintances on her good fortune. Such is the implied
assertion; but if any one has difficulty in believing that the loss of one piece
of money, of the value of a sixpence, out of ten, could appear a serious matter
even to the impoverished population of a Syrian village, it is easy to conceive
circumstances which would give even to the one lost coin a special value. It
might form part of a whole which had been hoarded, and was all needed, for a
special purpose; as to pay a tax, or to defray the expenses connected with a
religious festival. In such a case, to lose one coin was to be unable to meet
the emergency for the sake of which the whole had been carefully scraped
together, and such inability might be the occasion of no little anxiety. Our
ministerial experiences have afforded opportunity of knowing into what distress
a poor, but honest, Highland widow can be thrown by her inability to pay on
demand the half-yearly rent for her miserable garret, amounting to the petty sum
of one pound sterling, and with what joy she will receive from a friend the
means of satisfying her landlord. Suppose such a poor widow had succeeded in
accumulating in the course of six months the twenty shillings necessary for the
purpose, and that towards the end of the period, as rent-day was approaching,
she had somehow lost one of the twenty—would you wonder that the misfortune put
her much about, if she spoke of it to her neighbours and to her pastor; if she
searched for it day after day, and if on finding it she joyfully reported the
fact to the same parties, and met with honest sympathy from them all? We can
only say for ourselves that we should feel ashamed if the joy of a poor
fellow-creature in the case supposed did not awaken a very hearty response in
our bosom. This little parable gives a very life-like description of the search
for the lost drachma. The woman lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and seeks
carefully till she finds it. The lighting of the lamp speaks to a house
ill-provided with windows, perhaps having no windows at all, but receiving light
only from the door.[1] There may be light enough in the clay hut to enable one
familiar with all its corners to grope about and find all she wants, but there
is not light sufficient to guide one in searching for something lost. The
housewife must go, lamp or candle in hand, looking narrowly into the dark nooks.
But this will not suffice. For in dark neglected corners there will be dust, and
if the lost coin happens to have fallen into such a dusty corner it will not be
visible to the eye. The besom will be necessary as well as the lamp, and instead
of sweeping here and there it will be best to sweep the floor all over, in hope
of sweeping up the coin along with the dust. Then, the sweeping ended, a search
among the accumulated heap of dust must be commenced. And so the anxious woman
commences the search, slowly, carefully examining in the heap, and looking
narrowly at everything in the least; degree resembling a coin. At last her
patience is rewarded; there it is shining in the lamplight. She sets down her
candle, rushes out of her dwelling, and into the house of her nearest
neighbours, exclaiming, "Rejoice with me, I have found the piece which I lost"
And of course they do rejoice with her; for doubtless they have heard of her
loss ere now; they know about the missing drachma, and they have sympathised
with their neighbour’s anxiety, with the sympathy peculiar to fellows in
poverty; and now they sympathise not less sincerely with her in her joy over the
recovery of her lost property.

[1] Robinson, in his ’Biblical Researches,’ vol. iii. p. 44, mentions a house in
the Lebanon in which he passed a night, answering to this description. "There
was no window, and no light except from the door."

It scarcely needs to be remarked that the housewife of the second parable would
be more demonstrative than the shepherd of the first in the expression of her
joy, and in her demand for the sympathy of her female friends and neighbours. Of
this difference some trace may be found in the text, if we regard that as the
true reading which gives the Greek verb rendered in the English Version, "calls
together," in the middle voice in the second parable, instead of in the active
as in the first. With Godet we think this reading is to be preferred, but we
doubt if he has correctly indicated the significance of the change in the mode
of expression. He thinks that the active (συγκαλεῖ) is used in the first
instance because the shepherd has not a monopoly of the joy, the lost sheep
sharing it in part, and that the middle (συγκαλεῖται) is used in the.second
instance, on the other hand, because the joy is wholly the woman’s,—that which
was lost being a thing without life, incapable of any sensation of joy. In a
similar way he explains the diverse terms in which the lost object is spoken of
in the two parables: in the first, described as "the lost" (τὸ ἀπολωλός), as an
object of pity; in the second, as "the drachma which I have lost," the whole
sympathy being concentrated upon the loser.[1] The suggestions are ingenious,
but possibly just a little over-refined. We are inclined to explain the first of
the two differences by a reference to the difference in sex between the
principal characters in the two parables. The middle voice is used in the second
parable, because the actor is a woman, not a man, to mark the greater intensity
and subjectivity of her sex. The second difference may be explained in a similar
way. The shepherd speaks of his lost sheep in an objective way, without
emphasising the fact that the loss was his. The housewife, on the other hand,
puts the loss which she sustained in the forefront, and says: Not my drachma
which was lost, but the drachma which I lost It is, however, questionable
whether it were not better to regard the two modes of expression as
equivalent.[2] [1] ’Commentaire’ in loc.

[2] To show bow much in such minute points one is apt to be influenced by fancy,
it may be mentioned that Trench puts the following construction on the diverse
manner of expression in reference to the two lost objects: The Shepherd, being
Christ, says My sheep; the woman, being the Church, says the drachma. In the
application of this parable Jesus contents Himself with the positive statement
that "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that
repenteth." A comparative statement in this case would have been unsuitable, as
tending to weaken rather than strengthen the sentiment expressed at the close of
the first parable; seeing that it would have had to run thus: There is joy in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over nine sinners that need no
repentance.[1]

[1] Lightfoot (’Horæ Hebraicæ’) gives a parable from the Talmud like the
foregoing one of the Lost Piece, the aim of which is to illustrate the quest of
wisdom. Here again we have to note the comparatively commonplace moral of the
Talmudic parables. But the moral as repeated here has an interest and a pathos
of its own. It suggests the thought that the repentance of the meanest of
mankind, however insignificant in social position or degraded in character,
calls forth a sympathetic thrill in the heart of God. It teaches us that all
souls and their moral history are precious in God’s sight, that every human
being has value in the esteem of heaven, as endowed with reason and free will,
and subject to infinite moral possibilities. This was then a new doctrine
concerning man, and it is still very contrary to the world’s way of thinking
concerning human beings. For on this earth men are still very cheap in one
another’s esteem for various reasons, theoretical and practical. Some regard the
moral interests of humanity with comparative indifference because their
philosophy teaches them to treat as insignificant the distinction between man
and beast, in nature and in destiny. Others, through the lust for gain, are
accustomed to regard human life as of no account in comparison with commercial
profit. Jesus assures us that in heaven human beings are not valued so cheaply.
There, He tells us, all souls are precious, the souls of publicans and
profligates, of bondsmen and negroes; and though nothing spiritually great
should come out of the repentance of any of these least ones, though they should
remain least ones for ever, yet is the change implied in repentance, even in
their case deemed an event of solemn interest, because the blurred image of God
is restored in some degree, and the soul is at least saved, though as through
fire. Surely an altogether God-worthy way of thinking! Long may it prevail on
earth as well as in heaven! For if even in spite of a Christian way of thinking
and acting, the condition of many be far from satisfactory, it would certainly
be infinitely worse were the way of thinking peculiar to philosophic atheism, or
to brutal mammon-worship, universally prevalent. As it is, we manage to make
many ignorant and erring ones imperfect Christians; as it would be then, the
multitude would live unheeded in misery, and die unmourned in sin. This is all
that needs to be said on this parable. If we were anxious to draw out our
exposition to a greater length, we might easily do so, by following the example
of commentators who indulge in spiritualising interpretation, telling us that
the house is the Church; and the woman the indwelling Spirit; and the drachma,
man with the image of God stamped upon him, but lying in the dust of sin and
corruption; the candle the Word of God held forth by the Church, and the
sweeping the disturbance caused by the action of the Spirit in the individual
and in society, making dust rise and fly about, and turning the world upside
down. To our mind, however, this style of interpretation savours of frigidity.
If we may say it without offence, it seems to us to savour, moreover, of
Pharisaism. It looks as if interpreters found it impossible to discover any real
interest in the story itself, taken as a natural illustration of the joy of
finding things lost, and felt it necessary to fly to the spiritual sense to get
something to say. What is this but Pharisaic indifference to the affairs of
common humanity in a new form? The parable as a scene from ordinary life is of
no account, and all the objects must be transformed into theological equivalents
ere they can be worthy of attention. How much better to try first of all to feel
the human pathos of the parable as a story of real life, and then to make that
pathos the one link of connection between the natural and the spiritual. The
Lost Son And He said, A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said
to his father, Father, give me the portion of the property that falleth to me as
my share.[1] And he divided between them his living.[2] And not many days after
the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country,
and there wasted his substance with prodigal living.[3] And when he had spent
all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And
he went ana attached himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into
the fields to feed swine. And he was fain to fill his belly with the carobtree
pods[4] that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. Bui when he came to
himself he said, How many hired servants of my fathers have bread enough and to
spare, and I am perishing here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father,
and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, I
am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his
father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.
And the son said unto him, Father, I sinned against heaven and before thee, I am
no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring
forth quickly[5] the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand,
and shoes on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it: and let us
eat and be merry: for this person, my son, was dead, and is alive again; was
lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. But his elder ton was in the
field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing.
And, calling one of the servants, he asked what these things meant. And he said
to him (it is), Because thy brother is come; and thy father killed the fatted
calf, because he received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go
in: and his father came out and entreated him. And he answering said to his
father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time
thy commandment, and thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my
friends. But as soon as thy (precious)[6] son, this fellow who devoured thy
living with harlots, arrived, thou didst kill for him the fatted calf And he
said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me and all mine is thine. It was meet
that we should make merry, and be glad; for this thy (dear) brother was dead,
and is alive again, and was lost, and is found.—Luk 15:11-32.

[1] τὸ ἐπιβάλλον μέρος τῆς οὐσίας: a quite classic expression; vide Wetstein for
examples.

[2] τὸν βίον, practically synonymous with the τῆς οὐσίας going before.

[3] ζῶν ἀσώτως, living in excess, with special reference to extravagant
expenditure. From this phrase comes the common title of this parable, The
Prodigal Son—̔Ο υἱὸς ἄσωτος, filius perditus, or prodigus. Dr. Field, with
reference to the old rendering, "riotous living," retained in R. V., asks why
not "with prodigal living," with reference to the familiar English title of the
parable.—’Otium Norv.’

[4] κεράτια, so called from their horn-like, curved shape. On the carob or
locust tree, and its fruit, and its use as food for animals and for the poor,
vide Tristram’s ’Natural History of the Bible,’ also Smith’s ’Dictionary of the
Bible.’

[5] ταχὺ probably forms part of the text, though it is not found in many MSS.,
and is omitted by Tischendorf.

[6] We throw this word in to bring out the tone in which the elder son referred
to his brother. It is gratifying to find Dr. Field suggesting the use of the
same epithet, also of the epithet ’dear’ in the next verse to bring out what the
returned son ought to be to his brother. The latter suggestion we have adopted
from him. This parable differs from the preceding two in length, in the
multiplicity of picturesque and pathetic details, in heightened moral interest
due to the fact of the example being taken from the sphere of human conduct, and
in the manner in which Pharisaic severity is rebuked; the former parables
showing the censors of Jesus how they ought to have acted, this parable showing
them (through the picture of the elder brother) how they did act. It was fitting
that this should be done in the last of the three parables rather than in the
others because, the illustration being taken from human conduct, the term ’lost’
has a moral sense, and there is a conflict of feeling towards the lost object;
on the one hand resentment against folly, on the other pity awakened by misery.
In this case, therefore, sympathy with one who has recovered the lost cannot be
taken for granted, as it could in the case of a lost sheep, or of a lost coin;
for the feeling of resentment might predominate, as accordingly it is made to do
in the case of the elder brother. By conveying reproof in this instance under
this form, Jesus showed His respect for the feelings of men of exemplary lives
against the sinful, so far as these were based on sincere love of virtue. He
said thereby in effect: "What I condemn in you is not your disapprobation of
sin, but merely the excessive one-sided nature of your resentment, shutting your
hearts against pity for the sinful." This tone of carefully-qualified and
guarded blame, very observable in the closing part of the parable, is traceable
throughout the whole, in the picture of the Prodigal, and of the Father, not
less than in that of the Elder Brother. Christ’s purpose evidently is not to
provoke but to conciliate, not to treat moral severity as inadmissible, but to
moderate its excess, and to soften it with a mixture of compassion. The three
pictures of the Prodigal Son, the loving Father, and the relentless Elder
Brother, make up this parable of exquisite beauty and inexhaustible didactic
significance. Let us stand and gaze upon each of them in turn, till we have
become duly impressed with the inimitable skill of the Artist who drew them.

1. The prodigal is so depicted as to show us his sin and folly, and yet to
awaken in us pity for his misery. He is an unfilial, thoughtless, self-willed,
sensual youth, who by his follies brings upon himself many sorrows; and he
excites in us just the sort of mixed feeling with which Jesus regarded the
publicans and sinners whom he represents, extenuating not their guilt, yet
deeply commiserating them. This foolish, wayward one is the younger of two sons.
He might have been either of them, but it was fitting to make the younger the
prodigal; because the younger the more likely to be thoughtless, and the weaker
the influences tending to give steadiness by developing the sense of
responsibility; for by the Hebrew Law the younger of two sons had a claim to
only one-third of the paternal inheritance, the elder receiving a double share
of two-thirds,[1] and being the more likely just on that account to conduct
himself with gravity as one conscious of the dignity of birthright. The career
of this younger son is exhibited in four successive scenes, in the first of
which we see his self-will, in the second his folly, in the third his misery,
and in the fourth his repentance.[2] His self-will manifests itself in the
request to have his share of the paternal property given into his hands at once,
that he may be free to do with it what he chooses. His motive is speedily
revealed by his subsequent conduct in setting off with all his means to a
distant country, where he can forget his home and family, and be, as he hopes,
forgotten by, and hidden from the knowledge of, his friends.[3] There are
passionate impulses and hungry appetites within him which can get no outlet in
his father’s house, and he is impatient to get away from it to a place where he
can follow his bent without restraint. The youth is in the Byronic or Werterean
vein, and he desires freedom to sow his wild oats. It is strange that the
father, who, if he had any discernment, must have noticed the mood of his boy,
consented to his request;[4] but parental softheartedness often does what a
dispassionate judgment cannot approve. Moreover, the exigencies of the parable
required that he should so act, and also the rôle which he sustained as the
representative of Divine Providence: for God in his Providence often gives to
men towards whom He has a high purpose of grace, free rein, permitting them to
go to wild excesses of riot before he breaks them in to the yoke of obedience;
of which we have a notable instance in the case of Augustine, whose history
supplies a far more instructive commentary on our parable than anything to be
found in his writings.[5]

[1] Deu 21:17.

[2] Luk 15:12; Luk 15:13; Luk 15:14-16; Luk 15:17-19.

[3] Luk 15:13.

[4] Legally he might either grant or refuse the request: "Fecit non quod
oportebat, sed quod licebat facere."—Maldonatus.

[5] Godet refers to Rom 1:24 as illustrating the father’s consent to his son’s
foolish wishes. The folly of the youth is depicted in very few words. He
scattered his substance, living in sensual indulgence, continuing this course of
wasteful excesses till all his means were gone. Melancholy picture of
enslavement to passion, and of utter thoughtlessness and absence of
self-control! The fire of sinful impulse once kindled burns on till the fuel is
exhausted, when the poor wretch, who in thoughtless joy kindled this fire, and
for a while compassed himself about with its sparks, must lie down in
sorrow.[1]. Where, all the while, is the reason firm and temperate will? Alas!
these do not usually keep company with self-will and lawless desire. They may
return when the tempest of passion has spent its force, but meantime madness
rules the hour. How the youth spent the months of folly it is not difficult to
imagine. With characteristic delicacy Jesus omits details, leaving the
ungracious task of filling in repulsive particulars to the elder son.[2] It is
the animus of his representation that is at fault; his statement, though
brutally unfeeling, was probably too true. We may without any breach of charity
conceive the prodigal as wasting his means on every form of sensual
gratification, playing the fool in no half and half manner.[3]

[1] Isa 1:11

[2] Luk 15:30. μετὰ πορνῶν. [3] From a fragment of Eusebius it might be inferred
that the Ebionitic Gospel went beyond the elder brother in describing the evil
life of the prodigal. In that passage Eusebius refers to the ’Gospel according
to the Hebrews’ in connection with the parable of the Talents, and uses the
expression, μετὰ πορνῶν καὶ αὐλητρίδων (with harlots and flute women). It is,
however, not clear whether the words are a quotation from the Hebrew Gospel, or
a phrase employed by Eusebius himself to describe the prodigal’s conduct. The
passage in question is given by Mr. Nicholson in his recently-published work on
’The Gospel according to the Hebrews,’ p. 59. The inevitable end of such courses
is want and misery, and these all too soon overtook the prodigal. His money is
squandered, and he is now almost without the means of purchasing the necessaries
of life, not to speak of hurtful, pleasures. And, as evil fortune would have it,
about the time when his resources were nearly exhausted there "arose a mighty
famine in that land." This may seem a blemish in the parable, as introducing an
element of an accidental character, having no necessary connection with the
prodigal’s misconduct. But it is not by accident that physical and moral evil
meet in human history. There is a Divine teleology in the conjunction, whether
appearing in individual experience, or in the life of nations, and the parable
only recognises this truth in exhibiting a correspondence between moral state
and outward circumstances which is often exemplified in history, and as often
shown by the result to have been designed by Providence to serve a beneficent
purpose. By this unhappy conjunction of exhausted personal resources with
general scarcity the luckless spendthrift is reduced to a state of destitution.
And at the heels of want comes degradation. The well-born and once wealthy youth
is driven by need to force himself[1] into the service of a citizen of the
country, who has no better employment for him than the one of all others the
most abhorrent to a Jew, that of a swineherd to a Gentile owner. A humiliating
downcome, and a representation of the degradation of the publicans, Jews by
birth, serving Roman masters as tax-gatherers, such as would satisfy even
Pharisaic hearers.[2] The sorrows of the prodigal, beginning in want and passing
into degradation, reach their lowest depth in desperation. His hunger at length
attains such a pitch that he has a craving "to fill his belly," according to the
homely but expressive phrase of the reading we follow,[3] with the fruit of the
carob tree lying on the ground, and on which the swine fed. He had little else
to eat, for nobody thought of giving to him when all had so little to
themselves.[4]

[1] ἐκολλήθη. "The word implies that the citizen of the country to whom he
applied was unwilling at first to receive him, and only after persistent
pressing entreaties took him into his service."—Goebel, ’Die Parabeln.’ Se
obtrudat (ἐκολλήθη, contemptim)—Unger, p. 148. "The term has something abject;
he was, as it were, suspended on another personality."—Godet [2] Negotium quod
antehac quam maxime abhorruisset subit. Judæus porcos pascit hominis
Gentilis.—Unger.

[3] γεμίσαι τὴν κοιλίαν. The reading in ℵ, B, &c., is χορτασθῆναι, which Godet
regards as a euphemism substituted for the true reading in the Lectionaries, and
thence transferred into the text by copyists. Westcott and Hort, however, regard
this as the true reading, alleging that the other reading misses the point, and
holding that the documentary evidence in any case is here decisive. The R. V.
also adopts this reading. The American revisers, however, prefer the other, and
our sympathies are with them.

[4] The words οὐδεὶς ἐδίδου αὐτῷ it is best to understand as assigning a reason
why he was fain to eat of the κεράτια. The prodigal got a modicum of bread in
the famine, but not enough to satisfy; he was therefore glad to eke out his diet
with swine’s food, which he could get for the lifting (like hungry children
eating turnips out of a field). So Godet Similarly, Calvin.

Desperation formed the turning-point in the youth’s career, and the next scene
shows him returning to his senses, and beginning to think soberly and wisely. He
is brought to his last shifts, but there is one course open: he may go back to
his father’s house. Of that house, and of the happiness of even those in servile
position therein, he begins now, for the first time for many days, to think. The
thought begets a purpose, and suggests a plan. He will go home, and he will make
confession of his sin in well-premeditated form, suited at once to propitiate an
injured father, and to express the modesty of his present expectations. He will
own that he has been an offender both against God and against his parent, and he
will beg a servant’s place and position, a great boon to a starving man.[1] The
picture of the penitent is not drawn in the ethereal colours of philosophy.
Repentance has its source in hunger, and its motive is to get a bit of bread.
How much nobler to have returned to rationality in folly’s mid career, to have
pulled up suddenly and said: "This will never do; I have been a fool. I will be
a fool no longer; I will henceforth live a life of sobriety and wisdom."
Perhaps; but the parable is true to life. Hunger, stern necessity, abject
poverty, has made many a man wise who had been foolish before, and though the
repentance which thus begins is somewhat impure in its source, it clears itself
betimes, as reason gradually gains its ascendancy, and the moral nature grows
into strength. The prodigal’s repentance became purified, whether as the result
of reflection on the way home, or as the effect of an unexpectedly gracious
reception from his father, is matter of conjecture; but, at all events, he
dropped the last part of his premeditated confession when he came into his
father’s presence, and made no request, but only owned his sin.[2]

[1] ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων. Trench thinks the μίσθιοι are to be regarded as
occupying a lower position than even the δοῦλοι, so that the sense is: a place
among the lowest class of servants. But the contrast suggested is rather that
between the condition of the μίσθιοι in his father’s house, and that of the
μίσθιοι in the land where he now spends a miserable existence. So Goebel. Godet
identifies the μίσθιοι with the pagan proselytes of the outer court, and says
the prodigal, in his hope and desire, takes his position beside the publican
(Luk 18:13).

[2] The premeditated confession was the repentance of fear; the actual
confession, the repentance of love. The discovery of the difference produced the
Reformation.—Godet.

2. We have now to look at the picture of the father of this penitent prodigal.
He descries his son while he is yet a great way off, at the point where the road
brings a traveller first into view. He has not forgotten his son, though his son
has long forgotten him. He has been thinking of him through the long period of
his absence. Probably he often cast glances along the road to see if perchance
the erring one was returning, thinking he saw him in every stranger who made his
appearance. He has continued looking, longing, till hope deferred has made his
heart sick and weary almost to despair. If he is not represented as going in
search of his lost child, it is not because he cares less for that child than
the shepherd for his straying sheep, or the housewife for her missing coin; but
because in this case the lost one is a man, not a beast or a lifeless thing, and
can return of his own accord when his mind changes; and because only when the
return is his own act, has it any moral significance. The father’s solicitude
therefore takes the form of waiting for his son’s return. He has to wait long,
but at last his patience is rewarded. For lo! at length there is one who does
look like the long lost one. He is much changed, wears the aspect of a beggar,
and trudges along like an aged man, weak and footsore. But love is quick to
discern resemblances, and there is something in the stranger’s gait and bearing
that recalls the lost son. The father watches his movements for a little, till
in the end he feels certain that it is none other than his son. The tide of
compassion rises instantaneously, sweeping every other feeling before it. There
is not even a momentary struggle between pity and resentment, such as the
prophet represents taking place in the Divine bosom, in reference to
Ephraim.[1]. He "ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him;" kissed him not once
but many times, with fervency and rapture.[2] The moving scene over, the son
gets an opportunity at length of making his confession. On arriving at the
homestead together, the happy father gives orders to his servants, which
indicate the completeness of his forgiveness, and the depth of his joy. First,
he commands them to bring forth quickly the best robe and put it on him as the
badge of distinction,[3] and a ring for his finger, and shoes for his feet as
the badges of a free man[4] (though the shoes, and indeed all the three
things—robe, ring, shoes, may be regarded simply as a provision rendered
necessary by the destitute condition of the beggared prodigal). These
instructions signify full reinstatement in filial position and privilege. He who
has confessed himself no more worthy to be called a son is to be treated as a
son, not as a servant, and as the son of such a father, attired as becomes the
member of a respectable family. He receives the adoption, the νἱοθεσία, to
employ a prominent word of the Pauline theology. This feature in the parable is
of great importance in respect of its religious significance. It is designed to
suggest the doctrine that God deals with sinners repenting, as the father dealt
with his returning son. God receives all penitents, even such as the publicans
and sinners of Jewish society, as sons. It may become such to say: We are not
worthy to be called thy sons, in the same spirit as Jewish exiles returned from
Babylon are represented by the prophet as saying: We are so changed that Abraham
would not know us, so degraded that Israel might be ashamed to acknowledge
us.[5] But God is their Father notwithstanding; regards them as His sons, whence
His joy on their return; treats them as sons, not forgiving them with a grudge,
or partially, or in contempt, but to all intents and purposes acting towards
them as if they had never sinned. At this point the doctrine of Christ
remarkably coincides with that of St. Paul, who represents the standing of
sonship as the privilege of every justified man. and the spirit of sonship as
the ideal of the Christian’s conscious relation to God. This harmony is only
what we should expect when we consider that in the teaching both of Christ and
of Paul the supreme category is Grace.

[1] Jer 31:20 [2] κατεφίλησεν, the same word as in Luk 7:38; Luk 7:45.

[3] στολὴν τὴν πρώτην: literally the first, whether in time or in degree must be
determined by other considerations. Theophylact understood it in the temporal
sense, and rendered πρώτην by ἀρχαῖαν, the reference being supposed to be to the
pristine state of innocence before the fall. Similarly Calvin. The other view is
favoured by most interpreters, and is doubtless to be preferred. For the use of
πρῶτος in the sense of ’chief,’ vide 1Ti 1:15.

[4] So Meyer. Grotius takes δακτύλιον as a sign of dignity, and refers to Gen
41:42.

[5] Isa 63:16.

Next the father gives orders that a feast be made to celebrate his son’s return,
not merely to express his own joy and thankfulness, but to give the whole
household an opportunity of sharing his gladness. The fatted calf, which had
been in keeping for some periodically recurring high tide,[1] must be killed
to-day, for never was there a fitter occasion for feasting and mirth than the
day on which a son who has been as dead comes to life again, and who has been
lost is found. So the father describes the case, and we can understand what a
depth of meaning the words have for him. For the servants to whom he first
utters them, they describe merely the outer aspect of the fact: a son who has
been very long away from home and of whom no tidings have been received,
returned to his father’s house in good health. For the father, they express this
outer fact, and more, the inner ethical aspect of the event, the great fact of a
morally altered life. It is idle* therefore, to discuss, as some recent writers
have done, the question, whether the words "dead and alive," "lost and found,"
have an ethical or only a physical meaning.[2] That depends on who uses them or
hears them. The father employed a mode of expression which conveyed to his
servants a meaning which they could understand and appreciate, and at the same
time expressed for himself a thought he hid in his own bosom, as one with which
hirelings might not inter-meddle. For him such words could not but mean more
than met the ear of unreflecting domestics. But what did meet their ear sufficed
to make them happy. They sympathised heartily with their master’s joy, promptly
executed his orders for the preparation of a feast, and then "began to be
merry."[3] All in that household were in holiday humour that day,—all but one.

[1] τὸν μόσχον τὸν σιτευτόν, the fatted calf. "On every farm was the calf that
was being fattened for the feast day. Jesus knew rural manners."—Godet.

[2] Hofmann contends that the words are to be taken in an ethical sense; Goebel
takes the contrary view.

[3] Viewing the return of the prodigal simply from the outside as a finding of
one lost for a time, the servants in this parable hold the place of the
neighbours and friends in the other two parables. They, regarding the event from
the outside, as a matter of course sympathise with their master.

3. That one was the elder son. He has been "in the field" all the day long, so
that he is ignorant of what has happened, till returning home towards the
evening he learns, from sounds which reach him from the house, that something
unusual is going on. He has been busy at work on the paternal estate, for he is
a dutiful, diligent, methodical, plodding, prosaic, uninteresting man. Inquiring
what the music and the sound as of dancing means, he receives from the slave to
whom he addresses his question the answer: "Thy brother is come, and thy father
killed the fatted calf, because he received him safe and sound." In the words we
are to find neither a sneer, nor a studied reserve in reporting the facts, as if
in doubt how the news would be received, but simply an honest statement of the
facts as they appeared to the superficial view of the servile mind, which
thought only of the outward aspect of the event related.[1] Probably the honest
slave expected that the tidings he communicated would give the elder son as much
pleasure as they gave himself. If he did, he was very much mistaken. The report
that a feast had been extemporised, to celebrate the return of a worthless
member of the family, roused in the virtuous man a storm of indignation, and he
could not endure the thought of appearing in a company where a spirit of mirth
reigned, with which he had no sympathy. Strange that a brother should come
behind even a slave in joy over the return of the erring one! And yet we must
not overlook the fact, that in his very anger the eldest son showed himself
morally superior to the slave. The slave was glad because he looked merely at
the exterior side of the event: a member of the family long absent from home, at
length returned. The son was angry because he looked at the moral side of his
brother’s history; at the cause of his absence, and the sort of life he had been
living. For thinking of these he was not to be blamed; his fault lay here, that
he was readier to think of the sin than of the repentance, which in the judgment
of charity might be presumed to have been the motive impelling the prodigal to
return. This was the fault of the Pharisees, of whom he is the type. They
thought only of the vices of the class whom Jesus loved, never of their
repentance, and hence their inability to comprehend the motives, and to
sympathise with the feelings, of Jesus. It was a fault due immediately to the
want of a hopeful spirit in reference to the moral reformation of the degraded
members of society. But that want of hope resolved itself ultimately into a lack
of love. Charity hopeth all things. Jesus hoped for the repentance of publicans
and sinners, because He loved them deeply; the Pharisees despaired of them
because their hearts were cold, frozen with the pride of virtue. Even so with
the elder son, to return to him. His virtue made him hard and severe, and unable
to be forbearing, gentle, pitiful, or, to use the pregnant word of the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews, μετριοπαθεῖν, towards the erring.[2] He thought he
did well to be angry, and therefore, when his father, on receiving the servant’s
report that he was standing without in sullen humour, came out and entreated him
to come in, his respect for his sire did not prevent him from expressing himself
in the tone of one who felt himself deeply injured, dwelling with not unnatural
pride on the length and faithfulness of his service, and then complaining that
his devotion had never been rewarded with so much as a paltry kidling to make a
feast with his friends. Of this he should never have thought of complaining
under ordinary circumstances; but when he sees how this worthless fellow is
received and honoured by the killing of the calf that was being fattened against
a family high-tide, as if no worthier occasion could be found than the day of
his return, it is more than he can bear in silence. Verily he seems to have a
good case against his father, and one wonders how the old man will defend
himself. And on scanning his reply, one is half inclined to suspect that he is
conscious of occupying a somewhat indefensible position. For he speaks with
wondrous mildness, seeking to appease his angry son by calling him child,[3] and
reminding him that his place in the house is such that to offer him a kid would
be no compliment; for what was such a paltry gift to one who was lord of all?
But this mildness does not really spring out of weakness; its true source is
paternal love. The tender-hearted parent desires to soften the heart of one
brother towards the other. For this purpose he first gently reminds the offended
one that the returned prodigal was his own brother. "Thy son," he had called the
prodigal, but the father calls him "thy brother." Then with the softness in word
and tone which turneth away wrath he pled: "It was meet that there should be
mirth and gladness, for thy brother was dead and is alive, and was lost and is
found." It was a plea in justification of the mirth and gladness in which he and
all the rest of the family had freely indulged, and also indirectly for the
mirth and gladness which ought to have been, but was not, excited by the good
news in the breast of the elder son himself.[4] It was the wisest plea the
worthy head of the household could have advanced, but had he been disposed to
retaliate he might easily have found a vulnerable point. He might have said,
what indeed his words implied, that in complaining that he had never been
presented with a kid the fault-finder had degraded himself to the position of a
servant.[5] Nay, he might have said with perfect truth, that he was not the sort
of man to awaken in others the festive mood. He was an eminently respectable,
correct, exemplary man, but not one to be enthusiastic about. Prosaic himself,
he could never excite gushes of emotion, lyric states of soul, in his
fellow-men. The fountains of emotion are opened, not by moral mediocrity and
correctness, but by wickedness penitent, or by heroic goodness. For a great
sinner repenting, or for a moral hero who has achieved great deeds, one would
readily make a feast, but scarcely for a righteous man like the elder brother
would one even so much as kill a fatted calf, not to speak of dying oneself.

[1] Hofmann, with a strange want of insight, finds in the words a sneer adapted
by a cunning domestic to the manifest ill-will of the elder brother. Meyer, on
the other hand, thinks the servant showed discretion in speaking only of the
physical health of the returned son. Godet, with superior discernment, says, the
words of the servant describe the fact without the moral appreciation which did
not suit a servant.

[2] Heb 5:2.

[3] Luk 15:31. τέκνον.

[4] ἔδει may refer either to something which has happened as it must have, or
which ought to have happened but has not. Here it is used in both senses; in the
first sense, with reference to the father and the rest of the family; in the
second, with reference to the elder brother. So Goebel.

[5] The servile tone pervades the elder brother’s words throughout, and in this
he was a faithful picture of the Pharisees, whose religion was essentially legal
and servile in spirit. The elder brother in the parable is the representative of
the Pharisees in their good and bad points, in their moral correctness, and in
their severity and pride, as the younger brother is the representative of the
"publicans and sinners" in their depravity and repentance. This seems so evident
to us, that we have all along taken it for granted. Some, however, and notably
the critics who are always discovering traces of tendency in the Gospel, are of
opinion that the two brothers represent not the Pharisees and publicans
respectively, but Jews and Gentiles. But we must here, as in all cases,
distinguish between the applications of which the parable admits, and the
application primarily intended. That the reference, in the first place, is to
Pharisees and publicans is to us beyond question; but that the doctrine of the
parable admitted of being applied to Jews and Pagans, and that Jesus, and
likewise Luke, was conscious of its applicability to the wider distinction, we
have as little doubt. The Pharisees themselves could hardly fail to discern in
Christ’s sympathy with the degraded class, and in His defence thereof a latent
universalism. The offence they took at Christ’s conduct was probably due to an
instinctive, half-conscious perception, that this new love for the sinful
portended a religious revolution, the setting aside of Jewish prerogative, and
the introduction of a religion of humanity to which Jew and Gentile should be as
one.[1] They might arrive at this conclusion by a very simple process of
reasoning. They themselves called Jesus "Friend of publicans and sinners"; but
publicans were to them as heathens, and ’sinners’ was the epithet they used to
denote the Gentiles. Therefore they might readily argue that the man who took
such an interest in publicans and sinners could have no objection in principle
to associating with Gentiles, and that when the leaven of His influence had had
time to work, the religion associated with His name would become the religion,
not of the Jews, but of mankind. If they reasoned thus they reasoned rightly
Christ’s love was indeed revolutionary in tendency, and so was the doctrine He
taught in these apologetic parables. The doctrine that every penitent sinner,
though he were the meanest of mankind, is a son of God, could only issue in the
new humanity of Paul, wherein "is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free,
neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus."[2] [1] Reuss says
under ’sinners’ Pagans are included, and in the sense explained above we agree
with him.

[2] Gal 3:28.

It remains now to make a few observations on the import of the term ’lost’ which
occurs in all these three parables. It was a term frequently employed by Jesus
to denote the objects of His redemptive activity. "I came," He said once and
again, "to seek the lost" (τὸἀπολωλός). In endeavouring to appreciate the moral
significance of this figurative term, it is important to note the difference
between the second perfect participle used passively and the middle voice of the
verb ἀπόλλυμι, as employed in a sense peculiar to the New Testament, viz. to
denote the future condition of the unsaved, as in the familiar text: "God so
loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that every one believing in
Him might not perish (μὴ ἀπόληται), but have eternal life."[1] The participle
ἀπολωλός is used to denote a condition of peril, but the middle voice in New
Testament usage denotes absolute perdition. The state indicated by the
participle in question is one from which recovery is possible; the state
indicated by the verb ἀπόλλυσθαι or by the noun ἀπώλεια is one of irretrievable
loss.[2] Hence that which is lost, ἀπολωλός, is represented as the object of
redeeming love. The Son of man came to seek τὸ ἀπολωλός.[3]

[1] John 3:16.

[2] On this distinction vide Cramer’s ’Dictionary of New Testament Greek.’

[3] Luk 19:10; cf. Mat 10:6; Mat 15:24.

What, then, is the moral condition of humanity considered as that which, while
lost, is yet capable of being found and saved? The parables we have been
considering help us to answer this question. Man, viewed as the object of the
Saviour’s solicitude, is lost as a straying sheep is lost, through
thoughtlessness; as a piece of money is lost to use, when its owner cannot find
it; as a prodigal is lost, who in wayward-ness and self-will departs from his
father’s house to a distant land, and there lives a life utterly diverse from
that of the home he has left, and so living holds no correspondence with his
family, but is content to be as dead to them, and that they in turn should be as
dead to him. Man as ’lost’ is foolish as a straying sheep, to his own peril;
lives in vain, not fulfilling the end of his existence, like a lost coin; is
without God in the world, alienated from God, like a prodigal son. As a straying
sheep he is not only lost, but has lost himself, bewildered like a traveller in
a snowstorm, or a child in a wood. He has gone astray not in wantonness merely,
but in quest of pasture, seeking after good, blindly groping after the summum
bonum. He has gone further astray from that which he seeks, instead of coming
nearer it. As a lost piece of money, he is forgetful of his chief end, and so
lives in vain, so far as the higher purposes of life are concerned. As a lost
son of God, he is not only witless like a sheep, and useless like a lost coin,
but positively evil-minded, disobedient, undutiful, devoid of right affection, a
lover of pleasure more than of God, one who banishes God from his thoughts, and
who desires that he may not be in God’s thoughts, and does what he can to hide
himself from God, by living a prayerless, irreligious life, behaving as a
runaway who holds no correspondence with friends that he may conceal from them
his whereabouts. Such were the thoughts of Jesus concerning man when He
described him as τὸ ἀπολωλός.[1]

[1] Bengel distinguishes the senses of the term ’lost,’ as used in the three
parables respectively, thus: Ovis, drachma, filius perditus; peccator stupidus,
sui plane nescius, sciens et voluntarius. Our interpretation agrees with his in
the first and third cases, but diverges from it in the second—he emphasising the
unconsciousness of the lifeless piece of money; we, the fact that a lost coin is
lost to use.


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  CHAPTER 19: 01.14.        CHAPTER 3. THE CHILDREN OF THE BRIDE-CHAMBER
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Chapter 3. The Children of the Bride-chamber Or, Christ’s Apology for the Joy of
His Disciples.

Then come to Him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast
oft,[1] but Thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the children
of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with them? but days
will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they
fast.[2] And no one putteth a piece of unfulled cloth[3] unto an old garment,
for that which filleth up[4] taketh from the garment, and a worse rent takes
placed.[5] Neither do they put new wine into old skins; else[6] the skins burst,
and the wine is shed, and the skins perish; but they put new wine into new
skins, and both are preserved.—Mat 9:14-17. (Luk 5:33-39; Mark 2:18-22.) [1]
πολλὰ, much: πυκνὰ, in Luke (Luk 5:33).

[2] Luke adds ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις, "those days;" Mark, ἐν ἐκεῖνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ,
"in that day:" the repetition adds solemnity to the statement.

[3] ῥάκους ἀγνάφου: so also in Mark.

[4] τό πλήρωμα αὐτοῦ = the patch which fills the hole in the garment. Mark says,
"that which fills up (τὸ πλήρωμα) takes from it, the new from the old (τὸ καινὸν
τοῦ παλαιοῦ). The mode of expression in this parable, as reported, is somewhat
obscure throughout.

[5] χεῖρον σχίσμα γίνεται.

[6] εἰ δὲ μήγε, or at least if they don’t attend to this rule.

It is not usual with writers on the parables to include among the number the
three suggestive comparisons or illustrations contained in this remarkable
section of the Gospel History. But without disputing the right of others to act
otherwise, we have no hesitation in giving them a place in our studies on the
Parabolic Teaching of Christ. For, if not fully developed parables, these
similitudes are at least parable-germs; a fact recognised by one of the
Evangelists, who applies the terra parable to the second and third of the three,
the new patch on the worn-out garment, and the new wine in the old skins. And
what is lacking in the artistic finish of these parable-germs is fully
compensated for by their number, which is a significant hint of the importance
of the subject to which they refer. Once more Jesus is put on His defence with
reference to departure from the custom of the time by Himself and His disciples,
and this time as usual His apology assumes the parabolic form; only in this case
He does not, as in His apology for loving the sinful, seek so much to play the
part of a consummate artist in the construction of exquisitely finished
parables, but rather that of the suggestive original thinker, throwing out in
rapid succession fruitful ideas which might be worked out by the hearers
themselves. The change in the style was suited to a change in the circumstances;
for the new interrogants do not seem to have been, as in the former case,
captious, disaffected fault-finders, but rather men honestly perplexed by a
surprising diversity in the religious-habits of the disciples of Jesus as
compared with those of the Pharisees, and of John’s disciples. What was called
for in the former case was an effort to make a moral and emotional impression,
and hence the artistic beauty and the pathos of the parables last considered:
what is needed in the present case, on the other hand, is instruction in the
form of hints at the true cause of the conduct animadverted on, and at the
principles applicable to such a matter as the practice of fasting. And the
instruction given is admirably adapted to its purpose. No hints could be more
suggestive or stimulative of thought, more pregnant with deep meanings
far-reaching in their application, more illustrative of the originality of the
speaker, and more surely indicative that a great outstanding characteristic of
the kingdom, a cardinal feature of the new movement heralded by the Man who was
such a puzzle to His contemporaries, was pointed at. We should be very sorry
indeed not to have a good excuse for including in our scheme these three
parable-germs—the children of the bride-chamber, the new patch on the worn
garment, and the new wine in the old skins. Of these parable-germs any one might
have been selected to be the title of this chapter; but after due consideration
we have deemed the first worthiest of the honour, not merely because it is the
first, but specially because it gives us the deepest glimpse into the heart of
the subject. For while the second and third simply illustrate the general
principle that incongruous things ought not to be combined, that is, in the
particular case in hand, that fasting should not be forced upon men whose mood
it did not meet, the first tells us precisely what was the mood of the disciples
of Jesus which made fasting an uncongenial practice, reveals to us the latent
spiritual characteristic of the Jesus-circle, which accounted for this
superficial divergence from religious custom. And what then was that mood and
characteristic? It was. Joy. Jesus and His disciples were a wedding party; He
the bridegroom, they the sons of the bride-chamber, the bridegroom’s friends who
with Him conducted the bride to her new home, and there spent a happy week in
unrestrained festivity. For all this is implied in the question, Can the
children of the bride-chamber mourn? The question is an implicit assertion, the
case put is the actual case, here as in all the parables. Such then being the
relations and circumstances of the parties, of course mourning, and therefore by
the law of congruity fasting, is out of the question. Joy, mirth, rules the
hour, and the appropriate behaviour is not fasting, but dancing and song. But
whence this joy, whence in other words the relations alleged to subsist between
the Galilean Master and his companions? The question throws us back on the
characteristics of the kingdom as preached by Jesus. There is joy in the
Jesus-circle because the kingdom is a kingdom of GRACE, a kingdom the
announcement of whose advent is good news, the very gospel, and whose presence
is the summum bonum, signifying God a Father, and men His sons. This idea of the
kingdom, the one ever presented by Jesus, was the true source of the behaviour
of His disciples, and the radical cause of the difference between their
behaviour and that of John’s disciples. The difference ran up ultimately into
this: the diverse conceptions of the kingdom as preached by Jesus and John
respectively. The diversity of their conceptions may be very simply formulated.
The kingdom as preached by Jesus was good news. As preached by John it was awful
news. In the mouth of the one it meant God regarding men as a Father ready to
bestow upon them His grace, yea, willing to receive graciously, as still His
children, though erring, the most depraved of men returning to Him in penitence.
In the mouth of the other it meant God coming in the majesty of His justice, to
execute judgment; Messiah coming with fan in hand to sift wheat from chaff, and
with axe to hew down unfruitful trees. No wonder that the followers of the two
preachers differed widely in their way of life, the disciples of the one
resembling a wedding party making the welkin ring with laughter and song, the
disciples of the other resembling a band of pilgrims trudging with rueful look
and weary foot to the shrine of a saint to do penance for their sins. No wonder
that the disciples of Jesus were a puzzle and a scandal to the disciples of the
Baptist; for it is not easy to understand or sympathise with conduct springing
out of a radically different spirit to that which animates oneself. No wonder,
finally, that Jesus himself was a mystery to the Baptist as he lay brooding in
melancholy fashion in the prison of Machærus; for in His hand was no axe or fan,
in His mouth no words of terror, in His heart no severity, but only gentleness
and pity dictating deeds of kindness and messages of mercy. In all Christ’s
teachings can be found no more decisive indication of the gracious character of
the kingdom than just this parable of the Children of the Bridechamber. But we
must not suppose that the joyous mood of His disciples sprang directly out of a
clear conception on their part of the nature of the kingdom. A kingdom is a very
complex phenomenon, and the kingdom which Jesus preached was as yet but very
imperfectly understood by those who followed Him. Their conscious thoughts about
it were crude and mistaken, and what knowledge of its true nature they had was
of an instinctive, unconscious, and implicit character. They knew the kingdom
through Jesus the King; not through His words, but through the spirit that was
in Him, and that revealed itself in His whole bearing. They knew it as voyagers
know the near neighbourhood of an unseen land, by the sweet odour borne thence
on the breeze. They discerned the perfume of the oil of gladness emanating from
their Master, and hence divined the nature of the, kingdom which He came to
found. And the gladness which was in Him passed into them by sympathy. Being in
His company they were infected with His spirit, and acted as they saw Him act.
Their neglect of fasting was imitative in its origin, not based on reflection.
They acted from impulse, not from principle. They did what they did they knew
not why, and on being found fault with they would not know what to answer. Men
constantly in Christ’s company might be expected at length to understand the
rationale of the conduct impugned, but to such insight they had not yet
attained. In the foregoing remarks we have implied that the spirit or mood of
Jesus was characteristically one of joy. To some this may seem a very
questionable position. Was not Jesus the man of sorrow and sadness rather than
the man of gladness? He was a man of sorrow; there was ever in Him a deep
sadness, of whose presence we have a significant index in the words, "there will
come days when the bridegroom shall be taken from them," which are an ominous
hint of a tragic experience awaiting Him in the future that cast its shadow on
His spirit now; how deep a shadow we may judge from the repeated mention of the
days of mourning, in the version of the saying given by the other Evangelists.
But this deep habitual sadness notwithstanding, the spirit of Jesus was
emphatically joyful, and His face radiant with the oil of gladness. There was a
sunny brightness in His temper as well as an undertone of melancholy. And the
springs of His gladness were twofold. First there was the joy inseparable from a
religion which has its source in fresh intuitions of truth and rests not on the
mere traditions of men, the joy of perfect freedom combined with absolute
devotion to God, a joy of which they know nothing whose souls are imprisoned in
a complicated system of conventional religious observances such as those
practised by the Pharisees, or even by the Baptist’s disciples. What a dull,
dreary, sombre existence is that of the tradition-enslaved soul, doomed to
perform the daily routine of fasting and praying and almsgiving, which composes
the dead carcase of works technically holy! But how inexpressibly sweet the joy
of "religion new given," consisting in "a revival of intuitive and fresh
perceptions."[1] It is the joy of the lark soaring to heaven’s gate, and singing
in the bright sunshine and warm air of summer. It is a joy given to men in
certain ages to know in exceptional measure (happy they who live then), and to
none more than to Jesus and His disciples. The sign of its presence is the term
new applied by implication in our parables to the religious movement with which
Jesus and His disciples were identified. Jesus in effect calls His cause a new
garment and a new vintage. He does this, moreover, not as one apologising for
His existence, but rather as one asserting His own importance. He not merely
concedes, he triumphantly proclaims the novelty of His religion. What was a
fault in the eyes of others was a virtue in His view. And here we have to note
the affinity between Christ’s spirit and that of Paul, who gloried in the
novelty of the Christian religion as a merit, inasmuch as it was but the
fulfilment of the prophetic oracle which proclaimed God to be the Maker of new
things.[2]. Of the same mind also was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
whose whole argument is a vindication of the rights of the new as opposed to the
prescriptive rights of the decadent old, which he regarded as cancelled and
antiquated by the bare uttering of the word ’new’ in the prophetic oracle of the
new covenant.[3] This joy in the new is indeed characteristic of the whole New
Testament, and it is a standing characteristic of the genuinely evangelic spirit
in all ages.

[1] ’Literature and Dogma,’ p. 91.

[2] 2Co 5:16 : cf. Isa 43:18-19

[3] Heb 8:13.

Besides this joy of fresh religious intuition, Jesus also knew the not less
intense joy of love. His passion for saving the lost brought Him wondrous
gladness, as well as deep sadness. It was meat to Him to create a spring of new
spiritual life in the heart of any human being, even though it were but a
publican or a Samaritan woman. He drank deeply of this joy of redeeming love at
the feast in Matthew’s house with publicans for fellow-guests, the occasion on
which our parables were spoken. "In the midst of this feast of publicans the
heart of Jesus is overflowing with joy; it is one of the hours when His earthly
life seems to His feeling like a marriage day."[1] Generous natures can
appreciate this joy of doing good; Paul showed that he appreciated it when in
his catalogue of the fruits of the Spirit he placed joy next to love.[2] It was
a true instinct which guided him in the collocation, for where the spirit of
beneficence is, there inevitably will be the spirit of gladness. Christ could
not be full of grace without being also full of joy.

[1] Godet in loco.

[2] Gal 5:22. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy," etc. In a faint degree the
disciples were partakers of their Master’s joy in both aspects. They knew a
little, as yet only a little, of the joy of fresh religious intuition, and of
the liberty thence accruing; a little also of the joy of saving the lost. But
they had a joy of their own distinct from that of Jesus, the joy, not of giving,
but of receiving grace, the joy of faith in the love of a Divine Father to the
sinful and unworthy. And in proportion as they experienced this joy would they
also experience the species of joy first described, the joy of religious
liberty. Faith in God’s grace has for its natural issue and consummation that
exultant, triumphant joy which was so marked a feature in Paul’s religious
consciousness, and which finds such impassioned expression in his great
controversial epistles—the joy of the spirit of sonship which dares to call God,
Father;[1] the joy of hope which can take an optimistic view of life, and
believe that all things work together for good;[2] the joy which can exult even
in tribulation, because it only tends to develop patience and test character,
and so to confirm hope;[3] the joy last, but not least, of liberty from law,[4]
of happy riddance from that stern tyrannical husband, to be united in blessed
wedlock to the soul’s true husband, Jesus Christ.[5] There are many in our time
who gravely doubt whether the companions of Jesus ever attained to the perfect
Christian joy of the Pauline theology, deeming it rather highly probable that to
the end the original apostles, the eleven, continued to do the very thing their
Master had treated as an absurdity; to combine, that is, incongruous elements in
their religious faith and practice, law and grace, works and faith, the old
worn-out garment of Judaism with the new garment of evangelic righteousness; the
old skins of Jewish religious custom with the new wine of a gospel of mercy
which God meant to be preached to every creature under heaven. If this were
indeed the case, then we can only say that the eleven made little use of their
opportunities during the time "they had been with Jesus." For it cannot
reasonably be doubted that Pauline antinomianism, to use the word in an
uninvidious sense, was the natural outcome of Christ’s own teaching, and that in
accustoming His disciples to disregard existing Jewish religious custom in
certain particulars he was educating them for the ultimate abandonment of the
whole system as superseded by, and incongruous with, the new order of things
brought in with the era of grace.

[1] Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15.

[2] Rom 8:28.

[3] Rom 5:3.

[4] Gal 4:5.

[5] Rom 7:1-4. The idea in this passage is essentially the same as in the
parable of the children of the bride-chamber. These children of the
bride-chamber are from another point of view also the bride, as the Baptist
himself hinted when he said, "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom; but the
friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly
because of the bridegroom’s voice" (John 3:29). Olshausen remarks on it as
somewhat surprising, that in the passage before us the disciples are merely the
παρανύμφιοι. He reconciles the representation with the other, by saying that
while with all believers they were the bride, the first disciples were the first
rays shed upon humanity by the rising Sun of the spiritual world, and so might
be said to introduce the heavenly Bridegroom to His earthly bride. This we take
to be the hidden import of the two parables concerning the new patch on the old
garment, and the new wine in old skins, though on the surface they merely teach
the general truth that incongruous elements ought not to be united in religion.
One consideration that tends to justify the ascription to the two parables of
such deep significance is the fact that in uttering them Jesus was defending His
disciples for divergence from the religious customs, not of the Pharisees only,
but of the Baptist’s followers. From this it follows, that the religious
movement inaugurated by Jesus was a new thing, new wine, a new garment, in
reference even to the religion of the Baptist-circle. Much is implied in this.
If Christ had called his religion new as compared with Pharisaism it might have
signified no more than that His religion was Judaism reformed, for Pharisaism
was Judaism deformed. But John’s religion was itself a reformed Judaism; if
therefore Christ’s was new in comparison with it, it must have been something
more than a reform, even a revolution, an absolutely new thing, having its roots
in the Old Testament doubtless, but radically diverse in spirit, principle, and
tendency, from the whole religious life of the age whether deformed or reformed.

Passing from this let us observe the reasons by which the law of congruity is
enforced in these parables. The chief reason is the incompatibility of the new
with the old, leading inevitably to rupture and waste. But it is interesting to
note that besides this Luke mentions another, in connection with the first of
the two parables; viz. the want of correspondence or keeping between the new and
the old. Besides the rending which takes place in connection with the patching
of an old garment by a piece from a new one, there is the further objection to
the proceeding that the new piece will not agree or harmonise with the old.[1]
It is an offence against aesthetics, objectionable on the score of taste, even
if no serious result were to follow from the inharmonious combination. The
garment so patched will present a grotesque aspect to be avoided by all means.
This recognition of æsthetical considerations as having their own place in
religion (for we may legitimately transfer this feature of the parable to the
spiritual sphere) is well deserving notice, though in comparison with the more
serious consequences resulting from disregard of the law of congruity, it be but
of subordinate moment. It is a word in favour of the beautiful from the author
of our faith. And it is further to be noted, that the parable of the new patch,
as given in Luke, conveys to us an important hint as to the true source of
beauty and harmony in religion. A religious cultus will only then exhibit a fair
aspect and harmonious proportions when it is all of a piece, generated from one
principle, the embodiment of one spirit, not an eclectic patchwork of beliefs
and practices borrowed from various sources. This is but to say that religion is
only then seen in its native comeliness when it is the religion of the spirit.
Then it possesses the incomparable attractions of naturalness, spontaneity, free
unfettered movement, doing whatever the spirit prompts, and doing it gracefully
and heartily. How repulsive by comparison a religion of mechanical habits, of
which no account can be given except that they are sanctioned by tradition and
custom; and not less, let us add, a religion of merely negative affected
spirituality, whose mechanicalism consists in avoiding everything savouring of
taste as sensuous, mistaking barbarism for purity. It is an error of the same
kind in worship, as that in religious life which makes the new nature consist in
being unnatural.

[1] τῷ παλαιῷ οὐ συμφωνήσε ι τὸ ἀπὸ τοῦ καινσῦ (John 3:36). The expression might
be interpreted as referring to the stronger quality of the new cloth leading to
the result pointed at in Matthew and Mark, but, as Godet remarks, it much more
naturally refers to a contrast in appearance between the two cloths. Besides, as
we shall see, Luke’s conception of the new cloth does not make room for the idea
of contraction resulting from the unfulled condition of the cloth.

Turning now to the principal reason for observing the law of congruity, viz. the
damage and loss caused by the breach of it, we find here also a peculiarity in
Luke’s narrative, in so far as the first of the two parables is concerned; this,
viz., that the injury is done not, as in Matthew and Mark, to the old garment,
but to the new one. In the first two Gospels the evil to be shunned is the
rending of the old patched garment by the contraction of the new piece of
unfulled cloth under the influence of moisture. In Luke, on the other hand, the
evil is the spoiling of a new garment,[1] from which a piece has been cut out.
This seems a somewhat unnatural turn of thought, for the procedure pointed at,
that of patching an old coat by a piece cut out of a new one, seems too absurd
for any human being in his senses to think of. And when we endeavour to apply
the idea to the spiritual situation we find ourselves somewhat at a loss in
which direction to turn. Is Jesus justifying Himself for not playing the part of
a patcher as described in the parable, or is He representing John as playing
that part; and in either case what is signified by the spoiling of the new
garment? If cur Lord stated the case as represented in Luke’s narrative we must
put upon His words some such sense as the following:—It is a folly to combine
the new doctrine of the kingdom with old customs associated with a religion of
an entirely different spirit. The necessary effect of such a course must be to
do fatal injury to the new doctrine, by obscuring its true nature and weakening
its influence. We certainly can imagine Jesus saying this in reference to John’s
disciples, for the deprecated line of action was just that which they pursued.
They believed in the kingdom preached by their Master, and so far were on the
side of the new movement; but they combined this belief with Judaistic or
Pharisaic practice, with the result that their faith in the kingdom was
practically neutralised, or extinguished as a light put under a bushel. And we
can also conceive Jesus saying the same thing concerning Himself to the effect
of justifying Himself for not pursuing the policy indicated; though not without
qualification, for while He disregarded Pharisaic practice in such matters as
fasting and ceremonial washing, He did certainly accommodate Himself to many
existing usages, which were destined to fall into desuetude when the spirit of
the new religion had had time to create for itself a fitting garment of
habits.[2]

[1] The piece used as a patch is taken from a new garment, ἀπὀ ἱματίου καινοῦ,
and the evil one does by such a procedure is that he rends the new (garment) τὸ
καινὸν (ἱμάτιον) σχίσει. The A. V. renders this "the new maketh a rent" (in the
old), which brings Luke into harmony with Matthew and Mark. But this
construction is hardly admissible. Besides, the new piece of cloth in Luke’s
version does not possess the property which causes rending, for it is taken from
a new garment which would not naturally be made of unfulled cloth.

[2] Godet understands the parable as referring to Christ, that is, as containing
a repudiation on Christ’s part of the rôle of a patcher. Hofmann, on the other
hand, thinks the reference is to the Baptist, so that the parable contains a
description of what John and his disciples did. They did what Jesus declined to
do; spoiled the new religion by using it to patch up, or reform, a worn-out
religion.

We are inclined to think that while the thought to which Luke gives prominence
in the first parable may have been glanced at, it was not the one emphasised by
the speaker, but rather that brought out in the version of Matthew and Mark,
viz. the tearing asunder of the new from the old after the patching process has
been accomplished.[1] In this form the first parable sympathises best with the
second, for then it becomes apparent that the mischief wrought in both cases is
due to the forces latent in the new. Rending in the one case is produced by the
contraction of the new cloth, in the other by the fermentation of the new wine.
And the great truth in the spiritual sphere thus pointed out is, that the
attempt to force old beliefs and customs on a new religious movement must ever
be disastrous either to the old or to the new, probably to both, in consequence
of the vital force of the new life, which will never rest till it has rid itself
of bondage to foreign elements with which it has no affinity.

[1] So Olshausen, who thinks that in Luke’s narrative our Lord’s words have
undergone modification, with a view to assimilate the two parables by making
Christianity in each the chief thing: the new garment and the new wine. Godet
takes strongly and even enthusiastically the opposite view. In the natural
sphere men take the disruptive forces latent in the new into account, and so
avoid the risks run by disregard of the law of congruity. No man putteth a piece
of unfulled cloth on an old garment, or new wine into worn-out skins. Such
prudence is so much a matter of course, that but for the sake of the spiritual
application of the parables, it had been wholly unnecessary to point out the
consequences of neglect. But, alas! in the spiritual sphere the exceptional man
is he who has the wisdom to act on the law of congruity. The admirers of the old
will insist on forcing the new wine into old bottles, regardless of the
thousandfold illustrations supplied by history of the danger and folly of so
doing. How is it that a prudence which is so common in natural life is so rare
in religion? It arises from failure to recognise in new religious phenomena a
new wine of the kingdom. Once recognise the presence of a new wine, and the
sense to know what to do with it may be expected to follow; just as, once
recognise that Christ is a Physician and a Shepherd, and you will no longer
wonder that He takes an interest in publicans and sinners. But the difficulty is
to discern the true character of the novel in religion. One is so apt to regard
it not as a new wine of the kingdom, but as a poisonous liquid, the fruit of
levity, impiety, youthful vanity, restless love of change. That it objects to
anything in the established beliefs and customs is sufficient evidence of its
dangerous character. But even after the initial difficulty of discerning in the
new the traces of a genuine wine of the kingdom has been got over, there are
still hindrances to be overcome before the new wine shall receive wise
treatment. Men are apt to say, Why cannot the new wine go into old skins? why
should not forms of belief and worship and modes of action which suited the
fathers suit the children also, and what harm can result from insisting on
conformity to existing custom? This is the position usually assumed virtually or
avowedly by the patrons of use and wont Conservative minds have a very
inadequate idea of the vital force of belief. Their own faith having become a
tame lifeless thing, they imagine tameness or pliancy to be an attribute of
faith generally, and too often they do not find out their mistake till an
irrepressible revolutionary outburst causes them to open their eyes in
amazement. They insist on adherence to what is old till the new proves its
inherent power by producing an explosion needlessly wasteful, whereby both wine
and bottles are destroyed, and energies which might have wrought much unmixed
good are perverted into blind powers of indiscriminate destruction. The unwisdom
of the old in dealing with the new has yet another source: dislike of the
unamiable repulsive elements characteristic of the latter. It may be taken for
granted that there are such elements in all new movements, however noble and
wholesome in the main. The existence of defects, imperfections inseparable from
the initial stage of the new life, is clearly implied in both the parabolic
emblems. The new piece of cloth is unfulled, not fit for wear. The new wine has
to go through a process of fermentation before it be drinkable, or at least in
its present state it is very inferior to the old wine in flavour. In the very
striking sentence with which Luke’s report of our Lord’s words ends, this is
very frankly recognised. "And no one," said Jesus, "having drunk old wine,
wishes new, for he saith, the old is mild."[1] It is an observation full of
kindly humour, rare charity, and deepest wisdom; a candid concession to the
honest lovers of old ways, and, in effect, a modest appeal to them to exercise
indulgence towards the new ways. Had Christians but entered fully into the
spirit of this one saying of their Lord, what a difference it would have made in
the history of the Church. Then men had known how to combine preference for the
old with tolerance of the new, so as to give the new time to grow mellow in
turn. But such wisdom is often sadly lacking even in good men, men of taste and
culture, the reverent and devout, themselves excellent samples of the old
vintage. Such not unfrequently make no allowance for youth and inexperience, but
treat faults which are at worst but the escapades of noble energies not yet
perfectly under the control of wisdom, as if they were unpardonable sins.
Because the new wine is as yet harsh and fiery they think they do well to spill
it, saying it is naught and unprofitable. How much wiser to give heed to the
appeal of the new wine as uttered by the mouth cf the Eternal Vine: "We know
that we are unpalatable to those accustomed to the old vintage; but bear with
us, do not hate us, do not destroy us, do not cast us out. Keep us, we will mend
with age, and may ultimately be as good to drink as that which is at present in
use."[2]

[1] Luk 5:39, before θέλεε many copies read εὐθεώς = ’straightway,’ A.V. For the
positive χρηστός some MSS. read χρηστότερος. The positive is to be preferred as
more emphatic.

[2] Godet finds in this saying, recorded alone by Luke, a third parable, having
for its distinctive aim to teach that the organs of the new principles must not
treat those of the ancient order with harshness, but remember that it is not
easy to pass from a system with which one has been identified from childhood, to
an entirely different principle of life. This is certainly an important truth
which was often enforced and habitually acted on by Paul, and this sentence may
be used for the purpose of inculcating it on Christians, as showing how kindly
their Lord treated the adherents of the old order of things. But the saying
seems intended primarily to show how a plea for the toleration of the new may be
combined with recognition of the merits of the old, and in this view it is
better to take it as a reflection appended to the preceding parable than as a
new one.

What ’sweet reasonableness’ is in that saying of Jesus concerning the old wine
and the new! What rare qualities of mind and heart are exhibited in all the
sayings spoken by Him on this occasion: what ready wit, what kindly humour, what
gaiety of spirit, what profound yet homely originality of thought; what clear
insight into the significance of His own position and vocation, what confidence
in His own cause, what resolute determination to maintain His independence, and
to decline all self-stultifying compromises; and yet withal what patience and
tolerance towards all honest earnest men who in matters of religion cannot see
with His eyes!


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  CHAPTER 20: 01.15.        CHAPTER 4. THE LOWEST SEATS AT FEASTS, AND THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN
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Chapter 4. The Lowest Seats at Feasts, and the Pharisee and the Publican Or, The
Kingdom of God for the Humble. At a Sabbath-day feast in the house of an
influential and wealthy Pharisee, Jesus spake the following parable to His
fellow-guests, when He marked how they chose out the chief places: When thou art
bidden of any one to a wedding, sit not down in the chief seat, lest a more
honoured one than thou be bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and
say to thee, Give place to this one; and then shalt thou begin with shame to
take the last seat. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the last place,
that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, come up
hither:[1] then shalt thou have glory before all thy fellow-guests. For every
one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be
exalted.—Luk 14:7-11.

[1] προςανάβηθι; the προς implying approach towards the host at the head of the
table. So Field, criticising the A. V. and R. V. "No account," he says, "is
taken of the πρὸς. It must have one of two values, either of addition,—ascende
adhuc superius,—or motion towards—ascende huc superius. The latter seems to be
the case here. The host comes into the room, takes his place at the head of the
table, and calls to the guest whom he intends to honour, Friend, come up higher.
This view is remarkably confirmed by Pro 25:7, which our Lord had in
view."—’Otium Norv.’ This parable has not, any more than those considered in our
last chapter, the honour of being included among the parables of our Lord in
many of the books belonging to the literature of our subject. This may be due to
the fact that it offers few topics for remark, and that the one lesson which it
teaches, the moral enunciated in the closing verse, is more impressively
enforced in the more important parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. It
deserves however at least a passing notice, if it were only to give occasion for
pointing out the prominent place which the great truth that the kingdom of God
is for the humble, occupied in the thoughts of Jesus, as evinced by the fact of
His uttering two parables to enforce it We have discovered it to be His way to
multiply parables to inculcate truths either ill understood, or of cardinal
importance. We have two parables setting forth the kingdom of God as the summum
bonum, two to teach the value of perseverance in prayer, three to declare the
joy of men in finding things lost, three to vindicate the joy of those who have
believed in God’s grace. In like manner we have two parables to teach that he
who humbleth himself shall be exalted, and he who exalteth himself shall be
abased; whence we may confidently infer that, in the view of Christ, this is one
of the great laws of the kingdom of God. On the surface this portion of our
Lord’s table-talk at the Sabbath feast wears the aspect of a moral advice,
rather than of a parable. But it does not require lengthened consideration to be
satisfied that Jesus is not here performing the part of a mere censor of
manners, but is following His true vocation as the Teacher of the Doctrine of
the Kingdom. Through the medium of a counsel of prudence relating to ordinary
social life He communicates a lesson of true wisdom concerning the higher sphere
of religion. The Evangelist perceived this, therefore he called this piece of
advice a parable; most legitimately, inasmuch as a parable has for its aim to
show by an example of human action in natural life, how men should act in the
sphere of spiritual life. There is indeed a manifest difference between this
parable and all others hitherto considered, viz. that it tells us not how men do
act in the natural sphere, but how according to the dictates of prudence they
should act. The guests whom Jesus saw before Him, and whose conduct called forth
the parable, had been acting in a different way, not prudently sitting down in a
humble place in the hope that their host would invite them to a place of greater
distinction, but proudly appropriating to themselves the places which they
thought due to their social importance. The morality of the advice given to them
was not high, for it simply showed them a slyer way of gratifying ambition; but
low as was its moral tone, the line of action apparently recommended was too
high pitched for most of those present The prudence prescribed, though worldly
in its spirit, was too like genuine wisdom to be generally practised. The truth
seems to be that Christ had no serious intention to give a lesson in social
deportment, and that the parabolic element in His words is confined to this,
that instruction valid only for the religious sphere is couched in terms which
seem to imply a reference to ordinary social life. At the table of this chief
man among the Pharisees He has an excellent opportunity of witnessing the spirit
of Pharisaism in full bloom; and as He notes its characteristic vanity and pride
exhibiting themselves in a struggle for the chief rooms at the feast, He thinks
how different the order of things here from that which obtains in the kingdom of
God! Here pride grasps at distinction and gets its reward, there pride is abased
and the humble are exalted. He puts His reflections in the form of a counsel how
to behave at feasts, not that He, expects any one present to act on the advice,
or to regard it otherwise than as the whimsical utterance of an eccentric
person, to be received with a smile. He knows that no proud man can ever believe
that humility is the way to exaltation, and therefore that no proud man ever
will take that way. He knows also that humility does not gain honour among the
worldly-minded, that on the contrary the world generally takes men at their own
estimate, and gives to ambition the first place, and to modesty the last. He
understands, consequently, that to attempt to change the customs of society by
moral advice were to waste words and to lower Himself. What He really does is to
remind His fellow-guests that there is a society in which humility is held in
honour and pride gets a downsetting. That He is thinking of this sacred society
is apparent from His manner of expressing Himself. The case supposed is that of
an invitation to a wedding.[1] Why a wedding, instead of an ordinary feast?
Because He has in mind that kingdom of heaven which He more than once expressly
represented by the emblem of a marriage-feast,[2] and which He thought of under
that figure when He spake of His disciples as the children of the bride-chamber.
Then the word "glory" (δόξα) in the closing sentence of the parable is very
suggestive: "Thou shalt have glory before all thy fellow-guests." Would Jesus
use such a term in reference to the little triumph of a guest at a common feast
over his fellow-guests, in being promoted to a place of distinction? The
expression, it has been well remarked, would be puerile, if it did not open up a
glimpse of a heavenly reality.[3] [1] είς γάμους. D. has γάμον.

[2] Mat 22:1; Mat 25:1.

[3] Godet. The Pharisee and the Publican The parable of the Pharisee and the
Publican shows us the same spirit which at the Sabbath-day feast eagerly sought
the first places, at work in the sphere of religion: the Pharisee confidently
taking for himself the first place among the ranks of the righteous and the
devout. On this account this history cannot strictly be considered a parable,
for in it is no comparison between action in the natural sphere and action in
the higher spiritual sphere; but rather an illustrative example of a certain
kind of action in the latter sphere, with a declaration of the Divine judgment
thereon. Nevertheless the Evangelist calls it a parable, and expositors with one
consent have agreed to regard it as such. To certain men who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous, and were in the habit of despising others,
Jesus spake "this parable:"

Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a
publican. The Pharisee, having taken up his position,[1] prayed within himself
thus: God, I thank Thee, that I am not as the rest of men,[2] extortioners,
unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican, I fast twice in the week, I give
tithes of all that I acquired.[3] But the publican, standing[4] afar off, would
not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but kept smiting his breast,
saying: God, be merciful to me the sinner.[5] I tell you, this man went down to
his house justified rather than the other;[6] for every one that exalteth
himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.—Luk
18:9-14.

[1] σταθεὶς. The word implies confidence. Bengel: fidenter, loco solito.
Reciprocum plus notat quam ίστὼς neutrum (Luk 9:13). Similarly Unger: σταθεὶς,
elatus.

[2] οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, all but himself and his class.

[3] κτῶμαι, not κέκτημαι, which it would require to be in order to bear the
rendering in A. V.

[4] έστως, vide note 2: the publican stood in a timid attitude, as it
apologizing for his existence.

[5] τῷ ἁμαρτωλῷ, not the only sinner, but the man who is known by his sin, the
notorious sinner.

[6] The reading here is very uncertain. T. R. has ἢ ἐκεἴνος. The most probable
reading is that of ℵ, B, L. παρ᾿ ἐκεῖνον. Another reading adopted by Tischendorf
is ἢ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος, which seems to be a combination of the other two, γαρ being a
mistake for παρ. The sense in any case is clear.

It is idle to ask when or to whom this parable was spoken. The Evangelist states
that it was spoken to or about certain persons who trusted in themselves that
they were righteous. It is evident that it might have been represented with
equal propriety as spoken to or about men of an opposite spirit, such, viz., as
were ready to acknowledge their shortcomings. The really important thing to note
is that this is a parable which sets forth one of the great laws of the kingdom
of God, viewed as a kingdom of Grace, that enunciated in the closing verse:
"Every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself
shall be exalted." It was doubtless the perception of this fact which led Luke
to gather up the precious fragment and preserve it in his basket. Luke was the
Evangelist, as Paul was the Apostle, of the Gentiles, and in collecting
materials for the composition of his Gospel he was ever on the outlook for such
incidents in the ministry of Christ as tended to show that the Gospel was
designed for the whole world, and that it was fit to be a Gospel for the world.
A salvation to be preached to the human race, a salvation by grace, and
therefore available for Gentiles on the same terms as for Jews, these were the
fundamental articles in Luke’s as in Paul’s creed; and in writing the life of
our Lord he was ever intent on showing that these doctrines had a root in His
teaching. This parable he rightly considered fitted to serve that purpose. The
poor publican, though a Jew, was in Pharisaic esteem as an heathen man; and in
representing a penitent publican as an object of Divine favour, Jesus in effect
and in principle proclaimed the truth: "There is hope in God even for Gentiles,
for all, who are objects of contempt, as aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
to the proud self-righteous Jew." Then in declaring that the penitent publican
was justified rather than the Pharisee who had no sins to confess, Jesus in
effect proclaimed that other grand truth, that men are saved not by works of
righteousness which they have done, but by God’s mercy. Christ’s reflection on
the two men is equivalent in drift to Paul’s doctrine of justification by grace
through faith. It is not so clear and explicit an announcement of that doctrine
as we find in the Pauline Epistles; but it tends that way, it looks in the
direction of Paul’s doctrine, it is Paul’s doctrine in germ, and hence the
interest it awakened in the mind of Luke, who was a thorough believer in the
Pauline programme: salvation by grace, therefore salvation for all on equal
terms, there being no difference between Jew and Gentile, for "all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God."

We shall best study this parable by making our starting-point the judgment of
Jesus on the two men whose characters are so graphically depicted in it, and
considering in order these points: First, the import of the judgment; Second,
its grounds; Third, its uses.

I. It is declared that the publican went down to his house justified rather than
the Pharisee. In endeavouring to ascertain the import of this declaration we
must assume that it is not intended to call in question the statements of fact
made by the two parties. Neither is supposed to have borne false witness for or
against himself, whether in ignorance or with intent to deceive. Even the
self-laudatory statements of the Pharisee are allowed to pass unquestioned. It
is not said, insinuated, or tacitly implied that he gives himself credit for
actions which he has not performed, or for virtues which he does not possess. It
is conceded that he is not an extortioner, or an unjust man, or an impure man,
and that he fasts twice a week, and gives tithes of all he acquires, so adding
works of supererogation to his virtue, doing more than the statute required.[1]
What is blamed is not his statement of facts, but the spirit in which he makes
that statement, the spirit of self-complacency. There is the less reason to
doubt this that the Pharisee is not represented as uttering his prayer aloud. He
took up his posture and prayed thus with himself. Some indeed would connect the
words differently, so as to make the sentence run—he stood by himself and prayed
thus, the isolated position being supposed to be the point our Lord wished to
emphasise as a mark of pride. There seem to be no good grounds, however, for
departing from the arrangement as it stands in our English version, which is
approved by the great majority of interpreters. But if πρὸς ἑαυτὸν is to be
taken with προσηύχετο, the fact implied is that the Pharisee’s prayer was mental
not audible. He prayed "within himself," even as "there were some that had
indignation within themselves" at the waste of precious ointment by Mary of
Bethany.[2] It has been asked what was there characteristic of a Pharisee in
praying mentally?[3] But this trait is added not to distinguish the Pharisee
from others, but to keep the account given of his prayer within the limits of
verisimilitude. Even a Pharisee would hardly dare to utter such a prayer in the
hearing of his fellow-men, speaking as if he were the only good man, and all the
rest of the world given up to iniquity. Had his prayer been meant for the public
ear there would probably have been in it less depreciation of others and also
less praise of himself. But just on that account there would likewise have been
less sincerity, less fidelity to the actual thoughts and feelings of the man.
However the Pharisee might pray in public, the prayer put into his mouth shows
us how he prayed in his heart. And just because it is a heart prayer it is a
true prayer reflecting his real belief.[4] He thinks as badly of the world as he
is represented; he thinks as well of himself, and he does so on the ground of
the virtues and pious practices for which he gives himself credit, with perfect
fidelity to fact It is his self-complacency alone, therefore, not its
fact-basis, which is liable to question.

[1] The Pharisees fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. The law prescribed only one
regular fast, that on the great day of atonement. The law as to tithes
prescribed that a tenth part of the produce of the fields and of the herds
should be devoted to the Levites (Lev 27:30-32; Num 18:21; Num 18:24). The
Pharisee pays tithes of all he acquires, from whatever source.

[2] Mark 14:4. ἀγανακτοῦντες πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς

[3] Goebel raises this objection to the view we advocate as to the connection.

[4] So Godet. The Pharisee, he remarks, prayed "très sincèrement (car la prière
était faite intérieurement)." The publican’s account of himself is also assumed
to be correct In declaring that this man went down to his house justified, our
Lord does not mean to say: This publican was mistaken in imagining himself to be
so great a sinner—standing in a timid, abject attitude, as if apologising for
his existence—calling himself the sinner, as if sin were the one thing by which
he was known, beating on his breast, and, under an overwhelming sense of guilt,
not daring to lift up his eyes to heaven. It is taken for granted that the
publican’s confession is true, and that his whole demeanour is but an
appropriate expression of contrition. He is a sinner as he says in words, a
great sinner as he declares by significant gesture. The validity of the judgment
pronounced concerning him, does not at all rest on the comparative smallness of
his guilt. Suppose the penitent had said more against himself sincerely
(sincerely, observe, for he might have said more, and in stronger terms, and
meant less), the verdict had not been different. Suppose he had said: "I am what
that holy man yonder thinks he is not, an extortioner, unjust, an adulterer. He
points at me, to make a long story short. He has good right. I am an epitome of
all the sins": still the judgment of Jesus had been the same.

These things being so, it is clear how the judgment must be understood. It
means, not the publican is a just man, and the Pharisee an unjust, but the
publican is nearer the approval of God than the other who approves himself. The
approval or good will of God is what both are seeking. Both address God. The one
says, "God, I thank Thee;" the other, "God, be gracious to me." The one expects
God to endorse the good opinion he entertains of himself; the other begs God to
be merciful to him notwithstanding his sin. And what our Lord means to affirm
is, that the publican came nearer the common end than the Pharisee did; that God
regarded the self-blaming sinner with more favour than the self-praising saint;
that the two men in a manner changed places, the self-styled just man being in
God’s sight as an unrighteous man, and the self-styled sinner being in God’s
sight as a righteous man. In short the term "justified" (δεδικαιωμένος) is used
in a sense kindred to the Pauline, and the comparison between the two dramatis
personæ has reference not to character, but to the relation to God in which they
respectively stand.[1]

[1] Some commentators, whose minds are dominated by the theological interest,
say there is no comparison, because there are no degrees in justification. This
is too rigid. To the same bias is due the attempt of Trench and others to find
in the publican’s ἱλάσθητί μοι a reference to a propitiatory atonement. This is
to overlay nature by dogmatic theology. Goebel, recognising a comparison in the
expression παρ᾿ ἐκεῖνον, thinks that the δεδικαιωμένος points back to δίκαιοι,
Luk 18:9, and that the idea is, the publican got a better righteousness than the
Pharisee’s.

We must add another observation by way of determining the import of the
judgment. It does not mean that the publican went down to his house thinking
that God regarded him with more favour than the Pharisee. Our Lord’s purpose is
to point out what God did indeed think of the two men, not what they thought He
thought of them. Stier affirms that our Lord meant His declaration to refer to
the consciousness of the two parties, in which the one was sensible of his
justification, the other not.[1] This is an utterly groundless assertion, and in
its practical tendency most mischievous, as fitted to rob the parable of its
great use as a source of comfort to contrite souls. It is moreover a very
improbable assertion. It is by no means likely that the publican felt surer of
God’s favour than the Pharisee did. The Pharisee, it may be shrewdly suspected,
went down to his house quite confident that God was as well pleased with him as
he was with himself. And it may be feared the publican went down to his house
still in an anxious apprehensive frame of mind, thinking it hardly possible God
could have mercy on such a wretch; walking homeward with slow and melancholy
step, and eyes cast down to the ground. Strange state of mind, it may be
thought, for a justified man! But we must remember that God’s thoughts of us do
not take their complexion from our opinion of them; that they may be very
gracious towards us, when we are unable to believe it, and that salvation does
not depend on our changing moods, any more than the existence of the sun depends
on the presence or absence of clouds. We will return to this point Meantime let
us consider—

[1] ’Reden Jesu.’ Similarly Trench affirms that the publican was not merely
justified in the secret counsels of God, but had a sweet sense of forgiveness,
&c., &c All which is pure assumption.

2. The grounds of the judgment. Only one reason 19 expressly referred to by
Christ, but there is another reason implied to which it may be well to advert.
It is this: The publican’s self-dissatisfaction had more truth or religious
sincerity in it than the Pharisee’s self-complacency, and God, as the Psalmist
tells us, desires and is pleased with truth in the inward parts.[1] In making
this statement we do not, any more than our Lord, mean to call in question the
correctness of the description which the Pharisee gives of his own moral and
religious character. We assume that all the statements he makes, viewed as
matters of fact, are true. But it does not follow from this that he had any just
reason for self-complacency. For to be pleased with oneself goes a great deal
further than to make some particular statements of a satisfactory nature about
one’s conduct. It implies a comprehensive judgment concerning one’s whole
spiritual condition to the effect that it is as it ought to be. Now, so far is
this from being necessarily involved in an enumeration of some favourable
particulars concerning myself that such an enumeration may be but the preface or
prelude to a heavy charge which I mean to bring against myself, to a long
catalogue of confessions which I feel constrained to make. This worshipper,
e.g., might have said all he did say concerning himself, and yet have made as
many confessions as would have put all self-complacent thoughts out of his mind.
Every act of thanksgiving might have been followed by an act of confession, as
thus: I thank Thee I have been preserved from extortion, but I confess I have
coveted ofttimes what I have not laid hands on. I thank Thee I have not been an
unjust man, but I acknowledge that I am far from being a generous man. I thank
Thee I am not an adulterer, but I confess that my heart has harboured many
wicked thoughts. I thank Thee that my lot, my opportunities, and my. habits
differ widely from those of the class to which this man my fellow-worshipper,
who beats his breast, belongs; but I do not flatter myself that had I been in
his circumstances I should have been better than he, and I deplore that I and
the class of which I am a member feel so little compassion towards these
much-tempted men, that we content ourselves with simply abhorring them and
holding aloof from their society. I thank Thee that it is in my heart to attend
punctually to my religious duties, but I acknowledge that my zeal and my
liberality come immeasurably short of what is due to Thee, and contrast but
poorly with those of him who centuries ago offered up this prayer and
thanksgiving in this holy city: "Now therefore, our God, we thank Thee and
praise Thy glorious name. But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be
able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of Thee, and of
Thine own have we given Thee. O Lord our God, all this store that we have
prepared to build Thee an house for Thine holy name cometh of Thine hand, and is
all Thine own."[2] What are my poor tithes to the liberality of King David, or
what my religious devotion compared to his whose whole heart was set upon
building a temple for Jehovah such as that within whose sacred precincts I now
stand?

[1] Psa 51:6.

[2] 1Ch 29:13-14; 1Ch 29:16. The self-complacent Pharisee made no such
confessions, was utterly unconscious that he had any such confessions to make,
and hence we may with certainty infer that if not a conscious hypocrite, he was
at least an unconscious one, a self-deceived man, utterly devoid of the soul of
true goodness. For all the truly good are conscious that they have confessions
to make which exclude all boasting. While not indulging in indiscriminate
self-condemnation, and distinguishing between occasions for thankfulness and
occasions for self-humiliation, they are ever more sensible of their
shortcomings than of their good performances. And speaking generally, it may be
said that a man confessing sin, is nearer to true goodness than a man boasting
of his goodness. Confession of sin is the homage of an awakened conscience to
the moral law; boasting of goodness is the lying vanity of a foolish
self-deceived heart. He who does nothing but confess, may or may not have some
good qualities which he might have specified had he been in the humour; but even
at the worst, supposing previous character to have been utterly bad, he who with
his whole heart says, "I am a sinner," hath more of God’s spirit in him, than he
who makes no confession at all, and does nothing but boast.

It is characteristic of this self-complacent Pharisee, and another index of the
want of truth in the deeper sense, that while apparently unconscious of any sins
of his own, he is very much alive to the sins of others. With a coarse sweeping
indiscriminateness he pronounces all men but himself and his class guilty, and
of the grossest sins. He makes himself very good, by the cheap method of making
all others very bad. It is easy to be a saint by comparison, when all the world
consists of extortioners, knaves, and adulterers. But what truth or delicacy of
conscience can there be in one who can adopt the method of an unbridled
censoriousness for advancing his own reputation?[1] It is sad to reflect that at
this point in the parable the speaker can be charged with no exaggeration, but
has faithfully described a feature of the Pharisaic spirit in every age, as
exhibited both in individuals and in communities. The vulgar method of
self-exaltation by depreciation of others has been and is too commonly
practised.

[1] Unger: De toto hominum genere quam humillime sentit (i.q. Lutherus notat)
tum semet perfectum jam superbit, quod a flagitiis humillimis liberum se sentit.
Hofmann thinks the οἱ λοιποὶ in Luk 18:11 does not mean all other men besides
himself, but men of another disposition. Perhaps, but it does not make matters
much better. What is noticeable is the absence of all indications in the
Pharisee’s language of an anxiety to do justice to the characters of others.

We come now to the reason expressly stated by our Lord in support of His
judgment concerning the two men. "Every one that exalteth himself shall be
abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." This statement is
valuable as teaching that self-praise and self-condemnation produce the same
effects on the Divine mind as they produce on our own minds. When a man praises
himself in our hearing the act provokes in us a spirit of criticism; when, on
the other hand, we hear a man condemn himself, there arises in our bosom a
feeling of sympathy towards him. Just the same effects, Christ gives us to
understand, do the same acts produce on the mind of God. And with His teaching
all Scripture agrees. All through the Bible runs the sentiment so forcibly
expressed by the Psalmist: "Though the Lord be high, yet hath He respect unto
the lowly; but the proud He knoweth afar off."[1] This Bible doctrine may be
said to be a part of the philosophy of justification. It does not tell us the
whole truth on that subject, but it certainly gives us some insight into the
Divine procedure in connection with the forgiveness of sin. It teaches us that
God forgiveth sins to such as acknowledge them, and imputeth sins to such as
deny them, for this among other reasons, because it gives Him pleasure to exalt
those who humble themselves, and to humble those who exalt themselves. A very
good reason truly, which commends itself to the common conscience, and we may
say to the common sense of mankind. Let us not despise it because it is
elementary, and does not belong to the more specific doctrines of Christian
theology on the subject of justification. Let those who do not feel at home in
these doctrines, and to whom perchance they appear not only mysterious but
unreal, lay this elementary ethical truth to heart, and it will be at least one
lesson learnt on a very important subject. Believe with all the heart that God
forgiveth sin penitently acknowledged, because His moral nature is like our own
in this, that He scorneth scorners and giveth grace to the lowly, is pleased to
save the afflicted and to bring down high looks, lightly esteems those who
highly esteem themselves and regards with favour those who humble themselves. It
were well that men did lay these truths more to heart, and considered that he
who judgeth himself shall not be judged, that he who criticises himself disarms
criticism, that he who frankly says "I have sinned" shall hear no further
mention of his sin. So many imagine that their interest lies in stoutly denying
or extenuating sin; so few understand that policy, not to say truth, dictates
rather the use of such a prayer as that of the Psalmist, "For Thy name’s sake, O
Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." To deny sin, wisdom! Nay, it is
utter folly. Consider what a man does who denies sin. He simply identifies
himself with his sin, and compels God to treat him and it as one. He makes his
innermost self responsible for his sin, binds it like a millstone round his neck
to sink him down to the depths of perdition, gathers it round his person like a
burning garment to consume him with the fire of damnation. But confess your sin,
say it is yours, and you separate yourself from it, show that though it is yours
it is not you, show that there is something in the heart of your being that
abhors it: you cut the cord which suspends the millstone about your neck, and
escape drowning; you tear off the burning clothes from your person and escape a
horrible death by fire. It is well to have the courage to acknowledge offences.
It requires an effort, but it is an effort to which humility is equal; for it
has been truly said by a German writer, that the essence of Demuth, humility, is
Muth,[2]

[1] Psa 138:6.

[2] Arndt, "Das Wesen der Demuth ist Muth." It is a pretty play upon words, but
it is more, a great moral truth. courage. A proud man cannot dare to say, "I
have sinned," but a humble man can, and his daring is his salvation.

3. The uses of the judgment. It may be remarked here in the first place, that it
were not to use but to abuse the words of Christ to find in them a doctrinally
complete statement on the subject of justification. We learn from the verdict
pronounced on the two worshippers, that it is necessary, in order to please God,
to be sincere and to be humble, but we may not hence infer that we are saved by
our sincerity or by our humility. We are not saved by these virtues, any more
than by boasting of our goodness, but by the free grace of God. From Luke’s
introduction it might be inferred that the chief purpose for which the parable
was spoken was to rebuke and subdue the spirit of self-righteousness. To do this
effectively is not easy, though that is no reason why it should not be
attempted. Another service, however, was probably also kept in view by the
speaker, which was much more likely to be accomplished, viz. to revive the
spirit of the contrite, and embolden them to hope in God’s mercy. This is a
service which contrite souls greatly need to have rendered them, for they are
slow to believe that they can possibly be the objects of Divine complacency.
Such in all probability was the publican’s state of mind, not only before but
even after he had prayed. He went down to his house justified in God’s sight,
but not, we think, in his own. He had not ’found peace,’ to use a current
phrase. In technical language we might speak of him as objectively, but not
subjectively, justified. In plain English the fact was so, but he was not aware
that the fact was so. In saying this, we do rot forget that there is an
instinct, call it rather the still small voice of the Holy Spirit, which tells a
penitent, "there is hope in God," "there is forgiveness with Him that He may be
feared;" "wait for God, as they that wait for the dawn." But a man who beats his
breast, and dares not look up, and stands afar off in an attitude which seems an
apology for existence, has some difficulty in trusting this instinct. To fear
and despond suits his mood rather than to hope. There are physical reasons for
this, not to speak of spiritual ones. The whole behaviour of the publican speaks
to a great religious crisis going on in his soul. For that beating of the
breast, and that downcast eye, and that timid posture, are not a theatrical
performance got up for the occasion. They bear witness to a painful, possibly a
protracted, soul-struggle. But one who passes through such a crisis suffers in
body as well as in mind. His nerves are sorely shaken, and in this physical
condition he is apt to become a prey to fear and depression. He starts at his
own shadow, dreads the postman, trembles when he opens a letter lest it should
contain evil tidings, can scarce muster courage to go into a dark room, or to
put out the light when he goes to bed. How hard for a man in this state to take
cheerful views of his spiritual condition, to rejoice in the sunlight of Divine
grace! In the expressive phrase of Bunyan, used with reference to himself when
he was in a similar state, such an one is prone rather to take the shady side of
the street. Is it improbable that one object Christ had in view in uttering this
parable and the judgment with which it winds up, was to take such contrite and
fear-stricken ones by the hand and conduct them over to the sunny side? There
are some who are stupid enough to take unfavourable views of the spiritual state
of such as walk in darkness and have no light, punishing them for their
despondency by declaring them to be under the frown of the Almighty. But Jesus
was not one who could thus break the bruised reed or quench the smoking taper.
The spectacle of a publican repenting of his sin, but hardly daring to hope for
pardon, would excite the deepest sympathy in His breast Far from harshly
condemning him for his despairing mood, He would witness with respect the
tremendous earnestness of his repentance, and with pity the acuteness of his
mental sufferings, and He would seek to convince him that God’s thoughts towards
him were such as His own. Think not, He would say to him, that God casts the
poor, nervous, trembling, desponding penitent out of His sympathies. Nay! the
Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart. If they be too sad to walk in
the sun, He takes the shade along with them; for He is not as the heartless men
of the world, who desert a poor unfortunate in his time of need. He loves the
company of the sad better than the society of the gay, and He is ever with them,
though in their melancholy they know it not: with them to comfort and exalt, if
not soon, then all the more effectually in the end. To suggest such thoughts, we
believe, Christ spake this parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. Who can
tell how many repentant ones went down to their houses cheered by the words
which had fallen from the lips of the sinner’s Friend! Let us use the parable
for kindred purposes still; learning from it ourselves to cherish hopeful views
concerning such as are more persuaded of their own sinfulness than of Divine
mercy, and doing what we can to help such to believe that verily there is
forgiveness with God.


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  CHAPTER 21: 01.16.        CHAPTER 5. THE GREAT SUPPER
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Chapter 5. The Great Supper Or, the Kingdom for the Hungry. On hearing the
table-talk of Jesus at the Sabbath-day feast in the Pharisee’s house, one of the
guests took occasion, from the reference to the resurrection of the just, to
make the pious reflection: "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of
God!" Whereupon Jesus proceeded to speak the following parable, for the benefit
of His fellow-guest, and all the rest who were present:— A certain man made a
great supper,[1] and bade many: and sent his servant at supper time, to say to
them that were bidden. Come, for all things are now ready. And they all with one
consent[2] began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought afield,
and must needs go to see it: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I
have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me
excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.
And the servant returned, and reported to his master these things. Then the
master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, Go out quickly into the
streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and
the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, what you commanded has been
done, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the
highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.
For I tell you, That none of those men, the invited, shall taste of my
supper.—Luk 14:16-24.

[1] δεῖπνον, the principal meal in the day, not necessarily the evening meal; at
least that is not the point intended to be emphasised, as is evident from the
first two excuses.

[2] ἀπὸ μιᾶς; γνώμης, καρδίας, φωνῆς, or some such word, being understood. This
parable Jesus spoke for the immediate purpose of teaching those present how
little they really cared for the kingdom of heaven, whatever they might pretend.
Knowing well the stony indifference with which He and His cause had been treated
by the class of Jewish society to which His host and fellow-guests belonged, He
heard with impatience the sentimental reflection which had just been uttered
concerning the blessedness of eating bread in the kingdom of God. It sounded as
cant to His ear, as a statement, that is, which, while true in itself, was not
true for the speaker; and it is characteristic of all earnest minds to have a
hearty abhorrence of cant. The prophet Jeremiah, e. g., could not bear to hear a
godless generation talk glibly of the "Burden of the Lord," while the word of
the Lord was in truth no burden to them as it was to his own heart; and in the
name of God and of sincerity he interdicted further use of the phrase, saying,
"The burden of the Lord shall ye mention no more."[1]. It made his spirit
bitter, and almost cynical, to listen to such religious phraseology, as employed
by men who had no comprehension of its meaning. Similar were the feelings
awakened in the breast of Jesus by the pious reflection of the sentimental
guest, and He uttered the parable as one who would say: "Think you so? Let Me
tell you how little many such as you care for the privilege you seem to value so
highly."

[1] Jer 23:36 But it is easy to see that the parable serves a wider purpose than
merely to hold up the mirror to spurious self-deceiving piety, and show it its
own worthlessness. There are elements in the parable not required for that
purpose, but serving admirably another, viz. the defence of the speaker’s
conduct in frequenting ofttimes very different company from that in which He
found Himself. In that part of the parabolic representation which relates to the
invitation of the poor from the streets and lanes, and of the poorer still from
the highways and hedges, Jesus but describes His own conduct in preaching the
Gospel to the publicans and sinners, and indirectly vindicates the policy by its
success; saying in effect: "Ye wise and prudent, holy and respectable ones,
despise the kingdom I preach; I invite therefore the outcasts to participate in
its joys, and I am justified by their prompt response to my invitations."

Viewed didactically these two uses of censure and self-defence coalesce in one
lesson. The parable teaches that the kingdom of heaven is not for the full, but
for the hungry. In concrete pictorial form it declares that God filleth the
hungry with good things, and sendeth the rich empty away. In conveying this
lesson it sets forth another most important doctrine concerning the kingdom as a
kingdom of grace. Indeed we cannot over-estimate the present parable as a
contribution to the illustration of the gracious aspect of the kingdom. It is,
in that point of view, full of most significant features. Everything is
significant of grace: the selection of a feast as the emblem of the blessings
promised, the behaviour of the first invited, the character of those invited in
the second and third place, and the avowed motive of the repeated
invitations—the desire to have the house filled. How easy to read off from these
indications the truths that the kingdom is a free gift of Divine grace; that
therefore it is despised by those who are full, and valued by those that are
empty; that being for the needy it is offered to all the needy alike—to the most
needy, most urgently—a catholic boon for the sinful suffering race of mankind!
Undoubtedly we shall not err in our interpretation of this parable, if before
all things we regard it as designed to exhibit the spirit of the kingdom which
Christ preached, with its policy of unconventional worldwide charity, gainsaid
of men, but justified by history.

We begin our study of the parable by considering first the account which it
gives of the behaviour of the men first invited to the feast. Now what strikes
one at the first glance in that behaviour is its unnaturalness or improbability.
Invited to what is described as a great feast on some important occasion,
instead of regarding the invitation as a great honour, and making every
endeavour so to arrange their affairs that nothing may occur to prevent them
from being present at the entertainment, all lightly esteem the privilege, and
begin with one consent to invent excuses for absenting themselves. It is not
usual with men invited to feasts so to act; the very feast at which the parable
was spoken suffices to show how far such behaviour diverges from ordinary
practice. Those who had been invited to sup with "one of the chief Pharisees"
appear all to have presented themselves punctually at the supper hour, and they
show the value they put on the honour conferred on them by striving eagerly to
obtain the best places" at the table. It is no fault in the parable, however,
that its representation at this point violates natural probability; the fault
rather lies with those who act as represented. The story is invented to suit the
facts; and if, as a mere story of natural life, it seems highly improbable, it
is because men’s conduct in regard to the Divine kingdom is not according to
right reason. And, in passing, we may take occasion to note the contrast between
those parables which apologise for Christ’s conduct as the sinner’s friend, and
this parable which describes the conduct of many in reference to the kingdom.
What perfect naturalness characterises the parables of the lost sheep, the lost
coin, and the lost son! The shepherd, the housewife, and the father act exactly
as we should expect; we should feel surprised if they acted otherwise. Here, on
the contrary, our surprise is awakened by the behaviour depicted, and we are
conscious of the need of effort to overcome distaste for the parabolic
representation because it violates the law of probability. The difference is due
to this, that Christ’s conduct was in accordance with right reason, and that of
those who despised the kingdom of heaven was not. However strange Christ’s
behaviour might appear to contemporaries, it was characterised by ’sweet
reasonableness,’ and therefore it was easy to find parallels thereto in ordinary
life, the naturalness of which would be recognised by every one. On the other
hand, however common it might be for men to treat the Divine kingdom as the
parable represents, such conduct was inherently unreasonable, and therefore it
was difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to find a parallel to it in natural
life, or to make a parabolic representation of it which should not appear highly
improbable.[1]

[1] Professor Calderwood (’The Parables of our Lord,’ p. 102), remarking on the
unusual character of the occurrences narrated in this parable, speaks of the
expedients for supplying guests in place of those first invited as even more
strange than the refusal of the latter. They are not so, however. Lightfoot and
Schöttgen quote the Talmud in proof that the poor and wanderers were often
invited. This being understood, it will at once be seen that it is no part of an
expositor’s duty to set himself to invent hypotheses for the purpose of
removing, or at least alleviating, the aspect of improbability presented by the
behaviour of those first invited to the feast; or to waste time in trying to
account for conduct which, like the origin of sin, is really unaccountable. The
unanimous refusal of the guests to come to the feast is, indeed, hard to explain
on any conceivable hypothesis. The hypothesis, for example, of a double
invitation, one a good while before the feast day, and another when the festive
hour was at hand, will not avail for the purpose. Whether such double
invitations were customary or not, is a point on which it is difficult to arrive
at a certain conclusion, and concerning which, accordingly, interpreters are
divided in opinion. A double invitation is certainly implied in the parable. The
guests were first bidden, and then the message was sent at supper-time: "Come,
for all things are now ready." This representation is in accordance with the
facts of Jewish history. The Jewish people were first invited by the prophets to
participation in the blessings of the kingdom, and then when the hour of
fulfilment came, and the kingdom was at hand, Jesus, as God’s servant, appeared,
and cried, "Come to the feast long promised, and now ready." But it would be a
mistake to imagine that the double invitation is meant to bring the conduct of
the invited within the limits of natural probability. It is not fitted to do
this, however we conceive of the two invitations, whether with some we regard
the second invitation as rendered necessary by the first being indefinite, not
fixing the time,[1] or, with others, as owing its origin to the dilatoriness of
the guests, and being merely a reminder of a befinite invitation previously
given.[2] It is enough to say that no custom could live which could have such
utter failure to insure the end aimed at as its natural, or even as a possible,
result. The result is a reductio ad absurdum of the method supposed to be
adopted to insure attendance. The custom of issuing two invitations could only
have prevailed, because on the whole it was found to work well; that is, because
it usually issued in those invited to feasts presenting themselves duly at the
festive hour. If so, then how came it to pass in this instance, that none of the
invited rendered themselves at the feast chamber, but with one consent begged
off from the engagement? However the strange fact is to be accounted for, no
supposed customary double invitation will suffice to explain it; so that the
question as to the actual existence of such a custom possesses only an
antiquarian interest. For the discussion of such a question we do not profess
either special competency or great inclination; therefore we content ourselves
with expressing the opinion that it has not been proved that it was usual to
send a message at the last moment,[3] and that a second message is represented
as being sent, for a special reason. That reason may be, as already hinted, to
make the parabolic representation correspond more exactly with the history of
Israel, or it may be, as Godet suggests, to bring out the indisposition of the
intended guests. The hour pre-announced, and well known to all, had arrived, and
no guests had made their appearance. Therefore a second invitation is sent that
no one might have it in his power to plead forgetfulness, and that it might be
made apparent that the true cause of absence was indifference. With this view it
accords that none of the guests does plead either ignorance or forgetfulness, as
they all certainly would if they honestly could, for either plea would have been
a stronger one than any of those actually advanced.

[1] So Goebel.

[2] So Meyer and Hofmann.

[3] Goebel quotes Rosenmüller in proof of the custom of double invitations, and
Trench, after Grotius, refers to Est 5:1 to Est 6:14. Thomson, ’Land and Book,’
states, that a friend at whose house he was invited to dine, sent a message when
the feast was ready. To the question, is this customary, he replies, "not among
common people, or in cities whose manners are influenced by the West, but in
Lebanon it still prevails. If a Sheik, Beg, or Emir invites, he always sends a
servant to call you at the proper time." The custom he represents as confined to
the wealthy (ν.p. 125).

Proceeding now to consider these excuses, we observe that they are all of the
nature of pretexts, not one of them being a valid reason for non-attendance at
the feast. The engagements with which the guests were preoccupied were all in
themselves lawful and reasonable, but it could easily have been arranged, had
the parties been so minded, that they should not come into collision with the
previous engagement to attend the feast Even the marriage itself, the most
urgent affair, could have been adjusted to the feast, and would have been by one
who was in the humour. The pleas, one and all, indicate indifference. The state
of mind of those who advanced them was this. They were aware that they were
under invitation to a feast They cherished no disrespect to him from whom the
invitation came, and had no desire to insult him by sending a blunt refusal to
accept his hospitality. On the contrary they were pleased to have that
hospitality in their offer, and probably at the moment of receiving the
invitation their intention was to be present at the feast. But the feast did not
appear, to their minds, an affair of urgent or supreme importance. So they went
on their several ways after receiving the invitation as if nothing had happened,
forming new engagements, without even recalling to their thoughts the
prospective feast, or asking themselves whether the engagement already made, and
those which they were making from day to day, were compatible. And so it
happened that when the feast-day came, one found himself in possession of a
newly-purchased piece of land which he greatly desired to see, another had just
bought five yoke of oxen whose qualities he wished to ascertain by trial, and a
third had just got married to a wife whom it would be altogether unseemly to
leave so soon after. We are to assume that the facts were as stated. It is not
necessary, in order to convict the intended guests of indifference, to suspect
them of inventing excuses. Granting the truth of their respective allegations,
it is evident that these are insufficient reasons for not going to the feast.
Can the visit to the newly-bought land and the trial of the oxen not stand over
till to-morrow, and what bride would object to her husband leaving her for a few
hours to attend a feast in the house of one whom he held in honour, and whose
favour it was important to secure? Manifestly, those who advance such pleas have
no real desire to attend the feast Out of their own mouth they are condemned.
Indifference is their common sin, and it is the sufficient explanation of their
common behaviour. No need to seek for any other explanation. There may have been
forgetfulness as well as indifference; but it was forgetfulness caused by
indifference. Men do not forget what they are very much interested in. No wonder
the host was angry when the excuses of his guests were reported to him by his
servant. The men whom he invited had trifled with him. In spite of civil phrases
and flimsy pretexts, that was the manifest state of the case.

Just such as these intended guests in the parable were the hearers of Jesus, and
all like-minded, in their relation to the kingdom of God. They were solemn
triflers in the matter of religion. They were under invitation to enter the
kingdom, and they did not assume the attitude of men who avowedly cared nothing
for it. On the contrary, they were pleased to think that its privileges were
theirs in offer, and even gave themselves credit for setting a high value on
them.[1] But in truth they did not. The kingdom of God had not, by any means,
the first place in their esteem. And so it came to pass that when Jesus came and
proclaimed the advent of the kingdom, and expounded to them its true nature,
they turned a deaf ear to His message, and refused to accept His invitations, on
grounds not less flimsy than those advanced by the men in the parable. The
indifferent guests of the parable represent the sentimental guest of the Sabbath
feast, and he, in turn, was a type of his generation, a fair sample of a large
class of men who put right sentiment in place of right action; who said to God,
"I go, Sir, and went not;" who talked much about the kingdom of heaven, yet
cared little for it; who were very religious, yet very worldly; a class of which
too many specimens exist in every age.

[1] Bleek assumes the first invited guests to have accepted the invitation.
This, so far as the Jewish nation is concerned, is practically correct. They had
accepted God’s invitation in the letter, but not in the spirit.

While altogether insufficient as excuses, these reasons for absence are very
instructive as to the causes of indifference to the Divine kingdom. The samples
supplied do not by any means exhaust the list of possible causes; they are only
three out of many, and these such as are most suitable to be mentioned in a
parable or popular story. They do not even, as some interpreters seem to think,
indicate exhaustively the classes of causes of indifference. Worldly
possessions, business occupations, social ties, are certainly very prevalent
sources of religious indifference, but they do not account for all the
ungodliness that is in the world. It may be questioned, indeed, whether they
were the chief causes of the lukewarmness in reference to the kingdom, of
Christ’s immediate hearers. At all events it is certain that there were other
influences at work in producing the widespread unbelief with which Jewish
society regarded Jesus and His teaching. The instructiveness of the excuses
specified in the parable is to be found not in the exhaustiveness of the list,
but in the suggestion of a general idea embracing all the various kinds of
influence by which human hearts are rendered indifferent to the chief end and
good of life. That general idea is preoccupation of mind.[1] Whatever
preoccupies or fills the mind prevents the hunger which is necessary to the
appreciation of God’s feast of grace. Among the things which fill the mind and
heart are worldly goods, cares about food and raiment and business, social
relationships and enjoyments. But there are preoccupations of a more spiritual
kind by which even the nobler natures innocent of vulgar worldliness are kept
aloof from the kingdom; preconceived opinions, philosophical or religious
prejudices, pride of virtue. These fill the minds of many, and deaden the hunger
of the soul for God’s kingdom and righteousness. These influences were
powerfully at work among the contemporaries of Jesus, producing apathy or
dislike towards Himself and His teaching. He indicated His knowledge of the fact
when he uttered the familiar words, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent." The words
point to a very different sort of preoccupation from any named in the
parable—the preoccupation of the wisdom of the world. The wise men of Judaea in
those days had their minds filled with cut and dry notions and theories about
all things human and Divine; with a fixed idea about God, a fixed interpretation
of every important Scripture text, a fixed theory as to the notes of the true
Messiah, the nature of the kingdom and its righteousness. Hence when Christ came
to them with a different set of ideas on all these topics He found among them no
hunger or receptivity. He came teaching that God is a Father, and His doctrine
met with no acceptance, because the public mind was preoccupied with the
conception of God merely as the High and Lofty One, living above the world. He
came preaching a righteousness which springs out of faith in God’s grace, and
manifests itself in devoted love to Him who proclaims and embodies Divine grace.
What chance was there of such views finding entrance into the hearts of men who
conceived of righteousness as consisting in punctilious observance of a
multitude of petty rules concerning matters of no ethical or intrinsic
importance? He came offering to his contemporaries, in His own Person, a meek,
lowly, suffering Messiah, a man of sorrows and tenderest human sympathies; and
He was welcomed only by a few ’babes,’ ignorant, obscure, sinful persons of no
social consequence, because the minds of the ’wise and understanding’ were
preoccupied with an entirely different Messianic ideal, that of a conquering
Christ who sought and received honour from the world, and made all things serve
His ambition. In a word, Jesus came offering to men these supremely valuable
boons: a Divine Father, a Kingdom of Grace, a Christ who was the sinner’s
Friend, and a righteousness possible even for the most depraved, nay, in which
precisely they might make the greatest attainment; and He found no appetite for
these benefits, no eagerness to come to the feast which He had spread, because
with reference to all the topics on which He discoursed men’s minds were full of
thoughts and beliefs of a wholly diverse character, wherewith they were
perfectly satisfied. Hence, in order to find disciples, He was obliged to seek
them elsewhere than among those whom He described as the wise and knowing: hot
in Jerusalem, the seat of legal lore and Pharisaic influence, but in northern
Galilee, where life was simpler; not among the doctors of the law, but among the
mob who knew not the law; not among the elders who by long study had matured a
system of opinions which had become part of themselves, but among the young who
had not had time to build up a system, and whose minds were empty, open, and
receptive; not among the well-conducted who made a point of observing all
conventional moral proprieties, and prided themselves on an orderly and
blameless life, but among the social and moral outcasts who were glad to hear
that God was merciful, and that there was hope in Him even for the guiltiest
Galilean rustics, illiterate laics, open-hearted youths, penitent "publicans and
sinners"—these were the likely classes to yield converts to a doctrine like that
taught by Jesus. Therefore He addressed Himself chiefly to such, and was by many
of them made welcome. And so it came to pass that the intellectually and morally
empty and hungry were filled with the good things of the kingdom, while the rich
in reputation for wisdom and sanctity turned away in indifference or disdain.

[1] The parable no more binds us down to the precise forms of preoccupation
specified than it binds us to understand the poor invited in the second place as
the literally poor, as Keim very prosaically does, so finding traces of
Ebionitism in the parable. The poor represent all who from any cause are empty,
and need filling with the good things of the kingdom. The poor in the literal
sense are referred to only in so far as their circumstances exempt them from
many of the causes of self-satisfaction to which the rich are exposed.

It is this state of matters, Christ’s activity and success among those of least
account and poor in wisdom and sanctity, that is depicted in the second half of
our parable. The people in the streets and lanes who were invited in the second
place are those in Judaea who, in the ways indicated, were hungry for such a
feast as Jesus invited them to; those from the highways and hedges invited in
the third place were all within or without Palestine—Jews, Samaritans, and
Pagans, who were needier still, and might be glad to come to the feast, could
they only be brought to believe that it was meant for the like of them. It is at
this point that the gracious aspect of the parable becomes most conspicuous, and
it is that aspect which must now engage our attention. Our exposition will
consist in pointing out how every turn of the story and every phrase serves the
purpose of accentuating the grace of the kingdom. The first point to be noted in
this view is the selection of the needy and hungry to be the recipients of
benefit. To the citation of this as an index of grace it may be objected that
such parties are invited only in the second place. The invitation of them is an
after-thought, a device forced upon the host by the refusal of those first
invited, and which he will rather have recourse to than let all the precious
dishes he has prepared be lost. On the surface this is indeed the state of the
case, and the fact with regard to Christ’s own action was somewhat analogous. We
may say that He turned His attention to the publicans and sinners because He
found, and knew instinctively beforehand that He would find, little acceptance
with those who were socially and morally in repute. And when we look to the
action of the apostles in after days, more particularly of Paul, we find the
same line of procedure reappearing. Paul’s habit was to offer the gospel to the
Jew first, and then to the Gentile. But the method of procedure does not in
either case derogate from the grace of the procedure, so far as those to whom
the gospel was preached in the second place is concerned. For when we come to
inquire why Christ met with so poor a response among the wise and the righteous,
we discover that the real cause lay in the gracious nature of His gospel. The
gracious attitude of Jesus to publicans and sinners was not produced by the
indifference of other classes. The grace went before the indifference, and was
its cause, not its effect. Jesus came from the first preaching a God who was the
Father of men, not the patron of favourites, and a kingdom into which the most
depraved might find admittance on repentance; and the Scribes and Pharisees did
not love such a doctrine—it was too humane, too catholic, too revolutionary, too
vulgar in its sympathies for their taste; and so Jesus, who had the lower
classes in His heart from the first, was forced by the disdain of the higher
orders to turn His attention more and more exclusively to them. Similar
observations apply to the case of Paul. He preached first to the Jews, because
that appeared the natural order of procedure. But he preached a gospel avowedly
universal in its destination, and offering to all, to Jews and Greeks alike, a
righteousness not of works but of faith, that is of grace. And it was because
His gospel was catholic and gracious that the Jews rejected it, and compelled
him to turn away from them and address himself to the Gentiles. The truth just
stated, viz. that it was the gracious character of the gospel of the kingdom
which caused the unbelief of those to whom it was first preached, does not come
out in the parable. The parable depicts facts, it does not set forth the
rationale of the facts; hence the defect that the second and third invitations
appear as after-thoughts, and the motive appears to be not so much love to the
invited as a dislike of waste, as if the host had said to himself, "As the food
has been prepared, it had better be eaten than thrown away."

Most significant as indexes of the grace of the kingdom are the two phrases,
"yet there is room," and "that my house may be filled." These two words indeed
might be singled out as worthy to be the mottoes of the kingdom, interpretative
of its genius, bearing witness to the vastness of its charity, and its desire to
communicate its blessings to the greatest possible number. Doubtless it is easy
here also by plausible reasoning to rob these mottoes of their significance. It
may be said of the former of the two that it is merely the word of a servant.
And so indeed it is; but it were a pertinent counter-remark that it is the word
of a servant who has his master’s confidence, is intimately acquainted with his
disposition, and fully sympathises with it. But without pressing these
considerations, there is enough in the mere fact reported by the servant to
indicate the gracious mind of his lord. There is still room in the guest-chamber
even after all the poor and suffering of the city have been invited, and have,
as we are to assume, responded to the invitation. What a great chamber that must
be! What a great feast must have been prepared, and what a magnanimous man he
must be who has it in his heart to prepare such a feast! The report of the
servant is a sure witness to the riches of God’s grace, to the boundlessness of
Divine liberality, the immeasurable dimensions of redeeming love: it is put into
the servant’s mouth by Jesus for that end, not merely to supply the motive for
the next turn in the story, in which the host commands his servant to go forth
to the highways and hedges to invite those found there to fill up the still
vacant places. Only a greathearted man indeed would issue such an order; any
other would be content if his house were fairly well filled. "That my house may
be filled," is the speech of one animated by the very enthusiasm of hospitality.
But this expression, too, may seem liable to cavil, as a motto expressive of
grace. It may be pointed out that the sequel seems to imply that the host’s
chief reason for wishing his house filled, even if it should be with vagrants
and vagabonds from the highways and hedges, is to spite the first invited and
exclude them from the feast by cramming the house, in case any of them should
repent his declinature, and after all desire to be present. And without doubt
this is how the story runs; such is the natural import of the concluding part of
the host’s speech—"for I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden
shall taste of my supper." But what then? After all, the revenge proposed is the
revenge of magnanimity, not of meanness and malice. If so minded the host can
easily exclude the first invited without bringing in any more guests. The method
of revenge is that of one who has pleasure in hospitality for its own sake, and
loves to exercise it as widely as possible. It may even be suspected of being
the revenge of one who is not quite in earnest in his declared purpose, and who
would make room even for the first bidden if they came humbly acknowledging
their offence and seeking admission. We may legitimately hesitate before taking
this word spoken in anger as the last word on the subject. Christ’s word, as an
aside from the parable, it certainly is not;[1] to regard it as His is to invest
it with much too serious and deliberate a character. It is a word put by Him
into the mouth of the host very fitly, as a word spoken in anger. But it is not
a word endorsed by Him as the whole truth on the subject of Israel’s future. It
is important to bear this in mind in order to the maintenance of harmony between
the teaching of Christ and that of Paul. For Paul does not treat it as
unbelieving Israel’s final doom that she shall not taste of God’s supper. He
refuses to believe that Israel’s election is absolutely cancelled, that her
inheritance is finally forfeited. He does represent the evangelisation of the
Gentiles as taking place to spite Israel. But he believes that the spite is the
spite of love changing its method of working towards its old end, the blessing
of the covenant people; casting them out and putting the heathen in their room
in order to provoke them to jealousy, and so bring them to another mind, and
induce them at length to value mercies previously despised.[2] The whole passage
is very instructive in its bearing on the subject of election. This Pauline
doctrine, the fruit of a noble patriotism which hoped against hope for
fellow-countrymen, must be kept in view in interpreting the present parable, if
we would not make the Master and the apostle contradict each other The parable
certainly contains no hint of the Pauline doctrine, and that is one piece of
evidence that this parable has not been, as some think, remodelled by Luke to
bring it into closer correspondence with Paulinism. If, as certain critics
imagine, the invitation to the vagrants was added by Luke to the original
parable, in order to represent the call of the Gentiles,[3] why did he stop
short here in his alterations? Why not go further in accordance with the
irenical tendency ascribed to him, and give such a turn to the last word of the
host as to make it contain the idea not of final exclusion, which seems to be
hinted, but of provocation to repentance? We see no reason to doubt the
originality of this feature of our parable. We cannot certainly regard the
universalism latent in it as a good reason for such doubt. That Christ’s
teaching was in spirit universalistic is admitted; universalism was also
immanent in His conduct, for His behaviour towards publicans and sinners could
be explained only on principles equally applicable to all mankind, irrespective
of racial or other distinctions. The religion of one who acted as Jesus did
could only be a religion for humanity. Why should it seem surprising if one
whose whole bearing said, "I am a man, and nothing human is foreign to my
sympathies," should occasionally speak words universalistic in scope? And if in
any department of Christ’s teaching such words are to be looked for it is in His
parables, wherein truth is at once revealed and hidden. We should not expect to
find in the recorded sayings of the founder of our faith any such explicit
statement as this: My gospel is for the Gentiles (except, indeed, in private
instructions to His disciples before He left the world), because it was meet
that the purpose of grace towards the outlying nations should remain a "mystery
hid in God," till the drama of the Redeemer’s earthly life was complete, and the
materials for the gospel were fully supplied. But we are not surprised to find
mystic hints of the universal destination of the gospel in such words as these:
"Ye are the salt of the earth," "Ye are the light of the world," "The field is
the world;" or in parables of grace like this, telling of invitations to the
great feast addressed even to homeless, characterless vagrants whose food was
what they could pick up, beg, or steal, and whose couch was beneath the hedge on
the highway.

[1] The ὑμῖν in Luk 14:24 might plausibly be adduced in proof that it is Christ
who speaks, addressing those present and pointing for their benefit the moral of
the parable: "I, Jesus, say to you now present," &c. But the form of expression
in what follows excludes this construction. The use of the plural must be
accounted for by the emotional character of the utterance. The host in his anger
addresses himself to an ideal audience.

[2] Vide Rom 11:11-14.

[3] So Hilgenfeld, ’Einleitung.’

Yet another index of the grace of the kingdom may be found in the direction
given to the servant with reference to these vagrants, to "compel them to come
in." What insight into the secret thoughts, what sympathy with the miseries of
the abject class, is revealed in these words! True, as it stands in the parable,
the direction seems to have reference rather to the exigencies of the host than
to the circumstances of the intended guests. It seems to mean: Be urgent with
them and bring them quickly, for time passes, and the feast is getting out of
season; take no refusal, for I wish my house filled, so that there may be no
room for the men whom I first invited. But higher motives are implied, though
not expressed, or capable of expression, in the parable. The beauty of the
parable is, that while moving in a lower moral plane, it constantly suggests to
our thoughts a higher one in which the motives are of a purely benevolent
character. The speaker of the parable lives up in the higher region, though for
the sake of His hearers He comes down in the parable to the lower. It is due to
the unearthly charity that dwells in His bosom that mention is made of vagrants
at all as possible objects of hospitality. Nothing but such charity was capable
of the audacity necessary to the bare conception of such a thought. And the same
charity which could conceive the idea is revealed in the injunction, "compel
them to come in." The speaker knows full well that the difficulty with the
parties now to be invited will be to get them to believe that such a felicity
can possibly be meant for the like of them, accustomed to misery and to the
neglect of their more favoured fellow-mortals. Jesus recognises the naturalness
and the excusableness of scepticism in such circumstances, and the need of
compulsion to overcome doubt. He can enter into their minds and understand just
how they feel. "We are hungry, and would gladly be fed, even with the plainest
fare, how much more be partakers of so grand an entertainment! But such bliss
cannot be in store for such wretches as we are: you trifle with us, you mock our
misery." Christ knew that such thoughts would certainly pass through the minds
of persons situated as described. Yes, He knew that there would always be many
so situated that it would be natural and excusable in them to hear with
incredulity the good news which He brought from God to the world; men accustomed
to misery and to hard treatment from their fellows, or so profoundly sensible of
their own demerit that they could hardly believe in God’s love, at least in so
far as it concerned themselves. And He had pity on such, and He would have all
possible means employed to overcome their mistrust, and lead them from
incredulity to faith. "Compel them to come in," is the word He gives forth with
reference to such. Indifference He will not compel, but will rather treat with
dignified reserve. But the incredulity of men who would gladly avail themselves
of God’s grace if they durst, He will compel. What hope there is in this
sympathy of Christ with human hopelessness! And alas, what need of the humane
compulsion He mercifully enjoins! How many now live even in Christian lands
whose hard lot, whose experience of inhumanity at the hands of
fellow-mortals—sometimes even of men calling themselves Christians—is such as to
make God’s love almost incredible! How many are in danger of being driven on to
deeper degrees of guilt by the thought that they have already sinned so
heinously as to be beyond the reach of mercy! Nay, who does not need compulsions
to faith? For is it not one of our chief hindrances to hearty faith in Divine
grace that God’s love, as declared in the gospel, is so unlike anything we see
in this world as to be incredible? Behold what manner of love is this, that the
most high God should care for sinful and miserable men; care even for those who
have rebelled against Him! Behold what manner of love is this, that God should
give His Son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish! We need help, we
need even compulsion, to receive this truth, and to convert the wonder of
incredulity into the wonder of faith; and Christ’s word in this parable assures
us that all who need such compulsion, have in Him a sympathetic Friend who will
not fail to help them in their infirmities.


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  CHAPTER 22: 01.17.        CHAPTER 6. THE GOOD SAMARITAN
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Chapter 6. The Good Samaritan Or, Charity the True Sanctity. The connection in
which this parable was spoken is so distinctly indicated by the Evangelist that
it will be best to quote his introductory sentences as part of our text:

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up to tempt Hint, saying: Master! what shall
I do to inherit eternal life? And He said unto him, What is written in the
law?[1] how readest thou? And he answering said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and
with all thy mind;[2] and thy neighbour as thyself. And He said unto him: Thou
hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he wishing to justify
himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering said: A
certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell in with
robbers,[3] who having both stripped him of his raiment, and inflicted on him
wounds, went away leaving him half dead. Now by chance there came down a certain
priest that way; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. And
likewise also a Levite arrived at the place, and having come and looked at him,
passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, on a journey, came where
he was, and seeing (his plight) he was moved with pity, and approaching him he
bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine, and mounting him on his own
beast he brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow [when he
was departing] he took out two denarii. and gave them to the host, and said:
Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, on my return, will
repay. Which now of these three seems to thee to have become neighbour to him
that fell among the robbers?[4] And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then
said Jesus unto him, Go, do thou also likewise.— Luk 10:25-37.

[1] Kuinoel suggests that Christ pointed at the phylactery on which the words of
this law were written, as He spake. Unger quotes this opinion with approval.

[2] There are variations in the text here, but of no importance for the
interpretation of the parable.

[3] Field prefers this to the rendering in A. V. and R. V. on the ground that
the verb is often joined with a noun in the singular number, when of course
’among’ would be unsuitable; περιέπεσει might be rendered by the one word
’encountered.’

[4] γεγονἐναι; suggesting the adage, "Neighbour is who neighbour does." In the
interpretation of this parable great regard must be had to the original question
of the lawyer. Formally an answer to the question, Who is my neighbour?
evasively asked by one who was not thoroughly in earnest about the subject of
his professed solicitude, the parable is really an answer to the wider question,
What is the supreme duty, by the performance of which a man may hope to attain
eternal life? The moral of the charming story is—Charity the true sanctity. This
is the key to the construction of the parable, especially to the selection of
its dramatis persona—a priest and a Levite—persons holy by profession and
occupation, and a Samaritan stranger of a different race from that of the man in
need of neighbourly succour. Through the introduction of the two former the
lesson of the parable is accentuated by suggesting a contrast between the
genuine holiness of love, and spurious forms of holiness; through the
introduction of the latter, as doing the requisite good deed, the supreme value
of love in God’s sight is emphasised. It means: Even in a Samaritan love is
acceptable to God; wherever it is there is true goodness, and therefore eternal
life; like faith, love, wherever manifested, breaks down all conventional
barriers: "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." Such being
its import, our parable is emphatically a parable of grace, revealing to us the
nature of God and of His kingdom. Its teaching can be true only if God be love,
and His kingdom a kingdom of grace, and the Speaker, not typically, as in the
Patristic interpretation, but literally, the Good Samaritan par excellence—one,
that is, to whom every human being who needs help is a neighbour; one who is
ever ready to render, to those who require it, seasonable succour. It was not
Christ’s intention, perhaps, under the guise of the Samaritan stranger, to
describe Himself; the less we introduce the spiritual motive into the parable
itself the greater our sense of its natural beauty and pathos will be. But the
present parable is one of those peculiar to Luke, in which the vehicle of
instruction is not a type taken from the natural sphere to teach a truth in the
spiritual, but an example of the very action recommended. In connection with
such a parable it is legitimate exegesis to say that Jesus was the supreme
example of the virtue inculcated.[1]

[1] So Goebel, who points out that this parable is the first of those in Luke in
which instruction is conveyed, not by type, but by example. The didactic drift
of the parable being such as indicated, it is obvious that the appearance on the
scene of the three contrasted figures is as intentional as it is admirably
fitted to serve the purpose the Speaker has in view. The Priest, the Levite, and
the Samaritan do not enter on the stage by accident; they are carefully and
skilfully chosen to convey the moral. In apparent contradiction with this, it is
indeed said that by chance[1] a priest went down that way; and perhaps we ought
to extend the scope of the phrase to the other two travellers also, as if Jesus
would say: By a singular fortuitous concurrence these three men turned up in
that lonely place just at the time the poor wayfarer came to grief. But the
reference to the chance character of the meeting only makes the intention of the
Artist in the selection of his dramatis persona more marked. It is a virtual
apology for the unlikelihood of a concurrence which the purpose of the story
demands. It says in effect: That these four men should come together in such a
place, about the same time, and under such circumstances, seems, I admit, a
somewhat unlikely supposition; yet suffer me to make it, for I need it in order
to point duly my moral.[2] The apology will be accepted by all who are satisfied
that the characters who figure in the parable are well selected for the didactic
purpose. On this point, however, doubts have been expressed by some, as, e. g.,
by Keim, who, disbelieving in the genuineness of the parable, adduces in support
of his opinion the fact that nowhere else do we find Jesus assuming a polemic
attitude towards the priests and Levites—the usual objects of His attacks being
the scribes.[3] But this objection has but little force, if the classes referred
to laid themselves open to attack, after the manner of our parable. And who can
doubt that they did? Who does not know that men holy by profession and
occupation are very prone to come short in the duties of humanity?—so divorcing
holiness from charity, religion from morality. Were the officially holy persons
in Israel in the last stage of her degeneracy likely to be an exception?[4] And
if not, were their shortcomings likely to escape animadversion on Christ’s part,
due opportunity offering itself? Far from doubting the genuineness of the
parable on this score, and resolving it into a mere traditional expansion of a
simpler utterance of our Lord in conversation with some legal interrogant,[5] we
gladly welcome it as filling up what would otherwise have been a blank in His
many-sided teaching. It was too much needed to complete the picture of the time
not to have been spoken by Him who was at once the most faithful and the wisest
of all the prophets; and it is too good to have been spoken or invented by any
one else.[6] [1] κατὰ ουγκυρίαν.

[2] Godet remarks that there is a certain irony in the expression, by chance, as
it is certainly not accidental that the narrative makes the two characters,
priest and Levite, appear on the scene.

[3] ’Jesu von Nazara,’ iii. 13, note 2.

[4] Goebel says that the priest and the Levite are introduced because they were
peculiarly given to literalism.

[5] So Keim and others of similar proclivities.

[6] Keim’s doubts are only a part of his general scepticism in regard to all the
Samaritan incidents and sections in the Gospels, and especially in Luke, and are
entitled to all the less consideration on that account.

While seeing in the reference to chance an apology for a needed combination, we
must be careful not to make too much of it, as if the improbability of the
concurrence were so great as to mar the natural felicity of the parable. This is
so far from being the case that the Speaker might quite well have omitted the
expression, and probably would have done so but for His desire to fix attention
on the characters He introduced, and we may add, His exquisite sense of the
fitting in narration, which was such that He felt inclined to apologise for the
slightest appearance of a departure from the dictates of good taste. It was
quite within the limits of natural possibility that all the persons alluded to
should make their appearance in the scene of the deed of violence—the rugged,
rocky pass between Jerusalem and Jericho, arduous for the traveller even on
account of its physical characteristics, and dangerous as the haunt of
desperadoes who lived by plunder.[1] Travellers on various errands must have
frequented that road, for there had been no robbers had there been no one to
rob. Among these travellers priests and Levites might occasionally be found; for
Jericho was a city of priests, and officials would come and go between that
place and Jerusalem in connection with their service at the temple. The pass of
Adummim was not indeed the only way from the City of Palms to the capital, but
it was the most direct, and would therefore be at least occasionally taken in
spite of its bad renown as the "Way of Blood." A Samaritan stranger might also
now and then appear there, journeying to or from Jerusalem on his private
business; for his errands might require him to choose the route which lay
through Jericho.

[1] Vide the passages in Josephus and Jerome, usually referred to in the
Commentaries, and modern books of travel, such as Stanley’s ’Sinai and
Palestine.’ Stanley’s note on the pass of Adummim at p. 424 is worth consulting.
In truth, whether we have regard to the construction of the story, or to its
moral aim, we must acknowledge that in the parable before us the artistic tact
of the Speaker appears in a conspicuous degree. The place, the persons, and the
moral, all fit into each other admirably. A situation is chosen in which the
occurrence of a calamity demanding active benevolence is probable. A wounded man
in the Bloody Way, how likely a phenomenon! There, too, the men from whom help
in such an emergency might naturally be expected, but from whom, alas, it will
not be forthcoming, may also be met with: priests and Levites punctually
attending to their religious duties according to law and custom, but deaf to the
call of charity. In that same grim, perilous pass might by chance be met a
Samaritan, hated of the Jews, and most probably hating in turn, yet not
necessarily, conceivably nearer the kingdom of God than those who proudly
despised him as a heretic and alien, by the possession of a heart susceptible of
the gentle emotion of pity, and prompt to act on its benignant impulses; not
staying to inquire who or what the object of pity may be, content to know that
he is a human being—"a certain man"[1] in distress. Finally, in the situation
chosen love will have an opportunity of showing its true nature as an heroic
passion. For the love that shall prove itself equal to the occasion must possess
very uncommon attributes. It must be stronger than fear and the instinct of
self-preservation which so often harden the heart It must be superior to the
prejudice which chills pity by the thought that the claimant is one of another
race and religion. It must be generous and uncalculating, grudging no
expenditure of time, pains, or money, which may be necessary for the effectual
succour of distress. In a word, it must be a love like that of
God—self-sacrificing, ready to die for its object, even though that object
should be an enemy; a love in which is revealed the maximum of gracious
possibility, and which finds its secret reward in the blessedness of its own
deed.

[1] "He was a human being (Mensch.), that is all he says; not a word about his
rank, descent, or religion," quaintly remarks Arndt, whose whole treatment of
the parable is spirited, graphic, and instructive, without having recourse to
spiritualising. In details, not less than in general structure, the delineations
of the parable are faithful to reality. The plight of the wounded man is
desperate, as the didactic purpose requires; yet the description thereof cannot
at any point be charged with exaggeration. It is just thus that the victims of
bandits in those regions would be treated in those days, as it is just thus they
are treated still. To be robbed of his purse, stripped of his garments, wounded,
and heartlessly abandoned to his fate, is the lot of any one who has the
misfortune to fall into such hands. The first of these particulars is omitted in
the narrative, a circumstance diversely explained by the commentators; some
suggesting poverty, others that plunder is taken for granted as a matter of
course. The latter view is the more probable, whether we have regard to the
verbal expression at this part of the story, or to the aim of the whole. The καὶ
before ἐκδύσαντες (also having stripped him) seems to imply some previous act of
violence, which could only have been the forcible appropriation of that which
robbers chiefly seek—the purse. Then the supposition that this misfortune also
befell the victim, harmonises best with the design of the parable to signalise
the supreme worth of humanity: for the graver the case the greater the
opportunity afforded for the display of that virtue. But why, then, is this
feature not introduced? In reply, we ask, Is it quite certain that it is not? It
is not indeed expressly mentioned in the description of the victim’s condition;
but is it not indirectly alluded to in the picture presented of the humane
conduct of his benefactor? Among the kind services of the Samaritan to the
object of his care, payment of his bill at the inn is carefully specified. That
implies that the wounded one was unable to pay his own way; for the services
rendered by love are all supposed to be necessary, the virtue inculcated being
not quixotic, uncalled-for generosity, but readiness to succour real and urgent
need. Then it may further be regarded as certain, that the poverty does not
belong to the man’s ordinary condition, but forms a part of the calamity which
has lately overtaken him; for it belongs to the felicity of the parable that all
the particulars specified should arise out of the supposed situation. The
behaviour of the priest and Levite is very simply but suggestively described.
They came, they saw, and they passed by. Inhuman, unnatural conduct, one is
ready to exclaim. It was inhuman, but it was not unnatural. These men did
exactly what all the world is inclined to do; what the majority are doing in one
form or another every day—passing by need without giving pity time to rise in
the bosom—what every one will certainly do in whom the impulses of fear and the
instinct of self-preservation are stronger than the nobler instincts and
impulses of benevolence. The language of the parable betrays a consciousness on
the part of the Speaker that the conduct he describes is not exceptional but
usual. Very noticeable is the repetition of the expressive word ἀντιπαρῆλθεν.
The very monotony suggests the idea of what is customary—the way of the
world—and, in the present case, of the religious world. The first comer passed
by, the second passed by; and in nine cases out of ten that is what you may
expect.[1] It is the exceptional case when, instead of ἀντιπαρῆλθε, you can say
ἐσπλαγχνίσθη—not he passed by, but he was moved with pity. So it is with the
beggar in the street; so it is with men placed in extreme danger whom you cannot
help without serious risk to yourself. There is doubtless everything in so grave
a plight as that of the wounded man in the pass of Adummim to rouse the dormant
feelings of compassion which minor afflictions of everyday occurrence fail to
touch. Yet let us not imagine that the priest and the Levite would necessarily
have a bad conscience, or go away feeling that they were behaving in an
altogether monstrous manner. Nothing so easy as to invent excuses for their
conduct. Every commentator suggests a list of excuses, each one inventing his
own list—so plentiful are they. "Another of these robberies. How frequent they
are growing! One ought to help, but what can one do? This poor fellow seems
beyond help. It is impossible to attend to every unfortunate. Then one must
think of himself. True, these robbers do not meddle with us; they leave us holy
men to go and come in the performance of our sacred duties; but we cannot expect
them to act with such forbearance unless we observe a discreet silence as to
their lawless deeds." "Alas, for the rarity of Christian charity under the
sun!"—and alas for the multitude of plausible, prudent reasons by which that
rarity can be accounted for!

[1] Grotius interprets ἀντιπαρῆλθε as signifying—passed in the opposite
direction. ’Praeterivit contrario itinere ab Jerichunte, scil. Hiersolyma
properans.’ Godet, with his usual insight, renders it—’In face of such a
spectacle they passed.’ The thing emphasised is surely not the direction in
which they were going, but that they avoided the sufferer, gave him a wide
berth, and hurried on from the place. The reasons are good enough for all who
want an excuse. But if one happen to have a big, tender heart he will not be
able to avail himself of such reasons for neglecting a duty lying in his way.
When the emotion of pity is strong, it prevents a man from acting on the
suggestions of prudence; when it is very strong, amounting to a passion, it
prevents these from even arising in the mind. Thanks be to God, there are always
some such men in the world. Though such charity be rare it is not unexampled;
therefore the good Samaritan is not an incredible character. His picture is one
of unearthly beauty, yet it is not unreal or impossible. We exclaim as we
read—"He did as he ought to have done; as we all ought to do." It has been said
of the story of the good Samaritan that it has been "the consolation of the
wanderer and the sufferer, of the outcast and the heretic, in every age and
country."[1] It may also be said of it that it has been as a conscience in the
heart of Christendom condemning inhumanity, breeding shame of cowardice and
selfishness, and prompting to deeds of kindness by a heavenly yet sober and
practicable ideal of benevolence. This ideal is painted with a few strokes, but
with consummate art, which the Limner has learnt from His own gracious spirit.
The Samaritan traveller, like the two others, comes up to the half-dead victim
of violence, and sees his sorrowful condition; but, unlike the two others who
preceded him, he does not pass by, but feels pity. They, too, perhaps felt a
little pity, but it was just enough to scare them away in horror, and to send
them on their journey inventing excuses to hide from themselves their own
heartlessness. But the Samaritan’s pity was a passion and an agony; therefore he
could not get away from the object which excited it, but was compelled rather to
draw near to him, and that not to gaze but to succour. The sufferer has taken
full possession of his heart, and he must do for him all that he needs. And he
does all promptly, without hesitation, or intrusion of any thought or feeling
that can interrupt the flow of the commanding emotion. The several acts are
carefully enumerated, not for mere pictorial effect, but for the sake of moral
impression; even to show the genius of true love, as that which renders help
with promptitude, thoroughness, self-denial, and unwearying patience;[2] and
also with tact, doing all things in their proper order, and in the best, most
considerate way: first staunching the wounds with wine and oil,[3] which with
due forethought for emergencies it has at hand; then conveying the patient to
the inn where he can stay till he recover; and making itself answerable for all
charges incurred during convalescence. Noticeable yet further in this picture is
the absence of all sentimentality, for this, too, is a sure mark of genuine
love. All things are done without parade, and with good sense. Specially to be
remarked in this connection is the pecuniary part of the transactions. The
benefactor does not give to the host a large sum of money amply sufficient to
pay all possible expense with a liberal margin over. He gives a limited sum,
small, but sufficient to pay past outlay, and promises to pay the rest on his
return. There is thrift without niggardliness, as you expect in one who is not
performing a solitary act of charity in an ostentatious way, because he happens
to be in the humour, but is in the habit of doing kind actions as he has
opportunity, and therefore does them in sober, business style. It may indeed
appear unbusiness-like to expect the host to give him credit for future expense
on account of his beneficiary. But, doubtless, the host knows his man: he has
been that way before, and he will come again, and he has always been a good
customer.[4] [1] Stanley, ’Sinai and Palestine,’ p. 425.

[2] Arndt is good on the attributes of love developed in the conduct of the
Samaritan.

[3] Schöttgen asks how came the Samaritan to have wine and oil, and thinks it
was usual in hot countries to carry oil. Jacob had oil to anoint the pillar, and
Lot had wine with him.

[4] Possibly the inn in the dangerous pass (of which ruins are still traceable)
was kept by a Samaritan. So Unger.

Such is the charming tableau. How beautiful, and also how suggestive of didactic
meanings! In the first place, it completely answers the immediate question: Who
is my neighbour? The whole doctrine of neighbourhood is virtually and
effectively taught in the parable. First, and directly, what it is to be a
neighbour, viz. to render effectual succour when and where it is needed, having
regard to nothing beyond the fact of need. Next, indirectly, but by obvious
consequence, Who is my neighbour?—viz. any one who needs help, and whom I have
power and opportunity to help, no matter what his rank, race, or religion may
be. Neighbourhood is made co-extensive with humanity. Any human being is my
neighbour who needs aid, and to whom I can render aid; and I am neighbour to him
when I do for him what his case demands. It matters not on which of the two
sides the doctrine is approached. The relation of neighbourhood is mutual; he is
my neighbour to whom I am neighbour. Jesus applied the parable on the latter
side of the doctrine, as leading up most directly to the practical appeal to the
conscience of His interrogant—"Go, and do thou likewise." "Which of these
three," He asked, "appears to thee to have become neighbour to the man who fell
among the robbers?" Had the Scribe been in the mood in which he began the
interview he might have parried the question, and raised another quibble,
saying: What I want to know is, not to whom I am neighbour, but who is neighbour
to me? In so doing he would have acted as reasonably as when he first put the
question; for he asked it not because he did not know, but because he did not
wish to act on his knowledge. But the legal quibbler has lost all his briskness
and courage. The pathos of the parable has subdued and solemnized him, and for
the moment called into play those feelings of nature which even in a Jewish
Rabbi were only overlaid, not extinguished, by the sophistries of conventional
morality. Therefore, though it went against the grain to praise a Samaritan, and
his pride refused even to name him, he could not help replying: "He who showed
mercy on Him."[1] And when Jesus bade him go and practise the virtue his
conscience approved he had no heart for further fencing, but went away
profoundly impressed with the wisdom and moral authority of Him whom he had
tried to puzzle.

[1] Godet. The parable further answered the larger question first propounded by
the lawyer: which is the virtue that saves? The Scriptures teach that without
holiness no man shall see the Lord, that is, have eternal life; and in this
parable two kinds of holiness are set before us, the one spurious, the other
genuine. The spurious holiness is that of the priest and Levite, or sanctity
divorced from charity. It is not indeed formally described; but the idea is
suggested by the introduction of two officially holy persons. The very motive of
their introduction is to suggest the thought of a religion separated from
morality, and especially from that which is the soul and essence of all
morality, love. The two sacerdotal characters appear on the scene as concrete
embodiments of a type of piety which God abhors, sacrifice without mercy. By
placing them alongside of the humane Samaritan Jesus eloquently re-utters the
prophetic oracle, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice." In the person of the
Samaritan the nature of true sanctity is exhibited. We are taught that the way
to please God, the way to genuine holiness, is the practice of charity. It has
been remarked indeed, that in applying the parable Jesus did not repeat the
words, "This do, and thou shalt live," and that He could not do so, because
charity, though necessary, is not sufficient for salvation, faith being
indispensable. But it is evident that if life could be promised to him who kept
the commandments, it could also be promised to one who acted as the Samaritan,
for what was such action but a most emphatic keeping of the commandments? In
that action, it is true, only the second of the two great commandments is
expressly involved, but neither of these commandments can be kept apart from the
other. He that truly loveth God loveth his brother also; and conversely he that
truly loveth his brother loveth God also, unconsciously if not consciously. The
claims of faith as a condition of salvation were fully acknowledged by our Lord
in His teaching, and we must take care that they suffer no neglect at our hands.
But there is a better way of protecting these claims than to be jealous of the
life-giving power of love. That better way is to teach that charity presupposes
faith; in other words, that the man whose religion consists in loving God and
his neighbour, is inevitably a man who believes in a God whose nature is love.
And this leads us to remark that our parable likewise answers the question which
lies behind the first question of the lawyer, viz. What is God? The parable
virtually, though not formally, solves that problem; implying, though not
saying, God is love; His kingdom is a kingdom of grace; the way to please Him is
to walk in love; I, Jesus, am His well-beloved Son, because I delight in saving
the lost and succouring the miserable. What the parable expressly teaches is
true only because these things are true. To ascribe this extended significance
to the parable is not, as already hinted, to indulge in a licentious, tropical
exegesis; it is merely to extend its didactic import within the same sphere. For
the spiritualising interpretation of the fathers, followed by some moderns, we
have no taste. It seems to us frigid, trifling, even pernicious, as tending to
blunt our perception of the true, natural sense. When carried far enough it
becomes ridiculous; and hence the illogical moderation and discretion exercised
by some patrons of this style of exegesis, as by a leading English writer on the
parables, who, having gone so far with the fathers, draws the line at the two
pence, which, in the tropical interpretation, denote the two sacraments![1] But
we have no hesitation in saying that this parable is a most important
contribution to Christ’s general doctrine of God, and of the kingdom of God, and
in that view pre-eminently a parable of grace. It is implied that God is a God
of love, and that His love is catholic, not partial; a love of mankind, not of
Jews only, a φιλανθρωπία, as it is termed by an apostle;[2] a love kindred in
nature to that pity which moves one human being to help another in need, to
which also the name philanthropy is applied in Scripture notably, too, in the
case of the kindness shown by Maltese barbarians to Paul and his shipwrecked
companions.[3] How significant this juxtaposition of the love of God most high
with the humane feelings to which even the most uncultured of mankind are not
strangers! The catholic scope of our parable was doubtless one of its chief
attractions in the eyes of Luke, the Pauline evangelist. Invent the parable he
certainly did not, for that was a task above his genius; but select it with
pleasure he certainly did on account of its universalism. It pleased him that it
was a Samaritan who did the good action;[4] it pleased him that love in man,
disregardful of conventional barriers, in the parable had free course and was
glorified, as implying a similar love in God, wide as the world, and bringing
healing without stint for its sin and misery. And the Church and the whole world
have reason to be thankful that in such things Luke took delight; for to that
fact we owe the preservation of one of the most precious morsels of our Lord’s
incomparable teaching.

[1] Trench, who says: "It would be an entering into curious minutiae, one
tending to bring discredit on this scheme of interpretation, to affirm decidedly
of the ’two pence’ that they mean either the two Sacraments, or the two
Testaments, or the Word and the Sacraments, or unreservedly to accede to any one
of the ingenious explanations which have been offered for them" (pp. 325-6).

[2] Tit 3:4.

[3] Acts 28:2.

[4] Vide Renan, ’Les Evangiles,’ p. 267.


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  CHAPTER 23: 01.18.        CHAPTER 7. THE UNJUST STEWARD
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Chapter 7. The Unjust Steward Or, the Redeeming Power of Charity. And He said
also unto His disciples: There was a certain rich man who had a steward; and the
same was accused unto him as wasting his goods. And he called him, and said unto
him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for
thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What
shall I do, for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship? I cannot dig, to
beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the
stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of
his lord’s debtors, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?
And he said, An hundred baths of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill,[1]
and sit down and write quickly fifty. Then to another he said, And thou, how
much owest thou? And he said, An hundred cors of wheat. He saith to him, Take
thy bill, and write fourscore. And the lord praised the unjust steward, because
he had acted wisely for himself; for the children of this world are wiser in
their generation than the children of light. And I say unto you; Make to
yourselves friends with[2] the mammon of unrighteousness; that when ye fail, (or
it fails[3]), they may receive you into the everlasting tents.—Luk 16:1-9.

[1] Τὸ γράμμα in T. R.; τὰ γράμματα according to approved reading, the bond or
voucher which showed the amount owed.

[2] ἐκ τοῦ Μαμωνᾶ, rendered ambiguously of in A. V.

[3] ἐκλἰπητε in T. R.; ἐκλίπη in some copies, and adopted by most critics. De
Wette prefers the former. The introductory formula might seem to imply that this
parable was spoken at the same time as that of the Prodigal Son contained in the
preceding chapter. In reality, however, it does not necessarily imply, and ought
not in the exposition to be assumed to imply, anything more than that to the
mind of the Evangelist the two parables had some connection, some word, or
thought-affinity, which made the one suggest the other, and led him to introduce
both in the same part of his narrative. What the subjective connection was we
can only conjecture; it might be very slight, for often a very insignificant
point of contact suffices to bring the law of association into play. The link
might be the simple circumstance that both parables refer to worldly goods, and
especially to the way in which these are often abused by men. In each there is a
prodigal who wastes substance, in the one case his own, in the other that of
another man; and the act of wasting is described in both instances by the same
term.[1] It is quite conceivable that so slender and external a tie might bind
together the two parables in the Evangelist’s thought, and determine him, in
absence of knowledge of the historical connection, to unite them in his story.
It is probable, however, that they appeared to his view bound together by more
intimate relations; by affinity in their general spirit and didactic drift not
less than by their superficial features. At the least it may safely be assumed
that he cannot have been conscious of any incongruity between the parables in
these respects. He must have discerned even in this most unevangelic-looking
parable of the Unjust Steward a vein of evangelic sentiment, which made it not
unfit to stand beside that parable of the Prodigal Son in which the gracious
aspect of Christ’s teaching is seen at its brightest. If so, then we too must
try to pierce beneath the repulsive surface to the underlying stratum of Gospel
truth. And we mean to make the attempt, and that in a spirit of good hope, not
of despair. For we believe that in the whole of the section wherein, according
to Renan, is to be found the great originality of Luke[2]—the fifteenth and
sixteenth chapters—the evangelic tone prevails. To this extent at least we are
prepared to go in opposition to another critic, who boldly affirms that the two
chapters have absolutely nothing in common.[3] For we cannot regard Luke, with
some, as a mere mechanical chronicler who placed side by side in his history
materials of the most heterogeneous character drawn from his sources; in one
chapter a section radiant with the light of divine love, in another a piece of
cold Ebionitic morality, ascetic in tone and commonplace in thought.[4] The
writer had religious sympathy with his subject, and was guided throughout, both
in the selection and in the grouping of his materials, by a warm evangelic
feeling. On this account we expect to find traces of that feeling and of that
which justifies it even here, as also in the succeeding parable of the Rich Man
and Lazarus. In saying so we readily acknowledge that there are difficulties to
be surmounted. Among these we do not reckon the selection of an unprincipled
agent to be the vehicle of instruction, for there are similar instances of the
same sort[5] which show that our Lord in His parabolic teaching was wont to use
great boldness and freedom in the application of that method of instruction, a
fact which only gives to the doctrine taught enhanced value and piquancy in the
esteem of all intelligent students. If a particular character was best fitted in
other respects to convey the intended lesson, the mere lack of morality was not
regarded as an objection to its introduction. The main difficulty in the way of
one who would get to the evangelic heart of the parable is the apparently low
level of the very moral lesson itself which the parable is employed to convey.
It seems to be a lesson of mere prudence in the use of money with a view to the
salvation of our souls in the next world. Such a low-toned, unheroic sentiment
strikes one as un-Christlike, and if that were really all that was meant, we
should feel strongly tempted to acquiesce in the verdict of Keim that such a
gross morality of prudence never came from the lips of Jesus,[6] and to see in
this parable a foreign element that had found its way into the Gospel from
extra-canonical sources current in quarters where the genuine logia of Christ
had undergone corruption, or been mixed up with apocryphal additions.[7] But we
should be very slow indeed to adopt any such conclusion and we do not think the
facts demand it; that is, we are persuaded that in this section of the evangelic
narrative we are taught no mere morality of prudence, though the lesson may be
put in prudential form, but something worthy of Him whose words were always like
Himself—noble, generous, unworldly.

[1] διεσκόρπισεν, Luk 15:13; διασκορπίζων, Luk 16:1.

[2] ’Les Évangiles,’ p. 265.

[3] Reuss, ’Histoire Evangélique,’ 495.

[4] Pfleiderer regards this parable as Ebionitic in spirit, and cites it as
illustrating the evangelist’s impartiality as an author in the use of his
sources, of which he finds traces in Acts also. Vide ’Paulinismus, p. 499.

[5] Vide parables of Selfish Neighbour and Unjust Judge.

[6] ’Jesu von Nazara,’ ii. 401.

[7] So Hilgenfeld, Weizsäcker, Pfleiderer, &c. The parable seems to us to teach
not one lesson but two, one general, the other particular; the general one a
lesson of prudence in the use of temporal possessions with a view to eternal
interests; the special one a lesson as to the way of using these possessions
which most directly and surely tends to promote our eternal interests, viz. by
the practice of kindness towards those who are destitute of this world’s goods.
A prudent regard to the higher concerns of man, and beneficence towards the poor
as a means to that end, such are the virtues which it seems the teacher’s aim to
inculcate. Many commentators have failed to recognise the intention to teach a
double lesson, and have virtually, though probably in many instances
unconsciously, proceeded on the assumption that the interpreter had to make his
choice between two mutually exclusive alternatives; the result being a multitude
of interpretations not altogether erroneous, but partial and one-sided.[1] One
class leans to the side of prudence, another to the side of beneficence, the
fewest have clearly perceived that the two points of view are perfectly
compatible, and ought to be combined in order to do justice to the thought and
purpose of the Teacher. As was to be expected, the smaller number give the
preference to the special lesson of beneficence, the tendency of commentators,
as of men in general, being to side with the common-place in thought rather than
with the original, with the mean in ethics rather than with the lofty. To the
honourable band who in this case have obeyed the nobler instinct belong two men
of princely rank among interpreters, Calvin and Olshausen. The Genevan divine
opens his comments on the parable with this sentence: "The sum of this parable
is that we should deal humanely and benignantly with our neighbours, that when
we come to the tribunal of God the fruit of our liberality may return to us." It
is the utterance of a man thoroughly imbued with the evangelic spirit of the
Reformation, who, while zealous for faith as the instrument of justification,
was not afraid to give love its due; he being no mere scholastic theologian, but
a living Christian endowed with fresh religious intuitions, and quick to discern
in Scripture whatever was in sympathy with the doctrine of grace. The more
modern interpreter reechoes the sentiment of Calvin when, comparing the
fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of Luke, he remarks, that what in the former is
taught concerning the compassionate love of God, is in the latter exhibited as
the duty of man in his surroundings. The view is significant in his case also,
as an index of the close connection between the exegesis of Scripture and the
life of the Church. For Olshausen also, like Calvin, was the child of a new time
in which the evangelic intuition was once more restored, and Christian thought,
delivered from the stupefying influence of dogmatism and the blinding influence
of religious legalism, could with unveiled face and open eye see for itself the
fulness of grace which was in Christ Jesus.

[1] Unger in his remarks on the parable adverts to this fact. That these two
distinguished interpreters have given only a partial account of the didactic
significance of our parable may perhaps be admitted. But, while defective in
detail, their view is certainly right in tendency. If the duty of beneficence be
not the only lesson of the parable it is certainly the chief lesson, that which
gives to the parable its distinctive character, and must dominate the
interpretation of the whole. We hope to show that with this key we can unlock
the secret of the parabolic narration, and explain its most peculiar features.
Another decided recommendation of this view is that it raises the moral tone of
our Lord’s teaching clear above the low level of a vulgar religious
utilitarianism. For with the practice of beneficence we get into the region of
love, and there we get rid of self and prudential calculation. It is true,
doubtless, that the motive to beneficence is made to assume the form of a
calculation. The owner of worldly goods is advised to make friends therewith of
the poor, because they in turn may be able to do him a friendly turn in the
world beyond. But this will not perplex any one who remembers that the parabolic
form of instruction does not afford scope for the play of the highest class of
motives. It is essentially popular wisdom, and it is the way of that which aims
at teaching the million to make action spring from homely motives. The prodigal
is moved to return home by hunger; the host whose guests refuse to come to his
feast invites the beggars to take their place from no interest in them, but to
spite the first invited, and to prevent waste of the food prepared. So here,
Jesus, applying His parable in the terms naturally suggested by it, bids His
disciples be kind to the poor, to make sure their own admission into the eternal
tents. This vulgar morality is meant to suggest the doctrines of a heroic
morality. The method is of kin with the employment of bad characters to teach
the lessons of wisdom. Both belong to the condescension involved in the
parabolic form of instruction, and in that respect are in harmony with the
genius of a revelation of grace. In all the above cases it is assumed as an
axiom that the real motives are higher and purer than the ones suggested. If it
were not so the action described would never be performed. Mere hunger would
never bring the prodigal home. Mere anger would never lead any host to entertain
the abjects of society. As little will mere self-interest lead a man to practise
beneficence. Beneficence is not the product of the prudence, but the prudence is
rather the product of the beneficence. A benignant spirit impels a man to do
beneficent actions, and in that way, without being aware of it, or reflecting on
it, he practises prudence with regard to his own eternal interest; secures for
himself an abundant entrance into the everlasting tents after death; nay, does
more than that, even brings into his soul now that blessedness which, just
because it is the true life, is therefore eternal. With this preliminary glance
at the moral import of the parable, we may now proceed to notice its more
salient features.

First, we advert to the peculiar case supposed. It is that of a man occupying
the position of a steward or factor to a person of wealth and rank who leaves
the administration of his estate wholly in his servant’s hands,[1] and
systematically abusing his trust according to reports which reach his master’s
ears, insomuch that his summary dismissal has become inevitable. One naturally
wonders that so objectionable a character should be selected as the vehicle of
instruction. For though we may not insist that no bad men shall be employed to
teach wisdom, we may reasonably lay it down as a rule that bad men should not be
used if they can be dispensed with; that is, if good men will serve the purpose
equally well, or even sufficiently well. Why, then, does Jesus oblige His
scholars to make the acquaintance of so immoral and unedifying a character? The
answer is, because He must find a man who is placed in a situation analogous to
that which the moral lesson has in view. Now the situation contemplated by the
moral lesson is that of men who look forward to the certain event of death, and
who are exhorted in view of that event to make due preparation for what comes
after. Such a situation suggests as its analogue in this world’s affairs the
position of an employ? about to lose his place and be deprived of his income. A
factor on the point of being deprived of his stewardship is a suitable emblem of
a man about to be removed from this world by death. That being so, it is obvious
that an unjust steward is more naturally introduced into the parable than a just
one, for the simple reason that his misbehaviour is the natural explanation of
the impending dismissal. Why should a faithful steward be removed from office?
To conceive such a case were to sacrifice probability to a moral scruple.

[1] Un grand seigneur vivant dans la capitale, loin de ses terres dont il a
remis l’administration à un intendant.—Godet.

Clearly then we must overcome our distaste for this unsavoury character and be
content to learn wisdom even from him. But what can he teach us? Well, two
things at least. One that dismissal, death, will certainly come; another, that
some provision must be made for what is beyond. The first lesson we are taught
by the simple fact that the master had resolved to put away his unfaithful
servant, which is carefully indicated by the words, give an account of thy
stewardship, for thou canst be no longer steward. The rendering of the account
is not demanded as a means of enabling the employer to decide what to do. He has
decided already; he is so satisfied that his agent has been utterly false to his
trust. He expects him to play the knave even in this last act, and he calls for
it more out of curiosity than with any hope of satisfaction. It is meet that the
steward should wind up his affairs in that way, and therefore his master will
have it so; and we may add, the Maker of the parable will have it so, because
the story must go on, and the steward must have his opportunity of showing how
he provides for the evil day. That provision has to be made against that day—the
day of Dismissal—we are taught by the vivid picture of the steward realising the
fact. He said within himself: "What am I to do? My lord taketh away my
stewardship. I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed." The future event is distinctly
laid to heart, and the question what next deliberately, anxiously pondered, all
possible courses being one after another weighed.[1] Thus would the Great
Teacher have His hearers lay to heart their latter end, and consider solemnly
and seriously how it will be with them thereafter. The steward’s soliloquy is
not recorded merely for graphic effect, though it serves that end excellently,
but to suggest the lesson, "go and do likewise." "Thou, too, must be dismissed,"
says Jesus to those who have ears to hear: "Think with thyself what thou canst
do by way of providing against the fateful day." The meditations of the
disgraced steward suggest rather gloomy thoughts as to the limited capacity of
men to provide for the great future. "I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed." He is
too broken-down by debauchery, too effeminate in spirit to engage in honest
toil, and he is too much of a gentleman to stoop to the trade of a beggar. If he
is to live at all it must be in gentlemanly fashion: by cheating possibly, but
by vulgar labour or by abject dependence on charity never. Is man so helpless
with regard to eternity; unable either to work for heaven or to beg for it; too
broken-down by sin to work out for himself salvation as the reward of
righteousness; too proud to be dependent for righteousness on another? But we
are running unawares into the vice of the spiritualisers, and must return to our
parable.

[1] The mention of digging is natural as typical of agricultural labour with
which the steward’s position has brought him mainly into contact So Lightfoot,
’Hor. Heb.’

Thus far the delineation serves the purpose of enforcing the lesson of prudence
in providing against the day of death. What follows is to be understood in the
light of the second, higher, lesson of the value of beneficence as a means
towards that end. After depicting the steward engaged in rapt meditation on his
approaching dismissal and the measures for ameliorating the evil consequences,
Jesus represents him as at length forming his resolution. "I know what I will
do," he exclaims as the bright idea strikes him.[1] "I have it at last." Then
follows the explanation of his plan, which is in effect so to benefit the
creditors of his lord in his account to be rendered that after his removal from
office they will gladly do him the counter favour of receiving him into their
houses, not as a beggar, but as one well entitled to the benefit, and therefore
able to receive it without humiliation. The scheme rests on the simple principle
that one good turn deserves another. It involves knavery as towards the
creditor, but it involves beneficence as towards his debtors. And that is the
reason why the steward is made to adopt this plan of helping himself; for the
Speaker of the parable has it in view to teach a lesson of the worth of
beneficence as a provision against the evil day. To make this point clear, let
it be considered that the scheme of the disgraced factor was by no means the
only possible one in the circumstances; he might, e. g., have required the
various creditors to pay him the full sum specified in their bills while
altering the figures, and then have gone to his lord and paid the sums due
according to the amended accounts and pocketed the balance. This would have made
provision for some time to come, if not for all time, and it would have made him
more independent.[2] For after all there was something humiliating for one who
had occupied his high position to be the guest of those beneath him in station,
who had formerly feared him as their real master; passing from farm to farm as
he tired of each host in turn, and probably each got tired of him, with the not
impossible result of finding them eventually all wearied of their fastidious and
moody guest. All this could not fail to pass through his mind, and to appear a
serious drawback to the scheme, and to recommend some other course. It has
indeed been suggested that the bills were leases, and that the change of the
figures meant a change in the amount of the annual rental; in which case what he
would have gained by the adoption of the other plan would have borne a very
small proportion to the amount of money saved to the tenants by the transaction
so viewed, that amount of course being the measure of their indebtedness to
him.[3] But apart from the doubtfulness of the suggestion, it is open to the
objection that if such was the nature of the transaction it is difficult to see
why this great man need condescend to live under the roofs of meaner men as a
homeless penniless dependent. Why not commute the advantage into a money
payment, estimating the reduction of rent at a low rate which the tenants would
be willing to pay, and which yet would realise over the whole a considerable
sum, and having completed the nefarious business go his way, bidding good-bye to
landlord and tenants alike? Obviously the plan actually adopted, however we
interpret the alteration of the documents, is the one which suits the didactic
purpose of the parable, the steward being made to appear a benefactor of the
debtors without any pecuniary benefit to himself, because the aim of the
narrative is to teach the value of beneficence as a passport into the eternal
habitations.

[1] ἔγνων, implying not habitual knowledge, but a conclusion at length arrived
at as the result of consideration. "Not = ἔγνωκα, which would be, ’I know, as
part of my stock of knowledge, I am well aware,’—but implying, ’I have just
arrived at the knowledge, an idea has just struck me, I have a plan.’"—Alford.
Lange also puts the matter well; his account of the steward’s soliloquy
altogether is good. He remarks that the representation is very graphic if we
regard the word as spoken ex abrupto; "What shall I do...? for my lord is going
to deprive me of my office:... dig I can’t, to beg I am ashamed... εὕρηκα. I
know, I have found out what I must do."

[2] The values due to the master were large, a bath being equal to nearly ten
gallons, and the cor about fourteen bushels.

[3] Bailey, ’Exposition of the Parables of our Lord,’ advocates this view. As
helping us to understand more fully in what respect Jesus would have His hearers
regard the steward as exemplary, it is important to note not only the general
nature of his plan, but the manner in which it is executed. In this connection
the actor in the parable exhibits certain valuable qualities of character well
worthy of imitation, decision, self-collectedness, energy, promptitude, tact.
Having once resolved what to do, he proceeds without hesitation to carry out his
scheme undisturbed by any scruple of conscience or fear of failure. He is cool
enough to perceive where the risks of miscarriage lie, and he adopts the mode of
procedure best fitted to obviate them. He calls all the debtors together not
merely to save time and trouble, but that all may be implicated and none may mar
the plot by becoming informer.[1] The company assembled, he proceeds to business
with a briskness and spirit meant to be imposing and calculated to insure
co-operation. With the documents in hand he asks each debtor in turn the amount
of his obligation, and handing him his bill, in a tone of authority instructs
him what to do: Sit down and write quickly such and such an amount. Nor does he
give to all the same instructions. Herein he shows his tact and savoir faire.
Diverse reasons have been suggested for the variation in the remission. One
suggests his knowledge of the circumstances of each debtor;[2] another his idea
of the varying degrees of dishonesty the consciences of the different debtors
could stand;[3] a third his desire to show his power to do as he pleased, and so
strengthen the feeling of obligation to himself.[4] According to a fourth
interpreter the reductions were in accordance with the facts of each case. This
suggestion is based on the assumption that fifty and eighty were the amounts
really due to the master, and that the higher numbers indicated a fraudulent
over-estimate of the indebtedness by the unscrupulous agent.[5] According to
this view the steward had been a sinner against the debtors rather than against
his employer. The effect of the transaction described in the parable on this
hypothesis was to make the debtors under obligation to the steward by what they
supposed to be a reduction of their debt, and at the same time to gain credit
for him with his master by a correspondence between the bills as altered and the
amounts previously reported verbally by him. This explanation has little to
recommend it except that it makes the praise bestowed by the lord on his
unfaithful servant less difficult to comprehend, and also exhibits the steward
as in a way repenting, and by a return to honesty fitting himself to be with
less impropriety the vehicle of moral instruction.

[1] So Alford.

[2] So Alford.

[3] So Hofmann.

[4] So Goebel.

[5] So Lange.

Probably the best explanation is to be found in the lordly temper of the man. He
adopts the arbitrary line as the most imposing. It is not the power of his
position as the real master that he calculates on, but rather the power of an
imperious bearing. To give all the same reduction would be to act under law to a
method, like ordinary men; to remit arbitrarily, and as whimsical impulse
dictates, is to play the part of a magnifico, which suits his taste, and is not
less likely to succeed. The world is largely governed by show, and many admire
arbitrariness as princely, more than equity, which by comparison seems vulgar.
The steward knew human nature, and acted accordingly. The scheme is carried out,
and the news of it have reached the employer’s ears. How does he receive the
report? The lord praised his unjust steward. This alleged praise has scandalised
and perplexed commentators, and put them to shifts to explain it, or rather
explain it away. The most plausible method of doing so is to suggest that the
praise must be regarded from the point of view of the narrator.[1] Jesus is
going to use the story for a purpose which requires that the conduct of the
steward should be in some respects praiseworthy; therefore it is represented as
being actually praised by the injured employer, though in reality it could
hardly have been. It would compromise the natural probability of the parable
were we to have recourse to this expedient for getting rid of the difficulty.
But it is really not necessary. The praise is after all not so unlikely as it
seems. At first sight, no doubt, it appears as if an outburst of anger at this
new act of villainy had been much more appropriate. But in truth the stage of
anger is past. The master has had his bitter hours over the unfaithfulness of
his servant, and these have issued in a determination to be rid of him. That
resolution once formed, the master will not be troubled with any further
vexation. He expects doubtless additional evidence of knavery before he is done
with the unprincipled man. But then he does expect it, and has discounted it
already. The exposure, when it comes, will awaken no further emotions of a
painful kind. Any feeling that may be called forth will be of the nature of
amusement. Henceforth the degraded steward will be a kind of psychological study
to him. He will be curious to know just what the fellow will do in his
extremity. And if the knave show talent, dexterity, he will be quite able to
appreciate it, and in the mood even to bestow on it a sort of humorous
laudation. Of course the praise will have a noticeable peculiarity of tone. You
are not to imagine the master setting himself seriously to pronounce a eulogy on
his ex-steward; that were a very prosaic supposition. The lord looks, says
Calvin, not to the person but to the deed itself. There is humour in the
situation, and the praise must be understood cum grano salis. The now completed
career and the character of the dismissed servant lie in full view before his
lord’s eye. The picture presents a strange mixture of prodigality, magnificence,
cleverness, and unscrupulousness, not without its fascination, and exciting in
the beholder mixed feelings of abhorrence and admiration. In the last act of the
drama the hero displays all his qualities, bad and good. How natural that the
exhibition should extort from the spectator, even though he be one who has
suffered injury at his hand, such expressions of approbation as men are wont to
use with reference to skill, ability, and tact, dissociated from principle. One
does not need to be a "man of the world" in order to utter or appreciate such
laudatory phrases;[2] nothing more is required than the power to enjoy the
display of character.

[1] So Reuss.

[2] Alford and others remark that the master is a man of the world also, to
account for the praise of a clever but unprincipled person. With the praise
bestowed on his unrighteous servant the parable ends; all that follows is
application. The moral interpretation begins properly at the ninth verse with
the solemn formula—And I say unto you. The last clause of the preceding verse
may be regarded as a parenthesis explanatory of the term φρονίμως, employed to
describe the action of the steward. One might be tempted to regard it as a
reflection inserted by the Evangelist, similar to that which occurs in the
discourse of Jesus, recorded in the seventh chapter of his Gospel.[1] It has
somewhat the tone of those explanatory enlargements by which primitive disciples
might naturally unfold for the edification of themselves and their brethren the
latent meaning of Christ’s pregnant words; whereof we have a sample in the
addition of the words, unto repentance, in the saying, I came not to call the
righteous, but sinners. For the reflection, though true and important, is not
absolutely indispensable. Without it we could understand what it was that the
lord in the parable praised, and how it came to pass that there was that in his
servant which provoked his approbation. We know that there is such a thing as
practical skill and talent leading to success in life, apart from principle; and
we know, moreover, that very often most unprincipled men are exceptionally
endowed with such talent Such knowledge is a part of the ethical lore which men
learn by observation. It would not therefore have been surprising if Christ had
left the truth in question unexpressed, to be supplied by the intelligence of
His hearers. It is, however, on the other hand, by no means incredible that our
Lord did wind up the parabolic narrative with the observation, that "the
children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of
light." It is, as Bengel remarks, a sublime sentence most worthy of the
celestial mouth of Jesus Christ![2] It is a weighty truth expressed in choice
language. The title bestowed on those who are not of this world is especially
noteworthy. It does full justice to their superior dignity Children of the
light! How much better at the worst to belong to the goodly company than to
possess in the highest degree the talent which conducts to worldly success, and
by the use thereof to gain a place among the chief men of the world! Children of
the light, having spiritual insight into the relative worth and unworth of
things, and therefore choosing the better part which shall not be taken away!
Children of the light, walking in the sunshine of holiness, and having no
fellowship with the works of darkness! Yet taking the children of the light at
their best, how inferior they are in the talent for getting on as compared with
the world’s children! One may say, the more they are children of the light, the
less of that talent they possess. On the other hand, it is the talent of the
children of the world. The world is their portion, and to know the art of
advancing their own interest in the struggle of life with their own kind is
their study, and their frequent attainment. Thus understood, the apophthegm
conveys no censure on the children of the light for not being more like the
children of the world. The purpose is not to blame the former for the want of a
certain quality, but to advert to the fact of the latter possessing it in a
signal degree. "Praised him for his prudence; for his prudence, I say, for a
prudent and skilful prosecution of self-interest is a notable characteristic of
the men of the world; it is the thing which distinguishes them as compared with
the children of light." If blame be intended, then we must give the saying
another turn, and understand it thus: "The children of the world show more skill
in the prosecution of their worldly interest (εἰς τὴν νενεὰν τὴν ἑαυτῶν—in
relation to worldly men and temporal interests) than the children of light
exhibit in relation to their eternal interests." The objection to this view is,
that it is true only in proportion as men are not children of the light. There
are multitudes of so-called children of the light who are much more wise with
regard to temporal than to eternal interests. But are they children of the light
at all? Would Jesus have called them by that dignified name? Is not the true
child of light one who is wise for eternity, and a fool for this world? And yet
there are degrees of light: there are those who walk wholly in the day and
worthily of their vocation, seeking in all things the higher goods of life, and
measuring the value of all things by their bearing on the health of the spirit.
There are others who walk in the moonlight, seeing dimly, groping after the
summum bonum, aspiring to eternal life, candidates for initiation rather than
epopts, and not well instructed as to what most tends to promote their eternal
interest. We must suppose that Jesus has in view these specially. The advice
which follows is such as suits them. If such are meant then we may see in the
application to them of the epithet, ’children of the light,’ an evidence at once
of the charity and of the wisdom of Jesus—of His charity in conferring a title
hardly deserved; of His wisdom in conveying through the use of the title an
indirect admonition. "Children of light, I call you: such is your ideal
position; make it a practical reality by acting on the advice I proceed to give
to you."

[1] Luk 7:29-30.

[2] Sublimis est hæc sententia, cœlesti ore Iesu Christi dignissima. That advice
is obviously expressed, and with great felicity, in terms suggested by the
parable. The summum bonum is conceived of eschatologically as a state of
felicity entered upon at death corresponding to the provision made for his
well-being by the steward after his dismissal from office. Death is referred to
in very peculiar terms: that when ye fail, or when it, your worldly good, fails
you—for it is difficult to decide between the two readings. The weight of
diplomatic and critical authority is in favour of ἐκλίπη, but the other reading
given in the received text seems to sympathise best with the parabolic
representation. Both forms of expression are in accordance with usage, the verb
being employed to denote death in the Septuagint, as in Gen 25:8, with reference
to the decease of Abraham, and the corresponding adjective being applied to
riches in this same Gospel.[1] Our own preference is decidedly for the old
reading as the more impressive and poetical, as also more in keeping with the
connection of thought. That when ye fail, when ye suffer the last eclipse and
bankruptcy of life—how significant and pathetic the allusion!—how unmistakable,
too, in this respect contrasting with the other form of expression, which does
not shut us up to death as the only possible interpretation, for riches may fail
before death overtakes us.

[1] θησαυρὸν ἁνίκλειπτον: Luk 12:33.

Still more striking are the terms in which the future state is described. The
abodes of the blessed are called the eternal tents. The expression is
paradoxical, combining two ideas apparently incompatible—the idea of an
unchanging home, with the idea of transitoriness inseparable from tent life. A
tent is the lodging of a pilgrim and stranger; heaven is the everlasting
dwelling-place, the. perennial house and home of the beatified. But in this very
combination of apparently incongruous ideas lies the poetry and power of this
remarkable phrase. It transfers the pathos of the pilgrim life of time into the
life of eternity. It has been suggested with much probability that the
expression is taken from the patriarchal history. "The tents of Abraham and
Isaac under the oaks of Mamre are transported by the thought into that life to
come which is represented by the image of a glorified Canaan. What is the future
for poetry but the past idealised!"[1]

[1] Godet.

These tents have among their occupants men whose life on earth was hard and
sorrowful, and who are now enjoying eternal comfort, even the Lazaruses to whom
this world was a veritable vale of tears. Of these Jesus counsels His hearers
who possess wealth to make therewith friends. He speaks as one who is confident
that it will be worth while to follow this course; that it will prove to be true
prudence. "I say unto you, make to yourselves friends with the mammon of
unrighteousness. Mark my words—I assure you the line of action I recommend will
turn out good policy. If you do those who want what ye possess a good turn now,
they will be able and willing to do you a good turn hereafter. When ye get from
death notice to quit they will receive you into the eternal tents where they
dwell in peace and joy with Abraham. Your beneficiaries now, they will become
hereafter your benefactors."[1]

[1] Schöttgen states that the Jews believed that the poor could receive the rich
into heaven. Alford quotes a genial remark of Richard Baxter’s: "Is there joy in
heaven at thy conversion, and shall there be none at thy glorification?" The
form of the thought thus quaintly expressed is that naturally arising out of the
parable. The essential truth is, that genuine beneficence has value with God,
the Judge of all the earth. The statement that those whom we benefit now will
receive us into heaven means, that God has regard to deeds of charity, done in
the true spirit of charity, in determining men’s eternal destiny. The doctrine
taught here is therefore substantially identical with that set forth in the
parabolic representation of the last Judgment, in which those who are welcomed
to the abodes of the blessed are they who have done acts of kindness to Christ
in the person of the poor and needy. It is a doctrine with which we Protestants
are not quite at home, and which we are apt to regard with jealousy as
endangering the supremacy of faith as the grace that saves. That we should wish
to bring all Scripture statements into harmony with our dogmatic formulae is
natural enough, but before setting ourselves to this task it will be well to
impress upon our minds how very much teaching in the same line as that of this
parable there is in the Scriptures. Going back to the Old Testament we find
these beautiful words in the Book of Daniel: "Wherefore, O king, let my counsel
be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine
iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, if it may be a lengthening of thy
tranquillity." The recognition of the principle on which Daniel’s counsel was
based in the New Testament is very pronounced. To the pious Cornelius it is
declared by a Divine message: "Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a
memorial before God." The Apostle Peter, who was sent to teach the devout
proselyte the Christian faith, in his Epistle writes: "Charity covereth a
multitude of sins." Paul bids Timothy "charge them that are rich in this world,
that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living
God.... that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute,
willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation
against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal lite." Finally
Christ Himself said to the inquirer after eternal life: "If thou wilt be
perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven."[1] Luther reckoned the Epistle of James a strawy
production, because it appeared to him to contradict Paul’s doctrine of
justification alone; and we could imagine an over-zealous defender of that
doctrine, in possession of a courage equal to Luther’s, boldly calling in
question the authenticity of the above-cited utterances, and pronouncing them
one and all apocryphal in source and uncanonical in tendency. The Christian of
soberer mind will incline rather to make room for the doctrine they teach in his
creed, and to give earnest heed to it in his conduct, believing that so doing he
will be attending to matters which make for salvation. For it is a mistake to
imagine that the teaching of these texts, and of the counsel appended to our
parable, is Ebionitic, making poverty a virtue, and charity towards the poor, in
the purely external sense of almsgiving, a passport to heaven. The mere
possession of riches is not represented as an evil, but only the unwise use of
them.[2] And the wise use does not consist in making money in unscrupulous ways,
and then compounding for the iniquity by charitable donations. Our Lord’s
teaching concerning money may have been abused to that effect; but what part of
His teaching has not been abused? What He aimed at was to raise His disciples up
to a spiritual view of the world, as not an end in itself, but only a means to
an end. To those who had been slaves of the world He preached a higher life,
that consisted not in the abundance of the things they possessed. But He did not
merely set that higher life and earthly possessions over against each other. He
taught that the lower goods could be used so as to increase one’s spiritual
wealth. He held this to be possible in every case. There was no man, in His
view, however degraded, sordid, and even unrighteous his life had been, who
could not redeem the past and insure the future by a wise, beneficent use of his
means. The only hopeless character was that of the selfish man, who continued
all his life to live only for himself, having no solicitude to make friends with
the mammon of unrighteousness.

[1] These and other instances are enumerated in a most effective manner by M.
Oilier of Lille in his excellent book, ’Méditations Chrétiennes sur des
Paraboles,’ 1880. It is a collection of sermons full of insight and eloquence.

[2] Godet well remarks, that the sin connected with mammon consists not,
according to the parable, in being the stewards of God, but in forgetting that
we are. This phrase, the mammon of unrighteousness, must therefore not be
timidly interpreted. Many shades of meaning have been put upon it, largely with
a view to avoid exegetical encouragement to licentious abuse of our Lord’s
words. Mammon, we are told, is called unrighteous because it is evil when it is
made our chief good, however lawfully gotten;[1] or because it is deceitful,
that is, of uncertain tenure;[2] or because there is no money which has not at
some time 01 other been unrighteously used, although possibly not by the present
possessor;[3] or because money represents the distinction of property—meum and
tuum, which is itself the fruit of sin;[4] or because it has not been employed
for charitable purposes, neglect of this duty being called ἀδικία, as the
practice of it was called δικαιοσύνη.[5] Most commentators shrink from that
which might appear the most natural interpretation: the mammon which you have
gotten by unrighteousness. They tell us that with reference to such a case
Christ would have counselled, not charity, but restitution. Nevertheless we
hesitate not to say that the epithet applied to money may and ought to be
understood in the last sense, not to the exclusion of the others, but with very
emphatic inclusion of it among the possible meanings. Its importance consists in
this, that it exhibits the extreme limit of unrighteousness, and so tests the
value of the principle. Beneficence must have virtue indeed if it can redeem a
life of unrighteousness; if even in the case of men who have gained wealth by
fraud, there be a right use of wealth possible by which they can benefit not
only others, but themselves in the highest sense. Why should we hesitate to say
that Jesus did contemplate such an extreme case? Among His hearers and disciples
were probably not a few publicans; men like Zacchæus, mentioned a little further
on in this Gospel. What counsel was He to give them? To restore what they had
gotten by false and unrighteous means? Certainly, where possible. But what was
to be done in the many instances in which it was impossible? Surely the money
which could not be restored should be put to the best possible use. Let the
penitent publican do all the good to others he could, and so redeem the bad past
as far as lay in his power; putting the poor and the needy in the place of those
whom he had wronged, and to whom he could no longer give redress.[6]

[1] So Reuss.

[2] Kuinoel and others.

[3] Jerome, Melancthon, &c.

[4] Trench, Alford, &c.

[5] Lightfoot (’Hor. Heb.’); but with hesitation.

[6] The word mammon (properly mamon) in the Syriac means money. The idea that it
was the name of a god was of mediæval origin. There is no suggestion in the text
that mammon is essentially evil, though the concluding reflection in Luk 16:13,
"Ye cannot serve God and mammon," may seem to suggest an antagonism between a
good and an evil being. But it is impossible to serve two masters, whoever they
be. We cannot love both God and earthly friends supremely, any more than God and
earthly possessions. It would be better to replace the word mammon in out
English version by money or wealth. The moral sentences which follow do not
appear to us to be of great importance for the interpretation of the parable;
but they are of some use as giving us additional insight into Christ’s way of
regarding wealth. He virtually applies to money a series of epithets all tending
to show how insignificant were the possessions of time in His view in comparison
with the eternal riches. Wealth is the little, the unsubstantial, that which is
really not ours, because we cannot retain it in the day of death; eternal life
being the great boon, the true riches, that which is our own, because it abides
with us for ever. The proper use, therefore, of the little that is fleeting is
to use it with a view to the attainment of the much which endures.

One word more will finish what we have to say on this remarkable parable. The
lesson taught here suggests an important theological inference. If kindness to
the poo» have such value in the sight of God, it must be because God Himself is
a Being who delights in loving-kindness. In teaching a morality of love Jesus
virtually teaches a theology of grace. The two go together. Therefore, though
the parable before us is ethical in its tendency rather than doctrinal, it may
be legitimately reckoned among the parables of grace. The graciousness of the
parable comes out in the quality of the ethics taught.


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  CHAPTER 24: 01.19.        CHAPTER 8. DIVES AND LAZARUS, AND THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT
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Chapter 8. Dives and Lazarus, and the Unmerciful Servant Or, Inhumanity and
Implacability the Unpardonable Sins. The genius of an ethical system is revealed
not only by what it loves, but by what it heartily hates, and regards as deadly
unpardonable sin. In the teaching of Christ the unpardonable sins are Inhumanity
and Implacability. It is the selfish worldling who cares for nothing but his own
comfort that goes to the place of woe; it is the unforgiving man whom the Father
in heaven does not forgive. So we learn from the two parables next to be
considered, the last in the present division. The doctrine is altogether
congenial to a gospel of love, and fitly crowns the goodly edifice of spiritual
instruction set forth in the parables of grace. Where love is regarded as the
central truth of God’s being, and the supreme duty and virtue of man, there a
loveless spirit must appear the thing above all things hateful and damnable. We
feel, therefore, that we commit no offence against the law of congruity in
including the parables of Dives and the Unmerciful Servant under the same class
with those of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son, and treating them
as contributions to Christ’s doctrine of Grace. Without misgiving on this score
we proceed to the exposition of these parables, taking first the more difficult,
viz.: The Parable of Dives and Lazarus

Now there was a certain rich[1] man, and he was clothed in purple and fine
linen, and fared sumptuously every day.[2] And a certain beggar, Lazarus by
name, was laid at his gate[3] covered with ulcers, and desiring to be fed with
the crumbs[4] that fell from the rich man’s table: yea, even[5] the dogs came
and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died, and that he was
carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: and the rich man also died and was
buried. And in Hades, lifting up his eyes, being in torments, he seeth Abraham
from afar, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said: Father Abraham, have
mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water,
and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said: Son,
remember that thou receivedst thy good things in thy lifetime and Lazarus in
like manner the evil things:[6] but now here[7] he is comforted, and thou art in
anguish. And besides all this,[8] between us and you there is a great chasm[9]
fixed, that they which would pass from hence to you may not be able,[10] and
that none may cross over from thence to us. Then he said: I pray thee,
therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house, for I have
five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this
place of torment. But Abraham saith, They have Moses and the prophets: let them
hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham, but if one go to them from the
dead, they will repent. But he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rise from the dead.—Luk
16:19-31.

[1] Bleek regards πλούσιος as a predicate, and renders: There was a certain man
who was rich.

[2] Dr. Field criticising the revised version, says: "The Revisers have done
right in retaining the A. V. except that for ’faring’ they might with advantage
have substituted ’feasting.’ But in the margin they propose another rendering,
’living in mirth and splendour every day.’ Here the luxurious living of the rich
man is presented to us under two different aspects; mirth, which we may suppose
to consist in eating and drinking; and splendour, which suggests elegance of
house and furniture. But the Greek word εὐφρμινόμενος only contains the former
idea, that of merrymaking, which is qualified by the adverb λαμπρῶς, laute,
sumptuously."—’Otium Norvicense.’

[3] ἐβἐβλητο does not necessarily mean more than ’lay.’

[4] The correct reading is τῶν πιπτόντων = the things falling. ψιχίων =
’crumbs,’ has probably crept in from Mat 15:27. Godet, however, thinks it has
dropped out by confusion of the two τῶν and ought to be retained.

[5] ἀλλὰ καὶ, implying if not an aggravation of his sufferings, a heightened
colouring in the description of them.

[6] Τὰ κακὰ, the ills of life; not his evil things, as in the case of Dives
Goebel, however, maintains that the pronoun is understood.

[7] ὠδε: ὀδε=this one, Lazarus, in T. R.

[8] This rendering answers to the reading ἐπὶ πᾶσι τούτοις. The reading approved
by critics is ἐν πᾶσι τούτοις, literally, "in all these things."

[9] Χάσμα. Trench remarks that when the A. V. was published the word ’chasm’ did
not exist in English. The R. V. retains ’gulf.’

[10] The word ὄπως at the beginning of this clause suggests the idea that the
chasm has been fixed for the purpose of preventing transit. In the
interpretation of this parable much depends on the view taken of the connection
between it and the preceding portion of the chapter in which it occurs. If the
connection is supposed to be with the immediately preceding context, then the
main drift of the parable will be found in the concluding verses, in which the
importance of Moses and the prophets as means of grace is emphasised. If, on the
other hand, these miscellaneous observations contained in Luk 16:14-18 be passed
over as a kind of parenthesis interrupting the train of thought, and the present
parable be connected with the one going before, then we shall discover the
didactic significance not in the appendix, but in the main body of the story
viewed as a fictitious history invented to illustrate the moral with which the
parable of the unrighteous steward ends. We have no hesitation in deciding for
the latter view. The imaginary narrative of the rich man and Lazarus is
intended, as we think, to enforce the counsel to make friends with the mammon of
unrighteousness by showing the disadvantage of not having such friends to
facilitate admission into the eternal tents.[1] It is quite likely that Christ
would illustrate such a striking counsel by some such startling story; highly
probable that He meant to do so irrespective of the words which He was led to
speak by the derision of the Pharisees among His audience; so that we may see in
the introduction of the parable the resumption of the discourse at the point at
which it had been broken off.[2] So far from finding the key to the
interpretation of the parable in the sentences interpolated between it and the
preceding one, we should rather be disposed to agree with those who think that
some of these sentences at least, especially those respecting the perpetual
validity of the law, have found a place here because of the turn of thought at
the close of the parable. The sentences concerning the law do not explain the
story which follows; that story rather explains the presence of these sentences
in the foregoing context. They come in at that point, because the story with its
peculiar conclusion was to follow. We do not affirm this dogmatically; we simply
throw it out as a hypothesis preferable to being led astray in our
interpretation by the assumption of a rigid adherence to historical sequence on
the part of the narrator.

[1] So Olshausen. He says that the connection between the two parables is
unmistakable. As in the one an example is given how earthly goods may be used
for the service of God, so in the other we have an example of one who uses his
possessions only for his own enjoyment. In Lazarus, on the other hand, appears
one who could have been of service to the rich man with reference to heaven.
Here, therefore, again is beneficence, compassionate love, commended.

[2] So in effect Greswell. In none of the parables is the determination of the
central viewpoint at once more needful and more difficult. The need arises out
of the indefinite possibilities of didactic inference opened up by the scene
being in part laid in the invisible world, concerning which it is of the utmost
importance to draw no false conclusions. The difficulty springs from the fact
that the parable itself is unusually undidactic in form. In this case the
moralist retires far into the background, and only the artist comes to the front
The artistic power displayed is not inferior to anything in the whole range of
the parabolic literature. In its descriptive vividness, as in its delicacy and
pathos, the touch of the Limner is inimitable. But the Great Master does not in
express terms tell us this time what His picture means; we are left to draw the
moral lesson for ourselves. And the diversity of judgment as to the doctrinal
tendency of the parable shows that this is by no means an easy task. The
question, What does this story teach? has been very diversely answered. Some
have found in it a proclamation, in parabolic form, of the general doctrine of
future rewards and punishments for the good and evil deeds of the present life,
with sundry items of information concerning the states of the saved and the lost
respectively, the most momentous being that the separation between the two
classes is absolute and final—the dialogue between Abraham and Dives having for
its chief aim to proclaim this fact. And it is quite conceivable that our Lord
might have spoken a parable bearing on such a topic. But then in such a parable
we should have expected to find the characters of those whose future lots were
to be so different more clearly indicated than they are in the one before us, in
which Dives, though rich and living luxuriously, is not represented as wicked,
and Lazarus, though poor and spending a wretched existence, is not represented
as pious. The description would be sufficient, only if the doctrine intended
were, that to be rich is a crime and to be poor a virtue. And such, in fact, in
the opinion of some, is the doctrinal import of the parable. Its burden is, Woe
to the rich! blessed are the poor.[1] It is simply a vivid concrete
representation of what is taught in the makarisms and woes with which Luke’s
version of the Sermon on the Mount begins.[2] Something more and different, it
is admitted, is contained in the concluding part, which is regarded as a
supplement appended at a later date to the original parable, to rectify its
Ebionitism by making Dives be damned, not for his wealth, but for his neglect of
Old Testament teaching,[3] or by giving the rich man the character of a Judaism
remaining unbelieving in spite of the resurrection of Christ.[4] Those to whom
the imputation of Ebionitic tendencies to our Lord is offensive, and who
nevertheless discover in this part of His teaching the doctrine of future
recompenses, find themselves constrained to purge out the evil taint by bringing
out of the description of the two contrasted characters more than appears on the
surface. The chief effort is directed to Lazarus with the view of transforming
him from a merely poor and miserable wight into a saint. This is done by
imputing to his name moral significance. In the first place, importance is
attached to the fact of a name being given to him, the only instance of the kind
in the whole range of parabolic utterances. Then stress is laid on the
composition of the name: it being equivalent to Eleazar, which means, God my
help.[5] ‎ Thus the name used descriptively as so often among the Jews, conveys
the intimation that Lazarus was a man who put his trust in God, and bore all the
ills of life in pious patience and hope. The exegetical process is most
ingenious, and it may not be altogether fanciful; only it is not satisfactory to
be obliged to rest our interpretation on what at the best is only a conjecture.
For that the poor man who lay at the rich man’s gate is named is accounted for
very simply by the consideration that a name for him was necessary in the
dialogue between Dives and Abraham.[6] And as for the significance of the name,
even granting the correctness of the derivation vindicated, it may be
descriptive of state rather than of character: Lazarus, one whom God helps, that
is, who has no other helper: a forlorn man-forsaken mortal.[7] [1] So De Wette,
who denies that the parable is the counterpart of the preceding one.

[2] So Weizsäcker, ’Untersuchungen,’ p. 215, and the Tubingen school.

[3] So Pfleiderer, ’Paulinismus,’ p. 449. Also Weizsäcker, p. 215.

[4] So Hilgenfeld, ’Einleitung,’ p. 566, after Zeller.

[5] ‏אֵלי עֵזֶד

[6] So Hofmann.

[7] Another derivation of the word is ‏לאׁ עֵוֶר‎ = not-help. The dogmatic
interpretation of the parable, as one setting forth the doctrine of recompense,
undergoes modification in the hands of those who insist on a close connection
between the parable and the immediately preceding context. The rich man now
becomes the representative of Pharisaism, and the parable sets forth in
pictorial style the judgment of God on that system. On this view Lazarus ceases
to be an independent character exhibiting the bright side of the doctrine of
recompense, and subsides into a mere foil to the principal figure. In the
worldly state of Dives is represented that which is high among men,[1]. and from
the reversal of his fortune in the state of the dead we learn the esteem in
which the same is held of God. Lazarus is introduced into the scene on this side
the grave to make the grandeur of the world all the more imposing, and he
reappears in the scene laid in Hades to give the damnation of pride an aspect
most deeply tragic. But the main object of the scene in the invisible world is
to lead up to the sentiment concerning Moses and the prophets put into the mouth
of Abraham. In that sentiment is contained a virtual censure of Pharisaism as a
system whose whole tendency was to weaken the authority of the very law in which
it placed its trust and boast; a tendency specially apparent in connection with
the precept against adultery, to which reference is made in the eighteenth
verse. Thus the parable is the judgment at once of Pharisaic pride and
ostentatious worldliness, and of Pharisaic laxity; in one word, the judgment of
Pharisaic hypocrisy under its twofold aspect of self-indulgence veiled by petty
austerities, and of moral license disguised by a scrupulous regard to legal
minutiae. Christ virtually says to the Pharisees: "Ye affect an austere life,
but ye are in reality luxurious men: ye are very jealous in appearance for the
honour of the law, but ye do your best to make the law void. In both respects ye
are an abomination in the sight of God, and your damnation is certain and just."

[1] Luk 16:15 This interpretation is open to one very obvious criticism, viz.
that one does not at all readily recognise in the description of Dives the
picture of a Pharisee. As you read you incline rather to say: Behold a Sadducee
delineated—by his wealth, his splendid style of living, his outer robe of
purple-dyed wool, and his inner tunic of fine Egyptian linen,[1] pointed out
unmistakably as one of the party who believed not in a hereafter, and therefore
acted on the maxim: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."[2] Accordingly
Schleiermacher threw out the conjecture that Dives is Herod Antipas, taking the
hint from the allusion to adultery in the verse immediately preceding the
commencement of our parable. On this view the parable still remains the judgment
of the Pharisees, saying to them in effect: "This is what comes of your
teaching; it sends the great ones of the earth to hell; by your lax
interpretations of the moral law ye destroy the chief means of grace for such,
and remove the restraints which might keep them from perdition." The reference
being to so exalted a personage it was convenient that this should be said by a
parabolic representation rather than in plain terms.[3] The theory is ingenious.
Still it confessedly leaves much unexplained; a much larger proportion of
material to which no didactic significance is assigned, Schleiermacher
acknowledges, than in any other parable.

[1] So are the words "purple and fine linen" to be distributed, the one
referring to the upper, and the other to the under garment. To these, but in
reverse order, reference is made in Mat 5:40, "If any man will take away thy
coat, let him have thy cloke also." Mr. Nicholson blames the authors of the
revised New Testament for retaining this ambiguous and misleading rendering. He
says: "The word rendered ’coat’ means ’shirt,’ a garment lying next the skin,
reaching sometimes to the knee, sometimes to the ankle, kept close to the body
by a girdle, and worn either by itself or with an outer robe—the ’cloke.’ Of
these two the ordinary dress consisted, and were a man deprived of both, he
would have nothing left... But the translation of the Authorised and Revised
Versions suggests that he would have at least a shirt left.—’Our new New
Testament,’ p. 39.

[2] Wetstein says: "Sadducaeum describi ex divitiis, victu, amictu et petitione
patet; Pharisaii enim credebant animos esse superstites, jejunabant crebro,
modestius vestiebantur, et pauperiores erant."

[3] ’Über die Schriften des Lukas,’ p. 152. In view of the unsatisfactoriness of
all these dogmatic constructions, it is not surprising that some should have
felt themselves driven in despair to take up the position that the parable has
no doctrinal aim, and contains no definite doctrinal teaching, but is simply
intended to startle men into serious thought and make them look below appearance
to reality, and keep in mind the eternal future amid the enjoyments of the
present.[1] It thus becomes a mere memento mori addressed to unbelieving men of
all classes who do not live under the power of the world to come, but are
Sadducees in heart whatever their professed creed. Of course, when the didactic
drift is reduced to this vague generality, we can understand how a Sadducee
might be selected to convey the lesson, even though it was addressed immediately
to Pharisees. Unbelief is a leaven common to both Pharisees and Sadducees, and
any one who lives a worldly life will serve the purpose of enforcing the moral:
"Be wise in time." Dives is merely one of many possible illustrations of an
important but much neglected commonplace.[2] [1] So Dr. Service in ’Salvation
here and hereafter’; also Reuss.

[2] This is substantially the line of thought pursued by Trench. Vide his
remarks, in loc.

We are very loth to come to the conclusion that such pointless generalities are
all that we can extract from this remarkable portion of our Lord’s teaching. As
we remarked in another connection, it is characteristic of His parables, as
compared with those of the Rabbis, that their lessons are not moral
commonplaces, but specific truths, unfamiliar, and for the most part unwelcome.
Of course moral commonplaces are implied—it being, as we have more than once
remarked, part of the felicity of the parables that they suggest much more than
they expressly teach. The parable before us is no exception. It implies and
indirectly conveys many important moral lessons, such as that "the decision of
the next world will often reverse the estimation wherein men are held in this;
that God is no respecter of persons; that the heart must make its choice between
the good things of this life, and those which the externals of this life do not
affect."[1] It presupposes and recalls to mind truths more general still and not
less momentous, such as that there is a future life after death in which men
will receive the appropriate recompense of the deeds done in the life that now
is. But it was not to teach such truths generally believed, if little laid to
heart, that Christ spake in parables, but to express doctrine more original,
more distinctively Christian, more peculiar to the kingdom of God. Thus in the
parabolic representation of the Judgment in the twenty-fifth chapter of
Matthew’s Gospel the specific lesson is not that there will be such a Judgment,
but the principle on which the Judgment will proceed, viz. the great law of
charity. In like manner we come to the interpretation of the parable before us
quite expecting to find that its distinctive lesson is not the general doctrine
of retribution, but some specific information as to the ground of condemnation
in harmony with Christ’s whole teaching, though not in accordance with current
opinion. The general doctrine of retribution was part of the current opinion of
the time, formed indeed a prominent item in the Pharisaic creed, as the
parabolic form of the present discourse implies; for a parable uses things
familiar to illustrate things unfamiliar. But that the supreme virtue is love,
and that the damning sin is selfish inhumanity, formed no part of the ethical
system of the age, and it would not surprise us to find Christ speaking a
parable to teach these truths.

[1] Farrar, ’The Life of Christ,’ vol. ii. p. 128.

Just such we take to be the didactic significance of the imaginary history of
the rich man and Lazarus. This ’parable,’ for so we may continue to call it,
though in strictness it is hardly entitled to the designation, has two dogmatic
momenta: that inhumanity is a damning sin, and that it is a sin without excuse.
The former is the burden of the first part of the parable (Luk 16:19-26); the
latter of the concluding portion (Luk 16:27-31). This analysis, it is obvious,
does not destroy the unity of the parable, because the second doctrine is
clearly allied to the first, and forms its necessary complement. A sin is not
damning unless it be inexcusable; when a valid plea in extenuation can be
advanced judicial rigour is out of place. The only question that can be asked
is, whether we have correctly indicated the doctrinal gist of the story in both
its parts. That question shall be answered in the following exposition, in which
we hope to make it appear that all details can be naturally accounted for by,
and form together a harmonious picture around, these central truths which we
place in the foreground. The first point calling for notice is the character of
the rich man. Our construction of the parable requires that Dives should be, by
clear implication if not by express statement, accused of inhumanity. Is the
fact then so? Now what is expressly stated is, that Dives lived a life of
princely splendour and luxury, attired as princes are attired, and faring as
princes fare. It is not said that he was addicted to the vices which too often
accompany fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness. It is not even alleged in
so many words that he was hard-hearted towards the poor. Had that been charged,
we could understand the absence of all other charges, for the effect would
simply be to accentuate the wickedness of an unsympathetic spirit. But if even
this is not charged what becomes of our dogmatic construction? Before, however,
we come to the conclusion that Dives is not represented as being the opposite of
benevolent, we must make sure that we have taken into consideration all that is
stated concerning him. Observe what follows: "There was a certain beggar named
Lazarus, which was laid at his gate." This is a fact of importance in the
history of Dives. Lazarus enters on the stage not merely to present a striking
contrast to the rich man’s state, but as one with whom the latter had relations.
Lazarus represents opportunity for the exercise of humanity. That is the chief
if not the sole purpose for which he appears in the first scene. He comes before
us a picture of want and woe, and says: "I was laid at this man’s gate. He knew
me; he could not pass from his house into the street without seeing my
condition; yet as a leprous beggar I have lived, and as a beggar I will die."
And Lazarus is not to be regarded as a solitary individual; he is one of a class
who abound in the world, and are never far from the gates even of palaces. In no
place in the world can the rich man say with truth, There are no poor and needy
near me whom I can feed, and clothe, and cherish. To those who plead such an
excuse for a selfish life it may ever be replied: Ye have the poor always with
you. That is in effect what Christ meant to say by the introduction of Lazarus
in the first part of the story. He reminds those whom He counsels to make
friends with the mammon of unrighteousness that they will never lack abundant
opportunities for doing so. By representing Lazarus as laid at the rich man’s
gate He affirms the existence of opportunities of the most obtrusive sort,
forcing themselves on men’s attention, and not to be escaped; not needing to be
sought out, but seeking them out and compelling them to realise their
responsibilities. When once it is understood that Lazarus is but a symbol for
ample, urgent, inescapable opportunity, it is seen to be the obvious implication
that Dives is one who neglects his opportunities. The assertion of opportunity
is made for the very purpose of implying such neglect. It has indeed been asked
by some, anxious to fasten on the parable an Ebionitic bias, if the rich man was
inhuman, why was the poor man deposited by friends at his door?[1] And we
willingly allow force to the question, so far as to admit that the natural
probability of the parable requires us to think of Lazarus as getting something
at the rich man’s gate; at least a pittance sufficient to stave off starvation,
and to make it worth while for his relatives to bring him thither. And we can
afford to admit that he did get some crumbs from the great man’s table, through
the hands of servants; nay, possibly by the order of their master, who, being
aware that an object of pity lay at his street gate, may have given instructions
to that effect, not without a feeling of satisfaction and self-complacency.[2]
To what does all this amount to? Simply to this—that Dives was not a monster of
inhumanity. Christ had no intention of painting a monster; it was never His way
to bring exaggerated and indiscriminate charges against those whose lives He
disapproved, but rather to make generous admissions, even when dealing in stern
condemnation. What He desired to do in the present instance was to hold up the
picture of an average man of the world, living a self-centred life, coming
utterly short of the true ideal, while not without such small virtues as men of
the world ordinarily practise. If among these small virtues that of doling out
little charities to the poor found a place, then, by all means, He would say,
let this be conceded to Dives. He conceded as much to the Pharisees, whom,
nevertheless, He pronounced great sinners, even in their very almsgiving. He
could concede this to Dives, and yet represent him as one who neglected
opportunities for the exercise of humanity.[3] Ah, not so easily was Christ’s
ideal of humanity to be realised! Not by doling out crumbs to beggars could one
gain the honourable name of a friend of man. He who would win that high degree
must not only give alms in a small way, but bear the miseries of men as a burden
on his heart, in the spirit of Him who, though rich, for our sakes became poor.
He must behave towards the Lazaruses at his gate as the good Samaritan behaved
towards the wounded man. He must act as that king of whom it is written, that he
ate and drank and did judgment and justice, and especially that he judged the
cause of the poor and needy.[4] He must gain the blessing of them that are ready
to perish as Job gained it, who could protest that he had not withheld the poor
from their desire, or caused the eyes of the widow to fail, or seen any perish
for want of clothing, or any poor whose loins had not been warmed with the
fleece of his sheep, or any stranger to whom he had not opened his doors.[5]
After all has been said that can be said in his behalf, Dives is obviously not a
man of this heroic type: not a good Samaritan, not a benignant prince, not a
generous, noble-hearted Job, not a man who knows anything of the passion for
beneficence, of the ’enthusiasm of humanity;’ but merely a commonplace man of
the world, with vulgar, self-centred aims, and no virtues and humanities, save
such as are conventional.

[1] So De Wette; vid. note 1, p. 377.

[2] The clause, καὶ οὐδεὶς ἐδιδοῦ αὐτῷ, found in some cursive MSS. and versions,
borrowed doubtless from Luk 15:16, is a gloss arising out of the feeling, that
even a minimum of humanity is excluded by the intention of the parable. As such
it is regarded as a correct comment by Meyer and Trench. In proof that the
beggar received nothing, Goebel emphasises ἐπιθυμῶν, and interprets, desiring in
vain. In a similar strain Trench writes, speaking of the crumbs: "Even these
were not thrown to him, or not in measure sufficient to satisfy his hunger."
Kuinoel and Hofmann, on the other hand, think it is implied that Lazarus did
receive the usual beggar’s portion.

[3] Kuinoel remarks, that though Dives gave crumbs to Lazarus, he did not
thereby make himself out a humane man, or comply with the precepts of the law
and the prophets as set forth in such texts as Deu 15:7-8; Isa 58:7; Pro 3:27.

[4] Jer 22:15-16.

[5] Job 31:16-22. The description given of the state of Lazarus quite answers to
this view of the behaviour of the rich man. Whatever was done for the leprous
beggar, left him as he was when he was first laid down at the rich man’s gate.
The very word ἐβέβλητο, though it means strictly only ’lay,’ might be adduced in
proof of this, as implying on the part of those who brought him there and threw
him down, the hard, unfeeling manner of men accustomed to misery, who had ceased
to hope, and had experienced nothing at the hands of Dives to change their mood.
Then the pathetic trait of the dogs licking the ulcers is very significant. Some
take it as conveying the idea that the dogs showed themselves more humane than
Dives, possibly their owner, cleaning and soothing the sores by their soft
tongues, adducing this feature as one of the evidences that a charge of
inhumanity against the rich man is intended.[1] Others take it as an aggravation
of the poor man’s misery, holding that the effect of the canine attentions would
be the reverse of soothing.[2] We take it as expressing neither alleviation nor
aggravation, but simply as giving vividness to the description of the sufferer’s
chronic condition. He lay there utterly helpless, so that the dogs approached
him without fear, as if he were a dead carcase rather than a living being.[3]
Such he was from the first, and such he continued to be till beneficent death
came and rescued him from his misery, and the manner in which his death is
spoken of completes the proof that he had received no effectual attentions from
his fellow-creatures during his lifetime. He died as he had lived—a beggar, and
his carcase was disposed of as if it had been that of a beast; for so we
understand the absence of all reference to his burial. Meyer infers therefrom,
that the body as well as the soul of the beggar was carried by the angels to
Paradise. Calvin, with better exegetical tact, suggests that nothing is said as
to what happened to the body, because it was contemptuously, and without honour,
thrown into a ditch.

[1] So Bleek, Hofmann.

[2] Bengel says the tongue of a dog would soothe a body slightly diseased (minus
affecto), but would increase the pain of one covered with ulcers.

[3] So Maldonatus, Grotius, &c. In confirmation of the view now taken of the
rich man’s character, it is legitimate to take into account the words put into
the mouth of Abraham as descriptive of his earthly state in contrast to that of
Lazarus, "Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus
evil things." Various shades of meaning have been assigned to the words.
Accentuating the verb in the former part of the sentence, some bring out of it
the meaning, "Thou didst get in full, or beforehand, thy good things."[1]
Others, emphasising the pronoun ’thy,’ render: "Thou receivedst the things on
which thy heart was set, which alone thou accountedst good."[2] This much at
least is implied—there was no communication of goods worth mentioning. Happiness
was the lot of Dives, and misery of Lazarus, and the former kept all his
happiness to himself, and took no pains to make his woe-stricken fellow-creature
partaker of it.

[1] So Meyer and Godet.

[2] So Hofmann. On all these grounds we cannot doubt that it was the intention
of our Lord to reproach Dives as one who regulated not his life by the law of
love, and who utterly failed to act on the maxim of making for himself friends
with the mammon of unrighteousness. But when we turn to Lazarus, and ask whether
there is any indication in the first part of the parable of an intention to
describe him as not only a poor, but also a pious man, we must answer in the
negative. For reasons already indicated, we cannot attach any importance to the
presence or the import of the name Lazarus. It may be assumed as certain, that
had the design of the parable required that the beggar’s piety should be
emphasised in the description of his earthly state, an epithet would have been
introduced to indicate the fact unmistakably. But how, then, are we to account
for the absence of such an epithet in view of the fact that Lazarus at death
goes to heaven, if we are not to say, with the Tubingen critics, that his
translation to bliss is the consolation for his earthly state of poverty? That
is the second question we have to consider, and the answer we give to it yields,
we think, a strong confirmation of our view as to the didactic drift of the
parable. Lazarus, though devout,—for of course that is implied in his going to
the bosom of Abraham,—is not represented as such, because the mention of the
fact was not necessary to constitute him a legitimate object of charity, but was
rather fitted to convey a fake impression as to the grounds on which the duties
of humanity rest. If we are right in the view, that to hold up the neglect of
these duties to reprobation is the aim of the parable, then to speak of the
piety of Lazarus, however sincere, would have been misleading irrelevance. For
it is not to the pious poor alone, but to all the destitute, suffering, and
miserable, of whatever character, that we owe the offices of charity. As Christ
came not to call the righteous, so we are not to pick out the godly from among
the children of poverty and affliction as the recipients of our sympathy and
succour. Character may make a difference as to our mode of showing sympathy, but
not as to the cherishing of the feeling of pity, the proper object of which is
misery. It would therefore have been an impertinence in Dives to excuse his lack
of compassion towards Lazarus by saying, "I did not know he was a saint." It was
enough that he knew he was a sufferer. It is just because this is so that the
parable is silent concerning the moral qualities of Lazarus. That silence is
exactly what we should expect on our view as to She intention of the parable,
and the fact is an argument in favour of that view. On the other hand, the same
reason which prescribed silence concerning the good qualities of Lazarus on
earth required that prominent mention should be made of the fact, that on his
decease he went to Abraham’s bosom. The didactic intention fully explains both.
It is not said that Lazarus lived piously, because not piety but want is the
proper object of benevolence; it is said that when he died he was carried by
angels to the bosom of Abraham, because he is needed there as an illustration of
the advantage of having friends who can facilitate our admission into the
eternal tents, For that is really the reason why the poor leper, who on earth
lay at the rich man’s gate, goes to the regions of bliss, so far as our parable
is concerned. In real life men go to heaven because they are good; in parables
they may go there because the motive of the story requires them to be there. In
saying this we do not of course mean to imply that it is beneficence to the
pious poor alone that counts, in other words, that unless the objects of
beneficence go to heaven the labour of the humane is in vain. The loving may be
received into the eternal tents, when those who have been the recipients of
their charity themselves fail to gain an entrance. But when the doctrine that
beneficence has value in the sight of God, the Judge of men, is put in the form
which it assumes in the previous parable, viz. that by beneficence men make for
themselves friends to receive them into heaven, it is obviously necessary that
these friends should themselves be conceived of as being there. It may be
objected, that on this view the presence of Lazarus in paradise remains still
unaccounted for, having a motive, indeed, but. no natural cause. This is true;
but it is an unavoidable defect arising out of the fact that Lazarus has to
perform two rôles with conflicting qualifications. On earth he represents the
objects of compassion, who are the miserable, saintly or otherwise; in heaven he
represents the friends who receive the benevolent into the eternal tents, who
could not themselves be there unless they had been saintly as well as poor. The
defect is no argument against our theory of the didactic significance of the
parable, but is one inseparable from the parabolic style of instruction. It
makes for our view, that by it we can account both for the silence concerning
the piety of Lazarus on earth, and for his presence nevertheless in heaven. On
the ordinary theory, according to which the parable teaches the general doctrine
of eternal recompense, neither is explained; and so the presence of Lazarus in
paradise remains at once without cause and without motive.

We pass now from the first scene to the second, from earth to Hades, the common
receptacle of the dead. Sooner or later death overtakes all men, and so it came
to pass that the beggar died, and the rich man also died and was buried. The
beggar dies first, in accordance with the requirements of natural probability;
for he suffers from a deadly disease which must soon cut him off, while the rich
man is full of health and strength. Death brings an exchange of fortunes; the
beggar formerly left to the tender mercies of dogs, is carried by angels to the
bosom of Abraham; the rich man finds himself in a very different quarter of
Hades, where torments are experienced. The latter fact is gently insinuated in a
participial clause, partly from pity, partly because it is not the purpose of
the speaker formally to teach the doctrine that there is a place of torments,
which is assumed as a currently received truth, but to convey a hint as to the
kind of people who go there. But, however reluctantly, the word must be spoken.
"Being in torments,"—where else could such an one as Dives be? Not surely in
Paradise, the home of the loving; in the bosom of Abraham, the father of the
faithful! The torments of the fires of Gehenna teach Dives a lesson, which, in
the fulness of earthly felicity, he had never needed to learn—the value of a
friend. "Oh for one able and willing to bring to me the faintest alleviation of
this pain!" So the tormented man is represented as raising his eyes, and seeing
in the distance, across the abyss that divides the two regions of Hades, Lazarus
nestling in the bosom of the patriarch, and requesting that his former
petitioner might be sent to distil a little water, drop by drop, with the tips
of his fingers on his burning, parched tongue. Insignificant boon, corresponding
to the morsels of food which was all that the beggar desired; but misery is
thankful for small mercies. What a vastly greater benefit Dives might have
gained through Lazarus, had he only turned his acquaintance with him to account
in good time! Had he made of him a friend with his worldly possessions he might
have been his companion in Paradise. But now, so far from attaining that
felicity, he cannot even obtain the little favour he craves. All or nothing is
the rule. So Abraham tells him in effect in the sequel of this Dialogue of the
Dead, in words whose very gentleness and courtesy make them a message of despair
rather than of comfort.[1] Two reasons are given for the refusal: the law of
equity, and the impossibility of complying with the request. What was fitting
had happened to both parties. The one had received his full share of felicity on
earth and was now in sorrow; the other had drunk a full cup of misery and was
now comforted. The rich man had done nothing for the poor man in bygone days,
why should the poor man be asked to do anything for him now? It was fair that
every one should have his turn. But even if Lazarus were willing to render the
service it was not in his power. Between the two regions of Hades was fixed a
great ravine impassable either way. The former reason is of the nature of an
argumentum ad hominem, deriving a large part of its force from the very fact of
its being addressed to a selfish man. One who had not troubled himself about
Lazarus, could not but feel the point of the retort: why then should Lazarus
trouble himself about you? It was but paying him back with his own coin,
applying to him the lex talionis of the dispensation under which he had lived,
and of which he had taken due advantage. Hence he makes no attempt to argue the
matter with Abraham, as in the case of the request for his brethren, and this
fact supplies another proof that we have rightly conceived the character of his
life on earth, as that of a man who had lived for himself. Conscience makes him
a coward, and he has no spirit left to say even this much: "I own I have no
claim, but may I not receive this small service as a matter of grace?" To this
question however, though not asked, Abraham replies in the second reason for
refusal. Willingness on the part of Lazarus to go on an errand of mercy is not
denied, it is rather tacitly conceded; what is asserted is the impossibility of
intercommunication. The assertion provokes in us many questions: What is this
dreadful chasm? Why is it fixed? For how long? Cannot it be bridged over? What
is impossible to love or to penitence? Could not the one find its way to yonder
side, and the other to the hither side? These questions the parable was not
meant to answer, therefore they are not raised. Dives acquiesces in the
reasoning, and presses his request no further. In any case it was not meet to
put such questions in his mouth, not merely because they were not questions of
the age, but specially because they were not questions for the like of him. He
was of too low a moral type to feel the pressure of such problems. Had he been
capable of that he would never have been where he was. And being where he was,
he could not easily rise above his former moral level. That difficulty perhaps
furnishes the best clue to the mystery of the fixed gulf. What is impossible to
penitence, is it asked? But what if penitence itself be impossible? Difficult it
certainly is. The difficulty is implied in the very acquiescence of Dives in
Abraham’s reasoning. That reasoning is by no means exhaustive. It does not say
the last word on the subject raised; it does not anticipate and dispose of all
questions; at most it settles the matter in hand only from the lex talionis
point of view. But it is conclusive for Dives because it is adapted to his moral
tone. The first reason has irresistible force for him because his conscience
tells him that he has been a selfish man; the second has equal cogency, because
he is incapable of entertaining the thought of bridging the gulf by
self-condemnation. The acquiescence of Dives in Abraham’s reasoning thus does
more than show, as we have said, that he was a man for whom self has been the
chief end. It shows, moreover, that to escape from the perdition to which such a
life surely conducts is difficult, not to say impossible. The loving and the
beneficent make for themselves friends to receive them into the eternal tents.
But the unloving and inhuman banish themselves to a realm of darkness and pain
out of which they shall hardly be delivered, not because of any external
barriers, but because of obstacles presented in their own hearts. The gulf which
divides the two classes is as wide as the difference between selfishness and
self-sacrifice, and is so fixed because these moral characteristics tend to
permanence. In ’hell’ are they who have loved themselves; in heaven are they who
have loved others as themselves—how hard to go over from the one class to the
other; to be transformed from a Dives into a good Samaritan!

[1] Brouwer, speaking of the decorum of Christ’s parables, as exemplified in the
one before us, contrasts the mild terms in which Abraham addressed Dives with
the harsh language which is addressed to the lost in the parables of the
Talmudists, such as: "O most foolish man that ever lived."—’De Parabolis Jesu
Christi,’ p. 91.

Before passing on to the closing section of the parable, we may here briefly
remark that the phraseology employed by Christ in describing the place of the
dead is mostly borrowed from the current dialect of the time. The ’bosom of
Abraham’ was a title for the abode of the blessed in common use among the Jews.
The ministry of angels in conveying the spirits of the just thither had also its
place in the popular belief.[1] Dialogues of the dead formed a part of the
entertainment which the Rabbis provided for their pupils. Paradise, Abraham’s
bosom, Hades, Gehenna were not so closely shut that the voices of the blessed
and the pains of the tormented could not penetrate from either region to the
other, and also to the ears of the teachers who could report what they heard for
the benefit of their disciples.[2] The Divine Artist who painted the startling
picture before us, adopted a traditional theme, and dipped His brush in
conventional colours, departing from use and wont only in the one particular of
the fixed chasm; thereby making the separation wider than in the Rabbinical
representation, according to which the two regions are divided only by a wall,
or even by a hair’s breadth;[3] a fact worthy of notice as showing that Jesus
had no disposition to minimise the gravity of the outlook in the state beyond
the grave. But, on the whole, the picture of the invisible world here presented
is not to be taken as didactically significant. The one point of doctrinal
instruction in the parable thus far, is that set forth likewise in the account
of the last Judgment, viz. that men like Dives are excluded from the goodly
fellowship of those who spent their lives on earth in deeds of love.

[1] Vide Lightfoot, ’Hor. Heb.’

[2] Hausrath, ’Zeitgeschichte,’ ii. 278.

[3] "What is the distance between Paradise and Gehenna? According to Johanan, a
wall; according to Acha, a palm-breadth; according to other Rabbis, only a
finger-breadth." Midrash on Koheleth, quoted by Dr. Farrar in ’Mercy and
Judgment,’ p. 205. In the close of the parable, the additional but connected and
subordinate lesson is taught, that for the life of selfishness there is no
excuse on the score of ignorance. In making this the lesson of the concluding
part, we assume that the request of Dives in behalf of his brethren is
indirectly self-excuse. This may seem an ungenerous assumption, especially in
view of the construction put on the request by enthusiastic advocates of ’the
Eternal Hope’ as an indication that Dives, under the purgatorial fires of the
intermediate state, is undergoing rapid moral improvement. We have all respect
for the motives of those who thus argue, and we have no wish to make Dives
appear worse than he is. As in forming a judgment of his life on earth, we did
not accuse him of refusing crumbs to Lazarus, so we are willing to give him full
credit for the solicitude he manifests after his decease for his surviving
brethren. And we gladly note, as one more index of the geniality of the parable,
that no anxiety is evinced to rob Dives of this praise. Only we must add that it
does not amount to much. The humanity of Dives in Hades is not charity, but only
such love as even publicans and harlots practise; natural affection for an
extended self, indicative therefore of continuity of character rather than of
radical change. And we question whether in the intention of the speaker it be
even this much; whether love for the extended self be not at bottom love for the
unextended self. That is, we think Christ’s aim in introducing this trait is not
to show that unblessed spirits cherish natural affections, but to take away all
ground of excuse from those who live the life that has exclusion from bliss for
its penalty. The speaker’s real purpose is to tell the living that they are
without excuse if they so live as to forfeit bliss. But instead of doing this in
abstract terms, he prefers to do it through the machinery of the parable, as in
the case of the parable of the Lost Son, where the elder brother represents the
Pharisees who blamed Christ for His sympathy with the leper. Therefore he makes
Dives proffer a request which leads up to the declaration, that in Moses and the
prophets men have sufficient means of grace to teach them how to live. The
answer pointedly excludes all self-excuse on the score of defective aids to
piety, and so implies self-excuse as the motive of this request. The secret
thought of Dives is: Had I been warned it might have been otherwise. In like
manner we cannot so far stretch our charity as to give Dives credit for the
peculiar urgency he shows in behalf of his brethren. It is certainly a curious
circumstance, that whilst abstaining from pressing his petition for himself, he
ventures to expostulate with Abraham in pleading for his brethren, after the
manner of Abraham himself in pleading for Sodom. We are not inclined to see in
this a reflection of the spirit of Rabbinical dispute and Pharisaic
impudence.[1] But neither can we see in it a trace of disinterested love. The
repetition of the demand is meant merely to supply a motive for the utterance of
the sentiment, that those who are not moved to piety by the means actually
available, would not be moved by any means, however extraordinary. Doubtless the
law of probability requires that this should be done in a natural way; but this
remark cuts two ways. It may imply that Dives was particularly anxious for the
welfare of his brethren; but it may also imply that he was very desirous to
justify himself by some such reflection as this: Had only some one come from the
dead, with the calm, clear light of eternity shining in his eyes, to inform me
that the life beyond is no fable, that Paradise is a place or state of
unspeakable bliss, and Gehenna a place or state of unspeakable woe, had I not
then renounced my voluptuous, selfish ways, and entered on the path of piety and
charity? If one had come to me from the dead I had surely repented, and so would
not have come to this place of torment.

[1] So Godet. The didactic point then here is, that the selfish life is
inexcusable, and therefore justly visited with penalties. But how does this
appear? The reply of Abraham is: "They have Moses and the prophets, let them
hear them." It is a reply addressed to a Jew, and exactly adapted to the actual
religious practice in the synagogue, in which precisely the parts of the Old
Testament named the law and the prophets (those only, not the Hagiographa) were
regularly read.[1] It implies that these books were sufficient as a guide of
life to all men of right dispositions, without any further extraordinary means
of grace, and that when they failed, a better result could not be reached by any
conceivable means. To the men of right mind a messenger from the dead was wholly
unnecessary, and to the men of wrong mind he would be utterly useless. It was a
reply not to be gainsaid by any Jew, the truth of the implied affirmations being
sufficiently proved by the lives of the saints who lived under the old
dispensation, and had not more than the law and the prophets for their rule of
faith and practice, and many of them, such as Abraham himself, not even so much.
One thing very noticeable about these books is the little prominence they give
to the life to come. The fact of a future life is recognised, but so obscurely
that Paul could truly speak of immortality as being brought to light through the
Gospel. It is to miss the point of Abraham’s reference to the Old Testament
entirely to suppose that it means that the doctrine of immortality is there
taught with sufficient clearness. It is nearer the mark to say, that what is
meant is rather that the knowledge of that doctrine is not indispensable to the
life of piety. Certainly the doctrine in question is not clearly set forth or
strongly insisted on in the Hebrew Scriptures. And if the future life occupied a
quite subordinate place in Old Testament teaching, we may safely assume that it
occupied a still less prominent place in the thoughts and motives of Old
Testament saints. They tested theories of life by their bearings on this world
much more than by their bearings on the next. Hence their perplexities
respecting the mysteries of human life, their querulous complainings, e. g.
concerning the sufferings of the righteous. But in spite of their comparative
ignorance of the life to come, and their consequent misreading of the riddles of
the present life, we find no traces of dubiety as to the comparative merits of
the two opposed schemes of life—the way of godliness and the way of the world.
They might find difficulties in such facts of Providence as are pictured in this
parable: a low-minded voluptuary, prosperous, rich, happy according to his
taste, on the one hand; a saintly man in beggary, diseased, starved, homeless,
on the other. They might, in view of such phenomena, sometimes ask, "Why doth
the way of the wicked prosper?" But they never had any doubt whether it were
better to be good or evil, to be righteous or to be wicked, to be a humane
merciful man, or to be a sordid, selfish, heartless worldling. Nor did they
hesitate to walk in the way of godliness in spite of all drawbacks. They chose
the way that is everlasting; they could not do otherwise; the spirit of God in
them would not permit them. They needed no messenger from the dead to convince
them of the superiority of a life of justice, mercy, and piety over a life of
unrighteousness, inhumanity, and sensuality. Far from that, they needed not to
know that there was a life to come. The godly life appeared to them superior
intrinsically, on its own merits, apart altogether from the question of
duration. It was self-evident to them that in any case, whatever betide it is
better to be a wise good man, doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with
God, and holding all appetites and passions in strict subjection to conscience
and reason, than to be clothed in purple and fine linen, and to fare sumptuously
every day, doing nothing else worth speaking of. Even if they knew certainly
that there was no hell to fear, they could not live as Dives lived; it would be
hell enough to be compelled to attempt it.

[1] See Lightfoot.

It thus appears that the Jew had amply sufficient means of grace, and was
therefore without excuse if he chose the wrong way of life. But it is not the
Jew alone that is required to live the life of piety and charity. Christ taught
that He should judge all the nations, and that the principle of judgment would
be the law of charity. Are the Pagans also without excuse, though not having the
law and the prophets? Yes; because the law of humanity is written on their
hearts, and they need no book, any more than an Old Testament Jew needed a clear
doctrine of immortality, to impose obligation to fulfil that law. This position
obviously underlies the representation of the Judgment, and it is even not
obscurely implied in the words put into the mouth of Abraham in this parable.
For what is the meaning of the assertion, that if they believe not Moses and the
prophets, neither will they believe though one rose from the dead? Simply this,
that you cannot by any means compel faith in men morally indisposed to believe.
That is, everything turns on moral disposition. In absence of that, neither
Bible nor messenger from the dead will do me any good. I will find plausible
reasons for disregarding even the most potent and miraculous aids to faith. A
messenger from the dead! He would have a preliminary difficulty to deal with ere
he delivered his message. He would find it hard to get himself recognised as a
visitor from the other world. Instead of listening with awestruck hearts to what
he had to say, men of unbelieving temper would begin to discuss whether the
supposed visitant from the world of spirits could ever have been dead, or were
not a mere phantasm; nay, refusing to treat the matter seriously, they would
probably receive with shouts of merriment the very idea of one returning from
the grave to preach to them of repentance and judgment to come. On the other
hand, does a man of right disposition require a Bible, not to speak of a
messenger from the dead, to tell him that he ought to love his neighbour? Let
the Pagan who has no Bible consult his heart, and he will find that law written
there. This is the one law for the neglect of which all men everywhere are
without excuse. No need, in order to obligation to fulfil this law, of special
supernatural inducements; no need of knowledge of the life to come; no need
either of Moses, prophets, or gospels; the light within is enough. Those who
have the benefit of such special means of grace, and yet neglect this law, are
certainly blameworthy in a peculiar degree; but even those who have no such
privileges are for the like neglect without excuse. Such in spirit is the
teaching of our parable. It declares love to be the supreme duty, and it
declares the disregard thereof to be, without exception, a deadly damning sin,
because it is a duty which shines in the light of its own self-evidence. What
Abraham said to Dives was what it was fitting to say to Jews. But so much could
be said to them because it is fitting and fair to say to all: "Ye have the
voices of conscience, hear them." The Unmerciful Servant

Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain man, a king, who would
make a reckoning with his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, there was
brought unto him one who was a debtor to the extent of ten thousand talents. And
seeing he had not wherewith to pay, his lord commanded that he should be sold,
and his wife, and his children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The
servant therefore fell down and did obeisance to him, saying, Lord, have
patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And the lord of that servant, being
moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.[1] But that
servant going out, found one of his fellow-servants who owed him a hundred
denarii: and he laid hold on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay what
thou owest. And his fellow-servant fell down and besought him, saying, Have
patience with me, and I will pay thee.[2] And he would not, but went and cast
him into prison, till he should pay that which was due. His fellow-servants,
therefore, seeing what was done, were exceedingly sorry, and came and told their
lord all that was done. Then his lord called him unto him, and said unto him,
Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou besoughtest me:
oughtest thou not also to have had mercy on thy fellow-servant, even as I had
mercy on thee? And being wroth, his lord delivered him to the tormentors, till
he should pay all that was due to him. So shall also my Heavenly Father do unto
you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.[3]—Mat 18:23-35.

[1] τὸ δάνειον, literally, the loan.

[2] Most MSS. omit πάντα. It may have crept in from Mat 18:26.

[3] τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν (their trespasses) seems to be a gloss from Mat 6:15.

There is no difficulty in ascertaining the didactic drift of this parable. The
moral it is intended to teach is indicated with perfect distinctness by our Lord
Himself in the last sentence, in which He applies the narrative to the hearts of
His hearers, the disciples. Even without that application we could easily deduce
the lesson from the parable itself, viewed in connection with its surroundings.
It forms the fitting conclusion of a conversation between Jesus and His
disciples, arising out of their dispute as to who should be greatest in the
kingdom of heaven. That dispute evinced the presence among them of the spirit of
ambition, whose characteristic tendency it is, at once to be prone to do wrong,
and to be very unforgiving towards wrong done by others. Jesus, therefore, fitly
took occasion to warn His disciples against giving offences, especially to the
weak, and to instruct them how to behave when they were the receivers, not the
givers, of offences. The general tenor of the instructions given was—be meek and
merciful, not prone to resentment, hard to appease, but good and ready to
forgive. The counsel to cherish a spirit of love bent on overcoming evil with
good found its culminating expression in the reply to Peter’s question, "How
often must I forgive?" "Until seven times?" the disciple added, tentatively
answering his own question, and in doing so showing how far the benignant spirit
of his Master had already influenced him, raising him above the ideas current in
rabbinical circles, which fixed the limit at three times.[1] But Jesus went as
far beyond Peter as Peter went beyond the rabbis; nay, infinitely further, for
He said, "Not till seven times, but until seventy times seven." That is, times
without number; your forgivenesses must be as numerous as the implacable man’s
revenges;[2] you must never weary pardoning offences. By this strong utterance
Christ’s thought concerning forgiveness was raised to the high level at which
parabolic speech becomes natural and needful: natural on the part of One who was
conscious that His thoughts on such matters were not those of the world; needful
to familiarise the minds of hearers with truths lofty and novel. Therefore Jesus
spake at this time the parable of The Unmerciful Servant, the obvious aim of
which is to expose the odiousness and criminality of an implacable temper in
those who are citizens of the kingdom of heaven—a kingdom of grace in which they
themselves occupy the position of forgiven men. Having this for its burden, it
is emphatically a parable of grace, forming a worthy ending of Christ’s
discourse in Capernaum and of His whole ministry of love in Galilee;[3] teaching
His disciples that the kingdom of heaven was a kingdom of grace; a kingdom among
whose blessings pardon occupied a foremost place; a kingdom, therefore, in
connection with which ambitious disputes concerning places of distinction, and
still more, vindictive passions, were unseemly and intolerable.

[1] Vide Lightfoot and Wetstein in loc.

[2] Some, not without probability, have found in our Lord’s words an allusion to
the speech of Lamech in Gen 4:24 : "If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly
Lamech seventy and sevenfold."

[3] The final separation from Galilee is recorded in the commencement of the
next chapter. A certain severity of tone is observable in the present parable as
compared with the one last considered. "His lord was wroth, and delivered him to
the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due to him. So likewise shall My
heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your
hearts" The reason is that Jesus speaks here to offending disciples, members of
His own family circle whom He loves dearly, therefore rebukes and chastens
faithfully; and, moreover, to future apostles, on whose behaviour the well-being
of the Church about to be founded largely depends. He anticipates the time, no
longer distant, when He shall be personally removed from the earth, and He is
anxious to prepare His chosen companions for playing worthily the part of His
representatives. This He knows they cannot do so long as the spirit of ambition
and vainglory, which has recently manifested itself, animates their breasts.
Therefore He subjects them to the wholesome discipline of pathetic example,
heroic counsel, and stern warning, that by admiration, quickened sense of duty,
and godly fear, they may become morally transformed by the renewing of their
minds. Not merely the concluding parable, but the whole discourse on humility
savours of this unwonted rigour: witness that saying, "Whoso shall offend one of
these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone
were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea;"
or that still more stern saying concerning the cutting off an offending hand, or
foot, or eye. In this homily on lowliness Jesus seems Himself to perform the
part of a surgeon, operating with the sharp knife of rebuke on the diseased
parts of the souls of His disciples. We shall best understand the parable with
which the homily closes by regarding it from this point of view. This parable
has for its specific aim not merely to inculcate the general duty of
forgiveness, which is a part of natural ethics, but to inculcate that duty on
men who are themselves forgiven of God, and living under a reign of grace. Hence
the unforgiving man is in the first place represented as himself the object of
pardoning mercy. And in this part of the parabolic representation we note the
apparently exaggerated statement of the amount forgiven—ten thousand talents,
equivalent to millions sterling.[1] The enormous sum is formally explained by
conceiving of the offender as a farmer of revenue on a great scale, or as the
satrap of a province, whose duty it is to remit the tribute of the country under
his jurisdiction to the sovereign.[2] But this explanation only throws us back
on the previous question: Why is such a magnate selected to represent the
forgiven one who forgives not? A satisfactory answer to this question is
necessary to vindicate the verisimilitude of the parable. Now the fitness of the
representation appears in various ways. It is fitting, in the first place, as a
statement of the magnitude of all men’s indebtedness to God as compared with the
insignificant extent of the moral indebtedness of any one man to any other,
represented by the hundred denarii. It is further fitting in some special
respects more closely connected with the particular purpose of the parable. It
suits the character in which the disciples are addressed, as men destined ere
long to occupy princely position in the kingdom of God. It also suits the temper
of those who are likely to be guilty of harsh, merciless dealing towards such as
have done them wrong. Implacability is the sin of pride. But pride is
high-minded, and just because it is so it is a great sinner against God.
Therefore it is fit that the implacable man should be represented as occupying
high station, and likewise as a great debtor to his lord. Once more, the
vastness of the debt owed and forgiven is a just tribute to the gracious
magnanimity of God, who ’abundantly pardons,’ and from whose mercy even the most
wicked of men are not excluded.

[1] The exact amount will vary according to the particular talent meant; but the
intention is not to state precisely the amount due, but to convey the idea of an
immense sum, the payment of which was hopeless.

[2] Vide Trench, who gives illustrative examples, p. 153, note. The conduct of
the lord toward his deeply-indebted servant is a second point in which the
parable seems chargeable with exaggeration. At first it appears unduly severe,
then after the debtor has presented his petition, unduly lenient. "Forasmuch,"
we read, "as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife,
and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made." Yet after the debtor
has pled for time, his lord suddenly changes his tone, and grants not time to
pay, but a free remission. Is it credible, we are ready to inquire, that one who
issued such an order would confer so great a favour; or, conversely, that one
capable of such magnanimity would entertain thoughts of such pitiless rigour?
And, without doubt, the parabolic representation does wear an aspect of double
improbability. Nevertheless, here it is the improbable that happens. In the
first place, as respects the truculent command, it faithfully reflects the
attitude of the law of antiquity towards debt. The Roman law permitted a debtor
(in the literal sense) to be so treated, and the law of Moses seems not to have
been behind it in rigour;[1] indeed the rude practice of selling a man and his
whole belongings for debt appears to have been a common feature in the judicial
system of ancient nations. Therefore in issuing such an order the king was
simply acting as the mouthpiece of the law apart altogether from personal
feeling; and it is observable that no such feeling is imputed to him at this
stage. He could not well do otherwise in the first place, whatever compassionate
sentiments or purposes might be latent in his breast. On the other hand, in the
free pardon of the debt we see the moral individuality of the monarch displaying
itself. In the command is revealed the rigour of the ruler, in the remission of
the debt the humanity of the man. A very unusual humanity truly, and most
unlikely to be practised by men, whether kings or subjects, living under
barbaric codes of law. But the improbability at this point is inevitable; for
the humanity must be very unusual indeed which is to represent the mercy of God.
For the Divine magnanimity passes all human example; His ways in forgiving rise
above the ways of men high as heaven rises above earth.

[1] Vide Exo 22:3; Lev 25:39, Lev 25:47; Amo 2:6; Amo 8:6.

"For the love of God is broader Than the measures of man’s mind, And the heart
of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind."

Viewed with reference to the history of revelation, the rigour and benignity
combined in the behaviour of the king represent the relation between law and
gospel. The command, Sell the debtor and all he hath, that the debt may be paid,
exhibits the legal attitude towards sin; the free forgiveness of the debt
exhibits the grace that came in with Jesus Christ. The one prepared for the
other; the rigour of the law for the grace of the gospel. That rigour brought
the debtor to his knees, with a petition coming far short of the grace in store,
asking only for time to pay, for a hired servant’s place; for men are unable to
imagine and dare not hope for the good which God has prepared for them. The
rigour was meant to lead up to the mercy through the way of repentance; it was
but a means to an end, for had it been otherwise the more beneficent
dispensation had never come.[1] The law was but a pedagogue to conduct to
Christ.

[1] Euthymius Zigabenus expresses this thought. Speaking of the command to sell
for the debt, he says, Οὐκ ἐξ ὠμότητος δὲ τοῦτο ἐκέλευσεν ἐκ συμπαθείας, ἵνα
εὐλαβηθεὶς ἐκεῖνος τὴν τοιαύτην ἀπόφασιν (ἐκελεύση) καὶ τύχη, τῆς ἀφέσεως εἰ γὰρ
μὴ διὰ τοὺτο τοιαύτην ἐξήνεγκεν ἀπόφασιν οὐκ ἀν ἱκετεύσαντι τὸ χρείος ἀφῆκεν.
When Christ came the world entered into a state of objective grace, under which
God imputeth not to men their trespasses; and it becomes all who have attained
to the knowledge of this truth to imitate the Divine charity in their relations
to their fellow-men. But the wranglings of His disciples gave Jesus too good
ground for the apprehension that an implacable spirit might be by no means a
rare phenomenon in the era of grace; therefore, having in the first part of the
parable depicted the mercy of God, He proceeded in the second part to describe
the unmercifulness of so-called Christian men. The picture drawn is unspeakably
repulsive, and bears witness to the deep abhorrence with which the Speaker
regarded an unforgiving spirit in one who confesses his own need, and has
experienced the benefit of forgiveness. The great debtor goes forth from the
presence of his benignant master, straightway meets a fellow-servant who owes a
petty debt to himself, in the most truculent manner lays hold of him and demands
immediate payment,[1] and on hearing from his debtor’s lips the same appeal he
had previously made to the king, refuses his request, unmoved by the august
presence from which he has just come, by the memory of a recent benefit, and by
the repetition of the words of his own prayer; and with brutal ferocity drags
him to prison, there to lie till he has paid the paltry sum. Shall we say there
is exaggeration here too? It were a comfort to be able to think so, and perhaps
it may be said truly that Christ draws the picture in the darkest possible
colours, that His disciples and all who bear His name might be scared into a
holy fear of offending in such wise, and a godly jealousy lest they should bear
the most distant resemblance to so odious a character. Yet we cannot flatter
ourselves that the picture is a purely ideal one. It is not possible to conceive
one conscious that his own moral debt is great, and believing in the forgiveness
thereof, deliberately so acting, for, forgiven much, he will love much both God
and his fellow, men. But it is only too possible to be under the objective reign
of grace, and to take advantage of the benefits of the era of grace, not without
a certain appreciation of their value, yet to regulate our relations to our
brethren by the strict régime of law, aggravated by the superadded horrors of
violent temper and brutal passion when the slightest opposition is offered to
the immediate execution of our selfish will. How many members of Christian
Churches may rise from the communiontable to go forth on the following day to
the perpetration of such atrocities in connection with their secular business!
The sin of merciless hardness is one which easily besets us all, and instead of
asking, Is thy servant a dog, that he should do such a thing? we do well to ask,
rather, Is it I?

[1] The act denoted by ἔπνιγεν, seizing by the throat, though ferocious, was
legal according to Roman law. The approved reading in the next clause, εἴ τι
δφείλεις—literally, "if you owe aught"—must be understood in sympathy with the
truculent spirit displayed in that act. The εἴ τι, as Meyer remarks, is neither
courteous nor problematical, but logical = if you owe you must pay. Unger puts
it, "Conditio dicta pro causa." Grotius says, "Solet si sane non conditionem sed
generalitatem significare."

Even those who might themselves be guilty of such conduct would readily condemn
it in others, and hence the fellow-servants of the two who stand in the relation
of debtor and creditor are fitly represented as interesting themselves in the
case, and reporting it to the common lord in a spirit of compassion towards the
sufferer. Their sympathies are roused simply by the spectacle of excessive
severity, without reference to the glaring inconsistency of the wrong-doer, of
which they are not supposed to be aware. But that inconsistency is what arrests
the attention of the king. Now for the first time he is angry, and he gives
expression to his wrath in terms of unmitigated condemnation, followed up by a
sentence of unqualified rigour. He calls the offender ’wicked,’ using the
epithet not with reference to his own great debt, but to stigmatise the
mercilessness he had shown towards his brother who owed him a small debt—a
mercilessness to be reprehended in any one, and utterly inexcusable in him, who
had himself been forgiven so immensely greater a sum. And the sentence
pronounced on this ’wicked’ one is, that having shown no mercy, he should
receive none. The pardon granted is revoked, and he is remitted to the custody
of the roughest, most ruthless, gaolers, who will rather take pleasure in
tormenting him than in mitigating the discomforts of his imprisonment, and will
take good care that he do not get out till he have paid all that he owed.[1] [1]
Most interpreters take the ’tormentors’ in this general sense—gaolers of the
rudest order. The language of the parable here, as throughout, is strong, but
there is no occasion at this stage for any suggestion of exaggeration. Intensity
of utterance, the characteristic of the whole parable, is discernible in this
part also, but not extravagance. The words put into the mouth of the king find a
response in every healthy conscience. Who will call in question the
appropriateness of the epithet ’wicked’? Must we not rather acknowledge the
moderation of judgment evinced in applying the term to the offender not quâ
debtor, but quâ creditor? It is not easy to imagine how any man could amass such
an amount of debt without culpability approaching to wickedness. But, with fine
discrimination, the word is not brought in till the party characterised has been
guilty of conduct whose unmitigated iniquity could be doubtful to no one having
the slightest pretensions to moral discernment. Then, as to the sentence, it is
doubtless inexorably stern, but it is undeniably equitable and just. The case
described is one of those in which the public conscience would feel aggrieved
were a severe sentence not pronounced, and a lenient punishment would appear
little short of an outrage.

We are not surprised, therefore, to find our Lord expressing His deliberate
approval of the sentence pronounced on the unmerciful servant, and solemnly
assuring His disciples that after the like manner should they themselves be
treated if they followed his bad example. Such is the import of the closing
sentence: So shall also My heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every
one his brother from your hearts. Nothing could be more explicit than the
declaration here made that a policy of severity will be pursued against all the
unforgiving. And Christ’s personal approval of that policy is equally
pronounced. Specially worthy of notice in this view is the designation given to
the Ruler and Judge of men. One not in sympathy with the rigour of Divine
government might have said, So shall the Judge of all the earth do to you. Not
so speaks Christ here. He gives to God, even in this sombre connection, the
endearing title of Father. Not only so, He calls God My Father, as if to express
in the most emphatic manner His perfect sympathy with the Divine mind. At other
times He called God your Father, with reference to His disciples; but here He
takes the Divine Father from them, as if to imply that between Him and them so
acting there could be nothing in common, and appropriates Him to Himself, as if
to say, "I and My Father are one in this matter." Obviously Jesus has no sense
of incongruity between the Fatherhood of God and the strange work of stern
judgment on the unmerciful. Neither was there room for such a feeling. Just
because God is a Father, and because His inmost spirit is love, He must abhor a
spirit so utterly alien from His own. It is only what we should expect, that
under the government of a gracious God the spirit of mercilessness should have
judgment without mercy. Some good men think that it is due to the Divine love
that we should cherish a hope of ultimate mercy even for the merciless in the
long course of the ages. It may be so, though there is little either in the
letter or in the spirit of this parable to encourage such a hope. On this dark
subject we do not incline to dogmatise so freely as is usual on either side, but
would be swift to hear and slow to speak. Whether the ’tormentors’ and the
imprisonment be æonian merely, or strictly everlasting, may, for aught we know,
be a fair question; but it is one we had rather not discuss, especially in
connection with a class of sinners who have so little claim on our sympathy.


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  CHAPTER 25: 01.20.     BOOK 3. THE PARABLES OF JUDGMENT
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Book 3. The Parables of Judgment


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  CHAPTER 26: 01.21.        CHAPTER 1. THE CHILDREN IN THE MARKET-PLACE
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Chapter 1. The Children in the Market-place Or, the Judgment of Jesus on Jewish
Contemporaries. The little similitude of the Children in the Market-place does
not usually find a place in treatises on the parables. Nevertheless it seems to
us fit and worthy to stand at the head of the division on which we now enter as
an introduction to the study of those parables in which Christ appears as a
Prophet, speaking words of warning and of doom to His contemporaries in Israel.
For it sets forth the judgment of Jesus on that generation, the opinion which He
entertained of their character; an opinion from which it is easy to see that
they were in a bad way: blind, wanting spiritual insight,—incapable of
appreciating goodness when it showed itself among them, not knowing the time of
their merciful visitation; a generation saying now, "Not this Man, but the
Rabbis," and likely to say ere long, to their own hurt, "Not this Man, but
Barabbas." The whole section of the gospel history in which this parable occurs
may be described as a chapter of moral criticism. Its contents are given in
greatest fulness in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, wherein we find Jesus
expressing His opinion, first of John the Baptist, then of the Jewish people of
that time, and finally of Himself. Of John He says that he is a great prophet of
moral law, yet less than the least in the kingdom of God; the reason of the
latter part of the judgment being that the Baptist did not understand or
appreciate the kingdom of heaven as a kingdom of grace. To him it was a kingdom
of law, demanding of men righteousness, not a kingdom of mercy, offering itself
to men’s acceptance as the summum bonum. Therefore Jesus Himself was a
stumbling-block to him, for he expected Messiah to come with axe and fan, to
judge, hew down, and sift; and lo, He had come in the spirit of love, patience,
and pity. So he stood aloof from the new movement inaugurated by Jesus,
wondering what it all might mean; a true man of God, yet outside the kingdom as
a new historical phenomenon. Of Himself Jesus said, "I am despised and rejected
by the wise and understanding ones, and received only by babes. Nevertheless
those who despise Me cannot do without Me. I am the way to the knowledge of the
Father. Nor does their contempt harm Me; for though men know Me not nor value
Me, the Divine Father knoweth Me, and I know Him, and He loveth Me, and hath
committed all things—the sovereignty of the future—into My hands. I can do
without them, though they cannot do without Me." Of the Jewish people—that is,
of those then living in Judaea who were under the influence of the spirit of the
time, forming the great bulk of the nation—Jesus pronounced the opinion which is
contained in our parable, which, as it stands in St Matthew’s Gospel, is as
follows:

Whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the
market-place who, calling unto their fellows,[1] say: We piped unto you, and ye
danced not; we wailed, and ye mourned not. For John came neither eating nor
drinking, and they say: He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and
drinking, and they say: Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of
publicans and sinners; and wisdom is justified[2] by her children?.[3]

[1] ἑταίροις, the reading in T. R. retained in R. V. ℵ. B., &c., have ἑτέροις,
which is adopted by Tischendorf, and Westcott and Hort. Alford thinks ἑτέροις
came into texts through mistake of the ear—a case of itacism, the words being
pronounced the same way. But of course this cuts both ways. Lange adopts
ἑτέροις, and assigns to it a moral significance = a different set not in the
mood to play, representing Jesus and John, who were too earnest to trifle.

[2] ἐδικαιώθη, the aorist whose distinctive force is to be retained wherever
possible. But we may regard the present as a case of the use of the gnomic
aorist, indicating a law of the moral order analogous to the same use of the
aorist to denote facts belonging to the physical order, as in Jas 1:11.

[3] τέκνων, as in T. R. The R. V., Westcott and Hort, and Tischendorf adopt the
reading ἔργων, found in ℵ. B. Alford suggests that this reading may have been
substituted for τἑχνων, which might easily have arisen from τέκνων, by the
change of κ into χ. Readings found in ℵ. B. together are, on the grounds so ably
stated by Westcott and Hort in the valuable introduction to their edition of the
Greek Testament, always entitled to serious consideration; but we do not feel
called upon in every case, and as a matter of course, to introduce such into our
text.—Mat 11:16-19. The parable proper occupies only a single sentence, the
remainder of the passage quoted giving its application, whence we learn that the
opinion expressed by Jesus in the parable concerning His contemporaries had
reference to the reception they had accorded to Himself and to John. But though
very short, it is very significant. It hints that the contemporaries of Jesus
and John, in judging these messengers of God, judged themselves; had shown
themselves to be children. "To what shall I liken this generation?" asked the
Divine Critic of His age, and His reply to His own question was: "They are like
unto children." In one respect it was a mild judgment, but it was also very
ominous. For it is a serious thing when men are like children, not in the good
sense, but in the bad—not children, but childish. A generation like children in
this evil sense is a generation in its spiritual dotage, or second childhood, in
a state like that of the Hebrew Christians of after days so pathetically and
graphically described by the writer of the Epistle addressed to them, as,
"become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat."[1] When this state
of senility is reached death is not far off. This condition of spiritual dotage
had been reached by the generation to which our parable refers. Their senses
were blinded by age so that they were unable to discern between good and evil.
They were blind to true wisdom and goodness, and could not recognise these when
they presented themselves to view under various forms, as in Jesus and John.
They were blind to their own true interest, and could not discern the signs of
the time, the weather signs portentous of the coming storm. They were on the
wrong tracks, and had not the sense to allow themselves to be put right. There
was no salvation for them in any of the guidances in which they put their
trust—in Rabbinism, in Phariseeism, or in patriotism; yet they would follow
these blind guides, and turned a deaf ear to the still voice of wisdom behind
them, saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it." That such was the spiritual
state of Israel Jesus was fully aware when He likened His generation to
children. We could imagine Him using the comparison for the express purpose of
pointing out such a condition; it would have been natural to have employed it in
this sense when speaking with reference to the unappreciative attitude of
contemporaries towards either Himself or John separately. But on the present
occasion He thought of Himself and John together, and of the marked difference
in their whole manner of life between the two messengers of God to that time,
and of the impartiality with which their fellow-countrymen had dealt out to both
an equal measure of disesteem, and other points of resemblance to children
suggested themselves, for which He found a fit emblem in the scene from the
market-place of children playing at marriages and funerals. The figures convey
the idea that the men of that time—the generation of men under the influence of
the characteristic Zeitgeist, and specially the more religious folk—the
Pharisees—were merely playing at religion. While He and John were both consumed
with earnest zeal about the things of the kingdom, each striving after his own
mode to promote its interests, they were only amusing themselves with pious
works. Then, further, the similitude suggests that the parties depicted were
like children in the fickleness of their temper. They were changeable in their
humour; fastidious, difficult to please, much given to peevish complaining and
faultfinding, after the manner of self-willed children. As one might see
children in the market-place playing at their games and quarrelling with each
other, never all in the same humour at the same moment, one set wishing to play
at marriages when another wanted to play at funerals; so could one with
spiritual vision see that childish generation behaving itself with reference to
Jesus and John. The two men were very diverse in their spirit and mode of life
and method of working; and it might have been expected that if either was
disliked the other would be a favourite. But no; they were both alike unpopular.
When people saw John’s austere garb and heard him preach repentance, they were
in the mood to wish for something less severe. When they observed the genial way
of Jesus, how He ate and drank and dressed as other men, and heard the gentle,
pitiful words He addressed to the sinful, they turned away unsympathising,
deeming that a sterner mood was called for. Both the great ones, full of love
and originality, sinned against the law of the mean expressed in such proverbs
as ne quid nimis, μηδὲν ἄγαν, and so incurred the penalty of being blamed by
those, at all times the majority, to whom whatever was not characterised by
tameness, half-and-halfness, and mediocrity was an offence.

[1] Heb 5:12.

Such is the general drift of the parable, and in a broad sketch of the Parabolic
Teaching of Christ it might not be necessary to add anything more by way of
interpretation. But in a systematic exposition such as we have on hand there are
some particular points adverted to by the commentators of which some notice must
be taken. The questions have been discussed: Who are the complainants and who
the complained of? Who say "We piped, we wailed"? and who are they who danced
not and mourned not? The settlement of these questions depends on another: Does
Jesus, with wondrous condescension, as Bengel thinks, include Himself and John
among the children?[1] If so, then they may be regarded either as the
complainers or the complained of, the former alternative being that in favour
with the older interpreters. According to this view those who call to their
companions are Jesus and John, and their complaint, a just one, against their
countrymen is that they had not responded to their call, and danced when they
had piped, or wept when the Baptist mourned. It is in favour of this view that
it assigns to Jesus and John the initiative, and puts their generation in the
position simply of not sympathising with their work, in accordance with the
historical state of the case. But against it is the consideration that it
ascribes to the two prophets a rôle which was not characteristic of them, but
which was eminently characteristic of the Pharisaic religionists of the
time—that of complaining—and so mars the literary felicity of the parable. The
prophets had a good right to complain; but it was not their way to complain. We
therefore concur in the opinion held by many modern commentators, viz. that the
children who were so unfortunate as never to be able to get other children to
play with them were not the two great ones of the time, but their small-souled
critics.

[1] "Jesus non solum Judæos, sed etiam se et Joannem diversis modis comparat cum
puerulis, mirabili, quod ad Jesus attinet, facilitate." Gnomon.

If then Jesus and John be among the children, they must represent the parties
who would not dance and weep. But these, though all complained of, are not all
complained of for the same reason. There are those whose fault is that they will
not dance; and there are others whose fault is that they will not weep. Which of
these two classes is represented by Jesus, and which by John? Diverse views have
been expressed on these points. Some, e. g. Alford, think that the former class
is represented by Jesus and the latter by John. On this view the cause of
complaint is not that Christ and His followers were not of glad humour, and that
John and his disciples were not of sad humour, but that the gladness of the one
and the sadness of the other were not of the kind their contemporaries liked.
This view appears so artificial that it is hardly worth while arguing against
it; but it may be pointed out that the stress laid on the kind of joy or sorrow
is not in keeping with the variation in the Evangelic reports of our Lord’s
words.[1] It can hardly be doubted that John represents the group who will not
dance, and Jesus the group who will not mourn. The negatives have the force of
emphatic positives. Ye danced not, means not, ye danced otherwise than we
wished, but ye did the opposite of dancing—went to culpable excess in sadness.
Ye mourned not, means not, ye gave no place to the element of sadness, but, on
the contrary, indulged in a measure of mirthfulness and joy with which we could
not possibly sympathise. The situation implied in the parable is thus that Jesus
and John went to extremes in opposite directions, and so offended the taste of
those who loved moderation in all things, and who deemed that the just, wise way
of life in which gladness and sadness are duly blended. When men of this temper
heard the Baptist preach with awful earnestness the necessity of repentance,
they felt that he offended against the law of the mean by taking too gloomy a
view of human conduct, and practising too rigid a way of life; and they said, He
hath a devil; he is a monomaniac with a fixed idea in his brain—"Repent, repent,
repent." When the same sort of man came into contact with the society of Jesus
on any peculiarly significant, characteristic occasion, as at Matthew’s farewell
feast, they were shocked by the exuberant joy, and said, Surely these revellers
forget the sadness that is in human existence. Such was the actual state of the
case as we know from the gospel records, and it is to this state that Jesus
alludes in the parable of the children in the market-place, when He makes one
set of children, representing the bulk of Jewish religious society, complain of
another set, representing Himself and John and his disciples, that they would
not dance or mourn; if, that is to say, we are to assume that Jesus and John are
among the children.

[1] Luk 7:32 : ἐθρηνήσαμεν ὑμῖν καὶ οὐκ ἐκλαὐσατε; Mat 11:17 : ἐθρηνίτ σαμεν καὶ
οὐκ ἐκόψασθε. But we must now say that we do not believe this assumption to be
correct. The supposition is one which is due to a microscopic way of
interpreting the parables against which we have steadily protested. The truth in
this case, as in so many others, is hit by Olshausen, who finds in both classes
of children—the complainants and the complained of—representatives of the fickle
generation among whom Jesus and John lived. The drift of the parable is: This
generation is like a company of peevish children with whom nothing goes
right,—one half wishing this, the other that, so that activity with a fixed aim
is impossible among them. Both sets of children are alike unreasonable; they are
well-matched playmates, fellows in spirit as well as in years; and they are
photographed together, caught in the act of play, to form a picture of the
grown-up children of the time, who behaved towards Jesus and John as
unreasonably as the children in the market-place behaved towards each other. It
is immaterial which of the two readings, ἑταίροις or ἑτέροις, we adopt; for even
if with the critics we adopt the latter and emphasise its distinctive meaning so
as to make it signify a different set of children, still it will remain true
that the two sets were fellows; their differences superficial, their agreement
radical. All the sects and societies of that time in Judaea were under the
influence of one and the same spirit—the spirit of a decadent age approaching
dissolution. The only party in which there was any life or light or hope for the
future was the party of Jesus, in which for the present we may include that of
John and his disciples; for John was Christ’s forerunner, and when his work had
its proper effect it issued in his disciples joining the society of Jesus.
Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, were all in servile subjection to the old, the
customary, the morally commonplace; and therefore they all instinctively agreed
to hate the movement led by Jesus, characterised as it was by originality,
poetry, passionate earnestness, and creative energy destined to make many things
new. All alike were, under diverse guises, children of the world, and such
wisdom as they could boast of was but worldly wisdom, which abhors enthusiasm,
is incapable of making allowance for the faults real or seeming that accompany
it, and devoid of the power to appreciate great characters; insomuch that it
could commit the almost incredibly stupid mistakes of deeming such an one as the
Baptist a madman, and such an one as Jesus a profligate, and of finally putting
both to death as intolerable nuisances of whom it did well to rid itself.

Though Jesus and John are not included among the children the parable is so
constructed as to exhibit them very clearly in their distinctive peculiarities,
in the picture of the time This is effected by the simple device of representing
the children not merely employed in play and quarrelling over their games, which
would have sufficed as a picture of the Jewish people, but as playing at
marriages and funerals; the former symbolising the joy of the company of Jesus;
the latter the sadness of the Baptist’s circle. And thus it appears that in a
single sentence the Divine Artist has given us a photograph of His age,
including among the figures of the tableau, though not in the foreground, the
two greatest characters of the age—John and Himself. We see in this picture a
fickle peevish generation behaving themselves in religion like the children of a
village gathered together in the marketplace at the hour of play; not without a
certain keen interest in religious and moral movements, taking note of them as
they made their appearance, observing their characteristics, going out in crowds
to hear and see the preacher of repentance in the wilderness, and watching with
curious eye the strange, eccentric, and unconventional behaviour of the Prophet
of Nazareth; fascinated yet repelled by both, hoping for a moment to find in
them that which might satisfy the obscure uncomprehended cravings of their
hearts, only to be immediately disappointed by traits of character and modes of
action not to their taste. Behind the motley group in the forefront we perceive
the two great ones whose appearance has created the stir and disturbance in the
public mind. One is attired in a garment of camel’s hair, gathered up with a
leathern girdle, and wears a sad, austere countenance, as of one who feels it to
be his vocation to be a standing protest against the iniquities of an evil time.
The other wears no external badge of isolation or singularity, and in His face
is a strange blending of sadness and gladness. All that His companion knows of
the world’s evil is known to Him, and is a constant burden to His spirit, but He
knows also of a cure for it, and the predominant expression of His countenance
is one of hope and joy and enthusiastic devotion to a Saviour’s calling. These
two are the rudiments of a new era. All else in Judaea is of the old era and
doomed to perish, too hopelessly degenerate to be capable of salvation, too
blind to know the time of its gracious visitation, proved to be incurably bad by
its treatment of those who could have led it in the way of peace.

"All else," we have said, not forgetful that in the worst of times there are
always some exceptions to the general corruption. Such there were in Judaea in
the time of Christ—contemporaries of the generation animadverted on in the
parable, but not belonging to it; children of wisdom, though babes in respect of
Rabbinic lore, and of no account with the sages of the age. To these, as to the
tribunal of true wisdom, Jesus appealed from the harsh, unsympathetic judgment
of the worldly wise. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they said,
Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners, and
the quiet reply to such savage censure by the object of it was, Wisdom is
justified by her children. The way in which the reflection is introduced has all
the effect of humour. It is connected with the reference to the slanders of a
prejudiced public by καί, ’and,’ conveying the idea that the two things are wont
to go together; the censure of the blind and the approbation of the wise: "They
say such things of John and Me, and of course we are justified by true wisdom."
The censure of folly is the negative test of goodness, the praise of wisdom is
the positive; where the one is the other is to be looked for. Thus viewed, the
reflection with which the parable concludes is the statement of a moral axiom,
and as such is properly rendered, "Wisdom is justified," though the tense is the
aorist. Not that it would be difficult to put a good sense on the sentence
viewed as a statement of historical fact with reference to Jesus and John. So
taken it would suggest this train of thought: John came and was evil entreated;
Jesus came and was likewise evil entreated. Both were rejected by their
generation, though for superficially opposite reasons; yet in the case of both
wisdom was justified of her children. The wisdom of God, the Sender of the two
badly-received prophets and the wisdom of the sent were recognised by a small
minority in an evil time, by those, viz. who were themselves the children of
wisdom. But it is better to take the aorist, ἐδικαιώθη, as the gnomic aorist,
expressing, in the form of an historical fact, that which belongs to the usual
course of things.

We are shut up to this interpretation of the tense if we adopt the reading
’works’ (τεχνῶν) instead of ’children’ (τέκνων). Then the meaning will be: Men
blame, but the result justifies those blamed; the issue will show that both John
and I were in our right, both in different ways inspired by wisdom. Historical
in form, the statement is in reality a prophecy. So taken, the saying contains
an important truth often verified in history, that proscribed causes in the long
run arc justified by their effects, and obtain general recognition as having
their origin, not in folly, but in wisdom. That Christ should make such an
appeal to the future is nowise unlikely, only it may be doubted whether this was
all He had in view. It is probable He had the present and even the past in His
thoughts when He uttered this pregnant saying, and it is not difficult to give
such a wide sense to ’works’ as to cover such a reference, and indeed make the
two readings practically coincide. Among the works of wisdom we may reckon the
children of wisdom, those who possess spiritual insight into the nature of moral
phenomena. These see at the beginning what all see at the end—that movements
which give rise to criticism are of God, and by their insight those movements
are justified. But if we may reckon among the works of wisdom the few who at an
early stage detect the character of spiritual movements, à fortiori we may
reckon in the same category the chief agents in those movements whose conduct is
the principal subject of criticism. And confining our view to them we may say:
"Wisdom is justified by her works,"—meaning, wisdom is justified in all her
diverse ways of working; in the two instances in question, in particular.

Thus understood, the saying is demonstrably true. Wisdom was indeed justified in
the diverse modes of life and methods of work characteristic of Jesus and John
respectively. John came neither eating nor drinking, and inculcating an ascetic
habit; Jesus came both eating and drinking, and initiating His disciples into a
life of liberty and joy; and wisdom revealed itself in both—God’s wisdom in
sending them such as they were, their wisdom in being what God meant them to be.
Both had one end, and were devoted to that end, but their manner of life and
action were very diverse; yet both were legitimate and wise, because they were
adapted to the gifts, the opportunities, and the tasks of each respectively.
Wisdom dictates that means correspond to ends, and that men be like their work,
and this law of congruity was complied with in the case of Jesus and John. John
standing at the threshold of the new era of grace was yet a man of the old era,
and his vocation was that of a Hebrew prophet, viz. to show the people their
transgressions. He was indeed the last of the prophets, and the harbinger of the
new era, but that function demanded the same type of man. The work of a
forerunner of Messiah involved rough tasks, and needed a stern will. He had to
prepare the way of the Lord, levelling the hills of pride, rousing dormant
consciences, and so preparing men for receiving the Redeemer when He came in the
fulness of grace. It became one having such a vocation to live austerely, and by
the very exaggerations of his self-denial to be a living protest against all
forms of sensualism. His very dress served his vocation, giving emphasis to his
ministry of repentance, speaking to the eye of the people, and telling them that
this was another Elijah, a representative of moral law isolated from them,
raised above them, and from Sinai’s peak thundering down a stern "Thou shalt
not" against the vice of the world below. The garment of camel’s hair girt with
a leathern girdle was thus a most legitimate piece of ritualism. It is very easy
to criticise this man, and point out faults. His austerity is excessive, his
aspect is grotesque, his speech uncourtly, his whole way so eccentric, that men,
at a loss what to think of him, might very excusably solve the problem by the
hypothesis of demoniacal possession. Nevertheless John, wanting these
peculiarities—call them faults if you will—would not have done his work so well.
They were at least proofs of his utter sincerity; proofs that he was a man
possessed, not indeed, as the critics imagined, with an evil spirit, but with
the sublime spirit of righteousness; so utterly possessed by the noble passion
for right as to disturb the balance and mar the symmetry of his character, and
make him appear, to a superficial view, a onesided, extreme, singular, even
absurd man, unendurable except to those who sympathised with his work, and
understood its requirements. The same law of congruity made it meet that Jesus
should be as like other men as possible within the limits of the innocent; for
thus only could He get close to them and win His way into their hearts with His
gospel of mercy. He did well to come eating and drinking. Not eating and
drinking riotously did He come, as He was slanderously reported to have done.
His accommodations to existing customs sprang from love, not from laxity, and
were the outward symbol of that sympathetic spirit which led Him to call Himself
Son of man; and, having this end, they were accommodations in accordance with
wisdom. The life of Jesus suited His vocation as one sent to preach a gospel to
the poor, the fallen, the miserable; for it helped Him to win the confidence of
those whom He sought to benefit. It becomes the Sanctifier to be in all possible
respects like those whom he would sanctify; the more points of contact the
better. This is the key to many features in Christ’s conduct, and especially to
that part of His public conduct which was so much blamed—His intercourse with
the tax-gatherers, and the morally suspicious or disreputable class with whom
they were associated. In that instance wisdom was justified by Christ’s own lips
in those beautiful apologies for loving the sinful which we had occasion to
expound in studying the parables of grace. And wisdom was further justified by
her works—by the actual results. For Christ’s open, genial bearing did win the
confidence of many social outcasts; and the faith thus inspired exercised a
redeeming influence upon their spirit, and led them to peace and purity. Wisdom
was justified by children of folly transformed into children of wisdom, and as
time went on, and the new movement unfolded itself, and its tendencies were
revealed by its effects, the vindication grew more and more complete.

If the critics of Jesus had foreseen all that was to come out of His work they
might possibly have abstained from faultfinding; for the world respects results,
and recognises that which by these has fully vindicated its right to exist. But
it is the misfortune of worldly wisdom that it has exclusive regard to results,
and at the same time wants the prophetic prescience that can divine what these
will be, and so is liable to be misled by present appearances into false and
injurious judgments. In both respects it differs from true wisdom, which is not
guided in its judgment solely by results seen of foreseen, but looks into the
heart of things, and when it can recognise in conduct the expression of sincere
conviction, the forth-putting of Divine force, does homage thereto irrespective
of consequences. In this spirit the truly wise judge others; in this spirit they
act themselves. They show their wisdom not by calculating consequences, but by
being faithful in word and deed to the best impulses within them. So they play
the hero; while worldly wisdom, in its anxiety to please all, to obviate
immediate difficulties, to gain temporary advantages, stifles conviction, chills
enthusiasm, and cuts itself off from the possibility of a heroic career
permanently influential. But again, true wisdom has clear insight into the
ultimate consequences of conduct. It has confidence in the moral order of the
world, and knows that the final issues of all right action must be good. Worldly
wisdom, in its blindness, can only infer from ascertained effects the quality of
the cause. Genuine wisdom, from insight into the quality of the cause, can
predict the nature of the effects. The one can only judge of the tree by its
fruit; the other can judge of the fruit by the tree. The people of Judæa,
unhappily for themselves, did not even possess the former and easier of these
faculties of moral judgment. They persisted in entertaining a poor opinion of
Jesus and His work even after it had attained to the measure of development
manifested in the Apostolic Church. They were still unconvinced of their own
sin, and of Christ’s righteousness. And so there remained for them nothing but a
fearful prospect of the wrath to the uttermost that came upon them in the first
Christian century, from which Jesus and John would gladly have saved them.


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  CHAPTER 27: 01.22.        CHAPTER 2. THE BARREN FIG-TREE
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Chapter 2. The Barren Fig-Tree Or, the Withdrawal of Israel’s Privilege in
Favour of the Gentiles Foreshadowed.

JESUS spake this parable: A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard;
and he came seeking fruit on it, and found not any. And he said unto the
vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree,
and I find it not: cut it down; why doth it also[1] make the land useless?[2]
And he answering saith unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall
dig about it, and dung it, and if it bear fruit next year,[3] well; but if not,
thou shalt cut it down.—Luk 13:6-9.

[1] The omission of this word in the A. V. is a grave fault, as it is essential
to the meaning. The R. V. corrects the error.

[2] καταργεῖ The rendering ’cumbereth’ in A. V. retained in R. V. is
objectionable as too vague, not to mention that the verb cumber is used in
another place of the same Gospel for a wholly different Greek word (Luk 10:40).
The same word should certainly not be used in both places. The idea intended by
καταργεῖ seems to be that the land is rendered ἀργός = ὰεργός.

[3] In the T. R. εἰς τὸ μέλλον comes after εἰ δὲ μήγε. The rendering
’henceforth’ in the R. V., replacing the ’after that’ of the A. V., is too
general, ἔτος is understood after μέλλον. So Bengel, Meyer, and Hofmann. Also
Dr. Field, who, criticising the R. V., remarks: "Here ἔτος occurs in the
preceding verse, but even without that the idiom is well established. Plutarch
frequently uses it of magistrates designate" (’Otium Norvicense,’ Part III). The
correct rendering of the phrase was given early in last century by the Cambridge
scholar, Jeremiah Markland, to whom reference is made by Dr. Field, and also by
Bos in ’Ellipses Græcæ’ under the word ἔτος.

If it be assumed that the conception and. delivery of this parabolic speech
sprang out of the incidents previously narrated, its judicial character is
self-evident. In that case the obvious purpose of the parable is to enforce the
warning: "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish;" to intimate, that is
to say, that the judgment of the Jewish nation was impending. But even if, as is
most likely, the connection between the parable and what goes before is
subjective only, in the mind of the writer, rather than in the actual course of
events, the sombre and threatening nature of the utterance is still very
apparent. The unfruitful tree, which we may safely assume to be Israel, is about
to be cut down. It is on its last trial, the issue of which, judging from the
past, is far from hopeful. There is, indeed, mercy in the petition that it may
have a last trial—another year of grace. This circumstance, however, throws no
shadow of doubt on the judicial character of the parable; or, if it does, then
we must conclude that it is a mistake to speak of a separate class of parables
of judgment. For none of our Lord’s parabolic sayings are so purely judicial as
to show no trace of the grace that dwelt in Him. The grace is visible enough
here in the intercession of the vinedresser. Nevertheless, judgment
preponderates. The very intercession is ominous. The vinedresser shows His
mercifulness by deprecating immediate cutting down, but the careful
specification of conditions, and the limitation of the period within which
experiments are to be made, intimate that peril is imminent. The object of
judgment, already hinted at, is Israel—that would be so obvious to the hearers
that it was quite unnecessary to explain it; and what is threatened is exclusion
from the kingdom of God, forfeiture of privilege as the elect people. As in most
parables belonging to the present group, the threatening against Israel is
accompanied by hints at the replacing of the chosen people by other recipients
of Divine favour. The most obvious hint is contained in the words: Why also
rendereth it the land useless? The owner regards the occupation of the land by
an unproductive tree as a serious evil, and one reason of his desire to cut down
the tree is that another fertile tree may be planted in its room. It thus
appears that in one aspect a parable of judgment, the present parable,—and a
similar remark may be made with reference to all belonging to the same group,—is
in another aspect a parable of grace. A parable of judgment as towards Israel,
it is a parable of grace as towards the Gentiles, intimating God’s purpose to
put them in the place of an unfruitful elect people. In this fact, doubtless,
lay the attraction of this parable for the third Evangelist, who has alone
recorded it. The doom of Israel by itself was an unpleasant subject of
contemplation to a Christian mind; and had there been nothing but that to be
found in the parable, Luke might have kept it out of his gospel. But his quick
Pauline eye detected much more in it than that. He found there, to his comfort,
a hint that Israel’s doom was to be the opportunity of the Gentiles; that the
sunset of Israel’s day of grace was to be the sunrise of a day of grace for the
outside nations. The parable before us is one of those parts of our Lord’s
teaching in which is latent Pauline universalism. This element is its specialty,
and only when we keep it steadily in view can we do full justice to all the
features of the representation, or enter sympathetically into the spirit of
either the speaker or the narrator. We understand the story of the unfruitful
fig-tree only when we see in it an anticipation of Paul’s apologetic for his
Gentile Gospel, as apparently liable to the objection of setting aside the
election of Israel, in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of his Epistle to
the Romans. So at least we read the story, and we hope to justify the reading by
the exposition following. The lesson of the parable then being, on our view, not
merely the doom of Israel, but that doom as accompanied by the in-bringing of
the Gentiles, let us see how the details fit into the hypothesis. The first
point claiming attention is the subject of the parabolic narration—a fig-tree in
a vineyard. That requires explanation. A fig-tree is not the thing we look for
in a vineyard. The peculiarity has not escaped the notice of commentators, and
they have tried to account for it. Some point out that a fig-tree does not
conflict with the prohibition in Deu 22:9—Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with
divers seeds, lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of
thy vineyard, be defiled, inasmuch as trees are not referred to in the
passage.[1] Others conversant with the present practice in the East tell us that
a fig-tree in a vineyard is by no means an uncommon phenomenon.[2] One who
writes with authority on all that relates to the Natural History of the Bible,
states that the corners and irregular pieces of ground in a vineyard are
generally occupied by a fig-tree.[3] Such observations prove that a fig-tree in
a vineyard is not contrary either to law or to usage; but they do not explain
why our Lord selected a fig-tree instead of a vine, as we should have expected,
to be the vehicle of instruction. However legal or usual the presence of a
fig-tree in a vineyard may be, it is not, as in the case of a vine, a matter of
course, and Christ must have had a reason for introducing it, and the reason can
only be found in the didactic significance of the emblem. What, then, was the
reason? On our view of the drift of the parable it is not difficult to answer
the question. The fig-tree is chosen to represent Israel as a tacit yet
effective protest against the notion of her possessing a prescriptive right to
occupy in perpetuity the place she held in God’s favour. The supposition is
directed against the pride and self-importance of an elect race, prone to think
that Israel and God’s kingdom were synonymous, or as intimately and essentially
related to each other as are vineyard and vine. To have used the vine as an
emblem of Israel might have seemed to concede this claim, but by selecting the
fig-tree as an emblem Christ said to his countrymen in effect, "Ye have no
natural or necessary place in the sphere within which God’s grace manifests
itself, like a vine in a vineyard, without which the vineyard can hardly be
conceived: Ye are but a fig-tree in the vineyard, legitimately, suitably enough
there, yet there by accident, or by free choice of the owner, and there only so
long as ye serve the purpose for which he put you there." Much the same thing
indeed could be said even of a vine. For while vines are necessary to the idea
of a vineyard, this of that particular vine is not, and the introduction of any
individual plant is a matter of choice, and its continuance depends on its
fruit-bearing qualities; for no owner of a vineyard recognises a prescriptive
right in a vine to remain in its place even when it has proved unfruitful. But
what may be said even of a vine may be said à fortiori of a fig-tree, and to
select a fig-tree as the emblem of Israel was a way of. provoking reflections of
this kind in a people not by any means inclined thereto. The Jewish people would
not of their own accord think of themselves as a fig-tree in a vineyard. They
would rather think of themselves as God’s vine, which He brought from Egypt and
planted in the goodly land of promise; and they would flatter themselves that as
God had taken so much pains to elect them, and as they had been so long in
possession, they would continue in the vineyard for ever. It was because the
Jews cherished such thoughts that necessity was laid on Paul to reconcile his
Gentile Gospel, not only with ethical interests and with the claims of the
Mosaic law, but with the election of Israel. They had the same thoughts in our
Lord’s time, and it was to provide an antidote to such self-deception and
self-flattery that He called Israel a fig-tree in a vineyard; so by a single
word accomplishing the same end which Paul sought to serve by an elaborate
process of argument, designed to show that in election God is free, that
therefore it confers no prescriptive rights, that what God freely began He may
freely end, so far as human claims are concerned; and that Israel, so far from
having any prescriptive right, had justly forfeited her privilege as the elect
people by her utter failure to realise the Divine purpose in her election.[4]

[1] So Meyer.

[2] Vide Stanley, ’Sinai and Palestine,’ p. 421.

[3] Tristram, ’The Natural History of the Bible,’ p. 352. Godet remarks that the
soil of a vineyard is very good for fruit-trees, as if the point of the parable
were to teach that God had done all for Israel that He could (so Arnot). This is
not the moral lesson of the parable, and the observation concerning the goodness
of the soil, besides being irrelevant to the didactic scope, leaves the
selection of a fig-tree as emblem unexplained. The land was good for any
fruit-tree; why then name this one in particular?

[4] Such is the scope of Rom. ix., x. Chap. xi. qualifies the severity of the
previous argument by showing that the cancelling of Israel’s election is not
absolute or final.

All this is hinted by one short parable, and even by the single word
fig-tree;[1] all this, and yet more, for the comparison of Israel to a fig-tree
suggests forcibly the thought that God’s vineyard is a much more comprehensive
category than the chosen race. Doubtless it was intended to suggest this
thought, and when we keep this fact in view we can have no difficulty in
answering the question: If Israel be the fig-tree, what is the vineyard? The
question has puzzled commentators and received various and even curious answers.
Some say the vineyard in this instance must mean the world.[2] One expositor,
unable to accept this view, and at a loss to suggest any other, on the
assumption that the fig-tree denotes Israel, in despair makes the tree represent
individual Israelites, the vineyard being Israel collectively.[3] The truth is,
that the vineyard is the kingdom of God, the sphere within which God manifests
Himself in grace; always in idea and Divine purpose distinguishable from and
wider than the Jewish people, and now on the eve of becoming a much more
comprehensive thing in reality through the calling of the Gentiles,[4] after
which it would become apparent to all that the place of Israel. in the kingdom
was as that of a fig-tree in the corner of a vineyard, small at the best, and by
no means secure.

[1] Bengel had a glimpse of this, as appears from his suggestive remark: σμκν,
arborem cui per se nil loci est in vineâ.

[2] So Euthymius Zig. Trench, Oostersee, Arnot [3] Stier in ’Die Reden Jesu.’

[4] So Hofmann and Goebel. The vineyard, says Hofmann, is "die Anstalt des
Heils." By no means secure, for the fig-tree has been unfruitful: that is the
outstanding fact in its history. "Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit
on this tree, and find not any." The three years signify the time sufficient for
ascertaining the tree’s fruit-bearing qualities, after the lapse of which one
may infer incurable barrenness.[1] Possibly, as has been suggested, the number
of years has been fixed with reference to the precept in the law directing that
the fruit of young trees should for three years not be eaten, but be reckoned
uncircumcised.[2] There is little reason to believe that Jesus meant to refer to
the years of His own personal ministry, though this view, in favour with many,
certainly helps to remove the appearance of harshness in limiting the trial to
so short a period, as in that case the meaning would be, that during a time of
special means of grace Israel should have been exceptionally fruitful. Similar
service is rendered by the suggestion that the three years represent the three
epochs of the judges, the kings, and the high priests; each year in the parable
signifying a period of many centuries in the history. Certainly the time of
trial does seem short, and in so far conveys an unfavourable impression as to
God’s patience towards Israel, not justified by the actual facts; for Jehovah
had borne long with the unfruitfulness of His chosen people. But the time is
made short because the purpose is not to emphasise the Divine patience, but to
give prominence to the thought that fruit is the thing looked for, the reason of
the fig-tree’s presence in the vineyard. It belonged to the didactic drift of
the parable to emphasise this point, for it tended to justify the threatened
excision of Israel. Hence is explained the limitation of the period of trial to
the barely sufficient number of years. The same bias comes out in the use of the
present ἔρχομαι, in speaking of the owner’s quest for fruit "I am coming," he
says: he is continually on the outlook for fruit, and on its becoming apparent
to him that a particular tree is not likely to be fruit-bearing, he has but one
thought concerning it, viz. to cut it down or remove it, and plant another in
its place. The point meant to be insisted on obviously is not the patience of
God, but His impatience with a spiritually unfruitful people, even though it
were an elect people. Christ would teach His countrymen, presuming on their
privilege, that election was only a means to an end, and that if the end were
not attained it would be sternly cancelled.

[1] So Godet.

[2] Lev 19:23. So Hofmann. The restriction of the intercession of the
vinedresser for a prolongation of the experiment to a single year indicates
Christ’s own sympathy with this Divine rigour. He is the vinedresser, and His
ministry of grace and truth is the means whereby it is faintly hoped Israel may
yet, at the eleventh hour, be made spiritually fruitful. But, full of grace
though He be, He neither expects nor desires an indefinite extension of Israel’s
day of grace. He knows that though God is long-suffering, yet His patience, as
exhibited in the history of His dealings with men, is exhaustible; and that in
Israel’s case it is now all but worn out. And He sympathises with the Divine
impatience with chronic and incurable sterility. For though He preaches with
enthusiasm a gospel of grace, He does so with the aim of producing in the
recipients of the good tidings holiness, and in the conviction that belief in
the gospel is the most efficient cause of holiness. A kingdom of God must be a
kingdom of righteousness, and if Jesus presented it to view as a kingdom of
grace, it was because He believed that was the most direct way of reaching the
ideal. It was made a kingdom of grace to begin with, that it might become a
kingdom of righteousness to end with. In this respect there is absolute
agreement between Christ and Paul. The Herald of the kingdom, not less
energetically than the apostle of the Gentiles, repudiates the idea that men
might sin with impunity because grace abounded. The intercession put into the
mouth of the vinedresser is a solemn act of repudiation, similar in import to
Paul’s protest in the sixth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. "Let it alone
this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it; and if it bear fruit
next year, well; and if not, thou shalt cut it down." What words could more
clearly or forcibly declare that grace is meant to lead to holy living, and that
when it fails to do that it will be and ought to be exchanged for judicial
rigour? The words of the vinedresser naturally make no reference to what may
follow the cutting down of the unfruitful tree. And yet from the respect which
he shows for the owner’s urgent demand for fruit, as well as from that demand
itself, it is easy to infer what is to be expected. The place of the barren tree
will be filled by another tree in the hope of its proving fruitful. The owner of
the vineyard must have fruit, and if he cannot get it from one quarter, he will
provide that it be forthcoming from another. The thought suggested by the stress
laid throughout on fertility is distinctly expressed by the words put into the
mouth of the proprietor, "Why maketh it the land useless?" That the tree
occupied unprofitably soil which might otherwise be productive is held to be
sufficient condemnation. Some interpreters, ancient and modern, put a pregnant
sense on the verb καταργεῖ, so as to make it cover not only the idea of
profitless occupation, but that of injuring the land by intercepting the sun’s
rays, and sucking out of it its nutritive juices.[1] This heaping of accusations
on the devoted tree arises out of a latent feeling that the owner’s tone appears
unduly severe, and stands in need of vindication. A strong case must be made out
against the tree, that the owner may be cleared from the charge of
unreasonableness. Therefore three sins are imputed to it, over and above that of
unfruitfulness—it occupies space, it shuts out the sun, it impoverishes the
soil. But this looks very like a repetition of the sin of Job’s theorising
friends, that of playing the part of special pleaders for God. The interpreters,
missing the point of the parable, have been decidedly too hard upon the poor
fig-tree. For, after all, it is a young tree, and cannot do very great harm by
its leaves casting shade, or by its roots sucking moisture out of the land. No
doubt the nation of Israel, which it represented, was an old tree, and did
serious harm by its hypocritical profession of piety, causing the name of God to
be blasphemed among the Gentiles, as Paul solemnly declared. But the parable is
not so constructed as to bring out these facts, and we are not entitled to foist
them into it. The fig-tree of the parable is a young tree of comparatively small
dimensions and short roots. It has just lived long enough to show that it is not
likely to be fruitful, and therefore uselessly occupies a place in the vineyard.
And the point of the parable is, that that alone is sufficient to justify
removal. To accumulate charges against the tree is simply to teach by
implication that the one reason of profitless occupancy is not enough, and to
obscure the moral lesson, which is that the supreme motive of Providence in its
dealings with men is a regard to fruitfulness. The attempt to make out a strong
case only issues in making out a weak case. The true interest of the
interpreter, therefore, is to concentrate attention on the one point, and to set
forth as the lesson of the parable, that as soon as it has been definitely
ascertained that a tree planted in the Divine vineyard is barren, and therefore
idly occupies the ground, it ought to be removed and another planted in its
room.[2] That is just what an unfruitful tree does to land. The land is as good
as non-existent which is occupied by a barren tree. In the history of nations a
long time is allowed for the ascertainment of the fact; but it holds good,
nevertheless, that such is the principle on which nations are dealt with by
Providence, and, in particular, that such is the principle on which the people
of Israel were dealt with.

[1] So Gregory the Great, and, almost as a matter of course, after him Trench;
also Bengel, who thus pithily sums up the case against the tree:—"Non modo nil
prodest, sed etiam laticem avertit, quem e terra sucturae erant vites, et soles
interpellat, et spatium occupat." To the same effect Maldonatus.

[2] The Vulgate renders κμταργεῖ by occupat. Trench pronounces the rendering
inadequate; in our view it hits the meaning intended exactly. The fact that
κμταργεῖν is a favourite Pauline word might tempt us to put a Pauline sense on a
word which occurs here only outside of Paul’s Epistles, or to suppose that Luke,
the Pauline evangelist, must have understood it in a Pauline sense. But even if
we were to yield to this impulse, it would not conduct to a sense widely
different from that assigned to the word in our exposition. A prevalent Pauline
sense of the term is "to make void." The means proposed by the vinedresser for
the cure of barrenness are characteristic. They are means of grace; such means
as from the gospel records we know to have been employed by Christ to win His
countrymen to repentance and true piety. "I shall dig about it, and dung it."
These processes began with the ministry of John the Baptist, and were carried on
faithfully and lovingly by Jesus till the hour when He uttered the pathetic
lament over Jerusalem, because she had defeated all His efforts to save her.[1]
The doctrine of the Kingdom was the chief ingredient in the fertilising matter
laid at the roots of the barren tree. That doctrine way supremely well fitted to
regenerate Israel, and cause her to bring forth fruit to God, in place of mere
foliage and wood. Yet it signally failed to do so; the Jewish people, as a
whole, treated the good tidings with contempt, and became worse rather than
better. And it is a melancholy reflection, that this is apt to be the case with
a people after it has attained a certain stage of spiritual decay. The goodness
of God leadeth it not to repentance; it rather despises the riches of His
goodness and forbearance and long-suffering. This fact in the spiritual world
has its analogue in the physical world. It is a well-known fact, that both in
the animal and in the vegetable kingdom fertility is frequently better promoted
by starving than by fattening.[2] A barren tree, gone to leaf and wood, is
rendered fertile, not by dunging, but by cutting the roots. Severe treatment
restores to fruit-bearing more readily than generous gardening. Poor populations
are more prolific than well-to-do classes. It is a remarkable law this,
according to which impoverishment is the condition of abundant reproduction, and
nature is compelled to make an effort at self-preservation, by having its
continued existence threatened. The law, ever active alike in the physical and
in the spiritual spheres, was exemplified in Israel. The manuring process
utterly failed, and there was nothing left but to try the cutting process. This
process was tried when Israel was cut off, and the Gentiles were put in her
place. Then means of grace gave place to measures of severity, to which Paul
applied the expressive name of ἀποτομία.[3] According to the apostle, these
measures were means of grace under a different guise. They were only a new way
towards the old end—that of making Israel in truth a people of God. Such is the
drift of the last part of the great argument by which Paul seeks to reconcile
his gospel with the election of Israel. God, he says, hath not totally or
finally cast off His people. He has only adopted a new method of accomplishing
the purpose of the election.[4] It is a comforting doctrine, whether we have
regard to the case of Israel or to the dark, judicial side of God’s dealings
with men generally. It is a doctrine not taught in our parable. The cutting down
spoken of there is final and irretrievable. For if a tree be felled with the axe
it cannot grow again. The fact reminds us of the relativity and partiality of
many individual Scripture statements, and of the need for combining mutually
complementary texts in order to a just, full, and balanced view of Bible
teaching on matters of fundamental moment.

[1] Qui vinitor eximia imago est ejus qui ἰδὼν τὴν πόλιν ἐπέκλαυσεν ἐπ αὐτήν.
Unger.

[2] Vide Doubleday’s ’Law of Population.’

[3] Rom 11:22.

[4] Vide remarks on this topic in connection with the parable of the Great
Supper, at p. 338.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 28: 01.23.        CHAPTER 3. THE TWO SONS
========================================================================

Chapter 3. The Two Sons Or, Israel’s leaders charged with the vice of
insincerity.

During the conflicts of the Passion-week Jesus spake the following parable, one
of the three directed one after the other against the ecclesiastical leaders of
the Jewish people, now become His relentless adversaries: But what think ye? A
man had two sons; and coming to the first, he said, Son, go work to-day in the
vineyard. And he answered and said, I go, sir; and went not. And coming to the
second, he said likewise. And he answered and said, I will not; but afterwards,
repenting, he went. Which of the two did the will of his father? They say the
second. Jesus saith to them, Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the
harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way
of righteousness, and ye believed him not; but the publicans and the harlots
believed him; and ye, when ye saw it, did not even afterwards repent, that ye
might believe him.—St. Mat 21:28-32.[1]

[1] We give the parable as it stands in the text of the Vatican Codex, and as
given in Westcott and Hort; the order in which the two sons are named being the
inverse of that in the T. R. For remarks in vindication of this order, see the
exposition. This parable, like that of the Children in the Market-place, is also
a parable of moral criticism, associated here as in the earlier instance with
the name of the Baptist. It arose naturally out of the preceding discussion in
which Jesus, put upon His defence, with controversial tact made use of John to
put to silence His opponents. John’s career was finished; his name belonged to
history; and public opinion had pronounced on him its final verdict, to the
effect that he was a true prophet of God, entitled to speak in God’s name to his
fellow-countrymen. This judgment the religious heads of the people could not
afford to gainsay, and as prudent men of the world they bowed to it But they did
not recognise the claims of the Baptist while he lived and carried on his work.
Then they found fault with him, not less than with Jesus, though on different
grounds. Of this fact Jesus, interrogated concerning His prophetic authority,
takes care to remind them now, putting them in an awkward dilemma by asking the
question: "The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven or from men?" The
effect of the question was to rob their doubt or unbelief in regard to Himself
of all moral weight. It meant: "You bow to the opinion of the public now,
concerning John, but you know how you thought and spoke of him not long ago.
Your adverse opinion against a man does not count for much. He may be a genuine
messenger of God, and yet be evil spoken of by you. I do not think it worth
while to answer your question about my authority. If ever you recognise it, it
will be after the world has done so, for your way is not to lead but to follow
opinion."

Having first used John in self-defence, Jesus next proceeded to turn him into a
weapon of attack against His foes by relating in parabolic form the treatment
which His fellow-prophet received at their hands. The parable and its
interpretation amount to a charge of insincerity against the Pharisaic class, as
manifested in their behaviour towards the Baptist Animadversion on this
Pharisaic vice was natural in the circumstances; for the opponents of Jesus had
just shown themselves guilty of it by their evasive answer to His question
concerning John’s baptism and its source. "We know not," replied they, because
it was inconvenient to give a more distinct answer. Had they spoken according to
the thoughts of their own hearts they would have given one answer; had they
followed their inclination to echo the voice of the nation they would have
returned an opposite answer. They in fact said both yes and no to the assertion
that John was a prophet; yes, by their deference to the vox populi; no, by their
deepest sympathies. The design of the parable is to declare that what these men
did then they had been doing all along—assuming a yes-and-no attitude towards
the Baptist’s public vocation and ministry, seeming to approve his general aim
yet utterly out of sympathy with his spirit. The parabolic discourse seems to
charge a twofold insincerity against the parties animadverted on; one of the
past, and one of the present They had said yes and no while John exercised his
ministry, approving of his way so far as it was a way of legal righteousness,
disapproving of his spirit; they say yes and no still, saying with the general
public, ’John is a prophet,’ and so appearing at length to believe in him: yet
all the while disliking his moral temper as much as ever, so retaining their
secret conviction altogether unrepented of.

Insincerity, then, deep, habitual, incurable, is the vice with which the
Pharisaic character is here branded. It is a much more serious charge than that
brought in the earlier parable of moral criticism. There the fault animadverted
on is simply childish caprice and whimsicality, which can be pleased with
nothing, and regards with equal dislike the most diverse moral tendencies. There
also the censure is mitigated by the employment of children as an emblem of the
objects of censure, for who is much surprised at the peccadilloes of children,
however naughty? Here the emblem of an evil generation is a son grown to man’s
estate, who may be expected to realise the responsibilities and to address
himself seriously to the duties of life. And what is charged against this son is
that he recognises his responsibilities in word or sentiment only, not in deed,
and so trifles with and wrongs those to whom he owes relative duties. Yet the
vices exposed in the two parables are more closely connected than at first
appears. The child of the earlier parable is the father of the young man of the
later. The child’s fault is playing at religion; the man’s fault is still that
of playing at religion, only in a theatrical, hypocritical sense. The two
parables, while linked together by the common reference to John in the
interpretation, have this difference, that, whereas in the earlier both John and
Jesus are alluded to in the interpretation, in the latter John alone comes in.
This is easily explained by the difference in the didactic drift. The earlier
parable, having for its aim to convict the contemporaries of Jesus and John of
unreasonable caprice, naturally employs for this purpose both prophets, so
diverse in their way of life and work, yet equally disapproved of by the men of
that generation. The present parable, being intended to establish a charge of
insincerity, could not with effect refer to the behaviour of the parties
censured towards Jesus. For they had never even pretended or seemed to side with
Him. From the first they had regarded Him and His ways with surprise and
distrust, which as time went on deepened into disgust, hostility, and hatred. He
and they lay too far apart, not only in spirit but in fundamental principles.
They might be wrong and He right, but their dissent could not convict them of
insincerity, but only of spiritual blindness. Reference to the case of John, on
the other hand, was peculiarly apposite in connection with an attempt to
establish such a charge. For John and the Pharisees and Scribes had much in
common. Their ’way’—using the term as it is sometimes used in the New Testament,
in the sense of a religion[1]—and John’s was essentially the same. John came
neither eating nor drinking—that is, practising ascetic fasting[2]—observing the
rules regarding purification,[3] and teaching his disciples forms of prayer;[4]
just as the Pharisees did, who fasted oft, scrupulously attended to ceremonial
washing, and said many prayers. The watchword of both parties was righteousness,
and their professed aim to keep the law in all its parts. This agreement in
principle and aim is what is referred to in the expression, "John came unto you
in the way of righteousness."[5] The phrase is not employed to express the
common-place truth that John was a righteous man. It means: "John came in your
own way; the way you loved and professed to walk in, the good old way as you
might think it, comparing it with mine which might appear to you a new way
involving objectionable innovations: neglect of fasting and ablutions, Sabbath
desecrations, and the like." The implied assertion is that they had no excuse
for not believing in John such as they might plausibly allege for not believing
in Himself. If they disbelieved in John it could not be on account of his
principles or his practice; it must be solely on account of the earnestness with
which he proclaimed his principles, and insisted on their being carried out in
conduct.[6] [1] Vide Acts 9:2; Acts 19:9, &c.

[2] Mat 9:14; Mat 11:18.

[3] John 3:25.

[4] Luk 11:1.

[5] Mat 21:32.

[6] So Olshausen. Trench refers in general terms to his view, without naming
him, and explains its import without saying whether he approves it or not. "An
emphasis," he remarks, "has been sometimes laid" on the words, ’in the way of
righteousness.’" This is a most unsatisfactory way of disposing of a view which
is either a conceit, or the key to the interpretation of the parable. We have no
doubt at all that it if the latter.

Yes! the earnestness of John was his one grand offence in the eyes of his
contemporaries. He came in their own way of righteousness and that they approved
of, but he came with such consuming earnestness that, zealots though they were,
they were repelled and shocked. The man seemed out of his senses: possessed, so
to speak, with a demoniac zeal for holiness. Such zeal was unwholesome, and also
uncomfortable, for it attached supreme importance to moral law, while
scrupulously attentive to ritual. It rebuked vice in kings; yea, even in
Pharisaic zealots themselves. So they condemned the Baptist, and in doing so
convicted themselves of insincerity; exhibited themselves playing the part of
the son in the parable, saying to his father bidding him go work in the
vineyard, "I go, sir," and after all not going. They said, "I go, sir," by
agreeing with John’s general aim, and busying themselves about righteousness.
They "went not," by disapproving of John’s spirit of downright moral earnestness
and behaving as moral triflers, attending seriously to minutiae, neglecting the
great matters of the law.

It would have been possible to represent the religionists of Judaea in this
light, in parabolic form, without introducing a second son. The parable might
have run, "A certain man had a son, and he said to him, ’Go, my son, work to-day
in my vineyard;’ and he said, ’I go, sir, and went not;’" and the
interpretation: "John summoned you to walk in the way of legal piety, and ye
affected great zeal for that way; nevertheless ye walked not in it." But the
introduction of a second figure serves several good purposes. The picturesque
interest of the parable is immensely increased by contrast. The character which
it is the chief object of the speaker to describe is more exactly defined and
estimated by comparison with another type, also faulty but not so criminal. Then
by this device it is made possible to present to view the whole behaviour of the
Pharisaic class towards John, from the days of his appearing in the desert till
now. They are exhibited not only as giving a hypocritical response to the
Baptist’s summons, but as persisting in their first mood when the course of
events seemed to demand a change of mind. When the class represented by the
publicans and the harlots had responded to John’s call and repented, and when by
general consent he had been accepted as a prophet, their inmost thoughts
remained unaltered. For prudential reasons they might have changed their tone,
and ceased to complain of the Baptist’s extreme and unreasonable temper as an
excuse for keeping aloof from his movement, but they had not changed their
heart. Finally the use of comparison gave a natural occasion for the question by
which the auditors were drawn unwittingly into self-condemnation. In these
remarks we have virtually assumed that one of the two sons—the one who
represents the degraded classes—is introduced as a mere foil to the other, that
representing the religious leaders of the people. If this assumption be correct,
then we should expect to find the latter first mentioned in the parable. The
principal character naturally takes precedence of the foil; the main object of
censure of the figure introduced merely to give point to the censure. For this
reason we have without much hesitation adopted the order in which the two sons
are named in the Vatican text. Our chief feeling indeed is one of surprise that
there should have been any considerable variation in the manuscript readings of
the passage. The difficulty is not so much to decide which is the more probable
reading, as to account for the variations from the Vatican text which exist,
that, viz. of Codex Bezae which puts the son who represents the publicans first,
but retains the Vatican reading in the answer to Christ’s question, "Which did
the will of his father?" and that of the Textus Receptus, which puts the same
son first, and gives the answer as that order naturally demands, the first.[1]
Yet on reflection we see several things which might mislead copyists and tempt
them to try their hand at ’rectifying’ what we regard as the true text. In the
first place it might easily be assumed that the father wanted only one son to go
to work in the vineyard, in which case the first asked must refuse in order to
supply a motive for asking the second Then the solemn manner in which the
interpretation commences with a verily I say unto you, might be supposed to
imply that Christ was not merely confirming a right answer, but correcting a
wrong one given impudently in flagrant contradiction to common sense: the
answer, viz. that the son who said, I go, sir, and went not, did the will of the
father. This idea would account for the text of Codex Bezae, which places first
the son who said, I go not, and afterwards went, yet puts into the mouth of the
audience the reply to Christ’s query who did the will of his father—the second.
A third misleading element probably was the expression, go before you
(προάγουαι), applied by Christ to the publicans and harlots with reference to
the Pharisees; which might be interpreted thoughtlessly as applying to the order
in which the two sons were named in the parable. Finally, in a similar way the
word afterwards (ὕστερον), in the clause ye, when ye had seen it, repented not
afterwards, might react upon the arrangement by misleading copyists into the
notion that the representative of the class to whom these words refer must come
second. When once under these influences the order had been fixed as in the
Textus Receptus, the change of the answer given by the audience from the second
into the first was almost a matter of course, as a rectification to bring the
whole passage into harmony with itself.[2] [1] This reading is found in ℵ CLX.

[2] Tregelles (on the printed text of the ’Greek Testament,’ pp. 106-8) suggests
as the meaning of ὁ ὕστερος in Codex Bezae, Mat 21:31, "the man who afterwards
repented," which would reconcile the answer with this son occupying the first
place in the parable. But this view was not likely to occur to copyists or at
least to satisfy them. The adoption of πρῶτος along with that order was
ultimately certain. Vide on the whole passage the notes of Westcott and Hort.

While these considerations seem to explain the deviations from the Vatican text
as errors not unnatural on the part of mechanical copyists, that text itself is
recommended by all the probabilities of the case. It was natural that the
Pharisees should be mentioned first, not merely as the more important class
socially, but because they are the direct object of animadversion. It has indeed
been suggested that the Vatican order had its origin in the fact, that the
current interpretation of the parable made it refer to Jews and Gentiles.[1] But
the suggestion is gratuitous, because the order in question is equally congruous
to the narrower reference. Whether we apply the parable to Pharisees and
publicans on the one hand, or to Jews and Gentiles on the other, it was most
fitting that the son who answered insincerely should take precedence of the son
who answered rudely. And that this was the actual order seems to be certified by
the fact that it is in this order the parties are spoken of in the
interpretation. "John came unto you," said Jesus to the men whose conduct He was
criticising, "in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not, but the
publicans and harlots believed him." It only remains to add, that the order
which we defend corresponds to that in which the same parties are introduced in
the parable of the Great Supper.

[1] So Trench.

If the introduction of a second son representing the lowest class of society as
a foil to the first representing the higher orders added greatly to the literary
and moral value of the parable, it also very manifestly enhanced immeasurably
its offensiveness. To tell the proud self-satisfied zealots for righteousness
that the moral scum of society was nearer the kingdom of God than they, was to
offer them a mortal and unpardonable insult. Publicans and harlots! Why the
phrase was proverbial to denote all that was vile, loathsome, and alien to the
feelings of the pure, the respectable, and the patriotic. The analogous phrase
in Corea, another Judaea in exclusiveness, is "pig-stickers and harlots."[1] In
either case the words are so unsavoury as to be unfit to be spoken to polite
ears. Barely to use the phrase was a sin against conventional good taste. But to
speak of such people, and to add, "bad as they are in their moral rudeness and
licentiousness, they are better than you, for they have repented, and that you,
with not less need, have not done;" what a deadly offence, surely provocative of
bitter resentment and murderous intents!

[1] Vide ’History of Corea, Ancient and Modern,’ p. 311, by the Rev. John Ross.

Even so, Jesus knew it; and yet He felt constrained to speak this parable and
its interpretation. The truth must be spoken, however it might offend, because
it concerned more than those to whom it was first addressed. For while
mercilessly severe as towards them, this utterance is full of precious truth as
regards the kingdom of God, and the depraved members of the human family. It
tells us what we have already learned, but what we cannot hear too often, that
the kingdom of God is open to all comers irrespective of their moral
antecedents; that there is hope even for the most depraved; nay, that so far
from their case being desperate, there are great possibilities of good in them.
In telling us so much, it implicitly tells us more: viz. that the kingdom of God
is not for Jews only but for mankind. For a kingdom that can go so low as
publicans and harlots, must be prepared eventually to go to the ends of the
earth in quest of citizens. In this parable, as in so many others, there is
latent Christian universalism: a parable of judgment in its bearing towards the
insincere and hollow-hearted, it is a parable of grace in. its bearing towards
the sinful everywhere, whom it makes welcome to all its privileges on the one
condition of repentance.


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  CHAPTER 29: 01.24.        CHAPTER 4. THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN
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Chapter 4. The Wicked Husbandmen Or, the Iniquity of Israel’s Leaders Exposed
and Their Doom Declared. In continuance of His prophetic discourse, Jesus
addressed to His captious hearers another parable of judgment, saying:

Hear another parable: There was a man, a householder, who planted a vineyard,
and set a hedge about it, and dug in it a winepress, and built a tower, and let
it out to husbandmen, and went abroad. And when the fruit season drew near, he
sent his servants to the husbandmen to receive its fruits.[1] And the husbandmen
took his servants and beat one, and killed another, and stoned (to death)
another. Again he sent other servants more than the first,[2] and they did unto
them likewise. But afterwards he sent unto them his son, saying, They will
reverence my son. But the husbandmen, when they saw the son, said among
themselves; This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.
And laying hold of him, they cast him out of the vineyard and slew him. When
therefore the lord of the vineyard shall have come, what will he do to those
husbandmen? They say unto Him, He will miserably destroy those miserable men,[3]
The play of words in the Greek has been variously done into English by
commentators. The attempt of the R. V. adopted above is good enough. and will
let out the vineyard to other husbandmen who shall render him the fruits in
their seasons.—Mat 21:33-41 (Mark 12:1-9; Luk 20:9-17).

[1] Or his, the αὐτοῦ may refer either to the vineyard or to the owner.

[2] πλείονας might refer to quality as well as to number, and is so understood
by some. Vide Exposition.

[3] Κακοὺς κακῶς ἀπολέσει. The abrupt, imperative manner in which the parable is
introduced betrays the emotion of the Speaker. He is aware what deep offence the
words last spoken have given, and proceeds to reveal His knowledge by
foreshadowing His own fate. He is aware also that insincerity never stands
alone, that when pressed by moral earnestness to cease trifling and become real
it resents the demand as an impertinence; and He proceeds with stern resolution,
and at all hazards, to show the triflers the truculent side of their character.
Yet again He regards the inquiry concerning His authority as a mere affectation,
one more manifestation of the Pharisaic vice of insincerity; and He proceeds to
show how little His interrogators and their predecessors cared for authority
insisting in God’s name on anything being done which they did not feel inclined
to do. The parable rises to the sublime height of that sacred passion of
prophetic indignation which animated the soul of Jesus during the days
immediately preceding His crucifixion. It is by no means a pleasant parable to
read, the tragic history to which it relates appearing too clearly through the
parabolic veil. But the fault is not the Speaker’s, it is that of those whose
conduct and doom He describes. It may be a question whether the parabolic form
is of much use in such a case; whether when it comes to speaking so plainly as
is done here, it were not better to speak more plainly still, and to describe in
undisguised, unfigurative terms the repulsive facts of the past, and the not
less repulsive events about to happen; as Stephen did in after days, whose
speech before the Sanhedrim, as has been remarked, is but the commentary and
development of the parable before us.[1] One unavoidable result of the adoption
of the parabolic form is improbability in the fictitious narrative; for who ever
heard of husbandmen, even in the worst governed countries, behaving as these
vinedressers? The parable is true to Israel’s history, but it is not true to
natural probability; and for the reason stated in connection with the parable of
the Great Supper, to which the same observation applies, viz. that the conduct
animadverted on is itself thoroughly unnatural. But why speak in parables when
by the nature of the case probability is excluded? Is it that men whose
self-complacency will prevent them from seeing the drift of the story may be led
on to condemn themselves? We can hardly lay much stress on that, especially when
we consider that in the narratives of Mark and Luke the answer to the question,
What shall be done to these men? is not ascribed to the audience.[2] Or is it
that the Speaker shrinks from referring to Himself without disguise as the Son
of God? There is more force in this consideration, for such delicacy and reserve
was characteristic of the Son of man, and suitable to the state of humiliation.
But perhaps the true explanation is that in this instance Jesus did not so much
invent a new parable as use an old one whose words were familiar to Jewish ears,
and its meaning generally understood—that, viz., contained in Isaiah’s song of
the vineyard.[3] At most, our parable is but an old theme worked up with new
variations. Every one who heard it knew what the vineyard with its hedge,
winepress, and tower signified, and who the vinedressers were, and who the
servants sent for the fruits. These phrases belonged to the established
religious dialect of Israel as much as the words pastor, flock, lambs of the
flock, Zion, &c., do to ours, used by us all without consciousness that we are
speaking in figures. In adopting this form of presentation, therefore, Jesus was
not so much speaking in parables as using the recognised authority of written
prophecy against His opponents, a most appropriate procedure when the question
at issue respected His personal authority. It was saying in effect, Let me take
Isaiah’s familiar parable of the vineyard and expand it a little that I may show
you how it stands with you as regards this matter of authority, that we may see
whether ye have as much respect for the ascertained will of God as ye pretend,
so that ye should be sure to submit to Me if only ye were satisfied that I was
an accredited messenger of God.

[1] Sabatier, ’L’Apôtre Paul.’

[2] Mark 12:9; Luk 20:16.

[3] Isa 5:1. The parable, it will be observed, does more than show what amount
of respect the parties to whom it was addressed had for prophetic authority. It
shows that disregard for authority going counter to inclination had been a
characteristic of Israel’s leaders and representative men all through her
history. This does not indeed appear from the mere structure of the parable, for
the events described might all fall within the compass of a single fruit season,
the servants being sent one after another to demand the produce due in one and
the same year, for anything that is said to the contrary; though the number of
messengers sent seems hardly compatible with the brief period of a single fruit
season, and suggests as the more natural hypothesis a succession of seasons,
when the demand for fruit was renewed as the time came round. But the
self-evident interpretation of the parable as referring to the prophets under
the servants, makes it certain that the intention of the Speaker was to
characterise the behaviour of Israel throughout her long history towards God’s
messengers. And this broadening of the charge of iniquitous dealing so as to
include the misbehaviour of the past, was well fitted to serve Christ’s purpose
to bring home such a charge to the consciences of His hearers. It raised a
strong presumption against these hypocritical inquirers after His authority to
show that they belonged to a race whose habit it had all along been to treat
authority with contempt, except when it chimed in with their own wishes. In the
parable of the Children in the Market-place Jesus had spoken of this generation.
He now speaks of all the generations of Israel’s headmen as one generation
morally, with rebellion in its blood, the original sin transmitted from sire to
son. The fact as to the past representatives of this moral generation was
indubitable, and the onus probandi lay on the present representatives to show
that they were free from;the taint. The likelihood was all the other way, viz.
that they would consummate the iniquity of their fathers by committing a greater
offence of the kind denounced than any previously committed, and so, filling up
the measure of their sin, serve themselves heir to their guilt, and bear its
bitter penalty. That this would be the actual fact it is the aim of the latter
part of the parable to declare, the reference being to the approaching
crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, and the Son of God, and the subsequent ruin
which overtook the Jewish nation. A very noticeable feature in the parable is
the dark picture it presents of the behaviour of the vinedressers towards the
servants sent to demand the fruit. The most violent acts are selected as
typical. One is flayed by stripes, another is slain, by the sword, a third is
put to death by stoning[1]—the three instances forming an ascending series of
atrocities. So in Matthew’s version, and similarly in Mark and Luke, the conduct
of the criminals advances from bad to worse, though the stages are not so
distinctly marked.[2] In this description Christ’s audience would not recognise
their own likeness; for as yet they had been guilty of nothing so truculent,
though they were on the point of committing even greater atrocities. They had
not treated the ’servant’ of their time, John the Baptist, in so barbarous a
fashion. He had indeed been beheaded, but not by them. All they had done was to
look on him as a madman, and so excuse themselves for disregarding his summons
to repentance. The triflers had not found John’s ministry sufficiently provoking
or formidable to carry their opposition beyond depreciatory speech and cold
neglect The implied allegation of the parable is that they would have gone
greater lengths had they been forced to it by circumstances. The direct
assertion is that their predecessors had gone greater lengths; had actually
beaten, insulted, and killed their prophets. They had also committed offences of
a less aggravated character. They too had manifested their hostility to the
prophetic order under the minor forms of evil speaking, mockery, and ridicule.
The drunkards of Ephraim mocked Isaiah’s reiterated warnings and expostulations
by comparing him to a teacher of children, with his everlasting tsav-la-tsav,
tsav-la-tsav, kav-la-kav, kav-la-kav.[3] But they had often shown themselves
capable of worse things than banter and blasphemy; even of down-right brutality,
as in the case of Zechariah stoned to death in the court of the house of the
Lord.[4] And acts of this more aggravated character are singled out for mention
to show what the spirit of religious insincerity tends to and culminates in.
This is what ultimately comes of that temper which begins by saying politely, "I
go, sir," and not going. Press insincerity a little, and the politeness gives
place to rudeness; press it still more, and rudeness in word gives place to
rudeness in act; press it still further, and minor indignities, such as smiting
with the hand, spitting, pulling off the hair, give place to more serious forms
of violence, such as the inflicting of wounds with lethal weapons; press it yet
further, and violence culminates in murder. Behold the polite but false-hearted
gentleman, transformed by degrees into a ruffian. Who could have believed it?
yet how natural it all is. "Is thy servant a dog?" asked Hazael of the prophet,
quite sincerely possibly, and yet he did all the atrocious acts specified.
History supplies ample material for illustrating the strange transformation, and
proving the humbling truth that refinement and savagery do not lie far apart in
human nature. The most startling example is supplied in the case of the very men
to whom this parable was addressed. In their ordinary relations with their
fellow-men, the religious heads of Israel were, without doubt, courteous and
gentle, pleasant, if not sincere, in speech, and duly attentive to all social
proprieties. Yet these same men were responsible for all the indignities,
iniquities, and brutalities of the crucifixion and its accompaniments.

[1] Vide Lightfoot, ’Horæ Hebraicæ.’

[2] Especially is this true of Luke, whose version is somewhat toned down
throughout.

[3] Isa 28:10. Vide remarks on this passage at p. 23.

[4] 2Ch 24:21.

Another significant feature in the parable is the particularity with which the
details connected with the construction of the vineyard are specified. For the
general purpose of the story it might have been enough to have said, A certain
householder planted a vineyard, and let it out to husbandmen. The introduction
of the processes of hedging, digging a winepress, hewing out a place for a
vat,[1] and building a tower, is not a mere affair of word-painting for
picturesque effect; considering the circumstances and the mood of the Speaker,
such merely literary play was very unlikely. The design is to signalise the
contrast between the spirit of the owner and that of the men to whom the
vineyard was entrusted. The owner has an eye to fruit; the details depicting the
construction of the vineyard all point towards fruit as the chief end, and they
are enumerated for no other reason. There is a hedge that the vines may not be
spoiled by wild beasts; a press and vat that the grapes may be squeezed and the
juice preserved; a tower that the ripe fruit may not be stolen. The didactic
significance of these particulars is not, as in the original form of the
allegory in Isaiah, that all has been done that could be done for the vineyard,
so as to make the owner free from blame, but that all has been done with one
object in view, viz. the production of fruit. In keeping with this emphasising
of fruitfulness as the reason of the existence of the vineyard fully equipped
for the purpose, is the reiterated persistent demand for the fruit when the
season came round, as also the intimation of the owner’s purpose, on
conclusively ascertaining that no fruit was to be forthcoming, to entrust his
vineyard to other husbandmen, who should render the fruits in their seasons.[2]
On the other hand, what was the temper of the vinedressers? Was it that of men
who wished to keep the fruit to themselves instead of giving it to the owner?
No; but rather that of men who never thought of fruit, but only of the honour
and privilege of being entrusted with the keeping of the vineyard. They were
triflers—men utterly devoid of earnestness, and the practical purpose of the
property committed to their charge they habitually forgot. The hedge and the
press and the tower might as well not have been there. When the servants came
for the fruit they were simply surprised. "Fruit, did you say? we have occupied
the position of vinedressers, and duly drawn our wages; what more do you want?"
Such was the actual fact in regard to the spiritual heads of Israel. They had
been entrusted with a valuable institution; an elect nation furnished with good
laws, and meant to be a holy nation, a people to God’s praise. And speaking
generally they had lost sight of the end of Israel’s calling, and had made no
use of the means provided for its attainment. They had occupied their position
for their own glory; taken pay and done no work. They had neglected the
vineyard, so that it brought forth no grapes, or at least only wild grapes. In a
word, they had committed the sin to which privileged classes have ever been
prone, that of thinking only of privilege and forgetting duty. All through
Israel’s history her spiritual guides, priests, scribes, and elders, not to
speak of her princes, had been saying, "I go, sir," without going, professing to
keep a vineyard which they did not keep.[3]

[1] Mark speaks of a ὑπολήνιον, which signifies the vat for receiving the juice
running into it from the press above.

[2] In the following similitude of the Rejected Stone, these ’others’ are called
a ’nation,’ which seems to point to the rejection of Israel, and the call of the
Gentiles; the nation being the true, spiritual Israel of God in every land. (So
Olshausen.) Keim (’Jesu von Nazara,’ iii. 119) thinks that a reference to the
Gentiles is not in keeping with the scope of the parable which animadverts on
the sin, not of Israel, but of her rulers; and that the ’others’ are Messiah’s
faithful followers in Israel.

[3] The view above given excludes the idea that the vinedressers were engaged on
the metayer system of paying rent with part of the produce. On our view there
was no produce. The sin of the husbandmen was not dishonesty, but neglect

Nothing is more remarkable in the history of Israel than the constant
co-existence within her pale of two entirely opposite classes of men—that of the
moral triflers, too numerously represented among those exercising official
influence, and that of the men of consuming zeal for righteousness, that is, the
prophets. It is strange indeed that a people so prone to baseness should have so
many noble men, who made it their duty to remonstrate with it for its baseness,
and summon it to a better life. The parable accentuates this fact in order to
show the enormity of Israel’s guilt and the justness of her doom. In the
versions of Matthew and Mark the multitude of servants sent is very expressly
alluded to. After stating, by way of sample, how these were treated, the first
Evangelist adds, "Again he sent other servants, more than the first." Mark in
like manner uses the significant phrase, "and many others." Luke’s version is
defective at this point, making mention only of three, and giving no hints that
more were sent. There can be no doubt as to which account is most in keeping
with the didactic drift of the parable. It has been suggested that the
expression πλείονας in Matthew refers not to number but to quality, and that the
purpose is to set forth an enhancement of Israel’s guilt, by exhibiting her as
treating with indignity a higher order of prophets sent subsequently to those
first spoken of. On this view the parable would specify three stages or degrees
of criminality: first, evil treatment of a certain number of servants; second,
similar treatment of servants of higher grade; third, the same misconduct
towards one who was not a servant, but a son. Now, it is perfectly true that the
word πλείονας might mean, not more in the numerical sense, but more respectable,
of higher rank. Nor is the objection to this view insuperable that no such
distinction as is implied existed between the earlier and later Old Testament
prophets,[2] for the reference might be to John the Baptist,[1] or even to John
and Jesus together; for the latter, though referred to as the son, might also be
referred to as one of the prophets, and on a level with John, as in the earlier
parable of the Children in the Marketplace. The contemporaries of Jesus sinned
against Him as a prophet, as well as in His higher capacity as the Messiah, and
they committed the one offence earlier than the other. But the interpretation in
question, nevertheless, is not to be approved. It is uncertain at the best, and
it is not required by the didactic drift of the parable. To aggravate Israel’s
guilt, it was enough to refer to the number of her prophets without insisting on
any distinction between them as to rank or importance, which, though real, might
not be apparent to the parties concerned; as indeed, if John, or even Jesus, be
referred to, it was not, for their contemporaries did not see in them greater
prophets than Elijah, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah. They thought they paid them very
great respect in putting them on a level with the great prophets of the olden
time.

[1] So Goebel, who, like Bengel, Campbell, &c., takes πλείονας as an adjective
of quality.

[2] So Morrison. The last point in the parable is the mission of the son, in
connection with which the guilt of the vinedressers reaches its highest measure.
In the narratives of Mark and Luke the value set upon this son by the owner, his
father, is emphasised. Luke represents the father as calling him ’beloved’; Mark
adds that he was an only son. These particulars are not added to enhance the
criminality of the occupants of the vineyard, but to show the intensity of the
owner’s desire for fruit. He has found by many experiments that the tenants are
utterly regardless of his claims, but before arriving at the conclusion that to
bring them to their senses is hopeless, he resolves to try once more, in the
most effective way possible, by the mission of his son. He is aware of the risk
run; for the probability is that the men who have habitually treated his
messengers with disrespect will not be restrained by any feeling of reverence
from repeating their misbehaviour towards his son, and in case they do, his
sorrow will be great for the loss of a beloved and only son. Nevertheless, there
is a possibility, and he will run the risk, so anxious is he to bring them to
reason. But the result, as was to be expected, is unhappy. The mission of the
son only brings a new opportunity of outrage, and a temptation to more audacious
and complete acts of rebellion than any hitherto perpetrated. Seeing this last
messenger, and discovering somehow that he is not a servant but a son, the
vinedressers say to each other, "This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and
seize his inheritance;" and forthwith proceed to carry the nefarious scheme into
effect, casting him out of the vineyard as a place he had no right to enter, and
putting him ruthlessly to death.[1] Their calculation is that they will be no
longer troubled with messages about fruit; they will now enjoy their position
without molestation, and be practically not tenants, but landlords. Their
presumption is based upon long experience of impunity in connection with their
habitual insubordination. They make the natural and common mistake of imagining
that because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily it will
never be executed at all; and so their heart is fully set in them to do evil.[2]
But the truth is that they have only exhausted the patience of their employer,
and his resources for bringing them to repentance, and filled up the measure of
their iniquity by committing an unpardonable offence; and in accordance with the
laws by which the moral order of the world is regulated, condign punishment must
speedily overtake them. This, accordingly, is what is announced in the closing
sentence of the parable, in which it is declared that he who has sent so many
messengers will at length come himself, and inflict on the criminals a
punishment closely answering to their offence—consisting in their ejection from
the vineyard which they thought to make their own, and their utter destruction.

[1] In Mark the act of murder precedes the casting out.

[2] Ecc 8:11. The representation is in accordance with the facts of Israel’s
subsequent history, however improbable it may appear in the parable. Certainly
it does strike one as strange that the owner of a vineyard should act as
represented—coming to judge and visit with doom unfaithful servants, acts which
seem appropriate not to a landowner, but to a king. On this account this part of
the parable has been regarded as an allegorising addition by the evangelists.[1]
But if we are to be guided by such considerations then the authenticity of the
whole parable must be called in question. For everything in it is improbable:
the behaviour of the vinedressers, the long patience of the owner under a series
of unparalleled outrages, not less than the ultimate judicial rigour with which
the offenders are visited by the same person, he being merely a landowner and
not a king. Throughout, the natural probabilities of the story are sacrificed to
the requirements of its moral interpretation.

[1] So Weiss, ’Das Markus-Evangelium.’ The account given in the parable of the
mission of the son has an important bearing on two topics, viz. the personal
self-consciousness of Christ, and the knowledge possessed by the Jews of His
peculiar claims. The son is described as the only and well-beloved son of his
father, and it is natural to suppose that as that son represents the Speaker, He
claims for Himself all that he ascribes to the former. In that case this text
must be associated with the remarkable one in the eleventh chapter of Matthew as
vindicating for Jesus a unique position in relation to God. The vinedressers are
represented as knowing the son and heir. Is it implied that the men to whom the
parable is addressed knew the Speaker to be the Christ, the Son of the living
God? In that case Jesus virtually charges them with being on the point of
putting to death one whom they admitted to be Divine, or at least invested with
Messianic dignity. But probably all that is strictly implied is that they might
have known who the Speaker was, and would have known had their hearts been pure.
In asking Him as to His authority they affected not to know who He was, and
perhaps it was not a mere affectation, for prejudice and passion had blinded
their eyes. But they were not on that account without blame, for they had
resisted evidence and crushed down rising conviction. Had they been sincere and
single-minded, their hearts would have yielded to the force of truth, and hailed
Jesus as their king. They were not, therefore, sinning in ignorance simply
against the Son of man, they were sinning against light, and dangerously near
the mortal sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Hence the severity of tone
in the sentences appended to our parable concerning the Rejected Stone, which
might be regarded as forming another parable. Availing Himself of a well-known
text in a psalm, Jesus happily describes His own fortunes and those of His
hearers in terms borrowed from the art of house-building. The men who have just
been compared to vinedressers now become builders, and the heir cast out of the
vineyard and murdered is now a stone thrown aside as useless. But the new figure
enables the Speaker to give a glimpse of what is to happen to Himself after evil
men have wrought their worst. The text from the psalm declares that the stone
which the builders refused is to become the head of the corner. The reference is
to despised Israel, restored to her former glory, by God’s grace, a marvel to
all beholders. But Jesus, appropriating the prophecy to Himself, thereby
intimates to His hearers that in killing Him they will not be done with Him: He
will be raised to a place of power, an object of admiration to friends, a source
of dismay to foes. Woe, then to the builders who had scornfully rejected Him.
Then their case would not be that of men stumbling against a stone, as many had
done in ignorance, sinning against the Son of man to their hurt and loss, but
not unpardonably. It would be that of men on whom a great stone falls,
descending in judgment to grind them to powder.


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  CHAPTER 30: 01.25.        CHAPTER 5. THE WEDDING-FEAST AND THE WEDDING-ROBE
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Chapter 5. The Wedding-Feast and the Wedding-Robe Or, the Doom of Despisers and
Abusers of Grace.

Jesus, we are told by the Evangelist, spake again to the people in parables,
saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain king who made a marriage
feast for his son. And he sent forth his servants to call the called[1] to the
feast, and they would not come. Again he sent forth other servants, saying. Tell
the invited: Behold, I have made ready my dinner,[2] my oxen and my fed beasts
are slain, and all things are ready, come to the feast. But they made light of
it, and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his merchandise; and
the rest laid hold on his servants, and entreated them shamefully, and killed
them. But the king was wroth,[3] and he sent his armies[4] and destroyed those
murderers, and burned their city. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding[5]
is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore unto the
thoroughfares,[6] and as many as ye shall find bid to the marriage feast.—And
those servants going out into the roads, gathered together all as many[7] as
they found, both bad and good; and the wedding chamber[8] was Jilted with
guests. But when the king came in to behold the guests he saw there a man not
clad with a wedding garment. And he saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in
hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then the king said
to the ministers,[9] Bind him hand and foot and cast him out into the outer
darkness; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. For many are
called, but few chosen.—St. Mat 22:1-14.

[1] καλέσαι τοὑς κεκλημένους.

[2] ἄριστον, the midday meal, "with which the series of marriage festivities
would begin."—Meyer.

[3] The ἀκούσας of the T. R. is omitted in the best MSS.

[4] Some texts have the singular τὸ στράτευμα, a reading probably due to a
feeling that armies were not needed for such an expedition, or to the knowledge
that the Romans used only one army against Jerusalem. So Fritsche. There is a
certain tone of exaggeration in the expression, or perhaps we should rather say
vagueness and inexactitude.

[5] ὀ γάμος, the plural in Mat 22:2 refers to the festivities connected with the
wedding.

[6] τὰς διεξόδους τῶν ὁδῶν, literally the outlets of the ways, exitus viarum,
Vulg. The word διέξοδος occurs only once in the N. T., and it is impossible to
determine with certainty what is meant by the expression in the text. It may
either signify the roads leading out from the town into the country, or the
crossings of such, or the streets leading into open places and squares in the
town. The general idea is: places where men an likely to be found, whether in
town or in country.

[7] ὅσους. Westcott and Hort adopt the reading οὒς.

[8] ὁ νυμφὼν, the reading of S. B. L.; ὁ γάμος in T. R.

[9] διακόνοις. The manner in which this parable is introduced does not imply any
strict view as to the connection with what goes before, and it is not likely to
have come in just at this point. It may be too much to say that it occupies an
impossible position;[1] but it certainly does seem to interrupt the course of
the history as indicated in the narratives of. the other Synoptical Evangelists.
From internal evidence, however, it is manifest that the parable belongs to the
last days of our Lord’s life, and is to be regarded as one of the memorable
utterances of the Passion week.[2] In its first part it has a close affinity
with the preceding parable of the vinedressers, presenting a gloomy picture of
similar misconduct visited with similar doom. That parable exposes Israel’s
neglect of covenanted duty; this her contempt of God’s grace. The two are
mutually complementary, and present together a full view of Israel’s sin. The
parable now to be considered bears a still more obvious resemblance to one
already studied under the second division, that of the Great Supper in the
fourteenth chapter of Luke. The common features are so numerous and striking as
to have led many to regard the two as one parable differently reported by the
first and third Evangelists.[3] The opinion is one which can hardly fail to
suggest itself, and yet it is based on a very superficial, outward view of the
narratives. Without doubt the theme is one and the same, but it is a theme twice
handled by the same artist, and for diverse purposes. If the essence or soul of
a parable lie in its didactic drift, then these two parables are broadly
distinct, while in several circumstances or features strikingly like. The
earlier of the two is a parable of grace, having for its aim to show what sort
of men care for and shall enjoy the blessings of the kingdom; the later is a
parable of judgment, having for its aim to show the doom of those who in any way
despise, abuse, or undervalue these blessings. There is indeed both grace and
judgment in each parable, but in very different proportions, and with
differently-placed emphasis. The host in the earlier parable declares that the
first invited shall not taste of his feast; that is the amount of the judicial
element, and even this comes in not so much as a threatening of punishment, but
rather as an indirect intimation that they are not the kind of men for whom the
joys of the kingdom are designed, these being reserved for the hungry. In the
later parable the host shows his grace by inviting and re-inviting to his feast,
and even humbling himself to extol the entertainment in prospect with a view to
excite desire; but all this takes place only to enhance the culpability of those
who after all refuse to come, and to justify the severity with which they are
visited.

[1] So Keim.

[2] Keim admits that the materials out of which the parable is constructed (by
the Evangelist) suit that late period.

[3] This opinion is held, among others, by Calvin and Maldonatus. The difference
just indicated in the didactic drift of the two parables explains at once their
resemblances and their points of contrast. Common to both are a feast, a refusal
from the first invited, and a subsequent invitation to a lower class. These
resemblances arise out of the fact that the two parables deal in different ways
and to different intents with the grace of the kingdom; the one showing who are
its chosen objects, the other the danger of despising it. A feast is a most
appropriate emblem of the kingdom as a kingdom of grace, likely to be employed
as often as there was occasion to speak of that topic. The refusal of the first
invited shows the tendency of preoccupation to produce indifference, and
supplies a motive for inviting persons not at first contemplated as guests,
though more likely from their circumstances to welcome the benefit put within
their reach. That final invitation thus brought about, for the first time brings
into light the true genius of grace, accrediting it with a benignant will to
make its blessings free to all, and if possible freest to those who most
urgently need them. On the other hand, the parables differ in these respects,
that in the earlier the feast is given by a private individual, in the later by
a king to his subjects, and on a very important occasion—the marriage of his
son; in the one the invitation to the first invited is not repeated after it has
been refused, in the other it is repeated with such descriptive accompaniments
as are fitted to awaken desire; in the one the first invited are simply
indifferent, in the other they not only show indifference, but some of them at
least proceed to deeds of violence, and these are visited with violent
penalties. All these variations are accounted for by the simple consideration
that the later parable is a parable of judgment. The feast is one given by a
king on a solemn occasion, because such a feast gives scope for a kind of
offences and of punishments which could have no place in connection with a
private feast. It is a feast possessing political significance, presence at
which is a mark of loyalty, absence from which indicates a spirit of
disaffection which is sure to manifest itself in deeds of rebellion, making
vengeance inevitable. The invitation is repeated to make the king’s patience
conspicuous, to bring more fully into the light the latent hostility of his
subjects, and to exhibit their persistent refusal as utterly inexcusable. Acts
of violence are ascribed to some of the invited because such enormities were the
actual reply of Israel’s representatives to God’s overtures of love, and the
mention of them prepares the hearer for sympathising with the doom pronounced
against them. That doom is inexorably severe, but it is only an exact
anticipation of the fact, and a parable setting forth the judgment of Heaven on
contempt of grace could not, if it aimed at adequate statement, say less. In all
these respects the variations are only such as we should expect from any expert
in the use of the parabolic style. And the method of variation is also what we
should expect such an one to employ in such a case; that is, the adaptation of
an old theme to a new case, rather than the invention of an entirely new theme.
The common theme forms the link of connection between two parables, both of
which relate to grace; the variations in the later form from the earlier point
it out as a parable setting forth the judgment of grace despised. What is common
gives emphasis to what is peculiar, and bids us mark what it is that is judged.
Why should we hesitate to ascribe such skilful variation for so important a
purpose to the Great Master rather than to the Evangelist? Why refuse to Christ
the use of a method which seems not to have been unknown even to the Rabbis?[1]

[1] Wünsche cites no less than three parables from the Talmud more or less like
the one we are considering. The first is of a king who asks guests to a feast,
not telling them when it was to be, but bidding them prepare for it by bathing,
washing their garments, &c. Those anxious to be present watch at the door of the
palace for the symptoms of the feast approaching; the easy-minded go about their
business and are taken by surprise, and come in every-day attire to be rejected.
The moral is—Watch, for ye know not the day of death. The second is of a king
who invited to a feast and bade the guests bring each a seat. The guests brought
all sorts of things—carpets, stools, pieces of wood, &c. The king ordered that
each should sit on what he had brought. Those who brought poor seats complained:
Were these seats for a palace? The king replied, they had themselves to blame.
Moral—we shall fare as we deserve. The third is of a king who distributed costly
robes among his servants; the wise folded them up and took care of them, the
foolish wore them. The garments were demanded back; the wise render up their
trust with approbation; the foolish had to send the garments to the washing, and
were put in prison. The garment is the soul given to man by God, pure, and to be
rendered back pure. ’Neue Beiträge zur Erlauterung der Evangelien aus Talmud und
Midrasch,’ p. 252. For the first of these parables vide also Meuschen, ’Nov.
Test, ex Talmud illustratum.’

One point in the variation of the later from the earlier parable we have
purposely overlooked in the foregoing remarks; that, viz., relating to the guest
without a wedding robe. In Luke’s parable there is nothing but welcome for the
poor without exception, while in Matthew’s, judicial rigour is exercised even on
one of them who is found unsuitably attired. At this point the difference
between the two parables in didactic scope becomes specially apparent. We feel
that such a feature would altogether mar the beauty of the former, whose aim
throughout, and in every phrase, is to emphasise the graciousness of the
kingdom. In the case of the latter, on the other hand, the wedding-robe scene,
however unwelcome, is in keeping with the general tenor of the story. It, too,
is a story of grace indeed, but of grace unworthily met, and manifesting itself
in judicial severity against those who commit the wrong. And just because it is
a parable of judgment, there must be judgment whenever it is called for. There
must be no partiality. If the first invited are to be punished because they sin
against grace in one way, the guests invited in the second place must be
punished if they sin against grace in another way. The relevancy of the
wedding-robe scene in a parable of judgment vindicating grace against injury can
be legitimately denied only if it be impossible for the recipients of grace to
commit any offence against it, which, as we shall see, is far enough from being
the case. The lesson taught in the second scene is thoroughly germane to the
lesson taught in the first. The first shows the judgment of those who despise
and reject grace, the second the judgment of those who receive it, but in a
disrespectful manner. The only question that can reasonably be raised is whether
it is likely that Christ would combine the two lessons in one parable, and speak
them at the same time and to the same audience. That is a question affecting the
literary rather than the doctrinal character of the parable. It may plausibly be
alleged that literary tact would dictate that only one of these lessons should
be taught at one time, so as to insure that it should receive due attention; and
as no such want of tact may be ascribed to Christ, it may hence be inferred that
the combination is due to the Evangelist: another instance of Matthew’s habit of
joining together sayings of kindred doctrinal import. If such were the case, we
should have to admit that the joining has been very well done. But it is so well
done, the dovetailing is so complete, and the parable is so manifestly a
doctrinal unity, that we are constrained to doubt the alleged want of tact, and
the inference founded on it. Why should not Christ have joined these two lessons
together? Each gives point to the other, rather than weakens its force. The
second, taken along with the first, says, that so determined is God that His
grace shall not be scorned, that even those who receive it shall be punished for
disrespect. The first, taken along with the second, says, if God be so severe
towards those who despise His grace, let those who receive it, but not with due
reverence, beware. The two together vindicate the Divine impartiality, and form
a complete doctrine on the subject to which they relate. With these preliminary
observations we proceed to consider in detail the two parts of the parable in
which these distinct lessons are taught.

I. The judgment of grace despised set forth in the first scene (Mat 22:1-9) The
emblem selected to represent the grace of the Kingdom is a fit one. It is that
of a marriage-feast. The term γάμους might indeed mean any great feast
resembling a wed ding-feast in magnitude and importance; as, for example, a
feast celebrating the event of an heir to an estate arriving at his majority, or
of a king delivering his kingdom into the hands of his son.[1] But the proper
sense of the word is a marriage feast, and we can have the less hesitation in
ascribing to it this meaning here, that the same emblem was employed by Jesus at
other times to denote the kingdom of heaven, especially on the memorable
occasion when He was interrogated concerning the neglect of fasting by His
disciples. No fitter emblem could be found at once to exhibit in brightest
lustre the benignity of God, and to test the spirit of men. It suggests the most
intimate union possible between the Head of the Church and the members, that of
wedlock; for the guests are also the Bride. And if men refuse an invitation to a
marriage-feast, what favour are they likely to accept?—what more certain
indication of ill-will can there be than such refusal?

[1] In Esther (Est 9:22) the word γἀμοι is used for the feast by which the Jews
commemorated their deliverance from the plot of Haman. Kuinoel thinks the
occasion referred to in the text is that of the delivery of the kingdom into the
hands of the son. Meyer, on the other hand, contends that γἀμοι is never used
for anything else than a marriage-feast.

Those who are invited to the wedding-feast are represented as persons already
invited. The servants are sent forth to call τοὺς κεκλημένους. This term
connects the New Testament history of Israel with that of the Old Testament, and
denotes the position in which the chosen race were placed by the ministry of the
prophets. For the prophets performed a double function. They were on the one
hand servants of moral law, demanding in God’s name the fruit of genuine
righteousness; and on the other servants of the promise or purpose of grace,
preaching under various forms a Messianic Hope, an ideal bliss to come in the
end of the days. Through this eloquent ministry of the Better Hope the people of
Israel were called to participation in the Messianic wedding-feast. But they
were merely called; while the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy tarried, it could
not be ascertained how the offered privilege would be received. Their attitude
towards the prophetic ministry of righteousness could be, and was, ascertained
at once. Throughout her whole history the chosen people showed plainly that the
Divine demand for righteousness was one she did not mean to comply with; and the
damning verdict of the record is endorsed in the preceding parable of the
Vinedressers. But all the while she might flatter herself that she was welcoming
the Messianic Hope, and looking with eager expectancy for the advent of the era
when all the glowing ideals of the prophets should be realised. Whether that was
so indeed could only be tested when the era of fulfilment arrived, and the
parable before us describes the result of the experiment. The test is supposed
to apply not merely to the generation who witnessed the fulfilment, but to all
the generations going before to whom the Messianic prophecies had been
addressed. Here, as in the last parable, the moral solidarity of all the
generations of Israel is recognised, and the spirit of the past is judged from
the behaviour of the present. It is assumed that former generations would have
acted as the one then living, if placed in the same circumstances. Therefore the
servants are represented as calling the called, though the called of the
prophetic era were distinct from the called of the era of fulfilment. The
’servants’ are Jesus and His disciples. The call covers the period of Christ’s
personal ministry, and its substance is—The kingdom of heaven in all the fulness
of grace is here; come, and participate in its joys. The Baptist we do not
include among the servants, because he was a minister of law rather than of
grace; like all the prophets doubtless performing a function in relation to the
Messianic Hope, still belonging inspirit and tendency to the era of expectation
rather than to the era of fulfilment. He had his place in the last parable as
one of the many messengers whom God sent to demand fruit; but he has no place in
this, except as one of those through whom the first preparatory call was
addressed to Israel. On the other hand, we have no hesitation in including Jesus
among the servants who are sent forth to invite the guests to the feast, long
expected, now at hand, Though He be the son whose marriage is about to be
celebrated, yet is He also a servant, the chief of the callers to the feast.
There may be an incongruity in this union of two such opposite characters in the
same person, but it is not greater than that resulting from the same parties
being at once bride and guests. However incongruous, both combinations are
matters of fact; nor do they mar the propriety of the parabolic narrative, for
neither is allowed to appear therein. So far as the parable is concerned, the
son and the servant are distinct, as are also the bride and the guests, though
in reality the two in either case are one. The result of the invitation to the
feast, briefly told, is that the invited are not inclined to come. In these
mild, simple terms does Jesus describe the reception He had met with at the
hands of His countrymen, as the Herald of the kingdom of grace. The account
stands in striking contrast with the view presented in the last parable of the
reception given to the last messenger of the owner of the vineyard, his son and
heir. How is this contrast to be explained? Partly by the consideration that the
two parables contemplate the history of Israel from different positions, the one
looking on it from the Old Testament view point, and the other from the New. In
the one case, what is done to the last messenger forms the climax of a long
series of iniquities, and is therefore drawn in as dark colours as possible, and
made the ground of Israel’s doom. In the other the New Testament history of
Israel ceases to be the background and comes into the foreground, and so
resolves itself into several distinct scenes, in which, in accordance with fact,
she gets a second chance after her misbehaviour towards the ’son’ of the former
parable, before being visited with her final doom. This second chance coincides
with the ministry of the apostles, after Christ’s death and final departure from
the earth. And as Israel was to get this second chance, a signal proof of the
patience of God, and clearing His final severity of all appearance of undue
rigour, it was fitting that her misbehaviour towards the first callers should be
described in mitigated terms, to leave room, as it were, for a further day of
grace. Had the first callers in this parable been treated as the heir was
treated in the last, the proper sequel had been not a second invitation, but
judgment.[1] But this explanation does not go to the root of the matter. It
amounts to this, that the structure of the parable required the facts as to the
reception given to the first callers to be understated, implying of course that
the facts were worse than represented. The true key to the solution of the
difficulty is to bear in mind the different capacities in which Jesus acts in
the two parables. In the Vinedressers He, like all His predecessors, is a
prophet of moral law, demanding in God’s name true righteousness. In the Wedding
Feast He is a minister of grace preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Now His
reception in these two ’distinct capacities was respectively as represented. It
was as a prophet of duty that He was maltreated by His countrymen. He provoked
them to wrath by His exposure of their sham sanctities in punctilious
performance of ritual ablutions, fastings, prayers, tithe-paying, &c.,
accompanied by scandalous neglect of the great matters of the law. The key to
the crucifixion is utterances by the Prophet of Nazareth such as those collected
together in the great antipharisaic discourse in the twenty-fourth chapter of
Matthew. On the other hand, the reception given to Jesus as the Minister of
grace was just that indicated in our parable. He invited His countrymen to a
great feast and they would not come. They did not hate Him or visit Him with
violence for His invitations. They simply were not attracted by what He offered,
and turned heedless away, as from an idle dreamer. At times the boon He held up
to view for a moment appeared tempting,—a kingdom and a kingship of this world,
real and worth having; but the deluded soon discovered that they were mistaken,
to their disappointment and disgust. In this indifference towards the Minister
of grace the people of Israel were far less culpable than in their hostility to
the Prophet of law. For righteousness was a thing familiar to them. It was their
own watchword and ’way.’ But the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus presented it, was a
new phenomenon, strange puzzling even to honest minds, even to the Baptist
himself. Shyness, doubt, misunderstanding for a time were pardonable, and were
so regarded by Jesus. He did not denounce those who stood in doubt of this new
movement He only said, "Blessed is he that is not offended in Me." The parable
before us is in full sympathy with that considerate, gentle utterance. Of those
to whom the Author of the parable preached the gospel of the kingdom it is said
simply they were not willing to come. And their unwillingness is, by
implication, treated as a pardonable misunderstanding when the king is
represented as sending forth other servants to renew the invitations, with
instructions to appraise the feast, so as to awaken desire. It is a notable
instance of the ’sweet reasonableness’ of Christ, as well as a faithful
reflection of the patience of God.

[1] The above is, in effect, Goebel’s view. The ’other servants,’ who receive
this new commission, are of course the apostles, whom Jesus had chosen to carry
on His work after He left the world, and of whose agency He could not but think
much at this time when His own end was so near. The kingdom of heaven was not to
disappear when He personally left the world; it would go on its course in spite
of all that men might do to Himself, not to say in consequence thereof, and the
preaching of His companions whom He had sought to embue with His spirit, would
give Israel another opportunity of receiving thankfully the things freely
bestowed by God. Very notable, in connection with the mission of the apostles,
is the special direction given to the second set of ’callers’: "Say to those
invited, ’Behold, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and fed beasts slain, and
all things ready; come to the feast.’" The second callers’ are not merely to
invite to, they are to commend the feast, with a view to create desire. The fact
suggests a contrast between the ministry of Christ and that of His apostles. The
apostles differed from their Master in two respects. They were more aggressive
or urgent in their manner of preaching, and they preached a more developed
gospel. Jesus went forth into the world and said quietly The kingdom is come.
Nor did He explain fully or elaborately wherein the kingdom consisted, and what
blessings it brought; at most He conveyed only hints of these by aphorism or
parable, or by kind words and deeds to sinful and sorrowful men. He did not
strive, or cry, nor did any one hear His voice in the streets. He did not aim at
teaching the multitude the mysteries of the kingdom, but spoke these into the
ear of a select few. These privileged ones, on the other hand, when the time
arrived for commencing their apostolic career, did not appear before the world
as imitators of their Master. They did not affect His calm, lofty tone, they did
not speak in parables, they did not select from the crowd- a band of disciples
to be taught an esoteric doctrine. They became street preachers in temper and
style, they spoke from the house-top, they addressed the crowd, they proclaimed
a more explicit, definite, common-place gospel of forgiveness and salvation from
wrath, talked as it were of oxen and fed beasts and the other accompaniments of
a feast, with an eloquence less dignified but more fitted to impress the million
with a sense of the riches of Divine grace.[1]

[1] Beyond this general idea no significance is to be attached to the ταῶροι and
σιτιστὰ. Theophylact makes the ταῶροι signify the Old Testament, and the σιτιστὰ
the New. The interpretation in the latter case he justifies by the consideration
that loaves are offered on the altar which are properly failed σιτιστὰ, as made
from wheat. And what was to be the result of this new aggressive declamatory
ministry? Surely it will be more satisfactory than that of the first servants,
to which all but a few simple folks turned a deaf ear? Alas, no! The result of
this second effort was to be worse rather than better. The majority were to
imitate the indifference of their predecessors, and the rest were to be guilty
of insolence and violence towards the King’s messengers. Such is the picture
presented in the words of our parable. "They went away, taking no heed; one to
his own field, another to his merchandise, and the rest laid hold of his
servants, and treated them shamefully and killed them." It is in a few words a
correct description of the treatment received by the apostles at the hands of
the Jews. The bulk of the people, preoccupied with secular affairs, finding
their satisfaction in possessions, or in the pursuit of gain,[1] took no
interest in the spiritual goods which the preachers of the gospel brought within
their reach. The heads of the nation, whom we may assume to be represented by
’the others’ in the parable, persecuted the missionaries of the new religion,
fearing evil consequences from its progress to the established civil and
religious order. So we learn from the familiar narratives of the Acts of the
Apostles. That Christ should predict so distinctly beforehand what was to happen
cannot appear surprising, as it scarcely needed prophetic prescience to enable
Him to do so. He had but to reason from what happened to the Master to what
would happen to disciples. For though it be true that the indignities which He
suffered at the hands of men came upon Him rather as a prophet of law than as a
minister of grace, yet His experience contained ominous indications of the
antagonism which might be provoked even by the bringer of good tidings when he
involuntarily offended against the prejudices of his hearers. How significant in
this connection the incidents in the synagogue of Nazareth recorded by the
Evangelist Luke.[2] Jesus discourses on the acceptable year of the Lord in
’words of grace’ which excite general admiration; yet in a few minutes after His
life is endangered by one or two historical references, which wound the
self-love of villagers animated by the bigoted exclusive spirit of their race.
That sudden ebullition of patriotic wrath was prophetic of the fate which
awaited the heralds of the new era of grace at the hands of Jewish pride. For,
however acceptable the good tidings might be in themselves, it would be
impossible to publish them without in some way giving offence. And as time went
on offences would increase. If the Nazarenes persecuted their fellow-townsman,
the Jewish people were sure to persecute more bitterly His followers while
engaged in their apostolic calling, and that on account precisely of those
characteristics by which their ministry was distinguished from His; its greater
aggressiveness, and its more explicit style of announcement. More energetic
action would provoke more violent reaction, and a more developed and
intelligible gospel would provoke more emphatic contradiction. When the gospel
of the kingdom, set forth in enigmatic aphorisms, took the form of a gospel of
salvation by a crucified man, offences would not be wanting! It was a matter of
course, therefore, that the second class of servants should be insulted,
assaulted, imprisoned, and even put in danger of their lives. And it was natural
that, in a parable setting forth the judgment of Israel for her contempt of
grace, allusion should be made to these prospective experiences to make it clear
that, on every ground, the guilty nation was ripe for doom. For a people not
only persistently negligent of duty, and practising habitual violence against
those who reminded it of its obligations, but equally insensible to God’s
overtures of mercy, and equally insolent towards the ministers of
reconciliation, what could be hoped? Even Paul, patriot though he was, capable
of wishing himself accursed for his countrymen’s sake, was forced to despair,
and to describe Israel as a people which despising the riches of God’s grace,
forbearance, and long-suffering, and misunderstanding their meaning with a
hardened, impenitent heart, treasured up for itself wrath in the day of wrath
and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.[3]

[1] The words τἰς τὸν ἴδιόν suggest the idea of landed property.

[2] Luk 4:16

[3] Rom 2:4-5. This wrath the parable proceeds to describe in these terms: "But
the king was angry; and sending his armies, he destroyed those murderers and
burned their city."[1] The words foreshadow the ruin of the Jewish state and the
holy city, a generation later, by the might of imperial Rome, employed by
Providence to punish Israel for her sins. It is startling to find so distinct an
anticipation of the event in a parable spoken so long beforehand. But Christ
says here only what he repeated with equal distinctness in the discourse on the
last things in a subsequent chapter of the same Gospel;[2] even as in the
description of the fate awaiting the apostles He but briefly hints what, on
various occasions, He had already said to His disciples by way of
forewarning,[3] and was to say again in the farewell discourse.[4]

[1] Mat 22:7.

[2] Mat 24:1-51.

[3] Mat 10:1-42; Mat 16:1-28.

[4] John 16:1-33. The concluding sentence of the first part of the parable
intimates the king’s resolve to transfer his favour from those who had been
guilty of such grievous misconduct to such as were more likely to value them.
This purpose, while an act of grace towards those next to be called, is an act
of judgment towards the first invited. It is the natural sequel of the dread
visitation spoken of just before. Israel, ruined as a nation, is at the same
time to be cast off as a people; as no longer worthy of the prerogatives and
privileges of the elect race. Of these indeed she had never been worthy, but in
view of her contempt of God’s grace, and judicial blindness in regard to her
spiritual opportunities, her demerit might be spoken of with an emphasis that in
other circumstances might appear excessive. By such behaviour as the parable
depicts, the Jewish people, as Paul declared in the synagogue of Antioch, judged
themselves unworthy of eternal life, and justified the transference of despised
privilege to the Gentiles.[1] Of this transference our parable speaks in very
general terms. "Go ye," says the king to his servants, "to the outlets of the
ways, and call to the marriage feast whomsoever ye find." We have already
alluded to the vagueness of the expression employed to denote the quarters where
the new guests are to be found. Much difference of opinion prevails as to its
meaning, and many interpreters express their views in a tone of dogmatism which
is altogether unwarrantable. Some are sure that the reference is to the streets
or squares of a city,[2] others pronounce with great confidence in favour of the
country roads, or crossings of the highways.[3] One asserts that the city in
which the new guests are to be sought is the same as that which is to be
burned;[4] another informs us that it is another city, that of the king; "not
Jerusalem, but God’s world."[5] There is nothing in the text to justify such
confidence, or to help us to a certain conclusion. The expression is vague;
perhaps it is purposely so; it may have been selected to embrace in its scope
the localities visited in the two missions to the poor in Luke’s parable—the
streets and lanes, and likewise the highways and hedges. The single mission to
the poor in Matthew’s parable is another point in which it differs from Luke’s.
Both have a double mission; but Matthew’s is to the first called, while Luke’s
is to those called in the second place. This difference is to be accounted for
in the same way as all the rest; viz. by the consideration that the parable
before us is a parable of judgment. Its aim is not to set forth with
distinctness and emphasis God’s purpose of grace to the outlying peoples, but to
justify the withdrawal of His grace from the chosen race. Therefore the calling
of those without is referred to only in indefinite terms: even as in the close
of the parable of the Vinedressers, where it is said that the kingdom of God
should be taken from Israel, and given to a nation (ἔθνει) yielding the fruits
thereof.[6] We shall best reflect the spirit of the parable by allowing the
terms to remain indefinite, and not binding them down to any particular
reference. If the Speaker had meant to fix the reference down either to town or
country, to the Jewish or the Gentile world, He could easily have done so, as in
the parable of the Supper, where one set of phrases are employed clearly
referring to the town, and then another as clearly referring to the country.
Good, or at least plausible, arguments have been advanced by respectable
authorities on both sides of the question, and that fact suggests that the
wisest course may be to be on both sides. The phrase, the outlets of the ways,
has a suggestive vagueness about it which stimulates the imagination, and craves
room and scope and largeness of interpretation, so that it may embrace at once
the outcasts of Israel and the Pagans. The king’s dining-hall was ample, and the
servants were to bring as many as they could find, and there are plenty of
servants about a king’s palace to search for guests in all directions, in town
or country. This, accordingly, the servants seem to have done; for it is written
that they went out into the ways (ὁδοὺς), the peculiar expression in their
directions not being repeated in the record of the execution.[7]

[1] Acts 13:46.

[2] Kypke, Kuinoel, Trench, &c.

[3] Fritsche after Fischer, De Wette, Meyer, Goebel.

[4] Trench.

[5] Alford.

[6] Mat 21:43.

[7] Farrar (’Life of Christ’) finds in this a delicate "reference to the
imperfect work of human, agents," the words within inverted commas being quoted
from ’Lightfoot on Revision,’ p. 68. We would rather find in the change of
expression a tacit admission that the phrase first used, while suitable enough
in the mouth of the king giving general instructions, was too vague to be used
with propriety in describing what was actually done.

II. The judgment of grace abused The tenth verse appropriately introduces the
new tableau of the guest without a wedding-robe. That a fresh start in the
narration, with a distinct didactic aim, is being made is apparent from the
simple fact that the messengers who go out to collect guests from the highways
are spoken of as those servants (οἱ δοῦλοι ἐκεῖνοι). If the verse had been
merely the conclusion of the preceding narrative, the servants would have been
the appropriate expression.[1] But that the story is about to take a new turn is
chiefly indicated by the significant expression employed to characterise the
guests gathered together by this mission. Those servants, we read, going forth,
collected together all whom they found, both bad and good. We must not, with
Bengel, minimise the force of the phrase, as if it were a proverbial expression
signifying ’indiscriminately.’ It is intended to emphasise the fact that the
invitation was indiscriminate with special reference to the moral character or
reputation of the parties, and that with an obvious regard to the scene which
follows in the wedding-chamber. The terms applied to the guests are all the more
significant when compared with those employed in the corresponding parable in
Luke. There what is accentuated is the abject poverty of the guests. It is the
children of misery and want that are invited; the desperately needy, the very
beggars on the highway, when it is found that there is still room. Here, on the
other hand, there is no reference to poverty; a fact overlooked by many
commentators, with the result that unnecessary difficulty is introduced into the
part of the parable relating to the wedding-robe. How unreasonable, it is
argued, to visit with severe penalties the want of such a robe on the part of a
poor man, who was not in possession of one or able to purchase one; and to get
over the difficulty it is deemed necessary to assume that the guests must have
been furnished with wedding-attire out of the royal wardrobes. We shall come to
that question by and by; meantime, let it be noted that there is not a word
about poverty in the text. The guests are not a crowd of paupers and beggars;
they are a congregation of men and women got together without reference to their
moral antecedents. In the esteem of society some of them might be good, and some
bad; but of such distinctions the servants took no account. They invited all
they met without question or hesitation as to character or antecedents; although
it might be evident at a glance from dress, features, and bearing, that some
were suspicious enough. Doubtless, among the invited would be some
poor,—probably the majority were of that class; but of that fact no note is
taken. What is remarked on is that the guests were a motley crew as to
character; some respectable, others disreputable: ragged not in their outward
attire, but in their name and fame, like the Corinthian Church of after days, of
which Paul remarked: "Such were some of you":[2] drunkards, adulterers, thieves,
and the like.

[1] So Goebel.

[2] 1Co 6:11. When we realise distinctly the import of the phrase "bad and
good," we are prepared for some such offence as is reported in the sequel. In
such a crowd, swept together from street and highway, rudeness, irreverence,
insensibility to the claims of the royal presence and the solemn occasion might
be looked for. These guests have not been accustomed to appear in such a place,
and it will be strange indeed if they comport themselves, without exception, as
becomes a palace and a royal marriage. We should rather expect irreverence to be
the rule, and decorum the exception. Yet in the parable only one of the guests
appears guilty of rudeness. Why is this? Because if the parable at this point
had followed natural probability, there would have been a risk of guests being
few, a great difficulty in getting the feast-chamber filled. The chamber was
filled with guests because the messengers invited all regardless of antecedents;
but it might have been emptied again, if the scrutiny had complied with the
requirements of probability. Many were called, but few might have been allowed
to remain. To avoid this result, and to keep the chamber full, the number of
offenders is reduced to one.[1] One was enough to suggest the fact, and
illustrate the principle of scrutiny. In consequence of this restriction, the
representation of the parable, as has been remarked, is not in keeping with the
concluding apophthegm:[2] ’ "Many are called, but few are chosen"—all being
chosen but one. The incongruity cannot be helped, for the feast must go on with
a number of guests answering to the importance of the occasion. Therefore one
guest is selected to represent a class.

[1] One or two interpreters have found the explanation in the supposition that
Christ had Judas Iscariot in view. Even Olshausen speaks of this prosaic
hypothesis as possible.

[2] D’Eichthal, ’Les Evangiles. When we consider how far short the parabolic
statement at this point comes of natural likelihood, we see that it cannot have
been the intention of Christ to represent the king as entering the chamber with
the express purpose of scrutinising the guests. He enters not to scrutinise but
to welcome; any other supposition would give to his appearance among his guests
an ungracious aspect, altogether out of keeping with the occasion. The discovery
of a man without a wedding-robe is an accident, an unpleasant incident not
looked for beforehand, though a thing which cannot be overlooked once it has
been observed. Had the intention been to make the king enter for the purpose of
a scrutiny, it would have been necessary either greatly to multiply the numbers,
to give the scrutiny an aspect at once of reality and of probability, or to make
the concluding aphorism run, Many are called, but not all are chosen. But now,
what is the offence of which the solitary representative of the disapproved is
guilty? We can have no difficulty in answering the question if we bear in mind
the composition of the multitude collected in the marriage-chamber. Answers very
wide of the mark have been returned by commentators approaching the subject from
the dogmatic, instead of the natural and historical, point of view. The sin of
the offending guest, we are told variously, is self-righteousness,[1]
disloyalty,[2] intrusion into a feast to which he has not been invited.[3] All
these views are connected with a theory as to the wedding-garment being the gift
of the king. The guest was self-righteous, because he preferred his own garment
to that offered him from the royal wardrobe; he was disloyal, because he refused
the garment which etiquette required all guests to receive and wear, in mere
rudeness and wantonness; he was an intruder, because had he been invited he
would doubtless have been offered a wedding-robe, and of course would have put
it on. These suggestions are all out of keeping with the circumstances.
Self-righteousness is not the sin which besets people such as those guests swept
indiscriminately from street and road. As little is disloyalty to be imputed
without urgent reason to men who have so far shown loyalty by coming to the
feast in response to the invitation. And as for the idea that the offending
guest was an uninvited intruder, it is simply absurd. Merely to hear of the
feast, even at second-hand, was to be invited, for the commission to the
servants was to bring as many as they could find. "Let him that heareth say
come, and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely."

[1] Arndt, Alford.

[2] Arnot.

[3] Baumgarten-Crusius. Of what kind of fault were those guests likely to be
guilty? Surely of unmannerliness, coming without decoration, not from want of
loyal feeling, or from conceit, or because they had no suitable apparel, but
from pure want of thought and refined feeling. The moral fault answering to this
is an unethical license, taking advantage of God’s goodness, without taking
pains to cultivate the virtue that becomes those who are admitted into close
relations with the Divine Being. This is one of two forms under which men may
sin against grace. It is the form under which those can so sin who accept God’s
invitations; the other being that under which those offend who decline the
invitations. Paul speaks of both offences in his Epistle to the Romans. The one,
that of the refusers of God’s invitations, he calls despising God’s grace, which
he charges upon the self-righteous Jews;[1] the other he calls sinning because
grace abounds,[2] which is the sin of what we might describe as unregenerate
faith.

[1] Rom 2:4.

[2] Rom 6:1. That Jesus should take occasion to enter a protest against this
sin, the licentious abuse of grace, as well as against the other offence, proud
contempt of grace, cannot appear surprising. For though He ever gave great
prominence to the gracious character of the kingdom, He was always zealous
likewise for its righteousness. He set forth the kingdom as a kingdom of grace
to begin with, because He wished it to be a kingdom of righteousness to end
with. He deemed the proclamation of free grace the best way to produce holiness.
If He offered the grace of God to the chief of sinners, it was because He
believed that such might become the chief of saints; on the principle that much
forgiveness breeds much love. The lesson of the wedding-robe is thus in keeping
with the general spirit of His teaching. And let it be observed that this is not
the only parable in which a zealous regard to the interests of holiness is
manifested. The same zeal comes out, not so obtrusively perhaps, but not less
unmistakably, in the parables of the Fig-tree and the Vinedressers. The barren
tree is removed because it unprofitably occupies the ground, which implies that
any tree which is planted in its place is put there for the purpose of bringing
forth fruit. Then in the sentences appended to the Vinedressers, it is stated
that the kingdom of God is to be taken from the Jews and given to a nation
producing the fruits thereof. The broad lesson then of the sub-parable of the
Wedding-robe is that the recipients of Divine grace must live worthily of their
privilege. The wedding-robe represents Christian holiness, and the demand is
that all believers in the gospel shall sedulously cultivate it. This being so,
it is useless to discuss, as a matter of life and death, the question whether,
according to ancient custom, the wedding-robe was a gift of the king. The point
is of no consequence to the didactic significance of the parable, but merely a
curious question of Biblical archaeology. So far as we can judge from the
extracts cited by commentators from works relating to Oriental customs, we
should say that a probable case has been made out in favour of the alleged
custom. But that is not enough to justify us in making that custom the hinge of
the interpretation. Had the didactic significance of the wedding-robe turned on
its being a gift, the fact that it was presented to each guest to be worn on the
occasion would have been mentioned.[1] It will not do to say that the custom was
so familiar to Christ’s audience that the point might be taken for granted.
Facts are not specified or omitted in parables according to the ignorance or the
knowledge of hearers, but according as they do or do not bear on the purpose of
the story. Thus the parable of Dives passes over the piety of Lazarus, not
because it might be assumed as known but because the mention of it would have
been an irrelevance. Similarly here: suppose it were not a matter of inference
merely, but a certainty that the wedding-garment was a robe similar to the
kaftan presented now in the East by kings to persons appearing before them, the
absence of all allusion to the custom must be held to be conclusive evidence
that it is irrelevant to the lesson intended to be taught. The silence means
that the Speaker wishes to accentuate the duty of each guest seeing to it that
he appeared at the feast in proper attire. In short, as has been remarked,
prominence is given to the ethical view-point which emphasises man’s
responsibility, rather than the religious which represents all as depending on
God.[2] To prove ever so cogently that the wedding-garment came from the king’s
stores does not invalidate this statement, but only confirms it.[3] [1] So Meyer
and Neander (’Life of Christ’), Bleek, &c.

[2] De Wette.

[3] While a circumstance of such didactic importance as that the wedding-garment
was a loan from the king could not properly be omitted, it is otherwise with the
circumstance that the guests gathered from the highways were allowed an
opportunity to make a change of raiment somehow. That might be taken for granted
as a matter of course. Storr, while pointing this out, yet concurs in the
opinion that it is not necessary to determine whence the wedding-garment was to
be procured; the intention being to teach merely the general lesson that the
soul must be clothed anew with righteousness, not the method of procuring the
necessary vesture (’De Parabolis Christi,’ translated in the ’Biblical Cabinet,’
vol. ix.). The conclusion to which these observations point is, that. there is
no foundation in the parable for the good old Protestant interpretation,
according to ’which the wedding-garment is the righteousness of God given to
faith. Vestis est justitia Christ, says the devout and scholarly Bengel, and we
should gladly agree with him; but we feel that the idea of an objective
righteousness given to faith lies outside the scope of this parable, and,
indeed, except in the most general form, is not to be found in the whole system
of truth contained in the records of our Lord’s teaching.[1] That idea is
distinctively Pauline. It is the form under which he presents to view the summum
bonum, or the gift of grace. The equivalent in Christ’s teaching is the kingdom
of God. These two ideas are not opposed to each other; on the contrary, they are
intimately related, and in full sympathy with each other. Still their relation
is one of co-ordination, not of subordination. The righteousness of God is not,
as is implied in Bengel’s interpretation of the wedding-garment, a detail under
the general head of the kingdom of God. It is another name for the same thing.
The doctrine of Christ and that of Paul are essentially one. In both, man’s
relation to God is represented as based upon grace. That view is implied in this
parable; but it is important to note at what point it comes in. The grace of the
kingdom is set forth by the selection of a wedding-feast to be its emblem. The
wedding-robe represents the holiness of the kingdom which ought to accompany and
flow from the reception of grace. Its equivalent in the Pauline system is not
the righteousness of faith, which answers to the feast in the parable, but those
parts of the Apostle’s teaching in which he insists on holiness as the outcome
of faith in God’s grace, and so guards his doctrine against objections springing
out of concern for ethical interests. The passages in Paul’s writings which come
nearest in import to the sub-parable of the Wedding-garment are those in his
Epistle to the Romans where he protests against the impious idea that we may sin
because grace abounds,[2] and warns the Gentile believers to beware lest through
spiritual shortcomings the same fate befall them—the wild olive branches, which
had overtaken the natural branches, the elect people of Israel.[3]

[1] The nearest approach to it in the Synoptical Gospels is in the expressions,
"The kingdom of God, and His righteousness" (Mat 6:33); and "Justified rather
than the other" (Luk 18:14).

[2] Rom 6:1.

[3] Rom 11:16-22. We may here, at the conclusion of the discussion as to the
wedding-garment, note that in the ’Clementine Homilies,’ viii. 22, the garment
is supposed to be Baptism: ἐνδυμα γάμου, ὅπερ ἐστὶν βάπτισμα. (In the same place
the διεξόδοι τῶν ὀδῶν are identified with the Gentile world, ἐκἐλευσεν ἡμῖν, εἰς
τὰς· διεξόδους τῶν ὀδῶν ἐλθοῦσιν, ὅ ἐστὶν πρὸς ὑμᾷς.) The Fathers generally made
the wedding-robe holiness. Thus Origen Calls it τὸ ὕφασμα τῆς ἄρετης.

We pass now to the sequel of the scene. The king saith to the offending guest:
"Friend, how camest thou hither not having a wedding-garment?" The guilty one
made no reply; in the expressive language of the parable he was muzzled. His
speechlessness was the product of confusion in the august presence of the king.
Till that moment the habit of irreverence had prevailed; for he had not realised
had never even thought, what it was to be confronted with royalty. But when the
king actually appears, fixes his eye on him and speaks to him, he is confounded
and struck dumb. Thus may the manner of the man be most naturally explained. It
is unnecessary to ascribe to him any deliberate intention to insult by any act
of rudeness or disloyalty. His offence was one of thoughtlessness, as was likely
to be the case in a man of his class. The severity of his punishment naturally
tempts us to make his fault appear as aggravated as possible by laying stress on
every word that can be supposed to imply deliberate purpose,[1] and by imagining
circumstances fitted to deprive him of all excuse, such as that the missing
article of apparel was simply an inexpensive badge or symbol which the poorest
could have procured for himself.[2] But instead of thus striving to magnify the
offender’s criminality, it is better to direct attention to the solemn truth
that even sins of thoughtlessness are no light matters in those who bear the
Christian name, and profess to believe in God’s grace. In this connection it is
important to remember that it is this class of sins the writer of the Epistle to
the Hebrews seems to have in view when he exhorts his readers to follow peace
with all men, and holiness as an indispensable condition of seeing God. For he
goes on immediately to refer to Esau as the type of those who through neglect of
holiness fall short of the grace of God. The sin of Esau was heedlessness. He
was dying of hunger, and what was a birthright to a starving man? When appetite
was satisfied he regretted his rash, thoughtless act, for he had not
deliberately despised his birthright. The writer of the Epistle would have his
brethren understand that through nothing worse than such moral rudeness might
Christians miss salvation. And that is the lesson taught in our parable. We see
here a man who falls from the king’s grace not through self-righteous pride, or
bold disloyalty, or deliberate disrespect, but by the rude behaviour of one who
has never been accustomed to restraint, and who without thought carries his
unmannerly ways into the royal presence.

[1] Thus Trench points out that the particle of negation in the king’s question
is not οῦ, as in the previous verse, but μὴ. μὴ ἔχων ἔνδυμα γάμομ not having
(and knowing that thou hadst not) a wedding-garment.

[2] So Arnot, who refers in illustration to the bride’s favour given to guests
at marriages in this country. The doom of one guilty of such an offence, as
described in the parable, appears unduly severe. Enough for such an one, we are
inclined to think, that he be unceremoniously turned out of a company in which
he is not fit to appear. Was it worth while, one is apt to ask, for the king to
get angry over the unmannerliness of this clown who had strayed into the
marriage-hall, or to issue such peremptory instructions as to how his ministers
should deal with him? Was not such wrath and such preciseness undignified in a
royal person? Certainly, on first thought, it does seem so. At the very least
the king’s action seems to stand in need of apology, and the apology that comes
readiest is that the king’s temper has been so ruffled by the contempt of the
first invited that he is naturally very jealous of any fresh manifestations of
irreverence, and prone to resentment when such appear. And such an explanation
of the king’s behaviour is quite legitimate, for we are not bound to vindicate
the actions of characters in parables from all charges of infirmity. In studying
the parable of the Great Feast in Luke’s Gospel we saw that the motive of the
host for filling his dining-hall with beggars from the highways was by no means
an elevated one. Even so here we may imagine the king to be simply giving way to
one of those sudden ebullitions of anger in which eastern rulers so frequently
indulge, under whose influence they issue the most ruthless orders on
comparatively slight provocation. In this way we should at all events justify
the parabolic representation as in accord with natural probability. But the
royal wrath and the order in which it issues have more than picturesque
significance. They convey the thought that a heedless life on the part of a
believer in Divine grace may be attended with fatal consequences; the same
thought which Paul sought to impress on the Corinthians, and the writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews on Jewish Christians, by reminding them of the melancholy
fate which overtook the people of Israel in the wilderness, notwithstanding that
they had participated in the grace of Jehovah in connection with the Exodus.[1]
The passages in which these solemn warnings are given are the best possible
commentary on the command of the king. They refer to historical facts which
prove that what seem very pardonable sins of unbelief, murmuring, and hankering
after forbidden enjoyments, may be mercilessly punished, leaving no room for
repentance, even though it be sought carefully and with tears. Christ, ever
faithful, and truly desirous of the salvation of all His followers, draws His
picture in accordance with the facts of experience, at the risk of seeming to
make God appear a harsh tyrant, and Himself less pitiful than we love to think
Him. For if, as we have no reason to doubt, the concluding reflections of the
parable were spoken by Him, then He must be understood as acquiescing in the
rigour of Providence. "There shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth,"
says He, in reference to the ejected guest; suggesting the picture of a poor
wight lying in darkness bound and helpless, lamenting his exclusion from joy,
and the folly which occasioned it. "Many are called, but few chosen," He adds,
to suggest that the sad fate of the one may befall many, the number of the
heedless being at all times great.

[1] 1Co 10:1-33; Heb 3:1-19.


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  CHAPTER 31: 01.26.        CHAPTER 6. THE UNFAITHFUL UPPER SERVANT
========================================================================

Chapter 6. The Unfaithful Upper Servant Or, the Judgment of Degenerate Ministers
of the Kingdom. In the two parables which remain to be considered ere we bring
these studies to a close, judgment appears active within the kingdom of grace.
In the second scene of the last parable we already see the judicial activity of
Christ beginning to manifest itself in this sphere. But the sub-parable of the
Wedding-robe is only a prelude to the judgment of the house of God. There is
judged a class who never realised the responsibilities of those who receive
God’s gracious favour, who entered the kingdom in the rudeness of nature,
untouched by any regenerative influence. But in the parables now to be studied
we witness the judgment not of the unregenerate, but of the degenerate, who made
a fair start, but have undergone a demoralising process, and declined from their
initial spiritual condition as believers. They begin by recognising the claims
of holiness, but they do not persevere in this mind. In every process of
declension or degeneracy time enters as an element. The phenomena resulting can
appear only after the movement with which they are associated has lasted for a
while. Perseverance in holiness in the individual and in the community is tested
by the occurrence of a period of trial. The parable first considered, that of
the Sower, taught us this. Jesus speaks there of those who receive the word with
joy, but when tribulation cometh are offended. It is not surprising, therefore,
that the parables before us are found connected in the record with an
eschatological discourse, in which the consummation of the kingdom, while
represented as an event to be looked for at any moment, is at the same time
spoken of as an event likely to be deferred so long as to involve a great trial
of faith and patience. The virtue specially called for by such a situation is
watchfulness. Were the near advent of the consummation certain, watching would
not be needed; being possible, yet not certain, that habit is at once necessary
and difficult. For delay brings temptation to relax zeal, and yielding to the
temptation exposes to the risk of surprise. The discourse on the last things,
accordingly, contains frequent exhortations to watchfulness. "Watch, therefore,
for ye know not the day nor the hour," comes in at intervals like a solemn
refrain. And the lesson is enforced not merely by repetition of the counsel, but
by the use of figurative representations exhibiting vividly the need of
watching, and the danger of neglecting it. We find a whole group of parabolic
sayings embedded in the eschatological discourse, all having for their moral:
"Watch, for you may be thrown off your guard by delay, and be surprised by the
sudden (for sudden it will be) coming of the long expected." In Matthew’s
version of the sermon there are three: the Goodman and the Thief, the Unfaithful
Upper Servant, and the Ten Virgins. The second of the three is given by Luke in
a different connection, prefaced by another parable, that of the Waiting
Servants who expect their absent lord with loins girt and lights burning, which
was probably spoken at the same time as the others.[1] Mark gives a fifth, that
of the Porter; its peculiarity being that the duty of watching, which in the
other parables is enjoined on all the servants, is assigned in the distribution
of offices to a particular functionary.[2] It is possible, however, that this is
not a distinct parable, but an amalgam of the Waiting Servants and the Talents,
the watching porter representing the lesson taught in the former, and the
assignment of tasks to the servants individually representing the distribution
of talents in the latter.[3] Omitting it, there remain four parabolic utterances
bearing on the same theme, and all, there is little doubt, spoken at the same
time; a sufficient index of the prominent place which the subject of watching
occupied in Christ’s thoughts in His last days, in its bearing on the spiritual
welfare of His disciples.

[1] Luk 12:35-37.

[2] Mark 13:34.

[3] So Weiss, ’Das Markus-Evangelium.’ Of these four parables only two, those of
the Unfaithful Upper Servant, and the Ten Virgins, call for detailed study. The
two others merely inculcate in a general manner the duty of watching; these show
the evil tendency of delay to demoralise character in different ways, and the
doom of such as yield to the baleful influence. The Waiting Servants and the
Goodman and the Thief may be regarded as introductory to the parable which is
first to engage our attention, as indeed they appear in Luke’s narrative. In the
former the coming of the Son of man is compared to the return of an householder
from a marriage-feast to his own home at an unseasonable hour of the night,
when, in the ordinary course, all the inmates would be asleep. But on such an
occasion, when their master is expected, dutiful servants will not retire to
rest, but will patiently wait for His arrival, at whatever hour it may take
place, with garments tucked up in readiness for service, and with the lights
burning brightly in the chambers. Such an attitude Jesus desired His disciples
habitually to maintain. "Let your loins be girt about," He said, "and your lamps
burning, and be ye yourselves like unto men who wait for their lord." He
indicated how difficult He deemed it to carry into effect the counsel by
appending to the parable the reflection: "Blessed are those servants whom their
lord, when he cometh, shall find watching; verily I say unto you, that he shall
gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and shall come and serve them."
When our Lord used this epithet ’blessed,’ He always meant to represent the
thing spoken of as high and rare. ’Rare virtue,’ He here exclaims in effect, in
reference to the conduct of the waiting servants. So rare does He reckon it,
that He represents the master as not expecting it; counting rather on finding
the house dark and his servants in bed, with hardly one left to open the door
when he knocks. Finding the facts otherwise, observing the cheery appearance of
lights in the windows, sure indication that the household is on the outlook, he
is so delighted that, instead of accepting service from his dutiful slaves, he
is rather in the mood to turn servant to them, and supply them with refreshment,
and so reward rare virtue with equally rare felicity and honour. The scene next
changes from servants waiting for their absent lord to a householder whose house
is in danger of being broken into by thieves. In this instance we are told, not
what the man does or ought to do, but what he would do in a supposed case. If he
knew when the thief would come he would watch to protect himself against the
risk of having his property carried off. If only he, like the waiting servants,
knew the day, it would not matter what the hour was, he would gladly keep awake
through all the watches of the night to avoid the threatened danger. But he does
not know the day any more than the hour; for while it is for the interest of an
absent master that his servants should know at least the day of his return, it
is the thief’s interest, on the contrary, that his victim should be ignorant as
to the day, as well as the hour, of his attack. Therefore the good-man of the
house cannot help himself; he must go to bed and take his risk; for it is
physically impossible to do without sleep, and watch night and day all his life
long. He acts so from necessity, not because he is indifferent; not even
trusting to his poverty as a sufficient protection. A poor man he is, for he
lives in a mud house, which can be dug through,[1] so that a barred door is no
sufficient defence. But even poverty does not lull him into security; for the
little he has is valuable to him, and it would be valuable also to a thief,
probably poorer than himself, and tempted by want to steal. The moral is: Let
disciples do always what the good man of the house would do if he could, or does
on occasion. They have need; for the end is apt to come thief-like, tarrying
long, as if it would never arrive, then overtaking men by surprise. They can;
for though they know neither the day nor the hour, watching in the moral sense
is possible at all times; there is no necessity in the spiritual sphere for
being at the mercy of the thief.

[1] The term employed to denote the mode by which the thief gets in is
διορυγῆναι.

Such urgent exhortations to watchfulness, spoken doubtless with great
earnestness of tone, must have fallen with startling effect on the ears of
hearers. We can readily believe, therefore, that Peter, speaking for the twelve,
asked such a question as is put into his mouth by the third Evangelist. The
question is vaguely expressed,—"Speakest Thou this parable?" he said, though two
had been uttered,—and without any indication of motive. Peter doubtless had in
view the whole discourse about watching, and his question probably arose out of
a feeling of surprise at the severe tone pervading it His thought fully
expressed was probably something like this: "Master, you seem to consider
watchfulness very difficult, as well as very needful. Whom have you specially in
view when you speak thus? Do you think that we, your chosen companions, need to
be particularly exhorted after this fashion, or are you not speaking to us at
all, but merely addressing general exhortations to the crowd?" Probably Peter’s
feeling was that he and his brethren did not need to be spoken to so, but were
superior to the vulgar vice of heedlessness. In that case there was indicated in
his question the same spirit of self-confidence which revealed itself on the
night before the Passion in connection with the declaration of Jesus, "All ye
shall be offended in Me this night." If, as is probable, the putting of the
question formed an incident in the delivery of the eschatological discourse
during Passion Week, we have two characteristic manifestations of Peter’s
infirmity occurring within a few days of each other, in one of which he asks,
with a tone of injured virtue, "Speakest Thou thus to us?" and in the other
declares, "Though all shall be offended in Thee, I will never be offended." In
the light of this juxtaposition we can better understand the stern tone of
Christ’s reply, which must have sounded almost as harsh to Peter’s ear as the
word which foretold his fall—"Verily I say unto thee, that this night thou shalt
deny Me thrice." Taking the two together, the announcement of the impending fall
and the parable of the Unfaithful Upper Servant, they convey this lesson: The
demoralising effect on character of a sudden crisis overtaking an inexperienced
disciple is bad enough, but that produced by long delay is still worse. The one
leads to humiliating denials of the Lord, the other may lead to shameless
profligacy: habitual denial in life, more culpable far than the momentary
denials of the tongue. The parable which teaches this lesson is as follows: Who
then is the faithful and wise servant whom his lord set over his household to
give them their food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when
he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say to you, that he will place him over
all his goods. But if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord
tarrieth, and shall begin to beat his fellow-servants, and shall eat and drink
with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he expecteth
not, and in an hour when he knoweth not, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint
his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of
teeth.—Mat 24:45-51.[1]

[1] The version of the parable in Luke is nearly the same as in Matthew. For
τροφὴν, Mat 24:45, Luke has σιτομέτριον. Instead of "to eat and drink with the
drunken," Luke reads, "to eat and to drink and to be drunken." For ὑποκρινῶν
Luke has ἀπίστων. Luke adds a reflection on the difference as to the amount of
penalty between those who know their lord’s will and those who know it not. The
reply of Jesus to Peter’s question is indirect but clear. Without saying in
express terms, "I mean you as well as others, nay, you very specially," by
selecting an upper servant as the subject of the parable He shows that the duty
of watching is one to which men called to be apostles are specially summoned,
and the neglect of which in their case involves peculiar dangers. In its main
drift the parable is the judgment of ministers of the kingdom demoralised even
to profligacy by the delay of the second advent, From the parable thus viewed
two inferences may be confidently drawn: that Christ must have expected His
kingdom to pass through a lengthened history before reaching its consummation;
and that He regarded perseverance in grace through a protracted period as
exceedingly difficult for the individual and for the community. Only in the
light of these inferences can the salient features of the representation be
understood and appreciated.

First we notice the black picture of the upper servant’s misconduct during his
lord’s absence. He becomes a brutal tyrant and a drunken profligate, a man
utterly unworthy of his trust, and absolutely indifferent to his master’s
interests, whatever he may pretend; whose proper place in character, as in
penalty, is among the faithless[1] and the hypocritical.[2] Consider what this
means in the spiritual sphere. A profligate clergy lording it over God’s
heritage, dissolute in life, sceptical in reference to the future glory of the
kingdom and all great Christian verities,[3] and guilty of grossest hypocrisy in
combining the exercise of sacred functions with a total lack of personal faith
and holiness. It takes a long time to develop such a deplorable state of
matters. Not at the beginning of a religious movement, not in its creative
epoch, do such scandalous phenomena make their appearance; but when the
spiritual force has to a large extent spent itself, and its effects have taken
their place among the institutions of the world, as at the conversion of the
Roman empire under Constantine, and the ’establishment’ of Christianity as the
religion of the State. When He drew the dark picture Christ must have been
looking far beyond the apostolic age; for any one of ordinary sagacity, not to
speak of prophetic prescience, might understand that the degeneracy depicted
could not appear then in a form intense and extensive enough to make it worth
while to construct a parable concerning it. The delay of the master’s coming
must have meant for Him a lengthened period, during which the kingdom was to
pass through a secular process of development, in the course of which hideous
forms of evil, as well as new forms of good, would manifest themselves. It is
true that in the parable only a single instance of degeneracy is mentioned,
which might occur even in the best of times, even in the earliest or apostolic
age. It is true also that the case is put hypothetically. If the servant act
thus and thus he will be treated accordingly. But parabolic speech suggests more
than it says, and it is due to its dignity and gravity to assume that a more
serious state of things than a solitary, exceptional instance of depravity would
amount to is signified, even a widespread declension; and further, that such
declension is not only possible, but probable or even certain.

[1] τῶν ἀπίστων, Luk 12:46.

[2] τῶν ὑποκριτῶν, Mat 24:51.

[3] ᾄπιστος may mean either faithless or unbelieving.

If this be so, then the second inference above stated is abundantly justified,
viz. that Jesus must have had a profound sense of the difficulty of persevering
in grace through a protracted period. But this more plainly appears from the
manner in which fidelity is spoken of in the opening sentences of the parable.
Who, it is asked, is the faithful and wise servant who, being appointed to a
place of trust and responsibility in his master’s house, shall act as is
expected of him? as ii. such a person were hardly to be found. Who is he? where
is he? what would one not give to see him? That such a one is pronounced blessed
signifies the same thing; for, as already stated, this word as used by Christ
always denotes something high, exceptional, rare. Applied to conduct, it
signifies virtue arduous, heroic, and therefore uncommon. Applied to state, it
signifies felicity out of the common course. "Blessed is that servant" means he
is a rare man, a hero, one among a thousand. It means further, great shall be
his reward, and of this accordingly the parable goes on next to speak. "Verily I
say unto you, that he shall make him ruler over all his goods." Having proved
himself trusty, he shall be rewarded with unlimited trust, and promoted to a
position next to his lord, which can be occupied by one only, the first man in
the house, the prime minister in the state.

It may appear strange that our Lord took so sombre and discouraging a view of
the capabilities of the average disciple to persevere in faith and fidelity
amidst the temptations arising out of the mere lapse of time, not to speak of
other more positive forms of trial. But it is not necessary to suppose that He
meant to represent time in itself as a source of trial. Time is a mere
abstraction, and the lapse of time tries men simply by affording scope for the
play of influences within or without hostile to their spiritual interest. The
real thought underlying the parabolic representation is: the difficulty of
persistence in spiritual life throughout a curriculum of trial such as the lapse
of years and ages inevitably brings, one of the sorest temptations involved
being the disappointment of early hopes for the speedy consummation of devout
desires. Even when thus put the doctrine is hard enough, and were it to be found
only in this parable, we might well doubt the correctness of our interpretation.
But it pervades our Lord’s teaching, and we do not need to go beyond the
discourses of the Passion Week to meet with words of kindred import to that now
under consideration. In the very same discourse of which our parable forms a
part we read, "Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved,"[1] a statement
implying that endurance is hard, and therefore rare, at least in times when
wickedness is rampant. Then on the Passion eve Jesus said to the eleven, "Ye are
they which have continued with Me in My temptations," so gratefully
acknowledging a fidelity which had been far from easy; and to indicate still
further His sense of the heroic character of their behaviour, He added, "And I
appoint unto you a kingdom."[2] Ye have done nobly, and noble shall be your
reward—such is the import of the pathetic utterance. It is in full sympathy with
the didactic drift of our parable, though it implies a more genial appreciation
of the behaviour of Peter and his fellow-disciples than that which seems to be
insinuated in the latter.

[1] Mat 24:12.

[2] Luk 22:28-29. The punishment awaiting the wicked servant is dreadful. His
lord, coming on a day when he expects him not, and at an unknown hour, will cut
him asunder. Whatever the word διχοτομήσει may signify in the spiritual sphere,
it is to be interpreted literally when we seek to determine the exact character
of the parabolic representation. It means in plain terms to cut the body into
two, as by a saw or other instrument, a barbaric and revolting mode of putting
to death practised among the Hebrews and other nations of antiquity.[1] For
classical references vide Wetstein. One is inclined to wonder that Christ did
not shrink from using a word suggestive of such horrible associations. But
doubtless He did shrink, and forced Himself nevertheless to employ the term,
with an eye to moral effect. The strong word served several good purposes. It
conveyed, in the first place, as has been happily pointed out by Bengel, the
idea of a punishment congruous to the character of the criminal on whom it is
inflicted, that, viz., of a hypocrite. "A hypocrite divides soul and body in the
worship of God; wherefore his soul and his body are divided in eternal
destruction." Then, secondly, the Dantesque expression adequately indicates the
intense abhorrence with which Jesus regarded conduct on the part of professed
followers by which the house of God was turned into a house of Belial. Finally,
it was well fitted to scare and terrify the twelve disciples to whom the parable
was first spoken, and so effectually prevent them from being guilty of
misconduct pronounced worthy of such punishment. In this connection it is
important to point out that Christ’s strongest, harshest words occur in speeches
addressed to His disciples. It is in the discourse on Humility that we find the
millstone suspended by the neck; it is in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant
that mention is made of the tormentors; it is in the parable of the Wicked Upper
Servant that the horrible punishment of cutting in two is alluded to: the
audience in all three instances being the twelve. The purpose is plain: strong
language is used to render hated sin impossible. With the punishment of the
unfaithful one, the parable as given in Matthew ends. Luke appends a reflection
intended to meet a feeling naturally arising out of the parabolic
representation. Declension into faithlessness is difficult to resist, and its
penalty is rigorous: such is the drift of the whole. "Who then can be saved?" is
the question which suggests itself to every sincere disciple. Such despair is
dangerous; for nothing is more demoralising than to be told at once that virtue
is next to impossible, and that the want of it will be inexorably punished.
Jesus hastened to obviate the evil effect by making a distinction between those
who sin with full knowledge of their Lord’s will, and those who sin in
comparative ignorance thereof. A milder word also is employed to denote the
penalty in either case. Stripes take the place of cutting asunder. The stronger
word denotes the inherent turpitude of the offence, the weaker is used out of
compassionate regard to the infirmity of human nature, which often causes men
not wicked in will to fall grievously before the assaults of temptation, whereof
the denial of his beloved Master by Peter is an instructive example.

[1] Vide 1Sa 15:33; 2Sa 12:31; Heb 11:37.


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  CHAPTER 32: 01.27.        CHAPTER 7. THE TEN VIRGINS
========================================================================

Chapter 7. The Ten Virgins Or, the Judgment of Foolish Citizens of the Kingdom

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, who took their
lamps,[1] and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were foolish,
and five were wise.[2] For the foolish, when they took their lamps, took no oil
with themselves. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their own lamps.
Now while the bridegroom tarried, they all nodded[3] and slept. But at midnight
is raised a cry, Behold the bridegroom; come ye forth to meet him.[4] Then arose
all those virgins, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise,
Give us of your oil, for our lamps are going out. But the wise answered, saying,
Lest there be not enough for us and you, go rather to them that sell, and buy
for yourselves.[5] And while they were going away to buy, the bridegroom came;
and the virgins that were ready[6] went in with him to the marriage-feast, and
the door was shut. Afterwards came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord,
open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Watch, therefore, for ye know not the day nor the hour.—Mat 25:1-13.

[1] λαμπάδος, properly torches. Probably the ’lamps’ consisted of a short wooden
stem held in the hand, with a dish at the top in which was a piece of cloth
dipped in oil or pitch. Lightfoot (’Hor. Heb.’) gives from the Talmud an account
of torches used at marriages among the Ishmaelites answering to this
description. They carry before the bride "decem baculos ligneos, in
uniuscujusque summitate vasculum instar se utellæ habentes, in quo est segmentum
panni cum oleo et pice." The number ten is noticeable.

[2] Such is the order in the chief uncials, and adopted by Tischendorf, Westcott
and Hort, and the R. V.

[3] ἐνύσταξαν. The nodding was transient, the initial stage, hence the aorist;
the sleeping was continuous, hence ἐκάθευδον, the imperfect. Nodded is a
familiar word, but it has the merit of stating exactly what happened, and
conveys the idea that as the night advanced the virgins were overtaken with
drowsiness.

[4] εἰς ἀπάντησιν: literally, "unto meeting:" a familiar and important ceremony.

[5] μήποτε οὐκ, which Goebel renders ’never,’ making the refusal unnecessarily
peremptory. The rendering above given is Campbell’s, after the Vulgate.

[6] αἱ ἕτοιμοι = the ready ones, viz. the wise virgins. The last of the parables
is one of the most beautiful and touching. The arts have been made to minister
to its illustration: poetry, painting, and the drama have combined to give it an
exceptional hold on the Christian imagination. The weird pathos of the story is
unspeakable. The occasion is so happy, the agents so interesting, the issue so
tragic. It is a wedding that is on hand; the characters brought on the stage are
virgins, young, bright, and fair; the fate of some of them is so hard—exclusion
from the marriage festivities at which they so longed to be present, and for so
slight a cause—a little too late. One’s heart is sore for those five witless,
luckless girls. A parable like this one would rather silently read than expound;
for exposition is almost certain to mean turning poetry into prose. For another
reason one shrinks from the interpreter’s task in the present instance. No
parable has been so completely taken possession of by allegorising theology. The
natural story has been buried beneath a heap of spiritual meanings which have
been accumulating from the patristic period till now. To every word—virgin,
bridegroom, lamp, oil—has been assigned its emblematic significance. A
comparatively sober Catholic commentator counts fifteen parts which have their
spiritual equivalents, not reckoning among these the part in which the foolish
virgins are represented as going to buy, which he regards as a mere ornament.[1]
To go against the exegetical tradition of well-nigh two thousand years is not
only audacious, but almost profane. And yet there is no parable in which
preliminary discussion of the story apart from the moral interpretation seems
more urgently needed. Convinced of this, we must decline to ask such questions
as what does the oil signify, until we have formed a clear idea of what persons
whose oil-supply had run out would be likely to do at an ordinary wedding. The
result of our inquiry may be to place us in the undesirable position of an
almost solitary dissenter. Yet what can one do but state honestly the opinions
which, after much reflection, commend themselves to his mind?

[1] Maldonatus. The situation, or course of events, is by no means clear. The
movement of the narrative is rapid, many details are omitted, only the salient
points necessary to the moral lesson being given; and, as has been remarked, the
information supplied by travellers and writers on antiquities concerning Jewish
customs do not afford much help towards filling up the picture.[1] Such
information carries us little beyond the generality of a torchlight procession,
which was not peculiar to Judaea, but formed a feature in the marriage customs
also of Greece and Rome.[2] We read of ten virgin-companions of the bride, whose
function it was[3] to go forth with lamps to meet the bridegroom. But from what
point did the torchlight night journey start? and how are we to conceive its
progress? To these queries no less than four distinct answers are given by the
commentators. They may be briefly stated thus:—

[1] So Fritsche and Bengel.

[2] Vide Wetstein for references to classic usage.

[3] αἵτινες, Mat 25:1, implies that the clause following describes the kind of
virgins meant. They are bridesmaids.

1. The virgins set out from their own homes with lamps in hand, arrive one after
the other at the bride’s home, there wait for the announcement of the
bridegroom’s approach, whereupon they prepare to accompany him, with his bride,
to his house, where the nuptial festivities are celebrated.[1]

2. The virgins meet at the bride’s home, their rendezvous. How or when they get
there is a matter of indifference to the parable. There they wait till the
approach of the bridegroom is announced; then, for the first time, they proceed
to light their lamps, that with these they may go forth to meet the bridegroom
and conduct him to the bride’s house, where, and not in his own house, the
marriage takes place.[2]

3. The virgins, assembled at the bride’s house, set out with their lights to
meet the bridegroom without waiting for the announcement of his approach,
expecting him to come at a certain time. When they have gone a certain length on
the way it becomes apparent to them that he is not coming so soon as was
expected, and, weary with the journey, they turn aside to some halting-place—an
inn, a private dwelling, or the roadside—to rest, and are soon overpowered with
sleep, from which they are aroused by the cry, The bridegroom is at hand;
whereupon they join his party and return with them to the bride’s house.[3]

4. The virgins join the procession of the bridegroom and the bride coming from
the house of the latter and going to the house of the former; meeting the bridal
party at some convenient point on the road at which they have gathered.[4] [1]
Bornemann in ’Studien und Kritiken, 1843, Ewald, Greswell.

[2] Goebel.

[3] Bleek, Meyer, &c.

[4] Trench Arnot, Lange. The difference which chiefly concerns us in these four
hypotheses is that between the second and all the rest. That view implies that
the foolish virgins had no oil at all, while all the others imply that they took
with them from their homes oil enough to last for the time which they expected
to elapse before the arrival of the bridegroom. On the one view their folly
consisted in never thinking of oil, and merely taking the empty lamps; on the
other it consisted in taking only as much as was usually sufficient, and making
no provision for the possible case of the delayed arrival of the bridegroom. The
author of the second hypothesis insists, in support of it, on the reflexive
pronoun ἑαυτῶν after λαμπάδας in Mat 25:1, and before ἔλαιον in Mat 25:3. The
foolish virgins took their own lamps, but they took not their own oil; for that,
or for the light, that oil gives, they trusted to others; it would be enough to
be in the company of those who had light-giving lamps. The expression, "Our
lamps are going out," in Mat 25:8, he thinks does not mean the oil in our lamps
is exhausted, but simply implies that wicks had been kindled in oilless lamps,
which of course were no sooner lighted than they began to go out. Against the
more common view he argues that it makes the wise far too wise, for how should
they be able to guess that the arrival of the bridegroom might possibly be
delayed a considerable time? Moreover, he contends that in any case there was no
need for an extra supply of oil. The lamps were not needed till the arrival of
the bridegroom was announced, and the procession of virgins to meet him went
only a short distance, and lasted only a short time. The idea of the virgins
setting out in a haphazard way, without any announcement, to meet the
bridegroom, is altogether unlikely, and the halt on the road for rest absurd,
and contrary to all notions of propriety. The argument is ingenious, and in some
points, especially the last referred to, cogent; but the hypothesis in question
has its assailable points also. If some of the other views make the wise too
wise, it in turn makes the foolish too foolish. It is surely possible to be as
foolish as the moral of the parable requires without being so foolish as to take
lamps without ever thinking of oil! In fact, the folly of the foolish virgins on
this view has no relation to the moral lesson. Suppose the bridegroom had not
tarried, the foolish virgins would have been equally at fault. But the point of
the parable is to illustrate the effect of delay, or of the unexpected, in
testing forethought, which is the chief part of wisdom. Besides, on this view it
is difficult to see why the foolish virgins trimmed, that is to say, lighted,
their lamps. They knew they had brought no oil, they knew why they had neglected
to do so, viz. because they reckoned it enough that their companions should have
lamps that gave light. Why did they not continue to be of this mind, and join
the procession with lamps unlit? Were they so foolish as not to know that a wick
without oil to feed the flame would not continue to burn? One other objection
may justly be taken to the hypothesis in question. It seems intended to obviate
the difficulty in the spiritual interpretation arising from the fact of the
foolish having oil—faith, hope, love, yet after all failing to attain salvation.
The hard problem is solved by the simple method of degrading the foolish virgins
into mere formalists. They have their own lamps,[1] and probably are very
conscious of the fact; but they have not that without which lamps of religious
profession are of no use, viz. the oil of grace.

[1] Greswell, adopting the reading ἐν τοῖς ἀγγείοις ἑαυτῶν μετὰ τῶν λαμπάδων in
Mat 25:4, makes a point of the fact that the vessels for extra supply of oil
were the property of the virgins, while the lamps are not said to be. "Though
their lamps might have been received from any other quarter, the vessels in
question must have been provided for themselves. The original provision of the
lamps, with their ordinary supply of oil, conveying as it did the privilege of
an invited guest, or being an evidence thereof, might be due to a cause
independent of themselves; but the provision of vessels, at the same time, was a
precaution which emanated from the wise virgins themselves." On the whole it
appears certain that the general tenor of the story and its didactic purport
demand that we should suppose that all the virgins alike were furnished with a
certain amount of oil, such as would have sufficed for ordinary circumstances,
and that the distinction of the wise virgins and the proof of their wisdom
consisted in their taking with them an extra supply in vessels used for that
purpose, whether attached to the torch handle or carried separately. In all
other particulars we are willing to adopt the second hypothesis and to conceive
of the circumstances thus: The virgins come from their own homes to that of the
bride with lamps burning, there rest waiting for the announcement of the
bridegroom, their lamps still burning or blown out. When the cry is raised, they
all rise and trim their lamps, the wise pouring in more oil, the foolish
lighting theirs as they were, to discover soon that the oil was exhausted. The
procession goes forth to meet the bridegroom, to conduct him to the bride’s
house, where the marriage takes place. Usually the marriage-feast was celebrated
in the house of the bridegroom,[1] but the practice does not appear to have been
uniform, exceptions occurring in the sacred history, as in the cases of Jacob
and Samson,[2] and reasons readily suggest themselves why the parabolic
representation should follow the exceptions rather than the rule.

[1] This fact may account for the reading of D in Mat 25:1, which adds to the
text καὶ τῆς νύμφης = to meet the bridegroom and the bride.

[2] Gen 29:22; Jdg 14:10.

Having settled one question respecting the oil, in finding that the folly of the
foolish virgins consisted not in bringing no oil, but in not bringing enough, we
have now to deal with another more difficult and delicate, viz. was the oil
indispensable? Would the foolish virgins have been excluded from the feast
supposing they had joined the procession and arrived in good time, simply on the
ground that they carried lamps which gave no light? This question the
commentators do not so much as ask themselves, yet with one consent they
virtually answer it in the affirmative. They come to the parable with the
foregone conclusion, that the oil, like the wedding garment, signifies some
necessary grace, faith, love, &c., without which no man can see the Lord, and of
course they find themselves shut up to the conclusion that the foolish virgins
were placed in the fatal dilemma of being obliged on the one hand to procure oil
somehow, and on the other to make themselves too late for the feast by their
endeavour to obtain the needed article. It is an extreme instance of exegesis
dominated by homiletic preoccupation. The bondage is so complete that it may
appear almost an impiety to claim the liberty to hold a different opinion. And
yet there are good reasons for doubting the soundness of the exegetical
tradition at this point. One is the endless diversity of opinion as to the
emblematic significance of the oil. Every interpreter has his own conjecture.
The oil is faith, charity, almsgiving, desire for the praise of God rather than
the praise of men; good works in general, the Holy Spirit, diligence in the
culture of grace, religious joy. In short, it is anything you please; each
conjecture is purely arbitrary, one is as legitimate as another, and the
multiplicity of opinions justifies the inference that they are all alike
illegitimate. Another reason for doubt is the fact that in the parable the
ground of exclusion is not want of oil, but lateness.[1] They that were ready
went in with the bridegroom to the marriage-feast. They were ready by being
present, while the others were away in quest of oil. Had these absent ones been
present and gone on with their sisters, they would, for anything that appears to
the contrary, have been admitted also. But the chief consideration that weighs
with us is that drawn from the natural probabilities of the case. Suppose it
were the story of an ordinary wedding, not intended to convey any spiritual
lesson. A number of young women are about to set out on a torchlight procession
in the evening to escort the bridegroom. Some of them have mislaid their
torches, and cannot find them in the hurry when the cry is raised The bridegroom
is at hand! or, as in the parable before us, their torches are rendered useless
for want of oil. What are they to do? Run the risk of making themselves too late
by searching for their torches or going in quest of oil, or fall into the
procession? Of course they go on with their companions, and of course they are
admitted to the feast with the rest. For though the carrying of a lighted torch
is a part of the festive ceremonial, and belongs to the conventional proprieties
of the occasion, it is not the essential element The essential element is the
welcoming of the bridegroom; the carrying of lights is an accident due to the
fact that the procession takes place by night. If this be a correct
representation of what would happen in natural life, and all that we learn from
those conversant with Eastern customs confirms it,[2] then it was simply a
second act of folly on the part of the foolish virgins to disqualify themselves
for showing honour to the bridegroom, and to make themselves late for the feast
by going away to buy oil, so turning an accessory into an essential, and
imperilling substantial interests by scrupulous regard to ceremony. Had they
been wise they would have gone on as they were, and so gained an admission to
the festive hall.

[1] Weiss, ’Das Matthäus-Evangelium,’ says that the want of oil does not, any
more than the sleep, cause exclusion from the feast. It mocks, he adds, every
allegorising interpretation.

[2] The passage cited from Ward’s ’View of the Hindoos’ by Trench, ana after him
by Morrison, is quite in accordance with our view. Ward mentions that, at a
certain marriage ceremony which he witnessed, the bridegroom, coming from a
distance, kept the party waiting for him several hours. Then, his arrival being
announced in words similar to those in the parable, all lighted their lamps, and
ran to join the procession. Some, however, lost their lamps. What then? The
author says—"It was too late to seek them, and the cavalcade moved forward," not
saying, but implying, that those who had lost their lamps did not waste time in
seeking them, but went on without them (vide vol. ii. p. 171).

According to this view the foolish virgins act in character from first to last.
They are fools all through. They are foolish first in taking only a limited
supply of oil, assuming that the usual will happen; while the wise with
characteristic forethought make provision for the unusual, that is, for the
possible case of unexpected delay. They are foolish next in going away at an
unseasonable hour to purchase oil instead of taking their place in the marriage
procession as they were, a little put to shame by their dark lamps, nevertheless
making sure their part in the main events of the occasion, the welcoming of the
bridegroom, and admission to the wedding feast. Such consistency of character
commends itself as intrinsically probable. The only serious objection to the
hypothesis is the fact that the suggestion to go and buy oil comes from the wise
virgins. How, it may be asked, could they advise their sisters to do a foolish
thing? Does not the very fact of their giving such advice imply that to procure
a supply of oil was indispensable to admission? Now it is not necessary in order
to meet this difficulty to adopt the suggestion of Augustine, that the advice of
the wise was only an exemplification of that mockery of wisdom at the calamity
of folly spoken of in the book of Proverbs.[1] There is certainly not a little
in the circumstances to give plausibility to this view. The hour was midnight,
and the bridegroom was at hand, what likelihood of being able to get oil at all
when the shops of those who sold were shut, and their owners in bed? What chance
of getting it at least in time, however near the houses of the vendors might be?
To say in such circumstances, Go and buy, was very like heartlessly advising to
do the impossible. But the conduct of the wise can be explained without
ascribing to them cruelty. Sudden emergencies bring into play a certain element
of selfishness. Then it is every one for himself. The sharp loud cry is raised,
Behold, the bridegroom is at hand! Excitement and hurry pervade the house, each
one is engrossed with her own business, and when help is sought by the shiftless
from the shifty it is declined with the best answer that occurs at the moment.
In natural life one might say to another, "Go and buy for yourself," without
expecting the advice to be taken seriously, yet without intending to mock.
Objectively the advice of the wise virgins to the foolish was a mockery;
subjectively it was nothing more than a declinature to be burdened with their
neighbours’ affairs.

[1] Augustine’s words are, Non consulentium, sed irridentium, est ista responsio
(Serm. xciii. 8); similarly in Epist. cxl. 31.

If the foregoing view be correct, the oil, hitherto regarded as a symbol of
grace, under one aspect or another, ought rather to be reckoned a symbol of the
means of grace; and the action of the virgins who went to buy oil will represent
the superstitious importance attached to such means by a certain class of
religionists to the peril of their spiritual interests. Taking together the two
acts of tolly committed by the foolish virgins, the neglect to take a sufficient
supply of oil, and the unseasonable attempt to provide what was lacking, the
resulting character is marked by two salient features—lack of forethought and
superstitious regard to form, or, to express it otherwise, vain regard to
appearance. That is to say, folly reveals itself in this parable under the same
guise as in another parable, in which a contrast is drawn between the foolish
and the wise, that, viz. with which the Sermon on the Mount concludes; and the
fact confirms us in the belief that the view we venture to take is correct. The
foolish builder is a man who thinks not of the future, and who has regard only
to appearances; while the wise builder keeps in view the uncertainties and
dangers of the future, and is not content with mere appearance. The
characteristic differences come out in connection with the cardinal question of
the foundation. The one builder, the wise one, makes the foundation of his house
a matter of serious consideration; the other begins to build without ever
thinking of a foundation, and therein shows his folly. His mistake does not
consist, as is often imagined, in making a bad choice of a foundation; but in
acting as if a foundation were a matter of no consequence, beginning to build
anywhere, on the loose sand, on the banks, or even in the bed of a river, dried
up by summer heat. This appears very clearly from Luke’s report of our Lord’s
words.[1] He that heareth and doeth is there compared to a man who "built a
house and digged deep and laid a foundation[2] upon the rock;" and he that
heareth and doeth not to a man that, "without a foundation,[3] built a house
upon the earth." That is, the one takes great pains with the foundation of his
house—digs below the surface, and goes deep in digging—digs till he reaches the
rock; the other takes no pains about a foundation, provides none indeed, but
begins at once to build at haphazard on the surface of the ground. It is thus
not a case of choosing well between two possible foundations, one good, the
other bad; but rather a case of attending to or neglecting the foundation. And
the question to be considered by the expositor or preacher is not what are the
two foundations represented respectively by the rock and the sand, but what are
the qualities of character implied in attending to or neglecting the foundation
of a house. The rock and the sand have no independent significance, the one
didactically important point is the contrast of character brought out by the
difference indicated in the respective ways of disposing of the question of a
foundation.

[1] Luk 6:46-49.

[2] θεμέλιον, without the article, implying that a foundation is not, as usual,
a matter of course.

[3] χωρὶς θεμελίου In what respects, then, do the characters of the two
builders, behaving as represented, stand in contrast? Obviously in two respects.
First, the wise builder has a prudent regard to the future. He anticipates the
coming of storms, and aims at being well provided against these. The foolish
builder, on the other hand, thinks only of the present. It is sunshine to-day,
and he recks not of to-morrow and the storms it may bring. Then, secondly, the
wise builder looks not merely to appearance. The question with him is not what
will look well, but what will stand. The foolish builder, on the contrary, cares
for appearance alone. A house without a foundation looks as well as one having a
foundation; it may even be made to look better. These distinctions have their
counterpart in the spiritual sphere, which form the salient characteristics of
two classes of men both professing religion. There are those who have
forethought, and those who have none; those who think of the trial which the
future may bring, those who think only of to-day and its bright sunshine. The
one class count the cost when they meditate becoming disciples of Christ; the
other receive the word with joy, leaving out of view the ’tribulations’ they are
likely to encounter in the career on which they are entering. Again, the one
class look to what is not seen by men in religious character, the hidden
foundation of inward disposition; while the other consider only what can be seen
by men, the outward act. The outward acts of both may be the same, but the
motives are entirely different. The motive of the one is love of goodness; that
of the other, vanity. Both pray, but a man of the one class prays in secret, his
desire being not to be known as a praying man, but to get the favour he asks of
Heaven; a man of the other class prays by preference at the corner of the
street, desiring chiefly to get credit for a devotional spirit. Both practise
beneficence; but the one from love or pity, and with modesty; the other not so
much sympathising with the poor, as seeking a reputation for philanthropy.

Such are the distinctive attributes of the wise and the foolish, the genuine and
the counterfeit, in religion. The marks of the one are forethought and
sincerity, or depth; the marks of the other thoughtlessness and insincerity, or
superficiality. The two sets of attributes always keep company. Sincerity
implies forethought, and forethought sincerity; and in like manner the two other
attributes imply each other. The man who has regard only to appearances would
never profess religion at all, if he considered the future. He acts from
impulse, imitation, and fashion, and the use of religion as a support in trial
is not in all his thoughts. Hence it was that Christ so often presented the
difficulties of the spiritual life to those who offered themselves as disciples.
It was His way of ridding Himself of counterfeit discipleship originating in
by-ends or thoughtless sentiment, and of securing that His circle of followers
should include only men whose religion was an affair not of sentiment alone, but
of reason and conscience, of reason looking well before, and of conscience
realising moral responsibility. The parable of the two builders shows us the
respective fates of these two classes. Looking to appearances it would be
difficult to say which was to be preferred; perhaps the verdict would be in
favour of the counterfeit, for they make appearances their study, and it is not
wonderful if they excel in their own line. But the elements judge infallibly and
ruthlessly, The rains descend, the floods rush, and the winds blow, and the
house built on a rock stands, "it fell not;" but the house built on the sand
"fell, and great was the fall of it. The elements are trials of all sorts, by
providential calamities, by religious doubts, by sinful desires, by tribulations
connected with profession of religion. Such trials the man of forethought and
sincerity stands; before them the man whose piety is imitative and impulsive
goes down.

Such are the lessons to be learnt from the parable of the Wise and Foolish
Builders, and they seem to us fitted to throw light on the parable of the Wise
and Foolish Virgins. It is to be presumed that wisdom and folly have fixed
characteristics in Christ’s teaching, so that if we have correctly determined
their respective attributes in any one place, we may expect to find them
reappearing in all other places where they are spoken of. They do reappear in
the parable of the virgins if we decide to regard the going to buy oil as an act
of folly, not otherwise. On that assumption we have in the parable two
characteristic acts of the foolish virgins close of kin to each other. There is
the initial act of taking an inadequate supply of oil, wherein is revealed
characteristic want of forethought. As the foolish builder did not anticipate
storms, but acted as if the usual good weather were to last always, and without
exception; so the foolish virgins did not anticipate delay, but acted as if the
usual at marriages was sure to happen, the prompt arrival of the bridegroom at
the appointed time. Then there was the further act of folly consequent on
discovering the evil result of the first, that, viz., of going away to buy oil,
instead of doing without it, and joining the procession so as to insure
admission to the feast. This act corresponds in general character to that of the
foolish builder in having regard only to appearances, and so neglecting to
provide a foundation. It is the act of persons to whom custom is an inviolable
law. These foolish virgins must be in the fashion, must attend to all the usual
ceremonies, must have their lighted lamps as well as the rest. The accidental
though interesting accompaniment of the bridal procession is to their
custom-ridden minds the essence of the matter, it would look so ill to meet and
escort the bridegroom with dark lamps in their hand. The two acts of folly are
obviously of kindred character, so that those who do the one are likely to do
the other; they both denote enslavement to the usual, which is a characteristic
mark of the morally commonplace, in contrast to the wise, who show their wisdom
by the ability to anticipate the unusual as possible, and to disregard custom
when it stands in the way of the attainment of a great end. The parable affords
no scope for the display of the latter phase of wisdom, for the wise virgins
having oil enough were in a position to follow the usual custom, and of course
did it; for to set aside even the least commandment of fashion unnecessarily is
no part of wisdom. But it is true, nevertheless, that the wise are distinguished
by freedom as well as by forethought in reference to the usual. They are
incapable of being enslaved by superstitious regard for that which is only of
secondary importance, a means to an end, an affair of decorum rather than of
principle. Such freedom belongs to wisdom both in social life and in religion.
On the other hand, the lack of such freedom is a sure mark of the weak and
unwise. They are superstitiously devoted to the fashion of their time in
religion as in other spheres. Means of grace, forms of worship, take the place
of absolutely binding laws in their minds, and so become hindrances rather than
helps in the Divine life. They understand not that "as ceremonies, such as men
have devised, are but temporal; so may and ought they to be changed when they
rather foster superstition than edify the Church using the same."[1] They think
all change impious, and the very thought converts the risk into a baleful
reality.

[1] ’Old Scotch Confession of Faith,’ ch. xxi.

It may appear strange, if the going to buy oil was an act of folly, that Jesus
did not distinctly indicate the fact But was it not enough to say, once for all,
"five were foolish"? The omission to characterise the second act as foolish is a
significant recognition of the persistency of character, more instructive than
the repetition of the epithet foolish. It signifies: "Take care to possess the
spirit of wisdom, for remember the spirit that is in you will dominate all your
conduct. Ye cannot be foolish to-day, and wise to-morrow; foolish in this
action, wise in the next. Character tends to fixity, and to get the benefit of
wisdom at any time ye must be under its guidance at all times." A great, solemn
truth, to be seriously pondered by all, and too often overlooked. As now
explained, the present parable obviously points to a species of degeneracy to be
manifested in the Church in the course of ages very different from that spoken
of in the parable last considered. There the evil foretold is a hideous
combination of hypocrisy, tyranny, and sensuality; here the evil hinted at is
religious superstition. The two evils manifested themselves together in the
Church, the one among the clergy, the other among the illiterate. The latter is
the less evil, and its doom accordingly is milder. The foolish virgins are
simply shut out from the feast, the unfaithful upper servant is cut in two. The
lesser doom is serious enough, and it is one to which all are exposed who
resemble the foolish virgins in their religious character. The slaves of use and
wont are ever in peril of their souls, ever exposed to the risk of exclusion
from the joys in store for those prepared to receive the Bridegroom at His
coming at each crisis in the Church’s history. So were the Pharisees excluded
from the society of Jesus, which was a veritable wedding party. So were the
Hebrew Christians, clinging to venerable Jewish customs and ordinances, in
danger of forfeiting all share in the blessings of the Kingdom of Grace. As
their faithful Teacher warned them, there was a risk of their being carried by
the strong current of old custom away from Christ, as a boat is carried down a
river past the landing-place on the opposite shore.[1] While they went to buy at
the Jewish synagogue the Bridegroom might come, and the door be shut.

[1] Heb 2:1, μή ποτε παραρυῶμεν, "lest haply we drift away."—R. V. The slumber
of the virgins is a feature in the parable which cannot fail to attract the
attention of all thoughtful readers. To the allegorising interpretation which
strives to discover a spiritual equivalent for every feature in a parable, this
slumber denotes the negligence which overtakes all more or less with reference
to the eternal, venial and remedial in the case of the wise, fatal in the case
of the foolish; or, the common sleep of death. To others, unable to acquiesce in
either of these suggestions, and averse from the allegorising method of
exegesis, the introduction of this feature appears simply a device for bringing
about a situation involving a surprise which brings disaster to the unprepared.
The foolish have to sleep, because had they kept awake they would have observed
that their oil was getting done, and have provided a fresh supply in good time.
The wise have to keep their foolish sisters company in slumber, that they may
escape the charge of unkindness in allowing the sleepers to sleep on till it was
too late to attend to the necessary preparations.[1] The truth lies between
these extremes. The sleep of the virgins is not of such grave significance as
the allegorisers imagine, and on the other hand it is something more than a mere
device for bringing about a situation necessary to the moral of the parable. It
is a meagre view which sees in the delay of the bridegroom, only a contrivance
to make room for slumber, and in the slumber in turn only a contrivance to give
occasion for a surprise. The delay of the bridegroom represents a spiritual
fact; the protracted endurance of the period of development, and the consequent
indefinite postponement of the consummation of the kingdom. And the sleep of the
virgins represents the natural inevitable occupation with the present which
ensues when through long delay hope or expectation of a future good has been all
but extinguished. The relevancy of the parable requires that the sleep should
have some such counterpart in the spiritual sphere; for if the fact were
otherwise we should have a situation described to which there is no parallel in
religious experience. The sleeping scene, therefore, besides being thoroughly
true to the natural, has an important didactic significance. It teaches that
there is a certain sleep of the mind with regard to the future and the eternal
which is unavoidable, in itself perfectly harmless, yet fraught with danger to
such as are not ever ready for any event, so that the most sudden crisis cannot
overtake them unawares. The inevitableness of this sleep is very happily brought
out in the delineation of the scene. The word all itself implies it; the
universality suggests the idea of necessity. Then the way in which sleep comes
on is significant. They grow drowsy, then begin to nod, then fall into deep
slumber. The sleep is involuntary, the virgins do not go to bed with deliberate
intent to sleep, they are overtaken with sleep while maintaining an attitude of
waiting, like the disciples in the garden, like weary sentinels on the
battle-field, like devout worshippers in church. Fatigue, advancing night, the
demands of nature, prevail over all wakeful influences. Yet these are by no
means wanting. For the virgins, one and all, are full of the excitement of the
occasion. To see them one would say that though the bridegroom should tarry till
daybreak sleep will be impossible till he arrive and the wedding festivities are
over. That is not said, but it goes without being said; it is enough to remember
that the occasion is a marriage, and that the actors in the drama are young
maidens. The innocence of the sleep follows of course from its being
unavoidable, but it is also taught by implication when in the sequel the wise
virgins are represented as having time to trim their lamps between their awaking
and the arrival of the bridegroom. Sleep in their case does not interfere with
the efficient performance of all needful offices. Yet that this sleep, though
innocent, may be dangerous appears from what befalls the hapless maidens. They
awake and discover that neglected tasks have to be attended to when there is no
time for their performance.

[1] So in effect Storr, ’De Parabolis Christi.’ The parabolic representation at
this point is characterised in a conspicuous degree by that felicity on which we
have often had occasion to remark. It suggests more lessons than it is expressly
designed to teach. It illustrates, for example, the ’sweet reasonableness’ of
Christ’s teaching, in so far as it exhibits an ideal of waiting, not too
exacting for human nature under the conditions of this present life. When Christ
requires of His disciples to watch, as He does in the closing sentence of this
parable, He does not demand exclusive preoccupation of mind with the future. The
watching required, we learn from the parable, is such as is compatible with a
very complete engrossment with the present. It signifies timely preparation,
ordering life on a right principle deliberately adopted once for all. It
involves not continuous straining of the attention towards the eternal, but
fixed intention active even when we are unconscious. The tension of the mind may
innocently and must naturally vary, it is enough that its intention is ever the
same, enough that we live under the power of the future and the eternal even
when not thinking of it. This is quite possible. All know what it is to sleep
under the power of the thought of having to rise at a particular hour in the
morning. The slumber is light; there is a certain semi-consciousness all through
the night. The slightest whisper, the calling of one’s name ever so gently,
suffices to awaken him; nay, in some mysterious way the latent thought of the
engagement in prospect, the journey to be undertaken, suffices of itself to
perform the part of an alarum clock, and to rouse the sleeper at the appointed
time. So wise virgins sleep, as those who lie down with the thought in their
minds that at any moment they may hear the thrilling call: "Behold the
Bridegroom! come ye forth to meet Him."

Christ’s ideal of watching, though eminently and characteristically reasonable,
is too high for many. In the parable one half of the virgins fail to realise it,
but in real life the proportion of defaulters is much larger. The number of
those who understand the art of watching, providing for the uncertain future,
for the unusual, for the eternal, while living healthily and heartily in the
present, is small. The multitude are the slaves of the usual; the wise man who
can anticipate the unusual and prepare for it is one among a thousand. How many
accidents by land and sea are due to the rarity of such wise forethought!
Railway accidents happen because they are exceptional, and officials get
accustomed to their not happening. Sailors on the outlook observe something
before them, but take no alarm. They think it is a cloud when it is an iceberg,
for icebergs are not usually met with at that time of the year. Their mind is
asleep under the soporific influence of the usual, though their physical senses
are awake. The same cause works disastrously in the spiritual sphere. Here it is
specially difficult to expect the unexpected, and specially dangerous to lack
the power to do so, and many there be who fail. The young Christian does not
expect the difficulties and delays connected with the fulfilment of his hopes
which he is destined to encounter, and when they occur he is scandalised and
becomes an apostate. Or he is not prepared to find the life of the spirit
passing through phases markedly different from each other, and he clings to the
initial stage and remains a babe, superstitiously attached to forms which, once
means of grace, degenerate into mere fetishes. So also does it fare oftentimes
with religious communities. They lack the wisdom to anticipate and provide for
changes in the course of development. These when they come find them enslaved by
the past, and unprepared to meet the new situation, and the inevitable result is
decay and death. In parabolic language, the doom of those who are guilty of such
folly is that the door is shut not to be opened again to them when they arrive
too late and seek admission. Taking the parable as a story of natural life, this
feature seems arbitrary. Children ask their parents the hard question, "Why
could he not open the door?" and learned interpreters ask the same question ana
acknowledge themselves unable to answer.[1] When the representation is viewed in
connection with the final judgment it becomes too awful to speak of, and very
difficult to construe with other Scriptural teaching. A recent writer remarks
that the exclusion of the belated virgins allegorically interpreted leads to the
wholly unbiblical thought that even the most earnest desire for salvation is in
vain when the hour of decision has struck. "The irreparabile damnum of the ’too
late’ in this sense is not a Biblical doctrine."[2] When one thinks of the
penitent thief, he is conscious that the difficulty is not imaginary. Then one
cannot but remember the supplement in the Pauline teaching to the doctrine of
exclusion taught in the parable of the Great Supper. "None of those men which
were bidden shall taste of my supper," says the parable, The Jews are cast out
pro tempore, and the Gentiles brought in to provoke the former to jealousy, that
they may also at length be brought in, says the Apostle Paul. Applying Paul’s
doctrine to the present parable in the case of the Jews, it would imply that
that people, prevented by their prejudices from taking part in the bridal
procession, would nevertheless gain admittance to the feast when arriving late
they cried, "Lord, Lord, open to us." Without doubt the judgment of exclusion in
its temporal application is not in this parable, any more than in the parable of
the Supper, absolute. It merely indicates tendency. It is not on that account
trivial. Even the temporal losses entailed by the lack of the wisdom commended
in this parable are grave enough to justify serious solicitude. Leaving the
eternal reference out of account, that wisdom is highly to be prized. In view of
eternity its value is unspeakable.

[1] Reuss speaks of the virgins going to buy oil and their exclusion as features
introduced with a view to the application. In natural life they could have got
oil in the house of the bride, and they would have been admitted though late.

[2] Weiss, ’Das Matthäus-Evangelium.’ The End


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  CHAPTER 33: 02.00. THE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE
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The Training Of The Twelve by

A. B. Bruce Foreword by D. Stuart Briscoe

Alexander Balmain Bruce, a man as Scottish as his name, was born on a Perthshire
farm and educated in an Edinburgh college. He ministered in Scottish country
parishes and taught in a Glasgow seminary. For over forty years he devoted
himself to the ministry of the Christian gospel, first as a pastor, and then as
a distinguished Professor of Apologetics and New Testament Exegesis. He started
writing during his pastorates and his best known book The Training of the Twelve
was published in 1871. In keeping with the nineteenth century’s love of
ponderous and descriptive titles the book was subtitled, “Passages out of the
Gospels Exhibiting the Twelve Disciples of Jesus Under Discipline for the
Apostleship.” For over a hundred years The Training of the Twelve has been
highly regarded and widely received. No less an authority than Dr. W. H.
Griffith Thomas called the book, “One of the great Christian classics of the
nineteenth century,” and Dr. Wilbur Smith, America’s number one evangelical
bibliophile remarked “There is nothing quite as important on the life of our
Lord as related to the training of the twelve apostles as this book. . . .”

Now, this “nineteenth century classic” can expand its already rich and blessed
ministry. Although over one-hundred years old, Dr. Bruce’s work speaks
powerfully and effectively to the contemporary Christian generation. In recent
years there has been a re-discovery of the importance of Paul’s teaching in Eph
4:1-32 concerning the pastor/teacher’s responsibility to “equip the saints for
the work of the ministry.” Many churches for long years had been ignorant of, or
chose to ignore such biblical teaching, and, accordingly, a few of God’s people
were over-worked while the majority were under-employed. While a handful of
gifts were exercised to the full, thousands of gifted people did not even know
they were gifted. As a result, the potential ministry of the Church of Christ
was drastically curtailed. Dr. Bruce would have felt right at home with the
present emphasis on training people to minister, and his book has much to offer
as a resource for such training as it shows the Master training His special
team.

Seeing the church as the Body of Christ is another healthy contemporary
emphasis. It serves to deliver people from the mistaken idea that the church is
something people attend and introduces them to the biblical concept that the
church is something people are. For Christians to see themselves as the Body of
Christ and to order their lives in loving response to each other as fellow
members, committed to mutual nurture, is potentially revolutionary. This book
carefully documents the struggles and the successes of the first group of people
who endeavored so to love each other that they became recognizable as Christ’s
disciples.

Much has been written recently about personal Christian growth. Some of the
material leans more heavily on social sciences than theological or biblical
teaching and savors more of self-improvement than spiritual growth. Dr. Bruce’s
work will greatly benefit many modern readers because his studies carefully
examine how the disciples grew as a result of their relationship with the
Master. The contemporary church needs to remember that the invaluable
information gleaned from the social scientist about human behavior must never be
seen as a substitute for a personal relationship with the living Lord Jesus
similar to that enjoyed by the twelve as they walked the highways and byways
together. How they heard His word, studied His reactions, fulfilled His commands
and responded to His promises is faithfully recorded for us in Scripture and
beautifully applied to our situations in this book.

Personally, I have found The Training of the Twelve of immense value for reasons
other than those listed above. When preaching through the Gospels I have
constantly referred to this book and found it to be an excellent commentary. In
addition, I have often sat down and read chapters for no other reason than I
needed the nourishment that comes to me only from the devotional application of
Scripture to my own soul. Few expositors have done more for me than A. B. Bruce
in this regard.

Perhaps the best recommendation that I can give the book, however, is to tell
you that although I have many hundreds of books in my growing library, all
carefully cataloged and filed, shelved and ordered, I have just realized that
The Training of the Twelve has never been officially included in my library! The
reason is simple. Ever since I purchased my copy, years ago, it has stayed
either on my desk or at my elbow with a handful of other books which I need to
refer to constantly. I just haven’t been able to part with it long enough to let
my secretary put it in its proper place! On second thought, it is in its proper
place right where I can get hold of it quickly. I hope your copy will find such
a place in your life and experience.

D. STUART BRISCOE Preface to the Second Edition On receiving notice from the
publisher that a second edition of The Training of the Twelve which first
appeared in 1871, was called for, I was obliged to consider the question what
alterations should be made on a work which, though written with care, was too
obviously, to my maturer judgment, stamped with imperfection. Two alternatives
suggested themselves to my mind. One was to recast the whole, so as to give it a
more critical and scientific character, and make it bear more directly on
current controversies respecting the origin of Christianity. The other was to
allow the book to remain substantially as it was, retaining its popular form,
and limiting alterations to details susceptible of improvement without change of
plan. After a little hesitation, I decided for the latter course, for the
following reasons. From expressions of opinion that reached me from many and
very diverse quarters, I had come to be convinced that the book was appreciated
and found useful, and I thence concluded that, notwithstanding its faults, it
might continue to be of service in its primitive shape. Then, considering how
difficult in all things it is to serve two masters or accomplish at once two
ends, I saw that the adoption of the former of the two alternative courses was
tantamount to writing a new book, which could be done, if necessary,
independently of the present publication. I confess to having a vague plan of
such a work in my head, which may or may not be carried into effect. The
Tübingen school of critics, with whose works English readers are now becoming
acquainted through translations, maintain that catholic Christianity was the
result of a compromise or reconciliation between two radically opposed
tendencies, represented respectively by the original apostles and by Paul, the
two tendencies being Judaistic exclusiveness on the one hand, and Pauline
universalism on the other. The twelve said: Christianity for Jews, and all who
are willing to become Jews by compliance with Jewish custom; Paul said:
Christianity for the whole world, and for all on the same terms. Now the
material dealt with in The Training of the Twelve, must, from the nature of the
case, have some bearing on this conflict hypothesis of Dr. Baur and his friends.
The question arises, What was to be expected of the men that were with Jesus?
and the consideration of this question would form an important division of such
a controversial work as I have in view. Another chapter might consider the part
assigned to Peter in the Acts of the Apostles (alleged by the same school of
critics to be a part invented for him by the writer for an apologetic purpose),
seeking especially to determine whether it was a likely part for him to
play-likely in view of his idiosyncrasies, or the training he had received.
Another appropriate topic would be the character of the Apostle John, as
portrayed in the synoptical Gospels, in its bearing on the questions of the
authorship of the fourth Gospel, and the hostility to Paul and his universalism
alleged to be manifested in the Book of Revelation. In such a work there would
further fall to be considered the materials bearing on the same theme in other
parts of the New Testament, especially those to be found in the Epistle to the
Galatians. Finally, there might not inappropriately be found a place in such a
work for a discussion of the question, How far do the synoptical Gospels-the
principal sources of information regarding the teaching and public actions of
Christ-bear traces of the influence of controversial or conciliatory tendencies?
e.g., what ground is there for the assertion that the mission of the seventy is
an invention in the interest of Pauline universalism intended to throw the
original apostles into the shade? In the present work I have not attempted to
develop the argument here outlined, but have merely indicated the places at
which the different points of the argument might come in, and the way in which
they might be used. The conflict hypothesis was not absent from my mind in
writing the book at first; but I was neither so well acquainted with the
literature relating thereto, nor so sensible of its importance, as I am now. In
preparing this new edition for the press, I have not lost sight of any hints
from friendly critics which might tend to make it more acceptable and useful. In
particular, I have kept steadily in view retrenchment of the homiletic element,
though I am sensible that I may still have retained too much for some tastes,
but I hope not too much for the generality of readers. I have had to remember,
that while some friends called for condensation, others have complained that the
matter was too closely packed. I have also had occasion to observe in my reading
of books on the Gospel history that it is possible to be so brief and sketchy as
to miss not only the latent connections of thought, but even the thoughts
themselves. The changes have not all been in the direction of retrenchment.
While not a few paragraphs have been cancelled or reduced in bulk, other new
ones have been added, and in one or two instances whole pages have been
rewritten. Among the more important additions may be mentioned a note at the end
of the chapter relating to the farewell discourse, giving an analysis of the
discourse into its component parts; and a concluding paragraph at the end of the
work summing up the instructions which the twelve had received from Jesus during
the time they had been with Him. Besides these, a feature of this edition is a
series of footnotes referring to some of the principal recent publications,
British and foreign, whose contents relate more or less to the Gospel history,
such as the works of Keim, Pfleiderer, Golani, Farrar, Sanday, and Supernatural
Religion. The notes referring to Mr. Sanday’s work bear on the important
question, how far we have in John’s Gospel a reliable record of the words spoken
by Jesus to His disciples on the eve of His passion.

Besides the index of passages discussed which appeared in the first edition,
this edition contains a carefully-prepared table of contents at the end, which
it is hoped will add to the utility of the work. To make the bearing of the
contents on the training of the disciples more apparent, I have in several
instances changed the titles of chapters, or supplied alternative titles. With
these explanations, I send forth this new edition, with grateful feelings for
the kind reception which the work has already received, and in the hope that by
the divine blessing it may continue to be of use as an attempt to illustrate an
interesting and important theme.

A. B. BRUCE


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  CHAPTER 34: 02.01.     BEGINNINGS
========================================================================

Beginnings

John 1:29-51 The section of the Gospel history above indicated, possesses the
interest peculiar to the beginnings of all things that have grown to greatness.
Here are exhibited to our view the infant church in its cradle, the petty
sources of the River of Life, the earliest blossoms of Christian faith, the
humble origin of the mighty empire of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All beginnings are more or less obscure in appearance, but none were ever more
obscure than those of Christianity. What an insignificant event in the history
of the church, not to say of the world, this first meeting of Jesus of Nazareth
with five humble men, Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathanael, and another unnamed! It
actually seems almost too trivial to find a place even in the evangelic
narrative. For we have here to do not with any formal solemn call to the great
office of the apostleship, or even with the commencement of an uninterrupted how
do discipleship, but at the utmost with the beginnings of an acquaintance with
and of faith in Jesus on the part of certain individuals who subsequently became
constant attendants on His person, and ultimately apostles of His religion.
Accordingly we find no mention made in the three first Gospels of the events
here recorded.

Far from being surprised at the silence of the synoptical evangelists, one is
rather tempted to wonder how it came to pass that John, the author of the fourth
Gospel, after the lapse of so many years, thought it worth while to relate
incidents so minute, especially in such close proximity to the sublime sentences
with which his Gospel begins. But we are kept from such incredulous wonder by
the reflection, that facts objectively insignificant may be very important to
the feelings of those whom they personally concern. What if John were himself
one of the five who on the present occasion became acquainted with Jesus? That
would make a wide difference between him and the other evangelists, who could
know of the incidents here related, if they knew of them at all, only at second
hand. In the case supposed, it would not be surprising that to his latest hour
John remembered with emotion the first time he saw the Incarnate Word, and
deemed the minutest memorials of that time unspeakably precious. First meetings
are sacred as well as last ones, especially such as are followed by a momentous
history, and accompanied, as is apt to be the case, with omens prophetic of the
future. Such omens were not wanting in connection with the first meeting between
Jesus and the five disciples. Did not the Baptist then first give to Jesus the
name “Lamb of God,” so exactly descriptive of His earthly mission and destiny?
Was not Nathanael’s doubting question, “Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth?” an ominous indication of a conflict with unbelief awaiting the
Messiah? And what a happy omen of an opening era of wonders to be wrought by
divine grace and power was contained in the promise of Jesus to the pious,
though at first doubting, Israelite: “Henceforth ye shall see heaven open, and
the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”! That John, the
writer of the fourth Gospel, really was the fifth unnamed disciple, may be
regarded as certain. It is his way throughout his Gospel, when alluding to
himself, to use a periphrasis, or to leave, as here, a blank where his name
should be. One of the two disciples who heard the Baptist call Jesus the Lamb of
God was the evangelist himself, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, being the other.
The impressions produced on our minds by these little anecdotes of the infancy
of the Gospel must be feeble, indeed, as compared with the emotions awakened by
the memory of them in the breast of the aged apostle by whom they are recorded.
It would not, however, be creditable either to our intelligence or to our piety
if we could peruse this page of the evangelic history unmoved, as if it were
utterly devoid of interest. We should address ourselves to the study of the
simple story with somewhat of the feeling with which men make pilgrimages to
sacred places; for indeed the ground is holy. The scene of the occurrences in
which we are concerned was in the region of Peraea, on the banks of the Jordan,
at the lower part of its course. The persons who make their appearance on the
scene were all natives of Galilee, and their presence here is due to the fame of
the remarkable man whose office it was to be the forerunner of the Christ. John,
surnamed the Baptist, who had spent his youth in the desert as a hermit, living
on locusts and wild honey, and clad in a garment of camel’s hair, had come forth
from his retreat, and appeared among men as a prophet of God. The burden of his
prophecy was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In a short time
many were attracted from all quarters to see and hear him. Of those who flocked
to his preaching, the greater number went as they came; but not a few were
deeply impressed, and, confessing their sins, underwent the rite of baptism in
the waters of the Jordan. Of those who were baptized, a select number formed
themselves into a circle of disciples around the person of the Baptist, among
whom were at least two, and most probably the whole, of the five men mentioned
by the evangelist. Previous converse with the Baptist had awakened in these
disciples a desire to see Jesus, and prepared them for believing in Him. In his
communications to the people around him John made frequent allusions to One who
should come after himself. He spoke of this coming One in language fitted to
awaken great expectations. He called himself, with reference to the coming One,
a mere voice in the wilderness, crying, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” At
another time he said, “I baptize with water; but there standeth One among you
whom ye know not: He it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose
shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.” This great One was none other than
the Messiah, the Son of God, the King of Israel.

Such discourses were likely to result, and by the man of God who uttered them
they were intended to result, in the disciples of the Baptist leaving him and
going over to Jesus. And we see here the process of transition actually
commencing. We do not affirm that the persons here named finally quitted the
Baptist’s company at this time, to become henceforth regular followers of Jesus.
But an acquaintance now begins which will end in that. The bride is introduced
to the Bridegroom, and the marriage will come in due season; not to the chagrin
but to the joy of the Bridegroom’s friend.

How easily and artlessly does the mystic bride, as represented by these five
disciples, become acquainted with her heavenly Bridegroom! The account of their
meeting is idyllic in its simplicity, and would only be spoiled by a commentary.
There is no need of formal introduction: they all introduce each other. Even
John and Andrew were not formally introduced to Jesus by the Baptist; they
rather introduced themselves. The exclamation of the desert prophet on seeing
Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!”
repeated next day in an abbreviated form, was the involuntary utterance of one
absorbed in his own thoughts, rather than the deliberate speech of one who was
directing his disciples to leave himself and go over to Him of whom he spake.
The two disciples, on the other hand, in going away after the personage whose
presence had been so impressively announced, were not obeying an order given by
their old master, but were simply following the dictates of feelings which had
been awakened in their breasts by all they had heard him say of Jesus, both on
the present and on former occasions. They needed no injunction to seek the
acquaintance of one in whom they felt so keenly interested: all they needed was
to know that this was He. They were as anxious to see the Messianic King as the
world is to see the face of a secular prince.

It is natural that we should scan the evangelical narrative for indications of
character with reference to those who, in the way so quaintly described, for the
first time met Jesus. Little is said of the five disciples, but there is enough
to show that they were all pious men. What they found in their new friend
indicates what they wanted to find. They evidently belonged to the select band
who waited for the consolation of Israel, and anxiously looked for Him who
should fulfil God’s promises and realize the hopes of all devout souls. Besides
this general indication of character supplied in their common confession of
faith, a few facts are stated respecting these first believers in Jesus tending
to make us a little better acquainted with them. Two of them certainly, all of
them probably, had been disciples of the Baptist. This fact is decisive as to
their moral earnestness. From such a quarter none but spiritually earnest men
were likely to come. For if the followers of John were at all like himself, they
were men who hungered and thirsted after real righteousness, being sick of the
righteousness then in vogue; they said Amen in their hearts to the preacher’s
withering exposure of the hollowness of current religious profession and of the
worthlessness of fashionable good works, and sighed for a sanctity other than
that of pharisaic superstition and ostentation; their conscience acknowledged
the truth of the prophetic oracle, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf, and our
iniquities like the wind have taken us away;” and they prayed fervently for the
reviving of true religion, for the coming of the divine kingdom, for the advent
of the Messianic King with fan in His hand to separate chaff from wheat, and to
put right all things which were wrong. Such, without doubt, were the sentiments
of those who had the honor to be the first disciples of Christ.

Simon, best known of all the twelve under the name of Peter, is introduced to us
here, through the prophetic insight of Jesus, on the good side of his character
as the man of rock. When this disciple was brought by his brother Andrew into
the presence of his future Master, Jesus, we are told, “beheld him and said,
Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas”-Cephas meaning in
Syriac, as the evangelist explains, the same which Petros signifies in Greek.
The penetrating glance of Christ discerned in this disciple latent capacities of
faith and devotion, the rudiments of ultimate strength and power.

What manner of man Philip was the evangelist does not directly tell us, but
merely whence he came. From the present passage, and from other notices in the
Gospels, the conclusion has been drawn that he was characteristically
deliberate, slow in arriving at decision; and for proof of this view, reference
has been made to the “phlegmatic circumstantiality” with which he described to
Nathanael the person of Him with whom he had just become acquainted. But these
words of Philip, and all that we elsewhere read of him, rather suggest to us the
idea of the earnest inquirer after truth, who has thoroughly searched the
Scriptures and made himself acquainted with the Messiah of promise and prophecy,
and to whom the knowledge of God is the summum bonum. In the solicitude
manifested by this disciple to win his friend Nathanael over to the same faith
we recognize that generous sympathetic spirit, characteristic of earnest
inquirers, which afterwards revealed itself in him when he became the bearer of
the request of devout Greeks for permission to see Jesus. The notices concerning
Nathanael, Philip’s acquaintance, are more detailed and more interesting than in
the case of any other of the five; and it is not a little surprising that we
should be told so much in this place about one concerning whom we otherwise know
almost nothing. It is even not quite certain that he belonged to the circle of
the twelve, though the probability is, that he is to be identified with the
Bartholomew of the synoptical catalogues-his full name in that case being
Nathanael the son of Tolmai. It is strongly in favor of this supposition that
the name Bartholomew comes immediately after Philip in the lists of the
apostles. Be this as it may, we know on the best authority that Nathanael was a
man of great moral excellence. No sooner had Jesus seen him than He exclaimed,
“Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” The words suggest the idea of
one whose heart was pure; in whom was no doublemindedness, impure motive, pride,
or unholy passion: a man of gentle, meditative spirit, in whose mind heaven lay
reflected like the blue sky in a still lake on a calm summer day. He was a man
much addicted to habits of devotion: he had been engaged in spiritual exercises
under cover of a fig-tree just before he met with Jesus. So we are justified in
concluding, from the deep impression made on his mind by the words of Jesus,
“Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee.”
Nathanael appears to have understood these words as meaning, “I saw into thy
heart, and knew how thou wast occupied, and therefore I pronounced thee an
Israelite indeed.” He accepted the statement made to him by Jesus as an evidence
of preternatural knowledge, and therefore he forthwith made the confession,
“Rabbi! Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel”-the King of that
sacred commonwealth whereof you say I am a citizen.

It is remarkable that this man, so highly endowed with the moral dispositions
necessary for seeing God, should have been the only one of all the five
disciples who manifested any hesitancy about receiving Jesus as the Christ. When
Philip told him that he had found the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth, he asked
incredulously, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” One hardly
expects such prejudice in one so meek and amiable; and yet, on reflection, we
perceive it to be quite characteristic. Nathanael’s prejudice against Nazareth
sprung not from pride, as in the case of the people of Judea who despised the
Galileans in general, but from humility. He was a Galilean himself, and as much
an object of Jewish contempt as were the Nazarenes. His inward thought was,
“Surely the Messiah can never come from among a poor despised people such as we
are-from Nazareth or any other Galilean town or village!” He timidly allowed his
mind to be biased by a current opinion originating in feelings with which he had
no sympathy; a fault common to men whose piety, though pure and sincere, defers
too much to human authority, and who thus become the slaves of sentiments
utterly unworthy of them.

While Nathanael was not free from prejudices, he showed his guilelessness in
being willing to have them removed. He came and saw. This openness to conviction
is the mark of moral integrity. The guileless man dogmatizes not, but
investigates, and therefore always comes right in the end. The man of bad,
dishonest heart, on the contrary, does not come and see. Deeming it his interest
to remain in his present mind, he studiously avoids looking at aught which does
not tend to confirm his foregone conclusions. He may, indeed, profess a desire
for inquiry, like certain Israelites of whom we read in this same Gospel, of
another stamp than Nathanael, but sharing with him the prejudice against
Galilee. “Search and look,” said these Israelites not without guile, in reply to
the ingenuous question of the honest but timid Nicodemus: “Doth our law judge
any man before it hear him, and know what he doeth?” “Search and look,” said
they, appealing to observation and inviting inquiry; but they added: “For out of
Galilee ariseth no prophet”-a dictum which at once prohibited inquiry in effect,
and intimated that it was unnecessary. “Search and look; but we tell you
beforehand you cannot arrive at any other conclusion than ours; nay, we warn
you, you had better not.”

Such were the characters of the men who first believed in Jesus. What, now, was
the amount and value of their belief? On first view the faith of the five
disciples, leaving out of account the brief hesitation of Nathanael, seems
unnaturally sudden and mature. They believe in Jesus on a moment’s notice, and
they express their faith in terms which seem appropriate only to advanced
Christian intelligence. In the present section of John’s Gospel we find Jesus
called not merely the Christ, the Messiah, the King of Israel, but the Son of
God and the Lamb of God-names expressive to us of the cardinal doctrines of
Christianity, the Incarnation and the Atonement. The haste and maturity which
seem to characterize the faith of the five disciples are only superficial
appearances. As to the former: these men believed that Messiah was to come some
time; and they wished much it might be then, for they felt He was greatly
needed. They were men who waited for the consolation of Israel, and they were
prepared at any moment to witness the advent of the Comforter. Then the Baptist
had told them that the Christ was come, and that He was to be found in the
person of Him whom he had baptized, and whose baptism had been accompanied with
such remarkable signs from heaven; and what the Baptist said they implicitly
believed. Finally, the impression produced on their minds by the bearing of
Jesus when they met, tended to confirm John’s testimony, being altogether worthy
of the Christ. The appearance of maturity in the faith of the five brethren is
equally superficial. As to the name Lamb of God, it was given to Jesus by John,
not by them. It was, so to speak, the baptismal name which the preacher of
repentance had learned by reflection, or by special revelation, to give to the
Christ. What the name signified even he but dimly comprehended, the very
repetition of it showing him to be but a learner striving to get up his lesson;
and we know that what John understood only in part, the men whom he introduced
to the acquaintance of Jesus, now and for long after, understood not at all. The
title Son of God was given to Jesus by one of the five disciples as well as by
the Baptist, a title which even the apostles in after years found sufficient to
express their mature belief respecting the Person of their Lord. But it does not
follow that the name was used by them at the beginning with the same fulness of
meaning as at the end. It was a name which could be used in a sense coming far
short of that which it is capable of conveying, and which it did convey in
apostolic preaching-merely as one of the Old Testament titles of Messiah, a
synonyme for Christ. It was doubtless in this rudimentary sense that Nathanael
applied the designation to Him, whom he also called the King of Israel. The
faith of these brethren was, therefore, just such as we should expect in
beginners. In substance it amounted to this, that they recognized in Jesus the
Divine Prophet, King, Son of Old Testament prophecy; and its value lay not in
its maturity, or accuracy, but in this, that however imperfect, it brought them
into contact and close fellowship with Him, in whose company they were to see
greater things than when they first believed, one truth after another assuming
its place in the firmament of their minds, like the stars appearing in the
evening sky as daylight fades away.


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  CHAPTER 35: 02.02.     FISHERS OF MEN
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Fishers of Men Mat 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luk 5:1-11. The twelve arrived at
their final intimate relation to Jesus only by degrees, three stages in the
history of their fellowship with Him being distinguishable. In the first stage
they were simply believers in Him as the Christ, and His occasional companions
at convenient, particularly festive, seasons. Of this earliest stage in the
intercourse of the disciples with their Master we have some memorials in the
four first chapters of John’s Gospel, which tell how some of them first became
acquainted with Jesus, and represent them as accompanying Him at a marriage in
Cana, at a passover in Jerusalem, on a visit to the scene of the Baptist’s
ministry, and on the return journey through Samaria from the south to Galilee.
In the second stage, fellowship with Christ assumed the form of an uninterrupted
attendance on His person, involving entire, or at least habitual abandonment of
secular occupations. The present narratives bring under our view certain of the
disciples entering on this second stage of discipleship. Of the four persons
here named, we recognize three, Peter, Andrew, and John, as old acquaintances,
who have already passed through the first stage of discipleship. One of them,
James the brother of John, we meet with for the first time; a fact which
suggests the remark, that in some cases the first and second stages may have
been blended together-professions of faith in Jesus as the Christ being
immediately followed by the renunciation of secular callings for the purpose of
joining His company. Such cases, however, were probably exceptional and few. The
twelve entered on the last and highest stage of discipleship when they were
chosen by their Master from the mass of His followers, and formed into a select
band, to be trained for the great work of the apostleship. This important event
probably did not take place till all the members of the apostolic circle had
been for some time about the person of Jesus. From the evangelic records it
appears that Jesus began at a very early period of His ministry to gather round
Him a company of disciples, with a view to the preparation of an agency for
carrying on the work of the divine kingdom. The two pairs of brothers received
their call at the commencement of the first Galilean ministry, in which the
first act was the selection of Capernaum by the seaside as the centre of
operations and ordinary place of abode. And when we think what they were called
unto, we see that the call could not come too soon. The twelve were to be
Christ’s witnesses in the world after He Himself had left it; it was to be their
peculiar duty to give to the world a faithful account of their Master’s words
and deeds, a just image of His character, a true reflection of His spirit. This
service obviously could be rendered only by persons who had been, as nearly as
possible, eye-witnesses and servants of the Incarnate Word from the beginning.
While, therefore, except in the cases of Peter, James, John, Andrew, and
Matthew, we have no particulars in the Gospels respecting the calls of those who
afterwards became apostles, we must assume that they all occurred in the first
year of the Saviour’s public ministry. That these calls were given with
conscious reference to an ulterior end, even the apostleship, appears from the
remarkable terms in which the earliest of them was expressed. “Follow Me,” said
Jesus to the fishermen of Bethsaida, “and I will make you fishers of men.” These
words (whose originality stamps them as a genuine saying of Jesus) show that the
great Founder of the faith desired not only to have disciples, but to have about
Him men whom He might train to make disciples of others: to cast the net of
divine truth into the sea of the world, and to land on the shores of the divine
kingdom a great multitude of believing souls. Both from His words and from His
actions we can see that He attached supreme importance to that part of His work
which consisted in training the twelve. In the intercessory prayer, e.g., He
speaks of the training He had given these men as if it had been the principal
part of His own earthly ministry. And such, in one sense, it really was. The
careful, painstaking education of the disciples secured that the Teacher’s
influence on the world should be permanent; that His kingdom should be founded
on the rock of deep and indestructible convictions in the minds of the few, not
on the shifting sands of superficial evanescent impressions on the minds of the
many. Regarding that kingdom, as our Lord Himself has taught us in one of His
parables to do, as a thing introduced into the world like a seed cast into the
ground and left to grow according to natural laws, we may say that, but for the
twelve, the doctrine, the works, and the image of Jesus might have perished from
human remembrance, nothing remaining but a vague mythical tradition, of no
historical value, and of little practical influence.

Those on whom so much depended, it plainly behoved to possess very extraordinary
qualifications. The mirrors must be finely polished that are designed to reflect
the image of Christ! The apostles of the Christian religion must be men of rare
spiritual endowment. It is a catholic religion, intended for all nations;
therefore its apostles must be free from Jewish narrowness, and have sympathies
wide as the world. It is a spiritual religion, destined ere long to antiquate
Jewish ceremonialism; therefore its apostles must be emancipated in conscience
from the yoke of ordinances. It is a religion, once more, which is to proclaim
the Cross, previously an instrument of cruelty and badge of infamy, as the hope
of the world’s redemption, and the symbol of all that is noble and heroic in
conduct; therefore its heralds must be superior to all conventional notions of
human and divine dignity, capable of glorying in the cross of Christ, and
willing to bear a cross themselves. The apostolic character, in short, must
combine freedom of conscience, enlargement of heart, enlightenment of mind, and
all in the superlative degree. The humble fishermen of Galilee had much to learn
before they could satisfy these high requirements; so much, that the time of
their apprenticeship for their apostolic work, even reckoning it from the very
commencement of Christ’s ministry, seems all too short. They were indeed godly
men, who had already shown the sincerity of their piety by forsaking all for
their Master’s sake. But at the time of their call they were exceedingly
ignorant, narrow-minded, superstitious, full of Jewish prejudices,
misconceptions, and animosities. They had much to unlearn of what was bad, as
well as much to learn of what was good, and they were slow both to learn and to
unlearn. Old beliefs already in possession of their minds made the communication
of new religious ideas a difficult task. Men of good honest heart, the soil of
their spiritual nature was fitted to produce an abundant harvest; but it was
stiff, and needed much laborious tillage before it would yield its fruit. Then,
once more, they were poor men, of humble birth, low station, mean occupations,
who had never felt the stimulating influence of a liberal education, or of
social intercourse with persons of cultivated minds.

We shall meet with abundant evidence of the crude spiritual condition of the
twelve, even long after the period when they were called to follow Jesus, as we
proceed with the studies on which we have entered. Meantime we may discover
significant indications of the religious immaturity of at least one of the
disciples-Simon, son of Jonas-in Luke’s account of the incidents connected with
his call. Pressed by the multitude who had assembled on the shore of the lake to
hear Him preach, Jesus, we read, entered into a ship (one of two lying near at
hand), which happened to be Simon’s, and requesting him to thrust out a little
from the land, sat down, and taught the people from the vessel. Having finished
speaking, Jesus said unto the owner of the boat, “Launch out into the deep, and
let down your nets for a draught.” Their previous efforts to catch fish had been
unsuccessful; but Simon and his brother did as Jesus directed, and were rewarded
by an extraordinary take, which appeared to them and their fishing companions,
James and John, nothing short of miraculous. Simon, the most impressible and the
most demonstrative of the four, gave utterance to his feelings of astonishment
by characteristic words and gestures. He fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying,
“Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” This exclamation opens a window
into the inner man of him who uttered it through which we can see his spiritual
state. We observe in Peter at this time that mixture of good and evil, of grace
and nature, which so frequently reappears in his character in the subsequent
history. Among the good elements discernible are reverential awe in presence of
Divine Power, a prompt calling to mind of sin betraying tenderness of
conscience, and an unfeigned self-humiliation on account of unmerited favor.
Valuable features of character these; but they did not exist in Peter without
alloy. Along with them were associated superstitious dread of the supernatural
and a slavish fear of God. The presence of the former element is implied in the
reassuring exhortation addressed to the disciple by Jesus, “Fear not; from
henceforth thou shalt catch men.” Slavish fear of God is even more manifest in
his own words, “Depart from me, O Lord.” Powerfully impressed with the
super-human knowledge revealed in connection with the great draught of fishes,
he regards Jesus for the moment as a supernatural being, and as such dreads Him
as one whom it is not safe to be near, especially for a poor sinful mortal like
himself. This state of mind shows how utterly unfit Peter is, as yet, to be an
apostle of a Gospel which magnifies the grace of God even to the chief of
sinners. His piety, sufficiently strong and decided, is not of a Christian type;
it is legal, one might almost say pagan, in spirit. With all their
imperfections, which were both numerous and great, these humble fishermen of
Galilee had, at the very outset of their career, one grand distinguishing
virtue, which, though it may co-exist with many defects, is the cardinal virtue
of Christian ethics, and the certain forerunner of ultimate high attainment.
They were animated by a devotion to Jesus and to the divine kingdom which made
them capable of any sacrifice. Believing Him who bade them follow Him to the
Christ, come to set up God’s kingdom on earth, they “straightway” left their
nets and joined his company, to be thenceforth His constant companions in all
His wanderings. The act was acknowledged by Jesus Himself to be meritorious; and
we cannot, without injustice, seek to disparage it by ascribing it to idleness,
discontent, or ambition as its motive. The Gospel narrative shows that the four
brethren were not idle, but hard-working, industrious men. Neither were they
discontented, if for no other reason than that they had no cause for discontent.
The family of James and John at least seems to have been in circumstances of
comfort; for Mark relates that, when called by Jesus, they left their father
Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after Him. But ambition,
had it no place among their motives? Well, we must admit that the twelve, and
especially James and John, were by no means free from ambitious passions, as we
shall see hereafter. But to whatever extent ambition may have influenced their
conduct at a later period, it was not the motive which determined them to leave
their nets. Ambition needs a temptation: it does not join a cause which is
obscure and struggling, and whose success is doubtful; it strikes in when
success is assured, and when the movement it patronizes is on the eve of its
glorification. The cause of Jesus had not got to that stage yet.

One charge only can be brought against those men, and it can be brought with
truth, and without doing their memory any harm. They were enthusiasts: their
hearts were fired, and, as an unbelieving world might say, their heads were
turned by a dream about a divine kingdom to be set up in Israel, with Jesus of
Nazareth for its king. That dream possessed them, and imperiously ruled over
their minds and shaped their destinies, compelling them, like Abraham, to leave
their kindred and their country, and to go forth on what might well appear
beforehand to be a fool’s errand. Well for the world that they were possessed by
the idea of the kingdom! For it was no fool’s errand on which they went forth,
leaving their nets behind. The kingdom they sought turned out to be as real as
the land of Canaan, though not such altogether as they had imagined. The
fishermen of Galilee did become fishers of men on a most extensive scale, and,
by the help of God, gathered many souls into the church of such as should be
saved. In a sense they are casting their nets into the sea of the world still,
and, by their testimony to Jesus in Gospel and Epistle, are bringing multitudes
to become disciples of Him among whose first followers they had the happiness to
be numbered. The four, the twelve, forsook all and followed their Master. Did
the “all” in any case include wife and children? It did in at least one
instance-that of Peter; for the Gospels tell how Peter’s mother-in-law was
healed of a fever by the miraculous power of Christ. From a passage in Paul’s
first epistle to the Corinthian church, it appears that Peter was not the only
one among the apostles who was married. From the same passage we further learn,
that forsaking of wives for Christ’s sake did not mean literal desertion. Peter
the apostle led his wife about with him, and Peter the disciple may sometimes
have done the same. The likelihood is that the married disciples, like married
soldiers, took their wives with them or left them at home, as circumstances
might require or admit. Women, even married women, did sometimes follow Jesus;
and the wife of Simon, or of any other married disciple, may occasionally have
been among the number. At an advanced period in the history we find the mother
of James and John in Christ’s company far from home; and where mothers were,
wives, if they wished, might also be. The infant church, in its original nomadic
or itinerant state, seems to have been a motley band of pilgrims, in which all
sorts of people as to sex, social position, and moral character were united, the
bond of union being ardent attachment to the person of Jesus. This church
itinerant was not a regularly organized society, of which it was necessary to be
a constant member in order to true discipleship. Except in the case of the
twelve, following Jesus from place to place was optional, not compulsory; and in
most cases it was probably also only occasional. It was the natural consequence
of faith, when the object of faith, the centre of the circle, was Himself in
motion. Believers would naturally desire to see as many of Christ’s works and
hear as many of His words as possible. When the object of faith left the earth,
and His presence became spiritual, all occasion for such nomadic discipleship
was done away. To be present with Him thereafter, men needed only to forsake
their sins.


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  CHAPTER 36: 02.03.     MATTHEW THE PUBLICAN
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Matthew the Publican Mat 9:9-13; Mark 2:15-17; Luk 5:27-32. The call of Matthew
signally illustrates a very prominent feature in the public action of Jesus,
viz., His utter disregard of the maxims of worldly wisdom. A publican disciple,
much more a publican apostle, could not fail to be a stumbling-block to Jewish
prejudice, and therefore to be, for the time at least, a source of weakness
rather than of strength. Yet, while perfectly aware of this fact, Jesus invited
to the intimate fellowship of disciplehood one who had pursued the occupation of
a tax-gatherer, and at a later period selected him to be one of the twelve. His
procedure in this case is all the more remarkable when contrasted with the
manner in which He treated others having outward advantages to recommend them to
favorable notice, and who showed their readiness to follow by volunteering to
become disciples; of whom we have a sample in the scribe who came and said,
“Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.” This man, whose social
position and professional attainments seemed to point him out as a very
desirable acquisition, the “Master” deliberately scared away by a gloomy picture
of his own destitute condition, saying, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of
the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.” The eye
of Jesus was single as well as omniscient: He looked on the heart, and had
respect solely to spiritual fitness. He had no faith in any discipleship based
on misapprehensions and by-ends; and, on the other hand, He had no fear of the
drawbacks arising out of the external connections or past history of true
believers, but was entirely indifferent to men’s antecedents. Confident in the
power of truth, He chose the base things of the world in preference to things
held in esteem, assured that they would conquer at the last. Aware that both He
and His disciples would be despised and rejected of men for a season, He went
calmly on His way, choosing for His companions and agents “whom He would,”
undisturbed by the gainsaying of His generation-like one who knew that His work
concerned all nations and all time. The publican disciple bears two names in the
Gospel history. In the first Gospel he is called Matthew, while in the second
and third Gospels he is called Levi. That the same person is intended, may, we
think, be regarded as a matter of certainty. It is hardly conceivable that two
publicans should have been called to be disciples at the same place and time,
and with all accompanying circumstances, and these so remarkable, precisely
similar. We need not be surprised that the identity has not been notified, as
the fact of the two names belonging to one individual would be so familiar to
the first readers of the Gospels as to make such a piece of information
superfluous.

It is not improbable that Levi was the name of this disciple before the time of
his call, and that Matthew was his name as a disciple-the new name thus becoming
a symbol and memorial of the more important change in heart and life. Similar
emblematic changes of name were of frequent occurrence in the beginning of the
Gospel. Simon son of Jonas was transformed into Peter, Saul of Tarsus became
Paul, and Joses the Cypriot got from the apostles the beautiful Christian name
of Barnabas (son of consolation or prophecy), by his philanthropy, and
magnanimity, and spiritual wisdom, well deserved.

Matthew seems to have been employed as a collector of revenue, at the time when
he was called, in the town of Capernaum, which Jesus had adopted as His place of
abode. For it was while Jesus was at home “in His own city,” as Capernaum came
to be called, that the palsied man was brought to Him to be healed; and from all
the evangelists we learn that it was on His way out from the house where that
miracle was wrought that He saw Matthew, and spoke to him the word, “Follow Me.”
The inference to be drawn from these facts is plain, and it is also important,
as helping to explain the apparent abruptness of the call, and the promptitude
with which it was responded to. Jesus and His new disciple being
fellow-townsmen, had opportunities of seeing each other before. The time of
Matthew’s call cannot be precisely determined, but there is good reason for
placing it before the Sermon on the Mount, of which Matthew’s Gospel contains
the most complete report. The fact just stated is of itself strong evidence in
favor of this chronological arrangement, for so full an account of the sermon
was not likely to emanate from one who did not hear it. An examination of the
third Gospel converts probability into something like certainty. Luke prefixes
to his abbreviated account of the sermon a notice of the constitution of the
apostolic society, and represents Jesus as proceeding “with them”-the twelve,
whose names he has just given-to the scene where the sermon was delivered. Of
course the act of constitution must have been preceded by the separate acts of
calling, and by Matthew’s call in particular, which accordingly is related by
the third evangelist in an earlier part of his Gospel. It is true the position
of the call in Luke’s narrative in itself proves nothing, as Matthew relates his
own call after the sermon; and as, moreover, neither one nor other
systematically adheres to the chronological principle of arrangement in the
construction of his story. We base our conclusion on the assumption, that when
any of the evangelists professes to give the order of sequence, his statement
may be relied on; and on the observations, that Luke does manifestly commit
himself to a chronological datum in making the ordination of the twelve
antecedent to the preaching of the Sermon on the Mount, and that Matthew’s
arrangement in the early part of his Gospel is as manifestly unchronological,
his matter being massed on the topical principle- Mat 5:1-48, Mat 6:1-34, Mat
7:1-29 showing Jesus as a great ethical teacher; Mat 8:1-34 and Mat 9:1-38, as a
worker of miracles; Mat 10:1-42 as a master, choosing, instructing, and sending
forth on an evangelistic mission the twelve disciples; Mat 11:1-30 as a critic
of His contemporaries and assertor of His own prerogatives; Mat 12:1-50, as
exposed to the contradictions of unbelief; and Mat 13:1-58, as teaching the
doctrines of the kingdom by parables.

Passing from these subordinate points to the call itself, we observe that the
narratives of the event are very brief and fragmentary. There is no intimation
of any previous acquaintance such as might prepare Matthew to comply with the
invitation addressed to him by Jesus. It is not to be inferred, however, that no
such acquaintance existed, as we can see from the case of the four fishermen,
whose call is narrated with equal abruptness in the synoptical Gospels, while we
know from John’s Gospel that three of them at least were previously acquainted
with Jesus. The truth is, that, in regard to both calls, the evangelists
concerned themselves only about the crisis, passing over in silence all
preparatory stages, and not deeming it necessary to inform intelligent readers
that, of course, neither the publican nor any other disciple blindly followed
one of whom he knew nothing merely because asked or commanded to follow. The
fact already ascertained, that Matthew, while a publican, resided in Capernaum,
makes it absolutely certain that he knew of Jesus before he was called. No man
could live in that town in those days without hearing of “mighty works” done in
and around it. Heaven had been opened right above Capernaum, in view of all, and
the angels had been thronging down upon the Son of man. Lepers were cleansed,
and demoniacs dispossessed; blind men received their sight, and palsied men the
use of their limbs; one woman was cured of a chronic malady, and another,
daughter of a distinguished citizen-Jairus, ruler of the synagogue-was brought
back to life from the dead. These things were done publicly, made a great noise,
and were much remarked on. The evangelists relate how the people “were all
amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is
this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth He even the
unclean spirits, and they do obey Him;” how they glorified God, saying, “We
never saw it on this fashion,” or, “we have seen strange things today.” Matthew
himself concludes his account of the raising of Jairus’ daughter with the
remark: “The fame hereof went abroad into all that land.”

We do not affirm that all these miracles were wrought before the time of the
publican’s call, but some of them certainly were. Comparing one Gospel with
another, to determine the historical sequence, we conclude that the greatest of
all these mighty works, the last mentioned, though narrated by Matthew after his
call, really occurred before it. Think, then, what a powerful effect that
marvelous deed would have in preparing the tax-gatherer for recognizing, in the
solemnly uttered word, “Follow me,” the command of One who was Lord both of the
dead and of the living, and for yielding to His bidding, prompt, unhesitating
obedience! In crediting Matthew with some previous knowledge of Christ, we make
his conversion to discipleship appear reasonable without diminishing its moral
value. It was not a matter of course that he should become a follower of Jesus
merely because he had heard of, or even seen, His wonderful works. Miracles of
themselves could make no man a believer, otherwise all the people of Capernaum
should have believed. How different was the actual fact, we learn from the
complaints afterwards made by Jesus concerning those towns along the shores of
the Lake of Gennesareth, wherein most of His mighty works were done, and of
Capernaum in particular. Of this city He said bitterly: “Thou, Capernaum, shalt
thou be exalted unto heaven? thou shalt go down unto Hades: for if the mighty
works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have
remained until this day. Christ’s complaint against the inhabitants of these
favored cities was that they did not repent, that is, make the kingdom of heaven
their chief good and chief end. They wondered sufficiently at His miracles, and
talked abundantly of them, and ran after Him to see more works of the same kind,
and enjoy anew the sensation of amazement; but after a while they relapsed into
their old stupidity and listlessness, and remained morally as they had been
before He came among them, not children of the kingdom, but children of this
world.

It was not so with the collector of customs. He not merely wondered and talked,
but he “repented.” Whether he had more to repent of than his neighbors, we
cannot tell. It is true that he belonged to a class of men who, seen through the
colored medium of popular prejudice, were all bad alike, and many of whom were
really guilty of fraud and extortion; but he may have been an exception. His
farewell feast shows that he possessed means, but we must not take for granted
that they were dishonestly earned. This only we may safely say, that if the
publican disciple had been covetous, the spirit of greed was now exorcised; if
he had ever been guilty of oppressing the poor, he now abhorred such work. He
had grown weary of collecting revenue from a reluctant population, and was glad
to follow One who had come to take burdens off instead of laying them on, to
remit debts instead of exacting them with rigor. And so it came to pass that the
voice of Jesus acted on his heart like a spell: “He left all, rose up, and
followed Him.” This great decision, according to the account of all the
evangelists, was followed shortly after by a feast in Matthew’s house at which
Jesus was present. From Luke we learn that this entertainment had all the
character of a great occasion, and that it was given in honor of Jesus. The
honor, however, was such as few would value, for the other guests were peculiar.
“There was a great company of publicans, and of others that sat down with them;”
and among the “others” were some who either were or were esteemed, in a
superlative degree, “sinners.” This feast was, as we judge, not less rich in
moral significance than in the viands set on the board. For the host himself it
was, without doubt, a jubilee feast commemorative of his emancipation from
drudgery and uncongenial society and sin, or, at all events, temptation to sin,
and of his entrance on the free, blessed life of fellowship with Jesus. It was a
kind of poem, saying for Matthew what Doddridge’s familiar lines say for many
another, perhaps not so well- “Oh happy day, that fixed my choice On Thee, my
Saviour, and my God!

Well may this glowing heart rejoice, And tell its raptures all abroad!

‘Tis done; the great transaction’s done;

I am my Lord’s and He is mine;

He drew me, and I followed on, Charmed to confess the voice divine.” The feast
was also, as already said, an act of homage to Jesus. Matthew made his splendid
feast in honor of his new master, as Mary of Bethany shed her precious ointment.
It is the way of those to whom much grace is shown and given, to manifest their
grateful love in deeds bearing the stamp of what a Greek philosopher called
magnificence, and churls call extravagance; and whoever might blame such acts of
devotion, Jesus always accepted them with pleasure. The ex-publican’s feast
seems further to have had the character of a farewell entertainment to his
fellow-publicans. He and they were to go different ways henceforth, and he would
part with his old comrades in peace.

Once more: we can believe that Matthew meant his feast to be the means of
introducing his friends and neighbors to the acquaintance of Jesus, seeking with
the characteristic zeal of a young disciple to induce others to take the step
which he had resolved on himself, or at least hoping that some sinners present
might be drawn from evil ways into the paths of righteousness. And who can tell
but it was at this very festive gathering, or on some similar occasion, that the
gracious impressions were produced whose final outcome was that affecting
display of gratitude unutterable at that other feast in Simon’s house, to which
neither publicans nor sinners were admitted?

Matthew’s feast was thus, looked at from within, a very joyous, innocent, and
even edifying one. But, alas! looked at from without, like stained windows, it
wore a different aspect: it was, indeed, nothing short of scandalous. Certain
Pharisees observed the company assemble or disperse, noted their character, and
made, after their wont, sinister reflections. Opportunity offering itself, they
asked the disciples of Jesus the at once complimentary and censorious question:
“Why eateth your master with publicans and sinners?” The interrogants were for
the most part local members of the pharisaic sect, for Luke calls them “their
scribes and Pharisees,” which implies that Capernaum was important enough to be
honored with the presence of men representing that religious party. It is by no
means unlikely, however, that among the unfriendly spectators were some
Pharisees all the way from Jerusalem, the seat of ecclesiastical government,
already on the track of the Prophet of Nazareth, watching His doings, as they
watched those of the Baptist before Him. The news of Christ’s wondrous works
soon spread over all the land, and attracted spectators from all quarters-from
Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and Peraea, as well as Galilee: and we may be sure
that the scribes and Pharisees of the holy city were not the last to go and see,
for we must own they performed the duty of religious espionage with exemplary
diligence. The presence of ill-affected men belonging to the pharisaic order was
almost a standing feature in Christ’s public ministry. But it never disconcerted
Him. He went calmly on His way doing His work; and when His conduct was called
in question, He was ever ready with a conclusive answer. Among the most striking
of His answers or apologies to them who examined Him, were those in which He
vindicated Himself for mixing with publicans and sinners. They are three in
number, spoken on as many occasions: the first in connection with Matthew’s
feast; the second in the house of Simon the Pharisee; and the third on an
occasion not minutely defined, when certain scribes and Pharisees brought
against Him the grave charge, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with
them.” These apologies for loving the unloved and the morally unlovely are full
of truth and grace, poetry and pathos, and not without a touch of quiet, quaint
satire directed against the sanctimonious fault-finders. The first may be
distinguished as the professional argument, and is to this effect: “I frequent
the haunts of sinners, because I am a physician, and they are sick and need
healing. Where should a physician be but among his patients? where oftenest, but
among those most grievously afflicted?” The second may be described as the
political argument, its drift being this: “It is good policy to be the friend of
sinners who have much to be forgiven; for when they are restored to the paths of
virtue and piety, how great is their love! See that penitent woman, weeping for
sorrow and also for joy, and bathing her Saviour’s feet with her tears. Those
tears are refreshing to my heart, as a spring of water in the arid desert of
pharisaic frigidity and formalism.” The third may be denominated the argument
from natural instinct, and runs thus: “I receive sinners, and eat with them, and
seek by these means their moral restoration, for the same reason which moves the
shepherd to go after a lost sheep, leaving his unstrayed flock in the
wilderness, viz. because it is natural to seek the lost, and to have more joy in
finding things lost than in possessing things which never have been lost. Men
who understand not this feeling are solitary in the universe; for angels in
heaven, fathers, housewives, shepherds, all who have human hearts on earth,
understand it well, and act on it every day.” In all these reasonings Jesus
argued with His accusers on their own premises, accepting their estimate of
themselves, and of the class with whom they deemed it discreditable to
associate, as righteous and sinful respectively. But He took care, at the same
time, to let it appear that His judgment concerning the two parties did not
coincide with that of His interrogators. This He did on the occasion of
Matthew’s feast, by bidding them go study the text, “I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice;” meaning by the quotation to insinuate, that while very religious,
the Pharisees were also very inhuman, full of pride, prejudice, harshness, and
hatred; and to proclaim the truth, that this character was in God’s sight far
more detestable than that of those who were addicted to the coarse vices of the
multitude, not to speak of those who were “sinners” mainly in the pharisaic
imagination, and within inverted commas. Our Lord’s last words to the persons
who called His conduct in question at this time were not merely apologetic, but
judicial. “I came not,” He said, “to call the righteous, but sinners;”
intimating a purpose to let the self-righteous alone and to call to repentance
and to the joys of the kingdom those who were not too self-satisfied to care for
the benefits offered, and to whom the gospel feast would be a real
entertainment. The word, in truth, contained a significant hint of an
approaching religious revolution in which the last should become first and the
first last; Jewish outcasts, Gentile dogs, made partakers of the joys of the
kingdom and the “righteous” shut out. It was one of the pregnant sayings by
which Jesus made known to those who could understand, that His religion was an
universal one, a religion for humanity, a gospel for mankind, because a gospel
for sinners. And what this saying declared in word, the conduct it apologized
for proclaimed yet more expressively by deed. It was an ominous thing that
loving sympathy for “publicans and sinners”-the pharisaic instinct discerned it
to be so, and rightly took the alarm. It meant death to privileged monopolies of
grace and to Jewish pride and exclusivism-all men equal in God’s sight, and
welcome to salvation on the same terms. In fact it was a virtual announcement of
the Pauline programme of an universalistic gospel, which the twelve are supposed
by a certain school of theologians to have opposed as determinedly as the
Pharisees themselves. Strange that the men who had been with Jesus were so
obtuse as not to understand, even at the last, what was involved in their
Master’s fellowship with the low and the lost! Was Buddha more fortunate in his
disciples than Jesus in His? Buddha said, “My law is a law of grace for all,”
directing the saying immediately against Brahminical caste prejudice; and his
followers understood that it meant, Buddhism a missionary religion, a religion
even for Sudras, and therefore for all mankind!


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  CHAPTER 37: 02.04.     THE TWELVE
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The Twelve Mat 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-19; Luk 6:12-16; Acts 1:13. The selection by
Jesus of the twelve from the band of disciples who had gradually gathered around
His person is an important landmark in the Gospel history. It divides the
ministry of our Lord into two portions, nearly equal, probably, as to duration,
but unequal as to the extent and importance of the work done in each
respectively. In the earlier period Jesus labored single-handed; His miraculous
deeds were confined for the most part to a limited area, and His teaching was in
the main of an elementary character. But by the time when the twelve were
chosen, the work of the kingdom had assumed such dimensions as to require
organization and division of labor; and the teaching of Jesus was beginning to
be of a deeper and more elaborate nature, and His gracious activities were
taking on ever-widening range.

It is probable that the selection of a limited number to be His close and
constant companions had become a necessity to Christ, in consequence of His very
success in gaining disciples. His followers, we imagine, had grown so numerous
as to be an incumbrance and an impediment to his movements, especially in the
long journeys which mark the later part of His ministry. It was impossible that
all who believed could continue henceforth to follow Him, in the literal sense,
whithersoever He might go: the greater number could now only be occasional
followers. But it was His wish that certain selected men should be with Him at
all times and in all places-His travelling companions in all His wanderings,
witnessing all His work, and ministering to His daily needs. And so, in the
quaint words of Mark, “Jesus calleth unto Him whom He would, and they came unto
Him, and He made twelve, that they should be with Him.”

These twelve, however, as we know , were to be something more than travelling
companions or menial servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were to be, in the
mean time, students of Christian doctrine, and occasional fellow-laborers in the
work of the kingdom, and eventually Christ’s chosen trained agents for
propagating the faith after He Himself had left the earth. From the time of
their being chosen, indeed, the twelve entered on a regular apprenticeship for
the great office of apostleship, in the course of which they were to learn, in
the privacy of an intimate daily fellowship with their Master, what they should
be, do, believe, and teach, as His witnesses and ambassadors to the world.
Henceforth the training of these men was to be a constant and prominent part of
Christ’s personal work. He was to make it His business to tell them in darkness
what they should afterwards speak in the daylight, and to whisper in their ear
what in after years they should preach upon the housetops. The time when this
election was made, though not absolutely determined, is fixed in relation to
certain leading events in the Gospel history. John speaks of the twelve as an
organized company at the period of the feeding of the five thousand, and of the
discourse on the bread of life in the synagogue of Capernaum, delivered shortly
after that miracle. From this fact we learn that the twelve were chosen at least
one year before the crucifixion; for the miracle of the feeding took place,
according to the fourth evangelist, shortly before a Passover season. From the
words spoken by Jesus to the men whom He had chosen, in justification of His
seeming doubt of their fidelity after the multitude had deserted Him, “Did I not
choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” we conclude that the choice
was then not quite a recent event. The twelve had been long enough together to
give the false disciple opportunity to show his real character.

Turning now to the synoptical evangelists, we find them fixing the position of
the election with reference to two other most important events. Matthew speaks
for the first time of the twelve as a distinct body in connection with their
mission in Galilee. He does not, however, say that they were chosen immediately
before, and with direct reference to, that mission. He speaks rather as if the
apostolic fraternity had been previously in existence, his words being, “When He
had called unto Him His twelve disciples.” Luke, on the other hand, gives a
formal record of the election, as a preface to his account of the Sermon on the
Mount, so speaking as to create the impression that the one event immediately
preceded the other. Finally, Mark’s narrative confirms the view suggested by
these observations on Matthew and Luke, viz. that the twelve were called just
before the Sermon the Mount was delivered, and some considerable time before
they were sent forth on their preaching and healing mission. There we read:
“Jesus goeth up into the mountain (to( o!roj), and calleth unto Him whom He
would”-the ascent referred to evidently being that which Jesus made just before
preaching His great discourse. Mark continues: “And He ordained twelve, that
they should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach, and to
have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out devils.” Here allusion is made to
an intention on Christ’s part to send forth His disciples on a mission, but the
intention is not represented as immediately realized. Nor can it be said that
immediate realization is implied, though not expressed; for the evangelist gives
an account of the mission as actually carried out several chapters further on in
his Gospel, commencing with the words, “And He calleth unto Him the twelve, and
began to send them forth.”

It may be regarded, then, as tolerably certain, that the calling of the twelve
was a prelude to the preaching of the great sermon on the kingdom, in the
founding of which they were afterwards to take so distinguished a part. At what
precise period in the ministry of our Lord the sermon itself is to be placed, we
cannot so confidently determine. Our opinion, however, is, that the Sermon on
the Mount was delivered towards the close of Christ’s first lengthened ministry
in Galilee, during the time which intervened between the two visits to Jerusalem
on festive occasions mentioned in the second and fifth chapters of John’s
Gospel. The number of the apostolic company is significant, and was doubtless a
matter of choice, not less than was the composition of the selected band. A
larger number of eligible men could easily have been found in a circle of
disciples which afterwards supplied not fewer than seventy auxiliaries for
evangelistic work; and a smaller number might have served all the present or
prospective purposes of the apostleship. The number twelve was recommended by
obvious symbolic reasons. It happily expressed in figures what Jesus claimed to
be, and what He had come to do, and thus furnished a support to the faith and a
stimulus to the devotion of His followers. It significantly hinted that Jesus
was the divine Messianic King of Israel, come to set up the kingdom whose advent
was foretold by prophets in glowing language, suggested by the palmy days of
Israel’s history, when the theocratic community existed in its integrity, and
all the tribes of the chosen nation were united under the royal house of David.
That the number twelve was designed to bear such a mystic meaning, we know from
Christ’s own words to the apostles on a later occasion, when, describing to them
the rewards awaiting them in the kingdom for past services and sacrifices, He
said, “Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the
regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also
shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

It is possible that the apostles were only too well aware of the mystic
significance of their number, and found in it an encouragement to the fond
delusive hope that the coming kingdom should be not only a spiritual realization
of the promises, but a literal restoration of Israel to political integrity and
independence. The risk of such misapprehension was one of the drawbacks
connected with the particular number twelve, but it was not deemed by Jesus a
sufficient reason for fixing on another. His method of procedure in this, as in
all things, was to abide by that which in itself was true and right, and then to
correct misapprehensions as they arose. From the number of the apostolic band,
we pass to the persons composing it. Seven of the twelve-the first seven in the
catalogues of Mark and Luke, assuming the identity of Bartholomew and
Nathanael-are persons already known to us. With two of the remaining five-the
first and the last-we shall become well acquainted as we proceed in the history.
Thomas called Didymus, or the Twin, will come before us as a man of warm heart
but melancholy temperament, ready to die with his Lord, but slow to believe in
His resurrection. Judas Iscariot is known to all the world as the Traitor. He
appears for the first time, in these catalogues of the apostles, with the
infamous title branded on his brow, “Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him.” The
presence of a man capable of treachery among the elect disciples is a mystery
which we shall not now attempt to penetrate. We merely make this historical
remark about Judas here, that he seems to have been the only one among the
twelve who was not a Galilean. He is surnamed, from his native place apparently,
the man of Kerioth; and from the Book of Joshua we learn that there was a town
of that name in the southern border of the tribe of Judah. The three names which
remain are exceedingly obscure. On grounds familiar to Bible scholars, it has
often been attempted to identify James of Alphaeus with James the brother or
kinsman of the Lord. The next on the lists of Matthew and Mark has been supposed
by many to have been a brother of this James, and therefore another brother of
Jesus. This opinion is based on the fact, that in place of the Lebbaeus or
Thaddaeus of the two first Gospels, we find in Luke’s catalogues the name Judas
“of James.” The ellipsis in this designation has been filled up with the word
brother, and it is assumed that the James alluded to is James the son of
Alphaeus. However tempting these results may be, we can scarcely regard them as
ascertained, and must content ourselves with stating that among the twelve was a
second James, besides the brother of John and son of Zebedee, and also a second
Judas, who appears again as an interlocutor in the farewell conversation between
Jesus and His disciples on the night before His crucifixion, carefully
distinguished by the evangelist from the traitor by the parenthetical remark
“not Iscariot.” This Judas, being the same with Lebbaeus Thaddaeus, has been
called the three-named disciple. The disciple whom we have reserved to the last
place, like the one who stands at the head of all the lists, was a Simon. This
second Simon is as obscure as the first is celebrated, for he is nowhere
mentioned in the Gospel history, except in the catalogues; yet, little known as
he is, the epithet attached to his name conveys a piece of curious and
interesting information. He is called the Kananite (not Canaanite), which is a
political, not a geographical designation, as appears from the Greek word
substituted in the place of this Hebrew one by Luke, who calls the disciple we
now speak of Simon Zelotes; that is, in English, Simon the Zealot. This epithet
Zelotes connects Simon unmistakably with the famous party which rose in
rebellion under Judas in the days of the taxing, some twenty years before
Christ’s ministry began, when Judea and Samaria were brought under the direct
government of Rome, and the census of the population was taken with a view to
subsequent taxation. How singular a phenomenon is this ex-zealot among the
disciples of Jesus! No two men could differ more widely in their spirit, ends,
and means, than Judas of Galilee and Jesus of Nazareth. The one was a political
malcontent; the other would have the conquered bow to the yoke, and give to
Caesar Caesar’s due. The former aimed at restoring the kingdom to Israel,
adopting for his watchword, “We have no Lord or Master but God;” the latter
aimed at founding a kingdom not national, but universal, not “of this world,”
but purely spiritual. The means employed by the two actors were as diverse as
their ends. One had recourse to the carnal weapons of war, the sword and the
dagger; the other relied solely on the gentle but omnipotent force of truth.

What led Simon to leave Judas for Jesus we know not; but he made a happy
exchange for himself, as the party he forsook were destined in after years to
bring ruin on themselves and on their country by their fanatical, reckless, and
unavailing patriotism. Though the insurrection of Judas was crushed, the fire of
discontent still smouldered in the breasts of his adherents; and at length it
burst out into the blaze of a new rebellion, which brought on a death-struggle
with the gigantic power of Rome, and ended in the destruction of the Jewish
capital, and the dispersion of the Jewish people. The choice of this disciple to
be an apostle supplies another illustration of Christ’s disregard of prudential
wisdom. An ex-zealot was not a safe man to make an apostle of, for he might be
the means of rendering Jesus and His followers objects of political suspicion.
But the Author of our faith was willing to take the risk. He expected to gain
many disciples from the dangerous classes as well as from the despised, and He
would have them, too, represented among the twelve.

It gives one a pleasant surprise to think of Simon the zealot and Matthew the
publican, men coming from so opposite quarters, meeting together in close
fellowship in the little band of twelve. In the persons of these two disciples
extremes meet-the tax-gatherer and the tax-hater: the unpatriotic Jew, who
degraded himself by becoming a servant of the alien ruler; and the Jewish
patriot, who chafed under the foreign yoke, and sighed for emancipation. This
union of opposites was not accidental, but was designed by Jesus as a prophecy
of the future. He wished the twelve to be the church in miniature or germ; and
therefore He chose them so as to intimate that, as among them distinctions of
publican and zealot were unknown, so in the church of the future there should be
neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bond nor free, but only
Christ-all to each, and in each of the all.

These were the names of the twelve as given in the catalogues. As to the order
in which they are arranged, on closely inspecting the lists we observe that they
contain three groups of four, in each of which the same names are always found,
though the order of arrangement varies. The first group includes those best
known, the second the next best, and the third those least known of all, or, in
the case of the traitor, known only too well. Peter, the most prominent
character among the twelve, stands at the head of all the lists, and Judas
Iscariot at the foot, carefully designated, as already observed, the traitor.
The apostolic roll, taking the order given in Matthew, and borrowing
characteristic epithets from the Gospel history at large, is as follows:

FIRST GROUP Simon Peter . . . . The man of rock.

Andrew . . . . Peter’s brother.

James and John . . . . Sons of Zebedee, and sons of thunder.

SECOND GROUP Philip . . . . The earnest inquirer.

Bartholomew, or Nathanael . . . . The guileless Israelite.

Thomas . . . . The melancholy.

Matthew . . . . The publican (so called by himself only).

THIRD GROUP James (the son) of Alphaeus . . . . (James the Less? Mark 15:40.)
Lebbaeus, Thaddaeus, Judas of James, . . . . The three-named disciple.

Simon . . . . The Zealot.

Judas, the man of Kerioth . . . . The Traitor.

Such were the men whom Jesus chose to be with Him while He was on this earth,
and to carry on His work after He left it. Such were the men whom the church
celebrates as the “glorious company of the apostles.” The praise is merited; but
the glory of the twelve was not of this world. In a worldly point of view they
were a very insignificant company indeed-a band of poor illiterate Galilean
provincials, utterly devoid of social consequence, not likely to be chosen by
one having supreme regard to prudential considerations. Why did Jesus choose
such men? Was He guided by feelings of antagonism to those possessing social
advantages, or of partiality for men of His own class? No; His choice was made
in true wisdom. If He chose Galileans mainly, it was not from provincial
prejudice against those of the south; if, as some think, He chose two or even
four of his own kindred, it was not from nepotism; if He chose rude, unlearned,
humble men, it was not because He was animated by any petty jealousy of
knowledge, culture, or good birth. If any rabbi, rich man, or ruler had been
willing to yield himself unreservedly to the service of the kingdom, no
objection would have been taken to him on account of his acquirements,
possessions, or titles. The case of Saul of Tarsus, the pupil of Gamaliel,
proves the truth of this statement. Even Gamaliel himself would not have been
objected to, could he have stooped to become a disciple of the unlearned
Nazarene. But, alas! neither he nor any of his order would condescend so far,
and therefore the despised One did not get an opportunity of showing His
willingness to accept as disciples and choose for apostles such as they were.
The truth is, that Jesus was obliged to be content with fishermen, and
publicans, and quondam zealots, for apostles. They were the best that could be
had. Those who deemed themselves better were too proud to become disciples, and
thereby they excluded themselves from what all the world now sees to be the high
honor of being the chosen princes of the kingdom. The civil and religious
aristocracy boasted of their unbelief. The citizens of Jerusalem did feel for a
moment interested in the zealous youth who had purged the temple with a whip of
small cords; but their faith was superficial, and their attitude patronizing,
and therefore Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew what was
in them. A few of good position were sincere sympathizers, but they were not so
decided in their attachment as to be eligible for apostles. Nicodemus was barely
able to speak a timid apologetic word in Christ’s behalf, and Joseph of
Arimathea was a disciple “secretly,” for fear of the Jews. These were hardly the
persons to send forth as missionaries of the cross-men so fettered by social
ties and party connections, and so enslaved by the fear of man. The apostles of
Christianity must be made of sterner stuff. And so Jesus was obliged to fall
back on the rustic, but simple, sincere, and energetic men of Galilee. And He
was quite content with His choice, and devoutly thanked His Father for giving
Him even such as they. Learning, rank, wealth, refinement, freely given up to
his service, He would not have despised; but He preferred devoted men who had
none of these advantages to undevoted men who had them all. And with good
reason; for it mattered little, except in the eyes of contemporary prejudice,
what the social position or even the previous history of the twelve had been,
provided they were spiritually qualified for the work to which they were called.
What tells ultimately is, not what is without a man, but what is within. John
Bunyan was a man of low birth, low occupation, and, up till his conversion, of
low habits; but he was by nature a man of genius, and by grace a man of God, and
he would have made-he was, in fact-a most effective apostle. But it may be
objected that all the twelve were by no means gifted like Bunyan; some of them,
if one may judge from the obscurity which envelops their names, and the silence
of history regarding them, having been undistinguished either by high endowment
or by a great career, and in fact, to speak plainly, all but useless. As this
objection virtually impugns the wisdom of Christ’s choice, it is necessary to
examine how far it is according to truth. We submit the following considerations
with this view:

1. That some of the apostles were comparatively obscure, inferior men, cannot be
denied; but even the obscurest of them may have been most useful as witnesses
for Him with whom they had companied from the beginning. It does not take a
great man to make a good witness, and to be witnesses of Christian facts was the
main business of the apostles. That even the humblest of them rendered important
service in that capacity we need not doubt, though nothing is said of them in
the apostolic annals. It was not to be expected that a history so fragmentary
and so brief as that given by Luke should mention any but the principal actors,
especially when we reflect how few of the characters that appear on the stage at
any particular crisis in human affairs are prominently noticed even in histories
which go elaborately into detail. The purpose of history is served by recording
the words and deeds of the representative men, and many are allowed to drop into
oblivion who did nobly in their day. The less distinguished members of the
apostolic band are entitled to the benefit of this reflection.

2. Three eminent men, or even two (Peter and John), out of twelve, is a good
proportion; there being few societies in which superior excellence bears such a
high ratio to respectable mediocrity. Perhaps the number of “Pillars” was as
great as was desirable. Far from regretting that all were not Peters and Johns,
it is rather a matter to be thankful for, that there were diversities of gifts
among the first preachers of the gospel. As a general rule, it is not good when
all are leaders. Little men are needed as well as great men; for human nature is
one-sided, and little men have their peculiar virtues and gifts, and can do some
things better than their more celebrated brethren.

3. We must remember how little we know concerning any of the apostles. It is the
fashion of biographers in our day, writing for a morbidly or idly curious
public, to enter into the minutest particulars of outward event or personal
peculiarity regarding their heroes. Of this fond idolatrous minuteness there is
no trace in the evangelic histories. The writers of the Gospels were not
afflicted with the biographic mania. Moreover, the apostles were not their
theme. Christ was their hero; and their sole desire was to tell what they knew
of Him. They gazed steadfastly at the Sun of Righteousness, and in His
effulgence they lost sight of the attendant stars. Whether they were stars of
the first magnitude, or of the second, or of the third, made little difference.


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  CHAPTER 38: 02.05.     HEARING AND SEEING
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Hearing and Seeing

Luk 1:1-4; Mat 13:16-17; Luk 10:23-24; Mat 5:1-48; Mat 6:1-34; Mat 7:1-29; Luk
6:17-49; Mat 13:1-52; Mat 8:16-17; Mark 4:33-34. In the training of the twelve
for the work of the apostleship, hearing and seeing the words and works of
Christ necessarily occupied an important place. Eye and ear witnessing of the
facts of an unparalleled life was an indispensable preparation for future
witness-bearing. The apostles could secure credence for their wondrous tale only
by being able to preface it with the protestation: “That which we have seen and
heard declare we unto you.” None would believe their report, save those who, at
the very least, were satisfied that it emanated from men who had been with
Jesus. Hence the third evangelist, himself not an apostle, but only a companion
of apostles, presents his Gospel with all confidence to his friend Theophilus as
a genuine history, and no mere collection of fables, because its contents were
attested by men who “from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the
Word.” In the early period of their discipleship hearing and seeing seem to have
been the main occupation of the twelve. They were then like children born into a
new world, whose first and by no means least important course of lessons
consists in the use of their senses in observing the wonderful objects by which
they are surrounded. The things which the twelve saw and heard were wonderful
enough. The great Actor in the stupendous drama was careful to impress on His
followers the magnitude of their privilege. “Blessed,” said He to them on one
occasion, “are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I tell you, that
many prophets and kings desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them
not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not.” Yet certain
generations of Israel had seen very remarkable things: one had seen the wonders
of the Exodus, and the sublimities connected with the lawgiving at Sinai;
another, the miracles wrought by Elijah and Elisha; and successive generations
had been privileged to listen to the not less wonderful oracles of God, spoken
by David, Solomon, Isaiah, and the rest of the prophets. But the things
witnessed by the twelve eclipsed the wonders of all bygone ages; for a greater
than Moses, or Elijah, or David, or Solomon, or Isaiah, was here, and the
promise to Nathanael was being fulfilled. Heaven had been opened, and the angels
of God-the spirits of wisdom, and power, and love-were ascending and descending
on the Son of man.

We may here take a rapid survey of the mirabilia which it was the peculiar
privilege of the twelve to see and hear, more or less during the whole period of
their discipleship, and specially just after their election. These may be
comprehended under two heads: the Doctrine of the Kingdom, and the Philanthropic
Work of the Kingdom.

1. Before the ministry of Jesus commenced, His forerunner had appeared in the
wilderness of Judea, preaching, and saying, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand;” and some time after their election the twelve disciples were
sent forth among the towns and villages of Galilee to repeat the Baptist’s
message. But Jesus Himself did something more than proclaim the advent of the
kingdom. He expounded the nature of the divine kingdom, described the character
of its citizens, and discriminated between genuine and spurious members of the
holy commonwealth. This He did partly in what is familiarly called the Sermon on
the Mount, preached shortly after the election of the apostles; and partly in
certain parables uttered about the same period. In the great discourse delivered
on the mountain-top, the qualifications for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven
were set forth, first positively, and then comparatively. The positive truth was
summed up in seven golden sentences called the Beatitudes, in which the felicity
of the kingdom was represented as altogether independent of the outward
conditions with which worldly happiness is associated. The blessed, according to
the preacher, were the poor, the hungry, the mournful, the meek, the merciful,
the pure in heart, the peaceable, the sufferers for righteousness’ sake. Such
were blessed themselves, and a source of blessing to the human race: the salt of
the earth, the light of the world raised above others in spirit and character,
to draw them upwards, and lead them to glorify God.

Next, with more detail, Jesus exhibited the righteousness of the kingdom, and of
its true citizens, in contrast to that which prevailed. “Except your
righteousness,” He went on to say with solemn emphasis, “shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the
kingdom of heaven;” and then He illustrated and enforced the general proposition
by a detailed description of the counterfeit in its moral and religious aspects:
in its mode of interpreting the moral law, and its manner of performing the
duties of piety, such as prayer, alms, and fasting. In the one aspect He
characterized pharisaic righteousness as superficial and technical; in the other
as ostentatious, self-complacent, and censorious. In contrast thereto, He
described the ethics of the kingdom as a pure stream of life, having charity for
its fountainhead; a morality of the heart, not merely of outward conduct; a
morality also broad and catholic, overleaping all arbitrary barriers erected by
legal pedantry and natural selfishness. The religion of the kingdom He set forth
as humble, retiring, devoted in singleness of heart to God and things supernal;
having faith in God as a benignant gracious Father for its root, and
contentment, cheerfulness, and freedom from secular cares for its fruits; and,
finally, as reserved in its bearing towards the profane, yet averse to severity
in judging, yea, to judging at all, leaving men to be judged by God. The
discourse, of which we have given a hasty outline, made a powerful impression on
the audience. “The people,” we read, “were astonished at His doctrine; for He
taught them as one having authority (the authority of wisdom and truth), and not
as the scribes,” who had merely the authority of office. It is not probable that
either the multitude or the twelve understood the sermon; for it was both deep
and lofty, and their minds were pre-occupied with very different ideas of the
coming kingdom. Yet the drift of all that had been said was clear and simple.
The kingdom whereof Jesus was both King and Lawgiver was not to be a kingdom of
this world: it was not to be here or there in space, but within the heart of
man; it was not be the monopoly of any class or nation, but open to all
possessed of the requisite spiritual endowments on equal terms. It is nowhere
said, indeed, in the sermon, that ritual qualifications, such as circumcision,
were not indispensable for admission into the kingdom. But circumcision is
ignored here, as it was ignored the teaching of Jesus. It is treated as
something simply out of place, which cannot be dove-tailed into the scheme of
doctrine set forth; an incongruity the very mention of which would create a
sense of the grotesque. How truly it was so any one can satisfy himself by just
imagining for a moment that among the Beatitudes had been found one running
thus: Blessed are the circumcised, for no uncircumcised ones shall enter into
the kingdom of heaven. This significant silence concerning the seal of the
national covenant could not fail to have its effect on the minds of the
disciples, as a hint at eventual antiquation. The weighty truths thus taught
first in the didactic form of an ethical discourse, Jesus sought at other times
to popularize by means of parables. In the course of His ministry He uttered
many parabolic sayings, the parable being with Him a favorite form of
instruction. Of the thirty parables preserved in the Gospels, the larger number
were of an occasional character, and are best understood when viewed in
connection with the circumstances which called them forth. But there is a
special group of eight which appear to have been spoken about the same period,
and to have been designed to serve one object, viz. to exhibit in simple
pictures the outstanding features of the kingdom of heaven in its nature and
progress, and in its relations to diverse classes of men. One of these, the
parable of the sower, apparently the first spoken, shows the different reception
given to the word of the kingdom by various classes of hearers, and the varied
issues in their life. Two-the parables of the tares and of the net cast into the
sea-describe the mixture of good and evil that should exist in the kingdom till
the end, when the grand final separation would take place. Another pair of short
parables-those of the treasure hid in a field and of the precious pearl-set
forth the incomparable importance of the kingdom, and of citizenship therein.
Other two-the grain of mustard seed, and the leaven hid in three measures of
meal-explain how the kingdom advances from small beginnings to a great ending.
An eighth parable, found in Mark’s Gospel only, teaches that growth in the
divine kingdom proceeds by stages, analogous to the blade, the ear, and the full
corn in the ear, in the growth of grain.

These parables, or the greater number of them, were spoken in the hearing of a
miscellaneous audience; and from a reply of Jesus to a question put by the
disciples, it might appear that they were intended mainly for the ignorant
populace. The question was, “Why speakest Thou unto them in parables?” and the
reply, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven, but to them it is not given;” which seems to imply, that in the case of
the twelve such elementary views of truth-such children’s sermons, so to
speak-might be dispensed with. Jesus meant no more, however, than that for them
the parables were not so important as for common hearers, being only one of
several means of grace through which they were to become eventually scribes
instructed in the kingdom, acquainted with all its mysteries, and able, like a
wise householder, to bring out of their treasures things new and old; while for
the multitude the parables were indispensable, as affording their only chance of
getting a little glimpse into the mysteries of the kingdom. That the twelve were
not above parables yet appears from the fact that they asked and received
explanations of them in private from their Master: of all, probably, though the
interpretations of two only, the parables of the sower and the tares, are
preserved in the Gospels. They were still only children; the parables were
pretty pictures to them, but of what they could not tell. Even after they had
received private expositions of their meaning, they were probably not much wiser
than before, though they professed to be satisfied. Their profession was
doubtless sincere: they spake as they felt; but they spake as children, they
understood as children, they thought as children, and they had much to learn yet
of these divine mysteries. When the children had grown to spiritual manhood, and
fully understood these mysteries, they highly valued the happiness they had
enjoyed in former years, in being privileged to hear the parables of Jesus. We
have an interesting memorial of the deep impression produced on their minds by
these simple pictures of the kingdom, in the reflection with, which the first
evangelist closes his account of Christ’s parabolic teaching. “All these
things,” he remarks, “spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables, . . . that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth
in parables, I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation
of the world.” The quotation (from Psa 78:1-72) significantly diverges both from
the Hebrew original and from the Septuagint version. Matthew has consciously
adapted the words so as to express the absolute originality of the teaching in
which he found their fulfilment. While the Psalmist uttered dark sayings from
the ancient times of Israel’s history, Jesus in the parables had spoken things
that had been hidden from the creation. Nor was this an exaggeration on the part
of the evangelist. Even the use of the parable as a vehicle of instruction was
all but new, and the truths expressed in the parables were altogether new. They
were indeed the eternal verities of the divine kingdom, but till the days of
Jesus they had remained unannounced. Earthly things had always been fit to
emblem forth heavenly things; but, till the great Teacher appeared, no one had
ever thought of linking them together, so that the one should become a mirror of
the other, revealing the deep things of God to the common eye: even as no one
before Isaac Newton had thought of connecting the fall of an apple with the
revolution of the heavenly bodies, though apples had fallen to the ground from
the creation of the world.

2. The things which the disciples had the happiness to see in connection with
the philanthropic work of the kingdom were, if possible, still more marvellous
than those which they heard in Christ’s company. They were eye-witnesses of the
events which Jesus bade the messengers of John report to their master in prison
as unquestionable evidence that He was the Christ who should come. In their
presence, as spectators, blind men received their sight, lame men walked, lepers
were cleansed, the deaf recovered hearing, dead persons were raised to life
again. The performance of such wonderful works was for a time Christ’s daily
occupation. He went about in Galilee and other districts, “doing good, and
healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” The “miracles” recorded in detail
in the Gospels give no idea whatever of the extent to which these wondrous
operations were carried on. The leper cleansed on the descent from the mountain,
when the great sermon was preached, the palsied servant of the Roman centurion
restored to health and strength, Peter’s mother-in-law cured of a fever, the
demoniac dispossessed in the synagogue of Capernaum, the widow’s son brought
back to life while he was being carried out to burial-these, and the like, are
but a few samples selected out of an innumerable multitude of deeds not less
remarkable, whether regarded as mere miracles or as acts of kindness. The truth
of this statement appears from paragraphs of frequent recurrence in the Gospels,
which relate not individual miracles, but an indefinite number of them taken en
masse. Of such paragraphs take as an example the following, cursorily rehearsing
the works done by Jesus at the close of a busy day: “And at even, when the sun
did set, they brought unto Him all that were diseased, and them that were
possessed with devils; and all the city was gathered together at the door. And
He healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils.”
This was what happened on a single Sabbath evening in Capernaum, shortly after
the Sermon on the Mount was preached; and such scenes appear to have been common
at this time: for we read a little farther on in the same Gospel, that “Jesus
spake unto His disciples, that a small ship should wait on Him because of the
multitude, lest they should throng Him; for He had healed many; insomuch that
they pressed upon Him for to touch Him, as many as had plagues.” And yet again
Mark tells how “they went into an house, and the multitude cometh together
again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.” The inference suggested by
such passages as to the vast extent of Christ’s labors among the suffering, is
borne out by the impressions these made on the minds both of friends and foes.
The ill-affected were so struck by what they saw, that they found it necessary
to get up a theory to account for the mighty influence exerted by Jesus in
curing physical, and especially psychical maladies. “This fellow,” they said,
“doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub the prince of devils.” It was a lame
theory, as Jesus showed; but it was at least conclusive evidence that devils
were cast out, and in great numbers. The thoughts of the well-affected
concerning the works of Jesus were various, but all which have been recorded
involve a testimony to His vast activity and extraordinary zeal. Some,
apparently relatives, deemed him mad, fancying that enthusiasm had disturbed His
mind, and compassionately sought to save Him from doing Himself harm through
excessive solicitude to do good to others. The sentiments of the people who
received benefit were more devout. “They marvelled, and glorified God, which had
given such power unto men;” and they were naturally not inclined to criticise an
“enthusiasm of humanity” whereof they were themselves the objects. The
contemporaneous impressions of the twelve concerning their Master’s deeds are
not recorded; but of their subsequent reflections as apostles we have an
interesting sample in the observations appended by the first evangelist to his
account of the transactions of that Sabbath evening in Capernaum already alluded
to. The devout Matthew, according to his custom, saw in these wondrous works Old
Testament Scripture fulfilled; and the passage whose fulfilment he found therein
was that touching oracle of Isaiah, “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried
our sorrows;” which, departing from the Septuagint, he made apt to his purpose
by rendering, “Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.” The Greek
translators interpreted the text as referring to men’s spiritual maladies-their
sins; but Matthew deemed it neither a misapplication nor a degradation of the
words to find in them a prophecy of Messiah’s deep sympathy with such as
suffered from any disease, whether spiritual or mental, or merely physical. He
knew not how better to express the intense compassion of his Lord towards all
sufferers, than by representing Him in prophetic language as taking their
sicknesses on Himself. Nor did he wrong the prophet’s thought by this
application of it. He but laid the foundation of an à fortiori inference to a
still more intense sympathy on the Saviour’s part with the spiritually diseased.
For surely He who so cared for men’s bodies would care yet more for their souls.
Surely it might safely be anticipated, that He who was so conspicuous as a
healer of bodily disease would become yet more famous as a Saviour from sin. The
works which the twelve were privileged to see were verily worth seeing, and
altogether worthy of the Messianic King. They served to demonstrate that the
King and the kingdom were not only coming, but come; for what could more
certainly betoken their presence, than mercy dropping like the “gentle rain from
heaven upon the place beneath”? John, indeed, seems to have thought otherwise,
when he sent to inquire of Jesus if He were the Christ who was to come. He
desiderated, we imagine, a work of judgment on the impenitent as a more reliable
proof of Messiah’s advent than these miracles of mercy. The prophetic infirmity
of querulousness and the prison air had got the better of his judgment and his
heart, and he was in the truculent humor of Jonah, who was displeased with God,
not because He was too stern, but rather because He was too gracious, too ready
to forgive. The least in the kingdom of heaven is incapable now of being
offended with these works of our Lord on account of their mercifulness. The
offence in our day lies in a different direction. Men stumble at the
miraculousness of the things seen by the disciples and recorded by the
evangelists. Mercy, say they, is God-like, but miracles are impossible; and they
think they do well to be sceptical. An exception is made, indeed, in favor of
some of the healing miracles, because it is not deemed impossible that they
might fall within the course of nature, and so cease to belong to the category
of the miraculous. “Moral therapeutics” might account for them-a department of
medical science which Mr. Matthew Arnold thinks has not been at all sufficiently
studied yet. All other miracles besides those wrought by moral therapeutics are
pronounced fabulous. But why not extend the dominion of the moral over the
physical, and say without qualification: Mercy is God-like, therefore such works
as those wrought by Jesus were matters of course? So they appeared to the
writers of the Gospels. What they wondered at was not the supernaturalness of
Christ’s healing operations, but the unfathomable depth of divine compassion
which they revealed. There is no trace of the love of the marvellous either in
the Gospels or in the Epistles. The disciples may have experienced such a
feeling when the era of wonders first burst on their astonished view, but they
had lost it entirely by the time the New Testament books began to be written.
Throughout the New Testament miracles are spoken of in a sober, almost
matter-of-fact, tone. How is this to be explained? The explanation is that the
apostles had seen too many miracles while with Jesus to be excited about them.
Their sense of wonder had been deadened by being sated. But though they ceased
to marvel at the power of their Lord, they never ceased to wonder at His grace.
The love of Christ remained for them throughout life a thing passing knowledge;
and the longer they lived, the more cordially did they acknowledge the truth of
their Master’s words: “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see.”


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  CHAPTER 39: 02.06.     LESSONS ON PRAYER
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Lessons On Prayer Mat 6:5-13; Mat 7:7-11; Luk 11:1-13; Luk 18:1-5.

It would have been matter for surprise if, among the manifold subjects on which
Jesus gave instruction to His disciples, prayer had not occupied a prominent
place. Prayer is a necessity of spiritual life, and all who earnestly try to
pray soon feel the need of teaching how to do it. And what theme more likely to
engage the thoughts of a Master who was Himself emphatically a man of prayer,
spending occasionally whole nights in prayerful communion with His heavenly
Father?

We find, accordingly, that prayer was a subject on which Jesus often spoke in
the hearing of His disciples. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, He
devoted a paragraph to that topic, in which He cautioned His hearers against
pharisaic ostentation and heathenish repetition, and recited a form of devotion
as a model of simplicity, comprehensiveness, and brevity. At other times He
directed attention to the necessity, in order to acceptable and prevailing
prayer, of perseverance, concord, strong faith, and large expectation. The
passage cited from the eleventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel gives an account of
what may be regarded as the most complete and comprehensive of all the lessons
communicated by Jesus to His disciples on the important subject to which it
relates. The circumstances in which this lesson was given are interesting. The
lesson on prayer was itself an answer to prayer. A disciple, in all probability
one of the twelve, after hearing Jesus pray, made the request: “Lord, teach us
to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” The request and its occasion taken
together convey to us incidentally two pieces of information. From the latter we
learn that Jesus, besides praying much alone, also prayed in company with His
disciples, practising family prayer as the head of a household, as well as
secret prayer in personal fellowship with God His Father. From the former we
learn that the social prayers of Jesus were most impressive. Disciples hearing
them were made painfully conscious of their own incapacity, and after the Amen
were ready instinctively to proffer the request, “Lord, teach us to pray,” as if
ashamed any more to attempt the exercise in their own feeble, vague, stammering
words. When this lesson was given we know not, for Luke introduces his narrative
of it in the most indefinite manner, without noting either time or place. The
reference to John in the past tense might seem to indicate a date subsequent to
his death; but the mode of expression would be sufficiently explained by the
supposition that the disciple who made the request had previously been a
disciple of the Baptist. Nor can any certain inference be drawn from the
contents of the lesson. It is a lesson which might have been given to the twelve
at any time during their disciplehood, so far as their spiritual necessities
were concerned. It is a lesson for children, for spiritual minors, for
Christians in the crude stage of the divine life, afflicted with confusion of
mind, dumbness, dejection, unable to pray for want of clear thought, apt words,
and above all, of faith that knows how to wait in hope; and it meets the wants
of such by suggesting topics, supplying forms of language, and furnishing their
weak faith with the props of cogent arguments for perseverance. Now such was the
state of the twelve during all the time they were with Jesus; till He ascended
to heaven, and power descended from heaven on them, bringing with it a loosed
tongue and an enlarged heart. During the whole period of their discipleship,
they needed prompting in prayer such as a mother gives her child, and
exhortations to perseverance in the habit of praying, even as do the humblest
followers of Christ. Far from being exempt from such infirmities, the twelve may
even have experienced them in a superlative degree. The heights correspond to
the depths in religious experience. Men who are destined to be apostles must, as
disciples, know more than most of the chaotic, speechless condition, and of the
great, irksome, but most salutary business of Waiting on God for light, and
truth, and grace, earnestly desired but long withheld.

It was well for the church that her first ministers needed this lesson on
prayer; for the time comes in the case of most, if not all, who are spiritually
earnest, when its teaching is very seasonable. In the spring of the divine life,
the beautiful blossom-time of piety, Christians may be able to pray with fluency
and fervor, unembarrassed by want of words, thoughts, and feelings of a certain
kind. But that happy stage soon passes, and is succeeded by one in which prayer
often becomes a helpless struggle, an inarticulate groan, a silent, distressed,
despondent waiting on God, on the part of men who are tempted to doubt whether
God be indeed the hearer of prayer, whether prayer be not altogether idle and
useless. The three wants contemplated and provided for in this lesson-the want
of ideas, of words, and of faith-are as common as they are grievous. How long it
takes most to fill even the simple petitions of the Lord’s Prayer with definite
meanings! the second petition, e.g., “Thy kingdom come,” which can be presented
with perfect intelligence only by such as have formed for themselves a clear
conception of the ideal spiritual republic or commonwealth. How difficult, and
therefore how rare, to find out acceptable words for precious thoughts slowly
reached! How many, who have never got any thing on which their hearts were set
without needing to ask for it often, and to wait for it long (no uncommon
experience), have been tempted by the delay to give up asking in despair! And no
wonder; for delay is hard to bear in all cases, especially in connection with
spiritual blessings, which are in fact, and are by Christ here assumed to be,
the principal object of a Christian man’s desires. Devout souls would not be
utterly confounded by delay, or even refusal, in connection with mere temporal
goods; for they know that such things as health, wealth, wife, children, home,
position, are not unconditionally good, and that it may be well sometimes not to
obtain them, or not easily and too soon. But it is most confounding to desire
with all one’s heart the Holy Ghost, and yet seem to be denied the priceless
boon; to pray for light , and to get instead deeper darkness; for faith, and to
be tormented with doubts which shake cherished convictions to their foundations;
for sanctity, and to have the mud of corruption stirred up by temptation from
the bottom of the well of eternal life in the heart. Yet all this, as every
experienced Christian knows, is part of the discipline through which scholars in
Christ’s school have to pass ere the desire of their heart be fulfilled. The
lesson on prayer taught by Christ, in answer to request, consists of two parts,
in one of which thoughts and words are put into the mouths of immature
disciples, while the other provides aids to faith in God as the answerer of
prayer. There is first a form of prayer, and then an argument enforcing
perseverance in prayer. The form of prayer commonly called the Lord’s Prayer,
which appears in the Sermon on the Mount as a sample of the right kind of
prayer, is given here as a summary of the general heads under which all special
petitions may be comprehended. We may call this form the alphabet of all
possible prayer. It embraces the elements of all spiritual desire, summed up in
a few choice sentences, for the benefit of those who may not be able to bring
their struggling aspirations to birth in articulate language. It contains in all
six petitions, of which three-the first three, as was meet-refer to God’s glory,
and the remaining three to man’s good. We are taught to pray, first for the
advent of the divine kingdom, in the form of universal reverence for the divine
name, and universal obedience to the divine will; and then, in the second place,
for daily bread, pardon, and protection from evil for ourselves. The whole is
addressed to God as Father, and is supposed to proceed from such as realize
their fellowship one with another as members of a divine family, and therefore
say, “Our Father.” The prayer does not end, as our prayers now commonly do, with
the formula, “for Christ’s sake;” nor could it, consistently with the
supposition that it proceeded from Jesus. No prayer given by Him for the present
use of His disciples, before His death, could have such an ending, because the
plea it contains was not intelligible to them previous to that event. The twelve
did not yet know what Christ’s sake (sache) meant, nor would they till after
their Lord had ascended, and the Spirit had descended and revealed to them the
true meaning of the facts of Christ’s earthly history. Hence we find Jesus, on
the eve of His passion, telling His disciples that up to that time they had
asked nothing in His name, and representing the use of His name as a plea to be
heard, as one of the privileges awaiting them in the future. “Hitherto,” He
said, “have ye asked nothing in my name; ask, and ye shall receive, that your
joy may be full.” And in another part of His discourse: “Whatsoever ye shall ask
in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” To
what extent the disciples afterwards made use of this beautifully simple yet
profoundly significant form, we do not know; but it may be assumed that they
were in the habit of repeating it as the disciples of the Baptist might repeat
the forms taught them by their master. There is, however, no reason to think
that the “Lord’s Prayer,” though of permanent value as a part of Christ’s
teaching, was designed to be a stereotyped, binding method of addressing the
Father in heaven. It was meant to be an aid to inexperienced disciples, not a
rule imposed upon apostles. Even after they had attained to spiritual maturity,
the twelve might use this form if they pleased, and possibly they did
occasionally use it; but Jesus expected that by the time they came to be
teachers in the church they should have outgrown the need of it as an aid to
devotion. Filled with the Spirit, enlarged in heart, mature in spiritual
understanding, they should then be able to pray as their Lord had prayed when He
was with them; and while the six petitions of the model prayer would still enter
into all their supplications at the throne of grace, they would do so only as
the alphabet of a language enters into the most extended and eloquent utterances
of a speaker, who never thinks of the letters of which the words he utters are
composed. In maintaining the provisional, pro tempore character of the Lord’s
Prayer, so far as the twelve were concerned, we lay no stress on the fact
already adverted to, that it does not end with the phrase, “for Christ’s sake.”
That defect could easily be supplied afterwards mentally or orally, and
therefore was no valid reason for disuse. The same remark applies to our use of
the prayer in question. To allow this form to fall into desuetude merely because
the customary concluding plea is wanting, is as weak on one side as the too
frequent repetition of it is on the other. The Lord’s Prayer is neither a piece
of Deism unworthy of a Christian, nor a magic charm like the “Pater noster” of
Roman Catholic devotion. The most advanced believer will often find relief and
rest to his spirit in falling back on its simple, sublime sentences, while
mentally realizing the manifold particulars which each of them includes; and he
is but a tyro in the art of praying, and in the divine life generally, whose
devotions consist exclusively, or even mainly, in repeating the words which
Jesus put into the mouths of immature disciples. The view now advocated
regarding the purpose of the Lord’s Prayer is in harmony with the spirit of
Christ’s whole teaching. Liturgical forms and religious methodism in general
were much more congenial to the strict ascetic school of the Baptist than to the
free school of Jesus. Our Lord evidently attached little importance to forms of
prayer, any more than to fixed periodic fasts, else He would not have waited
till He was asked for a form, but would have made systematic provision for the
wants of His followers, even as the Baptist did, by, so to speak, compiling a
book of devotion or composing a liturgy. It is evident, even from the present
instructions on the subject of praying, that Jesus considered the form He
supplied of quite subordinate importance: a mere temporary remedy for a minor
evil, the want of utterance, till the greater evil, the want of faith, should be
cured; for the larger portion of the lesson is devoted to the purpose of
supplying an antidote to unbelief. The second part of this lesson on prayer is
intended to convey the same moral as that which is prefixed to the parable of
the unjust judge-“that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” The supposed
cause of fainting is also the same, even delay on the part of God in answering
our prayers. This is not, indeed, made so obvious in the earlier lesson as in
the later. The parable of the ungenerous neighbor is not adapted to convey the
idea of long delay: for the favor asked, if granted at all, must be granted in a
very few minutes. But the lapse of time between the presenting and the granting
of our requests is implied and presupposed as a matter of course. It is by delay
that God seems to say to us what the ungenerous neighbor said to his friend, and
that we are tempted to think that we pray to no purpose.

Both the parables spoken by Christ to inculcate perseverance in prayer seek to
effect their purpose by showing the power of importunity in the most unpromising
circumstances. The characters appealed to are both bad-one in ungenerous, and
the other unjust; and from neither is any thing to be gained except by working
on his selfishness. And the point of the parable in either case is, that
importunity has a power of annoyance which enables it to gain its object.

It is important again to observe what is supposed to be the leading subject of
prayer in connection with the argument now to be considered. The thing upon
which Christ assumes His disciples to have set their hearts is personal
sanctification. This appears from the concluding sentence of the discourse: “How
much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him!”
Jesus takes for granted that the persons to whom He addresses Himself here seek
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Therefore, though He inserted a
petition for daily bread in the form of prayer, He drops that object out of view
in the latter part of His discourse; both because it is by hypothesis not the
chief object of desire, and also because, for all who truly give God’s kingdom
the first place in their regards, food and raiment are thrown into the bargain.
To such as do not desire the Holy Spirit above all things, Jesus has nothing to
say. He does not encourage them to hope that they shall receive any thing of the
Lord; least of all, the righteousness of the kingdom, personal sanctification.
He regards the prayers of a double- minded man, who has two chief ends in view,
as a hollow mockery-mere words, which never reach Heaven’s ear. The supposed
cause of fainting being delay, and the supposed object of desire being the Holy
Spirit, the spiritual situation contemplated in the argument is definitely
determined. The Teacher’s aim is to succor and encourage those who feel that the
work of grace goes slowly on within them, and wonder why it does so, and sadly
sigh because it does so. Such we conceive to have been the state of the twelve
when this lesson was given them. They had been made painfully conscious of
incapacity to perform aright their devotional duties, and they took that
incapacity to be an index of their general spiritual condition, and were much
depressed in consequence. The argument by which Jesus sought to inspire His
discouraged disciples with hope and confidence as to the ultimate fulfilment of
their desires, is characterized by boldness, geniality, wisdom, and logical
force. Its boldness is evinced in the choice of illustrations. Jesus has such
confidence in the goodness of His cause, that He states the case as
disadvantageously for Himself as possible, by selecting for illustration not
good samples of men, but persons rather below than above the ordinary standard
of human virtue. A man who, on being applied to at any hour of the night by a
neighbor for help in a real emergency, such as that supposed in the parable, or
in a case of sudden sickness, should put him off with such an answer as this,
“Trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I
cannot rise and give thee,” would justly incur the contempt of his
acquaintances, and become a byword among them for all that is ungenerous and
heartless. The same readiness to take an extreme case is observable in the
second argument, drawn from the conduct of fathers towards their children. “If a
son shall ask bread of any of you”-so it begins. Jesus does not care what father
may be selected; He is willing to take any one they please: He will take the
very worst as readily as the best; nay, more readily, for the argument turns not
on the goodness of the parent, but rather on his want of goodness, as it aims to
show that no special goodness is required to keep all parents from doing what
would be an outrage on natural affection, and revolting to the feelings of all
mankind. The genial, kindly character of the argument is manifest from the
insight and sympathy displayed therein. Jesus divines what hard thoughts men
think of God under the burden of unfulfilled desire; how they doubt His
goodness, and deem Him indifferent, heartless, unjust. He shows His intimate
knowledge of their secret imaginations by the cases He puts; for the unkind
friend and unnatural father, and we may add, the unjust judge, are pictures not
indeed of what God is, or of what He would have us believe God to be, but
certainly of what even pious men sometimes think Him to be. And He cannot only
divine, but sympathize. He does not, like Job’s friends, find fault with those
who harbor doubting and apparently profane thoughts, nor chide them for
impatience, distrust, and despondency. He deals with them as men compassed with
infirmity, and needing sympathy, counsel, and help. And in supplying these, He
comes down to their level of feeling, and tries to show that, even if things
were as they seem, there is no cause for despair. He argues from their own
thoughts of God, that they should still hope in Him. “Suppose,” He says in
effect, “God to be what you fancy, indifferent and heartless, still pray on;
see, in the case I put, what perseverance can effect. Ask as the man who wanted
loaves asked, and ye shall also receive from Him who seems at present deaf to
your petitions. Appearances, I grant, may be very unfavorable, but they cannot
be more so in your case than in that of the petitioner in the parable; and yet
you observe how he fared through not being too easily disheartened.”

Jesus displays His wisdom in dealing with the doubts of His disciples, by
avoiding all elaborate explanations of the causes or reasons of delay in the
answering of prayer, and using only arguments adapted to the capacity of persons
weak in faith and in spiritual understanding. He does not attempt to show why
sanctification is a slow, tedious work, not a momentary act: why the Spirit is
given gradually and in limited measure, not at once and without measure. He
simply urges His hearers to persevere in seeking the Holy Spirit, assuring them
that, in spite of trying delay, their desires will be fulfilled in the end. He
teaches them no philosophy of waiting on God, but only tells them that they
shall not wait in vain. This method the Teacher followed not from necessity, but
from choice. For though no attempt was made at explaining divine delays in
providence and grace, it was not because explanation was impossible. There were
many things which Christ might have said to His disciples at this time if they
could have borne them; some of which they afterwards said themselves, when the
Spirit of Truth had come, and guided them into all truth, and made them
acquainted with the secret of God’s way. He might have pointed out to them,
e.g., that the delays of which they complained were according to the analogy of
nature, in which gradual growth is the universal law; that time was needed for
the production of the ripe fruits of the Spirit, just in the same way as for the
production of the ripe fruits of the field or of the orchard; that it was not to
be wondered at if the spiritual fruits were peculiarly slow in ripening, as it
was a law of growth that the higher the product in the scale of being, the
slower the process by which it is produced; that a momentary sanctification,
though not impossible, would be as much a miracle in the sense of a departure
from law, as was the immediate transformation of water into wine at the marriage
in Cana; that if instantaneous sanctification were the rule instead of the rare
exception, the kingdom of grace would become too like the imaginary worlds of
children’s dreams, in which trees, fruits, and palaces spring into being
full-grown, ripe, and furnished, in a moment as by enchantment, and too unlike
the real, actual world with which men are conversant, in which delay, growth,
and fixed law are invariable characteristics.

Jesus might further have sought to reconcile His disciples to delay by
descanting on the virtue of patience. Much could be said on that topic. It could
be shown that a character cannot be perfect in which the virtue of patience has
no place, and that the gradual method of sanctification is best adapted for its
development, as affording abundant scope for its exercise. It might be pointed
out how much the ultimate enjoyment of any good thing is enhanced by its having
to be waited for; how in proportion to the trial is the triumph of faith; how,
in the quaint words of one who was taught wisdom in this matter by his own
experience, and by the times in which he lived, “It is fit we see and feel the
shaping and sewing of every piece of the wedding garment, and the framing and
moulding and fitting of the crown of glory for the head of the citizen of
heaven;” how “the repeated sense and frequent experience of grace in the ups and
downs in the way, the falls and risings again of the traveller, the revolutions
and changes of the spiritual condition, the new moon, the darkened moon, the
full moon in the Spirit’s ebbing and flowing, raiseth in the heart of saints on
their way to the country a sweet smell of the fairest rose and lily of Sharon;”
how, “as travellers at night talk of their foul ways, and of the praises of
their guide, and battle being ended, soldiers number their wounds, extol the
valor, skill, and courage of their leader and captain,” so “it is meet that the
glorified soldiers may take loads of experience of free grace to heaven with
them, and there speak of their way and their country, and the praises of Him
that hath redeemed them out of all nations, tongues, and languages.”

Such considerations, however just, would have been wasted on men in the
spiritual condition of the disciples. Children have no sympathy with growth in
any world, whether of nature or of grace. Nothing pleases them but that an acorn
should become an oak at once, and that immediately after the blossom should come
the ripe fruit. Then it is idle to speak of the uses of patience to the
inexperienced; for the moral value of the discipline of trial cannot be
appreciated till the trial is past. Therefore, as before stated, Jesus abstained
entirely from reflections of the kind suggested, and adopted a simple, popular
style of reasoning which even a child could understand. The reasoning of Jesus,
while very simple, is very cogent and conclusive. The first argument-that
contained in the parable of the ungenerous neighbor-is fitted to inspire hope in
God, even in the darkest hour, when He appears indifferent to our cry, or
positively unwilling to help, and so to induce us to persevere in asking. “As
the man who wanted the loaves knocked on louder and louder, with an importunity
that knew no shame, and would take no refusal, and thereby gained his object,
the selfish friend being glad at last to get up and serve him out of sheer
regard to his own comfort, it being simply impossible to sleep with such a
noise; so (such is the drift of the argument), so continue thou knocking at the
door of heaven, and thou shalt obtain thy desire if it were only to be rid of
thee. See in this parable what a power importunity has, even at a most
unpromising time-midnight-and with a most unpromising person, who prefers his
own comfort to a neighbor’s good: ask, therefore, persistently, and it shall be
given unto you also; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you.” At one point, indeed, this most pathetic and sympathetic argument seems to
be weak. The petitioner in the parable had the selfish friend in his power by
being able to annoy him and keep him from sleeping. Now, the tried desponding
disciple whom Jesus would comfort may rejoin: “What power have I to annoy God,
who dwelleth on high, far beyond my reach, in imperturbable felicity? ‘Oh that I
knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat! But, behold, I
go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: on the
left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the
right hand, that I cannot see Him.’” The objection is one which can hardly fail
to occur to the subtle spirit of despondency, and it must be admitted that it is
not frivolous. There is really a failure of the analogy at this point. We can
annoy a man, like the ungenerous neighbor in bed, or the unjust judge, but we
cannot annoy God. The parable does not suggest the true explanation of divine
delay, or of the ultimate success of importunity. It merely proves, by a homely
instance, that delay, apparent refusal, from whatever cause it may arise, is not
necessarily final, and therefore can be no good reason for giving up asking.
This is a real if not a great service rendered. But the doubting disciple,
besides discovering with characteristic acuteness what the parable fails to
prove, may not be able to extract any comfort from what it does prove. What is
he to do then? Fall back on the strong asseveration with which Jesus follows up
the parable: “And I say unto you.” Here, doubter, is an oracular dictum from One
who can speak with authority; One who has been in the bosom of the eternal God,
and has come forth to reveal His inmost heart to men groping in the darkness of
nature after Him, if haply they might find Him. When He addresses you in such
emphatic, solemn terms as these, “I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given
you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” you may
take the matter on His word, at least pro tempore. Even those who doubt the
reasonableness of prayer, because of the constancy of nature’s laws and the
unchangeableness of divine purposes, might take Christ’s word for it that prayer
is not vain, even in relation to daily bread, not to speak of higher matters,
until they arrive at greater certainty on the subject than they can at present
pretend to. Such may, if they choose, despise the parable as childish, or as
conveying crude anthropopathic ideas of the Divine Being, but they cannot
despise the deliberate declarations of One whom even they regard as the wisest
and best of men. The second argument employed by Jesus to urge perseverance in
prayer is of the nature of a reductio ad absurdum, ending with a conclusion ___à
fortiori. “If,” it is reasoned, “God refused to hear His children’s prayers, or,
worse still, if He mocked them by giving them something bearing a superficial
resemblance to the things asked, only to cause bitter disappointment when the
deception was discovered, then were He not only as bad as, but far worse than,
even the most depraved of mankind. For, take fathers at random, which of them,
if a son were to ask bread, would give him a stone? or if he asked a fish, would
give him a serpent? or if he asked an egg, would offer him a scorpion? The very
supposition is monstrous. Human nature is largely vitiated by moral evil; there
is, in particular, an evil spirit of selfishness in the heart which comes into
conflict with the generous affections, and leads men ofttimes to do base and
unnatural things. But men taken at the average are not diabolic; and nothing
short of a diabolic spirit of mischief could prompt a father to mock a child’s
misery, or deliberately to give him things fraught with deadly harm. If, then,
earthly parents, though evil in many of their dispositions, give good, and, so
far as they know, only good, gifts to their children, and would shrink with
horror from any other mode of treatment, is it to be credited that the Divine
Being, that Providence, can do what only devils would think of doing? On the
contrary, what is only barely possible for man is for God altogether impossible,
and what all but monsters of iniquity will not fail to do God will do much more.
He will most surely give good gifts, and only good gifts, to His asking
children; most especially will He give His best gift, which His true children
desire above all things, even the Holy Spirit, the enlightener and the
sanctifier. Therefore again I say unto you: Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and
ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened.”

Yet it is implied in the very fact that Christ puts such cases as a stone given
for bread, a serpent for a fish, or a scorpion for an egg, that God seems at
least sometimes so to treat His children. The time came when the twelve thought
they had been so treated in reference to the very subject in which they were
most deeply interested, after their own personal sanctification, viz., the
restoration of the kingdom to Israel. But their experience illustrates the
general truth, that when the Hearer of prayer seems to deal unnaturally with His
servants, it is because they have made a mistake about the nature of good, and
have not known what they asked. They have asked for a stone, thinking it bread,
and hence the true bread seems a stone; for a shadow, thinking it a substance,
and hence the substance seems a shadow. The kingdom for which the twelve prayed
was a shadow, hence their disappointment and despair when Jesus was put to
death: the egg of hope, which their fond imagination had been hatching, brought
forth the scorpion of the cross, and they fancied that God had mocked and
deceived them. But they lived to see that God was true and good, and that they
had deceived themselves, and that all which Christ had told them had been
fulfilled. And all who wait on God ultimately make a similar discovery, and
unite in testifying that “the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the
soul that seeketh Him.” For these reasons should all men pray, and not faint.
Prayer is rational, even if the Divine Being were like men in the average, not
indisposed to do good when self-interest does not stand in the way-the creed of
heathenism. It is still more manifestly rational if, as Christ taught and
Christians believe, God be better than the best of men-the one supremely good
Being-the Father in heaven. Only in either of two cases would prayer really be
irrational: if God were no living being at all-the creed of atheists, with whom
Christ holds no argument; or if He were a being capable of doing things from
which even bad men would start back in horror, i.e., a being of diabolic
nature-the creed, it is to be hoped, of no human being.


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  CHAPTER 40: 02.07.     LESSONS IN RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
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Lessons in Religious Liberty; or, The Nature of True Holiness Section I -
Fasting Mat 9:14-17; Mark 2:16-22; Luk 5:33-39.

We have learnt in the last chapter how Jesus taught His disciples to pray, and
we are now to learn in the present chapter how He taught them to live.

Christ’s ratio vivendi was characteristically simple; its main features being a
disregard of minute mechanical rules, and a habit of falling back in all things
on the great principles of morality and piety. The practical carrying out of
this rule of life led to considerable divergence from prevailing custom. In
three respects especially, according to the Gospel records, were our Lord and
His disciples chargeable, and actually charged, with the offence of
nonconformity. They departed from existing practice in the matters of fasting,
ceremonial purifications as prescribed by the elders, and Sabbath
sanctification. The first they neglected for the most part, the second
altogether; the third they did not neglect, but their mode of observing the
weekly rest was in spirit totally, and in detail widely, diverse from that which
was in vogue.

These divergences from established custom are historically interesting as the
small beginnings of a great moral and religious revolution. For in teaching His
disciples these new habits, Jesus was inaugurating a process of spiritual
emancipation which was to issue in the complete deliverance of the apostles, and
through them of the Christian church, from the burdensome yoke of Mosaic
ordinances, and from the still more galling bondage of a “vain conversation
received by tradition from the fathers.” The divergences in question have much
biographical interest also in connection with the religious experience of the
twelve. For it is a solemn crisis in any man’s life when he first departs in the
most minute particulars from the religious opinions and practices of his age.
The first steps in the process of change are generally the most difficult, the
most perilous, and the most decisive. In these respects, learning spiritual
freedom is like learning to swim. Every expert in the aquatic art remembers the
troubles he experienced in connection with his first attempts-how hard he found
it to make arms and legs keep stroke; how he floundered and plunged; how fearful
he was lest he should go beyond his depth and sink to the bottom. At these early
fears he may now smile, yet were they not altogether groundless; for the tyro
does run some risk of drowning though the bathing-place be but a small pool or
dam built by schoolboys on a burn flowing through an inland dell, remote from
broad rivers and the great sea.

It is well both for young swimmers and for apprentices in religious freedom when
they make their first essays in the company of an experienced friend, who can
rescue them should they be in danger. Such a friend the twelve had in Christ,
whose presence was not only a safeguard against all inward spiritual risks, but
a shield from all assaults which might come upon them from without. Such
assaults were to be expected. Nonconformity invariably gives offence to many,
and exposes the offending party to interrogation at least, and often to
something more serious. Custom is a god to the multitude, and no one can
withhold homage from the idol with impunity. The twelve accordingly did in fact
incur the usual penalties connected with singularity. Their conduct was called
in question, and censured, in every instance of departure from use and wont. Had
they been left to themselves, they would have made a poor defence of the actions
impugned; for they did not understand the principles on which the new practice
was based, but simply did as they were directed. But in Jesus they had a friend
who did understand those principles, and who was ever ready to assign good
reasons for all He did Himself, and for all He taught His followers to do. The
reasons with which he defended the twelve against the upholders of prevailing
usage were specially good and telling; and they constitute, taken together, an
apology for nonconformity not less remarkable than that which He made for
graciously receiving publicans and sinners, consisting, like it, of three lines
of defence corresponding to the charges which had to be met. That apology we
propose to consider in the present chapter under three divisions, in the first
of which we take up the subject of fasting. From Matthew’s account we learn that
the conduct of Christ’s disciples in neglecting fasting was animadverted on by
the disciples of John the Baptist. “Then,” we read, “came to Him the disciples
of John”-those, that is, who happened to be in the neighborhood-“saying, Why do
we and the Pharisees fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not?” From this question
we learn incidentally that in the matter of fasting the school of the Baptist
and the sect of the Pharisees were agreed in their general practice. As Jesus
told the Pharisees at a later date, John came in their own “way” of legal
righteousness.” But it was a case of extremes meeting; for no two religious
parties could be more remote in some respects than the two just named. But the
difference lay rather in the motives than in the external acts of their
religious life. Both did the same things-fasted, practised ceremonial ablutions,
made many prayers-only they did them with a different mind. John and his
disciples performed their religious duties in simplicity, godly sincerity, and
moral earnestness; the Pharisees, as a class, did all their works
ostentatiously, hypocritically, and as matters of mechanical routine. From the
same question we further learn that the disciples of John, as well as the
Pharisees, were very zealous in the practice of fasting. They fasted oft, much
(pukna(, Luke; polla(, Matthew). This statement we otherwise know to be strictly
true of such Pharisees as made great pretensions to piety. Besides the annual
fast on the great day of atonement appointed by the law of Moses, and the four
fasts which had become customary in the time of the Prophet Zechariah, in the
fourth, fifth, seventh, and tenth months of the Jewish year, the stricter sort
of Jews fasted twice every week, viz., on Mondays and Thursdays. This bi-weekly
fast is alluded to in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. It is not to
be assumed, of course, that the practice of the Baptist’s disciples coincided in
this respect with that of the strictest sect of the pharisaic party. Their
system of fasting may have been organized on an independent plan, involving
different arrangements as to times and occasions. The one fact known, which
rests on the certain basis of their own testimony, is that, like the Pharisees,
John’s disciples fasted often, if not on precisely the same days and for the
same reasons.

It does not clearly appear what feelings prompted the question put by John’s
disciples to Jesus. It is not impossible that party spirit was at work, for
rivalry and jealousy were not unknown, even in the environment of the
forerunner. In that case, the reference to pharisaic practice might be explained
by a desire to overwhelm the disciples of Jesus by numbers, and put them, as it
were, in a hopeless minority on the question. It is more likely, however, that
the uppermost feeling in the mind of the interrogators was one of surprise, that
in respect of fasting they should approach nearer to a sect whose adherents were
stigmatized by their own master as a “generation of vipers,” than to the
followers of One for whom that master cherished and expressed the deepest
veneration. In that case, the object of the question was to obtain information
and instruction. It accords with this view that the query was addressed to
Jesus. Had disputation been aimed at, the questioners would more naturally have
applied to the disciples.

If John’s followers came seeking instruction, they were not disappointed. Jesus
made a reply to their question, remarkable at once for originality, point, and
pathos, setting forth in lively parabolic style the great principles by which
the conduct of His disciples could be vindicated, and by which He desired the
conduct of all who bore His name to be regulated. Of this reply it is to be
observed, in the first place, that it is of a purely defensive character. Jesus
does not blame John’s disciples for fasting, but contents Himself with defending
His own disciples for abstaining from fasting. He does not feel called on to
disparage the one party in order to justify the other, but takes up the position
of one who virtually says: “To fast may be right for you, the followers of John:
not to fast is equally right for my followers.” How grateful to Christ’s
feelings it must have been that He could assume this tolerant attitude on a
question in which the name of John was mixed up! For He had a deep respect for
the forerunner and his work, and ever spoke of him in most generous terms of
appreciation; now calling him a burning and a shining lamp, and at another time
declaring him not only a prophet but something more. And we may remark in
passing, that John reciprocated these kindly feelings, and had no sympathy with
the petty jealousies in which his disciples sometimes indulged. The two great
ones, both of them censured for different reasons by their degenerate
contemporaries, ever spoke of each other to their disciples and to the public in
terms of affectionate respect; the lesser light magnanimously confessing his
inferiority, the greater magnifying the worth of His humble fellow-servant. What
a refreshing contrast was thus presented to the mean passions of envy,
prejudice, and detraction so prevalent in other quarters, under whose malign
influence men of whom better things might have been expected spoke of John as a
madman, and of Jesus as immoral and profane!

Passing from the manner to the matter of the reply, we notice that, for the
purpose of vindicating His disciples, Jesus availed Himself of a metaphor
suggested by a memorable word uttered concerning Himself at an earlier period by
the master of those who now examined Him. To certain disciples who complained
that men were leaving him and going to Jesus, John had said in effect: “Jesus is
the Bridegroom, I am but the Bridegroom’s friend; therefore it is right that men
should leave me and join Jesus.” Jesus now takes up the Baptist’s words, and
turns them to account for the purpose of defending the way of life pursued by
His disciples. His reply, freely paraphrased, is to this effect: “I am the
Bridegroom, as your master said; it is right that the children of the
bride-chamber come to me; and it is also right that, when they have come, they
should adapt their mode of life to their altered circumstances. Therefore they
do well not to fast, for fasting is the expression of sadness, and how should
they be sad in my company? As well might men be sad at a marriage festival. The
days will come when the children of the bride-chamber shall be sad, for the
Bridegroom will not always be with them; and at the dark hour of His departure
it will be natural and seasonable for them to fast, for then they shall be in a
fasting mood-weeping, lamenting, sorrowful, and disconsolate.” The principle
underlying this graphic representation is, that fasting should not be a matter
of fixed mechanical rule, but should have reference to the state of mind; or,
more definitely, that men should fast when they are sad, or in a state of mind
akin to sadness-absorbed, pre-occupied-as at some great solemn crisis in the
life of an individual or a community, such as that in the history of Peter, when
he was exercised on the great question of the admission of the Gentiles to the
church, or such as that in the history of the Christian community at Antioch,
when they were about to ordain the first missionaries to the heathen world.
Christ’s doctrine, clearly and distinctly indicated here, is that fasting in any
other circumstances is forced, unnatural, unreal; a thing which men may be made
to do as a matter of form, but which they do not with their heart and soul. “Can
ye make the children of the bride-chamber fast while the bridegroom is with
them?” He asked, virtually asserting that it was impossible. By this rule the
disciples of our Lord were justified, and yet John’s were not condemned. It was
admitted to be natural for them to fast, as they were mournful, melancholy,
unsatisfied. They had not found Him who was the Desire of all nations, the Hope
of the future, the Bridegroom of the soul. They only knew that all was wrong;
and in their querulous, despairing mood they took pleasure in fasting, and
wearing coarse raiment, and frequenting lonely, desolate regions, living as
hermits, a practical protest against an ungodly age. The message that the
kingdom was at hand had indeed been preached to them also; but as proclaimed by
John the announcement was awful news, not good news, and made them anxious and
dispirited, not glad. Men in such a mood could not do otherwise than fast;
though whether they did well to continue in that mood after the Bridegroom had
come, and had been announced to them as such by their own master, is another
matter. Their grief was wilful, idle, causeless, when He had appeared who was to
take away the sin of the world.

Jesus had yet more to say in reply to the questions addressed to Him. Things new
and unusual need manifold apology, and therefore to the beautiful similitude of
the children of the bride-chamber He added two other equally suggestive
parables: those, viz., of the new patch on the old garment, and the new wine in
old skins. The design of these parables is much the same as that of the first
part of His reply, viz., to enforce the law of congruity in relation to fasting
and similar matters; that is, to show that in all voluntary religious service,
where we are free to regulate our own conduct, the outward act should be made to
correspond with the inward condition of mind, and that no attempt should be made
to force particular acts or habits on men without reference to that
correspondence. “In natural things,” He meant to say, “we observe this law of
congruity. No man putteth a piece of unfulled cloth on an old garment. Neither
do men put new wine into old skins, and that not merely out of regard to
propriety, but to avoid bad consequences. For if the rule of congruity be
neglected, the patched garment will be torn by the contraction of the new cloth;
and the old skin bottles will burst under the fermenting force of the new
liquor, and the wine will be spilled and lost.” The old cloth and old bottles in
these metaphors represent old ascetic fashions in religion; the new cloth and
the new wine represent the new joyful life in Christ, not possessed by those who
tenaciously adhered to the old fashions. The parables were applied primarily to
Christ’s own age, but they admit of application to all transition epochs;
indeed, they find new illustration in almost every generation. The force of
these homely parables as arguments in vindication of departure from current
usage in matters of religion may be evaded in either of two ways. First, their
relevancy may be denied; i.e., it may be denied that religious beliefs are of
such a nature as to demand congenial modes of expression, under penalties if the
demand is not complied with. This position is usually assumed virtually or
openly by the patrons of use and wont. Conservative minds have for the most part
a very inadequate conception of the vital force of belief. Their own belief,
their spiritual life altogether, is often a feeble thing, and they imagine
tameness or pliancy must be an attribute of other men’s faith also. Nothing but
dire experience will convince them that they are mistaken; and when the proof
comes in the shape of an irrepressible revolutionary outburst, they are
stupefied with amazement. Such men learn nothing from the history of previous
generations; for they persist in thinking that their own case will be an
exception. Hence the vis inertiae of established custom evermore insists on
adherence to what is old, till the new wine proves its power by producing an
explosion needlessly wasteful, by which both wine and bottles often perish, and
energies which might have quietly wrought out a beneficent reformation are
perverted into blind powers of indiscriminate destruction.

Or, in the second place, the relevancy of these metaphors being admitted in
general terms, it may be denied that a new wine (to borrow the form of
expression from the second, more suggestive metaphor) has come into existence.
This was virtually the attitude assumed by the Pharisees towards Christ. “What
have you brought?” they asked Him in effect, “to your disciples, that they
cannot live as others do, but must needs invent new religious habits for
themselves? This new life of which you boast is either a vain pretence, or an
illegitimate, spurious thing, not worthy of toleration, and the waste of which
would be no matter for regret.” Similar was the attitude assumed towards Luther
by the opponents of the Reformation. They said to him in effect: “If this new
revelation of yours, that sinners are justified by faith alone, were true, we
admit that it would involve very considerable modification in religious opinion,
and many alterations in religious practice. But we deny the truth of your
doctrine, we regard the peace and comfort you find in it as a hallucination; and
therefore we insist that you return to the time-honored faith, and then you will
have no difficulty in acquiescing in the long-established practice.” The same
thing happens to a greater or less extent every generation; for new wine is
always in course of being produced by the eternal vine of truth, demanding in
some particulars of belief and practice new bottles for its preservation, and
receiving for answer an order to be content with the old ones.

Without going the length of denunciation or direct attempt at suppression, those
who stand by the old often oppose the new by the milder method of disparagement.
They eulogize the venerable past, and contrast it with the present, to the
disadvantage of the latter. “The old wine is vastly superior to the new: how
mellow, mild, fragrant, wholesome, the one! how harsh and fiery the other!”
Those who say so are not the worst of men: they are often the best-the men of
taste and feeling, the gentle, the reverent, and the good, who are themselves
excellent samples of the old vintage. Their opposition forms by far the most
formidable obstacle to the public recognition and toleration of what is new in
religious life; for it naturally creates a strong prejudice against any cause
when the saintly disapprove of it.

Observe, then, how Christ answers the honest admirers of the old wine. He
concedes the point: He admits that their preference is natural. Luke represents
Him as saying, in the conclusion of His reply to the disciples of the Baptist:
“No man also, having drunk old wine, desireth the new; for he saith, The old is
good.” This striking sentiment exhibits rare candor in stating the case of
opponents, and not less rare modesty and tact in stating the case of friends. It
is as if Jesus had said: “I do not wonder that you love the old wine of Jewish
piety, fruit of a very ancient vintage; or even that you dote upon the very
bottles which contain it, covered over with the dust and cobwebs of ages. But
what then? Do men object to the existence of new wine, or refuse to have it in
their possession, because the old is superior in flavor? No: they drink the old,
but they carefully preserve the new, knowing that the old will get exhausted,
and that the new, however harsh, will mend with age, and may ultimately be
superior even in flavor to that which is in present use. Even so should you
behave towards the new wine of my kingdom. You may not straightway desire it,
because it is strange and novel; but surely you might deal more wisely with it
than merely to spurn it, or spill and destroy it!”

Too seldom for the church’s good have lovers of old ways understood Christ’s
wisdom, and lovers of new ways sympathized with His charity. A celebrated
historian has remarked: “It must make a man wretched, if, when on the threshold
of old age, he looks on the rising generation with uneasiness, and does not
rather rejoice in beholding it; and yet this is very common with old men. Fabius
would rather have seen Hannibal unconquered than see his own fame obscured by
Scipio.” There are always too many Fabii in the world, who are annoyed because
things will not remain stationary, and because new ways and new men are ever
rising up to take the place of the old. Not less rare, on the other hand, is
Christ’s charity among the advocates of progress. Those who affect freedom
despise the stricter sort as fanatics and bigots, and drive on changes without
regard to their scruples, and without any appreciation of the excellent
qualities of the “old wine.” When will young men and old men, liberals and
conservatives, broad Christians and narrow, learn to bear with one another; yea,
to recognize each in the other the necessary complement of his own
one-sidedness?

Section II - Ritual Ablutions Mat 15:1-20; Mark 7:1-23; Luk 11:37-41. The happy
free society of Jesus, which kept bridal hightide when others fasted, was in
this further respect singular in its manners, that its members took their meals
unconcerned about existing usages of purification. They ate bread with “defiled,
that is to say, with unwashen hands.” Such was their custom, it may be assumed,
from the beginning, though the practice does not appear to have become the
subject of animadversion till an advanced period in the ministry of our Lord, at
least in a way that gave rise to incidents worthy of notice in the Gospel
records. Even at the marriage in Cana, where were set six water-pots of stone
for the purposes of purifying, Christ and His disciples are to be conceived as
distinguished from the other guests by a certain inattention to ritual
ablutions. This we infer from the reasons by which the neglect was defended when
it was impugned, which virtually take up the position that the habit condemned
was not only lawful, but incumbent-a positive duty in the actual circumstances
of Jewish society, and therefore, of course, a duty which could at no time be
neglected by those who desired to please God rather than men. But indeed it
needs no proof that one of such grave earnest spirit as Jesus could never have
paid any regard to the trifling regulations about washing before eating invented
by the “elders.”

These regulations were no trifles in the eyes of the Pharisees; and therefore we
are not surprised to learn that the indifference with which they were treated by
Jesus and the twelve provoked the censure of that zealous sect of religionists
on at least two occasions, adverted to in the Gospel narratives. On one of these
occasions, certain Pharisees and scribes, who had followed Christ from Jerusalem
to the north, seeing some of His disciples eat without previously going through
the customary ceremonial ablutions, came to Him, and asked, “Why walk not Thy
disciples according to the traditions of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen
hands?” In the other instance Jesus Himself was the direct object of censure. “A
certain Pharisee,” Luke relates, “besought Jesus to dine with him; and He went
in, and sat (directly) down to meat: and when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled
that He had not first washed before dinner.” Whether the host expressed his
surprise by words or by looks only is not stated; but it was observed by his
guest, and was made an occasion for exposing the vices of the pharisaic
character. “Now,” said the accused, in holy zeal for true purity, “now do ye
Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but your inward part is
full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not He that made that which is
without make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as
ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.” That is to say, the
offending guest charged His scandalized host, and the sect he belonged to, with
sacrificing inward to outward purity, and at the same time taught the important
truth that to the pure all things are pure, and showed the way by which inward
real purity was to be reached, viz., by the practice of that sadly neglected
virtue, humanity or charity. The Lord’s reply in the other encounter with
pharisaic adversaries on the subject of washings was similar in its principle,
but different in form. He told the zealots for purifications, without
periphrasis, that they were guilty of the grave offence of sacrificing the
commandments of God to the commandments of men-to these pet traditions of the
elders. The statement was no libel, but a simple melancholy fact, though its
truth does not quite lie on the surface. This we hope to show in the following
remarks; but before we proceed to that task, we must force ourselves, however
reluctantly, to acquire a little better acquaintance with the contemptible
senilities whose neglect once seemed so heinous a sin to persons deeming
themselves holy. The aim of the rabbinical prescriptions respecting washings was
not physical cleanliness, but something thought to be far higher and more
sacred. Their object was to secure, not physical, but ceremonial purity; that
is, to cleanse the person from such impurity as might be contracted by contact
with a Gentile, or with a Jew in a ceremonially unclean state, or with an
unclean animal, or with a dead body or any part thereof. To the regulations in
the law of Moses respecting such uncleanness the rabbis added a vast number of
additional rules on their own responsibility, in a self-willed zeal for the
scrupulous observance of the Mosaic precepts. They issued their commandments, as
the Church of Rome has issued hers, under the pretext that they were necessary
as means towards the great end of fulfilling strictly the commandments of God.
The burdens laid on men’s shoulders by the scribes on this plausible ground
were, by all accounts, indeed most grievous. Not content with purifications
prescribed in the law for uncleanness actually contracted, they made provision
for merely possible cases. If a man did not remain at home all day, but went out
to market, he must wash his hands on his return, because it was possible that he
might have touched some person or thing ceremonially unclean. Great care, it
appears, had also to be taken that the water used in the process of ablution was
itself perfectly pure; and it was necessary even to apply the water in a
particular manner to the hands, in order to secure the desired result. Without
travelling beyond the sacred record, we find, in the items of information
supplied by Mark respecting prevailing Jewish customs of purification, enough to
show to what ridiculous lengths this momentous business of washing was carried.
“Many other things,” remarks he quaintly, and not without a touch of quiet
satire, “there be which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups and
pots, brazen vessels, and of tables.” All things, in short, used in connection
with food-in cooking it, or in placing it on the table-had to be washed, not
merely as people might wash them now to remove actual impurity, but to deliver
them from the more serious uncleanness which they might possibly have contracted
since last used, by touching some person or thing not technically clean. A kind
and measure of purity, in fact, were aimed at incompatible with life in this
world. The very air of heaven was not clean enough for the doting patrons of
patristic traditions; for, not to speak of other more real sources of
contamination, the breeze, in blowing over Gentile lands to the sacred land of
Jewry, had contracted defilement which made it unfit to pass into ritualistic
lungs till it had been sifted by a respirator possessing the magic power to
cleanse it from its pollution. The extravagant fanatical zeal of the Jews in
these matters is illustrated in the Talmud by stories which, although belonging
to a later age, may be regarded as a faithful reflection of the spirit which
animated the Pharisees in the time of our Lord. Of these stories the following
is a sample: “Rabbi Akiba was thrown by the Christians into prison, and Rabbi
Joshua brought him every day as much water as sufficed both for washing and for
drinking. But on one occasion it happened that the keeper of the prison got the
water to take in, and spilled the half of it. Akiba saw that there was too
little water, but nevertheless said, Give me the water for my hands. His brother
rabbi replied, My master, you have not enough for drinking. But Akiba replied,
He who eats with unwashed hands perpetrates a crime that ought to be punished
with death. Better for me to die of thirst than to transgress the traditions of
my ancestors.” Rabbi Akiba would rather break the sixth commandment, and be
guilty of self-murder, than depart from the least punctilio of a fantastic
ceremonialism; illustrating the truth of the declaration made by Christ in His
reply to the Pharisees, which we now proceed to consider.

It was not to be expected that, in defending His disciples from the frivolous
charge of neglecting the washing of hands, Jesus would show much respect for
their accusers. Accordingly, we observe a marked difference between the tone of
His reply in the present case, and that of His answer to John’s disciples.
Towards them the attitude assumed was respectfully defensive and apologetic;
towards the present interrogants the attitude assumed is offensive and
denunciatory. To John’s disciples Jesus said, “Fasting is right for you: not to
fast is equally right for my disciples.” To the Pharisees He replies by a retort
which at once condemns their conduct and justifies the behavior which they
challenged. “Why,” ask they, “do Thy disciples transgress the traditions of the
elders?” “Why,” asked He in answer, “do ye also transgress the commandments of
God by your traditions?” as if to say, “It becomes not you to judge; you, who
see the imaginary mote in the eye of a brother, have a beam in your own.” This
spirited answer was something more than a mere retort or et tu quoque argument.
Under an interrogative form it enunciated a great principle, viz., that the
scrupulous observance of human traditions in matters of practice leads by a sure
path to a corresponding negligence and unscrupulousness in reference to the
eternal laws of God. Hence Christ’s defence of His disciples was in substance
this: “I and my followers despise and neglect those customs because we desire to
keep the moral law. Those washings, indeed, may not seem seriously to conflict
with the great matters of the law, but to be at worst only trifling and
contemptible. But the case is not so. To treat trifles as serious matters, as
matters of conscience, which ye do, is degrading and demoralizing. No man can do
that without being or becoming a moral imbecile, or a hypocrite: either one who
is incapable of discerning between what is vital and what not in morals, or one
who finds his interest in getting trifles, such as washing of hands, or paying
tithe of herbs, to be accepted as the important matters, and the truly great
things of the law-justice, mercy, and faith-quietly pushed aside as if they were
of no moment whatever.” The whole history of religion proves the truth of these
views. A ceremony and tradition ridden time is infallibly a morally corrupt
time. Hypocrites ostensibly zealots, secretly atheists; profligates taking out
their revenge in licentiousness for having been compelled, by tyrannous custom
or intolerant ecclesiastical authorities, to conform outwardly to practices for
which they have no respect; priests of the type of the sons of Eli, gluttonous,
covetous, wanton: such are the black omens of an age in which ceremonies are
every thing, and godliness and virtue nothing. Ritualistic practices, artificial
duties of all kinds, whether originating with Jewish rabbis or with doctors of
the Christian church, are utterly to be abjured. Recommended by their zealous
advocates, often sincerely, as eminently fitted to promote the culture of
morality and piety, they ever prove, in the long run, fatal to both. Well are
they called in the Epistle to the Hebrews “dead works.” They are not only dead,
but death-producing; for, like all dead things, they tend to putrefy, and to
breed a spiritual pestilence which sweeps thousands of souls into perdition. If
they have any life at all, it is life feeding on death, the life of fungi
growing on dead trees; if they have any beauty, it is the beauty of decay, of
autumnal leaves sere and yellow, when the sap is descending down to the earth,
and the woods are about to pass into their winter state of nakedness and
desolation. Ritualism at its best is but the shortlived after-summer of the
spiritual year! very fascinating it may be, but when it cometh, be sure winter
is at the doors. “We all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind,
have taken us away.”

Having brought a grave countercharge against the Pharisees, that of sacrificing
morality to ceremonies, the commandments of God to the traditions of men, Jesus
proceeded forthwith to substantiate it by a striking example and a Scripture
quotation. The example selected was the evasion of the duties arising out of the
fifth commandment, under pretence of a previous religious obligation. God said,
“Honor thy father and mother,” and attached to a breach of the commandment the
penalty of death. The Jewish scribes said, “Call a thing Corban, and you will be
exempt from all obligation to give it away, even for the purpose of assisting
needy parents.” The word Corban in the Mosaic law signifies a gift or offering
to God, of any kind, bloody or bloodless, presented on any occasion, as in the
fulfilment of a vow. In rabbinical dialect it signified a thing devoted to
sacred purposes, and therefore not available for private or secular use. The
traditional doctrine on the subject of Corban was mischievous in two ways. It
encouraged men to make religion an excuse for neglecting morality, and it opened
a wide door to knavery and hypocrisy. It taught that a man might not only by a
vow deny himself the use of things lawful, but that he might, by devoting a
thing to God, relieve himself of all obligation to give to others what, but for
the vow, it would have been his duty to give them. Then, according to the
pernicious system of the rabbis, it was not necessary really to give the thing
to God in order to be free of obligation to give it to man. It was enough to
call it Corban. Only pronounce that magic word over any thing, and forthwith it
was sealed over to God, and sacred from the use of others at least, if not from
your own use. Thus self-willed zeal for the honor of God led to the dishonoring
of God, by taking His name in vain; and practices which at best were chargeable
with setting the first table of the law over against the second, proved
eventually to be destructive of both tables. They made the whole law of God of
none effect by their traditions. The disannulling of the fifth commandment was
but a sample of the mischief the zealots for the commandments of men had
wrought, as is implied in Christ’s concluding words, “Many such like things do
ye.” The Scripture quotation made by our Lord in replying to the Pharisees was
not less apt than the example was illustrative, as pointing out their
characteristic vices, hypocrisy and superstition. They were near to God with
their mouth, they honored Him with their lips, but they were far from Him in
their hearts. Their religion was all on the outside. They scrupulously washed
their hands and their cups, but they took no care to cleanse their polluted
souls. Then, in the second place, their fear of God was taught by the precept of
men. Human prescriptions and traditions were their guide in religion, which they
followed blindly, heedless how far these commandments of men might lead them
from the paths of righteousness and true godliness. The prophetic word was
quick, powerful, sharp, searching, and conclusive. Nothing more was needed to
confound the Pharisees, and nothing more was said to them at this time. The
sacred oracle was the fitting conclusion of an unanswerable argument against the
patrons of tradition. But Jesus had compassion on the poor multitude who were
being misled to their ruin by their blind spiritual guides, and therefore He
took the opportunity of addressing a word to those who stood around on the
subject of dispute. What He had to say to them He expressed in the terse,
pointed form of a proverb: “Hear and understand: not that which goeth into the
mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a
man.” This was a riddle to be solved, a secret of wisdom to be searched out, a
lesson in religion to be conned. Its meaning, though probably understood by few
at the moment, was very plain. It was simply this: “Pay most attention to the
cleansing of the heart, not, like the Pharisees, to the cleansing of the hands.
When the heart is pure, all is pure; when the heart is impure, all outward
purification is vain. The defilement to be dreaded is not that from meat
ceremonially unclean, but that which springs from a carnal mind, the defilement
of evil thoughts, evil passions, evil habits.” This passing word to the
bystanders became the subject of a subsequent conversation between Jesus and His
disciples, in which He took occasion to justify Himself for uttering it, and
explained to them its meaning. The Pharisees had heard the remark, and were
naturally offended by it, as tending to weaken their authority over the popular
conscience. The twelve observed their displeasure, perhaps they overheard their
comments; and, fearing evil consequences, they came and informed their Master,
probably with a tone which implied a secret regret that the speaker had not been
less outspoken. Be that as it may, Jesus gave them to understand that it was not
a case for forbearance, compromise, or timid, time-serving, prudential policy;
the ritualistic tendency being an evil plant which must be uprooted, no matter
with what offence to its patrons. He pleaded, in defence of His plainness of
speech, His concern for the souls of the ignorant people whose guides the
Pharisees claimed to be. “Let them alone, what would follow? Why, the blind
leaders and the blindly led would fall together into the ditch. Therefore if the
leaders be so hopelessly wedded to their errors that they cannot be turned from
them, let us at least try to save their comparatively ignorant victims.” The
explanation of the proverbial word spoken to the people Jesus gave to His
disciples by request of Peter. It is rudely plain and particular, because
addressed to rudely ignorant hearers. It says over again, in the strongest
possible language, that to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man, because
nothing entering the mouth can come near the soul; that the defilement to be
dreaded, the only defilement worth speaking of, is that of an evil, unrenewed
heart, out of which proceed thoughts, words, and acts which are offences against
the holy, pure law of God. The concluding words, “purging all meats,” have,
however, a peculiar significance, if we adopt the reading approved by critics:
“This He said, purging all meats.” In that case we have the evangelist giving
his own opinion of the effect of Christ’s words, viz., that they amounted to an
abrogation of the ceremonial distinction between clean and unclean. A very
remarkable comment, as coming from the man to whom we are indebted for the
report of the preaching of that apostle who in his disciple days called forth
the declaration, and who had the vision of the sheet let down from heaven. The
evangelist having given us his comment, we may add ours. We observe that our
Lord is here silent concerning the ceremonial law of Moses (to which the
traditions of the elders were a supplement), and speaks only of the commandments
of God, i.e. the precepts of the decalogue. The fact is significant, as showing
in what direction He had come to destroy, and in what to fulfil. Ceremonialism
was to be abolished, and the eternal laws of morality were to become all in all.
Men’s consciences were to be delivered from the burden of outward positive
ordinances, that they might be free to serve the living God, by keeping His ten
words, or the one royal law of love. And it is the duty of the church to stand
fast in the liberty Christ designed and purchased for her, and to be jealous of
all human traditions out of holy zeal for the divine will, shunning superstition
on the one side, and the licentious freedom of godless libertinism on the other.
Christ’s true followers wish to be free, but not to do as they like; rather to
do what God requires of them. So minded, they reject unceremoniously all human
authority in religion, thereby separating themselves from the devotees to
tradition; and at the same time, as God’s servants, they reverence His word and
His law, thereby putting a wide gulf between them and the lawless and
disobedient, who side with movements of religious reform, not in order to get
something better in the place of what is rejected, but to get rid of all moral
restraint in matters human or divine.

Section III - Sabbath Observance Mat 12:1-14; Mark 2:23-28; Mark 3:1-6; Luk
6:1-11; Luk 13:10-16; Luk 14:1-6; John 5:1-18; John 9:13-17. In no part of their
conduct were Jesus and His disciples more frequently found fault with than in
respect to their mode of observing the Sabbath. Six distinct instances of
offence given or taken on this score are recorded in the Gospel history; in five
of which Jesus Himself was the offender, while in the remaining instance His
disciples were at least the ostensible objects of censure. The offences of Jesus
were all of one sort; His crime was, that on the Sabbath-day He wrought works of
healing on the persons of men afflicted respectively with palsy, a withered
hand, blindness, dropsy, and on the body of a poor woman “bowed together” by an
infirmity of eighteen years’ standing. The offence of the disciples, on the
other hand, was that, while walking along a way which lay through a corn-field,
they stepped aside and plucked some ears of grain for the purpose of satisfying
their hunger. This was not theft, for it was permitted by the law of Moses; but
nevertheless it was, in the judgment of the Pharisees, Sabbath-breaking. It was
contrary to the command, “Thou shalt not work;” for to pluck some ears was
reaping on a small scale, and to rub them was a species of threshing!

These offences, deemed so grave when committed, seem very small at this
distance. All the transgressions of the Sabbath law charged against Jesus were
works of mercy; and the one transgression of the disciples was for them a work
of necessity, and the toleration of it was for others a duty of mercy, so that
in condemning them the Pharisees had forgotten that divine word: “I will have
mercy, and not sacrifice.” It is, indeed, hard for us now to conceive how any
one could be serious in regarding such actions as breaches of the Sabbath,
especially the harmless act of the twelve. There is a slight show of
plausibility in the objection taken by the ruler of the synagogue to miraculous
cures wrought on the seventh day: “There are six days on which men ought to
work; in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath-day.” The
remark was specially plausible with reference to the case which had provoked the
ire of the dignitary of the synagogue. A woman who had been a sufferer for
eighteen years might surely bear her trouble one day more, and come and be
healed on the morrow! But on what pretence could the disciples be blamed as
Sabbath-breakers for helping themselves to a few ears of corn? To call such an
act working was too ridiculous. Men who found a Sabbatic offence here must have
been very anxious to catch the disciples of Jesus in a fault. On the outlook for
faults we have no doubt the Pharisees were; and yet we must admit that, in
condemning the act referred to, they were acting faithfully in accordance with
their theoretical views and habitual tendencies. Their judgment on the conduct
of the twelve was in keeping with their traditions concerning washings, and
their tithing of mint and other garden herbs, and their straining of gnats out
of their wine-cup. Their habit, in all things, was to degrade God’s law by
framing innumerable petty rules for its better observance, which, instead of
securing that end, only made the law appear base and contemptible. In no case
was this miserable micrology carried greater lengths than in connection with the
fourth commandment. With a most perverse ingenuity, the most insignificant
actions were brought within the scope of the prohibition against labor. Even in
the case put by our Lord, that of an animal fallen into a pit, it was deemed
lawful to lift it out-so at least those learned in rabbinical lore tell us-only
when to leave it there till Sabbath was past would involve risk to life. When
delay was not dangerous, the rule was to give the beast food sufficient for the
day; and if there was water in the bottom of the pit, to place straw and
bolsters below it, that it might not be drowned.

Yet with all their strictness in abstaining from every thing bearing the
faintest resemblance to work, the Jews were curiously lax in another direction.
While scrupulously observing the law which prohibited the cooking of food on
Sabbath, they did not make the holy day by any means a day of fasting. On the
contrary, they considered it their duty to make the Sabbath a day of feasting
and good cheer. In fact, it was at a Sabbath feast, given by a chief man among
the Pharisees, that one of the Sabbath miracles was wrought for which Jesus was
put upon His defence. At this feast were numerous guests, Jesus Himself being
one-invited, it is to be feared, with no friendly feelings, but rather in the
hope of finding something against Him concerning the Sabbatic law. “It came to
pass,” we read in Luke, “as He (Jesus) went into the house of one of the rulers
of the Pharisees to eat bread on a Sabbath-day, that they were watching Him.
They set a trap, and hoped to catch in it Him whom they hated without cause; and
they got for their pains such searching, humbling table-talk as they had
probably never heard before. This habit of feasting had grown to a great abuse
in the days of Augustine, as appears from the description he gives of the mode
in which contemporary Jews celebrated their weekly holiday. “Today,” he writes,
“is the Sabbath, which the Jews at the present time keep in loose, luxurious
ease, for they occupy their leisure in frivolity; and whereas God commanded a
Sabbath, they spend it in those things which God forbids. Our rest is from evil
works, theirs is from good works; for it is better to plough than to dance. They
rest from good work, they rest not from idle work.” From the folly and pedantry
of scribes and Pharisees we gladly turn to the wisdom of Jesus, as revealed in
the animated, deep, and yet sublimely simple replies made by Him to the various
charges of Sabbath-breaking brought against Himself and His disciples. Before
considering these replies in detail, we premise one general remark concerning
them all. In none of these apologies or defences does Jesus call in question the
obligation of the Sabbath law. On that point He had no quarrel with His
accusers. His argument in this instance is entirely different from the line of
defence adopted in reference to fasting and purifications. In regard to fasting,
the position He took up was: Fasting is a voluntary matter, and men may fast or
not as they are disposed. In regard to purification His position was: Ceremonial
ablutions at best are of secondary moment, being mere types of inward purity,
and as practised now, lead inevitably to the utter ignoring of spiritual purity,
and therefore must be neglected by all who are concerned for the great interests
of morality. But in reference to the alleged breaches of the Sabbath, the
position Jesus took up was this: These acts which you condemn are not
transgressions of the law, rightly apprehended, in its spirit and principle. The
importance of the law was conceded, but the pharisaic interpretation of its
meaning was rejected. An appeal was made from their pedantic code of regulations
about Sabbath observance to the grand design and principle of the law; and the
right was asserted to examine all rules in the light of the principle, and to
reject or disregard those in which the principle had either been mistakenly
applied, or, as was for the most part the case with the Pharisees, lost sight of
altogether. The key to all Christ’s teaching on the Sabbath, therefore, lies in
His conception of the original design of that divine institution. This
conception we find expressed with epigrammatic point and conciseness, in
contrast to the pharisaic idea of the Sabbath, in words uttered by Jesus on the
occasion when He was defending His disciples. “The Sabbath,” said He, “was made
for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” In other words, His doctrine was this:
The Sabbath was meant to be a boon to man, not a burden; it was not a day taken
from man by God in an exacting spirit, but a day given by God in mercy to
man-God’s holiday to His subjects; all legislation enforcing its observance
having for its end to insure that all should really get the benefit of the
boon-that no man should rob himself, and still less his fellow-creatures, of the
gracious boon. This difference between Christ’s mode of regarding the Sabbath
and the pharisaic involves of necessity a corresponding difference in the spirit
and the details of its observance. Take Christ’s view, and your principle
becomes: That is the best way of observing the Sabbath which is most conducive
to man’s physical and spiritual well-being-in other words, which is best for his
body and for his soul; and in the light of this principle, you will keep the
holy day in a spirit of intelligent joy and thankfulness to God the Creator for
His gracious consideration towards His creatures. Take the pharisaic view, and
your principle of observance becomes: He best keeps the Sabbath who goes
greatest lengths in mere abstinence from any thing that can be construed into
labor, irrespective of the effect of this abstinence either on his own
well-being or on that of others. In short, we land in the silly, senseless
minuteness of a rabbinical legislation, which sees in such an act as that of the
disciples plucking and rubbing the ears of corn, or that of the healed man who
carried his bed home on his shoulders, or that of one who should walk a greater
distance than two thousand cubits, or three-fourths of a mile, on a Sabbath, a
heinous offence against the fourth commandment and its Author. A Sabbath
observance regulated by the principle that the institution was made for man’s
good, obviously involves two great general uses-rest for the body, and worship
as the solace of the spirit. We should rest from servile labor on the divinely
given holiday, and we should lift up our hearts in devout thought to Him who
made all things at the first, who “worketh hitherto,” preserving the creation in
being and well-being, and whose tender compassion towards sinful men is great,
passing knowledge. These things are both necessary to man’s true good, and
therefore must enter as essential elements of a worthy Sabbath observance.

But, on the other hand, the Sabbath being made for man, the two general
requirements of rest and worship may not be so pressed that they shall become
hostile to man’s well-being, and in effect self-destructive, or mutually
destructive. The rule, “Thou shalt rest,” must not be so applied as to exclude
all action and all work; for absolute inaction is not rest, and entire
abstinence from work of every description would often-times be detrimental both
to private and to public well-being. Room must be left for acts of “necessity
and mercy;” and too peremptory as well as too minute legislation as to what are
and what are not acts of either description must be avoided, as these may vary
for different persons, times, and circumstances, and men may honestly differ in
opinion in such details who are perfectly loyal to the great broad principles of
Sabbath sanctification. In like manner, the rule, “Thou shalt worship,” must not
be so enforced as to make religious duties irksome and burdensome-a mere
mechanical, legal service; or so as to involve the sacrifice of the other great
practical end of the Sabbath, viz., rest to the animal nature of man. Nor may
men dictate to each other as to the means of worship any more than as to the
amount; for one may find helps to devotion in means which to another would prove
a hindrance and a distraction.

It was only in regard to cessation from work that pharisaic legislation and
practice anent Sabbath observance were carried to superstitious and vexatious
excess. The Sabbatic mania was a monomania, those affected thereby being mad
simply on one point, the stringent enforcement of rest. Hence the peculiar
character of all the charges brought against Christ and His disciples, and also
of His replies. The offences committed were all works deemed unlawful; and the
defences all went to show that the works done were not contrary to law when the
law was interpreted in the light of the principle that the Sabbath was made for
man. They were works of necessity or of mercy, and therefore lawful on the
Sabbath-day.

Jesus drew His proofs of this position from three sources: Scripture history,
the everyday practice of the Pharisees themselves, and the providence of God. In
defence of His disciples, He referred to the case of David eating the shewbread
when he fled to the house of God from the court of King Saul, and to the
constant practice of the priests in doing work for the service of the temple on
Sabbath-days, such as offering double burnt-offerings, and removing the stale
shewbread from the holy place, and replacing it by hot loaves. David’s case
proved the general principle that necessity has no law, hunger justifying his
act, as it should also have justified the act of the disciples even in pharisaic
eyes. The practice of the priests showed that work merely as work is not
contrary to the law of the Sabbath, some works being not only lawful, but
incumbent on that day. The argument drawn by Jesus from common practice was well
fitted to silence captious critics, and to suggest the principle by which His
own conduct could be defended. It was to this effect: “You would lift an ox or
an ass out of a pit on Sabbath, would you not? Why? To save life? Why then
should not I heal a sick person for the same reason? Or is a beast’s life of
more importance than that of a human being? Or again: Would you scruple to loose
your ox or your ass from the stall on the day of rest, and lead him away to
watering? If not, why object to me when on the Sabbath-day I release a poor
human victim from a bondage of eighteen years’ duration, that she may draw water
out of the wells of salvation?” The argument is irresistible, the conclusion
inevitable; that it is lawful, dutiful, most seasonable, to do well on the
Sabbath-day. How blind they must have been to whom so obvious a proposition
needed to be proved! how oblivious of the fact that love is the foundation and
fulfilment of all law, and that therefore no particular precept could ever be
meant to suspend the operation of that divine principle! The argument from
providence used by Jesus on another occasion was designed to serve the same
purpose with the others, viz., to show the lawfulness of certain kinds of work
on the day of rest. “My Father worketh even until now,” said He to His accusers,
“and I work.” The Son claimed the right to work because and as the Father worked
on all days of the week. The Father worked incessantly for beneficent,
conservative ends, most holy, wisely, and powerfully preserving and governing
all His creatures and all their actions, keeping the planets in their orbits,
causing the sun to rise and shine, and the winds to circulate in their courses,
and the tides to ebb and flow on the seventh day as on all the other six. So
Jesus Christ, the son of God, claimed the right to work, and did work-saving,
restoring, healing; as far as might be bringing fallen nature back to its
pristine state, when God the Creator pronounced all things good, and rested,
satisfied with the world He had brought into being. Such works of beneficence,
by the doctrine of Christ, may always be done on the Sabbath-day: works of
humanity, like those of the physician, or of the teacher of neglected children,
or of the philanthropist going his rounds among the poor and needy, or of the
Christian minister preaching the gospel of peace, and many others, of which men
filled with love will readily bethink themselves, but whereof too many, in the
coldness of their heart, do not so much as dream. Against such works there is no
law save that of churlish, ungenial, pharisaic custom.

One other saying our Lord uttered on the present subject, which carries great
weight for Christians, though it can have had no apologetic value in the opinion
of the Pharisees, but must rather have appeared an aggravation of the offence it
was meant to excuse. We refer to the word, “The Son of man is Lord even of the
Sabbath-day,” uttered by Jesus on the occasion when He defended His disciples
against the charge of Sabbath-breaking. This statement, remarkable, like the
claim made at the same time to be greater than the temple, as an assertion of
superhuman dignity on the part of the meek and lowly One, was not meant as a
pretension to the right to break the law of rest without cause, or to abrogate
it altogether. This is evident from Mark’s account, where the words come in as
an inference from the proposition that the Sabbath was made for man, which could
not logically be made the foundation for a repeal of the statute, seeing it is
the most powerful argument for the perpetuity of the weekly rest. Had the
Sabbath been a mere burdensome restriction imposed on men, we should have
expected its abrogation from Him who came to redeem men from all sorts of
bondage. But was the Sabbath made for man-for man’s good? Then should we expect
Christ’s function to be not that of a repealer, but that of a universal
philanthropic legislator, making what had previously been the peculiar privilege
of Israel a common blessing to all mankind. For the Father sent His Son into the
world to deliver men indeed from the yoke of ordinances, but not to cancel any
of His gifts, which are all “without repentance,” and, once given, can never be
withdrawn.

What, then, does the lordship of Christ over the Sabbath signify? Simply this:
that an institution which is of the nature of a boon to man properly falls under
the control of Him who is the King of grace and the administrator of divine
mercy. He is the best judge how such an institution should be observed; and He
has a right to see that it shall not be perverted from a boon into a burden, and
so put in antagonism to the royal imperial law of love. The Son of man hath
authority to cancel all regulations tending in this direction emanating from
men, and even all by-laws of the Mosaic code savoring of legal rigor, and
tending to veil the beneficent design of the fourth commandment of the
decalogue. He may, in the exercise of His mediatorial prerogative, give the old
institution a new name, alter the day of its celebration, so as to invest it
with distinctively Christian associations congenial to the hearts of believers,
and make it in all the details of its observance subservient to the great ends
of His incarnation. To such effect did the Son of man claim to be Lord of the
Sabbath-day; and His claim, so understood, was acknowledged by the church, when,
following the traces of the apostolic usage, she changed the weekly rest from
the seventh day to the first, that it might commemorate the joyful event of the
resurrection of the Saviour, which lay nearer the heart of a believer than the
old event of the creation, and called the first day by His name, the Lord’s day.
That claim all Christians acknowledge who, looking at the day in the light of
God’s original design, and of Christ’s teaching, example and work, so observe it
as to keep the golden mean between the two extremes of pharisaic rigor and of
Sadducaic laxity: recognizing on the one hand the beneficent ends served by the
institution, and doing their utmost to secure that these ends shall be fully
realized, and, on the other hand, avoiding the petty scrupulosity of a cheerless
legalism, which causes many, especially among the young, to stumble at the law
as a statute of unreasonable arbitrary restriction; avoiding also the bad
pharisaic habit of indulging in over-confident judgments on difficult points of
detail, and on the conduct of those who in such points do not think and act as
they do themselves.

We may not close this chapter, in which we have been studying the lessons in
free yet holy living given by our Lord to His disciples, without adding a
reflection applicable to all the three. By these lessons the twelve were taught
a virtue very necessary for the apostles of a religion in many respects new-the
power to bear isolation and its consequences. When Peter and John appeared
before the Sanhedrin, the rulers marvelled at their boldness, till they
recognized in them companions of Jesus the Nazarene. They seem to have imagined
that His followers were fit for any thing requiring audacity. They were right.
The apostles had strong nerves, and were not easily daunted; and the lessons
which we have been considering help us to understand whence they got their rare
moral courage. They had been accustomed for years to stand alone, and to
disregard the fashion of the world, till at length they could do what was right,
heedless of human criticism, without effort, almost without thought.


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  CHAPTER 41: 02.08.     FIRST ATTEMPTS AT EVANGELISM
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First Attempts at Evangelism Section I - The Mission Mat 10:1-42; Mark 6:7-13,
Mark 6:30-32; Luk 9:1-11. The twelve are now to come before us as active agents
in advancing the kingdom of God. Having been for some time in Christ’s company,
witnessing His miraculous works, hearing His doctrine concerning the kingdom,
and learning how to pray and how to live, they were at length sent forth to
evangelize the towns and villages of their native province, and to heal the sick
in their Master’s name, and by His power. This mission of the disciples as
evangelists or miniature apostles was partly, without doubt, an educational
experiment for their own benefit; but its direct design was to meet the
spiritual necessities of the people, whose neglected condition lay heavy on
Christ’s heart. The compassionate Son of man, in the course of His wanderings,
had observed how the masses of the population were, like a shepherdless flock of
sheep, scattered and torn, and it was His desire that all should know that a
good Shepherd had come to care for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The
multitudes were ready enough to welcome the good news; the difficulty was to
meet the pressing demand of the hour. The harvest, the grain, ready for reaping,
was plenteous, but the laborers were few. In connection with this mission four
things call for special notice: The sphere assigned for the work, the nature of
the work, the instructions for carrying it on, the results of the mission, and
the return of the missionaries. These points we shall consider in their order,
except that, for convenience, we shall reserve Christ’s instructions to His
disciples for the last place, and give them a section to themselves.

1. The sphere of the mission, as described in general terms, was the whole land
of Israel. “Go,” said Jesus to the twelve, “to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel;” and further on, in Matthew’s narrative, He speaks to them as if the
plan of the mission involved a visit to all the cities of Israel. Practically,
however, the operations of the disciples seem to have been restricted to their
native province of Galilee, and even within its narrow limits to have been
carried on rather among the villages and hamlets, than in considerable towns or
cities like Tiberias. The former of these statements is supported by the fact
that the doings of the disciples attracted the attention of Herod the tetrarch
of Galilee, which implies that they took place in his neighborhood; while the
latter is proved by the words of the third evangelist in giving a summary
account of the mission: “They departed and went through the villages (towns,
Eng. Ver.), preaching the gospel, and healing everywhere.”

While the apprentice missionaries were permitted by their instructions to go to
any of the lost sheep of Israel, to all if practicable, they were expressly
forbidden to extend their labors beyond these limits. They were not to go into
the way of the Gentiles, nor enter into any city or town of the Samaritans. This
prohibition arose in part out of the general plan which Christ had formed for
founding the kingdom of God on the earth. His ultimate aim was the conquest of
the world; but in order to do that, He deemed it necessary first to secure a
strong base of operations in the Holy Land and among the chosen people.
Therefore He ever regarded Himself personally as a Messenger of God to the
Jewish nation, seriously giving that as a reason why He should not work among
the heathen, and departing occasionally from the rule only in order to supply in
His own ministry prophetic intimations of an approaching time when Jew and
Samaritan and Gentile should be united on equal terms in one divine
commonwealth. But the principal reason of the prohibition lay in the present
spiritual condition of the disciples themselves. The time would come when Jesus
might say to His chosen ones, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel
to every creature;” but that time was not yet. The twelve, at the period of
their first trial mission, were not fit to preach the gospel, or to do good
works, either among Samaritans or Gentiles. Their hearts were too narrow, their
prejudices too strong: there was too much of the Jew, too little of the
Christian, in their character. For the catholic work of the apostleship they
needed a new divine illumination and a copious baptism with the benignant spirit
of love. Suppose these raw evangelists had gone into a Samaritan village, what
would have happened? In all probability they would have been drawn into disputes
on the religious differences between Samaritans and Jews, in which, of course,
they would have lost their temper; so that, instead of seeking the salvation of
the people among whom they had come, they would rather be in a mood to call down
fire from heaven to consume them, as they actually proposed to do at a
subsequent period.

2. The work intrusted to the twelve was in one department very extensive, and in
the other very limited. They were endowed with unlimited powers of healing, but
their commission was very restricted so far as preaching was concerned. In
regard to the former their instructions were: “Heal the sick, cleanse the
lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give;”
in regard to the latter: “As ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at
hand.” The commission in the one case seems too wide, in the other too narrow;
but in both the wisdom of Jesus is apparent to a deeper consideration. In so far
as miraculous works were concerned, there was no need for restriction, unless it
were to avoid the risk of producing elation and vanity in those who wielded such
wonderful power-a risk which was certainly not imaginary, but which could be
remedied when it assumed tangible form. All the miracles wrought by the twelve
were really wrought by Jesus Himself, their sole function consisting in making a
believing use of His name. This seems to have been perfectly understood by all;
for the works done by the apostles did not lead the people of Galilee to wonder
who they were, but only who and what He was in whose name all these things were
done. Therefore, it being Christ’s will that such miracles should be wrought
through the instrumentality of His disciples, it was just as easy for them to do
the greatest works as to do the smaller; if, indeed, there be any sense in
speaking of degrees of difficulty in connection with miracles, which is more
than doubtful. As regards the preaching, on the other hand, there was not only
reason, but necessity, for restriction. The disciples could do no more than
proclaim the fact that the kingdom was at hand, and bid men everywhere repent,
by way of a preparation for its advent. This was really all they knew
themselves. They did not as yet understand, in the least degree, the doctrine of
the cross; they did not even know the nature of the kingdom. They had, indeed,
heard their Master discourse profoundly thereon, but they had not comprehended
his words. Their ideas respecting the coming kingdom were nearly as crude and
carnal as were those of other Jews, who looked for the restoration of Israel’s
political independence and temporal prosperity as in the glorious days of old.
In one point only were they in advance of current notions. They had learned from
John and from Jesus that repentance was necessary in order to citizenship in
this kingdom. In all other respects they and their hearers were pretty much on a
level. Far from wondering, therefore, that the preaching programme of the
disciples was so limited, we are rather tempted to wonder how Christ could trust
them to open their mouths at all, even on the one topic of the kingdom. Was
there not a danger that men with such crude ideas might foster delusive hopes,
and give rise to political excitement? Nay, may we not discover actual traces of
such excitement in the notice taken of their movements at Herod’s court, and in
the proposal of the multitude not long after, to take Jesus by force to make Him
a king? Doubtless there was danger in this direction; and therefore, while He
could not, to avoid it, leave the poor perishing people uncared for, Jesus took
all possible precautions to obviate mischief as far as might be, by in effect
prohibiting His messengers from entering into detail on the subject of the
kingdom, and by putting a sound form of words into their mouths. They were
instructed to announce the kingdom as a kingdom of heaven; a thing which some
might deem a lovely vision, but which all worldly men would guess to be quite
another thing from what they desired. A kingdom of heaven! What was that to
them? What they wanted was a kingdom of earth, in which they might live
peaceably and happily under just government, and, above all, with plenty to eat
and drink. A kingdom of heaven! That was only for such as had no earthly hope; a
refuge from despair, a melancholy consolation in absence of any better comfort.
Even so, ye worldlings! Only for such as ye deem miserable was the message
meant. To the poor the kingdom was to be preached. To the laboring and heavy
laden was the invitation “Come to me” addressed, and the promise of rest made;
of rest from ambition and discontent, and scheming, carking care, in the blessed
hope of the supernal and the eternal.

3. The impression produced by the labors of the twelve seems to have been very
considerable. The fame of their doings, as already remarked, reached the ears of
Herod, and great crowds appear to have accompanied them as they moved from place
to place. On their return, e.g. from the mission to rejoin the company of their
Master, they were thronged by an eager, admiring multitude who had witnessed or
experienced the benefits of their work, so that it was necessary for them to
withdraw into a desert place in order to obtain a quiet interval of rest. “There
were many,” the second evangelist informs us, “coming and going, and they had no
leisure so much as to eat. And they departed unto a desert place by ship
privately.” Even in the desert solitudes on the eastern shore of the Sea of
Galilee they failed to secure the desired privacy. “The people saw them
departing, and ran afoot thither (round the end of the sea) out of all cities,
and outwent them, and came together unto Him.” In quality the results of the
mission appear to have been much less satisfactory than in their extent. The
religious impressions produced seem to have been in a great measure superficial
and evanescent. There were many blossoms, so to speak, on the apple-tree in the
springtide of this Galilean “revival;” but only a comparatively small number of
them set in fruit, while of these a still smaller number ever reached the stage
of ripe fruit. This we learn from what took place shortly after, in connection
with Christ’s discourse on the bread of life, in the synagogue of Capernaum.
Then the same men who, after the miraculous feeding in the desert, would have
made Christ a king, deserted Him in a body, scandalized by His mysterious
doctrine; and those who did this were, for the most part, just the men who had
listened to the twelve while they preached repentance.

Such an issue to a benevolent undertaking must have been deeply disappointing to
the heart of Jesus. Yet it is remarkable that the comparative abortiveness of
the first evangelistic movement did not prevent Him from repeating the
experiment some time after on a still more extensive scale. “After these
things,” writes the third evangelist, “the Lord appointed other seventy also,
and sent them two and two before His face, into every city and place whither He
Himself would come.” The Tübingen school of critics, indeed, as we have already
indicated, assure us that this mission had no existence, being a pure invention
of the third evangelist, intended to thrust into the shade the mission of the
twelve, and to exhibit the Christian religion as a religion for humanity,
represented by the Samaritans as the recipients, and by the seventy as the
preachers of the faith, the number corresponding to the number of the nations.
The theory is not devoid of plausibility, and it must be owned the history of
this mission is very obscure; but the assumption of invention is violent, and we
may safely take for granted that Luke’s narrative rests on an authentic
tradition. The motive of this second mission was the same as in the case of the
first, as were also the instructions to the missionaries. Jesus still felt deep
compassion for the perishing multitude, and hoping against hope, made a new
attempt to save the lost sheep. He would have all men called at least to the
fellowship of the kingdom, even though few should be chosen to it. And when the
immediate results were promising He was gratified, albeit knowing, from past
experience as well as by divine insight, that the faith and repentance of many
were only too likely to be evanescent as the early dew. When the seventy
returned from their mission, and reported their great success, He hailed it as
an omen of the downfall of Satan’s kingdom, and, rejoicing in spirit, gave
thanks to the Supreme Ruler in heaven and earth, His Father, that while the
things of the kingdom were hid from the wise and the prudent, the people of
intelligence and discretion, they were by His grace revealed unto babes-the
rude, the poor, the ignorant. The reference in the thanksgiving prayer of Jesus
to the “wise and prudent” suggests the thought that these evangelistic efforts
were regarded with disfavor by the refined, fastidious classes of Jewish
religious society. This is in itself probable. There are always men in the
church, intelligent, wise, and even good, to whom popular religious movements
are distasteful. The noise, the excitement, the extravagances, the delusions,
the misdirection of zeal, the rudeness of the agents, the instability of the
converts-all these things offend them. The same class of minds would have taken
offence at the evangelistic work of the twelve and the seventy, for undoubtedly
it was accompanied with the same drawbacks. The agents were ignorant; they had
few ideas in their heads; they understand little of divine truth; their sole
qualification was, that they were earnest and could preach repentance well.
Doubtless, also, there was plenty of noise and excitement among the multitudes
who heard them preach; and we certainly know that their zeal was both
ill-informed and short-lived. These things, in fact, are standing features of
all popular movements. Jonathan Edwards, speaking with reference to the
“revival” of religion which took place in America in his day, says truly: “A
great deal of noise and tumult, confusion and uproar, darkness mixed with light,
and evil with good, is always to be expected in the beginning of something very
glorious in the state of things in human society or the church of God. After
nature has long been shut up in a cold, dead state, when the sun returns in the
spring, there is, together with the increase of the light and heat of the sun,
very tempestuous weather before all is settled, calm, and serene, and all nature
rejoices in its bloom and beauty.”

None of the “wise and prudent” knew half so well as Jesus what evil would be
mixed with the good in the work of the kingdom. But He was not so easily
offended as they. The Friend of sinners was ever like Himself. He sympathized
with the multitude, and could not, like the Pharisees, contentedly resign them
to a permanent condition of ignorance and depravity. He rejoiced greatly over
even one lost sheep restored; and He was, one might say overjoyed, when not one,
but a whole flock, even began to return to the fold. It pleased Him to see men
repenting even for a season, and pressing into the kingdom even rudely and
violently; for His love was strong, and where strong love is, even wisdom and
refinement will not be fastidious.

Before passing from this topic, let us observe that there is another class of
Christians, quite distinct from the wise and prudent, in whose eyes such
evangelistic labors as those of the twelve stand in no need of vindication.
Their tendency, on the contrary, is to regard such labors as the whole work of
the kingdom. Revival of religion among the neglected masses is for them the sum
of all good-doing. Of the more still, less observable work of instruction going
on in the church they take no account. Where there is no obvious excitement, the
church in their view is dead, and her ministry inefficient. Such need to be
reminded that there were two religious movements going on in the days of the
Lord Jesus. One consisted in rousing the mass out of the stupor of indifference;
the other consisted in the careful, exact training of men already in earnest, in
the principles and truths of the divine kingdom. Of the one movement the
disciples, that is, both the twelve and the seventy, were the agents; of the
other movement they were the subjects. And the latter movement, though less
noticeable, and much more limited in extent, was by far more important than the
former; for it was destined to bring forth fruit that should remain-to tell not
merely on the present time, but on the whole history of the world. The deep
truths which the great Teacher was now quietly and unobservedly, as in the dark,
instilling into the minds of a select band, the recipients of His confidential
teaching were to speak in the broad daylight ere long; and the sound of their
voice would not stop till it had gone through all the earth. There would have
been a poor outlook for the kingdom of heaven if Christ had neglected this work,
and given Himself up entirely to vague evangelism among the masses.

4. When the twelve had finished their mission, they returned and told their
Master all that they had done and taught. Of their report, or of His remarks
thereon, no details are recorded. Such details we do find, however, in
connection with the later mission of the seventy. “The seventy,” we read,
“returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us
through Thy name.” The same evangelist from whom these words are quoted, informs
us that, after congratulating the disciples on their success, and expressing His
own satisfaction with the facts reported, Jesus spoke to them the warning word:
“Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but
rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” It was a timely
caution against elation and vanity. It is very probable that a similar word of
caution was addressed to the twelve also after their return. Such a word would
certainly not have been unseasonable in their case. They had been engaged in the
same exciting work, they had wielded the same miraculous powers, they had been
equally successful, they were equally immature in character, and therefore it
was equally difficult for them to bear success. It is most likely, therefore,
that when Jesus said to them on their return, “Come ye yourselves apart into a
desert place, and rest awhile,” He was not caring for their bodies alone, but
was prudently seeking to provide repose for their heated minds as well as for
their jaded frames. The admonition to the seventy is indeed a word in season to
all who are very zealous in the work of evangelism, especially such as are crude
in knowledge and grace. It hints at the possibility of their own spiritual
health being injured by their very zeal in seeking the salvation of others. This
may happen in many ways. Success may make the evangelists vain, and they may
begin to sacrifice unto their own net. They may fall under the dominion of the
devil through their very joy that he is subject unto them. They may despise
those who have been less successful, or denounce them as deficient in zeal. The
eminent American divine already quoted gives a lamentable account of the pride,
presumption, arrogance, conceit, and censoriousness which characterized many of
the more active promoters of religious revival in his day. Once more, they may
fall into carnal security respecting their own spiritual state, deeming it
impossible that any thing can go wrong with those who are so devoted, and whom
God has so greatly owned. An obvious as well as dangerous mistake; for doubtless
Judas took part in this Galilean mission, and, for aught we know to the
contrary, was as successful as his fellow-disciples in casting out devils.
Graceless men may for a season be employed as agents in promoting the work of
grace in the hearts of others. Usefulness does not necessarily imply goodness,
according to the teaching of Christ Himself. “Many,” He declares in the Sermon
on the Mount, “will say unto me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by
Thy name, and by Thy name cast out devils, and by Thy name do many wonderful
works?” And mark the answer which He says He will give such. It is not: I call
in question the correctness of your statement-that is tacitly admitted; it is:
“I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

These solemn words suggest the need of watchfulness and self- examination; but
they are not designed to discourage or discountenance zeal. We must not
interpret them as if they meant, “Never mind doing good, only be good;” or,
“Care not for the salvation of others: look to your own salvation.” Jesus Christ
did not teach a listless or a selfish religion. He inculcated on His disciples a
large-hearted generous concern for the spiritual well-being of men. To foster
such a spirit He sent the twelve on this trial mission, even when they were
comparatively unfitted for the work, and notwithstanding the risk of spiritual
harm to which it exposed them. At all hazards He would have His apostles be
filled with enthusiasm for the advancement of the kingdom; only taking due care,
when the vices to which young enthusiasts are liable began to appear, to check
them by a warning word and a timely retreat into solitude.

Section II - The Instructions The instructions given by Jesus to the twelve in
sending them forth on their first mission, are obviously divisible into two
parts. The first, shorter part, common to the narratives of all the three first
evangelists, relates to the present; the second and much the longer part,
peculiar to Matthew’s narrative, relates mainly to the distant future. In the
former, Christ tells His disciples what to do now in their apprentice
apostleship; in the latter, what they must do and endure when they have become
apostles on the great scale, preaching the gospel, not to Jews only, but to all
nations.

It has been doubted whether the discourse included in the second part of the
apostolic or missionary instructions, as given by Matthew, was really uttered by
Jesus on this occasion. Stress has been laid by those who take the negative view
of this question on the facts that the first evangelist alone gives the
discourse in connection with the trial mission, and that the larger portion of
its contents are given by the other evangelists in other connections. Reference
has also been made, in support of this view, to the statement made by Jesus to
His disciples, in His farewell address to them before the crucifixion, that He
had not till then spoken to them of coming persecutions, and for this reason,
that while He was with them it was unnecessary. Finally, it has been deemed
unlikely that Jesus would frighten His inexperienced disciples by alluding to
dangers not imminent at the time of their mission in Galilee. These doubts, in
view of the topical method of grouping his materials undoubtedly followed by
Matthew, are legitimate, but they are not conclusive. It was natural that Jesus
should signalize the first missionary enterprise of the twelve chosen men by
some such discourse as Matthew records, setting forth the duties, perils,
encouragements, and rewards of the apostolic vocation. It was His way, on solemn
occasions, to speak as a prophet who in the present saw the future, and from
small beginnings looked forward to great ultimate issues. And this Galilean
mission, though humble and limited compared with the great undertaking of after
years, was really a solemn event. It was the beginning of that vast work for
which the twelve had been chosen, which embraced the world in its scope, and
aimed at setting up on earth the kingdom of God. If the Sermon on the Mount was
appropriately delivered on the occasion when the apostolic company was formed,
this discourse on the apostolic vocation was not less appropriate when the
members of that company first put their hands to the work unto which they had
been called. Even the allusions to distant dangers contained in the discourse
appear on reflection natural and seasonable, and calculated to re-assure rather
than to frighten the disciples. It must be remembered that the execution of the
Baptist had recently occurred, and that the twelve were about to commence their
missionary labors within the dominions of the tyrant by whose command the
barbarous murder had been committed. Doubtless these humble men who were to take
up and repeat the Baptist’s message, “Repent,” ran no present risk of his fate;
but it was natural that they should fear, and it was also natural that their
Master should think of their future when such fears would be any thing but
imaginary; and on both accounts it was seasonable to say to them in effect:
Dangers are coming, but fear not.

Such, in substance, is the burden of the second part of Christ’s instructions to
the twelve. Of the first part, on the other hand, the burden is, Care not. These
two words, Care not, Fear not, are the soul and marrow of all that was said by
way of prelude to the first missionary enterprise, and we may add, to all which
might follow. For here Jesus speaks to all ages and to all times, telling the
Church in what spirit all her missionary enterprises must be undertaken and
carried on, that they may have His blessing.

1. The duty of entering on their mission without carefulness, relying on
Providence for the necessaries of life, was inculcated on the twelve by their
Master in very strong and lively terms. They were instructed to procure nothing
for the journey, but just to go as they were. They must provide neither gold nor
silver, nor even so much as brass coin in their purses, no scrip or wallet to
carry food, no change of raiment; not even sandals for their feet, or a staff
for their hands. If they had the last-mentioned articles, good and well; if not,
they could do without them. They might go on their errand of love barefooted,
and without the aid even of a staff to help them on their weary way, having
their feet shod only with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and leaning
their weight upon God’s words of promise, “As thy days, so shall thy strength
be.” In these directions for the way, it is the spirit, and not the mere letter,
which is of intrinsic and permanent value. The truth of this statement is
evident from the very variations of the evangelists in reporting Christ’s words.
One, for example (Mark), makes Him say to His disciples in effect: “If you have
a staff in your hand, and sandals on your feet, and one coat on your back, let
that suffice.” Another (Matthew) represents Jesus as saying: “Provide nothing
for this journey, neither coat, shoes, nor staff.” In spirit the two versions
come to the same thing; but if we insist on the letter of the injunctions with
legal strictness, there is an obvious contradiction between them. What Jesus
meant to say, in whatever form of language He expressed Himself, was this: Go at
once, and go as you are, and trouble not yourselves about food or raiment, or
any bodily want; trust in God for these. His instructions proceeded on the
principle of division of labor, assigning to the servants of the kingdom
military duty, and to God the commissariat department. So understood, the words
of our Lord are of permanent validity, and to be kept in mind by all who would
serve Him in His kingdom. And though the circumstances of the church have
greatly altered since these words were first spoken, they have not been lost
sight of. Many a minister and missionary has obeyed those instructions almost in
their letter, and many more have kept them in their spirit. Nay, has not every
poor student fulfilled these injunctions, who has gone forth from the humble
roof of his parents to be trained for the ministry of the gospel, without money
in his pocket either to buy food or to pay fees, only with simple faith and
youthful hope in his heart, knowing as little how he is to find his way to the
pastoral office, as Abraham knew how to find his way to the promised land when
he left his native abode, but, with Abraham, trusting that He who said to him,
“Leave thy father’s house,” will be his guide, his shield, and his provider? And
if those who thus started on their career do at length arrive at a wealthy
place, in which their wants are abundantly supplied, what is that but an
indorsement by Providence of the law enunciated by the Master: “The workman is
worthy of his meat”? The directions given to the twelve with respect to
temporalities, in connection with their first mission, were meant to be an
education for their future work. On entering on the duties of the apostolate,
they should have to live literally by faith, and Jesus mercifully sought to
inure them to the habit while He was with them on earth. Therefore, in sending
them out to preach in Galilee, He said to them in effect: “Go and learn to seek
the kingdom of God with a single heart, unconcerned about food or raiment; for
till ye can do that ye are not fit to be my apostles.” They had indeed been
learning to do that ever since they began to follow Him; for those who belonged
to His company literally lived from day to day, taking no thought for the
morrow. But there was a difference between their past state and that on which
they were about to enter. Hitherto Jesus had been with them; now they were to be
left for a season to themselves. Hitherto they had been like young children in a
family under the care of their parents, or like young birds in a nest sheltered
by their mother’s wing, and needing only to open their mouths wide in order to
get them filled; now they were to become like boys leaving their father’s house
to serve an apprenticeship, or like fledglings leaving the warm nest in which
they were nursed, to exercise their wings and seek food for themselves.

While requiring His disciples to walk by faith, Jesus gave their faith something
to rest on, by encouraging them to hope that what they provided not for
themselves God would provide for them through the instrumentality of His people.
“Into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and
there abide till ye go thence.” He took for granted, we observe, that there
would always be found at every place at least one good man with a warm heart,
who would welcome the messengers of the kingdom to his house and table for the
pure love of God and of the truth. Surely no unreasonable assumption! It were a
wretched hamlet, not to say town, that had not a single worthy person in it.
Even wicked Sodom had a Lot within its walls who could entertain angels
unawares. To insure good treatment of His servants in all ages wherever the
gospel might be preached, Jesus made it known that He put a high premium on all
acts of kindness done towards them. This advertisement we find at the close of
the address delivered to the twelve at this time: “He that receiveth you,” He
said to them, “receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent
me. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a
prophet’s reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a
righteous man, shall receive a righteous man’s reward.” And then, with increased
pathos and solemnity, He added: “Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these
little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say
unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.” How easy to go forth into
Galilee, yea, into all the world, serving such a sympathetic Master on such
terms! But while thus encouraging the young evangelists, Jesus did not allow
them to go away with the idea that all things would be pleasant in their
experience. He gave them to understand that they should be ill received as well
as kindly received. They should meet with churls who would refuse them
hospitality, and with stupid, careless people who would reject their message;
but even in such cases, He assured them, they should not be without consolation.
If their peaceful salutation were not reciprocated, they should at all events
get the benefit of their own spirit of good-will: their peace would return to
themselves. If their words were not welcomed by any to whom they preached, they
should at least be free from blame; they might shake off the dust from their
feet, and say: “Your blood be upon your own heads, we are clean; we leave you to
your doom, and go elsewhere.” Solemn words, not to be uttered, as they are too
apt to be, especially by young and inexperienced disciples, in pride,
impatience, or anger, but humbly, calmly, deliberately, as a part of God’s
message to men. When uttered in any other spirit, it is a sign that the preacher
has been as much to blame as the hearer for the rejection of his message. Few
have any right to utter such words at all; for it requires rare preaching indeed
to make the fault of unbelieving hearers so great that it shall be more
tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for them. But such
preaching has been. Christ’s own preaching was such, and hence the fearful doom
He pronounced on those who rejected His words. Such also the preaching of the
apostles was to be; and therefore to uphold their authority, Jesus solemnly
declared that the penalty for despising their word would be not less than for
neglecting His own.

2. The remaining instructions, referring to the future rather than to the
present, while much more copious, do not call for lengthened explanation. The
burden of them all, as we have said, is “Fear not.” This exhortation, like the
refrain of a song, is repeated again and again in the course of the address.
From that fact the twelve might have inferred that their future lot was to be of
a kind fitted to inspire fear. But Jesus did not leave them to learn this by
inference; He told them of it plainly. “Behold,” He said, with the whole history
of the church in His view, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves.” Then He went on to explain in detail, and with appalling vividness, the
various forms of danger which awaited the messengers of truth; how they should
be delivered up to councils, scourged in synagogues, brought before governors
and kings (like Felix, Festus, Herod), and hated of all for His name’s sake. He
explained to them, at the same time, that this strange treatment was inevitable
in the nature of things, being the necessary consequence of divine truth acting
in the world like a chemical solvent, and separating men into parties, according
to the spirit which ruled in them. The truth would divide even members of the
same family, and make them bitterly hostile to each other; and however
deplorable the result might be, it was one for which there was no remedy.
Offences must come: “Think not,” He said to His disciples, horrified at the dark
picture, and perhaps secretly hoping that their Master had painted it in too
sombre colors, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to
send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

Amid such dangers two virtues are specially needful-caution and fidelity; the
one, that God’s servants may not be cut off prematurely or unnecessarily, the
other, that while they live, they may really do God’s work, and fight for the
truth. In such times Christ’s disciples must not fear, but be brave and true;
and yet, while fearless, they must not be foolhardy. These qualities it is not
easy to combine; for conscientious men are apt to be rash, and prudent men are
apt to be unfaithful. Yet the combination is not impossible, else it would not
be required, as it is in this discourse. For it was just the importance of
cultivating the apparently incompatible virtues of caution and fidelity that
Jesus meant to teach by the remarkable proverb-precept: “Be wise as serpents,
harmless as doves.” The serpent is the emblem of cunning, the dove of
simplicity. No creatures can be more unlike; yet Jesus requires of His disciples
to be at once serpents in cautiousness, and doves in simplicity of aim and
purity of heart. Happy they who can be both; but if we cannot, let us at least
be doves. The dove must come before the serpent in our esteem, and in the
development of our character. This order is observable in the history of all
true disciples. They begin with spotless sincerity; and after being betrayed by
a generous enthusiasm into some acts of rashness, they learn betimes the
serpent’s virtues. If we invert the order, as too many do, and begin by being
prudent and judicious to admiration, the effect will be that the higher virtue
will not only be postponed, but sacrificed. The dove will be devoured by the
serpent: the cause of truth and righteousness will be betrayed out of a base
regard to self-preservation and worldly advantage. On hearing a general maxim of
morals announced, one naturally wishes to know how it applies to particular
cases. Christ met this wish in connection with the deep, pregnant maxim, “Be
wise as serpents, harmless as doves,” by giving examples of its application. The
first case supposed is that of the messengers of truth being brought up before
civil or ecclesiastical tribunals to answer for themselves. Here the dictate of
wisdom is, “Beware of men,” “Do not be so simple as to imagine all men good,
honest, fair, tolerant. Remember there are wolves in the world-men full of
malice, falsehood, and unscrupulousness, capable of inventing the most atrocious
charges against you, and of supporting them by the most unblushing mendacity.
Keep out of their clutches if you can; and when you fall into their hands,
expect neither candor, justice, nor generosity.” But how are such men to be
answered? Must craft be met with craft, lies with lies? No; here is the place
for the simplicity of the dove. Cunning and craft boot not at such an hour;
safety lies in trusting to Heaven’s guidance, and telling the truth. “When they
deliver you up, take no (anxious) thought how or what ye shall speak; for it
shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that
speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” The counsel given
to the apostles has been justified by experience. What a noble book the speeches
uttered by confessors of the truth under the inspiration of the Divine Spirit,
collected together, would make! It would be a sort of Martyrs’ Bible.

Jesus next puts the case of the heralds of His gospel being exposed to popular
persecutions, and shows the bearing of the maxim upon it likewise. Such
persecutions, as distinct from judicial proceedings, were common in apostolic
experience, and they are a matter of course in all critical eras. The ignorant,
superstitious populace, filled with prejudice and passion, and instigated by
designing men, play the part of obstructives to the cause of truth, mobbing,
mocking, and assaulting the messengers of God. How, then, are the subjects of
this ill-treatment to act? On the one hand, they are to show the wisdom of the
serpent by avoiding the storm of popular ill-will when it arises; and on the
other hand, they are to exhibit the simplicity of the dove by giving the utmost
publicity to their message, though conscious of the risk they run. “When they
persecute you in this city, flee ye into the next;” yet, undaunted by clamor,
calumny, violence, “what I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; what ye
hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops.” To each of these
injunctions a reason is annexed. Flight is justified by the remark, “Verily I
say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of
man be come.” The coming alluded to is the destruction of Jerusalem and the
dispersion of the Jewish nation; and the meaning is, that the apostles would
barely have time, before the catastrophe came, to go over all the land, warning
the people to save themselves from the doom of an untoward generation, so that
they could not well afford to tarry in any locality after its inhabitants had
heard and rejected the message. The souls of all were alike precious; and if one
city did not receive the word, perhaps another would. The reason annexed to the
injunction to give the utmost publicity to the truth, in spite of all possible
dangers, is: “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his
lord.” That is to say: To be evil entreated by the ignorant and violent
multitude is hard to bear, but not harder for you than for me, who already, as
ye know, have had experience of popular malice at Nazareth, and am destined, as
ye know not, to have yet more bitter experience of it at Jerusalem. Therefore
see that ye hide not your light under a bushel to escape the rage of wolfish
men. The disciples are supposed, lastly, to be in peril not merely of trial,
mocking, and violence, but even of their life, and are instructed how to act in
that extremity. Here also the maxim, “Wise as serpents, harmless as doves,”
comes into play in both its parts. In this case the wisdom of the serpent lies
in knowing what to fear. Jesus reminds His disciples that there are two kinds of
deaths, one caused by the sword, the other by unfaithfulness to duty; and tells
them in effect, that while both are evils to be avoided, if possible, yet if a
choice must be made, the latter death is most to be dreaded. “Fear not,” He
said, “them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather
fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell,”-the tempter, that
is, who, when one is in danger, whispers: Save thyself at any sacrifice of
principle or conscience. The simplicity of the dove in presence of extreme peril
consists in childlike trust in the watchful providence of the Father in heaven.
Such trust Jesus exhorted His disciples to cherish in charmingly simple and
pathetic language. He told them that God cared even for sparrows, and reminded
them that, however insignificant they might seem to themselves, they were at
least of more value than many sparrows, not to say than two, whose money value
was just one farthing. If God neglected not even a pair of sparrows, but
provided for them a place in His world where they might build their nest and
safely bring forth their young, would He not care for them as they went forth
two and two preaching the doctrine of the kingdom? Yea! He would; the very hairs
of their head were numbered. Therefore they might go forth without fear,
trusting their lives to His care; remembering also that, at worst, death was no
great evil, seeing that for the faithful was reserved a crown of life, and, for
those who confessed the Son of man, the honor of being confessed by Him in turn
before His Father in heaven.

Such were the instructions of Christ to the twelve when He sent them forth to
preach and to heal. It was a rare, unexampled discourse, strange to the ears of
us moderns, who can hardly imagine such stern requirements being seriously made,
not to say exactly complied with. Some readers of these pages may have stood and
looked up at Mont Blanc from Courmayeur or Chamounix. Such is our attitude
towards this first missionary sermon. It is a mountain at which we gaze in
wonder from a position far below, hardly dreaming of climbing to its summit.
Some noble ones, however, have made the arduous ascent; and among these the
first place of honor must be assigned to the chosen companions of Jesus.


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  CHAPTER 42: 02.09.1.     THE GALILEAN CRISIS
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The Galilean Crisis Section I - The Miracle John 6:1-15; Mat 14:13-21; Mark
6:33-34; Luk 9:11-17.

John 6:1-71 is full of marvels. It tells of a great miracle, a great enthusiasm,
a great storm, a great sermon, a great apostasy, and a great trial of faith and
fidelity endured by the twelve. It contains, indeed, the compendious history of
an important crisis in the ministry of Jesus and the religious experience of His
disciples-a crisis in many respects foreshadowing the great final one, which
happened little more than a year afterwards, when a more famous miracle still
was followed by a greater popularity, to be succeeded in turn by a more complete
desertion, and to end in the crucifixion, by which the riddle of the Capernaum
discourse was solved, and its prophecy fulfilled. The facts recorded by John in
John 6:1-71 may all be comprehended under these four heads: the miracle in the
wilderness, the storm on the lake, the sermon in the synagogue, and the
subsequent sifting of Christ’s disciples. These, in their order, we propose to
consider in four distinct sections. The scene of the miracle was on the eastern
shore of the Galilean Sea. Luke fixes the precise locality in the neighborhood
of a city called Bethsaida. This, of course, could not be the Bethsaida on the
western shore, the city of Andrew and Peter. But there was, it appears, another
city of the same name at the north-eastern extremity of the lake, called by way
of distinction, Bethsaida Julias. The site of this city, we are informed by an
eye-witness, “is discernible on the lower slope of the hill which overhangs the
rich plain at the mouth of the Jordan” (that is, at the place where the waters
of the Upper Jordan join the Sea of Galilee). “The ‘desert place,’” the same
author goes on to say, by way of proving the suitableness of the locality to be
the scene of this miracle, “was either the green tableland which lies halfway up
the hill immediately above Bethsaida, or else in the parts of the plain not
cultivated by the hand of man would be found the ‘much green grass,’ still fresh
in the spring of the year when this event occurred, before it had faded away in
the summer sun: the tall grass which, broken down by the feet of the thousands
then gathered together, would make ‘as it were, ‘couches’ for them to recline
upon.” To this place Jesus and the twelve had retired after the return of the
latter from their mission, seeking rest and privacy. But what they sought they
did not find. Their movements were observed, and the people flocked along the
shore toward the place whither they had sailed, running all the way, as if
fearful that they might escape, and so arriving at the landing place before
them. The multitude which thus gathered around Jesus was very great. All the
evangelists agree in stating it at five thousand; and as the arrangement of the
people at the miraculous repast in groups of hundreds and fifties made it easy
to ascertain their number, we may accept this statement not as a rough estimate,
but as a tolerably exact calculation.

Such an immense assemblage testifies to the presence of a great excitement among
the populations living by the shore of the Sea of Galilee. A fervid enthusiasm,
a hero-worship, whereof Jesus was the object, was at work in their minds. Jesus
was the idol of the hour: they could not endure his absence; they could not see
enough of His work, nor hear enough of His teaching. This enthusiasm of the
Galileans we may regard as the cumulative result of Christ’s own past labors,
and in part also of the evangelistic mission which we considered in the last
chapter. The infection seems to have spread as far south as Tiberias, for John
relates that boats came from that city “to the place where they did eat bread.”
Those who were in these boats came too late to witness the miracle and share in
the feast, but this does not prove that their errand was not the same as that of
the rest; for, owing to their greater distance from the scene, the news would be
longer in reaching them, and it would take them longer to go thither. The great
miracle wrought in the neighborhood of Bethsaida Julias consisted in the feeding
of this vast assemblage of human beings with the utterly inadequate means of
“five barley loaves and two small fishes.” It was truly a stupendous
transaction, of which we can form no conception; but no event in the Gospel
history is more satisfactorily attested. All the evangelists relate the miracle
with much minuteness, with little even apparent discrepancy, and with such
graphic detail as none but eye-witnesses could have supplied. Even John, who
records so few of Christ’s miracles, describes this one with as careful a hand
as any of his brother evangelists, albeit introducing it into his narrative
merely as a preface to the sermon on the Bread of Life found in his Gospel only.
This wonderful work, so unexceptionably attested, seems open to exception on
another ground. It appears to be a miracle without a sufficient reason. It
cannot be said to have been urgently called for by the necessities of the
multitude. Doubtless they were hungry, and had brought no victuals with them to
supply their bodily wants. But the miracle was wrought on the afternoon of the
day on which they left their homes, and most of them might have returned within
a few hours. It would, indeed, have been somewhat hard to have undertaken such a
journey at the end of the day without food; but the hardship, even if necessary,
was far within the limits of human endurance. But it was not necessary; for food
could have been got on the way without going far, in the neighboring towns and
villages, so that to disperse them as they were would have involved no
considerable inconvenience. This is evident from the terms in which the
disciples made the suggestion that the multitude should be sent away. We read:
“When the day began to wear away, then came the twelve, and said unto Him, Send
the multitude away, that they may go into the villages and country round about,
and lodge and get victuals.” In these respects there is an obvious difference
between the first miraculous feeding and the second, which occurred at a
somewhat later period at the south-eastern extremity of the Lake. On that
occasion the people who had assembled around Jesus had been three days in the
wilderness without aught to eat, and there were no facilities for procuring
food, so that the miracle was demanded by considerations of humanity.
Accordingly we find that compassion is assigned as the motive for that miracle:
“Jesus called His disciples unto Him, and saith unto them, I have compassion on
the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing
to eat; and if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by
the way; for some of them are come from far.”

If our object were merely to get rid of the difficulty of assigning a sufficient
motive for the first great miracle of feeding, we might content ourselves with
saying that Jesus did not need any very urgent occasion to induce Him to use His
power for the benefit of others. For His own benefit He would not use it in case
even of extreme need, not even after a fast of forty days. But when the
well-being (not to say the being) of others was concerned, He dispensed
miraculous blessings with a liberal hand. He did not ask Himself: Is this a
grave enough occasion for the use of divine power? Is this man ill enough to
justify a miraculous interference with the laws of nature by healing him? Are
these people here assembled hungry enough to be fed, like their fathers in the
wilderness, with bread from heaven? But we do not insist on this, because we
believe that something else and higher was aimed at in this miracle than to
satisfy physical appetite. It was a symbolic, didactic, critical miracle. It was
meant to teach, and also to test; to supply a text for the subsequent sermon,
and a touchstone to try the character of those who had followed Jesus with such
enthusiasm. The miraculous feast in the wilderness was meant to say to the
multitude just what our sacramental feast says to us: “I, Jesus the Son of God
Incarnate, am the bread of life. What this bread is to your bodies, I myself am
to your souls.” And the communicants in that feast were to be tested by the way
in which they regarded the transaction. The spiritual would see in it a sign of
Christ’s divine dignity, and a seal of His saving grace; the carnal would rest
simply in the outward fact that they had eaten of the loaves and were filled,
and would take occasion from what had happened to indulge in high hopes of
temporal felicity under the benign reign of the Prophet and King who had made
His appearance among them. The miracle in the desert was in this view not merely
an act of mercy, but an act of judgment. Jesus mercifully fed the hungry
multitude in order that He might sift it, and separate the true from the
spurious disciples. There was a much more urgent demand for such a sifting than
for food to satisfy merely physical cravings. If those thousands were all
genuine disciples, it was well; but if not-if the greater number were following
Christ under misapprehension-the sooner that became apparent the better. To
allow so large a mixed multitude to follow Himself any longer without sifting
would have been on Christ’s part to encourage false hopes, and to give rise to
serious misapprehensions as to the nature of His kingdom and His earthly
mission. And no better method of separating the chaff from the wheat in that
large company of professed disciples could have been devised, than first to work
a miracle which would bring to the surface the latent carnality of the greater
number, and then to preach a sermon which could not fail to be offensive to the
carnal mind. That Jesus freely chose, for a reason of His own, the miraculous
method of meeting the difficulty that had arisen, appears to be not obscurely
hinted at in the Gospel narratives. Consider, for example, in this connection,
John’s note of time, “The passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.” Is this a
merely chronological statement? We think not. What further purpose, then, is it
intended to serve? To explain how so great a crowd came to be gathered around
Jesus? Such an explanation was not required, for the true cause of the great
gathering was the enthusiasm which had been awakened among the people by the
preaching and healing work of Jesus and the twelve. The evangelist refers to the
approaching passover, it would seem, not to explain the movement of the people,
but rather to explain the acts and words of His Lord about to be related. “The
passover was nigh, and”-so may we bring out John’s meaning-“Jesus was thinking
of it, though He went not up to the feast that season. He thought of the paschal
lamb, and how He, the true Paschal Lamb, would ere long be slain for the life of
the world; and He gave expression to the deep thoughts of His heart in the
symbolic miracle I am about to relate, and in the mystic discourse which
followed.” The view we advocate respecting the motive of the miracle in the
wilderness seems borne out also by the tone adopted by Jesus in the conversation
which took place between Himself and the twelve as to how the wants of the
multitude might be supplied. In the course of that conversation, of which
fragments have been preserved by the different evangelists, two suggestions were
made by the disciples. One was to dismiss the multitude that they might procure
supplies for themselves; the other, that they (the disciples) should go to the
nearest town (say Bethsaida Julias, probably not far off) and purchase as much
bread as they could get for two hundred denarii, which would suffice to
alleviate hunger at least, if not to satisfy appetite. Both these proposals were
feasible, otherwise they would not have been made; for the twelve had not spoken
thoughtlessly, but after consideration, as appears from the fact that one of
their number, Andrew, had already ascertained how much provision could be got on
the spot. The question how the multitude could be provided for had evidently
been exercising the minds of the disciples, and the two proposals were the
result of their deliberations. Now, what we wish to point out is, that Jesus
does not appear to have given any serious heed to these proposals. He listened
to them, not displeased to see the generous concern of His disciples for the
hungry people, yet with the air of one who meant from the first to pursue a
different line of action from any they might suggest. He behaved like a general
in a council of war whose own mind is made up, but who is not unwilling to hear
what his subordinates will say. This is no mere inference of ours, for John
actually explains that such was the manner in which our Lord acted on the
occasion. After relating that Jesus addressed to Philip the question, Whence
shall we buy bread, that these may eat? he adds the parenthetical remark, “This
He said to prove him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”

Such, then, was the design of the miracle; what now was its result? It raised
the swelling tide of enthusiasm to its full height, and induced the multitude to
form a foolish and dangerous purpose-even to crown the wonder-working Jesus, and
make Him their king instead of the licentious despot Herod. They said, “This is
of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world;” and they were on the
point of coming and taking Jesus by force to make Him a king, insomuch that it
was necessary that He should make His escape from them, and depart into a
mountain Himself alone. Such are the express statements of the fourth Gospel,
and what is there stated is obscurely implied in the narratives of Matthew and
Mark. They tell how, after the miracle in the desert, Jesus straightway
constrained His disciples to get into a ship and to go to the other side. Why
such haste, and why such urgency? Doubtless it was late, and there was no time
to lose if they wished to get home to Capernaum that night. But why go home at
all, when the people, or at least a part of them, were to pass the night in the
wilderness? Should the disciples not rather have remained with them, to keep
them in heart and take a charge of them? Nay, was it dutiful in disciples to
leave their Master alone in such a situation? Doubtless the reluctance of the
twelve to depart sprang from their asking themselves these very questions; and,
as a feeling having such an origin was most becoming, the constraint put on them
presupposes the existence of unusual circumstances, such as those recorded by
John. In other words, the most natural explanation of the fact recorded by the
synoptical evangelists is, that Jesus wished to extricate both Himself and His
disciples from the foolish enthusiasm of the multitude, an enthusiasm with
which, beyond question, the disciples were only too much in sympathy, and for
that purpose arranged that they should sail away in the dusk across the lake,
while He retired into the solitude of the mountains.

What a melancholy result of a hopeful movement have we here! The kingdom has
been proclaimed, and the good news has been extensively welcomed. Jesus, the
Messianic King, is become the object of most ardent devotion to an enthusiastic
population. But, alas! their ideas of the kingdom are radically mistaken. Acted
out, they would mean rebellion and ultimate ruin. Therefore it is necessary that
Jesus should save Himself from His own friends, and hide Himself from His own
followers. How certainly do Satan’s tares get sown among God’s wheat! How easily
does enthusiasm run into folly and mischief! The result of the miracle did not
take Jesus by surprise. It was what He expected; nay, in a sense, it was what He
aimed at. It was time that the thoughts of many hearts should be revealed; and
the certainty that the miracle would help to reveal them was one reason at least
for its being worked. Jesus furnished for the people a table in the wilderness,
and gave them of the corn of heaven, and sent them meat to the full, that He
might prove them, and know what was in their heart,-whether they loved Him for
His own sake, or only for the sake of expected worldly advantage. That many
followed Him from by-ends He knew beforehand, but He desired to bring the fact
home to their own consciences. The miracle put that in His power, and enabled
Him to say, without fear of contradiction, “Ye seek me, not because ye saw the
miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled.” It was a
searching word, which might well put all His professed followers, not only then,
but now, on self-examining thoughts, and lead each man to ask himself, Why do I
profess Christianity? is it from sincere faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God
and Saviour of the world, or from thoughtless compliance with custom, from a
regard to reputation, or from considerations of worldly advantage?

Section II - The Storm Mat 14:24-33; Mark 6:45-52; John 6:16-21.

“In perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea,” wrote Paul, describing the
varied hardships encountered by himself in the prosecution of his great work as
the apostle of the Gentiles. Such perils meet together in this crisis in the
life of Jesus. He has just saved himself from the dangerous enthusiasm
manifested by the thoughtless multitude after the miraculous repast in the
desert; and now, a few hours later, a still greater disaster threatens to befall
Him. His twelve chosen disciples, whom He had hurriedly sent off in a boat, that
they might not encourage the people in their foolish project, have been
overtaken in a storm while He is alone on the mountain praying, and are in
imminent danger of being drowned. His contrivance for escaping one evil has
involved Him in a worse; and it seems as if, by a combination of mischances, He
were to be suddenly deprived of all His followers, both true and false, at once,
and left utterly alone, as in the last great crisis. The Messianic King watching
on those heights, like a general on the day of battle, is indeed hard pressed,
and the battle is going against Him. But the Captain of salvation is equal to
the emergency; and however sorely perplexed He may be for a season, He will be
victorious in the end. The Sea of Galilee, though but a small sheet of water,
some thirteen miles long by six broad, is liable to be visited by sharp, sudden
squalls, probably due to its situation. It lies in a deep hollow of volcanic
origin, bounded on either side by steep ranges of hills rising above the
water-level from one to two thousand feet. The difference of temperature at the
top and bottom of these hills is very considerable. Up on the tablelands above
the air is cool and bracing; down at the margin of the lake, which lies seven
hundred feet below the level of the ocean, the climate is tropical. The storms
caused by this inequality of temperature are tropical in violence. They come
sweeping down the ravines upon the water; and in a moment the lake, calm as
glass before, becomes from end to end white with foam, whilst the waves rise
into the air in columns of spray.

Two such storms of wind were encountered by the twelve after they had become
disciples, probably within the same year; the one with which we are concerned at
present, and an earlier one on the occasion of a visit to Gadara. Both happened
by night, and both were exceedingly violent. In the first storm, we are told,
the ship was covered with the waves, and filled almost to sinking, so that the
disciples feared they should perish. The second storm was equally violent, and
was of much longer duration. It caught the twelve apparently when they were
half-way across, and after the gray of dusk had deepened into the darkness of
night. From that time the wind blew with unabated force till daybreak, in the
fourth watch, between the hours of three and six in the morning. Some idea of
the fury of the blast may be gathered from the fact recorded, that even then
they were still little more than half-way over the sea. They had rowed in all
only a distance of twenty-five or thirty furlongs, the whole distance in a
slanting direction, from the eastern to the western shore, being probably about
fifty. During all those weary hours they had done little more, pulling with all
their might, than hold their own against wind and waves.

All this while what was Jesus doing? In the first storm He had been with His
disciples in the ship, sweetly sleeping after the fatigues of the day, “rocked
in cradle of the imperious surge.” This time He was absent, and not sleeping;
but away up among the mountains alone, watching unto prayer. For He, too, had
His own struggle on that tempestuous night; not with the howling winds, but with
sorrowful thoughts. That night He, as it were, rehearsed the agony in
Gethsemane, and with earnest prayer and absorbing meditation studied the passion
sermon which He preached on the morrow. So engrossed was His mind with His own
sad thoughts, that the poor disciples were for a season as if forgotten; till at
length, at early dawn, looking seawards, He saw them toiling in rowing against
the contrary wind, and without a moment’s further delay made haste to their
rescue. This storm on the Sea of Galilee, besides being important as a
historical fact, possesses also the significance of an emblem. When we consider
the time at which it occurred, it is impossible not to connect it in our
thoughts with the untoward events of the next day. For the literal storm on the
water was succeeded by a spiritual storm on the land, equally sudden and
violent, and not less perilous to the souls of the twelve than the other had
been to their bodies. The bark containing the precious freight of Christ’s true
discipleship was then overtaken by a sudden gust of unpopularity, coming down on
it like a squall on a highland loch, and all but upsetting it. The fickle crowd
which but the day before would have made Jesus their king, turned away abruptly
from Him in disappointment and disgust; and it was not without an effort, as we
shall see, that the twelve maintained their steadfastness. They had to pull hard
against wind and waves, that they might not be carried headlong to ruin by the
tornado of apostasy.

There can be little doubt that the two storms-on the lake and on the
shore-coming so close one on the other, would become associated in the memory of
the apostles; and that the literal storm would be stereotyped in their minds as
an expressive emblem of the spiritual one, and of all similar trials of faith.
The incidents of that fearful night-the watching, the wet, the toil without
result, the fatigue, the terror and despair-would abide indelibly in their
recollection, the symbolic representation of all the perils and tribulations
through which believers must pass on their way to the kingdom of heaven, and
especially of those that come upon them while they are yet immature in the
faith. Symbolic significance might be discovered specially in three features.
The storm took place by night; in the absence of Jesus; and while it lasted all
progress was arrested. Storms at sea may happen at all hours of the day, but
trials of faith always happen in the night. Were there no darkness there could
be no trial. Had the twelve understood Christ’s discourse in Capernaum, the
apostasy of the multitude would have seemed to them a light matter. But they did
not understand it, and hence the solicitude of their Master lest they too should
forsake Him. In all such trials, also, the absence of the Lord to feeling is a
constant and most painful feature. Christ is not in the ship while the storm
rages by night, and we toil on in rowing unaided, as we think, by His grace,
uncheered by His spiritual presence. It was so even with the twelve next day on
shore. Their Master, present to their eyes, had vanished out of sight to their
understanding. They had not the comfort of comprehending His meaning, while they
clung to Him as one who had the words of eternal life. Worst of all, in these
trials of faith, with all our rowing, we make no progress; the utmost we can
effect is to hold our own, to keep off the rocky shore in the midst of the sea.
Happily that is something, yea, it is every thing. For it is not always true
that if not going forward we must be going backward. This is an adage for fair
weather only. In a time of storm there is such a thing as standing still, and
then to do even so much is a great achievement. Is it a small thing to weather
the storm, to keep off the rocks, the sands, and the breakers? Vex not the soul
of him who is already vexed enough by the buffeting winds, by retailing wise
saws about progress and backsliding indiscriminately applied. Instead of playing
thus the part of a Job’s friend, rather remind him that the great thing for one
in his situation is to endure, to be immovable, to hold fast his moral integrity
and his profession of faith, and to keep off the dangerous coasts of immorality
and infidelity; and assure him that if he will only pull a little longer,
however weary his arm, God will come and calm the wind, and he will forthwith
reach the land. The storm on the lake, besides being an apt emblem of the trial
of faith, was for the twelve an important lesson in faith, helping to prepare
them for the future which awaited them. The temporary absence of their Master
was a preparation for His perpetual absence. The miraculous interposition of
Jesus at the crisis of their peril was fitted to impress on their minds the
conviction that even after He had ascended He would still be with them in the
hour of danger. From the ultimate happy issue of a plan which threatened for a
time to miscarry, they might further learn to cherish a calm confidence in the
government of their exalted Lord, even in midst of most untoward events. They
probably concluded, when the storm came on, that Jesus had made a mistake in
ordering them to sail away across the lake while He remained behind to dismiss
the multitude. The event, however, rebuked this hasty judgment, all ending
happily. Their experience in this instance was fitted to teach a lesson for
life: not rashly to infer mismanagement or neglect on Christ’s part from
temporary mishaps, but to have firm faith in His wise and loving care for His
cause and people, and to anticipate a happy issue out of all perplexities; yea,
to glory in tribulation, because of the great deliverance which would surely
follow.

Such strong faith the disciples were far enough from possessing at the time of
the storm. They had no expectation that Jesus would come to their rescue; for
when He did come, they thought He was a spirit flitting over the water, and
cried out in an agony of superstitious terror. Here also we note, in passing, a
curious correspondence between the incidents of this crisis and those connected
with the final one. The disciples had then as little expectation of seeing their
Lord return from the dead as they had now of seeing Him come to them over the
sea; and therefore His re-appearance at first frightened rather than comforted
them. “They were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a
spirit.” Good, unlooked for in either case, was turned into evil; and what to
faith would have been a source of intense joy, became, through unbelief, only a
new cause of alarm. The fact of His not being expected seems to have imposed on
Jesus the necessity of using artifice in His manner of approaching His
storm-tossed disciples. Mark relates that “He would have passed by them,”
affecting strangeness, as we understand it, out of delicate consideration for
their weakness. He knew what He would be taken for when first observed; and
therefore He wished to attract their attention at a safe distance, fearing lest,
by appearing among them at once, He might drive them distracted. He found it
needful to be as cautious in announcing His advent to save as men are wont to be
in communicating evil tidings: first appearing, as the spectre, as far away as
He could be seen; then revealing Himself by His familiar voice uttering the
words of comfort, “It is I; be not afraid,” and so obtaining at length a willing
reception into the ship. The effects which followed the admission of Jesus into
the vessel betrayed the twelve into a new manifestation of the weakness of their
faith. “The wind ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure,
and wondered.” They ought not to have wondered so greatly, after what had
happened once before on these same waters, and especially after such a miracle
as had been wrought in the wilderness on the previous day. But the storm had
blown all thoughts of such things out of their mind, and driven them utterly
stupid. “They reflected not on the loaves (nor on the rebuking of the winds),
for their heart was hardened.” But the most interesting revelation of the mental
state of the disciples at the time when Jesus came to their relief, is to be
found in the episode concerning Peter related in Matthew’s Gospel. When that
disciple understood that the supposed spectre was his beloved Master, he cried,
“Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water;” and on receiving
permission, he forthwith stepped out of the ship into the sea. This was not
faith, but simple rashness. It was the rebound of an impetuous, headlong nature
from one extreme of utter despair to the opposite extreme of extravagant,
reckless joy. What in the other disciples took the tame form of a willingness to
receive Jesus into the ship, after they were satisfied it was He who walked on
the waters, took, in the case of Peter, the form of a romantic, adventurous wish
to go out to Jesus where He was, to welcome Him back among them again. The
proposal was altogether like the man-generous, enthusiastic, and well-meant, but
inconsiderate.

Such a proposal, of course, could not meet with Christ’s approval, and yet He
did not negative it. He rather thought good to humor the impulsive disciple so
far, by inviting him to come, and then to allow him, while in the water, to feel
his own weakness. Thus would He teach him a little self-knowledge, and, if
possible, save him from the effects of his rash, self-confident temper. But
Peter was not to be made wise by one lesson, nor even by several. He would go on
blundering and erring, in spite of rebuke and warning, till at length he fell
into grievous sin, denying the Master whom he loved so well. The denial at the
final crisis was just what might be looked for from one who so behaved at the
minor crisis preceding it. The man who said, “Bid me come to Thee,” was just the
man to say, “Lord, I am ready to go with Thee both into prison and to death.” He
who was so courageous on deck, and so timid amid the waves, was the one of all
the disciples most likely to talk boldly when danger was not at hand, and then
play the coward when the hour of trial actually arrived. The scene on the lake
was but a foreshadowing or rehearsal of Peter’s fall. And yet that scene showed
something more than the weakness of that disciple’s faith. It showed also what
is possible to those who believe. If the tendency of weak faith be to sink, the
triumph of strong faith is to walk on the waves, glorying in tribulation, and
counting it all joy when exposed to divers temptations. It is the privilege of
those who are weak in faith, and the duty of all, mindful of human frailty, to
pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” But when storms come not of their inviting,
and when their ship is upset in midst of the sea, then may Christians trust to
the promise, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;” and if
only they have faith, they shall be enabled to tread the rolling billows as if
walking on firm land.

“He bids me come; His voice I know, And boldly on the waters go, And brave the
tempest’s shock.

O’er rude temptations now I bound; The billows yield a solid ground, The wave is
firm as rock.”


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  CHAPTER 43: 02.09.2.     THE GALILEAN CRISIS
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The Galilean Crisis Section III - The Sermon

John 6:32-58 The task now before us is to study that memorable address delivered
by Jesus in the synagogue of Capernaum on the bread of life, which gave so great
offence at the time, and which has ever since been a stone of stumbling, a
subject of controversy, and a cause of division in the visible church, and, so
far as one can judge from present appearances, will be to the world’s end. On a
question so vexed as that which relates to the meaning of this discourse, one
might well shrink from entering. But the very confusion which prevails here
points it out as our plain duty to disregard the din of conflicting
interpretations, and, humbly praying to be taught of God, to search for and set
forth Christ’s own mind. The sermon on the bread of life, however strangely it
sounds, was appropriate both in matter and manner to the circumstances in which
it was delivered. It was natural and seasonable that Jesus should speak to the
people of the meat that endureth unto everlasting life after miraculously
providing perishable food to supply their physical wants. It was even natural
and seasonable that He should speak of this high topic in the startling,
apparently gross, harsh style which He adopted on the occasion. The form of
thought suited the situation. Passover time was approaching, when the paschal
lamb was slain and eaten; and if Jesus desired to say in effect, without saying
it in so many words, “I am the true Paschal Lamb,” what more suitable form of
language could He employ than this: “The bread that I will give is my flesh,
which I will give for the life of the world”? The style was also adapted to the
peculiar complexion of the speaker’s feelings at the moment. Jesus was in a sad,
austere mood when He preached this sermon. The foolish enthusiasm of the
multitude had saddened Him. Their wish to force a crown on His head made Him
think of His cross; for He knew that this idolatrous devotion to a political
Messiah meant death sooner or later to one who declined such carnal homage. He
spoke, therefore, in the synagogue of Capernaum with Calvary in view, setting
Himself forth as the life of the world in terms applicable to a sacrificial
victim, whose blood is shed, and whose flesh is eaten by those presenting the
offering; not mincing His words, but saying every thing in the strongest and
intensest manner possible. The theme of this memorable address was very
naturally introduced by the preceding conversation between Jesus and the people
who came from the other side of the lake, hoping to find Him at Capernaum, His
usual place of abode. To their warm inquiries as to how He came thither, He
replied by a chilling observation concerning the true motive of their zeal, and
an exhortation to set their hearts on a higher food than that which perisheth.
Understanding the exhortation as a counsel to cultivate piety, the persons to
whom it was addressed inquired what they should do that they might work the
works of God, i.e. please God. Jesus replied by declaring that the great testing
work of the hour was to receive Himself as one whom God had sent. This led to a
demand on their part for evidence in support of this high claim to be the
divinely missioned Messiah. The miracle just wrought on the other side of the
lake was great, but not great enough, they thought, to justify such lofty
pretensions. In ancient times a whole nation had been fed for many years by
bread brought down from heaven by Moses. What was the recent miracle compared to
that? He must show a sign on a far grander scale, if He wished them to believe
that a greater than Moses was here. Jesus took up the challenge, and boldly
declared that the manna, wonderful as it was, was not the true heavenly bread.
There was another bread, of which the manna was but the type: like it, coming
down from heaven; but unlike it, giving life not to a nation, but to a world,
and not life merely for a few short years, but life for eternity. This
announcement, like the similar one concerning the wonderful water of life made
to the woman of Samaria, provoked desire in the hearts of the hearers, and they
exclaimed, “Lord, evermore give us this bread.” Then said Jesus unto them, “I am
the bread of life: he that cometh unto me shall never hunger; and he that
believeth on me shall never thirst.” In these words Jesus briefly enunciated the
doctrine of the true bread, which He expounded and inculcated in His memorable
Capernaum discourse. The doctrine, as stated, sets forth what the true bread is,
what it does, and how it is appropriated.

1. The true bread is He who here speaks of it-Jesus Christ. “I am the bread.”
The assertion implies, on the speaker’s part, a claim to have descended from
heaven; for such a descent is one of the properties by which the true bread is
defined. Accordingly we find Jesus, in the sequel of His discourse, expressly
asserting that He had come down from heaven. This declaration, understood in a
supernatural sense, was the first thing in His discourse with which His hearers
found fault. “The Jews then murmured at Him, because He said, I am the bread
which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of
Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that He saith, I came
down from heaven?” It was natural they should murmur if they did not know or
believe that there was any thing out of course in the way in which Jesus came
into the world. For such language as He here employs could not be used without
blasphemy by a mere man born after the fashion of other men. It is language
proper only in the mouth of a Divine Being who, for a purpose, hath assumed
human nature. In setting Himself forth, therefore, as the bread which came down
from heaven, Jesus virtually taught the doctrine of the incarnation. The solemn
assertion, “I am the bread of life,” is equivalent in import to that made by the
evangelist respecting Him who spoke these words: “The Word became flesh, and
dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”

It is, however, not merely as incarnate that the Son of God is the bread of
eternal life. Bread must be broken in order to be eaten. The Incarnate One must
die as a sacrificial victim that men may truly feed upon Him. The Word become
flesh, and crucified in the flesh, is the life of the world. This special truth
Jesus went on to declare, after having stated the general truth that the
heavenly bread was to be found in Himself. “The bread,” said He, “that I will
give is my flesh, (which I will give) for the life of the world.” The language
here becomes modified to suit the new turn of thought. “I am” passes into “I
will give,” and “bread” is transformed into “flesh.”

Jesus evidently refers here to His death. His hearers did not so understand Him,
but we can have no doubt on the matter. The verb “give,” suggesting a
sacrificial act, and the future tense both point that way. In words dark and
mysterious before the event, clear as day after it, the speaker declares the
great truth, that His death is to be the life of men; that His broken body and
shed blood are to be as meat and drink to a perishing world, conferring on all
who shall partake of them the gift of immortality. How He is to die, and why His
death shall possess such virtue, He does not here explain. The Capernaum
discourse makes no mention of the cross; it contains no theory of atonement, the
time is not come for such details; it simply asserts in broad, strong terms that
the flesh and blood of the incarnate Son of God, severed as in death, are the
source of eternal life. This mention by Jesus of His flesh as the bread from
heaven gave rise to a new outburst of murmuring among His hearers. “They strove
among themselves, saying, How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” Jesus had
not yet said that His flesh must be eaten, but they took for granted that such
was His meaning. They were right; and accordingly He went on to say, with the
greatest solemnity and emphasis, that they must even eat His flesh and drink His
blood. Unless they did that, they should have no life in them; if they did that,
they should have life in all its fulness-life eternal both in body and in soul.
For His flesh was the true food, and His blood was the true drink. They who
partook of these would share in His own life. He should dwell in them,
incorporated with their very being; and they should dwell in Him as the ground
of their being. They should live as secure against death by Him, as He lived
from everlasting to everlasting by the Father. “This, therefore,” said the
speaker, reverting in conclusion to the proposition with which he started, “this
(even my flesh) is that bread which came down from Heaven; not as your fathers
did eat manna and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live forever.” A
third expression of disapprobation ensuing led Jesus to put the copestone on His
high doctrine of the bread of life, by making a concluding declaration, which
must have appeared at the time the most mysterious and unintelligible of all:
that the bread which descended from heaven must ascend up thither again, in
order to be to the full extent the bread of everlasting life. Doth this offend
you? asked He at his hearers: this which I have just said about your eating my
flesh and blood; what will ye say “if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up
where He was before?” The question was in effect an affirmation, and it was also
a prophetic hint, that only after He had left the world would He become on an
extensive scale and conspicuously a source of life to men; because then the
manna of grace would begin to descend not only on the wilderness of Israel, but
on all the barren places of the earth; and the truth in Him, the doctrine of His
life, death, and resurrection, would become meat indeed and drink indeed unto a
multitude, not of murmuring hearers, but of devout, enlightened, thankful
believers; and no one would need any longer to ask for a sign when he could find
in the Christian church, continuing steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and
fellowship, and in breaking bread and in prayers, the best evidence that He had
spoken truth who said, “I am the bread of life.”

2. This, then, is the heavenly bread: even the God-man incarnate, crucified, and
glorified. Let us now consider more attentively the marvellous virtue of this
bread. It is the bread of life. It is the office of all bread to sustain life,
but it is the peculiarity of this divine bread to give eternal life. “He that
cometh to me,” said the speaker, “shall never hunger, and he that believeth on
me, shall never thirst.” With reference to this life-giving power He called the
bread of which He spake “living bread,” and meat indeed, and declared that he
who ate thereof should not die, but should live forever. In commending this
miraculous bread to His hearers, Jesus, we observe, laid special stress on its
power to give eternal life even to the body of man. Four times over He declared
in express terms that all who partook of this bread of life should be raised
again at the last day. The prominence thus given to the resurrection of the body
is due in part to the fact that throughout His discourse Jesus was drawing a
contrast between the manna which fed the Israelites in the desert and the true
bread of which it was the type. The contrast was most striking just at this
point. The manna was merely a substitute for ordinary food; it had no power to
ward off death: the generation which had been so miraculously supported passed
away from the earth, like all other generations of mankind. Therefore, argued
Jesus, it could not be the true bread from heaven; for the true bread must be
capable of destroying death, and endowing the recipients with the power of an
endless existence. A man who eats thereof must not die; or dying, must rise
again. “Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the
bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.”
But the prominence given to the resurrection of the body is due mainly to its
intrinsic importance. For if the dead rise not, then is our faith vain, and the
bread of life degenerates into a mere quack nostrum, pretending to virtues which
it does not possess. True, it may still give spiritual life to those who eat
thereof, but what is that without the hope of a life hereafter? Not much,
according to Paul, who says, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we
are of all men most miserable.” Many, indeed, in our day do not concur in the
apostle’s judgment. They think that the doctrine of the life everlasting may be
left out of the creed without loss-nay, even with positive advantage, to the
Christian faith. The life of a Christian seems to them so much nobler when all
thought of future reward or punishment is dismissed from the mind. How grand, to
pass through the wilderness of this world feeding on the manna supplied in the
high, pure teaching of Jesus, without caring whether there be a land of Canaan
on the other side of Jordan! Very sublime indeed! but why, in that case, come
into the wilderness at all? why not remain in Egypt, feeding on more substantial
and palatable viands? The children of Israel would not have left the house of
bondage unless they had hoped to reach the promised land. An immortal hope is
equally necessary to the Christian. He must believe in a world to come in order
to live above the present evil world. If Christ cannot redeem the body from the
power of the grave, then it is in vain that He promises to redeem us from guilt
and sin. The bread of life is unworthy of the name, unless it hath power to cope
with physical as well as with moral corruption.

Hence the prominence given by Jesus in this discourse to the resurrection of the
body. He knew that here lay the crucial experiment by which the value and virtue
of the bread He offered to His hearers must be tested. “You call this bread the
bread of life, in contrast to the manna of ancient times-do you mean to say
that, like the tree of life in the garden of Eden, it will confer on those who
eat thereof the gift of a blessed immortality?” “Yes, I do,” replied the
Preacher in effect to this imaginary question: “this bread I offer you will not
merely quicken the soul to a higher, purer life; it will even revivify your
bodies, and make the corruptible put on incorruption, and the mortal put on
immortality.”

3. And how, then, is this wondrous bread to be appropriated that one may
experience its vitalizing influences? Bread, of course, is eaten; but what does
eating in this case mean? It means, in one word, faith. “He that cometh to me
shall never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst.” Eating
Christ’s flesh and drinking His blood, and, we may add, drinking the water of
which he spake to the woman by the well, all signify believing in Him as He is
offered to men in the gospel: the Son of God manifested in the flesh, crucified,
raised from the dead, ascended into glory; the Prophet, the Priest, the King,
and the Mediator between God and man. Throughout the Capernaum discourse eating
and believing are used interchangeably as equivalents. Thus, in one sentence, we
find Jesus saying, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath
everlasting life: I am that bread of life;” and shortly after remarking, “I am
the living bread which came down from heaven: If any man eat of this bread he
shall live forever.” If any further argument were necessary to justify the
identifying of eating with believing, it might be found in the instruction given
by the Preacher to His hearers before He began to speak of the bread of life;
“This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.” That
sentence furnishes the key to the interpretation of the whole subsequent
discourse. “Believe,” said Jesus, with reference to the foregoing inquiry, What
shall we do, that we might work the works of God?-“Believe, and thou hast done
God’s work.” “Believe,” we may understand Him as saying with reference to an
inquiry, How shall we eat this bread of life?-“Believe, and thou hast eaten.”

Believe, and thou hast eaten: such was the formula in which Augustine expressed
his view of Christ’s meaning in the Capernaum discourse. The saying is not only
terse, but true, in our judgment; but it has not been accepted by all
interpreters. Many hold that eating and faith are something distinct, and would
express the relation between them thus: Believe, and thou shalt eat. Even Calvin
objected to the Augustinian formula. Distinguishing his own views from those
held by the followers of Zwingli, he says: “To them to eat is simply to believe.
I say that Christ’s flesh is eaten in believing because it is made ours by
faith, and that eating is the fruit and effect of faith. Or more clearly: To
them eating is faith, to me it seems rather to follow from faith.” The
distinction taken by Calvin between eating and believing seems to have been
verbal rather than real. With many other theologians, however, it is far
otherwise. All upholders of the magical doctrines of transubstantiation and
consubstantiation contend for the literal interpretation of the Capernaum
discourse even in its strongest statements. Eating Christ’s flesh and drinking
His blood are, for such, acts of the mouth, accompanied perhaps with acts of
faith, but not merely acts of faith. It is assumed for the most part as a matter
of course, that the discourse recorded in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel has
reference to the sacrament of the Supper, and that only on the hypothesis of
such a reference can the peculiar phraseology of the discourse be explained.
Christ spoke then of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, so we are given to
understand, because He had in His mind that mystic rite ere long to be
instituted, in which bread and wine should not merely represent, but become, the
constituent elements of His crucified body.

While the sermon on the bread of life continues to be mixed up with
sacramentarian controversies, agreement in its interpretation is altogether
hopeless. Meantime, till a better day dawn on a divided and distracted church,
every man must endeavor to be fully persuaded in his own mind. Three things are
clear to our mind. First, it is incorrect to say that the sermon delivered in
the Capernaum synagogue refers to the sacrament of the Supper. The true state of
the case is, that both refer to a third thing, viz. the death of Christ, and
both declare, in different ways, the same thing concerning it. The sermon says
in symbolic words what the Supper says in a symbolic act: that Christ crucified
is the life of men, the world’s hope of salvation. The sermon says more than
this, for it speaks of Christ’s ascension as well as of His death; but it says
this for one thing. A second point on which we are clear is, that it is quite
unnecessary to assume a mental reference by anticipation to the Holy Supper, in
order to account for the peculiarity of Christ’s language in this famous
discourse. As we saw at the beginning, the whole discourse rose naturally out of
the present situation. The mention by the people of the manna naturally led
Jesus to speak of the bread of life; and from the bread He passed on as
naturally to speak of the flesh and the blood, because he could not fully be
bread until He had become flesh and blood dissevered, i.e. until He had endured
death. All that we find here might have been said, in fact, although the
sacrament of the Supper had never existed. The Supper is of use not so much for
interpreting the sermon as for establishing its credibility as an authentic
utterance of Jesus. There is no reason to doubt that He who instituted the
mystic feast, could also have preached this mystic sermon. The third truth which
shines clear as a star to our eye is that through faith alone we may attain all
the blessings of salvation. Sacraments are very useful, but they are not
necessary. If it had pleased Christ not to institute them, we could have got to
heaven notwithstanding. Because He has instituted them, it is our duty to
celebrate them, and we may expect benefit from their celebration. But the
benefit we receive is simply an aid to faith, and nothing which cannot be
received by faith. Christians eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of
man at all times, not merely at communion times, simply by believing in Him.
They eat His flesh and drink His blood at His table in the same sense as at
other times; only perchance in a livelier manner, their hearts being stirred up
to devotion by remembrance of His dying love, and their faith aided by seeing,
handling, and tasting the bread and the wine.

Section IV - The Sifting

John 6:66-71 The sermon on the bread of life produced decisive effects. It
converted popular enthusiasm for Jesus into disgust; like a fan, it separated
true from false disciples; and like a winnowing breeze, it blew the chaff away,
leaving a small residuum of wheat behind. “From that time many of His disciples
went back, and walked no more with Him.” This result did not take Jesus by
surprise. He expected it; in a sense, He wished it, though He was deeply grieved
by it. For while His large, loving human heart yearned for the salvation of all,
and desired that all should come and get life, He wanted none to come to Him
under misapprehension, or to follow Him from by-ends. He sought disciples God
-given, God-drawn, God-taught, knowing that such alone would continue in His
word. He was aware that in the large mass of people who had recently followed
Him were many disciples of quite another description; and He was not unwilling
that the mixed multitude should be sifted. Therefore He preached that mystic
discourse, fitted to be a savor of life or of death according to the spiritual
state of the hearer. Therefore, also, when offence was taken at the doctrine
taught, He plainly declared the true cause, and expressed His assurance that
only those whom His Father taught and drew would or could really come unto Him.
These things He said not with a view to irritate, but He deemed it right to say
them though they should give rise to irritation, reckoning that true believers
would take all in good part, and that those who took umbrage would thereby
reveal their true character. The apostatizing disciples doubtless thought
themselves fully justified in withdrawing from the society of Jesus. They turned
their back on Him, we fancy, in most virtuous indignation, saying in their
hearts-nay, probably saying aloud to one another: “Who ever heard the like of
that? how absurd! how revolting! The man who can speak thus is either a fool, or
is trying to make fools of his hearers.” And yet the hardness of His doctrine
was not the real reason which led so many to forsake Him; it was simply the
pretext, the most plausible and respectable reason that they could assign for
conduct springing from other motives. The grand offence of Jesus was this: He
was not the man they had taken Him for; He was not going to be at their service
to promote the ends they had in view. Whatever He meant by the bread of life, or
by eating His flesh, it was plain that He was not going to be a bread-king,
making it His business to furnish supplies for their physical appetites,
ushering in a golden age of idleness and plenty. That ascertained, it was all
over with Him so far as they were concerned: He might offer His heavenly food to
whom He pleased; they wanted none of it.

Deeply affected by the melancholy sight of so many human beings deliberately
preferring material good to eternal life, Jesus turned to the twelve, and said,
“Will ye also go away?” or more exactly, “You do not wish to go away too, do
you?” The question may be understood as a virtual expression of confidence in
the persons to whom it was addressed, and as an appeal to them for sympathy at a
discouraging crisis. And yet, while a negative answer was expected to the
question, it was not expected as a matter of course. Jesus was not without
solicitude concerning the fidelity even of the twelve. He interrogated them, as
conscious that they were placed in trying circumstances, and that if they did
not actually forsake Him now, as at the great final crisis, they were at least
tempted to be offended in Him. A little reflection suffices to satisfy us that
the twelve were indeed placed in a position at this time calculated to try their
faith most severely. For one thing, the mere fact of their Master being deserted
wholesale by the crowd of quondam admirers and followers involved for the chosen
band a temptation to apostasy. How mighty is the power of sympathy! how ready
are we all to follow the multitude, regardless of the way they are going! and
how much moral courage it requires to stand alone! How difficult to witness the
spectacle of thousands, or even hundreds, going off in sullen disaffection,
without feeling an impulse to imitate their bad example! how hard to keep one’s
self from being carried along with the powerful tide of adverse popular opinion!
Especially hard it must have been for the twelve to resist the tendency to
apostatize if, as is more than probable, they sympathized with the project
entertained by the multitude when their enthusiasm for Jesus was at full-tide.
If it would have gratified them to have seen their beloved Master made king by
popular acclamation, how their spirits must have sunk when the bubble burst, and
the would-be subjects of the Messianic Prince were dispersed like an idle mob,
and the kingdom which had seemed so near vanished like a cloudland!

Another circumstance trying to the faith of the twelve was the strange,
mysterious character of their Master’s discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum.
That discourse contained hard, repulsive, unintelligible sayings for them quite
as much as for the rest of the audience. Of this we can have no doubt when we
consider the repugnance with which some time afterward they received the
announcement that Jesus was destined to be put to death. If they objected even
to the fact of His death, how could they understand its meaning, especially when
both fact and meaning were spoken of in such a veiled and mystic style as that
which pervades the sermon on the bread of life? While, therefore, they believed
that their Master had the words of eternal life, and perceived that His late
discourse bore on that high theme, it may be regarded as certain that the twelve
did not understand the words spoken any more than the multitude, however much
they might try to do so. They knew not what connection existed between Christ’s
flesh and eternal life, how eating that flesh could confer any benefit, or even
what eating it might mean. They had quite lost sight of the Speaker in His eagle
flight of thought; and they must have looked on in distress as the people melted
away, painfully conscious that they could not altogether blame them.

Yet, however greatly tempted to forsake their Master, the twelve did abide
faithfully by His side. They did come safely through the spiritual storm. What
was the secret of their steadfastness? what were the anchors that preserved them
from shipwreck? These questions are of practical interest to all who, like the
apostles at this crisis, are tempted to apostasy by evil example or by religious
doubt; by the fashion of the world they live in, whether scientific or
illiterate, refined or rustic; or by the deep things of God, whether these be
the mysteries of providence, the mysteries of revelation, or the mysteries of
religious experience: we may say, indeed, to all genuine Christians, for what
Christian has not been tempted in one or other of these ways at some period in
his history?

Sufficient materials for answering these questions are supplied in the words of
Simon Peter’s response to Jesus. As spokesman for the whole company, that
disciple promptly said: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life. And we believe and know that Thou art that Christ, the son of the
living God,” or, according to the reading preferred by most critics, “that Thou
art the Holy One of God.”

Three anchors, we infer from these words, helped the twelve to ride out the
storm: Religious earnestness or sincerity; a clear perception of the
alternatives before them; and implicit confidence in the character and
attachment to the person of their Master.

1. The twelve, as a body, were sincere and thoroughly in earnest in religion.
Their supreme desire was to know “the words of eternal life,” and actually to
gain possession of that life. Their concern was not about the meat that
perisheth, but about the higher heavenly food of the soul which Christ had in
vain exhorted the majority of His hearers to labor for. As yet they knew not
clearly wherein that food consisted, but according to their light they sincerely
prayed, “Lord, evermore give us this bread.” Hence it was no disappointment to
them that Jesus declined to become a purveyor of mere material food: they had
never expected or wished Him to do so; they had joined His company with entirely
different expectations. A certain element of error might be mingled with truth
in their conceptions of His Mission, but the gross, carnal hopes of the
multitude had no place in their breasts. They became not disciples to better
their worldly circumstances, but to obtain a portion which the world could
neither give them nor take from them.

What we have now stated was true of all the twelve save one; and the crisis we
are at present considering is memorable for this, among other things, that it
was the first occasion on which Jesus gave a hint that there was a false
disciple among the men whom He had chosen. To justify Himself for asking a
question which seemed to cast a doubt upon their fidelity, He replied to Peter’s
protestation by the startling remark: “Did not I choose you the twelve, and one
of you is a devil?” as if to say: “It is painful to me to have to use this
language of suspicion, but I have good cause: there is one among you who has had
thoughts of desertion, and who is capable even of treachery.” With what sadness
of spirit must He have made such an intimation at this crisis! To be forsaken by
the fickle crowd of shallow, thoughtless followers had been a small matter,
could He have reckoned all the members of the select band good men and true
friends. But to have an enemy in one’s own house, a diabolus capable of playing
Satan’s part in one’s small circle of intimate companions-it was hard indeed!
But how could a man destined to be a traitor, and deserving to be stigmatized as
a devil, manage to pass creditably through the present crisis? Does not the fact
seem to imply that, after all, it is possible to be steadfast without being
single-minded? Not so; the only legitimate inference is, that the crisis was not
searching enough to bring out the true character of Judas. Wait till you see the
end. A little religion will carry a man through many trials, but there is an
experimentum crucis which nothing but sincerity can stand. If the mind be
double, or the heart divided, a time comes that compels men to act according to
the motives that are deepest and strongest in them. This remark applies
especially to creative, revolutionary, or transition epochs. In quiet times a
hypocrite may pass respectably through this world, and never be detected till he
get to the next, whither his sins follow him to judgment. But in critical eras
the sins of the double-minded find them out in this life. True, even then some
double-minded men can stand more temptation than others, and are not to be
bought so cheaply as the common herd. But all of them have their price, and
those who fall less easily than others fall in the end most deeply and
tragically. Of the character and fall of Judas we shall have another opportunity
to speak. Our present object is simply to point out that from such as he Jesus
did not expect constancy. By referring to that disciple as He did, He intimated
His conviction that no one in whom the love of God and truth was not the deepest
principle of his being would continue faithful to the end. In effect He
inculcated the necessity, in order to steadfastness in faith, of moral
integrity, or godly sincerity.

2. The second anchor by which the disciples were kept from shipwreck at this
season was a clear perception of the alternatives. “To whom shall we go?” asked
Peter, as one who saw that, for men having in view the aim pursued by himself
and his brethren, there was no course open but to remain where they were. He had
gone over rapidly in his mind all the possible alternatives, and this was the
conclusion at which he had arrived. “To whom shall we go-we who seek eternal
life? John, our former master, is dead; and even were he alive, he would send us
back to Thee. Or shall we go to the scribes and Pharisees? We have been too long
with Thee for that; for Thou hast taught us the superficiality, the hypocrisy,
the ostentatiousness, the essential ungodliness of their religious system. Or
shall we follow the fickle multitude there, and relapse into stupidity and
indifference? It is not to be thought of. Or, finally, shall we go to the
Sadducees, the idolaters of the material and the temporal, who say there is no
resurrection, neither any angels nor spirits? God forbid! That were to renounce
a hope dearer than life, without which life to an earnest mind were a riddle, a
contradiction, and an intolerable burden.”

We may understand what a help this clear perception of the alternatives was to
Peter and his brethren, by reflecting on the help we ourselves might derive from
the same source when tempted by dogmatic difficulties to renounce Christianity.
It would make one pause if he understood that the alternatives open to him were
to abide with Christ, or to become an atheist, ignoring God and the world to
come; that when he leaves Christ, he must go to school to some of the great
masters of thoroughgoing unbelief. In the works of a well-known German author is
a dream, which portrays with appalling vividness the consequences that would
ensue throughout the universe should the Creator cease to exist. The dream was
invented, so the gifted writer tells us, for the purpose of frightening those
who discussed the being of God as coolly as if the question respected the
existence of the Kraken or the unicorn, and also to check all atheistic thoughts
which might arise in his own bosom. “If ever,” he says, “my heart should be so
unhappy and deadened as to have all those feelings which affirm the being of a
God destroyed, I would use this dream to frighten myself, and so heal my heart,
and restore its lost feelings.” Such benefit as Richter expected from the
perusal of his own dream, would any one, tempted to renounce Christianity,
derive from a clear perception that in ceasing to be a Christian he must make up
his mind to accept a creed which acknowledges no God, no soul, no hereafter.

Unfortunately it is not so easy for us now as it was for Peter to see clearly
what the alternatives before us are. Few are so clear-sighted, so recklessly
logical, or so frank as the late Dr. Strauss, who in his latest publication, The
Old and the New Faith, plainly says that he is no longer a Christian. Hence many
in our day call themselves Christians whose theory of the universe (or
Weltanschauung, as the Germans call it) does not allow them to believe in the
miraculous in any shape or in any sphere; with whom it is an axiom that the
continuity of nature’s course cannot be broken, and who therefore cannot even go
the length of Socinians in their view of Christ and declare Him to be, without
qualification, the Holy One of God, the morally sinless One. Even men like Renan
claim to be Christians, and, like Balaam, bless Him whom their philosophy
compels them to blame. Our modern Balaams all confess that Jesus is at least the
holiest of men, if not the absolutely Holy One. They are constrained to bless
the Man of Nazareth. They are spellbound by the Star of Bethlehem, as was the
Eastern soothsayer by the Star of Jacob, and are forced to say in effect: “How
shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath
not defied? Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and He hath blessed;
and I cannot reverse it.” Others not going so far as Renan, shrinking from
thoroughgoing naturalism, believing in a perfect Christ, a moral miracle, yet
affect a Christianity independent of dogma, and as little as possible encumbered
by miracle, a Christianity purely ethical, consisting mainly in admiration of
Christ’s character and moral teaching; and, as the professors of such a
Christianity, regard themselves as exemplary disciples of Christ. Such are the
men of whom the author of Supernatural Religion speaks as characterized by a
“tendency to eliminate from Christianity, with thoughtless dexterity, every
supernatural element which does not quite accord with current opinions,” and as
endeavoring “to arrest for a moment the pursuing wolves of doubt and unbelief by
practically throwing to them scrap by scrap the very doctrines which constitute
the claims of Christianity to be regarded as a divine revelation at all.” Such
men can hardly be said to have a consistent theory of the universe, for they
hold opinions based on incompatible theories, are naturalistic in tendency, yet
will not carry out naturalism to all its consequences. They are either not able,
or are disinclined, to realize the alternatives and to obey the voice of logic,
which like a stern policeman bids them “Move on;” but would rather hold views
which unite the alternatives in one compound eclectic creed, like
Schleiermacher-himself an excellent example of the class-of whom Strauss remarks
that he ground down Christianity and Pantheism to powder, and so mixed them that
it is hard to say where Pantheism ends and Christianity begins. In presence of
such a spirit of compromise, so widespread, and recommended by the example of
many men of ability and influence, it requires some courage to have and hold a
definite position, or to resist the temptation to yield to the current and adopt
the watchword: Christianity without dogma and miracle. But perhaps it will be
easier by and by to realize the alternatives, when time has more clearly shown
whither present tendencies lead. Meantime it is the evening twilight, and for
the moment it seems as if we could do without the sun, for though he is below
the horizon, the air is still full of light. But wait awhile; and the deepening
of the twilight into the darkness of night will show how far Christ the Holy One
of the Church’s confession can be dispensed with as the Sun of the spiritual
world.

3. The third anchor whereby the twelve were enabled to ride out the storm, was
confidence in the character of their Master. They believed, yea, they knew, that
He was the Holy One of God. They had been with Jesus long enough to have come to
very decided conclusions respecting Him. They had seen Him work many miracles;
they had heard Him discourse with marvellous wisdom, in parable and sermon, on
the divine kingdom; they had observed His wondrously tender, gracious concern
for the low and the lost; they had been present at His various encounters with
Pharisees, and had noted His holy abhorrence of their falsehood, pride, vanity,
and tyranny. All this blessed fellowship had begotten a confidence in, and
reverence for, their beloved Master, too strong to be shaken by a single address
containing some statements of an incomprehensible character, couched in
questionable or even offensive language. Their intellect might be perplexed, but
their heart remained true; and hence, while others who knew not Jesus well went
off in disgust, they continued by His side, feeling that such a friend and guide
was not to be parted with for a trifle.

“We believe and know,” said Peter. He believed because he knew. Such implicit
confidence as the twelve had in Jesus is possible only through intimate
knowledge; for one cannot thus trust a stranger. All, therefore, who desire to
get the benefit of this trust, must be willing to spend time and take trouble to
get into the heart of the Gospel story, and of its great subject. The sure
anchorage is not attainable by a listless, random reading of the evangelic
narratives, but by a close, careful, prayerful study, pursued it may be for
years. Those who grudge the trouble are in imminent danger of the fate which
befell the ignorant multitude, being liable to be thrown into panic by every new
infidel book, or to be scandalized by every strange utterance of the Object of
faith. Those, on the other hand, who do take the trouble, will be rewarded for
their pains. Storm-tossed for a time, they shall at length reach the harbor of a
creed which is no nondescript compromise between infidelity and scriptural
Christianity, but embraces all the cardinal facts and truths of the faith, as
taught by Jesus in the Capernaum discourse, and as afterwards taught by the men
who passed safely through the Capernaum crisis. May God in His mercy guide all
souls now out in the tempestuous sea of doubt into that haven of rest!


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  CHAPTER 44: 02.10.     THE LEAVEN OF THE PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES
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The Leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees Mat 16:1-12; Mark 8:10-21. This new
collision between Jesus and His opponents took place shortly after a second
miracle of feeding similar to that performed in the neighborhood of Bethsaida
Julias. What interval of time elapsed between the two miracles cannot be
ascertained; but it was long enough to admit of an extended journey on the part
of our Lord and His disciples to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, the scene of the
pathetic meeting with the Syrophenician woman, and round from thence through the
region of the ten cities, on the eastern border of the Galilean lake. It was
long enough also to allow the cause and the fame of Jesus to recover from the
low state to which they sank after the sifting sermon in the synagogue of
Capernaum. The unpopular One had again become popular, so that on arriving at
the south-eastern shore of the lake He found Himself attended by thousands, so
intent on hearing Him preach, and on experiencing His healing power, that they
remained with Him three days, almost, if not entirely, without food, thus
creating a necessity for the second miraculous repast.

After the miracle on the south-eastern shore, Jesus, we read, sent away the
multitude; and taking ship, came into the coasts of Magdala, on the western side
of the sea. It was on His arrival there that He encountered the party who came
seeking of Him a sign from heaven. These persons had probably heard of the
recent miracle, as of many others wrought by Him; but, unwilling to accept the
conclusion to which these wondrous works plainly led, they affected to regard
them as insufficient evidence of His Messiahship, and demanded still more
unequivocal proof before giving in their adherence to His claim. “Show us a sign
from heaven,” said they; meaning thereby, something like the manna brought down
from heaven by Moses, or the fire called down by Elijah, or the thunder and rain
called down by Samuel; it being assumed that such signs could be wrought only by
the power of God, whilst the signs on earth, such as Jesus supplied in His
miracles of healing, might be wrought by the power of the devil! It was a demand
of a sort often addressed to Jesus in good faith or in bad; for the Jews sought
after such signs-miracles of a singular and startling character, fitted to
gratify a superstitious curiosity, and astonish a wonder-loving mind-miracles
that were merely signs, serving no other purpose than to display divine power;
like the rod of Moses, converted into a serpent, and reconverted into its
original form.

These demands of the sign-seekers Jesus uniformly met with a direct refusal. He
would not condescend to work miracles of any description merely as certificates
of His own Messiahship, or to furnish food for a superstitious appetite, or
materials of amusement to sceptics. He knew that such as remained unbelievers in
presence of His ordinary miracles, which were not naked signs, but also works of
beneficence, could not be brought to faith by any means; nay, that the more
evidence they got, the more hardened they should become in unbelief. He regarded
the very demand for these signs as the indication of a fixed determination on
the part of those who made it not to believe in Him, even if, in order to rid
themselves of the disagreeable obligation, it should be necessary to put Him to
death. Therefore, in refusing the signs sought after, He was wont to accompany
the refusal with a word of rebuke or of sad foreboding; as when He said, at a
very early period of His ministry, on His first visit to Jerusalem, after His
baptism: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” On the
present occasion the soul of Jesus was much perturbed by the renewed demands of
the sign-seekers. “He sighed deeply in His spirit,” knowing full well what these
demands meant, with respect both to those who made them and to Himself; and He
addressed the parties who came tempting Him in excessively severe and bitter
terms-reproaching them with spiritual blindness, calling them a wicked and
adulterous generation, and ironically referring them now, as He had once done
before, to the sign of the prophet Jonas. He told them, that while they knew the
weather signs, and understood what a red sky in the morning or evening meant,
they were blind to the manifest signs of the times, which showed at once that
the Sun of righteousness had arisen, and that a dreadful storm of judgment was
coming like a dark night on apostate Israel for her iniquity. He applied to
them, and the whole generation they represented, the epithet “wicked,” to
characterize their false-hearted, malevolent, and spiteful behavior towards
Himself; and He employed the term “adulterous,” to describe them, in relation to
God, as guilty of breaking their marriage covenant, pretending great love and
zeal with their lip, but in their heart and life turning away from the living
God to idols-forms, ceremonies, signs. He gave them the story of Jonah the
prophet for a sign, in mystic allusion to His death; meaning to say, that one of
the most reliable evidences that He was God’s servant indeed, was just the fact
that He was rejected, and ignominiously and barbarously treated by such as those
to whom He spake: that there could be no worse sign of a man than to be well
received by them-that he could be no true Christ who was so received.

Having thus freely uttered His mind, Jesus left the sign-seekers; and entering
into the ship in which He had just crossed from the other side, departed again
to the same eastern shore, anxious to be rid of their unwelcome presence. On
arriving at the land, He made the encounter which had just taken place the
subject of instruction to the twelve. “Take heed,” He said as they walked along
the way, “and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” The word was
spoken abruptly, as the utterance of one waking out of a revery. Jesus, we
imagine, while His disciples rowed Him across the lake, had been brooding over
what had occurred, sadly musing on prevailing unbelief, and the dark, lowering
weather-signs, portentous of evil to Him and to the whole Jewish people. And
now, recollecting the presence of the disciples, He communicates His thoughts to
them in the form of a warning, and cautions them against the deadly influence of
an evil time, as a parent might bid his child beware of a poisonous plant whose
garish flowers attracted its eye. In this warning, it will be observed,
pharisaic and Sadducaic tendencies are identified. Jesus speaks not of two
leavens, but of one common to both sects, as if they were two species of one
genus, two branches from one stem. And such indeed they were. Superficially, the
two parties were very diverse. The one was excessively zealous, the other was
“moderate” in religion; the one was strict, the other easy in morals; the one
was exclusively and intensely Jewish in feeling, the other was open to the
influence of pagan civilization. Each party had a leaven peculiar to itself:
that of the Pharisees being, as Christ was wont to declare, hypocrisy; that of
the Sadducees, an engrossing interest in merely material and temporal concerns,
assuming in some a political form, as in the case of the partisans of the Herod
family, called in the Gospels Herodians, in others wearing the guise of a
philosophy which denied the existence of spirit and the reality of the future
life, and made that denial an excuse for exclusive devotion to the interests of
time. But here, as elsewhere, extremes met. Phariseeism, Sadduceeism,
Herodianism, though distinguished by minor differences, were radically one. The
religionists, the philosophers, the politicians, were all members of one great
party, which was inveterately hostile to the divine kingdom. All alike were
worldly-minded (of the Pharisees it is expressly remarked that they were
covetous); all were opposed to Christ for fundamentally the same reason, viz.
because He was not of this world; all united fraternally at this time in the
attempt to vex Him by unbelieving, unreasonable demands; and they all had a hand
in His death at the last. It was thus made apparent, once for all, that a
Christian is not one who merely differs superficially either from Pharisees or
from Sadducees separately, but one who differs radically from both. A weighty
truth, not yet well understood; for it is fancied by many that right believing
and right living consist in going to the opposite extreme from any tendency
whose evil influence is apparent. To avoid pharisaic strictness and
superstition, grown odious, men run into Sadducaic scepticism and license; or,
frightened by the excesses of infidelity and secularity, they seek salvation in
ritualism, infallible churches, and the revival of mediaeval monkery. Thus the
two tendencies continue ever propagating each other on the principle of action
and reaction; one generation or school going all lengths in one direction, and
another making a point of being as unlike its predecessor or its neighbor as
possible, and both being equally far from the truth.

What the common leaven of Phariseeism and Sadduceeism was, Jesus did not deem it
necessary to state. He had already indicated its nature with sufficient
plainness in His severe reply to the sign-seekers. The radical vice of both
sects was just ungodliness: blindness, and deadness of heart to the Divine. They
did not know the true and the good when they saw it; and when they knew it, they
did not love it. All around them were the evidences that the King and the
kingdom of grace were among them; yet here were they asking for arbitrary
outward signs, “external evidences” in the worst sense, that He who spake as
never man spake, and worked wonders of mercy such as had never before been
witnessed, was no impostor, but a man wise and good, a prophet, and the Son of
God. Verily the natural man, religious or irreligious, is blind and dead! What
these seekers after a sign needed was not a new sign, but a new heart; not mere
evidence, but a spirit willing to obey the truth. The spirit of unbelief which
ruled in Jewish society Jesus described as a leaven, with special reference to
its diffusiveness; and most fitly, for it passes from sire to son, from rich to
poor, from learned to unlearned, till a whole generation has been vitiated by
its malign influence. Such was the state of things in Israel as it came under
His eye. Spiritual blindness and deadness, with the outward symptom of the
inward malady-a constant craving for evidence-met him on every side. The common
people, the leaders of society, the religious, the sceptics, the courtiers, and
the rustics, were all blind, and yet apparently all most anxious to see; ever
renewing the demand, “What sign showest Thou, that we may see and believe Thee?
What dost Thou work?”

Vexed an hour ago by the sinister movements of foes, Jesus next found new matter
for annoyance in the stupidity of friends. The disciples utterly, even
ludicrously, misunderstood the warning word addressed to them. In conversation
by themselves, while their Master walked apart, they discussed the question,
what the strange words, so abruptly and earnestly spoken, might mean; and they
came to the sapient conclusion that they were intended to caution them against
buying bread from parties belonging to either of the offensive sects. It was an
absurd mistake, and yet, all things considered, it was not so very unnatural:
for, in the first place, as already remarked, Jesus had introduced the subject
very abruptly; and secondly, some time had elapsed since the meeting with the
seekers of a sign, during which no allusion seems to have been made to that
matter. How were they to know that during all that time their Master’s thoughts
had been occupied with what took place on the western shore of the lake? In any
case, such a supposition was not likely to occur to their mind; for the demand
for a sign had, doubtless, not appeared to them an event of much consequence,
and it was probably forgotten as soon as their backs were turned upon the men
who made it. And then, finally, it so happened that, just before Jesus began to
speak, they remembered that in the hurry of a sudden departure they had
forgotten to provide themselves with a stock of provisions for the journey. That
was what they were thinking about when He began to say, “Take heed, and beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.” The momentous circumstance
that they had with them but one loaf was causing them so much concern, that when
they heard the caution against a particular kind of leaven, they jumped at once
to the conclusion, “It is because we have no bread.”

Yet the misunderstanding of the disciples, though simple and natural in its
origin, was blameworthy. They could not have fallen into the mistake had the
interest they took in spiritual and temporal things respectively been
proportional to their relative importance. They had treated the incident on the
other side of the lake too lightly, and they had treated their neglect to
provide bread too gravely. They should have taken more to heart the ominous
demand for a sign, and the solemn words spoken by their Master in reference
thereto; and they should not have been troubled about the want of loaves in the
company of Him who had twice miraculously fed the hungry multitude in the
desert. Their thoughtlessness in one direction, and their over-thoughtfulness in
another, showed that food and raiment occupied a larger place in their minds
than the kingdom of God and its interests. Had they possessed more faith and
more spirituality, they would not have exposed themselves to the reproachful
question of their Master: “How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it
not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the
Pharisees and Sadducees?” And yet, Jesus can hardly have expected these crude
disciples to appreciate as He did the significance of what had occurred on the
other side of the lake. It needed no common insight to discern the import of
that demand for a sign; and the faculty of reading the signs of the times
possessed by the disciples, as we shall soon see, and as all we have learned
concerning them already might lead us to expect, was very small indeed. One of
the principal lessons to be learned from the subject of this chapter, indeed, is
just this: how different were the thoughts of Christ in reference to the future
from the thoughts of His companions. We shall often have occasion to remark on
this hereafter, as we advance towards the final crisis. At this point we are
called to signalize the fact prominently for the first time.


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  CHAPTER 45: 02.11.     PETER'S CONFESSION
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Peter’s Confession; or, Current Opinion and Eternal Truth Mat 16:13-20; Mark
8:27-30; Luk 9:18-21. From the eastern shore of the lake Jesus directed His
course northwards along the banks of the Upper Jordan, passing Bethsaida Julias,
where, as Mark informs us, He restored eyesight to a blind man. Pursuing His
journey, He arrived at length in the neighborhood of a town of some importance,
beautifully situated near the springs of the Jordan, at the southern base of
Mount Hermon. This was Caesarea Philippi, formerly called Paneas, from the
heathen god Pan, who was worshipped by the Syrian Greeks in the limestone cavern
near by, in which Jordan’s fountains bubble forth to light. Its present name was
given to it by Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis, in honor of Caesar Augustus; his
own name being appended (Caesarea Philippi, or Philip’s Caesarea) to distinguish
it from the other town of the same name on the Mediterranean coast. The town so
named could boast of a temple of white marble, built by Herod the Great to the
first Roman Emperor, besides villas and palaces, built by Philip, Herod’s son,
in whose territories it lay, and who, as we have just stated, gave it its new
name.

Away in that remote secluded region, Jesus occupied Himself for a season in
secret prayer, and in confidential conversations with His disciples on topics of
deepest interest. One of these conversations had reference to His own Person. He
introduced the subject by asking the twelve the question, “Whom do men say that
I, the Son of man, am?” This question He asked, not as one needing to be
informed, still less from any morbid sensitiveness, such as vain men feel
respecting the opinions entertained of them by their fellow-creatures. He
desired of His disciples a recital of current opinions, merely by way of preface
to a profession of their own faith in the eternal truth concerning Himself. He
deemed it good to draw forth from them such a profession at this time, because
He was about to make communications to them on another subject, viz. His
sufferings, which He knew would sorely try their faith. He wished them to be
fairly committed to the doctrine of His Messiah-ship before proceeding to speak
in plain terms on the unwelcome theme of His death. From the reply of the
disciples, it appears that their Master had been the subject of much talk among
the people. This is only what we should have expected. Jesus was a very public
and a very extraordinary person, and to be much talked about is one of the
inevitable penalties of prominence. The merits and the claims of the Son of man
were accordingly freely and widely canvassed in those days, with gravity or with
levity, with prejudice or with candor, with decision or indecision,
intelligently or ignorantly, as is the way of men in all ages. As they mingled
with the people, it was the lot of the twelve to hear many opinions concerning
their Lord which never reached His ear; sometimes kind and favorable, making
them glad; at other times unkind and unfavorable, making them sad. The opinions
prevalent among the masses concerning Jesus-for it was with reference to these
that He interrogated His disciples-seem to have been mainly favorable. All
agreed in regarding Him as a prophet of the highest rank, differing only as to
which of the great prophets of Israel He most nearly resembled or personated.
Some said He was John the Baptist revived, others Elias, while others again
identified Him with one or other of the great prophets, as Jeremiah. These
opinions are explained in part by an expectation then commonly entertained, that
the advent of the Messiah would be preceded by the return of one of the prophets
by whom God had spoken to the fathers, partly by the perception of real or
supposed resemblances between Jesus and this or that prophet; His tenderness
reminding one hearer of the author of the Lamentations, His sternness in
denouncing hypocrisy and tyranny reminding another of the prophet of fire, while
perhaps His parabolic discourses led a third to think of Ezekiel or of Daniel.
When we reflect on the high veneration in which the ancient prophets were held,
we cannot fail to see that these diverse opinions current among the Jewish
people concerning Jesus imply a very high sense of His greatness and excellence.
To us, who regard Him as the Sun, while the prophets were at best but lamps of
greater or less brightness, such comparisons may well seem not only inadequate,
but dishonoring. Yet we must not despise them, as the testimonies of open-minded
but imperfectly -formed contemporaries to the worth of Him whom we worship as
the Lord. Taken separately, they show that in the judgment of candid observers
Jesus was a man of surpassing greatness; taken together, they show the
many-sidedness of His character, and its superiority to that of any one of the
prophets; for He could not have reminded those who witnessed His works, and
heard Him preach, of all the prophets in turn, unless He had comprehended them
all in His one person. The very diversity of opinion respecting Him, therefore,
showed that a greater than Elias, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, or Daniel, had
appeared.

These opinions, valuable still as testimonials to the excellence of Christ, must
be admitted further to be indicative, so far, of good dispositions on the part
of those who cherished and expressed them. At a time when those who deemed
themselves in every respect immeasurably superior to the multitude could find no
better names for the Son of man than Samaritan, devil, blasphemer, glutton and
drunkard, companion of publicans and sinners, it was something considerable to
believe that the calumniated One was a prophet as worthy of honor as any of
those whose sepulchres the professors of piety carefully varnished, while
depreciating, and even putting to death, their living successors. The multitude
who held this opinion might come short of true discipleship; but they were at
least far in advance of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who came in tempting mood
to ask a sign from heaven, and whom no sign, whether in heaven or in earth,
would conciliate or convince.

How, then, did Jesus receive the report of His disciples? Was He satisfied with
these favorable, and in the circumstances really gratifying, opinions current
among the people? He was not. He was not content to be put on a level with even
the greatest of the prophets. He did not indeed express any displeasure against
those who assigned Him such a rank, and He may even have been pleased to hear
that public opinion had advanced so far on the way to the true faith.
Nevertheless He declined to accept the position accorded. The meek and lowly Son
of man claimed to be something more than a great prophet. Therefore He turned to
His chosen disciples, as to men from whom He expected a more satisfactory
statement of the truth, and pointedly asked what they thought of Him. “But
you-whom say ye that I am?” In this case, as in many others, Simon son of Jonas
answered for the company. His prompt, definite, memorable reply to his Master’s
question was this: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” With this
view of His person Jesus was satisfied. He did not charge Peter with
extravagance in going so far beyond the opinion of the populace. On the
contrary, He entirely approved of what the ardent disciple had said, and
expressed His satisfaction in no cold or measured terms. Never, perhaps, did He
speak in more animated language, or with greater appearance of deep emotion. He
solemnly pronounced Peter “blessed” on account of His faith; He spake for the
first time of a church which should be founded, professing Peter’s faith as its
creed; He promised that disciple great power in that church, as if grateful to
him for being the first to put the momentous truth into words, and for uttering
it so boldly amid prevailing unbelief, and crude, defective belief; and He
expressed, in the strongest possible terms, His confidence that the church yet
to be founded would stand to all ages proof against all the assaults of the
powers of darkness.

Simon’s confession, fairly interpreted, seems to contain these two
propositions-that Jesus was the Messiah, and that He was divine. “Thou art the
Christ,” said he in the first place, with conscious reference to the reported
opinions of the people, “Thou art the Christ,” and not merely a prophet come to
prepare Christ’s way. Then he added: “the Son of God,” to explain what he
understood by the term Christ. The Messiah looked for by the Jews in general was
merely a man, though a very superior one, the ideal man endowed with
extraordinary gifts. The Christ of Peter’s creed was more than man-a superhuman,
a divine being. This truth he sought to express in the second part of his
confession. He called Jesus Son of God, with obvious reference to the name His
Master had just given Himself-Son of man. “Thou,” he meant to say, “art not only
what Thou hast now called Thyself, and what, in lowliness of mind, Thou art wont
to call Thyself-the Son of man; Thou art also Son of God, partaking of the
divine nature not less really than of the human.” Finally, he prefixed the
epithet “living” to the divine name, to express his consciousness that he was
making a very momentous declaration, and to give that declaration a solemn,
deliberate character. It was as if he said: “I know it is no light matter to
call any one, even Thee, Son of God, of the One living eternal Jehovah. But I
shrink not from the assertion, however bold, startling, or even blasphemous it
may seem. I cannot by any other expression do justice to all I know and feel
concerning Thee, or convey the impression left on my mind by what I have
witnessed during the time I have followed Thee as a disciple.” In this way was
the disciple urged on, in spite of his Jewish monotheism, to the recognition of
his Lord’s divinity. That the famous confession, uttered in the neighborhood of
Caesarea Philippi, really contains in germ the doctrine of Christ’s divinity,
might be inferred from the simple fact that Jesus was satisfied with it; for He
certainly claimed to be Son of God in a sense predicable of no mere man, even
according to synoptical accounts of His teaching. But when we consider the
peculiar terms in which He expressed Himself respecting Peter’s faith, we are
still further confirmed in this conclusion. “Flesh and blood,” said He to the
disciple, “hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”
These words evidently imply that the person addressed had said something very
extraordinary; something he could not have learned from the traditional
established belief of his generation respecting Messiah; something new even for
himself and his fellow-disciples, if not in word, at least in meaning, to which
he could not have attained by the unaided effort of his own mind. The confession
is virtually represented as an inspiration, a revelation, a flash of light from
heaven, the utterance not of the rude fisherman, but of the divine Spirit
speaking, through his mouth, a truth hitherto hidden, and yet but dimly
comprehended by him to whom it hath been revealed. All this agrees well with the
supposition that the confession contains not merely an acknowledgment of the
Messiahship of Jesus in the ordinary sense, but a proclamation of the true
doctrine concerning Messiah’s person-viz. that He was a divine being manifest in
the flesh. The remaining portion of our Lord’s address to Simon shows that He
assigned to the doctrine confessed by that disciple the place of fundamental
importance in the Christian faith. The object of these remarkable statements is
not to assert the supremacy of Peter, as Romanists contend, but to declare the
supremely important nature of the truth he has confessed. In spite of all
difficulties of interpretation, this remains clear and certain to us. Who or
what the “rock” is we deem doubtful; it may be Peter, or it may be his
confession: it is a point on which scholars equally sound in the faith, and
equally innocent of all sympathy with Popish dogmas, are divided in opinion, and
on which it would ill become us to dogmatize. Of this only we are sure, that not
Peter’s person, but Peter’s faith, is the fundamental matter in Christ’s mind.
When He says to that disciple, “Thou art Petros,” He means, “Thou art a man of
rock, worthy of the name I gave thee by anticipation the first time I met thee,
because thou hast at length got thy foot planted on the rock of the eternal
truth.” He speaks of the church that is to be, for the first time, in connection
with Simon’s confession, because that church is to consist of men adopting that
confession as their own, and acknowledging Him to be the Christ, the Son of God.
He alludes to the keys of the kingdom of heaven in the same connection, because
none but those who homologate the doctrine first solemnly enunciated by Simon,
shall be admitted within its gates. He promises Peter the power of the keys, not
because it is to belong to him alone, or to him more than others, but by way of
honorable mention, in recompense for the joy he has given his Lord by the
superior energy and decision of his faith. He is grateful to Peter, because he
has believed most emphatically that He came out from God; and He shows His
gratitude by promising first to him individually a power which He afterwards
conferred on all His chosen disciples. Finally, if it be true that Peter is here
called the rock on which the church shall be built, this is to be understood in
the same way as the promise of the keys. Peter is called the foundation of the
church only in the same sense as all the apostles are called the foundation by
the Apostle Paul, viz. as the first preachers of the true faith concerning Jesus
as the Christ and Son of God; and if the man who first professed that faith be
honored by being called individually the rock, that only shows that the faith,
and not the man, is after all the true foundation. That which makes Simon a
Petros, a rock-like man, fit to build on, is the real Petra on which the
Ecclesia is to be built.

After these remarks we deem it superfluous to enter minutely into the question
to what the term “rock” refers in the sentence, “Thou art Peter, and on this
rock I will build my church.” At the same time, we must say that it is by no
means so clear to us that the rock must be Peter, and can be nothing else, as it
is the fashion of modern commentators to assert. To the rendering, “Thou art
Petros, a man of rock; and on thee, as on a rock, I will build my church,” it is
possible, as already admitted, to assign an intelligible scriptural meaning. But
we confess our preference for the old Protestant interpretation, according to
which our Lord’s words to His disciple should be thus paraphrased: “Thou, Simon
Barjonas, art Petros, a man of rock, worthy of thy name Peter, because thou hast
made that bold, good confession; and on the truth thou hast now confessed, as on
a rock, will I build my church; and so long as it abides on that foundation it
will stand firm and unassailable against all the powers of hell.” So rendering,
we make Jesus say not only what He really thought, but what was most worthy to
be said. For divine truth is the sure foundation. Believers, even Peters, may
fail, and prove any thing but stable; but truth is eternal, and faileth never.
This we say not unmindful of the counterpart truth, that “the truth,” unless
confessed by living souls, is dead, and no source of stability. Sincere personal
conviction, with a life corresponding, is needed to make the faith in the
objective sense of any virtue.

We cannot pass from these memorable words of Christ without adverting, with a
certain solemn awe, to the strange fate which has befallen them in the history
of the church. This text, in which the church’s Lord declares that the powers of
darkness shall not prevail against her, has been used by these powers as an
instrument of assault, and with only too much success. What a gigantic system of
spiritual despotism and blasphemous assumption has been built on these two
sentences concerning the rock and the keys! How nearly, by their aid, has the
kingdom of God been turned into a kingdom of Satan! One is tempted to wish that
Jesus, knowing beforehand what was to happen, had so framed His words as to
obviate the mischief. But the wish were vain. No forms of expression, however
carefully selected, could prevent human ignorance from falling into
misconception, or hinder men who had a purpose to serve, from finding in
Scripture what suited that purpose. Nor can any Christian, on reflection, think
it desirable that the Author of our faith had adopted a studied prudential style
of speech, intended not so much to give faithful expression to the actual
thoughts of His mind and feelings of His heart, as to avoid giving occasion of
stumbling to honest stupidity, or an excuse for perversion to dishonest knavery.
The spoken word in that case had been no longer a true reflection of the Word
incarnate. All the poetry and passion and genuine human feeling which form the
charm of Christ’s sayings would have been lost, and nothing would have remained
but prosaic platitudes, like those of the scribes and of theological pedants.
No; let us have the precious words of our Master in all their characteristic
intensity and vehemence of unqualified assertion; and if prosaic or disingenuous
men will manufacture out of them incredible dogmas, let them answer for it. Why
should the children be deprived of their bread, and only the dogs be cared for?

One remark more ere we pass from the subject of this chapter. The part we find
Peter playing in this incident at Caesarea Philippi prepares us for regarding as
historically credible the part assigned to him in the Acts of the Apostles in
some momentous scenes, as, e.g., in that brought before us in the tenth chapter.
The Tübingen school of critics tell us that the Acts is a composition full of
invented situations adapted to an apologetic design; and that the plan on which
the book proceeds is to make Peter act as like Paul as possible in the first
part, and Paul, on the other hand, as much like Peter as possible in the second.
The conversion of the Roman centurion by Peter’s agency they regard as a capital
instance of Peter being made to pose as Paul, i.e., as an universalist in his
views of Christianity. Now, all we have to say on the subject here is this. The
conduct ascribed to Peter the apostle in the tenth chapter of the Acts is
credible in the light of the narrative we have been studying. In both we find
the same man the recipient of a revelation; in both we find him the first to
receive, utter, and act on a great Christian truth. Is it incredible that the
man who received one revelation as a disciple should receive another as an
apostle? Is it not psychologically probable that the man who now appears so
original and audacious in connection with one great truth, will again show the
same attributes of originality and audacity in connection with some other truth?
For our part, far from feeling sceptical as to the historic truth of the
narrative in the Acts, we should have been very much surprised if in the history
of the nascent church Peter had been found playing a part altogether devoid of
originalities and audacities. He would in that case have been very unlike his
former self.


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  CHAPTER 46: 02.12.     FIRST LESSON ON THE CROSS
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First Lesson On the Cross Section I - First Announcement of Christ’s Death Mat
16:21-28; Mark 8:31-38; Luk 9:22-27. Not till an advanced period in His public
ministry-not, in fact, till it was drawing to a close-did Jesus speak in plain,
unmistakable terms of His death. The solemn event was foreknown by Him from the
first; and He betrayed His consciousness of what was awaiting Him by a variety
of occasional allusions. These earlier utterances, however, were all couched in
mystic language. They were of the nature of riddles, whose meaning became clear
after the event, but which before, none could, or at least did, read. Jesus
spake now of a temple, which, if destroyed, He should raise again in three days;
at another time of a lifting up of the Son of man, like unto that of the brazen
serpent in the wilderness; and on yet other occasions, of a sad separation of
the bridegroom from the children of the bridechamber, of the giving of His flesh
for the life of the world, and of a sign like that of the prophet Jonas, which
should be given in His own person to an evil and adulterous generation. At
length, after the conversation in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus changed His style of
speaking on the subject of His sufferings, substituting for dark, hidden
allusions, plain, literal, matter-of-fact statements. This change was naturally
adapted to the altered circumstances in which He was placed. The signs of the
times were growing ominous; storm-clouds were gathering in the air; all things
were beginning to point towards Calvary. His work in Galilee and the provinces
was nearly done; it remained for Him to bear witness to the truth in and around
the holy city; and from the present mood of the ecclesiastical authorities and
the leaders of religious society, as manifested by captious question and
unreasonable demand, and a constant espionage on His movements, it was not
difficult to foresee that it would not require many more offences, or much
longer time, to ripen dislike and jealousy into murderous hatred. Such plain
speaking, therefore, concerning what was soon to happen, was natural and
seasonable. Jesus was now entering the valley of the shadow of death, and in so
speaking He was but adapting His talk to the situation.

Plain-speaking regarding His death was now not only natural on Christ’s part,
but at once necessary and safe in reference to his disciples. It was necessary,
in order that they might be prepared for the approaching event, as far as that
was possible in the case of men who, to the last, persisted in hoping that the
issue would be different from what their Master anticipated. It was safe; for
now the subject might be spoken of plainly without serious risk to their faith.
Before the disciples were established in the doctrine of Christ’s person, the
doctrine of the cross might have scared them away altogether. Premature
preaching of a Christ to be crucified might have made them unbelievers in the
fundamental truth that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. Therefore, in
consideration of their weakness, Jesus maintained a certain reserve respecting
His sufferings, till their faith in Him as the Christ should have become
sufficiently rooted to stand the strain of the storm soon to be raised by a most
unexpected, unwelcome, and incomprehensible announcement. Only after hearing
Peter’s confession was He satisfied that the strength necessary for enduring the
trial had been attained.

Wherefore, “from that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples how that
He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief
priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.”

Every clause in this solemn announcement demands our reverent scrutiny.

Jesus showed unto His disciples:

1. “That He must go unto Jerusalem.” Yes! there the tragedy must be enacted:
that was the fitting scene for the stupendous events that were about to take
place. It was dramatically proper that the Son of man should die in that “holy,”
unholy city, which had earned a most unenviable notoriety as the murderess of
the prophets, the stoner of them whom God sent unto her. “It cannot be”-it were
incongruous-“that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.” It was due also to the
dignity of Jesus, and to the design of His death, that He should suffer there.
Not in an obscure corner or in an obscure way must He die, but in the most
public place, and in a formal, judicial manner. He must be lifted up in view of
the whole Jewish nation, so that all might see Him whom they had pierced, and by
whose stripes also they might yet be healed. The “Lamb of God” must be slain in
the place where all the legal sacrifices were offered.

2. “And suffer many things.” Too many to enumerate, too painful to speak of in
detail, and better passed over in silence for the present. The bare fact that
their beloved Master was to be put to death, without any accompanying
indignities, would be sufficiently dreadful to the disciples; and Jesus
mercifully drew a veil over much that was present to His own thoughts. In a
subsequent conversation on the same sad theme, when His passion was near at
hand, He drew aside the veil a little, and showed them some of the “many
things.” But even then He was very sparing in His allusions, hinting only by a
passing word that He should be mocked, and scourged, and spit upon. He took no
delight in expatiating on such harrowing scenes. He was willing to bear those
indignities, but He cared not to speak of them more than was absolutely
necessary.

3. “Of the elders and chief priests and scribes.” Not of them alone, for Gentile
rulers and the people of Israel were to have a hand in evil-entreating the Son
of man as well as Jewish ecclesiastics. But the parties named were to be the
prime movers and most guilty agents in the nefarious transaction. The men who
ought to have taught the people to recognize in Jesus the Lord’s Anointed, would
hound them on to cry, “Crucify Him, crucify Him,” and by importunities and
threats urge heathen authorities to perpetrate a crime for which they had no
heart. Gray-haired elders sitting in council would solemnly decide that He was
worthy of death; high priests would utter oracles, that one man must die for the
people, that the whole nation perish not; scribes learned in the law would use
their legal knowledge to invent plausible grounds for an accusation involving
capital punishment. Jesus had suffered many petty annoyances from such persons
already; but the time was approaching when nothing would satisfy them but
getting the object of their dislike cast forth out of the world. Alas for
Israel, when her wise men, and her holy men, and her learned men, knew of no
better use to make of the stone chosen of God, and precious, than thus
contemptuously and wantonly to fling it away!

4. “And be killed.” Yes, and for blessed ends pre-ordained of God. But of these
Jesus speaks not now. He simply states, in general terms, the fact, in this
first lesson on the doctrine of the cross. Any thing more at this stage had been
wasted words. To what purpose speak of the theology of the cross, of God’s great
design in the death which was to be brought about by man’s guilty
instrumentality, to disciples unwilling to receive even the matter of fact? The
rude shock of an unwelcome announcement must first be over before any thing can
be profitably said on these higher themes. Therefore not a syllable here of
salvation by the death of the Son of man; of Christ crucified for man’s guilt as
well as by man’s guilt. The hard bare fact alone is stated, theology being
reserved for another season, when the hearers should be in a fitter frame of
mind for receiving instruction.

5. Finally, Jesus told His disciples that He should “be raised again the third
day.” To some so explicit a reference to the resurrection at this early date has
appeared improbable. To us, on the contrary, it appears eminently seasonable.
When was Jesus more likely to tell His disciples that He would rise again
shortly after His death, than just on the occasion when He first told them
plainly that He should die? He knew how harsh the one announcement would be to
the feelings of His faithful ones, and it was natural that He should add the
other, in the hope that when it was understood that His death was to be
succeeded, after a brief interval of three days, by resurrection, the news would
be much less hard to bear. Accordingly, after uttering the dismal words “be
killed,” He, with characteristic tenderness, hastened to say, “and be raised
again the third day;” that, having torn, He might heal, and having smitten, He
might bind up. The grave communications made by Jesus were far from welcome to
His disciples. Neither now nor at any subsequent time did they listen to the
forebodings of their Lord with resignation even, not to speak of cheerful
acquiescence or spiritual joy. They never heard Him speak of His death without
pain; and their only comfort, in connection with such announcements as the
present, seems to have been the hope that He had taken too gloomy a view of the
situation, and that His apprehensions would turn out groundless. They, for their
part, could see no grounds for such dark anticipations, and their Messianic
ideas did not dispose them to be on the outlook for these. They had not the
slightest conception that it behoved the Christ to suffer. On the contrary, a
crucified Christ was a scandal and a contradiction to them, quite as much as it
continued to be to the majority of the Jewish people after the Lord had ascended
to glory. Hence the more firmly they believed that Jesus was the Christ, the
more confounding it was to be told that He must be put to death. “How,” they
asked themselves, “can these things be? How can the Son of God be subject to
such indignities? How can our Master be the Christ, as we firmly believe, come
to set up the divine kingdom, and to be crowned its King with glory and honor,
and yet at the same time be doomed to undergo the ignominious fate of a criminal
execution?” These questions the twelve could not now, nor until after the
Resurrection, answer; nor is this wonderful, for if flesh and blood could not
reveal the doctrine of Christ’s person, still less could it reveal the doctrine
of His cross. Not without a very special illumination from heaven could they
understand the merest elements of that doctrine, and see, e.g., that nothing was
more worthy of the Son of God than to humble Himself and become subject unto
death, even the death of the cross; that the glory of God consists not merely in
being the highest, but in this, that being high, He stoops in lowly love to bear
the burden of His own sinful creatures; that nothing could more directly and
certainly conduce to the establishment of the divine kingdom than the gracious
self-humiliation of the King; that only by ascending the cross could Messiah
ascend the throne of His mediatorial glory; that only so could He subdue human
hearts, and become Lord of men’s affections as well as of their destinies. Many
in the church do not understand these blessed truths, even at this late era:
what wonder, then, if they were hid for a season from the eyes of the first
disciples! Let us not reproach them for the veil that was on their faces; let us
rather make sure that the same veil is not on our own. On this occasion, as at
Caesarea Philippi, the twelve found a most eloquent and energetic interpreter of
their sentiments in Simon Peter. The action and speech of that disciple at this
time were characteristic in the highest degree. He took Jesus, we are told (laid
hold of Him, we suppose, by His hand or His garment), and began to rebuke Him,
saying, “Be it far from Thee, Lord;” or more literally, “God be merciful to
Thee: God forbid! this shall not be unto Thee.” What a strange compound of good
and evil is this man! His language is dictated by the most intense affection: he
cannot bear the thought of any harm befalling his Lord; yet how irreverent and
disrespectful he is towards Him whom he has just acknowledged to be the Christ,
the Son of the living God! How he overbears, and contradicts, and domineers,
and, as it were, tries to bully his Master into putting away from His thoughts
those gloomy forebodings of coming evil! Verily he has need of chastisement to
teach him his own place, and to scourge out of his character the bad elements of
forwardness, and undue familiarity, and presumptuous self-will.

Happily for Peter, he had a Master who, in His faithful love, spared not the rod
when it was needful. Jesus judged that it was needed now, and therefore He
administered a rebuke not less remarkable for severity than was the encomium at
Caesarea Philippi for warm, unqualified approbation, and curiously contrasting
with that encomium in the terms in which it was expressed. He turned round on
His offending disciple, and sternly said: “Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art
an offence unto me: for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those
that be of men.” The same disciple who on the former occasion had spoken by
inspiration of Heaven is here represented as speaking by inspiration of mere
flesh and blood-of mere natural affection for his Lord, and of the animal
instinct of self-preservation, thinking of self-interest merely, not of duty. He
whom Christ had pronounced a man of rock, strong in faith, and fit to be a
foundation-stone in the spiritual edifice, is here called an offence, a
stumbling-stone lying in his Master’s path. Peter, the noble confessor of that
fundamental truth, by the faith of which the church would be able to defy the
gates of hell, appears here in league with the powers of darkness, the
unconscious mouth-piece of Satan the tempter. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” What
a downcome for him who but yesterday got that promise of the power of the keys!
How suddenly has the novice church dignitary, too probably lifted up with pride
or vanity, fallen into the condemnation of the devil! This memorable rebuke
seems mercilessly severe, and yet on consideration we feel it was nothing more
than what was called for. Christ’s language on this occasion needs no apology,
such as might be drawn from supposed excitement of feeling, or from a
consciousness on the speaker’s part that the infirmity of His own sentient
nature was whispering the same suggestion as that which came from Peter’s lips.
Even the hard word Satan, which is the sting of the speech, is in its proper
place. It describes exactly the character of the advice given by Simon. That
advice was substantially this: “Save thyself at any rate; sacrifice duty to
self-interest, the cause of God to personal convenience.” An advice truly
Satanic in principle and tendency! For the whole aim of Satanic policy is to get
self-interest recognized as the chief end of man. Satan’s temptations aim at
nothing worse than this. Satan is called the Prince of this world, because
self-interest rules the world; he is called the accuser of the brethren, because
he does not believe that even the sons of God have any higher motive. He is a
sceptic; and his scepticism consists in determined, scornful unbelief in the
reality of any chief end other than that of personal advantage. “Doth Job, or
even Jesus, serve God for naught? Self-sacrifice, suffering for righteousness’
sake, fidelity to truth even unto death-it is all romance and youthful
sentimentalism, or hypocrisy and hollow cant. There is absolutely no such thing
as a surrender of the lower life for the higher; all men are selfish at heart,
and have their price: some may hold out longer than others, but in the last
extremity every man will prefer his own things to the things of God. All that a
man hath will he give for his life, his moral integrity and his piety not
excepted.” Such is Satan’s creed. The suggestion made by Peter, as the
unconscious tool of the spirit of evil, is identical in principle with that made
by Satan himself to Jesus in the temptation in the wilderness. The tempter said
then in effect: “If Thou be the Son of God, use Thy power for Thine own behoof;
Thou art hungry, e.g., make bread for Thyself out of the stones. If Thou be the
Son of God, presume on Thy privilege as the favorite of Heaven; cast Thyself
down from this elevation, securely counting on protection from harm, even where
other men would be allowed to suffer the consequences of their foolhardiness.
What better use canst Thou make of Thy divine powers and privileges than to
promote Thine own advantage and glory?” Peter’s feeling at the present time
seems to have been much the same: “If Thou be the Son of God, why shouldst Thou
suffer an ignominious, violent death? Thou hast power to save Thyself from such
a fate; surely Thou wilt not hesitate to use it!” The attached disciple, in
fact, was an unconscious instrument employed by Satan to subject Jesus to a
second temptation, analogous to the earlier one in the desert of Judea. It was
the god of this world that was at work in both cases; who, being accustomed to
find men only too ready to prefer safety to righteousness, could not believe
that he should find nothing of this spirit in the Son of God, and therefore came
again and again seeking an open point in His armor through which he might shoot
his fiery darts; not renouncing hope till his intended victim hung on the cross,
apparently conquered by the world, but in reality a conqueror both of the world
and of its lord. The severe language uttered by Jesus on this occasion, when
regarded as addressed to a dearly beloved disciple, shows in a striking manner
His holy abhorrence of every thing savoring of self-seeking. “Save Thyself,”
counsels Simon: “Get thee behind me, Satan,” replies Simon’s Lord. Truly Christ
was not one who pleased Himself. Though He were a Son, yet would He learn
obedience by the things which He had to suffer. And by this mind He proved
Himself to be the Son, and won from His Father the approving voice: “Thou art my
beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased,”-Heaven’s reply to the voice from hell
counselling Him to pursue a course of self-pleasing. Persevering in this mind,
Jesus was at length lifted up on the cross, and so became the Author of eternal
salvation unto all them that obey Him. Blessed now and forevermore be His name,
who so humbled Himself, and became obedient as far as death!

Section II - Cross-Bearing, The Law of Discipleship Mat 16:24-28; Mark 8:34-38;
Luk 9:23-27.

After one hard announcement , comes another not less hard. The Lord Jesus has
told His disciples that He must one day be put to death; He now tells them, that
as it fares with Him, so it must fare with them also. The second announcement
was naturally occasioned by the way in which the first had been received. Peter
had said, and all had felt, “This shall not be unto Thee.” Jesus replies in
effect, “Say you so? I tell you that not only shall I, your Master, be
crucified-for such will be the manner of my death,-but ye too, faithfully
following me, shall most certainly have your crosses to bear. ‘If any man will
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’” The
second announcement was not, like the first, made to the twelve only. This we
might infer from the terms of the announcement, which are general, even if we
had not been informed, as we are by Mark and Luke, that before making it Jesus
called the people unto Him, with His disciples, and spake in the hearing of them
all. The doctrine here taught, therefore, is for all Christians in all ages: not
for apostles only, but for the humblest disciples; not for priests or preachers,
but for the laity as well; not for monks living in cloisters, but for men living
and working in the outside world. The King and Head of the church here proclaims
a universal law binding on all His subjects, requiring all to bear a cross in
fellowship with Himself.

We are not told how the second announcement was received by those who heard it,
and particularly by the twelve. We can believe, however, that to Peter and his
brethren it sounded less harsh than the first, and seemed, at least
theoretically, more acceptable. Common experience might teach them that crosses,
however unpleasant to flesh and blood, were nevertheless things that might be
looked for in the lot of mere men. But what had Christ the Son of God to do with
crosses? Ought He not to be exempt from the sufferings and indignities of
ordinary mortals? If not, of what avail was His divine Sonship? In short, the
difficulty for the twelve was probably, not that the servant should be no better
than the Master, but that the Master should be no better than the servant. Our
perplexity, on the other hand, is apt to be just the reverse of this. Familiar
with the doctrine that Jesus died on the cross in our room, we are apt to wonder
what occasion there can be for our bearing a cross. If He suffered for us
vicariously, what need, we are ready to inquire, for suffering on our part
likewise? We need to be reminded that Christ’s sufferings, while in some
respects peculiar, are in other respects common to Him with all in whom His
spirit abides; that while, as redemptive, His death stands alone, as suffering
for righteousness’ sake it is but the highest instance of a universal law,
according to which all who live a true godly life must suffer hardship in a
false evil world. And it is very observable that Jesus took a most effectual
method of keeping this truth prominently before the mind of His followers in all
ages, by proclaiming it with great emphasis on the first occasion on which He
plainly announced that He Himself was to die, giving it, in fact, as the first
lesson on the doctrine of His death: the first of four to be found in the
Gospels. Thereby He in effect declared that only such as were willing to be
crucified with Him should be saved by His death; nay, that willingness to bear a
cross was indispensable to the right understanding of the doctrine of salvation
through Him. It is as if above the door of the school in which the mystery of
redemption was to be taught, He had inscribed the legend: Let no man who is
unwilling to deny himself, and take up his cross, enter here. In this great law
of discipleship the cross signifies not merely the external penalty of death,
but all troubles that come on those who earnestly endeavor to live as Jesus
lived in this world, and in consequence of that endeavor. Many and various are
the afflictions of the righteous, differing in kind and degree, according to
times and circumstances, and the callings and stations of individuals. For the
righteous One, who died not only by the unjust, but for them, the appointed cup
was filled with all possible ingredients of shame and pain, mingled together in
the highest degree of bitterness. Not a few of His most honored servants have
come very near their Master in the manner and measure of their afflictions for
His sake, and have indeed drunk of His cup, and been baptized with His bloody
baptism. But for the rank and file of the Christian host the hardships to be
endured are ordinarily less severe, the cross to be borne less heavy. For one
the cross may be the calumnies of lying lips, “which speak grievous things
proudly and contemptuously against the righteous;” for another, failure to
attain the much-worshipped idol success in life, so often reached by unholy
means not available for a man who has a conscience; for a third, mere isolation
and solitariness of spirit amid uncongenial, unsympathetic neighbors, not minded
to live soberly, righteously, and godly, and not loving those who do so live.
The cross, therefore, is not the same for all. But that there is a cross of some
shape for all true disciples is clearly implied in the words: “If any one will
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross.” The plain meaning
of these words is, that there is no following Jesus on any other terms-a
doctrine which, however clearly taught in the Gospel, spurious Christians are
unwilling to believe and resolute to deny. They take the edge off their Lord’s
statement by explaining that it applies only to certain critical times, happily
very different from their own; or that if it has some reference to all times, it
is only applicable to such as are called to play a prominent part in public
affairs as leaders of opinion, pioneers of progress, prophets denouncing the
vices of the age, and uttering unwelcome oracles-a proverbially dangerous
occupation, as the Greek poet testified who said: “Apollo alone should prophesy,
for he fears nobody.” To maintain that all who would live devoutly in Christ
Jesus must suffer somehow, is, they think, to take too gloomy and morose a view
of the wickedness of the world, or too high and exacting a view of the Christian
life. The righteousness which in ordinary times involves a cross is in their
view folly and fanaticism. It is speaking when one should be silent, meddling in
matters with which one has no concern; in a word, it is being righteous
overmuch. Such thoughts as these, expressed or unexpressed, are sure to prevail
extensively when religious profession is common. The fact that fidelity involves
a cross, as also the fact that Christ was crucified just because He was
righteous, are well understood by Christians when they are a suffering minority,
as in primitive ages. But these truths are much lost sight of in peaceful,
prosperous times. Then you shall find many holding most sound views of the cross
Christ bore for them, but sadly ignorant concerning the cross they themselves
have to bear in fellowship with Christ. Of this cross they are determined to
know nothing. What it can mean, or whence it can come, they cannot comprehend;
though had they the true spirit of self-denial required of disciples by Christ,
they might find it for themselves in their daily life, in their business, in
their home, nay, in their own heart, and have no need to seek for it in the ends
of the earth, or to manufacture artificial crosses out of ascetic austerities.
To the law of the cross Jesus annexed three reasons designed to make the obeying
of it easier, by showing disciples that, in rendering obedience to the stern
requirement, they attend to their own true interest. Each reason is introduced
by a “For.” The first reason is: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose
it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” In this
startling paradox the word “life” is used in a double sense. In the first clause
of each member of the sentence it signifies natural life, with all the adjuncts
that make it pleasant and enjoyable; in the second, it means the spiritual life
of a renewed soul. The deep, pregnant saying may therefore be thus expanded and
paraphrased: Whosoever will save, i.e., make it his first business to save, or
preserve, his natural life and worldly well-being, shall lose the higher life,
the life indeed; and whosoever is willing to lose his natural life for my sake
shall find the true eternal life. According to this maxim we must lose
something, it is not possible to live without sacrifice of some kind; the only
question being what shall be sacrificed-the lower or the higher life, animal
happiness or spiritual blessedness. If we choose the higher, we must be prepared
to deny ourselves and take up our cross, though the actual amount of the loss we
are called on to bear may be small; for godliness is profitable unto all things,
having promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. If,
on the other hand, we choose the lower, and resolve to have it at all hazards,
we must inevitably lose the higher. The soul’s life, and all the imperishable
goods of the soul-righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness-are
the price we pay for worldly enjoyment. This price is too great: and that is
what Jesus next told His hearers as the second persuasive to cross-bearing. “For
what,” He went on to ask, “is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” The
two questions set forth the incomparable value of the soul on both sides of a
commercial transaction. The soul, or life, in the true sense of the word, is too
dear a price to pay even for the whole world, not to say for that small portion
of it which falls to the lot of any one individual. He who gains the world at
such a cost is a loser by the bargain. On the other hand, the whole world is too
small, yea, an utterly inadequate price, to pay for the ransom of the soul once
lost. What shall a man give in exchange for the priceless thing he has foolishly
bartered away? “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before
the high God? shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a
year old? will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands
of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of
my body for the sin of my soul?” No! O man; not any of these things, nor any
thing else thou hast to give; not the fruit of thy merchandise, not ten
thousands of pounds sterling. Thou canst not buy back thy soul, which thou hast
bartered for the world, with all that thou hast of the world. The redemption of
the soul is indeed precious; it cannot be delivered from the bondage of sin by
corruptible things, such as silver and gold: the attempt to purchase pardon and
peace and life that way can only make thy case more hopeless, and add to thy
condemnation. The appeal contained in these solemn questions comes home with
irresistible force to all who are in their right mind. Such feel that no outward
good can be compared in value to having a “saved soul,” i.e. being a
right-minded Christian man. All, however, are not so minded. Multitudes account
their souls of very small value indeed. Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of
silver; and not a few who probably deem themselves better that he would part
with theirs for the most paltry worldly advantage. The great ambition of the
million is to be happy as animals, not to be blessed as “saved,” noble-spirited,
sanctified men. “Who will show us any good?” is that which the many say. “Give
us health, wealth, houses, lands, honors, and we care not for righteousness,
either imputed or personal, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost. These
may be good also in their way, and if one could have them along with the other,
without trouble or sacrifice, it were perhaps well; but we cannot consent, for
their sakes, to deny ourselves any pleasure, or voluntarily endure any
hardship.” The third argument in favor of cross-bearing is drawn from the second
advent. “For the son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His
angels; and then shall He reward every man according to his works.” These words
suggest a contrast between the present and the future state of the speaker, and
imply a promise of a corresponding contrast between the present and the future
of His faithful followers. Now Jesus is the Son of man, destined ere many weeks
pass to be crucified at Jerusalem. At the end of the days He will appear
invested with the manifest glory of Messiah, attended with a mighty host of
ministering spirits; His reward for enduring the cross, despising the shame.
Then will He reward every man according to the tenor of his present life. To the
cross-bearers He will grant a crown of righteousness; to the cross-spurners He
will assign, as their due, shame and everlasting contempt. Stern doctrine,
distasteful to the modern mind on various grounds, specially on these two:
because it sets before us alternatives in the life beyond, and because it seeks
to propagate heroic virtue by hope of reward, instead of exhibiting virtue as
its own reward. As to the former, the alternative of the promised reward is
certainly a great mystery and burden to the spirit; but it is to be feared that
an alternative is involved in any earnest doctrine of moral distinctions or of
human freedom and responsibility. As to the other, Christians need not be afraid
of degenerating into moral vulgarity in Christ’s company. There is no vulgarity
or impurity in the virtue which is sustained by the hope of eternal life. That
hope is not selfishness, but simply self-consistency. It is simply believing in
the reality of the kingdom for which you labor and suffer; involving, of course,
the reality of each individual Christian’s interest therein, your own not
excepted. And such faith is necessary to heroism. For who would fight and suffer
for a dream? What patriot would risk his life for his country’s cause who did
not hope for the restoration of her independence? And who but a pedant would say
that the purity of his patriotism was sullied, because his hope for the whole
nation did not exclude all reference to himself as an individual citizen?
Equally necessary is it that a Christian should believe in the kingdom of glory,
and equally natural and proper that he should cherish the hope of a personal
share in its honors and felicities. Where such faith and hope are not, little
Christian heroism will be found. For as an ancient Church Father said, “There is
no certain work where there is an uncertain reward.” Men cannot be heroes in
doubt or despair. They cannot struggle after perfection and a divine kingdom,
sceptical the while whether these things be more than devout imaginations,
unrealizable ideals. In such a mood they will take things easy, and make secular
happiness their chief concern.


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  CHAPTER 47: 02.13.     THE TRANSFIGURATION
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The Transfiguration Mat 17:1-13; Mark 9:2-13; Luk 9:28-36. The transfiguration
is one of those passages in the Saviour’s earthly history which an expositor
would rather pass over in reverent silence. For such silence the same apology
might be pleaded which is so kindly made in the Gospel narrative for Peter’s
foolish speech concerning the three tabernacles: “He wist not what to say.” Who
does know what to say any more than he? Who is able fully to speak of that
wondrous night-scene among the mountains, during which heaven was for a few
brief moments let down to earth, and the mortal body of Jesus being transfigured
shone with celestial brightness, and the spirits of just men made perfect
appeared and held converse with Him respecting His approaching passion, and a
voice came forth from the excellent glory, pronouncing Him to be God’s
well-beloved Son? It is too high for us, this august spectacle, we cannot attain
unto it; its grandeur oppresses and stupefies; its mystery surpasses our
comprehension; its glory is ineffable. Therefore, avoiding all speculation,
curious questioning, theological disquisition, and ambitious word-picturing in
connection with the remarkable occurrence here recorded, we confine ourselves in
this chapter to the humble task of explaining briefly its significance for Jesus
Himself, and its lesson for His disciples. The “transfiguration,” to be
understood, must be viewed in connection with the announcement made by Jesus
shortly before it happened, concerning His death. This it evident from the
simple fact, that the three evangelists who relate the event so carefully note
the time of its occurrence with reference to that announcement, and the
conversation which accompanied it. All tell how, within six or eight days
thereafter, Jesus took three of His disciples, Peter, James, and John, and
brought them into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. The
Gospel historians are not wont to be so careful in their indications of time,
and their minute accuracy here signifies in effect: “While the foregoing
communications and discourses concerning the cross were fresh in the thoughts of
all the parties, the wondrous events we are now to relate took place.” The
relative date, in fact, is a finger post pointing back to the conversation on
the passion, and saying: “If you desire to understand what follows, remember
what went before.” This inference from the note of time given by all the
evangelists is fully borne out by a statement made by Luke alone, respecting the
subject of the conversation on the holy mount between Jesus and His celestial
visitants. “And,” we read, “behold, there talked with Him two men, which were
Moses and Elias; who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease (or exodus)
which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” That exit, so different from their own
in its circumstances and consequences, was the theme of their talk. They had
appeared to Jesus to converse with Him thereon; and when they ceased speaking
concerning it, they took their departure for the abodes of the blessed. How long
the conference lasted we know not, but the subject was sufficiently suggestive
of interesting topics of conversation. There was, e.g., the surprising contrast
between the death of Moses, immediate and painless, while his eye was not dim
nor his natural force abated, and the painful and ignominious death to be
endured by Jesus. Then there was the not less remarkable contrast between the
manner of Elijah’s departure from the earth-translated to heaven without tasting
death at all, making a triumphant exit out of the world in a chariot of fire,
and the way by which Jesus should enter into glory-the via dolorosa of the
cross. Whence this privilege of exemption from death, or from its bitterness,
granted to the representatives of the law and the prophets, and wherefore denied
to Him who was the end both of law and of prophecy? On these points, and others
of kindred nature, the two celestial messengers, enlightened by the clear light
of heaven, may have held intelligent and sympathetic converse with the Son of
man, to the refreshment of His weary, saddened, solitary soul. The same
evangelist who specifies the subject of conversation on the holy mount further
records that, previous to His transfiguration, Jesus had been engaged in prayer.
We may therefore see, in the honor and glory conferred on Him there, the
Father’s answer to His Son’s supplications; and from the nature of the answer we
may infer the subject of prayer. It was the same as afterwards in the garden of
Gethsemane. The cup of death was present to the mind of Jesus now, as then; the
cross was visible to His spiritual eye; and He prayed for nerve to drink, for
courage to endure. The attendance of the three confidential disciples, Peter,
James, and John, significantly hints at the similarity of the two occasions. The
Master took these disciples with Him into the mount, as He afterwards took them
into the garden, that He might not be altogether destitute of company and kindly
sympathy as He walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and felt the
horror and the loneliness of the situation.

It is now clear how we must view the transfiguration scene in relation to Jesus.
It was an aid to faith and patience, specially vouchsafed to the meek and lowly
Son of man, in answer to His prayers, to cheer Him on His sorrowful path towards
Jerusalem and Calvary. Three distinct aids to His faith were supplied in the
experiences of that wondrous night. The first was a foretaste of the glory with
which He should be rewarded after His passion, for His voluntary humiliation and
obedience unto death. For the moment He was, as it were, rapt up into heaven,
where He had been before He came into the world; for His face shone like the
sun, and His raiment was white as the pure untrodden snow on the high alpine
summits of Herman. “Be of good cheer,” said that sudden flood of celestial
light: “the suffering will soon be past, and Thou shalt enter into Thine eternal
joy!” A second source of comfort to Jesus in the experiences on the mount, was
the assurance that the mystery of the cross was understood and appreciated by
saints in heaven, if not by the darkened minds of sinful men on earth. He
greatly needed such comfort; for among the men then living, not excepting His
chosen disciples, there was not one to whom He could speak on that theme with
any hope of eliciting an intelligent and sympathetic response. Only a few days
ago, He had ascertained by painful experience the utter incapacity of the
twelve, even of the most quick-witted and warm-hearted among them, to comprehend
the mystery of His passion, or even to believe in it as a certain fact. Verily
the Son of man was most lonely as He passed through the dark valley! the very
presence of stupid, unsympathetic companions serving only to enhance the sense
of solitariness. When He wanted company that could understand His passion
thoughts, He was obliged to hold converse with spirits of just men made perfect;
for, as far as mortal men were concerned, He had to be content to finish His
great work without the comfort of being understood until it was accomplished.
The talk of the great lawgiver and of the great prophet of Israel on the subject
of His death was doubtless a real solace to the spirit of Jesus. We know how He
comforted Himself at other times with the thought of being understood in heaven
if not on earth. When heartless Pharisees called in question His conduct in
receiving sinners, He sought at once His defense and His consolation in the
blessed fact that there was joy in heaven at least, whatever there might be
among them, over one penitent sinner, more than over ninety and nine just
persons that needed no repentance. When He thought how “little ones,” the weak
and helpless, were despised and trampled under foot in this proud inhuman world,
He reflected with unspeakable satisfaction that in heaven their angels did
always behold the face of His Father; yea, that in heaven there were angels who
made the care of little ones their special business, and were therefore fully
able to appreciate the doctrine of humility and kindness which He strove to
inculcate on ambitious and quarrelsome disciples. Surely, then, we may believe
that when He looked forward to His own decease-the crowning evidence of His love
for sinners-it was a comfort to His heart to think: “Up yonder they know that I
am to suffer, and comprehend the reason why, and watch with eager interest to
see how I move on with unfaltering step, with my face steadfastly set to go to
Jerusalem.” And would it not be specially comforting to have sensible evidence
of this, in an actual visit from two denizens of the upper world, deputed as it
were and commissioned to express the general mind of the whole community of
glorified saints, who understood that their presence in heaven was due to the
merits of that sacrifice which He was about to offer up in His own person on the
hill of Calvary? A third, and the chief solace to the heart of Jesus, was the
approving voice of His heavenly Father: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased.” That voice, uttered then, meant: “Go on Thy present way,
self-devoted to death, and shrinking not from the cross. I am pleased with Thee,
because Thou pleasest not Thyself. Pleased with Thee at all times, I am most
emphatically delighted with Thee when, in a signal manner, as lately in the
announcement made to Thy disciples, Thou dost show it to be Thy fixed purpose to
save others, and not to save Thyself.” This voice from the excellent glory was
one of three uttered by the divine Father in the hearing of His Son during His
life on earth. The first was uttered by the Jordan, after the baptism of Jesus,
and was the same as the present, save that it was spoken to Him, not concerning
Him, to others. The last was uttered at Jerusalem shortly before the
crucifixion, and was of similar import with the two preceding, but different in
form. The soul of Jesus being troubled with the near prospect of death, He
prayed: “Father, save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this
hour. Father, glorify Thy name.” Then, we read, came there a voice from heaven,
saying: “I have both glorified it (by Thy life), and will glorify it again”
(more signally by Thy death). All three voices served one end. Elicited at
crises in Christ’s history, when He manifested in peculiar intensity His
devotion to the work for which He had come into the world, and His determination
to finish it, however irksome the task might be to flesh and blood, these voices
expressed, for His encouragement and strengthening, the complacency with which
His Father regarded His self-humiliation and obedience unto death. At His
baptism, He, so to speak, confessed the sins of the whole world; and by
submitting to the rite, expressed His purpose to fulfill all righteousness as
the Redeemer from sin. Therefore the Father then, for the first time, pronounced
Him His beloved Son. Shortly before the transfiguration He had energetically
repelled the suggestion of an affectionate disciple, that He should save Himself
from His anticipated doom, as a temptation of the devil; therefore the Father
renewed the declaration, changing the second person into the third, for the sake
of those disciples who were present, and specially of Peter, who had listened to
the voice of his own heart rather than to his Master’s words. Finally, a few
days before His death, He overcame a temptation of the same nature as that to
which Peter had subjected Him, springing this time out of the sinless infirmity
of His own human nature. Beginning His prayer with the expression of a wish to
be saved from the dark hour, He ended it with the petition, “Glorify Thy name.”
Therefore the Father once more repeated the expression of His approval,
declaring in effect His satisfaction with the way in which His Son had glorified
His name hitherto, and His confidence that He would not fail to crown His career
of obedience by a God-glorifying death.

Such being the meaning of the vision on the mount for Jesus, we have now to
consider what lesson it taught the disciples who were present, and through them
their brethren and all Christians. The main point in this connection is the
injunction appended to the heavenly voice: “Hear Him.” This command refers
specially to the doctrine of the cross preached by Jesus to the twelve, and so
ill received by them. It was meant to be a solemn, deliberate endorsement of all
that He had said then concerning His own sufferings, and concerning the
obligation to bear their cross lying on all His followers. Peter, James, and
John were, as it were, invited to recall all that had fallen from their Master’s
lips on the unwelcome topic, and assured that it was wholly true and in
accordance with the divine mind. Nay, as these disciples had received the
doctrine with murmurs of disapprobation, the voice from heaven addressed to them
was a stern word of rebuke, which said: “Murmur not, but devoutly and obediently
hear.” This rebuke was all the more needful, that the disciples had just shown
that they were still of the same mind as they had been six days ago. Peter at
least was as yet in no cross-bearing humor. When, on wakening up to clear
consciousness from the drowsy fit which had fallen on him, that disciple
observed the two strangers in the act of departing, he exclaimed: “Master, it is
good for us to be here, and let us make three tabernacles; one for Thee, and one
for Moses, and one for Elias.” He was minded, we perceive, to enjoy the
felicities of heaven without any preliminary process of cross-bearing. He
thought to himself: “How much better to abide up here with the saints than down
below amidst unbelieving captious Pharisees and miserable human beings, enduring
the contradiction of sinners, and battling with the manifold ills wherewith the
earth is cursed! Stay here, my Master, and you may bid good-by to all those dark
forebodings of coming sufferings, and will be beyond the reach of malevolent
priests, elders, and scribes. Stay here, on this sun-lit, heaven-kissing hill;
go no more down into the depressing, sombre valley of humiliation. Farewell,
earth and the cross: welcome, heaven and the crown!”

We do not forget, while thus paraphrasing Peter’s foolish speech, that when he
uttered it he was dazed with sleep and the splendors of the midnight scene. Yet,
when due allowance has been made for this, it remains true that the idle
suggestion was an index of the disciple’s present mind. Peter was drunken,
though not with wine; but what men say, even when drunken, is characteristic.
There was a sober meaning in his senseless speech about the tabernacle. He
really meant that the celestial visitants should remain, and not go away, as
they were in the act of doing when he spoke. This appears from the conversation
which took place between Jesus and the three disciples while descending the
mountain. Peter and his two companions asked their Master: “Why then say the
scribes that Elias must first come?” The question referred, we think, not to the
injunction laid on the disciples by Jesus just before, “Tell the vision to no
man until the Son of man be risen again from the dead,” but rather to the
fugitive, fleeting character of the whole scene on the mountain. The three
brethren were not only disappointed, but perplexed, that the two celestials had
been so like angels in the shortness of their stay and the suddenness of their
departure. They had accepted the current notion about the advent of Elias
before, and in order to, the restoration of the kingdom; and they fondly hoped
that this was he come at last in company with Moses, heralding the approaching
glory, as the advent of swallows from tropical climes is a sign that summer is
nigh, and that winter with its storms and rigors is over and gone. In truth,
while their Master was preaching the cross they had been dreaming of crowns. We
shall find them continuing so to dream till the very end.

“Hear ye Him”-this voice was not meant for the three disciples alone, or even
for the twelve, but for all professed followers of Christ as well as for them.
It says to every Christian: “Hear Jesus, and strive to understand Him while He
speaks of the mystery of His sufferings and the glory that should follow-those
themes which even angels desire to look into. Hear Him when He proclaims
cross-bearing as a duty incumbent on all disciples, and listen not to
self-indulgent suggestions of flesh and blood, or the temptations of Satan
counseling thee to make self-interest or self-preservation thy chief end. Hear
Him, yet again, and weary not of the world, nor seek to lay down thy burden
before the time. Dream not of tabernacles where thou mayest dwell secure, like a
hermit in the wild, having no share in all that is done beneath the circuit of
the sun. Do thy part manfully, and in due season thou shalt have, not a tent,
but a temple to dwell in: an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

It is true, indeed, that we who are in this tabernacle of the body, in this
world of sorrow, cannot but groan now and then, being burdened. This is our
infirmity, and in itself it is not sinful; neither is it wrong to heave an
occasional sigh, and utter a passing wish that the time of cross-bearing were
over. Even the holy Jesus felt at times this weariness of life. An expression of
something like impatience escaped His lips at this very season. When He came
down from the mount and learned what was going on at its base, He exclaimed,
with reference at once to the unbelief of the scribes who were present, to the
weak faith of the disciples, and to the miseries of mankind suffering the
consequences of the curse: “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall
I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?” Even the loving Redeemer of man
felt tempted to be weary in well-doing-weary of encountering the contradiction
of sinners and of bearing with the spiritual weakness of disciples. Such
weariness therefore, as a momentary feeling, is not necessarily sinful: it may
rather be a part of our cross. But it must not be indulged in or yielded to.
Jesus did not give Himself up to the feeling. Though He complained of the
generation amidst which He lived, He did not cease from His labors of love for
its benefit. Having relieved His heart by this utterance of a reproachful
exclamation, He gave orders that the poor lunatic should be brought to Him that
he might be healed. Then, when He had wrought this new miracle of mercy, He
patiently explained to His own disciples the cause of their impotence to cope
successfully with the maladies of men, and taught them how they might attain the
power of casting out all sorts of devils, even those whose hold of their victims
was most obstinate, viz. by faith and prayer. So He continued laboring in
helping the miserable and instructing the ignorant, till the hour came when He
could truly say, “It is finished.”


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  CHAPTER 48: 02.14.1.     TRAINING IN TEMPER
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Training in Temper; or, Discourse On Humility Section I - As This Little Child
Mat 18:1-14; Mark 9:33-37; Mark 9:42-50; Luk 9:46-48. From the Mount of
Transfiguration Jesus and the twelve returned through Galilee to Capernaum. On
this homeward journey the Master and His disciples were in very different moods
of mind. He sadly mused on His cross; they vainly dreamed of places of
distinction in the approaching kingdom. The diversity of spirit revealed itself
in a corresponding diversity of conduct. Jesus for the second time began to
speak on the way of His coming sufferings, telling His followers how the Son of
man should be betrayed into the hands of men, and how they should kill Him, and
how the third day He should be raised again. The twelve, on the other hand,
began as they journeyed along to dispute among themselves who should be the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Strange, humiliating contrast exhibited again
and again in the evangelic history; jealous, angry altercations respecting rank
and precedence, on the part of the disciples, following new communications
respecting His passion on the part of their Lord, as comic follows tragic in a
dramatic representation. This unseemly and unseasonable dispute shows clearly
what need there was for that injunction appended to the voice from heaven, “Hear
Him;” and how far the disciples were as yet from complying therewith. They heard
Jesus only when He spake things agreeable. They listened with pleasure when He
assured them that ere long they should see the Son of man come in His kingdom;
they were deaf to all He said concerning the suffering which must precede the
glory. They forgot the cross, after a momentary fit of sorrow when their Lord
referred to it, and betook themselves to dreaming of the crown; as a child
forgets the death of a parent, and returns to its play. “How great,” thought
they, “shall we all be when the kingdom comes!” Then by an easy transition they
passed from idle dreams of the common glory to idle disputes as to who should
have the largest share therein; for vanity and jealousy lie very near each
other. “Shall we all be equally distinguished in the kingdom, or shall one be
higher than another? Does the favor shown to Peter, James, and John, in
selecting them to be eye-witnesses of the prefigurement of the coming glory,
imply a corresponding precedence in the kingdom itself?” The three disciples
probably hoped it did; the other disciples hoped not, and so the dispute began.
It was nothing that they should all be great together; the question of questions
was, who should be the greatest-a question hard to settle when vanity and
presumption contend on one side, and jealousy and envy on the other.

Arrived at Capernaum, Jesus took an early opportunity of adverting to the
dispute in which His disciples had been engaged, and made it the occasion of
delivering a memorable discourse on humility and kindred topics, designed to
serve the purpose of disciplining their temper and will. The task to which He
now addressed Himself was at once the most formidable and the most needful He
had as yet undertaken in connection with the training of the twelve. Most
formidable, for nothing is harder than to train the human will into loyal
subjection to universal principles, to bring men to recognize the claims of the
law of love in their mutual relations, to expel pride, ambition, vainglory, and
jealousy, and envy from the hearts even of the good. Men may have made great
progress in the art of prayer, in religious liberty, in Christian activity, may
have shown themselves faithful in times of temptation, and apt scholars in
Christian doctrine, and yet prove signally defective in temper: self-willed,
self-seeking, having an eye to their own glory, even when seeking to glorify
God. Most needful, for what good could these disciples do as ministers of the
kingdom so long as their main concern was about their own place therein? Men
full of ambitious passions and jealous of each other could only quarrel among
themselves, bring the cause they sought to promote into contempt, and breed all
around them confusion and every evil work. No wonder then that Jesus from this
time forth devoted Himself with peculiar earnestness to the work of casting out
from His disciples the devil of self-will, and imparting to them as a salt His
own spirit of meekness, humility, and charity. He knew how much depended on His
success in this effort to salt the future apostles, to use His own strong
figure, and the whole tone and substance of the discourse before us reveal the
depth of His anxiety. Specially significant in this respect is the opening part
in which He makes use of a child present in the chamber as the vehicle of
instruction; so, out of the mouth of a babe and suckling, perfecting the praise
of a lowly mind. Sitting in the midst of ambitious disciples with the little one
in His arms for a text, He who is the greatest in the kingdom proceeds to set
forth truths mortifying to the spirit of pride, but sweeter than honey to the
taste of all renewed souls. The first lesson taught is this: To be great in the
kingdom, yea, to gain admission into it at all, it is necessary to become like a
little child. “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall
not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself
as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” The
feature of child-nature which forms the special point of comparison is its
unpretentiousness. Early childhood knows nothing of those distinctions of rank
which are the offspring of human pride, and the prizes coveted by human
ambition. A king’s child will play without scruple with a beggar’s, thereby
unconsciously asserting the insignificance of the things in which men differ,
compared with the things that are common to all. What children are
unconsciously, that Jesus requires His disciples to be voluntarily and
deliberately. They are not to be pretentious and ambitious, like the grown
children of the world, but meek and lowly of heart; disregarding rank and
distinctions, thinking not of their place in the kingdom, but giving themselves
up in simplicity of spirit to the service of the King. In this sense, the
greatest one in the kingdom, the King Himself, was the humblest of men. Of
humility in the form of self-depreciation or self-humiliation on account of sin
Jesus could know nothing, for there was no defect or fault in His character. But
of the humility which consists in self-forgetfulness He was the perfect pattern.
We cannot say that He thought little of Himself, but we may say that He thought
not of Himself at all: He thought only of the Father’s glory and of man’s good.
Considerations of personal aggrandizement had no place among His motives. He
shrank with holy abhorrence from all who were influenced by such considerations;
no character appearing so utterly detestable in His eye as that of the Pharisee,
whose religion was a theatrical exhibition, always presupposing the presence of
spectators, and who loved the uppermost rooms at feasts and the chief seats in
the synagogues, and to be called of men Rabbi, Rabbi. For Himself He neither
desired nor received honor from men. He came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister: He, the greatest, humbled Himself to be the least-to be a child born
in a stable and laid in a manger; to be a man of sorrow, lightly esteemed by the
world; yea, to be nailed to a cross. By such wondrous self-humiliation He showed
His divine greatness. The higher we rise in the kingdom the more we shall be
like Jesus in this humbling of Himself. Childlikeness such as He exhibited is an
invariable characteristic of spiritual advancement, even as its absence is the
mark of moral littleness. The little man, even when well-intentioned, is ever
consequential and scheming-ever thinking of himself, his honor, dignity,
reputation, even when professedly doing good. He always studies to glorify God
in a way that shall at the same time glorify himself. Frequently above the love
of gain, he is never above the feeling of self-importance. The great ones in the
kingdom, on the other hand, throw themselves with such unreservedness into the
work to which they are called, that they have neither time nor inclination to
inquire what place they shall obtain in this world or the next. Leaving
consequences to the great Governor and Lord, and forgetful of self-interest,
they give their whole soul to their appointed task; content to fill a little
space or a large one, as God shall appoint, if only He be glorified. This is the
true road to a high place in the eternal kingdom. For be it observed, Jesus did
not summarily dismiss the question, who is greatest in the kingdom, by
negativing the existence of distinctions therein. He said not on this occasion,
He said not on any other, “It is needless to ask who is the greatest in the
kingdom: there is no such thing as a distinction of greater and less there.” On
the contrary, it is implied here, and it is asserted elsewhere, that there is
such a thing. According to the doctrine of Christ, the supernal commonwealth has
no affinity with jealous radicalism, which demands that all shall be equal.
There are grades of distinction there as well as in the kingdoms of this world.
The difference between the divine kingdom and all others lies in the principle
on which promotion proceeds. Here the proud and the ambitious gain the post of
honor; there honors are conferred on the humble and the self-forgetful. He that
on earth was willing to be the least in lowly love will be the great one in the
kingdom of heaven. The next lesson Jesus taught His disciples was the duty of
receiving little ones; that is, not merely children in the literal sense, but
all that a child represents-the weak, the insignificant, the helpless. The child
which He held in His arms having served as a type of the humble in spirit, next
became a type of the humble in station, influence, and importance; and having
been presented to the disciples in the former capacity as an object of
imitation, was commended to them in the latter as an object of kind treatment.
They were to receive the little ones graciously and lovingly, careful not to
offend them by harsh, heartless, contemptuous conduct. All such kindness He,
Jesus, would receive as done to Himself. This transition of thought from being
like a child to receiving all that of which childhood in its weakness is the
emblem, was perfectly natural; for there is a close connection between the
selfish struggle to be great and an offensive mode of acting towards the little.
Harshness and contemptuousness are vices inseparable from an ambitious spirit.
An ambitious man is not, indeed, necessarily cruel in his disposition, and
capable of cherishing heartless designs in cold blood. At times, when the demon
that possesses him is quiescent, the idea of hurting a child, or any thing that
a child represents, may appear to him revolting; and he might resent the
imputation of any such design, or even a hint at the possibility of his
harboring it, as a wanton insult. “Is thy servant a dog?” asked Hazael
indignantly at Elisha, when the prophet described to him his own future self,
setting the strongholds of Israel on fire, slaying their young men with the
sword, dashing their children to the earth, and ripping up their women with
child. At the moment his horror of these crimes was quite sincere, and yet he
was guilty of them all. The prophet rightly divined his character, and read his
future career of splendid wickedness in the light of it. He saw that he was
ambitious, and all the rest followed as a matter of course. The king of Syria,
his master, about whose recovery he affected solicitude, he should first put to
death; and once on the throne, the same ambition that made him a murderer would
goad him on to schemes of conquest, in the prosecution of which he should
perpetrate all the barbarous cruelties in which Oriental tyrants seemed to take
fiendish delight. The crimes of ambition, and the lamentations with which it has
filled the earth, are a moral commonplace. Full well aware of the fact, Jesus
exclaimed, as the havoc already wrought and yet to be wrought by the lust for
place and power rose in vision before His eye: “Woe to the world because of
offences!” Woe indeed, but not merely to the wrong-sufferer; the greater woe is
reserved for the wrong-doer. So Jesus taught His disciples, when He added: “but
woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” Nor did He leave His hearers in the
dark as to the nature of the offender’s doom. “Whoso,” He declared, in language
which came forth from His lips like a flame of righteous indignation at thought
of the wrongs inflicted on the weak and helpless-“Whoso shall offend one of
these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill-stone
were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
“It were better for him”-or, it suits him, it is what he deserves; and it is
implied, though not expressed, that it is what he gets when divine vengeance at
length overtakes him. The mill-stone is no idle figure of speech, but an
appropriate emblem of the ultimate doom of the proud. He who will mount to the
highest place, regardless of the injuries he may inflict on little ones, shall
be cast down, not to earth merely, but to the very lowest depths of the ocean,
to the very abyss of hell, with a heavy weight of curses suspended on his neck
to sink him down, and keep him down, so that he shall rise no more. “They sank
as lead in the mighty waters!”

Such being the awful doom of selfish ambition, it were wise in the high-minded
to fear, and to anticipate God’s judgment by judging themselves. This Jesus
counselled His disciples to do by repeating a stern saying uttered once before
in the Sermon on the Mount, concerning the cutting off offending members of the
body. At first view that saying appears irrelevant here, because the subject of
discourse is offences against others, not offences against one’s self. But its
relevancy becomes evident when we consider that all offences against a brother
are offences against ourselves. That is the very point Christ wishes to impress
on His disciples. He would have them understand that self-interest dictates
scrupulous care in avoiding offences to the little ones. “Rather than harm one
of these,” says the great Teacher in effect, “by hand, foot, eye, or tongue,
have recourse to self-mutilation; for he that sinneth against even the least in
the kingdom, sinneth also against his own soul.”

One thing more Jesus taught His disciples while He held the child in His arms,
viz. that those who injured or despised little ones were entirely out of harmony
with the mind of Heaven. “Take heed,” said He, “that ye despise not one of these
little ones;” and then He proceeded to enforce the warning by drawing aside the
veil, and showing them a momentary glimpse of that very celestial kingdom in
which they were all so desirous to have prominence. “Lo, there! see those angels
standing before the throne of God-these be ministering spirits to the little
ones! And lo, here am I, the Son of God, come all the way from heaven to save
them! And behold how the face of the Father in heaven smiles on the angels and
on me because we take such loving interest in them!” How eloquent the argument!
how powerful the appeal! “The inhabitants of heaven,” such is its drift, “are
loving and humble; ye are selfish and proud. What hope can ye cherish of
admission into a kingdom, the spirit of which is so utterly diverse from that by
which ye are animated? Nay, are ye not ashamed of yourselves when ye witness
this glaring contrast between the lowliness of the celestials and the pride and
pretensions of puny men? Put away, henceforth and forever, vain, ambitious
thoughts, and let the meek and gentle spirit of Heaven get possession of your
hearts.” In the beautiful picture of the upper world one thing is specially
noteworthy, viz. the introduction by Jesus of a reference to His work as the
Saviour of the lost, into an argument designed to enforce care for the little
ones. The reference is not an irrelevance; it is of the nature of an argument à
fortiori. If the Son of man cared for the lost, the low, the morally degraded,
how much more will He care for those who are merely little! It is a far greater
effort of love to seek the salvation of the wicked than to interest one’s self
in the weak; and He who did the one will certainly not fail to do the other. In
adverting to His love as the Saviour of the sinful, as set forth in the parable
of the good shepherd going after the straying sheep, Jesus further directed the
attention of His disciples to the sublimest example of humility. For that love
shows that there was not only no pride of greatness in the Son of God, but also
no pride of holiness. He could not only condescend to men of humble estate, but
could even become the brother of the vile: one with them in sympathy and lot,
that they might become one with Him in privilege and character. Once more, in
making reference to His own love as the Saviour, Jesus pointed out to His
disciples the true source of that charity which careth for the weak and
despiseth not the little. No one who rightly appreciated His love could
deliberately offend or heartlessly condemn any brother, however insignificant,
who had a place in His Saviour-sympathies. The charity of the Son of man, in the
eyes of all true disciples, surrounds with a halo of sacredness the meanest and
vilest of the human race.

Section II - Church Discipline

Mat 18:15-20

Having duly cautioned His hearers against offending the little ones, Jesus
proceeded (according to the account of His words in the Gospel of Matthew) to
tell them how to act when they were not the givers, but the receivers or the
judges, of offences. In this part of His discourse He had in view the future
rather than the present. Contemplating the time when the kingdom-that is, the
church-should be in actual existence as an organized community, with the twelve
exercising in it authority as apostles, He gives directions for the exercise of
discipline, in order to the purity and well-being of the Christian brotherhood;
confers on the twelve collectively what He had already granted to Peter
singly-the power to bind and loose, that is, to inflict and remove church
censures; and makes a most encouraging promise of His own spiritual presence,
and of prevailing power with His heavenly Father in prayer, to all assembled in
His name, and agreeing together in the objects of their desires. His aim
throughout is to insure beforehand that the community to be called after His
name shall be indeed a holy, loving, united society. The rules here laid down
for the guidance of the apostles in dealing with offenders, though simple and
plain, have given rise to much debate among religious controversialists
interested in the upholding of diverse theories of church government. Of these
ecclesiastical disputes we shall say nothing here; nor do we deem it needful to
offer any expository comments on our Lord’s words, save a sentence of
explanation on the phrase employed by Him to describe the state of
excommunication: “Let him” (that is, the impenitent brother about to be cast out
of the church) “be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” These words,
luminous without doubt at the time they were spoken, are not quite so clear to
us now; but yet their meaning in the main is sufficiently plain. The idea is,
that the persistently impenitent offender is to become at length to the person
he has offended, and to the whole church, one with whom is to be held no
religious, and as little as possible social fellowship. The religious aspect of
excommunication is pointed at by the expression “as an heathen man,” and the
social side of it is expressed in the second clause of the sentence, “and a
publican.” Heathens were excluded from the temple, and had no part in Jewish
religious rites. Publicans were not excluded from the temple, so far as we know;
but they were regarded as social pariahs by all Jews affecting patriotism and
religious strictness. This indiscriminate dislike of the whole class was not
justifiable, nor is any approval of it implied here. Jesus refers to it simply
as a familiar matter of fact, which conveniently and clearly conveyed His
meaning to the effect: Let the impenitent offender be to you what heathens are
to all Jews by law-persons with whom to hold no religious fellowship; and what
publicans are to Pharisees by inveterate prejudice-persons to be excluded from
all but merely unavoidable social intercourse.”

Whatever obscurity may attach to the letter of the rules for the management of
discipline, there can be no doubt at all as to the loving, holy spirit which
pervades them. The spirit of love appears in the conception of the church which
underlies these rules. The church is viewed as a commonwealth, in which the
concern of one is the concern of all, and vice versa. Hence Jesus does not
specify the class of offences He intends, whether private and personal ones, or
such as are of the nature of scandals, that is, offences against the church as a
whole. On His idea of a church such explanations were unnecessary, because the
distinction alluded to in great part ceases to exist. An offence against the
conscience of the whole community is an offence against each individual member,
because he is jealous for the honor of the body of believers; and on the other
hand, an offence which is in the first place private and personal, becomes one
in which all are concerned so soon as the offended party has failed to bring His
brother to confession and reconciliation. A chronic alienation between two
Christian brethren will be regarded, in a church after Christ’s mind, as a
scandal not to be tolerated, because fraught with deadly harm to the spiritual
life of all.

Very congenial also to the spirit of charity is the order of proceeding
indicated in the directions given by Jesus. First, strictly private dealing on
the part of the offended with his offending brother is prescribed; then, after
such dealing has been fairly tried and has failed, but not till then, third
parties are to be brought in as witnesses and assistants in the work of
reconciliation; and finally, and only as a last resource, the subject of quarrel
is to be made public, and brought before the whole church. This method of
procedure is obviously most considerate as towards the offender. It makes
confession as easy to him as possible by sparing him the shame of exposure. It
is also a method which cannot be worked out without the purest and holiest
motives on the part of him who seeks redress. It leaves no room for the reckless
talkativeness of the scandalmonger, who loves to divulge evil news, and speaks
to everybody of a brother’s faults rather than to the brother himself. It puts a
bridle on the passion of resentment, by compelling the offended one to go
through a patient course of dealing with his brother before he arrive at the sad
issue at which anger jumps at once, viz. total estrangement. It gives no
encouragement to the officious and over-zealous, who make themselves busy in
ferreting out offences; for the way of such is not to begin with the offender,
and then go to the church, but to go direct to the church with severe charges,
based probably on hearsay information gained by dishonorable means.

Characteristic of the loving spirit of Jesus, the Head of the church, is the
horror with which He contemplates, and would have His disciples contemplate, the
possibility of any one, once a brother, becoming to his brethren as a heathen or
a publican. This appears in His insisting that no expedient shall be left
untried to avert the sad catastrophe. How unlike in this respect is His mind to
that of the world, which can with perfect equanimity allow vast multitudes of
fellow-men to be what heathens were to Jews, and publicans to Pharisees-persons
excluded from all kindly communion! Nay, may we not say, how unlike the mind of
Jesus in this matter to that of many even in the church, who treat brethren in
the same outward fellowship with most perfect indifference, and have become so
habituated to the evil practice, that they regard it without compunction as a
quite natural and right state of things!

Such heartless indifferentism implies a very different ideal of the church from
that cherished by its Founder. Men who do not regard ecclesiastical fellowship
as imposing any obligation to love their Christian brethren, think, consciously
or unconsciously, of the church as if it were a hotel, where all kinds of people
meet for a short space, sit down together at the same table, then part, neither
knowing nor caring any thing about each other; while, in truth, it is rather a
family, whose members are all brethren, bound to love each other with pure heart
fervently. Of course this hotel theory involves as a necessary consequence the
disuse of discipline. For, strange as the idea may seem to many, the law of love
is the basis of church discipline. It is because I am bound to take every member
of the church to my arms as a brother, that I am not only entitled, but bound,
to be earnestly concerned about his behavior. If a brother in Christ, according
to ecclesiastical standing, may say to me, “You must love me with all your
heart,” I am entitled to say in reply, “I acknowledge the obligation in the
abstract, but I demand of you in turn that you shall be such that I can love you
as a Christian, however weak and imperfect; and I feel it to be both my right
and my duty to do all I can to make you worthy of such brotherly regard, by
plain dealing with you anent your offences. I am willing to love you, but I
cannot, I dare not, be on friendly terms with your sins; and if you refuse to
part with these, and virtually require me to be a partaker in them by
connivance, then our brotherhood is at an end, and I am free from my
obligations.” To such a language and such a style of thought the patron of the
hotel theory of church fellowship is an utter stranger. Disclaiming the
obligation to love his brethren, he at the same time renounces the right to
insist on Christian virtue as an indispensable attribute of church membership,
and declines to trouble himself about the behavior of any member, except in so
far as it may affect himself personally. All may think and act as they please-be
infidels or believers, sons of God or sons of Belial: it is all one to him.

Holy severity finds a place in these directions, as well as tender, considerate
love. Jesus solemnly sanctions the excommunication of an impenitent offender.
“Let him,” saith He, with the tone of a judge pronouncing sentence of death, “be
unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” Then, to invest church censures
righteously administered with all possible solemnity and authority, He proceeds
to declare that they carry with them eternal consequences; adding in His most
emphatic manner the awful words-awful both to the sinner cast out and to those
who are responsible for his ejection: “Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye
shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on
earth, shall be loosed in heaven.” The words may be regarded in one sense as a
caution to ecclesiastical rulers to beware how they use a power of so tremendous
a character; but they also plainly show that Christ desired His church on earth,
as nearly as possible, to resemble the church in heaven: to be holy in her
membership, and not an indiscriminate congregation of righteous and unrighteous
men, of believers and infidels, of Christians and reprobates; and for that end
committed the power of the keys to those who bear office in His house,
authorizing them to deliver over to Satan’s thrall the proud, stubborn sinner
who refuses to be corrected, and to give satisfaction to the aggrieved
consciences of his brethren.

Such rigor, pitiless in appearance, is really merciful to all parties. It is
merciful to the faithful members of the church, because it removes from their
midst a mortifying limb, whose presence imperils the life of the whole body.
Scandalous open sin cannot be tolerated in any society without general
demoralization ensuing; least of all in the church, which is a society whose
very raison d’être is the culture of Christian virtue. But the apparently
pitiless rigor is mercy even towards the unfaithful who are the subjects
thereof. For to keep scandalous offenders inside the communion of the church is
to do your best to damn their souls, and to exclude them ultimately from heaven.
On the other hand, to deliver them over to Satan may be, and it is to be hoped
will be, but giving them a foretaste of hell now that they may be saved from
hell-fire forever. It was in this hope that Paul insisted on the excommunication
of the incestuous person from the Corinthian church, that by the castigation of
his fleshly sin “his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” It is
this hope which comforts those on whom the disagreeable task of enforcing church
censures falls in the discharge of their painful duty. They can cast forth
evil-doers from the communion of saints with less hesitation, when they know
that as “publicans and sinners” the excommunicated are nearer the kingdom of God
than they were as church members, and when they consider that they are still
permitted to seek the good of the ungodly, as Christ sought the good of all the
outcasts of His day; that it is still in their power to pray for them, and to
preach to them, as they stand in the outer court of the Gentiles, though they
may not put into their unholy hands the symbols of the Saviour’s body and blood.

Such considerations, indeed, would go far to reconcile those who are sincerely
concerned for the spiritual character of the church, and for the safety of
individual souls, to very considerable reductions of communion rolls. There
cannot be a doubt that, if church discipline were upheld with the efficiency and
vigor contemplated by Christ, such reductions would take place on an extensive
scale. It is indeed true that the purging process might be carried to excess,
and with very injurious effects. Tares might be mistaken for wheat, and wheat
for tares. The church might be turned into a society of Pharisees, thanking God
that they were not as other men, or as the poor publicans who stood without,
hearing and praying, but not communicating; while among those outside the
communion rails might be not only the unworthy, but many timid ones who dared
not come nigh, but, like the publican of the parable, could only stand afar off,
crying, “God be merciful to me, a sinner,” yet all the while were justified
rather than the others. A system tending to bring about such results is one
extreme to be avoided. But there is another yet more pernicious extreme still
more sedulously to be shunned: a careless laxity, which allows sheep and goats
to be huddled together in one fold, the goats being thereby encouraged to deem
themselves sheep, and deprived of the greatest benefit they can enjoy-the
privilege of being spoken to plainly as “unconverted sinners.”

Such unseemly mixtures of the godly and the godless are too common phenomena in
these days. And the reason is not far to seek. It is not indifference to
morality, for that is not generally a characteristic of the church in our time.
It is the desire to multiply members. The various religious bodies value members
still more than morality or high-toned Christian virtue, and they fear lest by
discipline they may lose one or two names from their communion roll. The fear is
not without justification. Fugitives from discipline are always sure of an open
door and a hearty welcome in some quarter. This is one of the many curses
entailed upon us by that greatest of all scandals, religious division. One who
has become, or is in danger of becoming, as a heathen man and a publican to one
ecclesiastical body, has a good chance of becoming a saint or an angel in
another. Rival churches play at cross purposes, one loosing when another binds;
so doing their utmost to make all spiritual sentences null and void, both in
earth and heaven, and to rob religion of all dignity and authority. Well may
libertines pray that the divisions of the church may continue, for while these
last they fare well! Far otherwise did it fare with the like of them in the days
when the church was catholic and one; when sinners repenting worked their way,
in the slow course of years, from the locus lugentium outside the sanctuary,
through the locus audientium and the locus substratorum to the locus fidelium:
in that painful manner learning what an evil and a bitter thing it is to depart
from the living God. The promise made to consent in prayer comes in
appropriately in a discourse delivered to disciples who had been disputing who
should be the greatest. In this connection the promise means: “So long as ye are
divided by dissensions and jealousies, ye shall be impotent alike with men and
with God; in your ecclesiastical procedure as church rulers, and in your
supplications at the throne of grace. But if ye be united in mind and heart, ye
shall have power with God, and shall prevail: my Father will grant your
requests, and I myself will be in the midst of you.”

It is not necessary to assume any very close connection between this promise and
the subject of which Jesus had been speaking just before. In this familiar
discourse transition is made from one topic to another in an easy conversational
manner, care being taken only that all that is said shall be relevant to the
general subject in hand. The meeting, supposed to be convened in Christ’s name,
need not therefore be one of church officers assembled for the transaction of
ecclesiastical business: it may be a meeting, in a church or in a cottage,
purely for the purposes of worship. The promise avails for all persons, all
subjects of prayer, all places, and all times; for all truly Christian
assemblies great and small. The promise avails for the smallest number that can
make a meeting-even for two or three. This minimum number is condescended on for
the purpose of expressing in the strongest possible manner the importance of
brotherly concord. Jesus gives us to understand that two agreed are better,
stronger, than twelve or a thousand divided by enmities and ambitious passions.
“The Lord, when He would commend unanimity and peace to His disciples, said, ‘If
two of you shall agree on earth,’ etc., to show that most is granted not to the
multitude, but to the concord of the supplicants.” It is an obvious inference,
that if by agreement even two be strong, then a multitude really united in mind
would be proportionally stronger. For we must not fancy that God has any
partiality for a little meeting, or that there is any virtue in a small number.
Little strait sects are apt to fall into this mistake, and to imagine that
Christ had them specially in His eye when He said two or three, and that the
kind of agreement by which they are distinguished-agreement in whim and
crotchet-is what He desiderated. Ridiculous caricature of the Lord’s meaning!
The agreement He requires of His disciples is not entire unanimity in opinion,
but consent of mind and heart in the ends they aim at, and in unselfish devotion
to these ends. When He spake of two or three, He did not contemplate, as the
desirable state of things, the body of His church split up into innumerable
fragments by religious opinionativeness, each fragment in proportion to its
minuteness imagining itself sure of His presence and blessing. He did not wish
His church to consist of a collection of clubs having no intercommunion with
each other, any more than He desired it to be a monster hotel, receiving and
harboring all comers, no questions being asked. He made the promise now under
consideration, not to stimulate sectarianism, but to encourage the cultivation
of virtues which have ever been too rare on earth-brotherly-kindness, meekness,
charity. The thing He values, in a word, is not paucity of numbers, due to the
want of charity, but union of hearts in lowly love among the greatest number
possible.

Section III - Forgiving Injuries

Mat 18:21-35 A lesson on forgiveness fitly ended the solemn discourse on
humility delivered in the hearing of disputatious disciples. The connection of
thought between beginning and end is very real, though it does not quite lie on
the surface. A vindictive temper, which is the thing here condemned, is one of
the vices fostered by an ambitious spirit. An ambitious man is sure to be the
receiver of many offences, real or imaginary. He is quick to take offence, and
slow to forgive or forget wrong. Forgiving injuries is not in his way: he is
more in his element when he lays hold of his debtor by the throat, and with
ruffian fierceness demands payment. The concluding part of the discourse was
occasioned by a question put by Peter, the usual spokesman of the twelve, who
came to Jesus and said: “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I
forgive him? till seven times?” By what precise association of ideas the
question was suggested to Peter’s mind we know not; perhaps he did not know
himself, for the movements of the mind are often mysterious, and in impulsive
mercurial natures they are also apt to be sudden. Thoughts shoot into
consciousness like meteors into the upper atmosphere; and suddenly conceived,
are as abruptly uttered, with physical gestures accompanying, indicating the
force with which they have taken possession of the soul. Suffice it to say, that
the disciple’s query, however suggested, was relevant to the subject in hand,
and had latent spiritual affinities with all that Jesus had said concerning
humility and the giving and receiving of offences. It showed on Peter’s part an
intelligent attention to the words of his Master, and a conscientious solicitude
to conform his conduct to those heavenly precepts by which he felt for the
moment subdued and softened. The question put by Peter further revealed a
curious mixture of childlikeness and childishness. To be so earnest about the
duty of forgiving, and even to think of practicing the duty so often as seven
times towards the same offender, betrayed the true child of the kingdom; for
none but the graciously-minded are exercised in that fashion. But to imagine
that pardon repeated just so many times would exhaust obligation and amount to
something magnanimous and divine, was very simple. Poor Peter, in his ingenuous
attempt at the magnanimous, was like a child standing on tiptoe to make himself
as tall as his father, or climbing to the top of a hillock to get near the
skies. The reply of Jesus to His honest but crude disciple was admirably adapted
to put him out of conceit with himself, and to make him feel how puny and petty
were the dimensions of his charity. Echoing the thought of the prophetic oracle,
it tells those who would be like God that they must multiply pardons: “I say not
unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven.” Alas for the
rarity of such charity under the sun! Christ’s thoughts are not man’s thoughts,
neither are His ways common among men. As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are His thoughts and ways higher than those current in this world. For many,
far from forgiving times without number a brother confessing his fault, do not
forgive even so much as once, but act so that we can recognize their portrait
drawn to the life in the parable of the unmerciful servant. In this parable,
whose minutest details are fraught with instruction, three things are specially
noteworthy: the contrast between the two debts; the corresponding contrast
between the two creditors; and the doom pronounced on those who, being forgiven
the large debt owed by them, refuse to forgive the small debt owed to them. The
two debts are respectively ten thousand talents and a hundred denarii, being to
each other in the proportion of, say, a million to one. The enormous disparity
is intended to represent the difference between the shortcomings of all men
towards God, and those with which any man can charge a fellow-creature. The
representation is confessed to be just by all who know human nature and their
own hearts; and the consciousness of its truth helps them greatly to be gentle
and forbearing towards offenders. Yet the parable seems to be faulty in this,
that it makes the unmerciful servant answerable for such a debt as it seems
impossible for any man to run up. Who ever heard of a private debt amounting in
British money to millions sterling? The difficulty is met by the suggestion that
the debtor is a person of high rank, like one of the princes whom Darius set
over the kingdom of Persia, or a provincial governor of the Roman Empire. Such
an official might very soon make himself liable for the huge sum here specified,
simply by retaining for his own benefit the revenues of his province as they
passed through his hands, instead of remitting them to the royal treasury. That
it was some such unscrupulous minister of state, guilty of the crime of
embezzlement, whom Jesus had in His eye, appears all but certain when we
recollect what gave rise to the discourse of which this parable forms the
conclusion. The disciples had disputed among themselves who should be greatest
in the kingdom, each one being ambitious to obtain the place of distinction for
himself. Here, accordingly, their Master holds up to their view the conduct of a
great one, concerned not about the faithful discharge of his duty, but about his
own aggrandizement. “Behold,” He says to them in effect, “what men who wish to
be great ones do! They rob their king of his revenue, and abuse the
opportunities afforded by their position to enrich themselves; and while
scandalously negligent of their own obligations, they are characteristically
exacting towards any little one who may happen in the most innocent way, not by
fraud, but by misfortune, to have become their debtor.”

Thus understood, the parable faithfully represents the guilt and criminality of
those at least who are animated by the spirit of pride, and deliberately make
self-advancement their chief end: a class by no means small in number. Such men
are great sinners, whoever may be little ones. They not merely come short of the
glory of God, the true chief end of man, but they deliberately rob the Supreme
of His due, calling in question His sovereignty, denying their accountability to
Him for their actions, and by the spirit which animates them, saying every
moment of their lives, “Who is Lord over us?” It is impossible to over-estimate
the magnitude of their guilt. The contrast between the two creditors is not less
striking than that between the two debts. The king forgives the enormous debt of
his unprincipled satrap on receiving a simple promise to pay; the forgiven
satrap relentlessly exacts the petty debt of some three pounds sterling from the
poor hapless underling who owes it, stopping his ear to the identical petition
for delay which he had himself successfully presented to his sovereign lord.
Here also the coloring of the parable appears too strong. The great creditor
seems lenient to excess: for surely such a crime as the satrap had been guilty
of ought not to go unpunished; and surely it had been wise to attach little
weight to a promise of future payment made by a man who, with unbounded
extravagance, had already squandered such a prodigious sum, so that he had
nothing to pay! Then this great debtor, in his character as small creditor,
seems incredibly inhuman; for even the meanest, most greedy, and grasping churl,
not to speak of so great a gentleman, might well be ashamed to show such
eagerness about so trifling a sum as to seize the poor wight who owed it by the
throat and drag him to prison, to lie there till he paid it. The representation
is doubtless extreme, and yet in both parts it is in accordance with truth. God
does deal with His debtors as the king dealt with the satrap. He is slow to
anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil He hath threatened.
He giveth men space to repent, and by providential delays accepts promises of
amendment, though He knoweth full well that they will be broken, and that those
who made them will go on sinning as before. So He dealt with Pharaoh, with
Israel, with Nineveh; so He deals with all whom He calls to account by remorse
of conscience, by a visitation of sickness, or by the apprehension of death,
when, on their exclaiming, in a passing penitential mood, “Lord, have patience
with me, and I will pay Thee all,” He grants their petition, knowing that when
the danger or the fit of repentance is over, the promise of amendment will be
utterly forgotten. Truly was it written of old: “He hath not dealt with us after
our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.” Nor is the part played
by the unmerciful servant, however infamous and inhuman, altogether unexampled;
although its comparative rarity is implied in that part of the parabolic story
which represents the fellow- servants of the relentless one as shocked and
grieved at his conduct, and as reporting it to the common master. It would not
be impossible to find originals of the dark picture, even among professors of
the Christian religion, who believe in the forgiveness of sins through the blood
of Jesus, and hope to experience all the benefits of divine mercy for His sake.
It is, indeed, precisely by such persons that the crime of unmercifulness is, in
the parable, supposed to be committed. The exacting creditor meets his debtor
just as he himself comes out from the presence of the king after craving and
receiving remission of his own debt. This feature in the story at once adapts
its lesson specially to believers in the gospel, and points out the enormity of
their guilt. All such, if not really forgiven, do at least consciously live
under a reign of grace, in which God is assuming the attitude of one who desires
all to be reconciled unto Himself, and for that end proclaims a gratuitous
pardon to all who will receive it. In men so situated the spirit of
unmercifulness is peculiarly offensive. Shameful in a pagan-for the light of
nature teacheth the duty of being merciful-such inhuman rigor as is here
portrayed in a Christian is utterly abominable. Think of it! he goes out from
the presence of the King of grace; rises up from the perusal of the blessed
gospel, which tells of One who received publicans and sinners, even the chief;
walks forth from the house of prayer where the precious evangel is proclaimed,
yea, from the communion table, which commemorates the love that moved the Son of
God to pay the debt of sinners; and he meets a fellow-mortal who has done him
some petty wrong, and seizes him by the throat, and truculently demands
reparation on pain of imprisonment or something worse if it be not forthcoming
May not the most gracious Lord righteously say to such an one: “O thou wicked
servant! I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me; shouldest thou
not also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?”
What can the miscreant who showed no mercy expect, but to receive judgment
without mercy, and to be delivered over to the tormentors, to be kept in durance
and put to the rack, without hope of release, till he shall have paid his debt
to the uttermost farthing? This very doom Jesus, in the closing sentences of His
discourse, solemnly assured His disciples awaited all who cherish an unforgiving
temper, even if they themselves should be the guilty parties. “So likewise shall
my heavenly Father do also unto you if ye from your hearts forgive not every one
his brother.” Stern words these, which lay down a rule of universal application,
not relaxable in the case of favored parties. Were partiality admissible at all,
such as the twelve would surely get the benefit of it; but as if to intimate
that in this matter there is no respect of persons, the law is enunciated with
direct, emphatic reference to them. And harsh as the law might seem, Jesus is
careful to indicate His cordial approval of its being enforced with
Rhadamanthine rigor. For that purpose He calls God the Judge by the endearing
name “My heavenly Father;” as if to say: “The great God and King does not seem
to me unduly stern in decreeing such penalties against the unforgiving. I, the
merciful, tender-hearted Son of man, thoroughly sympathize with such judicial
severity. I should solemnly say Amen to that doom pronounced even against you if
you behaved so as to deserve it. Think not that because ye are my chosen
companions, therefore violations of the law of love by you will be winked at. On
the contrary, just because ye are great ones in the kingdom, so far as privilege
goes, will compliance with its fundamental laws be especially expected of you,
and non-compliance most severely punished. To whom much is given, of him shall
much be required. See, then, that ye forgive every one his brother their
trespasses, and that ye do so really, not in pretense, even from your very
hearts.” By such severe plainness of speech did Jesus educate His disciples for
being truly great ones in His kingdom: great not in pride, pretension, and
presumption, but in loyal obedience to the behests of their King, and
particularly to this law of forgiveness, on which He insisted in His teaching so
earnestly and so frequently. And we cannot but remark here, at the close of our
exposition of the discourse on humility, that if the apostles in after days did
not rise superior to petty passions, it was not the fault of their Master in
neglecting their training. “With holy earnestness”-to quote the language of a
German scholar-“springing equally out of solicitude for the new community, zeal
for the cause of God and of men; nay, for the essential truths of the new
religion of divine grace and of the brotherhood of mankind, Jesus sought to ward
off the dark shadow of petty, ungodly feelings which He saw creeping stealthily
into the circle of His disciples, and of whose still more extensive and
mischievous influence, after His departure, He could not but be apprehensive.”
We cannot believe that all this earnestness had been manifested in vain; that
the disciples did not at length get the salt thoroughly into them.


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  CHAPTER 49: 02.14.2.     TRAINING IN TEMPER
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Training in Temper; or, Discourse On Humility Section IV - The Temple Tax: An
Illustration of the Sermon

Mat 17:24-27 This story is a nut with a dry, hard shell, but a very sweet
kernel. Superficial readers may see in it nothing more than a curious anecdote
of a singular fish with a piece of money in its mouth turning up opportunely to
pay a tax, related by Matthew, alone of the evangelists, not because of its
intrinsic importance, but simply because, being an ex-tax gatherer, he took
kindly to the tale. Devout readers, though unwilling to acknowledge it, may be
secretly scandalized by the miracle related, as not merely a departure from the
rule which Jesus observed of not using His divine power to help Himself, but as
something very like a piece of sport on His part, or an expression of a humorous
sense of incongruity, reminding one of the grotesque figures in old cathedrals,
in the carving of which the builders delighted to show their skill, and find for
themselves amusement.

Breaking the shell of the story, we discover within, as its kernel, a most
pathetic exhibition of the humiliation and self-humiliation of the Son of man,
who appears exposed to the indignity of being dunned for temple dues, and so
oppressed with poverty that He cannot pay the sum demanded, though its amount is
only fifteen pence; yet neither pleading poverty nor insisting on exemption on
the score of privilege, but quietly meeting the claims of the collectors in a
manner which, if sufficiently strange, as we admit, was at all events singularly
meek and peaceable. The present incident supplies, in truth, an admirable
illustration of the doctrine taught in the discourse on humility. The greatest
in the kingdom here exemplifies by anticipation the lowliness He inculcated on
His disciples, and shows them in exercise a holy, loving solicitude to avoid
giving offence not only to the little ones within the kingdom, but even to those
without. He stands not on His dignity as the Son of God, though the voice from
heaven uttered on the holy mount still rings in His ears, but consents to be
treated as a subject or a stranger; desiring to live peaceably with men whose
ways He does not love, and who bear Him no good-will, by complying with their
wishes in all things lawful. We regard, in short, this curious scene at
Capernaum (with the Mount of Transfiguration in the distant background!) as a
historical frontispiece to the sermon we have been studying. We think ourselves
justified in taking this view of it, by the consideration that, though the scene
occurred before the sermon was delivered, it happened after the dispute which
supplied the preacher with a text. The disciples fell to disputing on the way
home from the Mount of Transfiguration, while the visit of the tax-gatherers
took place on their arrival in Capernaum. Of course Jesus knew of the dispute at
the time of the visit, though He had not yet expressly adverted to it. Is it too
much to assume that His knowledge of what had been going on by the way
influenced His conduct in the affair of the tribute money, and led Him to make
it the occasion for teaching by action the same lesson which He meant to take an
early opportunity of inculcating by words? This assumption, so far from being
unwarranted, is, we believe, quite necessary in order to make Christ’s conduct
on this occasion intelligible. Those who leave out of account the dispute by the
way are not at the right point of view for seeing the incident at Capernaum in
its natural light, and they fall inevitably into misunderstandings. They are
forced, e.g., to regard Jesus as arguing seriously against payment of the temple
tax, as something not legally obligatory, or as lying out of the ordinary course
of His humiliation as the Son of man. Now it was neither one nor other of these
things. The law of Moses ordained that every man above twenty years should pay
the sum of half a shekel as an atonement for his soul, and to meet the expenses
connected with the service of the tabernacle rendered to God for the common
benefit of all Israelites; and Jesus, as a Jew, was just as much under
obligation to comply with this particular law as with any other. Nor was there
any peculiar indignity, either in kind or degree, involved in obeying that law.
Doubtless it was a great indignity and humiliation to the Son of God to be
paying taxes for the maintenance of His own Father’s house! All that He said to
Peter, pointing out the incongruity of such a state of things, was sober truth.
But the incongruity does not meet us here alone; it runs through the whole of
our Lord’s earthly experience. His life, in all respects, departed from the
analogy of kings’ sons. Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience; though
He were a Son, yet came He not to be ministered unto, but to minister; though He
were a Son, yet became He subject to the law, not merely the moral but the
ceremonial, and was circumcised, and took part in the temple worship, and
frequented the sacred feasts, and offered sacrifices, though these were all only
shadows of good things, whereof He Himself was the substance. Surely, in a life
containing so many indignities and incongruities-which was, in fact, one grand
indignity from beginning to end-it was a small matter to be obliged to pay
annually, for the benefit of the temple, the paltry sum of fifteen pence! He who
with marvelous patience went through all the rest, could not possibly mean to
stumble and scruple at so trifling a matter. He who did nothing towards
destroying the temple and putting an end to legal worship before the time, could
not be a party to the mean policy of starving out its officials, or grudging the
funds necessary to keep the sacred edifice in good repair. He might say openly
what He thought of existing ecclesiastical abuses, but He would do no more. The
truth is, that the words spoken by Jesus to Simon were not intended as an
argument against paying the tax, but as an explanation of what was meant by His
paying it, and of the motive which guided Him in paying it. They were a lesson
for Simon, and through him for the twelve, on a subject wherein they had great
need of instruction; not a legal defense against the demands of the
tax-gatherer. But for that dispute by the way, Jesus would probably have taken
the quietest means for getting the tax paid, as a matter of course, without
making any remarks on the subject. That He had already acted thus on previous
occasions, Peter’s prompt affirmative reply to the question of the collectors
seems to imply. The disciple said “yes,” as knowing what his Master had done in
past years, and assuming as a thing of course that His practice would be the
same now. But Jesus did not deem it, in present circumstances, expedient to let
His disciples regard His action with respect to the tax as a mere vulgar matter
of course; He wanted them to understand and reflect on the moral meaning and the
motive of His action for their own instruction and guidance.

He wished them to understand, in the first place, that for Him to pay the temple
dues was a humiliation and an incongruity, similar to that of a king’s son
paying a tax for the support of the palace and the royal household; that it was
not a thing of course that He should pay, any more than it was a thing of course
that He should become man, and, so to speak, leave His royal state behind and
assume the rank of a peasant; that it was an act of voluntary humiliation,
forming one item in the course of humiliation to which He voluntarily submitted,
beginning with His birth, and ending with His death and burial. He desired His
disciples to think of these things in the hope that meditation on them would
help to rebuke the pride, pretension, and self-assertion which had given rise to
that petty dispute about places of distinction. He would say to them, in effect:
“Were I, like you, covetous of honors, and bent on asserting my importance, I
would stand on my dignity, and haughtily reply to these collectors of tribute:
Why trouble ye me about temple dues? Know ye not who I am? I am the Christ, the
Son of the living God: the temple is my Father’s house; and I, His Son, am free
from all servile obligations. But, note ye well, I do nothing of the kind. With
the honors heaped upon me on the Mount of Transfiguration fresh in my
recollection, with the consciousness of who I am, and whence I came, and whither
I go, abiding deep in my soul, I submit to be treated as a mere common Jew,
suffering my honors to fall into abeyance, and making no demands for a
recognition which is not voluntarily conceded. The world knows me not; and while
it knows me not, I am content that it should do with me, as with John,
whatsoever it lists. Did the rulers know who I am, they would be ashamed to ask
of me temple dues; but since they do not, I accept and bear all the indignities
consequent on their ignorance.”

All this Jesus said in effect to His disciples, by first adverting to the
grounds on which a refusal to pay the didrachmon might plausibly be defended,
and then after all paying it. The manner of payment also was so contrived by Him
as to re-enforce the lesson. He said not to Simon simply: “Go and catch fish,
that with the proceeds of their sale we may satisfy our creditors.” He gave him
directions as the Lord of nature, to whom all creatures in land or sea were
subject, and all their movements familiar, while yet so humbled as to need the
services of the meanest of them. By drawing on His omniscience in giving these
instructions to His disciple, He did, in a manner, what He never did either
before or after, viz. wrought a miracle for His own behoof. The exception,
however, had the same reason as the rule, and therefore proved the rule. Jesus
abstained from using His divine faculties for His own benefit, that He might not
impair the integrity of His humiliation; that His human life might be a real
bona fide life of hardship, unalleviated by the presence of the divine element
in His personality. But what was the effect of the lightning-flash of divine
knowledge emitted by Him in giving those directions to Peter? To impair the
integrity of His humiliation? Nay, but only to make it glaringly conspicuous. It
said to Simon, and to us, if he and we had ears to hear: “Behold who it is that
pays this tax, and that is reduced to such straits in order to pay it! It is He
who knoweth all the fowls of the mountain, and whatsoever passeth through the
paths of the sea!” The other point on which Jesus desired to fix the attention
of His disciples, was the reason which moved Him to adopt the policy of
submission to what was in itself an indignity. That reason was to avoid giving
offence: “Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them.” This was not, of course,
the only reason of His conduct in this case. There were other comprehensive
reasons applicable to His whole experience of humiliation, and to this small
item therein in particular; a full account of which would just amount to an
answer to the great question put by Anselm: “Cur Deus Homo;” Why did God become
man? On that great question we do not enter here, however, but confine ourselves
to the remark, that while the reason assigned by Jesus to Peter for the payment
of the temple dues was by no means the only one, or even the chief, it was the
reason to which, for the disciples’ sake, He deemed it expedient just then to
give prominence. He was about to discourse to them largely on the subject of
giving and receiving offences; and He wished them, and specially their foremost
man, first of all to observe how very careful He Himself was not to offend-what
a prominent place the desire to avoid giving offence occupied among His motives.

Christ’s declared reason for paying the tribute is strikingly expressive of His
lowliness and His love. The mark of His lowliness is that there is no word here
of taking offence. How easily and plausibly might He have taken up the position
of one who did well to be angry! “I am the Christ, the Son of God,” He might
have said, “and have substantiated my claims by a thousand miracles in word and
deed, yet they willfully refuse to recognize me; I am a poor homeless wanderer,
yet they, knowing this, demanded the tribute, as if more for the sake of
annoying and insulting me than of getting the money. And for what purpose do
they collect these dues? For the support of a religious establishment thoroughly
effete, to repair an edifice doomed to destruction, to maintain a priesthood
scandalously deficient in the cardinal virtues of integrity and truth, and whose
very existence is a curse to the land. I cannot in conscience pay a didrachmon,
no, not even so much as a farthing, for any such objects.” The lowly One did not
assume this attitude, but gave what was asked without complaint, grudging, or
railing; and His conduct conveys a lesson for Christians in all ages, and in our
own age in particular. It teaches the children of the kingdom not to murmur
because the world does not recognize their status and dignity. The world knew
not when He came, even God’s eternal Son; what wonder if it recognize not His
younger brethren! The kingdom of heaven itself is not believed in, and its
citizens should not be surprised at any want of respect towards them
individually. The manifestation of the sons of God is one of the things for
which Christians wait in hope. For the present they are not the children, but
the strangers: instead of exemption from burdens, they should rather expect
oppression; and they should be thankful when they are put on a level with their
fellow-creatures, and get the benefit of a law of toleration. As the humility of
Jesus was shown by His not taking, so His love was manifested by His solicitude
to avoid giving offence. He desired, if possible, to conciliate persons who for
the most part had treated Him all along as a heathen and a publican, and who ere
long, as He knew well, would treat Him even as a felon. How like Himself was the
Son of man in so acting! How thoroughly in keeping His procedure here with His
whole conduct while He was on the earth! For what was His aim in coming to the
world, what His constant endeavor after He came, but to cancel offences, and to
put an end to enmities-to reconcile sinful men to God and to each other? For
these ends He took flesh; for these ends He was crucified. His earthly life was
all of a piece-a life of lowly love.

“Lest we should offend,” said Jesus, using the plural to hint that He meant His
conduct to be imitated by the twelve and by all His followers. How happy for the
world and the church were this done! How many offences might have been prevented
had the conciliatory spirit of the Lord always animated those called by His
name! How many offences might be removed were this spirit abundantly poured out
on Christians of all denominations now! Did this motive, “Notwithstanding, lest
we should offend,” bulk largely in all minds, what breaches might be healed,
what unions might come! A national church morally, if not legally, established
in unity and peace, might be realized in Scotland in the present generation.
Surely a consummation devoutly to be wished! Let us wish for it; let us pray for
it; let us cherish a spirit tending to make it possible; let us hope for it
against hope, in spite of increasing tendencies on all sides to indulge in an
opposite spirit.

Section V - The Interdicted Exorcist: Another Illustration Mark 9:38-41; Luk
9:49-50. The discourses of our Lord were not continuous, unbroken addresses on
formally announced themes, such as we are wont to hear, but rather for the most
part of the nature of Socratic dialogues, in which He was the principal speaker,
His disciples contributing their part in the form of a question asked, an
exclamation uttered, or a case of conscience propounded. In the discourse or
dialogue on humility, two of the disciples acted as interlocutors, viz. Peter
and John. Towards the close the former of these two disciples, as we saw, asked
a question concerning the forgiving of injuries; and near the commencement the
other disciple, John, related an anecdote which was brought up to his
recollection by the doctrine of his Master, respecting receiving little ones in
His name, and on which the truth therein set forth seemed to have a bearing. The
facts thus brought under his notice led Jesus to make reflections, which supply
an interesting illustration of the bearing of the doctrine He was inculcating on
a particular class of cases or questions. These reflections, with the incident
to which they relate, now solicit attention. The story told by John was to the
effect that on one occasion he and his brethren had found a man unknown to them
engaged in the work of casting out devils, and had served him with an interdict,
because, though he used the name of Jesus in practicing exorcism, he did not
follow or identify himself with them, the twelve. At what particular time this
happened is not stated; but it may be conjectured with much probability that the
incident was a reminiscence of the Galilean mission, during which the disciples
were separated from their Master, and were themselves occupied in healing the
sick, and casting out evil spirits, and in preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

John, it will be observed, does not disclaim joint responsibility for the
high-handed proceeding he relates, but speaks as if the twelve had acted
unanimously in the matter. It may surprise some to find him, the apostle of
love, consenting to so uncharitable a deed; but such surprise is founded on
superficial views of his character, as well as on ignorance of the laws of
spiritual growth. John is not now what he will be, but differs from his future
self, as much as an orange in its second year differs from the same orange in
its third final year of growth. The fruit of the Spirit will ultimately ripen in
this disciple into something very sweet and beautiful; but meantime it is green,
bitter, and fit only to set the teeth on edge. Devoted in mind, tender and
intense in his attachment to Jesus, scrupulously conscientious in all his
actions, he is even now; but he is also bigoted, intolerant, ambitious. Already
he has played the part of a very high churchman in suppressing the nonconforming
exorcist; ere long we shall see him figuring, together with his brother, as a
persecutor, proposing to call down fire from heaven to destroy the enemies of
his Lord; and yet again we shall find him, along with the same brother and their
common mother, engaged in an ambitious plot to secure those places of
distinction in the kingdom about which all the twelve have lately been
wrangling. In refusing to recognize the exorcist fellow-worker, however humble,
as a brother, the disciples proceeded on very narrow and precarious grounds. The
test they applied was purely external. What sort of man the person interdicted
might be they did not inquire; it was enough that he was not of their company:
as if all inside that charmed circle-Judas, for example-were good; and all
outside, not excepting a Nicodemus, utterly Christless! Two good things, on
their own showing, could be said of him whom they silenced: he was well
occupied, and he seemed to have a most devout regard for Jesus; for he cast out
devils, and he did it in Jesus’ name. These were not indeed decisive marks of
discipleship, for it was possible that a man might practice exorcism for gain,
and use the name of Christ because it had been proved to be a good name to
conjure by; but they ought to have been regarded as at least presumptive
evidence in favor of one in whose conduct they appeared. Judging by the facts,
it was probable that the silenced exorcist was an honest and sincere man, whose
heart had been impressed by the ministry of Jesus and His disciples, and who
desired to imitate their zeal in doing good. It was even possible that he was
more than this-a man possessing higher spiritual endowment than his censors,
some provincial prophet as yet unknown to fame. How preposterous, in view of
such a possibility, that narrow outward test, “Not with us”! As an illustration
of what this way of judging lands in, one little fact in the history of the
celebrated Sir Matthew Hale, whose Contemplations are familiar to all readers of
devout literature, may here be introduced. Richard Baxter relates that the good
people in the part of the country where the distinguished judge resided, after
his retirement from the judicial bench, did not entertain a favorable opinion of
his religious character, their notion being that he was certainly a very moral
man, but not converted. It was a serious conclusion to come to about a
fellow-creature, and one is curious to know on what so solemn a judgment was
based. The author of the Saint’s Rest gives us the needful information on this
momentous point. The pious folks about Acton, he tells us, ranked the ex-judge
among the unconverted, because he did not frequent their private weekly
prayer-meetings! It was the old story of the twelve and the exorcist under a new
Puritanic form. Baxter, it is needless to say, did not sympathize with the
harsh, uncharitable opinion of his less enlightened brethren. His thoughts
breathed the gentle, benignant, humble, charitable spirit of Christian maturity.
“I,” he adds, after relating the fact above stated, “I that have heard and read
his serious expressions of the concernments of eternity, and seen his love to
all good men, and the blamelessness of his life, thought better of his piety
than of mine own.” In silencing the exorcist the twelve were probably actuated
by a mixture of motives-partly by jealousy, and partly by conscientious
scruples. They disliked, we imagine, the idea of any one using Christ’s name but
themselves, desiring a monopoly of the power conferred by that name to cast out
evil spirits; and they probably thought it unlikely, if not impossible, that any
one who kept aloof from them could be sincerely devoted to their Master. In so
far as the disciples acted under the influence of jealousy, their conduct
towards the exorcist was morally of a piece with their recent dispute who should
be the greatest. The same spirit of pride revealed itself on the two occasions
under different phases. The silencing of the exorcist was a display of arrogance
analogous to that of those who advance for their church the claim to be
exclusively the church of Christ. In their dispute among themselves, the
disciples played on a humble scale the game of ambitious, self-seeking
ecclesiastics contending for seats of honor and power. In the one case the
twelve said in effect to the man whom they found casting out devils: We are the
sole commissioned, authorized agents of the Lord Jesus Christ; in the other case
they said to each other: We are all members of the kingdom and servants of the
King; but I deserve to have a higher place than thou, even to be a prelate
sitting on a throne. In so far as the intolerance of the twelve was due to
honest scrupulosity, it is deserving of more respectful consideration. The plea
of conscience, honestly advanced, must always be listened to with serious
attention, even when it is mistaken. We say “honestly” with emphasis, because we
cannot forget that there is much scrupulosity that is not honest. Conscience is
often used as a stalking-horse by proud, quarrelsome, self-willed men to promote
their own private ends. Pride, says one, speaking of doctrinal disputes, “is the
greatest enemy of moderation. This makes men stickle for their opinions to make
them fundamental. Proud men, having deeply studied some additional point in
divinity, will strive to make the same necessary to salvation, to enhance the
value of their own worth and pains; and it must needs be fundamental in
religion, because it is fundamental to their reputation.” These shrewd remarks
hold good of other things besides doctrine. Opinionative, pragmatic persons,
would make every thing in religion fundamental on which they have decided views;
and if they could get their own way, they would exclude from the church all who
held not with them in the very minutiae of belief and practice. But there is
such a thing also as honest scrupulosity, and it is more common than many
imagine. There is a certain tendency to intolerant exaction, and to severity in
judging, in the unripe stage of every earnest life. For the conscience of a
young disciple is like a fire of green logs, which smokes first before it burns
with a clear blaze. And a Christian whose conscience is in this state must be
treated as we treat a dull fire: he must be borne with, that is, till his
conscience clear itself of bitter, cloudy smoke, and become a pure, genial, warm
flame of zeal tempered by charity. That the scrupulosity of the twelve was of
the honest kind, we believe for this reason, that they were willing to be
instructed. They told their Master what they had done, that they might learn
from Him whether it was right or wrong This is not the way of men whose plea of
conscience is a pretext. The instruction honestly desired by the disciples,
Jesus promptly communicated in the form of a clear, definite judgment on the
case, with a reason annexed. “Forbid him not,” He replied to John, “for he that
is not against us is for us.” The reason assigned for this counsel of tolerance
reminds us of another maxim uttered by Jesus on the occasion when the Pharisees
brought against Him the blasphemous charge of casting out devils by aid of
Beelzebub. The two sayings have a superficial aspect of contradiction: one
seeming to say, The great matter is not to be decidedly against; the other, The
great matter is to be decidedly for. But they are harmonized by a truth
underlying both-that the cardinal matter in spiritual character is the bias of
the heart. Here Jesus says: “If the heart of a man be with me, then, though by
ignorance, error, isolation from those who are avowedly my friends, he may seem
to be against me, he is really for me.” In the other case He meant to say: “If a
man be not in heart with me (the case of the Pharisees), then, though by his
orthodoxy and his zeal he may seem to be on God’s side, and therefore on mine,
he is in reality against me.” To the words just commented on, Mark adds the
following, as spoken by Jesus at this time: “There is no man that shall do a
miracle in my name that can lightly speak evil of me.” The voice of wisdom and
charity united is audible here. The emphasis is on the word tachu, lightly or
readily. This word, in the first place, involves the admission that the case
supposed might happen; an admission demanded by historical truth, for such cases
did actually occur in after days. Luke tells, e.g., of certain vagabond Jews (in
every sense well named) who took upon them to call over demoniac the name of the
Lord Jesus, without any personal faith in Him, but simply in the way of trade,
being vile traffickers in exorcism for whom even the devils expressed their
contempt, exclaiming, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?” Our Lord
knowing before that such cases would happen, and being acquainted with the
depths of human depravity, could not do otherwise than admit the possibility of
the exorcist referred to by John being animated by unworthy motives. But while
making the admission, He took care to indicate that, in His judgment, the case
supposed was very improbable, and that it was very unlikely that one who did a
miracle in His name would speak evil of Him. And He desired His disciples to be
on their guard against readily and lightly believing that any man could be
guilty of such a sin. Till strong reasons for thinking otherwise appeared, He
would have them charitably regard the outward action as the index of sincere
faith and love (which they might the more easily do then, when nothing was to be
gained by the use or profession of Christ’s name, but the displeasure of those
who had the characters and lives of men in their power).

Such were the wise, gracious words spoken by Jesus with reference to the case
brought up for judgment by John. Is it possible to extract any lessons from
these words of general application to the church in all ages, or specially
applicable to our own age in particular? It is a question on which one must
speak with diffidence; for while all bow to the judgment of Jesus on the conduct
of His disciples, as recorded in the Gospels, there is much difference among
Christians as to the inferences to be drawn therefrom, in reference to cases in
which their own conduct is concerned. The following reflections, may, however,
safely be hazarded:

1. We may learn from the discreet, loving words of the great Teacher to beware
of hasty conclusions concerning men’s spiritual state based on merely external
indications. Say not with the Church of Rome, “Out of our communion is no
possibility of salvation or of goodness;” but rather admit that even in that
corrupt communion may be many building on the true foundation, though, for the
most part, with very combustible materials; nay, that Christ may have not a few
friends outside the pale of all the churches. Ask not with Nathanael, “Can any
good thing come out of Nazareth?” but remember that the best things may come out
of most unexpected quarters. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for
thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Bear in mind that, by indulging
in the cry, “Not with us,” in reference to trifles and crotchets, you may tempt
God, while giving His Holy Spirit to those whom you unchurch, to withdraw His
influences from you for your pride, exclusiveness, and self-will, and may turn
your creed into a prison, in which you shall be shut out from the fellowship of
saints, and doomed to experience the chagrin of seeing through the window-bars
of your cell God’s people walking at large, while you lie immured in a jail.

2. In view of that verdict, “Forbid him not,” one must read with a sad,
sorrowful heart, many pages of church history, in which the predominating spirit
is that of the twelve rather than that of their Master. One may confidently say,
that had Christ’s mind dwelt more in those called by His name, many things in
that history would have been different. Separatism, censoriousness, intolerance
of nonconformity, persecution, would not have been so rife; Conventicle Acts and
Five-mile Acts would not have disgraced the statute-book of the English
Parliament; Bedford jail would not have had the honor of receiving the
illustrious dreamer of the Pilgrim’s Progress as a prisoner; Baxter, and
Livingstone of Ancrum, and thousands more like-minded, by whose stirring words
multitudes had been quickened to a new spiritual life, would not have been
driven from their parishes and their native lands, and forbidden under heavy
penalties to preach that gospel they understood and loved so well, but would
have enjoyed the benefit of that law of toleration which they purchased so
dearly for us, their children.

3. The divided state of the church has ever been a cause of grief to good men,
and attempts have been made to remedy the evil by schemes of union. All honest
endeavors having in view the healing of breaches, which, since the days of the
Reformation, have multiplied so greatly as to be the opprobrium of
Protestantism, deserve our warmest sympathies and most earnest prayers. But we
cannot be blind to the fact that through human infirmity such projects are apt
to miscarry; it being extremely difficult to get a whole community, embracing
men of different temperaments and in different stages of Christian growth, to
take the same view of the terms of fellowship. What, then, is the duty of
Christians meanwhile? We may learn from our Lord’s judgment in the case of the
exorcist. If those who are not of our company cannot be brought to enter into
the same ecclesiastical organization, let us still recognize them from the heart
as fellow-disciples and fellow-laborers, and avail ourselves of all lawful or
open ways of showing that we care infinitely more for those who truly love
Christ, in whatever church they be, than for those who are with us
ecclesiastically, but in spirit and life are not with Christ, but against Him.
So shall we have the comfort of feeling that, though separated from brethren
beloved, we are not schismatical, and be able to speak of the divided state of
the church as a thing that we desire not, but merely endure because we cannot
help it.

Many religious people are at fault here. There are Christians not a few who do
not believe in these two articles of the Apostles’ Creed, “the holy catholic
church” and “the communion of saints.” They care little or nothing for those who
are outside the pale of their own communion: they practice brotherly-kindness
most exemplarily, but they have no charity. Their church is their club, in which
they enjoy the comfort of associating with a select number of persons, whose
opinions, whims, hobbies, and ecclesiastical politics entirely agree with their
own; every thing beyond in the wide wide world being regarded with cold
indifference, if not with passionate aversion or abhorrence. It is one of the
many ways in which the spirit of religious legalism, so prevalent amongst us,
reveals itself. The spirit of adoption is a catholic spirit. The legal spirit is
a dividing, sectarian spirit, multiplying fundamentals, and erecting scruples
into principles, and so manufacturing evermore new religious sects or clubs. Now
a club, ecclesiastical or other, is a very pleasant thing by way of a luxury;
but it ought to be remembered that, besides the club, and including all the
clubs, there is the great Christian commonwealth. This fact will have to be more
recognized than it has been if church life is not to become a mere imbecility.
To save us from this doom one of two things must take place. Either religious
people must overcome their doting fondness for the mere club fellowship of
denominationalism, involving absolute uniformity in opinion and practice; or a
sort of Amphictyonic council must be set on foot as a counterpoise to
sectarianism, in which all the sects shall find a common meeting-place for the
discussion of great catholic questions bearing on morals, missions, education,
and the defense of cardinal truths. Such a council (utopian it will be deemed)
would have many open questions in its constitution. In the ancient Amphictyonic
council men were not known as Athenians or Spartans, but as Greeks; and in our
modern utopian one men would be known only as Christians, not as Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, Independents, Churchmen, and Dissenters. It would be such a body,
in fact, as the “Evangelical Alliance” of recent origin, created by the craving
for some visible expression of the feeling of catholicity; but not, like it,
amateur, self-constituted, and patronized (to a certain extent) by persons
alienated from all existing ecclesiastical organizations, and disposed to
substitute it as a new church in their place, but consisting of representatives
belonging to, and regularly elected and empowered by, the different sections of
the church.

One remark more we make on this club theory of church fellowship. Worked out, it
secures at least one object. It breaks Christians up into small companies, and
insures that they shall meet in twos and threes! Unhappily, it does not at the
same time procure the blessing promised to the two or three. The spirit of Jesus
dwells not in coteries of self-willed, opinionative men, but in the great
commonwealth of saints, and especially in the hearts of those who love the whole
body more than any part, not excepting that to which they themselves belong; to
whom the Lord and Head of the church fulfill His promise, by enriching them with
magnanimous heroic graces, and causing them to rise like cedars above the
general level of contemporary character, and endowing them with a moral power
which exercises an ever-widening influence long after the strifes of their age,
and the men who delighted in them, have sunk into oblivion.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 50: 02.15.     THE SONS OF THUNDER
========================================================================

The Sons of Thunder

Luk 9:51-56 The delivery of the discourse on humility appears to have been the
closing act of our Lord’s ministry in Galilee; for immediately after finishing
their accounts of the discourse, the two first evangelists proceed to speak of
what we have reason to regard as His final departure from His native province
for the south. “It came to pass,” says Matthew, “that when Jesus had finished
these sayings, He departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judea.” Of
this journey neither Matthew nor Mark gives any details: they do not even
mention Christ’s visit to Jerusalem at the feast of dedication in winter,
referred to by John, from which we know that the farewell to Galilee took place
at least some four months before the crucifixion. The journey, however, was not
without its interesting incidents, as we know from Luke, who has preserved
several of them in his Gospel. Of these incidents, that recorded in the passage
above cited is one. For the words with which the evangelist introduces his
narrative obviously allude to the same journey from Galilee to the south, of
which Matthew and Mark speak in the passages already referred to. The journey
through Samaria adverted to here by Luke occurred “when the time was come (or
rather coming) that He (Jesus) should be received up,” that is, towards the
close of His life. Then the peculiar expression, “He steadfastly set His face to
go to Jerusalem,” hints not obscurely at a final transference of the scene of
Christ’s work from the north to the south. It refers not merely to the
geographical direction in which He was going, but also, and chiefly, to the
state of mind in which He journeyed. He went towards Jerusalem, feeling that His
duty lay in and near it henceforth, as a victim self-consecrated to death, His
countenance wearing a solemn, earnest, dignified aspect, expressive of the great
lofty purpose by which His soul was animated.

It was natural that Luke, the companion of Paul and evangelist to the Gentiles,
should carefully preserve this anecdote from the last journey of Jesus to Judea
through Samaria. It served admirably the purpose he kept in view throughout in
compiling his Gospel-that, viz., of illustrating the catholicity of the
Christian dispensation; and therefore he gathered it into his basket, that it
might not be lost. He has brought it in at a very suitable place, just after the
anecdote of the exorcist; for, not to speak of the link of association supplied
in the name of John, the narrator in one case and an actor in the other, this
incident, like the one recorded immediately before, exhibits a striking contrast
between the harsh spirit of the disciples and the gentle, benignant spirit of
their Master. That contrast forms the moral interest of the story. The main fact
in the story was this. The inhabitants of a certain Samaritan village at which
Jesus and His traveling companions arrived at the close of a day’s journey
having declined, on being requested, to give them quarters for the night, James
and John came to their Master, and proposed that the offending villagers should
be destroyed by fire from heaven.

It was a strange proposal to come from men who had been for years disciples of
Jesus, and especially from one who, like John, had been in the Master’s company
at the time of that meeting with the woman by the well, and heard the rapturous
words with which He spoke of the glorious new era that was dawning. It shows how
slow the best are to learn the heavenly doctrine and practice of charity. How
startling, again, to think of this same John, a year or two after the date of
this savage suggestion, going down from Jerusalem and preaching the gospel of
Jesus the crucified in “many of the villages of the Samaritans,” possibly in
this very village which he desired to see destroyed!

Such are the contrasts which growth in grace brings. In the green, crude stage
of the divine life, whose characteristics are opinionativeness, censoriousness,
scrupulosity, intolerance, blind passionate zeal, John would play the part of a
mimic Elijah; in his spiritual maturity, after the summer sun of Pentecost had
wrought its effects in his soul, and sweetened all its acid juices, he became an
ardent apostle of salvation, and exhibited in his character the soft, luscious
fruits of “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, and self-control.” Such contrasts in the same character at different
periods, however surprising, are perfectly natural. Amid all changes the
elements of the moral being remain the same. The juice of the ripe apple is the
same that was in the green fruit, plus sun-light and sun-heat. The zeal of the
son of thunder did not disappear from John’s nature after he became an apostle;
it only became tempered by the light of wisdom, and softened by the heat of
love. He did not even cease to hate, and become an indiscriminately amiable
individual, whose charity made no distinction between good and evil. To the
last, John was what he was at the first, an intense hater as well as an intense
lover. But in his later years he knew better what to hate-the objects of his
abhorrence being hypocrisy, apostasy, and Laodicean insincerity; not, as of old,
mere ignorant rudeness and clownish incivility. He could distinguish then
between wickedness and weakness, malice and prejudice; and while cherishing
strong antipathy towards the one, he felt only compassion towards the other. To
some it may seem a matter of wonder how a man capable of entertaining so
revolting a purpose as is here ascribed to James and John could ever be the
disciple whom Jesus loved. To understand this, it must be remembered that Jesus,
unlike most men, could love a disciple not merely for what he was, but for what
he should become. He could regard with complacency even sour grapes in their
season for the sake of the goodly fruit into which they should ripen. Then,
further, we must not forget that John, even when possessed by the devil of
resentment, was animated by a purer and holier spirit. Along with the smoke of
carnal passion there was some divine fire in his heart. He loved Jesus as
intensely as he hated the Samaritans; it was his devoted attachment to his
Master that made him resent their incivility so keenly. In his tender love for
the Bridegroom of his soul, he was beautiful as a mother overflowing with
affection in the bosom of her family; though in his hatred he was terrible as
the same mother can be in her enmity against her family’s foes. John’s nature,
in fact, was feminine both in its virtues and in its faults, and, like all
feminine natures, could be both exquisitely sweet and exquisitely bitter.

Passing now from personal remarks on John himself to the truculent proposal
emanating from him and his brother, we must beware of regarding it in the light
of a mere extravagant ebullition of temper consequent upon a refusal of
hospitality. No doubt the two brethren and all their fellow-disciples were
annoyed by the unexpected incivility, nor can one wonder if it put them out of
humor. Weary men are easily irritated, and it was not pleasant to be obliged to
trudge on to another village after the fatigues of a day’s journey. But we have
too good an opinion of the twelve to fancy any of them capable of revenging
rudeness by murder. The savage mood of James and John is not even thoroughly
explained by the recollection that the churlish villagers were Samaritans, and
that they were Jews. The chronic ill-will between the two races had
unquestionably its own influence in producing ill-feeling on both sides. The
nationality of the travellers was one, if not the sole reason, why the villagers
refused them quarters. They were Galilean Jews going southwards to Jerusalem,
and that was enough. Then the twelve, as Jews, were just as ready to take
offence as the Samaritan villagers were to give it. The powder of national
enmity was stored up in their breasts; and a spark, one rude word or insolent
gesture, was enough to cause an explosion. Though they had been for years with
Jesus, there was still much more of the old Jewish man than of the new Christian
man in them. If they had been left to the freedom of their own will, they would
probably have avoided the Samaritan territory altogether, and, like the rest of
their countrymen, taken a roundabout way to Jerusalem by crossing to the
eastward of the Jordan. Between persons so affected towards each other offences
are sure to arise. When Guelph and Ghibeline, Orangemen and Ribbonmen, Cavalier
and Roundhead meet, it does not take much to make a quarrel. But there was
something more at work in the minds of the two disciples than party passion.
There was conscience in their quarrel as well as temper and hereditary enmities.
This is evident, both from the deliberate manner in which they made their
proposal to Jesus, and from the reason by which they sought to justify it. They
came to their Master, and said, “Wilt Thou that we command fire to come down
from heaven, and consume them?” entertaining no doubt apparently of obtaining
His approval, and of procuring forthwith the requisite fire from heaven for the
execution of their dire intent. Then they quoted the precedent of Elijah, who,
refusing to have any dealings with the idolatrous king of Samaria, called down
fire from heaven to consume his messengers, as a signal mark of divine
displeasure. The conscious motive by which they were actuated was evidently
sincere, though ill-informed, jealousy for the honor of their Lord. As the
prophet of fire was indignant at the conduct of King Ahaziah in sending
messengers to the god of Ekron, Baalzebub by name, to inquire whether he should
recover from the disease with which he was afflicted; so the sons of thunder
were indignant because inhabitants of the same godless territory over which
Ahaziah ruled had presumed to insult their revered Master by refusing a favor
which they ought to have been only too proud to have an opportunity of granting.
The two brothers thought they did well to be angry; and, if they had been minded
to defend their conduct after it was condemned by Jesus, which they do not seem
to have been, they might have made a defense by no means destitute of
plausibility. For consider who these Samaritans were. They belonged to a mongrel
race, sprung from heathen Assyrians, whose presence in the land was a
humiliation, and from base, degenerate Israelites unworthy of the name. Their
forefathers had been the bitter enemies of Judah in the days of Nehemiah,
spitefully obstructing the building of Zion’s walls, instead of helping the
exiles in their hour of need, as neighbors ought to have done. Then, if it was
unfair to hold the present generation responsible for the sins of past
generations, what was the character of the Samaritans then living? Were they not
blasphemous heretics, who rejected all the Old Testament Scriptures save the
five books of Moses? Did they not worship at the site of the rival temple on
Gerizim, which their fathers had with impious effrontery erected in contempt of
the true temple of God in the holy city? And finally, had not these villagers
expressed their sympathy with all the iniquities of their people, and repeated
them all in one act by doing dishonor to Him who was greater than even the true
temple, and worthy not only to receive common civility, but even divine worship?

Ruthless persecutors and furious zealots, furnished with such plausible pleas,
have always been confident, like the two disciples, that they did God service.
It is of the very nature of zealotry to make the man of whom it has taken
possession believe that the Almighty not only approves, but shares his fierce
passions, and fancy himself in trusted with a carte blanche to launch the
thunders of the Most High against all in whom his small, peering, inhuman eye
can discern aught not approved by his tyrannic conscience. What a world were
this if the fact were so indeed!

“Every pelting, petty officer Would use God’s heaven for thunder; nothing but
thunder.”

Thank God the fact is not so! The Almighty does thunder sometimes, but not in
the way His petty officers would wish.

“Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather, with Thy sharp and sulphurous bolt, Splitt’st the unwedgeable and
gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle.”

Jesus too, all gentle as He was, had His thunderbolts; but He reserved them for
other objects than poor, benighted, prejudiced Samaritans. His zeal was directed
against great sins, and powerful, privileged, presumptuous sinners; not against
little sins, or poor, obscure, vulgar sinners. He burst into indignation at the
sight of His Father’s house turned into a den of thieves by those who ought to
have known, and did know better; He only felt compassion for those who, like the
woman by the well, knew not what they worshipped, and groped after God in
semi-heathen darkness. His spirit was kindled within Him at the spectacle of
ostentatious orthodoxy and piety allied to the grossest worldliness; He did not,
like the Pharisee, blaze up in sanctimonious wrath against irreligious
publicans, who might do no worship at all, or who, like the heretical
Samaritans, did not worship in the right place. Would that zeal like that of
Jesus, aiming its bolts at the proud oak and sparing the humble shrub, were more
common! But such zeal is dangerous, and therefore it will always be rare. The
Master, in whose vindication the two disciples wished to call down heaven’s
destroying fire, lost no time in making known His utter want of sympathy with
the monstrous proposal. He turned and rebuked them. According to the old English
version, He said, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” It is a
doubtful reading, and as such is omitted in our Revised Version, but it is a
true saying. The saying was true in more senses than one. The spirit of James
and John was, in the first place, not such as they fancied. They thought
themselves actuated by zeal for the glory of their Lord, and so they were in
part. But the flame of their zeal was not pure: it was mixed up with the bitter
smoke of carnal passions, anger, pride, self-will. Then, again, their spirit was
not such as became the apostles of the gospel, the heralds of a new era of
grace. They were chosen to preach a message of mercy to every creature, even to
the chief of sinners; to tell of a love that suffered not itself to be overcome
of evil, but sought to overcome evil with good; to found a kingdom composed of
citizens from every nation, wherein should be neither Jew nor Samaritan, but
Christ all and in all. What a work to be achieved by men filled with the
fire-breathing spirit of the “sons of thunder”! Obviously a great change must be
wrought within them to fit them for the high vocation wherewith they have been
called. Yet again, the spirit of James and John was, of course, not that of
their Master. He “came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” To see the
difference between the mind of the disciples and that of Jesus, put this scene
side by side with that other which happened on Samaritan ground-the meeting by
the well. We know what we have seen here: what see we there? The Son of man, as
a Jew, speaking to and having dealings with a Samaritan, so seeking to abolish
inveterate and deep-seated enmities between man and man; as the Friend of
sinners seeking to restore a poor, erring, guilty creature to God and holiness;
as the Christ announcing the close of an old time, in which the worship even of
the true God was ritualistic, exclusive, and local, and the advent of a new
religious era characterized by the attributes of spirituality, universality, and
catholicity. And we see Jesus rejoicing, enthusiastic in His work; deeming it
His very meat and drink to reveal to men one God and Father, one Saviour, one
life, for all without distinction; to regenerate individual character, society,
and religion; to break down all barriers separating man from God and from his
fellow-men, and so to become the great Reconciler and Peacemaker. Thinking of
this work as exhibited by sample in the conversion of the woman by the well, He
speaks to His surprised and unsympathetic disciples as one who perceives on the
eastern horizon the first faint streaks of light heralding the advent of a new
glorious day, and all around, in the field of the world, yellow crops of grain
ripe for the sickle. “It is coming on apace,” He says in effect, “the blessed,
long expected era, after a long night of spiritual darkness; the new world is
about to begin: lift up your eyes and look on the fields of Gentile lands, and
see how they be white already for the harvest!” At the time of the meeting by
the well, the disciples who were with Jesus neither understood nor sympathized
with His high thoughts and hopes. The bright prospect on which His eyes were
riveted was not within their horizon. For them, as for children, the world was
still small, a narrow valley bounded by hills on either side; while their
Master, up on the mountain-top, saw many valleys beyond, in which He was
interested, and out of which He believed many souls would find their way into
the eternal kingdom. For the disciples God was yet the God of the Jews only;
salvation was for the Jews as well as of them: they knew of only one channel of
grace-Jewish ordinances; only one way to heaven-that which lay through
Jerusalem. At the later date to which the present scene belongs, the disciples,
instead of progressing, seem to have retrograded. Old bad feelings seem to be
intensified, instead of being replaced by new and better ones. They are now not
merely out of sympathy with, but in direct antagonism to, their Lord’s mind; not
merely apathetic or skeptical about the salvation of Samaritans, but bent on
their destruction. Aversion and prejudice have grown into a paroxysm of enmity.

Yes, even so; things must get to the worst before they begin to mend. There will
be no improvement till the Lamb shall have been slain to take away sin, to
abolish enmities, and to make of twain one new man. It is the knowledge of that
which makes Jesus set His face so steadfastly towards Jerusalem. He is eager to
drink the cup of suffering, and to be baptized with the baptism of blood,
because He knows that only thereby can He finish the work whereof He spoke in
such glowing language on the earlier occasion to His disciples. The very wrath
of His devoted followers against the Samaritan villagers makes Him quicken His
pace on His crossward way, saying to Himself sadly as He advances, “Let me
hasten on, for not till I am lifted up can these things end.”


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 51: 02.16.1.     IN PEREA
========================================================================

In Perea; or, The Doctrine of Self-Sacrifice Section I - Counsels of Perfection
Mat 19:1-26; Mark 10:1-27; Luk 18:15-27.

After His final departure from Galilee, Jesus found for Himself a new place of
abode and scene of labor for the brief remainder of His life, in the region
lying to the eastward of the Jordan, at the lower end of its course. “He
departed from Galilee, and came into the borders of Judea beyond Jordan.” We may
say that He ended His ministry where it began, healing the sick, and teaching
the high doctrines of the kingdom in the place which witnessed His consecration
by baptism to His sacred work, and where He gained His first disciples. This
visit of Jesus to Peraea towards the close of His career is a fact most
interesting and significant in itself, apart altogether from its accompanying
incidents. It was evidently so regarded by John, who not less carefully than the
two first evangelists records the fact of the visit, though, unlike them, he
gives no details concerning it. The terms in which he alludes to this event are
peculiar. Having briefly explained how Jesus had provoked the ill-will of the
Jews in Jerusalem at the feast of dedication, he goes on to say: “Therefore they
sought again to take Him; but He escaped out of their hands, and went away again
beyond Jordan, into the place where John at first baptized.” The word “again,”
and the reference to the Baptist, are indicative of reflection and
recollection-windows letting us see into John’s heart. He is thinking with
emotion of his personal experiences connected with the first visit of Jesus to
those sacred regions, of his first meeting with his beloved Master, and of the
mystic name given to Him by the Baptist, “the Lamb of God” then uncomprehended
by the disciples, now on the eve of being expounded by events; and to the
evangelist writing his Gospel, clear as day in the bright light of the cross.

It was hardly possible that the disciple whom Jesus loved could do other than
think of the first visit when speaking of the second. Even the multitude, as he
records, reverted mentally to the earlier occasion while following Jesus in the
later. They remembered what John, His forerunner, had said of One among them
whom they knew not, and who yet was far greater than himself; and they remarked
that his statements, however improbable they might have appeared at the time,
had been verified by events, and he himself proved to be a true prophet by
Christ’s miracles, if not by his own. “John,” said they to each other, “did no
miracle; but all things that John said of this man were true.”

If John the disciple, and even the common people, thought of the first visit of
Jesus to Peraea at the time of His second, we may be sure that Jesus Himself did
so also. He had His own reasons, doubt it not, for going back to that hallowed
neighborhood. His journey to the Jordan, we believe, was a pilgrimage to holy
ground, on which He could not set His foot without profound emotion. For there
lay His Bethel, where He had made a solemn baptismal vow, not, as Jacob, to give
a tithe of His substance, but to give Himself, body and soul, a sacrifice to His
Father, in life and in death; there the Spirit had descended on Him like a dove;
there He had heard a celestial voice of approval and encouragement, the reward
of His entire self-surrender to His Father’s holy will. All the recollections of
the place were heart stirring, recalling solemn obligations, inspiring holy
hopes, urging Him on to the grand consummation of His life-work; charging Him by
His baptism, His vows, the descent of the Spirit, and the voice from heaven, to
crown His labors of love, by drinking of the cup of suffering and death for
man’s redemption. To these voices of the past He willingly opened His ear. He
wished to hear them, that by their hallowed tones His spirit might be braced and
solemnized for the coming agony.

While retiring to Peraea for these private reasons, that He might muse on the
past and the future, and link sacred memories to solemn anticipations, Jesus did
not by any means live there a life of seclusion and solitary meditation. On the
contrary, during His sojourn in that neighborhood, He was unusually busy healing
the sick, teaching the multitude “as He was wont” (so Mark states, with a mental
reference to the past ministry in Galilee), answering inquiries, receiving
visits, granting favors. “Many resorted unto Him” there on various errands.
Pharisees came, asking entangling questions about marriage and divorce, hoping
to catch Him in a trap, and commit Him to the expression of an opinion which
would make Him unpopular with some party or school, Hillel’s or Shammai’s, it
did not matter which. A young ruler came with more honorable intent, to inquire
how he might obtain eternal life. Mothers came with their little ones,
beseeching for them His blessing, thinking it worth getting, and not fearing
denial; and messengers came with sorrowful tidings from friends, who looked to
Him as their comfort in the time of trouble.

Though busily occupied among the thronging crowd, Jesus contrived to have some
leisure hours with His chosen disciples, during which He taught them some new
lessons on the doctrine of the divine kingdom. The subject of these lessons was
sacrifice for the sake of the kingdom-a theme congenial to the place, the time,
the situation, and the mood of the Teacher. The external occasion suggesting
that topic was supplied by the interviews Jesus had had with the Pharisees and
the young ruler. These interviews naturally led Him to speak to His disciples on
the subject of self-sacrifice under two special forms-abstinence from marriage
and renunciation of property-though He did not confine His discourse to these
points, but went on to set forth the rewards of self-sacrifice in any form, and
the spirit in which all sacrifices must be performed, in order to possess value
in God’s sight. The Pharisees, we read, “came unto Him, tempting Him, and
saying, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” To this
question Jesus replied, by laying down the primitive principle, that divorce was
justified only by conjugal infidelity, and by explaining, that any thing to the
contrary in the law of Moses was simply an accommodation to the hardness of
men’s hearts. The disciples heard this reply, and they made their own remarks on
it. They said to Jesus: “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not
good to marry.” The view enunciated by their Master, which took no account of
incompatibility of temper, involuntary dislike, uncongeniality of habits,
differences in religion, quarrels among relatives, as pleas for separation,
seemed very stringent even to them; and they thought that a man would do well to
consider what he was about before committing himself to a life-long engagement
with such possibilities before him, and to ask himself whether it would not be
better, on the whole, to steer clear of such a sea of troubles, by abstaining
from wedlock altogether. The impromptu remark of the disciples, viewed in
connection with its probable motives, was not a very wise one; yet it is to be
observed that Jesus did not absolutely disapprove of it. He spoke as if He
rather sympathized with the feeling in favor of celibacy-as if to abstain from
marriage were the better and wiser way, and only not to be required of men
because for the majority it was impracticable. “But he said unto them, All men
cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.” Then going on to
enumerate the cases in which, from any cause, men remained unmarried, He spoke
with apparent approbation of some who voluntarily, and from high and holy
motives, denied themselves the comfort of family relationships: “There be
eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.”
Such, He finally gave His disciples to understand, were to be imitated by all
who felt called and able to do so. “He that is able to receive (this high
virtue), let him receive it,” He said; hinting that, while many men could not
receive it, but could more easily endure all possible drawbacks of married life,
even on the strictest views of conjugal obligation, than preserve perfect
chastity in an unmarried state, it was well for him who could make himself a
eunuch for the kingdom of heaven, as he would not only escape much trouble, but
be free from carefulness, and be able to serve the kingdom without distraction.
The other form of self-sacrifice-the renunciation of property-became the subject
of remark between Jesus and His disciples, in consequence of the interview with
the young man who came inquiring about eternal life. Jesus, reading the heart of
this anxious inquirer, and perceiving that he loved this world’s goods more than
was consistent with spiritual freedom and entire singleness of mind, had
concluded His directions to him by giving this counsel: “If thou wilt be
perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and then thou shalt
have treasure in heaven: and come, and follow me.” The young man having thereon
turned away sorrowful, because, though desiring eternal life, he was unwilling
to obtain it at such a price, Jesus proceeded to make his case a subject of
reflection for the instruction of the twelve. In the observations He made He did
not expressly say that to part with property was necessary to salvation, but He
did speak in a manner which seemed to the disciples almost to imply that.
Looking round about, He remarked to them first, “How hardly shall they that have
riches enter into the kingdom of God!” The disciples being astonished at this
hard saying, He softened it somewhat by altering slightly the form of
expression. “Children,” he said, “how hard is it for them that trust in riches
to enter into the kingdom of God!” hinting that the thing to be renounced in
order to salvation was not money, but the inordinate love of it. But then He
added a third reflection, which, by its austerity, more than cancelled the
mildness of the second. “It is easier,” He declared, “for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” That
assertion, literally interpreted, amounts to a declaration that the salvation of
a rich man is an impossibility, and seems to teach by plain implication, that
the only way for a rich man to get into heaven is to cease to be rich, and
become poor by a voluntary renunciation of property. Such seems to have been the
impression made thereby on the minds of the disciples: for we read that they
were astonished above measure, and said among themselves, “Who then can be
saved?”

It is an inquiry of vital moment what our Lord really meant to teach on the
subjects of marriage and money. The question concerns not merely the life to
come, but the whole character of our present life. For if man’s life on earth
doth not consist wholly in possessions and family relations, these occupy a very
prominent place therein. Family relations are essential to the existence of
society, and without wealth there could be no civilization. Did Jesus, then,
frown or look down on these things, as at least unfavorable to, if not
incompatible with, the interests of the divine kingdom and the aspirations of
its citizens? This question up till the time of the Reformation was for the most
part answered by the visible church in the affirmative. From a very early period
the idea began to be entertained that Jesus meant to teach the intrinsic
superiority, in point of Christian virtue, of a life of celibacy and voluntary
poverty, over that of a married man possessing property. Abstinence from
marriage and renunciation of earthly possessions came, in consequence, to be
regarded as essential requisites for high Christian attainments. They were steps
of the ladder by which Christians rose to higher grades of grace than were
attainable by men involved in family cares and ties, and in the entanglements of
worldly substance. They were not, indeed, necessary to salvation-to obtain, that
is, a simple admission into heaven-but they were necessary to obtain an abundant
entrance. They were trials of virtue appointed to be undergone by candidates for
honors in the city of God. They were indispensable conditions of the higher
degrees of spiritual fruitfulness. A married or rich Christian might produce
thirty-fold, but only those who denied themselves the enjoyments of wealth and
wedlock could bring forth sixty-fold or an hundred-fold. While, therefore, these
virtues of abstinence were not to be demanded of all, they were to be commended
as “counsels of perfection” to such as, not content to be commonplace
Christians, would rise to the heroic pitch of excellence, and, despising a
simple admission into the divine kingdom, wished to occupy first places there.
This style of thought is now so antiquated that it is hard to believe it ever
prevailed. As a proof, however, that it is no invention of ours, take two brief
extracts from a distinguished bishop and martyr of the third century, Cyprian of
Carthage, which are samples of much of the same kind to be found in the early
Fathers of the church. The one quotation proclaims the superior virtue of
voluntary virginity in these terms: “Strait and narrow is the way which leads to
life, hard and arduous is the path (limes, narrower still than the narrow way)
which tends to glory. Along this path of the way go the martyrs, go virgins, go
all the just. For the first (degree of fruitfulness), the hundred-fold, is that
of the martyrs; the second, the sixty-fold, is yours (ye virgins).” The second
extract, while ascribing, like the first, superior merit to virginity, indicates
the optional character of that high-class virtue. Referring to the words of
Christ, “There be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of
heaven’s sake,” Cyprian says: “This the Lord commands not, but exhorts; He
imposes not the yoke of necessity, that the free choice of the will might
remain. But whereas he says (John 14:2), that there are many mansions with His
Father, He here points out the lodging quarters of the better mansion (melioris
habitaculi hospitia). Seek ye, O virgins, those better mansions. Crucifying
(castrantes) the desires of the flesh, obtain for yourselves the reward of
greater grace in the celestial abodes.”

Similar views were entertained in those early ages respecting the meaning of
Christ’s words to the young man. The inevitable results of such interpretations
in due course were monastic institutions and the celibacy of the clergy. The
direct connection between an ascetic interpretation of the counsel given by
Jesus to the rich youth who inquired after eternal life, and the rise of
monasticism, is apparent in the history of Antony, the father of the monastic
system. It is related of him, that going into the church on one occasion when
the Gospel concerning the rich young man was read before the assembly, he, then
also young, took the words as addressed by Heaven to himself. Going out of the
church, he forthwith proceeded to distribute to the inhabitants of his native
village his large, fertile, and beautiful landed estates which he inherited from
his fathers, reserving only a small portion of his property for the benefit of
his sister. Not long after he gave away that also, and placed his sister to be
educated with a society of pious virgins, and settling down near his paternal
mansion, began a life of rigid asceticism. The ascetic theory of Christian
virtue, which so soon began to prevail in the church, has been fully tested by
time, and proved to be a huge and mischievous mistake. The verdict of history is
conclusive, and to return to an exploded error, as some seem disposed to do, is
utter folly. At this time of day, the views of those who would find the
beau-ideal of Christian life in a monk’s cell appear hardly worthy of serious
refutation. It may, however, be useful briefly to indicate the leading errors of
the monkish theory of morals; all the more that, in doing this, we shall at the
same time be explaining the true meaning of our Lord’s words to His disciples.
This theory, then, is in the first place based on an erroneous assumption-viz.,
that abstinence from things lawful is intrinsically a higher sort of virtue than
temperance in the use of them. This is not true. Abstinence is the virtue of the
weak, temperance is the virtue of the strong. Abstinence is certainly the safer
way for those who are prone to inordinate affection, but it purchases safety at
the expense of moral culture; for it removes us from those temptations connected
with family relationships and earthly possessions, through which character,
while it may be imperilled, is at the same time developed and strengthened.
Abstinence is also inferior to temperance in healthiness of tone. It tends
inevitably to morbidity, distortion, exaggeration. The ascetic virtues were wont
to be called by their admirers angelic. They are certainly angelic in the
negative sense of being unnatural and inhuman. Ascetic abstinence is the ghost
or disembodied spirit of morality, while temperance is its soul, embodied in a
genuine human life transacted amid earthly relations, occupations, and
enjoyments. Abstinence is even inferior to temperance in respect to what seems
its strong point-self-sacrifice. There is something morally sublime, doubtless,
in the spectacle of a man of wealth, birth, high office, and happy domestic
condition, leaving rank, riches, office, wife, children, behind, and going away
to the deserts of Sinai and Egypt to spend his days as a monk or anchoret. The
stern resolution, the absolute mastery of the will over the natural affections,
exhibited in such conduct, is very imposing. Yet how poor, after all, is such a
character compared with Abraham, the father of the faithful, and model of
temperance and singleness of mind; who could use the world, of which he had a
large portion, without abusing it; who kept his wealth and state, and yet never
became their slave, and was ready at God’s command to part with his friends and
his native land, and even with an only son! So to live, serving ourselves heir
to all things, yet maintaining unimpaired our spiritual freedom; enjoying life,
yet ready at the call of duty to sacrifice life’s dearest enjoyments: this is
true Christian virtue, the higher Christian life for those who would be perfect.
Let us have many Abrahams so living among our men of wealth, and there is no
fear of the church going back to the Middle Ages. Only when the rich, as a
class, are luxurious, vain, selfish, and proud, is there a danger of the tenet
gaining credence among the serious, that there is no possibility of living a
truly Christian life except by parting with property altogether. The ascetic
theory is also founded on an error in the interpretation of Christ’s sayings.
These do not assert or necessarily imply any intrinsic superiority of celibacy
and voluntary poverty over the conditions to which they are opposed. They only
imply, that in certain circumstances the unmarried dispossessed state affords
peculiar facilities for attending without distraction to the interests of the
divine kingdom. This is certainly true. It is less easy sometimes to be
single-minded in the service of Christ as a married person than as an unmarried,
as a rich man than as a poor man. This is especially true in times of hardship
and danger, when men must either not be on Christ’s side at all, or be prepared
to sacrifice all for His sake. The less one has to sacrifice in such a case, the
easier it is for him to bear his cross and play the hero; and he may be
pronounced happy at such a crisis who has no family to forsake and no worldly
concerns to distract him. Personal character may suffer from such isolation: it
may lose geniality, tenderness, and grace, and contract something of inhuman
sternness; but the particular tasks required will be more likely to be
thoroughly done. On this account, it may be said with truth that “the forlorn
hope in battle, as well as in the cause of Christianity, must consist of men who
have no domestic relations to divide their devotion, who will leave no wife nor
children to mourn over their loss.” Yet this statement cannot be taken without
qualification. For it is not impossible for married and wealthy Christians to
take their place in the forlorn hope: many have done so, and those who do are
the greatest heroes of all. The advantage is not necessarily and invariably on
the side of those who are disengaged from all embarrassing relationships, even
in time of war; and in times of peace it is all on the other side. Monks, like
soldiers, are liable to frightful degeneracy and corruption when there are no
great tasks for them to do. Men who in emergencies are capable, in consequence
of their freedom from all domestic and secular embarrassments, of rising to an
almost superhuman pitch of self-denial, may at other seasons sink to a depth of
self-indulgence in sloth and sensuality which is rarely seen in those who enjoy
the protecting influence of family ties and business engagements. But not to
insist further on this, and conceding frankly all that can be said in favor of
the unmarried and dispossessed state in connection with the service of the
kingdom in certain circumstances, what we are concerned to maintain is, that
nowhere in the Gospel do we find the doctrine taught that such a state is in
itself and essentially virtuous. It is absurd to say, as Renan does, that the
monk is in a sense the only true Christian. The natural type of the Christian is
not the monk, but the soldier, both of whom are often placed in the same
position in relation to marriage and property ties, but for altogether different
reasons. The watchword of Christian ethics is not devoteeism, but devotion.
Consuming devotion to the kingdom is the one cardinal virtue required of all
citizens, and every stern word enjoining self-sacrifice is to be interpreted in
relation thereto. “Let the dead bury their dead;” “No man having put his hand to
the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God;” “If any man hate
not father and mother, he cannot be my disciple;” “Sell all that thou hast, and
come follow me”-these and many other sayings of kindred import all mean one
thing: the kingdom first, every thing else second, and when the interest of the
holy state demands it, military promptitude in leaving all and repairing to the
standards. Essentially the same idea is the key to the meaning of a difficult
parable spoken to “the apostles,” and recorded in Luke’s Gospel, which we may
call the parable of extra service. The thought intended is that the service of
the kingdom is very exacting, involving not only hard toil in the field through
the day, but extra duties in the evening when the weary laborer would gladly
rest, having no fixed hours of labor, eight, ten, or twelve, but claiming the
right to summon to work at any hour of all the twenty-four, as in the case of
soldiers in time of war, or of farm-laborers in time of harvest. And the extra
service, or overtime duty, is not monkish asceticism, but extraordinary demands
in unusual emergencies, calling men weary from age or from over-exertion to
still further efforts and sacrifices. The theory under consideration is guilty,
in the third place, of an error in logic. On the assumption that abstinence is
necessarily and intrinsically a higher virtue than temperance, it is illogical
to speak of it as optional. In that case, our Lord should have given not
counsels, but commands. For no man is at liberty to choose whether he shall be a
good Christian or an indifferent one, or is excused from practicing certain
virtues merely because they are difficult. It is absolutely incumbent on all to
press on towards perfection; and if celibacy and poverty be necessary to
perfection, then all who profess godliness should renounce wedlock and property.
The church of Rome, consistently with her theory of morals, forbids her priests
to marry. But why stop there? Surely what is good for priests is good for people
as well. The reason why the prohibition is not carried further, is of course
that the laws of nature and the requirements of society render it impracticable.
And this brings us to the last objection to the ascetic theory, viz. that,
consistently carried out, it lands in absurdity, by involving the destruction of
society and the human race. A theory which involves such consequences cannot be
true. For the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of nature are not mutually
destructive. One God is the sovereign of both; and all things belonging to the
lower kingdom-every relation of life, every faculty, passion, and appetite of
our nature, all material possessions-are capable of being made subservient to
the interests of the higher kingdom, and of contributing to our growth in grace
and holiness. The grand practical difficulty is to give the kingdom of God and
His righteousness their due place of supremacy, and to keep all other things in
strict subordination. The object of those hard sayings uttered by Jesus in
Peraea was to fix the attention of the disciples and of all on that difficulty.
He spoke so strongly, that men compassed by the cares of family and the comforts
of wealth might duly lay to heart their danger; and, conscious of their own
helplessness, might seek grace from God, to do that which, though difficult, is
not impossible, viz. while married, to be as if unmarried, caring for the things
of the Lord; and while rich, to be humble in mind, free in spirit, and devoted
in heart to the service of Christ.

One word may here aptly be said on the beautiful incident of the little children
brought to Jesus to get His blessing. Who can believe that it was His intention
to teach a monkish theory of morals after reading that story? How opportunely
those mothers came to Him seeking a blessing for their little ones, just after
He had uttered words which might be interpreted, and were actually interpreted
in after ages, as a disparagement of family relations. Their visit gave Him an
opportunity of entering His protest by anticipation against such a
misconstruction of His teaching. And the officious interference of the twelve to
keep away the mothers and their offspring from their Master’s person only made
that protest all the more emphatic. The disciples seem to have taken from the
words Jesus had just spoken concerning abstaining from marriage for the sake of
the kingdom, the very impression out of which monasticism sprang. “What does He
care,” thought they, “for you mothers and your children? His whole thoughts are
of the kingdom of heaven, where they neither marry nor are given in marriage: go
away, and don’t trouble Him at this time.” The Lord did not thank His disciples
for thus guarding His person from intrusion like a band of over-zealous
policemen. “He was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of
God.”

Section II - The Rewards of Self-Sacrifice Mat 19:27-30; Mark 10:28-31; Luk
18:28-30. The remarks of Jesus on the temptations of riches, which seemed so
discouraging to the other disciples, had a different effect on the mind of
Peter. They led him to think with self-complacency of the contrast presented by
the conduct of himself and his brethren to that of the youth who came inquiring
after eternal life. “We,” thought he to himself, have done what the young man
could not do-what, according to the statement just made by the Master, rich men
find very hard to do; we have left all to follow Jesus. Surely an act so
difficult and so rare must be very meritorious.” With his characteristic
frankness, as he thought so he spoke. “behold,” said he with a touch of brag in
his tone and manner, “we have forsaken all, and followed Thee: what shall we
have therefore?” To this question of Peter, Jesus returned a reply full at once
of encouragement and of warning for the twelve, and for all who profess to be
servants of God. First, with reference to the subject-matter of Peter’s inquiry,
He set forth in glowing language the great rewards in store for him and his
brethren; and not for them only, but for all who made sacrifices for the
kingdom. Then, with reference to the self-complacent or calculating spirit
which, in part at least, had prompted the inquiry, He added a moral reflection,
with an illustrative parable appended, conveying the idea that rewards in the
kingdom of God were not determined merely by the fact, or even by the amount, of
sacrifice. Many that were first in these respects might be last in real merit,
for lack of another element which formed an essential ingredient in the
calculation, viz. right motive; while others who were last in these respects
might be first in recompense in virtue of the spirit by which they were
animated. We shall consider these two parts of the reply in succession. Our
present theme is the rewards of self-sacrifice in the divine kingdom. The first
thing which strikes one in reference to these rewards, is the utter
disproportion between them and the sacrifices made. The twelve had forsaken
fishing-boats and nets, and they were to be rewarded with thrones; and every one
that forsakes any thing for the kingdom, no matter what it may be, is promised
an hundred-fold in return, in this present life, of the very thing he has
renounced, and in the world to come life everlasting.

These promises strikingly illustrate the generosity of the Master whom
Christians serve. How easy it would have been for Jesus to depreciate the
sacrifices of His followers, and even to turn their glory into ridicule! “You
have forsaken all! What was your all worth, pray? If the rich young man had
parted with his possessions as I counselled, he might have had something to
boast of; but as for you poor fishermen, any sacrifices you have made are hardly
deserving of mention.” But such words could not have been uttered by Christ’s
lips. It was never His way to despise things small in outward bulk, or to
disparage services rendered to Himself, as if with a view to diminish His own
obligations. He rather loved to make Himself a debtor to His servants, by
generously exaggerating the value of their good deeds, and promising to them, as
their fit recompense, rewards immeasurably exceeding their claims. So He acted
in the present instance. Though the “all” of the disciples was a very little
one, He still remembered that it was their all; and with impassioned
earnestness, with a “verily” full of tender, grateful feeling, He promised them
thrones as if they had been fairly earned!

These great and precious promises, if believed, would make sacrifices easy. Who
would not part with a fishing-boat for a throne? and what merchant would stick
at an investment which would bring a return, not of five per cent, or even of a
hundred per cent, but of a hundred to one? The promises made by Jesus have one
other excellent effect when duly considered. They tend to humble. Their very
magnitude has a sobering effect on the mind. Not even the vainest can pretend
that their good deeds deserve to be rewarded with thrones, and their sacrifices
to be recompensed an hundred-fold. At this rate, all must be content to be
debtors to God’s grace, and all talk of merit is out of the question. That is
one reason why the rewards of the kingdom of heaven are so great. God bestows
His gifts so as at once to glorify the Giver and to humble the receiver.

Thus far of the rewards in general. Looking now more narrowly at those specially
made to the twelve, we remark that on the surface they seem fitted to awaken or
foster false expectation. Whatever they meant in reality, there can be little
doubt as to the meaning the disciples would put on them at the time. The
“regeneration” and the “thrones” of which their Master spake would bring before
their imagination the picture of a kingdom of Israel restored-regenerated in the
sense in which men speak of a regenerated Italy-the yoke of foreign domination
thrown off; alienated tribes reconciled and reunited under the rule of Jesus,
proclaimed by popular enthusiasm their hero King; and themselves, the men who
had first believed in His royal pretensions and shared His early fortunes,
rewarded for their fidelity by being made provincial governors, each ruling over
a separate tribe. These romantic ideas were never to be realized: and we
naturally ask why Jesus, knowing that, expressed Himself in language fitted to
encourage such baseless fancies? The answer is, that He could not accomplish the
end He designed, which was to inspire His disciples with hope, without
expressing His promise in terms which involved the risk of illusion. Language so
chosen as to obviate all possibility of misconception caption would have had no
inspiring influence whatever. The promise, to have any charm, must be like a
rainbow, bright in its hues, and solid and substantial in its appearance. This
remark applies not only to the particular promise now under consideration, but
more or less to all God’s promises in Scripture or in nature. In order to
stimulate, they must to a certain extent deceive us, by promising that which, as
we conceive it, and cannot at the time help conceiving it, will never be
realized. The rainbow is painted in such colors as to draw us, children as we
are, irresistibly on; and then, having served that end, it fades away. When this
happens, we are ready to exclaim, “O Lord, Thou hast deceived me!” but we
ultimately find that we are not cheated out of the blessing, though it comes in
a different form from what we expected. God’s promises are never delusive,
though they may be illusive. Such was the experience of the twelve in connection
with the dazzling promise of thrones. They did not get what they expected; but
they got something analogous, something which to their mature spiritual judgment
appeared far greater and more satisfying than that on which they had first set
their hearts.

What, then, was this Something? A real glory, honor, and power in the kingdom of
God, conferred on the twelve as the reward of their self- sacrifice, partially
in this life, perfectly in the life to come. In so far as the promise referred
to this present life, it was shown by the event to signify the judicial
legislative influence of the companions of Jesus as apostles and founders of the
Christian church. The twelve, as the first preachers of the gospel trained by
the Lord for that end, occupied a position in the church that could be filled by
none that came after them. The keys of the kingdom of heaven were put into their
hands. They were the foundation-stones on which the walls of the church were
built. They sat, so to speak, on episcopal thrones, judging, guiding, ruling the
twelve tribes of the true Israel of God, the holy commonwealth embracing all who
professed faith in Christ. Such a sovereign influence the twelve apostles
exerted in their lifetime; yea, they continue to exert it still. Their word not
only was, but still is, law; their example has ever been regarded as binding on
all ages. From their epistles, as the inspired expositions of their Master’s
pregnant sayings, the church has derived the system of doctrine embraced in her
creed. All that remains of their writings forms part of the sacred canon, and
all their recorded words are accounted by believers “words of God.” Surely here
is power and authority nothing short of regal! The reality of sovereignty is
here, though the trappings of royalty, which strike the vulgar eye, are wanting.
The apostles of Jesus were princes indeed, though they wore no princely robes;
and they were destined to exercise a more extensive sway than ever fell to the
lot of any monarch of Israel, not to speak of governors of single tribes. The
promise to the twelve had doubtless a reference to their position in the church
in heaven as well as in the church on earth. What they will be in the eternal
kingdom we know not, any more than we know what we ourselves shall be, our
notions of heaven altogether being very hazy. We believe, however, on the ground
of clear Scripture statements, that men will not be on a dead level in heaven
any more than on earth. Radicalism is not the law of the supernal commonwealth,
even as it is not the law in any well-ordered society in this world. The kingdom
of glory will be but the kingdom of grace perfected, the regeneration begun here
brought to its final and complete development. But the regeneration, in its
imperfect state, is an attempt to organize men into a society based on the
possession of spiritual life, all being included in the kingdom who are new
creatures in Christ Jesus, and the highest place being assigned to those who
have attained the highest stature as spiritual men. This ideal has never been
more than approximately realized. The “visible” church, the product of the
attempt to realize it, is, and ever has been, a most disappointing embodiment,
in outward visible shape, of the ideal city of God. Ambition, selfishness,
worldly wisdom, courtly arts, have too often procured thrones for false
apostles, who never forsook any thing for Christ. Therefore we still look
forward and upward with longing eyes for the true city of God, which shall as
far exceed our loftiest conceptions as the visible church comes short of them.
In that ideal commonwealth perfect moral order will prevail. Every man shall be
in his own true place there; no vile men shall be in high places, no noble souls
shall be doomed to obstruction, obscurity, and neglect; but the noblest will be
the highest and first, even though now they be the lowest and last. “There shall
be true glory, where no one shall be praised by mistake or in flattery; true
honor, which shall be denied to no one worthy, granted to no one unworthy; nor
shall any unworthy one ambitiously seek it, where none but the worthy are
permitted to be.”

Among the noblest in the supernal commonwealth will be the twelve men who cast
in their lot with the Son of man, and were His companions in His wanderings and
temptations. There will probably be many in heaven greater than they in
intellect and otherwise; but the greatest will most readily concede to them the
place of honor as the first to believe in Jesus, the personal friends of the Man
of Sorrow, and the chosen vessels who carried His name to the nations, and in a
sense opened the kingdom of heaven to all who believe.

Such we conceive to be the import of the promise made to the apostles, as
leaders of the white-robed band of martyrs and confessors who suffer for
Christ’s sake. We have next to notice the general promise made to all the
faithful indiscriminately. “There is no man,” so it runs in Mark, “that hath
left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children,
or lands, for my sake and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundred-fold now
in this time houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and
lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” This promise
also, like the special one to the twelve, has a twofold reference. Godliness is
represented as profitable for both worlds. In the world to come the men who make
sacrifices for Christ will receive eternal life; in the present they shall
receive, along with persecutions, an hundred-fold of the very things which have
been sacrificed. As to the former of these, eternal life, it is to be understood
as the minimum reward in the great Hereafter. All the faithful will get that at
least. What a maximum is that minimum! How blessed to be assured on the word of
Christ that there is such a thing as eternal life attainable on any terms! We
may well play the man for truth and conscience, and fight the good fight of
faith, when, by so doing, it is possible for us to gain such a prize. “A hope so
great and so divine may trials well endure.” To win the crown of an imperishable
life of bliss, we should not deem it an unreasonable demand on the Lord’s part
that we be faithful even unto death. Life sacrificed on these terms is but a
river emptying itself into the ocean, or the morning star posing itself in the
perfect light of day. Would that we could lay hold firmly of the blessed hope
set before us here, and through its magic influence become transformed into
moral heroes! We in these days have but a faint belief in the life to come. Our
eyes are dim, and we cannot see the land that is afar off. Some of us have
become so philosophical as to imagine we can do without the future reward
promised by Jesus, and play the hero on atheistical principles. That remains to
be seen. The annals of the martyrs tell us what men have been able to achieve
who earnestly believed in the life everlasting. Up to this date we have not
heard of any great heroisms enacted or sacrifices made by unbelievers. The
martyrology of skepticism has not yet been written. That part of Christ’s
promise which respects hereafter must be taken on trust; but the other part,
which concerns the present life, admits of being tested by observation. The
question, therefore, may competently be put: Is it true, as matter of fact, that
sacrifices are recompensed by an hundredfold-that is, a manifold-return in kind
in this world? To this question we may reply, first, that the promise will be
found to hold good with the regularity of a law, if we do not confine our view
to the individual life, but include successive generations. When providence has
had time to work out its results, the meek do, at least by their heirs and
representatives, inherit the earth, and delight themselves in the abundance of
peace. The persecuted cause at length conquers the world’s homage, and receives
from it such rewards as it can bestow. The words of the prophet are then
fulfilled: “The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other
(by persecutor’s hands), shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait
for me: give place to me that I may dwell.” And again: “Lift up thine eyes round
about, and see; all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons
shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then thou
shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall throb and swell; because the
abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the wealth of the Gentiles
shall come unto thee. Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt
suck the breast of kings. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring
silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron.” These prophetic promises,
extravagant though they seem, have been fulfilled again and again in the history
of the church: in the early ages, under Constantine, after the fires of
persecution kindled by pagan zeal for hoary superstitions and idolatries had
finally died out; in Protestant Britain, once famous for men who were ready to
lose all, and who did actually lose much, for Christ’s sake, now mistress of the
seas, and heiress of the wealth of all the world; in the new world across the
Atlantic, with its great, powerful, populous nation, rivaling England in wealth
and strength, grown from a small band of Puritan exiles who loved religious
liberty better than country, and sought refuge from despotism in the savage
wildernesses of an unexplored continent.

Still it must be confessed that, taken strictly and literally, the promise of
Christ does not hold good in every instance. Multitudes of God’s servants have
had what the world would account a miserable lot. Does the promise, then, simply
and absolutely fail in their case? No; for, secondly, there are more ways than
one in which it can be fulfilled. Blessings, for example, may be multiplied an
hundred-fold without their external bulk being altered, simply by the act of
renouncing them. Whatever is sacrificed for truth, whatever we are willing to
part with for Christ’s sake, becomes from that moment immeasurably increased in
value. Fathers and mothers, and all earthly friends, become unspeakably dear to
the heart when we have learned to say: “Christ is first, and these must be
second.” Isaac was worth an hundred sons to Abraham when he received him back
from the dead. Or, to draw an illustration from another quarter, think of John
Bunyan in jail brooding over his poor blind daughter, whom he left behind at
home. “Poor child, thought I,” thus he describes his feelings in that inimitable
book, Grace Abounding, “what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in
this world! Thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a
thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee.
But yet, thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the
quick to leave you. Oh! I saw I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon
the heads of his wife and children; yet I thought on those two milch Kline that
were to carry the ark of God into another country, and to leave their calves
behind them.” If the faculty of enjoyment be, as it is, the measure of real
possession, here was a case in which to forsake wife and child was to multiply
them an hundred-fold, and in the multiplied value of the things renounced to
find a rich solarium for sacrifice and persecutions. The soliloquy of the
Bedford prisoner is the very poetry of natural affection. What pathos is in that
allusion to the Mitch Kline! what a depth of tender feeling it reveals! The
power to feel so is the reward of self-sacrifice; the power to love so is the
reward of “hating” our kindred for Christ’s sake. You shall find no such love
among those who make natural affection an excuse for moral unfaithfulness,
thinking it a sufficient apology for disloyalty to the interests of the divine
kingdom to say, “I have a wife and family to care for.”

Without undue spiritualizing, then, we see that a valid meaning can be assigned
to the strong expression, “an hundred-fold.” And from the remarks just made, we
see further why “persecutions” are thrown into the account, as if they were not
drawbacks, but a part of the gain. The truth is, the hundred-fold is realized,
not in spite of persecutions, but to a great extent because of them.
Persecutions are the salt with which things sacrificed are salted, the condiment
which enhances their relish. Or, to put the matter arithmetically, persecutions
are the factor by which earthly blessings given up to God are multiplied an
hundred-fold, if not in quantity, at least in virtue.

Such are the rewards provided for those who make sacrifices for Christ’s sake.
Their sacrifices are but a seed sown in tears, from which they afterwards reap a
plentiful harvest in joy. But what now of those who have made no sacrifices, who
have received no wounds in battle? If this has proceeded not from lack of will,
but from lack of opportunity, they shall get a share of the rewards. David’s law
has its place in the divine kingdom: “As his part is that goeth down to the
battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part alike.”
Only all must see to it that they remain not by the stuff from cowardice, or
indolence and self-indulgence. They who act thus, declining to put themselves to
any trouble, to run any risk, or even so much as to part with a sinful lust for
the kingdom of God, cannot expect to find a place therein at the last.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 52: 02.16.2.     IN PEREA
========================================================================

In Perea; or, The Doctrine of Self-Sacrifice Section III - The First Last, and
the Last First Mat 19:30; Mat 20:1-20; Mark 10:31.

Having declared the rewards of self-sacrifice, Jesus proceeded to show the risk
of forfeiture or partial loss arising out of the indulgence of unworthy
feelings, whether as motives to self-denying acts, or as self- complacent
reflections on such acts already performed. “But,” He said in a warning manner,
as if with upraised finger, “many that are first shall be last, and the last
shall be first.” Then, to explain the profound remark, He uttered the parable
preserved in Matthew’s Gospel only, which follows immediately after. The
explanation is in some respects more difficult than the thing to be explained,
and has given rise to much diverse interpretation. And yet the main drift of
this parable seems clear enough. It is not, as some have supposed, designed to
teach that all will share alike in the eternal kingdom, which is not only
irrelevant to the connection of thought, but untrue. Neither is the parable
intended to proclaim the great evangelic truth that salvation is of grace and
not of merit, though it may be very proper in preaching to take occasion to
discourse on that fundamental doctrine. The great outstanding thought set forth
therein, as it seems to us, is this, that in estimating the value of work, the
divine Lord whom all serve takes into account not merely quantity, but quality;
that is, the spirit in which the work is done. The correctness of this view is
apparent when we take a comprehensive survey of the whole teaching of Jesus on
the important subject of work and wages in the divine kingdom, from which it
appears that the relation between the two things is fixed by righteous law,
caprice being entirely excluded; so that if the first in work be last in wages
in any instances, it is for very good reasons.

There are, in all, three parables in the Gospels on the subject referred to,
each setting forth a distinct idea, and, in case our interpretation of the one
at present to be specially considered is correct, all combined presenting an
exhaustive view of the topic to which they relate. They are the parables of the
Talents and of the Pounds, and the one before us, called by way of distinction
“the Laborers in the Vineyard.” In order to see how these parables are at once
distinct and mutually complementary, it is necessary to keep in view the
principles on which the value of work is to be determined. Three things must be
taken into account in order to form a just estimate of men’s works, viz. the
quantity of work done, the ability of the worker, and the motive. Leaving out of
view meantime the motive: when the ability is equal, quantity determines
relative merit; and when ability varies, then it is not the absolute amount, but
the relation of the amount to the ability that ought to determine value. The
parables of the Pounds and of the Talents are designed to illustrate
respectively these two propositions. In the former parable the ability is the
same in all, each servant receiving one pound; but the quantity of work done
varies, one servant with his pound gaining ten pounds, while another with the
same amount gains only five. Now, by the above rule, the second should not be
rewarded as the first, for he has not done what he might. Accordingly, in the
parable a distinction is made, both in the rewards given to the two servants,
and in the manner in which they are respectively addressed by their employer.
The first gets ten cities to govern, and these words of commendation in
addition: “Well, thou good servant; because thou hast been faithful in a very
little, have thou authority over ten cities.” The second, on the other hand,
gets only five cities, and what is even more noticeable, no praise. His master
says to him dryly, “Be thou also over five cities.” He had done somewhat, in
comparison with idlers even something considerable, and therefore his service is
acknowledged and proportionally rewarded. But he is not pronounced a good and
faithful servant; and the eulogy is withheld, simply because it was not
deserved: for he had not done what he could, but only half of what was possible,
taking the first servant’s work as the measure of possibility. In the parable of
the Talents the conditions are different. There the amount of work done varies,
as in the parable of the Pounds; but the ability varies in the same proportion,
so that the ratio between the two is the same in the case of both servants who
put their talents to use. One receives five, and gains five; the other receives
two, and gains two According to our rule, these two should be equal in merit;
and so they are represented in the parable. The same reward is assigned to each,
and both are commended in the very same terms; the master’s words in either case
being: “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few
things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy
lord.”

Thus the case stands when we take into account only the two elements of ability
to work and the amount of work done; or, to combine both into one, the element
of zeal. But there is more than zeal to be considered, at least in the kingdom
of God. In this world men are often commended for their diligence irrespective
of their motives; and it is not always necessary even to be zealous in order to
gain vulgar applause. If one do something that looks large and liberal, men will
praise him without inquiring whether for him it was a great thing, a heroic act
involving self-sacrifice, or only a respectable act, not necessarily indicative
of earnestness or devotion. But in God’s sight many bulky things are very
little, and many small things are very great. The reason is, that He Seth the
heart, and the hidden springs of action there, and judges the stream by the
fountain. Quantity is nothing to Him, unless there be zeal; and even zeal is
nothing to Him, unless it be purged from all vain glory and self-seeking-a pure
spring of good impulses; cleared of all smoke of carnal passion-a pure flame of
heaven-born devotion. A base motive vitiates all. To emphasize this truth, and
to insist on the necessity of right motives and emotions in connection with work
and sacrifices, is the design of the parable spoken by Jesus in Peraea. It
teaches that a small quantity of work done in a right spirit is of greater value
than a large quantity done in a wrong spirit, however zealously it may have been
performed. One hour’s work done by men who make no bargain is of greater value
than twelve hours’ work done by men who have borne the heat and burden of the
day, but who regard their doings with self-complacency. Put in receptive form,
the lesson of the parable is: Work not as hirelings basely calculating, or as
Pharisees arrogantly exacting, the wages to which you deem yourselves entitled;
work humbly, as deeming yourselves unprofitable servants at best; generously, as
men superior to selfish calculations of advantage; trustfully, as men who
confide in the generosity of the great Employer, regarding Him as one from whom
you need not to protect yourselves by making beforehand a firm and fast bargain.
In this interpretation, it is assumed that the spirit of the first and of the
last to enter the vineyard was respectively such as has been indicated; and the
assumption is justified by the manner in which the parties are described. In
what spirit the last worked may be inferred from their making no bargain; and
the temper of the first is manifest from their own words at the end of the day:
“These last,” said they, “have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them
equal to us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.” This is the
language of envy, jealousy, and self-esteem, and it is in keeping with the
conduct of these laborers at the commencement of the day’s work; for they
entered the vineyard as hirelings, having made a bargain, agreeing to work for a
stipulated amount of wages. The first and last, then, represent two classes
among the professed servants of God. The first are the calculating and
self-complacent; the last are the humble, the self-forgetful, the generous, the
trustful. The first are the Jacobs, plodding, conscientious, able to say for
themselves, “Thus I was: in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by
night, and the sleep departed from mine eyes;” yet ever studious of their own
interest, taking care even in their religion to make a sure bargain for
themselves, and trusting little to the free grace and unfettered generosity of
the great Lord. The last are Abraham-like men, not in the lateness of their
service, but in the magnanimity of their faith, entering the vineyard without
bargaining, as Abraham left his father’s house, knowing not whither he was to
go, but knowing only that God had said, “Go to a land that I shall show thee.”
The first are the Simons, righteous, respectable, exemplary, but hard, prosaic,
ungenial; the last are the women with alabaster boxes, who for long have been
idle, aimless, vicious, wasteful of life, but at last, with bitter tears of
sorrow over an unprofitable past, begin life in earnest, and endeavor to redeem
lost time by the passionate devotion with which they serve their Lord and
Saviour. The first, once more, are the elder brothers who stay at home in their
father’s house, and never transgress any of his commandments, and have no mercy
on those who do; the last are the prodigals, who leave their father’s house and
waste their substance on riotous living, but at length come to their senses, and
say, “I will arise, and go to my father;” and having met him, exclaim, “Father,
I have sinned, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy
hired servants.” The two classes differing thus in character are treated in the
parable precisely as they ought to be. The last are made first, and the first
are made last. The last are paid first, to signify the pleasure which the master
has in rewarding them. They are also paid at a much higher rate; for, receiving
the same sum for one hour’s work that the others receive for twelve, they are
paid at the rate of twelve pence per diem. They are treated, in fact, as the
prodigal was, for whom the father made a feast; while the “first” are treated as
the elder brother, whose service was acknowledged, but who had to complain that
his father never had given him a kid to make merry with his friends. Those who
deem themselves unworthy to be any thing else than hired servants, and most
unprofitable in that capacity, are dealt with as sons; and those who deem
themselves most meritorious are treated coldly and distantly, as hired servants.

Reverting now from the parable to the apophthegm it was designed to illustrate,
we observe that the degradation of such as are first in ability, zeal, and
length of service, to the last place as regards the reward, is represented as a
thing likely to happen often. “Many that are first shall be last.” This
statement implies that self-esteem is a sin which easily besets men situated as
the twelve, i.e. men who have made sacrifices for the kingdom of God. Now, that
this is a fact observation proves; and it further teaches us that there are
certain circumstances in which the laborious and self-denying are specially
liable to fall into the vice of self-righteousness. It will serve to illustrate
the deep and, to most minds on first view, obscure saying of Jesus, if we
indicate here what these circumstances are.

1. Those who make sacrifices for Christ’s sake are in danger of falling into a
self-righteous mood of mind, when the spirit of self-denial manifests itself in
rare occasional acts, rather than in the form of a habit. In this case
Christians rise at certain emergencies to an elevation of spirit far above the
usual level of their moral feelings; and therefore, though at the time when the
sacrifice was made they may have behaved heroically, they are apt afterwards to
revert self-complacently to their noble deeds, as an old soldier goes back on
his battles, and with Peter to ask, with a proud consciousness of merit for
having forsaken all, What shall we have therefore? Verily, a state of mind
greatly to be feared. A society in which spiritual pride and self-complacency
prevails is in a bad way. One possessed of prophetic insight into the moral laws
of the universe can foretell what will happen. The religious community which
deems itself first will gradually fall behind in gifts and graces, and some
other religious community which it despises will gradually advance onward, till
the two have at length, in a way manifest to all men, changed places.

2. There is great danger of degeneracy in the spirit of those who make
sacrifices for the kingdom of God, when any particular species of service has
come to be much in demand, and therefore to be held in very high esteem. Take,
as an example, the endurance of physical tortures and of death in times of
persecution. It is well known with what a furor of admiration martyrs and
confessors were regarded in the suffering church of the early centuries. Those
who suffered martyrdom were almost deified by popular enthusiasm: the
anniversaries of their death-of their birthdays, as they were called, into the
eternal world-were observed with religious solemnity, when their doings and
sufferings in this world were rehearsed with ardent admiration in strains of
extravagant eulogy. Even the confessors, who had suffered, but not died for
Christ, were looked up to as a superior order of beings, separated by a wide
gulf from the common herd of untried Christians. They were saints, they had a
halo of glory round their heads; they had power with God, and could, it was
believed, bind or loose with even more authority than the regular ecclesiastical
authorities. Absolution was eagerly sought for from them by the lapsed;
admission to their communion was regarded as an open door by which sinners might
return into the fellowship of the church. They had only to say to the erring,
ego in peace,” and even bishops must receive them. Bishops joined with the
populace in this idolatrous homage to the men who suffered for Christ’s sake.
They petted and flattered the confessors, partly from honest admiration, but
partly also from policy, to induce others to imitate their example, and to
foster the virtue of hardihood, so much needed in suffering times. This state of
feeling in the church was obviously fraught with great danger to the souls of
those who endured hardship for the truth, as tempting them to fanaticism,
vanity, spiritual pride, all presumption. Nor were they all by any means
temptation-proof. Many took all the praise thou received as their due, all
deemed themselves persons of great consequence. The soldiers, who had been
flattered by their generals to make them brave, began to act as if they were the
masters, and could write, for example, to one who had been a special offender in
the extravagance of his eulogies, such a letter as this: “All the confessors to
Cyprian the bishop: Know that we have granted peace to all those of whom you
have had an account what they have done: how they have behaved since the
commission of their crimes; and we would that these presents should be by you
imparted to the rest of the bishops. We wish you to maintain peace with the holy
martyrs.” Thus was fulfilled in those confessors the saying, “Many that are
first shall be last.” First in suffering for the truth and in reputation for
sanctity, they became last in the judgment of the great Searcher of hearts. They
gave their bodies to be scourged, maimed, burned, and it profited them little or
nothing.

3. The first are in danger of becoming the last when self-denial is reduced to a
System, and practiced ascetically, not for Christ’s sake, but for one’s own
sake. That in respect of the amount of self-denial the austere ascetic is
entitled to rank first, nobody will deny. But his right to rank first in
intrinsic spiritual worth, and therefore in the divine kingdom, is more open to
dispute. Even in respect to the fundamental matter of getting rid of self, he
may be, not first, but last. The self-denial of the ascetic is in a subtle way
intense self-assertion. True Christian self-sacrifice signifies hardship, loss
undergone, not for its own sake, but for Christ’s sake, and for truth’s sake, at
a time when truth cannot be maintained without sacrifice. But the self-sacrifice
of the ascetic is not of this kind. It is all endured for his own sake, for his
own spiritual benefit and credit. He practices self-denial after the fashion of
a miser, who is a total abstainer from all luxuries, and even grudges himself
the necessaries of life because he has a passion for hoarding. Like the miser,
he deems himself rich; yet both he and the miser are alike poor: the miser,
because with all his wealth he cannot part with his coin in exchange for
enjoyable commodities; the ascetic, because his coins, “good works,” so called,
painful acts of abstinence, are counterfeit, and will not pass current in the
kingdom of heaven. All his labors to save his soul will turn out to be just so
much rubbish to be burned up; and if he be saved at all, it will be as by fire.

Recalling now for a moment the three classes of cases in which the first are in
danger of becoming last, we perceive that the word “many” is not an
exaggeration. For consider how much of the work done by professing Christians
belongs to one or other of these categories: occasional spasmodic efforts; good
works of liberality and philanthropy, which are in fashion and in high esteem in
the religious world; and good works done, not so much from interest in the work,
as from their reflex bearing on the doer’s own religious interests. Many are
called to work in God’s vineyard, and many are actually at work. But few are
chosen; few are choice workers; few work for God in the spirit of the precepts
taught by Jesus. But though there be few such workers, there are some. Jesus
does not say all who are first shall be last, and all who are last shall be
first: His word is many. There are numerous exceptions to the rule in both its
parts. Not all who bear the heat and burden of the day are mercenary and
self-righteous. No; the Lord has always had in His spiritual vineyard a noble
band of workers, who, if there were room for boasting in any case, might have
boasted on account of the length, the arduousness, and the efficiency of their
service, yet cherished no self-complacent thoughts, nor indulged in any
calculations how much more they should receive than others. Think of devoted
missionaries to heathen lands; of heroic reformers like Luther, Calvin, Knox,
and Latimer; of eminent men of our own day, recently taken from amongst us. Can
you fancy such men talking like the early laborers in the vineyard? Nay, verily!
all through life their thoughts of themselves and their service were very humble
indeed; and at the close of life’s day their day’s work seemed to them a very
sorry matter, utterly undeserving of the great reward of eternal life. Such
first ones shall not be last.

If there be some first who shall not be last, there are doubtless also some last
who shall not be first. If it were otherwise; if to be last in length of
service, in zeal and devotion, gave a man an advantage, it would be ruinous to
the interests of the kingdom of God. It would, in fact, be in effect putting a
premium on indolence, and encouraging men to stand all the day idle, or to serve
the devil till the eleventh hour; and then in old age to enter the vineyard, and
give the Lord the poor hour’s work, when their limbs were stiff and their frames
feeble and tottering. No such demoralizing law obtains in the divine kingdom.
Other things being equal, the longer and the more earnestly a man serves God,
the sooner he begins, and the harder he works, the better for himself hereafter.
If those who begin late in the day are graciously treated, it is in spite, not
in consequence, of their tardiness. That they have been so long idle is not a
commendation, but a sin; not a subject of self-congratulation, but of deep
humiliation. If it be wrong for those who have served the Lord much to glory in
the greatness of their service, it is surely still more unbecoming, even
ridiculous, for any one to pride himself in the littleness of his. If the first
has no cause for boasting and self-righteousness, still less has the last.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 53: 02.17.     THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE AGAIN
========================================================================

The Sons of Zebedee Again; or, Second Lesson On the Doctrine of the Cross Mat
20:17-28; Mark 10:32-45; Luk 18:31-34. The incident recorded in these sections
of Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels happened while Jesus and His disciples were
going up to Jerusalem for the last time, journeying via Jericho, from Ephraim in
the wilderness, whither they had retired after the raising of Lazarus. The
ambitious request of the two sons of Zebedee for the chief places of honor in
the kingdom was therefore made little more than a week before their Lord was
crucified. How little must they have dreamed what was coming! Yet it was not for
want of warning; for just before they presented their petition, Jesus had for
the third time explicitly announced His approaching passion, indicating that His
death would take place in connection with this present visit to Jerusalem, and
adding other particulars respecting His last sufferings not specified before
fitted to arrest attention; as that His death should be the issue of a judicial
process, and that He should be delivered by the Jewish authorities to the
Gentiles, to be mocked, and scourged, and crucified.

After recording the terms of Christ’s third announcement, Luke adds, with
reference to the disciples: “They understood none of these things; and this
saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.” The
truth of this statement is sufficiently apparent from the scene which ensued,
not recorded by Luke, as is also the cause of the fact stated. The disciples, we
perceive, were thinking of other matters while Jesus spake to them of His
approaching sufferings. They were dreaming of the thrones they had been promised
in Peraea, and therefore were not able to enter into the thoughts of their
Master, so utterly diverse from their own. Their minds were completely possessed
by romantic expectations, their heads giddy with the sparkling wine of vain
hope; and as they drew nigh the holy city their firm conviction was, “that the
kingdom of God should immediately appear.”

While all the disciples were looking forward to their thrones, James and John
were coveting the most distinguished ones, and contriving a scheme for securing
these to themselves, and so getting the dispute who should be the greatest
settled in their own favor. These were the two disciples who made themselves so
prominent in resenting the rudeness of the Samaritan villagers. The greatest
zealots among the twelve were thus also the most ambitious, a circumstance which
will not surprise the student of human nature. On the former occasion they asked
fire from heaven to consume their adversaries; on the present occasion they ask
a favor from Heaven to the disadvantage of their friends. The two requests are
not so very dissimilar. In hatching and executing their little plot, the two
brothers enjoyed the assistance of their mother, whose presence is not
explained, but may have been due to her having become an attendant on Jesus in
her widowhood, or to an accidental meeting with Him and His disciples at the
junction of the roads converging on Jerusalem, whither all were now going to
keep the feast. Salome was the principal actor in the scene, and it must be
admitted she acted her part well. Kneeling before Jesus, as if doing homage to a
king, she intimated her humble wish to proffer a petition; and being gently
asked, “What wilt thou?” said, “Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on
Thy right hand, and the other on the left, in Thy kingdom.” This prayer had
certainly another origin than the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and the scheme
of which it was the outcome was not one which we should have expected companions
of Jesus to entertain. And yet the whole proceeding is so true to human nature
as it reveals itself in every age, that we cannot but feel that we have here no
myth, but a genuine piece of history. We know how much of the world’s spirit is
to be found at all times in religious circles of high reputation for zeal,
devotion, and sanctity; and we have no right to hold up our hands in amazement
when we see it appearing even in the immediate neighborhood of Jesus. The twelve
were yet but crude Christians, and we must allow them time to become sanctified
as well as others. Therefore we neither affect to be scandalized at their
conduct, nor, to save their reputation, do we conceal its true character. We are
not surprised at the behavior of the two sons of Zebedee, and yet we say plainly
that their request was foolish and offensive: indicative at once of bold
presumption, gross stupidity, and unmitigated selfishness.

It was an irreverent, presumptuous request, because it virtually asked Jesus
their Lord to become the tool of their ambition and vanity. Fancying that He
would yield to mere solicitation, perhaps calculating that He would not have the
heart to refuse a request coming from a female suppliant, who as a widow was an
object of compassion, and as a contributor to His support had claims to His
gratitude, they begged a favor which Jesus could not grant without being untrue
to His own character and His habitual teaching, as exemplified in the discourse
on humility in the house at Capernaum. In so doing they were guilty of a
disrespectful, impudent forwardness most characteristic of the ambitious spirit,
which is utterly devoid of delicacy, and pushes on towards its end, reckless
what offence it may give, heedless how it wounds the sensibilities of others.
The request of the two brothers was as ignorant as it was presumptuous. The idea
implied therein of the kingdom was utterly wide of truth and reality. James and
John not only thought of the kingdom that was coming as a kingdom of this world,
but they thought meanly of it even under that view. For it is an unusually
corrupt and unwholesome condition of matters, even in a secular state, when
places of highest distinction can be obtained by solicitation and favor, and not
on the sole ground of fitness for the duties of the position. When family
influence or courtly arts are the pathway to power, every patriot has cause to
mourn. How preposterous, then, the idea that promotion can take place in the
divine, ideally-perfect kingdom by means that are inadmissible in any
well-regulated secular kingdom! To cherish such an idea is in effect to degrade
and dishonor the Divine King, by likening Him to an unprincipled despot, who has
more favor for flatterers than for honest men; and to caricature the divine
kingdom by assimilating it to the most misgoverned states on earth, such as
those ruled over by a Bomba or a Nero. The request of the brethren was likewise
intensely selfish. It was ungenerous as towards their fellow-disciples; for it
was an attempt to overreach them, and, like all such attempts, produced
mischief, disturbing the peace of the family circle, and giving rise to a most
unseemly embitterment of feeling among its members. “When the ten heard it, they
were moved with indignation.” No wonder; and if James and John did not
anticipate such a result, it showed that they were very much taken up with their
own selfish thoughts; and if they did anticipate it, and nevertheless shrank not
from a course of action which was sure to give offence, that only made their
selfishness the more heartless and inexcusable. But the petition of the two
disciples was selfish in a far wider view, viz. with reference to the public
interests of the divine kingdom. It virtually meant this: “Grant us the places
of honor and power, come what may; even though universal discontent and
disaffection, disorder, disaster, and chaotic confusion ensue.” These are the
sure effects of promotion by favor instead of by merit, both in church and in
state, as many a nation has found to its cost in the day of trial. James and
John, it is true, never dreamt of disaster resulting from their petition being
granted. No self-seekers and place-hunters ever do anticipate evil results from
their promotion. But that does not make them less selfish. It only shows that,
besides being selfish, they are vain. The reply of Jesus to this ambitious
request, considering its character, was singularly mild. Offensive though the
presumption, forwardness, selfishness, and vanity of the two disciples must have
been to His meek, holy, self-forgetful spirit, He uttered not a word of direct
rebuke, but dealt with them as a father might deal with a child that had made a
senseless request. Abstaining from animadversion on the grave faults brought to
light by their petition, He noticed only the least culpable-their ignorance. “Ye
know not,” He said to them quietly, “what ye ask;” and even this remark He made
in compassion rather than in the way of blame. He pitied men who offered prayers
whose fulfillment, as He knew, implied painful experiences of which they had no
thought. It was in this spirit that He asked the explanatory question: “Are ye
able to drink of the cup that I am about to drink, and to be baptized with the
baptism that I am baptized with?” But there was more than compassion or
correction in this question, even instruction concerning the true way of
obtaining promotion in the kingdom of God. In interrogatory form Jesus taught
His disciples that advancement in His kingdom went not by favor, nor was
obtainable by clamorous solicitation; that the way to thrones was the via
dolorosa of the cross; that the palm-bearers in the realms of glory should be
they who had passed through great tribulation, and the princes of the kingdom
they who had drunk most deeply of His cup of sorrow; and that for those who
refused to drink thereof, the selfish, the self-indulgent, the ambitious, the
vain, there would be no place at all in the kingdom, not to speak of places of
honor on His right or left hand. The startling question put to them by Jesus did
not take James and John by surprise. Promptly and firmly they replied, “We are
able.” Had they then really taken into account the cup and the baptism of
suffering, and deliberately made up their minds to pay the costly price for the
coveted prize? Had the sacred fire of the martyr spirit already been kindled in
their hearts? One would be happy to think so, but we fear there is nothing to
justify so favorable an opinion. It is much more probable that, in their
eagerness to obtain the object of their ambition, the two brothers were ready to
promise any thing, and that, in fact, they neither knew nor cared what they were
promising. Their confident declaration bears a suspiciously close resemblance to
the bravado uttered by Peter a few days later: “Though all men shall be offended
because of Thee, yet will I never be offended.”

Jesus, however, did not choose, in the case of the sons of Zebedee, as in the
case of their friend, to call in question the heroism so ostentatiously
professed, but adopted the course of assuming that they were not only able, but
willing, yea, eager, to participate in His sufferings. With the air of a king
granting to favorites the privilege of drinking out of the royal wine-cup, and
of washing in the royal ewer, He replied: “Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and
be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with.” It was a strange favor
which the King thus granted! Had they only known the meaning of the words, the
two brethren might well have fancied that their Master was indulging in a stroke
of irony at their expense. Yet it was not so. Jesus was not mocking His
disciples when He spake thus, offering them a stone instead of bread: He was
speaking seriously, and promising what He meant to bestow, and what, when the
time of bestowal came-for it did come-they themselves regarded as a real
privilege; for all the apostles agreed with Peter that they who were reproached
for the name of Christ were to be accounted happy, and had the spirit of glory
and of God resting on them. Such, we believe, was the mind of James when Herod
killed him with the persecutor’s sword: such, we know, was the mind of John when
he was in the isle of Patmos “for the word of God, and for the testimony of
Jesus Christ.”

Having promised a favor not coveted by the two disciples, Jesus next explained
that the favor they did covet was not unconditionally at His disposal: “But to
sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, save to those for whom
it is prepared of my Father.” The Authorized Version suggests the idea that the
bestowal of rewards in the kingdom is not in Christ’s hands at all. That,
however, is not what Jesus meant to say; but rather this, that though it is
Christ’s prerogative to assign to citizens their places in His kingdom, it is
not in His power to dispose of places by partiality and patronage, or otherwise
than in accordance with fixed principles of justice and the sovereign ordination
of His Father. The words, paraphrased, signify: “I can say to any one, Come,
drink of my cup, for there is no risk of mischief arising out of favoritism in
that direction. But there my favors must end. I cannot say to any one, as I
please, Come, sit beside me on a throne; for each man must get the place
prepared for him, and for which he is prepared.”

Thus explained, this solemn saying of our Lord furnishes no ground for an
inference which, on first view, it seems not only to suggest, but to
necessitate, viz. that one may taste of the cup, yet lose the crown; or, at
least, that there is no connection between the measure in which a disciple may
have had fellowship with Christ in His cross, and the place which shall be
assigned to him in the eternal kingdom. That Jesus had no intention to teach
such a doctrine is evident from the question He had asked just before He made
the statement now under consideration, which implies a natural sequence between
the cup and the throne, the suffering and the glory. The sacrifice and the great
reward so closely conjoined in the promise made to the twelve in Peraea are
disjoined here, merely for the purpose of signalizing the rigor with which all
corrupt influences are excluded from the kingdom of heaven. It is beyond doubt,
that those on whom is bestowed in high measure the favor of being companions
with Jesus in tribulation shall be rewarded with high promotion in the eternal
kingdom. Nor does this statement compromise the sovereignty of the Father and
Lord of all; on the contrary, it contributes towards its establishment. There is
no better argument in support of the doctrine of election than the simple truth
that affliction is the education for heaven. For in what does the sovereign hand
of God appear more signally than in the appointment of crosses? If crosses would
let us alone, we would let them alone. We choose not the bitter cup and the
bloody baptism: we are chosen for them, and in them. God impresses men into the
warfare of the cross; and if any come to glory in this way, as many an impressed
soldier has done, it will be to glory to which, in the first place at least,
they did not aspire. The asserted connection between suffering and glory serves
to defend as well as to establish the doctrine of election. Looked at in
relation to the world to come, that doctrine seems to lay God open to the charge
of partiality, and is certainly very mysterious. But look at election in its
bearing on the present life. In that view it is a privilege for which the elect
are not apt to be envied. For the elect are not the happy and the prosperous,
but the toilers and sufferers. In fact, they are elected not for their own sake,
but for the world’s sake, to be God’s pioneers in the rough, unwelcome work of
turning the wilderness into a fruitful field; to be the world’s salt, leaven,
and light, receiving for the most part little thanks for the service they
render, and getting often for reward the lot of the destitute, the afflicted,
and the tormented. So that, after all, election is a favor to the non-elect: it
is God ‘s method of benefiting men at large; and whatever peculiar benefit may
be in store for the elect is well earned, and should not be grudged. Does any
one envy them their prospect? He may be a partaker of their future joy if he be
willing to be companion to such forlorn beings, and to share their tribulations
now.

It is hardly needful to explain that, in uttering these words, Jesus did not
mean to deny the utility of prayer, and to say, “You may ask for a place in the
divine kingdom, and not get it; for all depends on what God has ordained.” He
only wished the two disciples and all to understand that to obtain their
requests they must know what they ask, and accept all that is implied, in the
present as well as in the future, in the answering of their prayers. This
condition is too often overlooked. Many a bold, ambitious prayer, even for
spiritual blessing, is offered up by petitioners who have no idea what the
answer would involve, and if they had, would wish their prayer unanswered. Crude
Christians ask, e.g., to be made holy. But do they know what doubts,
temptations, and sore trials of all kinds go to the making of great saints?
Others long for a full assurance of God’s love; desire to be perfectly persuaded
of their election. Are they willing to be deprived of the sunshine of
prosperity, that in the dark night of sorrow they may see heaven’s stars? Ah me!
how few do know what they ask! how much all need to be taught to pray for right
things with an intelligent mind and in a right spirit!

Having said what was needful to James and John, Jesus next addressed a word in
season to their brethren inculcating humility; most appropriately, for though
the ten were the offended party, not offenders, yet the same ambitious spirit
was in them, else they would not have felt and resented the wrong done so
keenly. Pride and selfishness may vex and grieve the humble and the
self-forgetful, but they provoke resentment only in the proud and the selfish;
and the best way to be proof against the assaults of other men’s evil passions
is to get similar affections exorcised out of our own breasts. “Let this mind be
in you which was also in Christ Jesus;” then shall nothing be done by you at
least in strife or vainglory.

“When the ten heard it,” we read, “they were moved with indignation against the
two brethren.” Doubtless it was a very unedifying scene which ensued; and it is
very disappointing to witness such scenes where one might have looked to see in
perfection the godly spectacle of brethren dwelling together in unity. But the
society of Jesus was a real thing, not the imaginary creation of a
romance-writer; and in all real human societies, in happy homes, in the most
select brotherhoods, scientific, literary, or artistic, in Christian churches,
there will arise tempests now and then. And let us be thankful that the twelve,
even by their folly, gave their Master an occasion for uttering the sublime
words here recorded, which shine down upon us out of the serene sky of the
gospel story like stars appearing through the tempestuous clouds of human
passion-manifestly the words of a Divine Being, though spoken out of the depths
of an amazing self-humiliation. The manner of Jesus, in addressing His heated
disciples, was very tender and subdued. He collected them all around Him, the
two and the ten, the offenders and the offended, as a father might gather
together his children to receive admonition, and He spoke to them with the
calmness and solemnity of one about to meet death. Throughout this whole scene
death’s solemnizing influence is manifestly on the Saviour’s spirit. For does He
not speak of His approaching sufferings in language reminding us of the night of
His betrayal, describing His passion by the poetic sacramental name “my cup,”
and for the first time revealing the secret of His life on earth-the grand
object for which He is about to die? In moral significance, the doctrine of
Jesus at this time was a repetition of His teaching in Capernaum, when He chose
the little child for His text. As He said then, Who would be great must be
childlike, so He says here, Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your
minister. In the former discourse His model and His text was an infant; now it
is a slave, another representative of the mean and despicable. Now, as before,
He quotes His own example to enforce His precept; stimulating His disciples to
seek distinction in a path of lowly love by representing the Son of man as come
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, even to the length of giving His
life a ransom for the many, as He then reminded them, that the Son of man came
like a shepherd, to seek and to save the lost sheep. The single new feature in
the lesson which Jesus gave His disciples at this season is, the contrast
between His kingdom and the kingdoms of earth in respect to the mode of
acquiring dominion, to which He directed attention, by way of preface, to the
doctrine about to be communicated. “Ye know,” He said, “that the princes of the
Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great (provincial
governors, often more tyrannical than their superiors) exercise authority upon
them. But it shall not be so among you.” There is a hint here at another
contrast besides the one mainly intended, viz. that between the harsh despotic
sway of worldly potentates, and the gentle dominion of love alone admissible in
the divine kingdom. But the main object of the words quoted is to point out the
difference in the way of acquiring rather than in the manner of using power. The
idea is this: earthly kingdoms are ruled by a class of persons who possess
hereditary rank-the aristocracy, nobles, or princes. The governing class are
those whose birthright it is to rule, and whose boast it is never to have been
in a servile position, but always to have been served. In my kingdom, on the
other hand, a man becomes a great one, and a ruler, by being first the servant
of those over whom he is to bear rule. In other states, they rule whose
privilege it is to be ministered unto; in the divine commonwealth, they rule who
account it a privilege to minister. In drawing this contrast, Jesus had, of
course, no intention to teach politics; no intention either to recognize or to
call in question the divine right of the princely cast to rule over their
fellow-creatures. He spoke of things as they were, and as His hearers knew them
to be in secular states, and especially in the Roman Empire. If any political
inference might be drawn from His words, it would not be in favor of absolutism
and hereditary privilege, but rather in favor of power being in the hands of
those who have earned it by faithful service, whether they belong to the
governing class by birth or not. For what is beneficial in the divine kingdom
cannot be prejudicial to secular commonwealths. The true interests, one would
say, of an earthly kingdom should be promoted by its being governed as nearly as
possible in accordance with the laws of the kingdom which cannot be moved.
Thrones and crowns may, to prevent disputes, go by hereditary succession,
irrespective of personal merit; but the reality of power should ever be in the
hands of the ablest, the wisest, and the most devoted to the public good.

Having explained by contrast the great principle of the spiritual commonwealth,
that he who would rule therein must first serve, Jesus proceeded next to enforce
the doctrine by a reference to His own example. “Whosoever will be chief among
you,” said He to the twelve, “let him be your servant;” and then He added the
memorable words: “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

These words were spoken by Jesus as one who claimed to be a king, and aspired to
be the first in a great and mighty kingdom. At the end of the sentence we must
mentally supply the clause-which was not expressed simply because it was so
obviously implied in the connection of thought-“so seeking to win a kingdom.”
Our Lord sets Himself forth here not merely as an example of humility, but as
one whose case illustrates the truth that the way to power in the spiritual
world is service; and in stating that He came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, He expresses not the whole truth, but only the present fact. The whole
truth was, that He came to minister in the first place, that He might be
ministered to in turn by a willing, devoted people, acknowledging Him as their
sovereign. The point on which He wishes to fix the attention of His disciples is
the peculiar way He takes to get His crown; and what He says in effect is this:
“I am a King, and I expect to have a kingdom; James and John were not mistaken
in that respect. But I shall obtain my kingdom in another way than secular
princes get theirs. They get their thrones by succession, I get mine by personal
merit; they secure their kingdom by right of birth, I hope to secure mine by the
right of service; they inherit their subjects, I buy mine, the purchase-money
being mine own life.”

What the twelve thought of this novel plan of getting dominion and a kingdom,
and especially what ideas the concluding word of their Master suggested to their
minds when uttered, we know not. We are sure, however, that they did not
comprehend that word; and no marvel, for the thought of Jesus was very deep. Who
can understand it fully even now? Here we emphatically see through a glass, in
enigmas. This memorable saying has been the subject of much doubtful disputation
among theologians, nor can we hope by any thing that we can say to terminate
controversy. The word is a deep well which has never yet been fathomed, and
probably never will. Brought in so quietly as an illustration to enforce a moral
precept, it opens up a region of thought which takes us far beyond the immediate
occasion of its being uttered. It raises questions in our minds which it does
not solve; and yet there is little in the New Testament on the subject of
Christ’s death which might not be comprehended within the limits of its possible
significance.

First of all, let us say that we have no sympathy with that school of critical
theologians who call in question the authenticity of this word. It is strange to
observe how unwilling some are to recognize Christ as the original source of
great thoughts which have become essential elements in the faith of the church.
This idea of Christ’s death as a ransom is here now. With whom did it take its
rise? was the mind of Jesus not original enough to conceive it, that it must be
fathered on some one else? Another thing has to be considered in connection with
this saying, and the kindred one uttered at the institution of the supper. After
Jesus had begun to dwell much in thought, accompanied with deep emotion, on the
fact that He must die, it was inevitable that His mind should address itself to
the task of investing the harsh, prosaic fact with poetic, mystic meanings. We
speak of Jesus for the moment simply as a man of wonderful spiritual genius,
whose mind was able to cope with death, and rob it of its character of a mere
fate, and invest it with beauty, and clothe the skeleton with the flesh and
blood of an attractive system of spiritual meanings.

Regarding, then, this precious saying as unquestionably authentic, what did
Christ mean to teach by it? First this, at least, in general, that there was a
causal connection between His act in laying down His life and the desired
result, viz. spiritual sovereignty. And without having any regard to the term
ransom, even supposing it for the moment absent from the text, we can see for
ourselves that there is such a connection. However original the method adopted
by Jesus for getting a kingdom-and when compared with other methods of getting
kingdoms, e.g. by inheritance, the most respectable way, or by the sword, or,
basest of all, by paying down a sum of money, as in the last days of the Roman
Empire, its originality is beyond dispute-however original the method of Jesus,
it has proved strangely successful. The event has proved that there must be a
connection between the two things-the death on the cross and the sovereignty of
souls. Thousands of human beings, yea, millions, in every age, have said Amen
with all their hearts to the doxology of John in the Apocalypse: “Unto Him that
loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings
and priests unto God and His Father, unto Him be glory and dominion forever.”
Without doubt this result of His self-devotion was present to the mind of Jesus
when He uttered the words before us, and in uttering them He meant for one thing
to emphasize the power of divine love in self-sacrifice, to assert its sway over
human hearts, and to win for the King of the sacred commonwealth a kind of
sovereignty not attainable otherwise than by humbling Himself to take upon Him
the form of a servant. Some assert that to gain this power was the sole end of
the Incarnation. We do not agree with this view, but we have no hesitation in
regarding the attainment of such moral power by self-sacrifice as one end of the
Incarnation. The Son of God wished to charm us away from self-indulgence and
self-worship, to emancipate us from sin’s bondage by the power of His love, that
we might acknowledge ourselves to be His, and devote ourselves gratefully to His
services. But there is more in the text than we have yet found, for Jesus says
not merely that He is to lay down His life for the many, but that He is to lay
down His life in the form of a ransom. The question is, what are we to
understand by this form in which the fact of death is expressed? Now it may be
assumed that the word “ransom” was used by Jesus in a sense having affinity to
Old Testament usage. The Greek word (lu)tron) is employed in the Septuagint as
the equivalent for the Hebrew word kopher, about whose meaning there has been
much discussion, but the general sense of which is a covering. How the idea of
covering is to be taken, whether in the sense of shielding, or in the sense of
exactly covering the same surface, as one penny covers another, i.e. as an
equivalent, has been disputed, and must remain doubtful. The theological
interest of the question is this, that if we accept the word in the general
sense of protection, then the ransom is not offered or accepted as a legal
equivalent for the persons or things redeemed, but simply as something of a
certain value which is received as a matter of favor. But leaving this point on
one side, what we are concerned with in connection with this text is the broader
thought that Christ’s life is given and accepted for the lives of many, whether
as an exact equivalent or otherwise being left indeterminate. Jesus represents
His death voluntarily endured as a means of delivering from death the souls of
the many; how or why does not clearly appear. A German theologian, who
energetically combats the Anselmian theory of satisfaction, finds in the word
these three thoughts: First, the ransom is offered as a gift to God, not to the
devil. Jesus, having undoubtedly the train of thought in Psa 49:1 in His mind,
speaks of devoting His life to God in the pursuit of His vocation, not of
subjecting Himself to the might of sin or of the devil. Second, Jesus not only
presupposes that no man can offer either for himself or for others a valuable
gift capable of warding off death unto God, as the Psalmist declares; but He
asserts that in this view He Himself renders a service in the place of many
which no one of them could render either for himself or for another. Third,
Jesus, having in mind also, doubtless, the words of Elihu in the Book of Job
concerning an angel, one of a thousand, who may avail to ransom a man from
death, distinguishes Himself from the mass of men liable to death in so far as
He regards Himself as excepted from the natural doom of death, and conceives of
His death as a voluntary act by which He surrenders His life to God, as in the
text John 10:17-18. In taking so much out of the saying we do not subject it to
undue straining. The assumption that there is a mental reference to the Old
Testament texts in the forty-ninth Psalm and in the thirty-third chapter of Job,
as also to the redemption of the males among the children of Israel by the
payment of a half-shekel, seems reasonable; and in the light of these passages
it does not seem going too far to take out of our Lord’s words these three
ideas: The ransom is given to God (Psa 49:7 : “Nor give to God a ransom for
him”); it is given for the lives of men doomed to die; and it is available for
such a purpose because the thing given is the life of an exceptional being, one
among a thousand, not a brother mortal doomed to die, but an angel assuming
flesh that He may freely die. Thus the text contains, besides the general truth
that by dying in self-sacrificing love the Son of man awakens in the many a
sense of grateful devotion that carries Him to a throne, this more special one,
that by His death He puts the many doomed to death as the penalty of sin somehow
in a different relation to God, so that they are no longer criminals, but sons
of God, heirs of eternal life, members of the holy commonwealth, enjoying all
its privileges, redeemed by the life of the King Himself, as the half-shekel
offered as the price of redemption.

These few hints must suffice as an indication of the probable meaning of the
autobiographical saying in which Jesus conveyed to His disciples their second
lesson on the doctrine of the cross. With two additional reflections thereon we
end this chapter. When He said of Himself that He came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister, Jesus alluded not merely to His death, but to His whole
life. The statement is an epitome in a single sentence of His entire earthly
history. The reference to His death has the force of a superlative. He came to
minister, even to the extent of giving His life a ransom. Then this saying,
while breathing the spirit of utter lowliness, at the same time betrays the
consciousness of superhuman dignity. Had Jesus not been more than man, His
language would not have been humble, but presumptuous. Why should the son of a
carpenter say of Himself, I came not to be ministered unto? servile position and
occupation was a matter of course for such an one. The statement before us is
rational and humble, only as coming from one who, being in the form of God,
freely assumed the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death for our
salvation.


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  CHAPTER 54: 02.18.     THE ANOINTING IN BETHANY
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The Anointing in Bethany; or, Third Lesson On the Doctrine of the Cross Mat
26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9; John 12:1-8. The touching story of the anointing of Jesus
by Mary at Bethany forms part of the preface to the history of the passion, as
recorded in the synoptical Gospels. That preface, as given most fully by
Matthew, includes four particulars: first, a statement made by Jesus to His
disciples two days before the passover concerning His betrayal; second, a
meeting of the priests in Jerusalem to consult when and how Jesus should be put
to death; third, the anointing by Mary; fourth, the secret correspondence
between Judas and the priests. In Mark’s preface the first of these four
particulars is omitted; in Luke’s both the first and the third. The four facts
related by the first evangelist had this in common, that they were all signs
that the end so often foretold was at length at hand. Jesus now says, not “the
Son of man shall be betrayed,” but “the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.”
The ecclesiastical authorities of Israel are assembled in solemn conclave, not
to discuss the question what should be done with the object of their
dislike-that is already determined-but how the deed of darkness may be done most
stealthily and most securely. The Victim has been anointed by a friendly hand
for the approaching sacrifice. And, finally, an instrument has been found to
relieve the priests from their perplexity, and to pave the way in a most
unexpected manner for the consummation of their wicked purpose. The grouping of
the incidents in the introduction to the tragic history of the crucifixion is
strikingly dramatic in its effect. First comes the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem
plotting against the life of the Just One. Then comes Mary at Bethany, in her
unutterable love breaking her alabaster box, and pouring its contents on the
head and feet of her beloved Lord. Last comes Judas, offering to sell his Master
for less than Mary wasted on a useless act of affection! Hatred and baseness on
either hand, and true love in the midst. This memorable transaction of Mary with
her alabaster box belongs to the history of the passion, in virtue of the
interpretation put upon it by Jesus, which gives to it the character of a lyric
prelude to the great tragedy enacted on Calvary. It belongs to the history of
the twelve disciples, because of the unfavorable construction which they put on
it. All the disciples, it seems, disapproved of the action, the only difference
between Judas and the rest being that he disapproved on hypocritical grounds,
while his fellow-disciples were honest both in their judgment and in their
motives. By their fault-finding the twelve rendered to Mary a good service. They
secured for her a present defender in Jesus, and future eulogists in themselves.
Their censure drew from the Lord the extraordinary statement, that wheresoever
the gospel might be preached in the whole world, what Mary had done would be
spoken of for a memorial of her. This prophecy the fault-finding disciples, when
they became apostles, helped to fulfill. They felt bound by the virtual
commandment of their Master, as well as by the generous redaction of their own
hearts, to make amends to Mary for former wrong done, by telling the tale of her
true love to Jesus wherever they told the story of His true love to men. From
their lips the touching narrative passed in due course into the gospel records,
to be read with a thrill of delight by true Christians to the end of time.
Verily one might be content to be spoken against for a season for the sake of
such chivalrous championship as that of Jesus, and such magnanimous recantations
as those of His apostles! When we consider from whom Mary’s defense proceeds, we
must be satisfied that it was not merely generous, but just. And yet surely it
is a defense of a most surprising character! Verily it seems as if, while the
disciples went to one extreme in blaming, their Lord went to the other extreme
in praising; as if, in so lauding the woman of Bethany, He were but repeating
her extravagance in another form. You feel tempted to ask: Was her action, then,
so preeminently meritorious as to deserve to be associated with the gospel
throughout all time? Then, as to the explanation of the action given by Jesus,
the further questions suggest themselves: Was there really any reference in
Mary’s mind to His death and burial while she was performing it? Does not Jesus
rather impute to her His own feeling, and invest her act with an ideal poetic
significance, which lay not in it, but in His own thoughts? And if so, can we
endorse the judgment He pronounced; or must we, on the question as to the
intrinsic merit of Mary’s act, give our vote on the side of the twelve against
their Master?

We, for our part, cordially take Christ’s side of the question; and in doing so,
we can afford to make two admissions. In the first place, we admit that Mary had
no thought of embalming, in the literal sense, the dead body of Jesus, and
possibly was not thinking of His death at all when she anointed Him with the
precious ointment. Her action was simply a festive honor done to one whom she
loved unspeakably, and which she might have rendered at another time. We admit
further, that it would certainly have been an extravagance to speak of Mary’s
deed, however noble, as entitled to be associated with the gospel everywhere and
throughout all time, unless it were fit to be spoken of not merely for her sake,
but more especially for the gospel’s sake; that is to say, unless it were
capable of being made use of to expound the nature of the gospel. In other
words, the breaking of the alabaster box must be worthy to be employed as an
emblem of the deed of love performed by Jesus in dying on the cross.

Such, indeed, we believe it to be. Wherever the gospel is truly preached, the
story of the anointing is sure to be prized as the best possible illustration of
the spirit which moved Jesus to lay down His life, as also of the spirit of
Christianity as it manifests itself in the lives of sincere believers. The
breaking of the alabaster box is a beautiful symbol at once of Christ’s love to
us and of the love we owe to Him. As Mary broke her box of ointment and poured
forth its precious contents, so Christ broke His body and shed His precious
blood; so Christians pour forth their hearts before their Lord, counting not
their very lives dear for His sake. Christ’s death was a breaking of an
alabaster box for us; our life should be a breaking of an alabaster box for Him.
This relation of spiritual affinity between the deed of Mary and His own deed in
dying is the true key to all that is enigmatical in the language of Jesus in
speaking of the former. It explains, for example, the remarkable manner in which
He referred to the gospel in connection therewith. “This gospel,” He said, as if
it had been already spoken of; nay, as if the act of anointing were the gospel.
And so it was in a figure. The one act already done by Mary naturally suggested
to the mind of Jesus the other act about to be done by Himself. “There,” He
thought within Himself, “in that broken vessel and outpoured oil is my death
foreshadowed; in the hidden motive from which that deed proceeded is the eternal
spirit in which I offer myself a sacrifice revealed.” This thought He meant to
express when He used the phrase “this gospel;” and in putting such a
construction on Mary’s deed He was in effect giving His disciples their third
lesson on the doctrine of the cross. In the light of this same relation of
spiritual affinity, we clearly perceive the true meaning of the statement made
by Jesus concerning Mary’s act: “In that she hath poured this ointment on my
body, she did it for my burial.” It was a mystic, poetic explanation of a most
poetic deed, and as such was not only beautiful, but true. For the anointing in
Bethany has helped to preserve, to embalm so to speak, the true meaning of the
Saviour’s death. It has supplied us with a symbolic act through which to
understand that death; it has shed around the cross an imperishable aroma of
self forgetting love; it has decked the Saviour’s grave with flowers that never
shall wither, and reared for Jesus, as well as for Mary, a memorial-stone that
shall endure throughout all generations. Might it not be fitly said of such a
deed, She did it for my burial? Was it not most unfitly said of a deed capable
of rendering so important a service to the gospel, that it was wasteful and
useless?

These questions will be answered in the affirmative by all who are convinced
that the spiritual affinity asserted by us really did exist. What we have now to
do, therefore, is to show, by going a little into detail, that our assertion is
well founded.

There are three outstanding points of resemblance between Mary’s “good work” in
anointing Jesus, and the good work wrought by Jesus Himself in dying on the
cross.

There was first a resemblance in motive. Mary wrought her good work out of pure
love. She loved Jesus with her whole heart, for what He was, for what He had
done for the family to which she belonged, and for the words of instruction she
had heard from His lips when He came on a visit to their house. There was such a
love in her heart for her friend and benefactor as imperatively demanded
expression, and yet could not find expression in words. She must do something to
relieve her pent-up emotions: she must get an alabaster box and break it, and
pour it on the person of Jesus, else her heart will break.

Herein Mary’s act resembles closely that of Jesus in dying on the cross, and in
coming to this world that He might die. For just such a love as that of Mary,
only far deeper and stronger, moved Him to sacrifice Himself for us. The simple
account of Christ’s whole conduct in becoming man, and undergoing what is
recorded of Him, is this: He loved sinners. After wearying themselves in
studying the philosophy of redemption, learned theologians come back to this as
the most satisfactory explanation that can be given. Jesus so loved sinners as
to lay down His life for them; nay, we might almost say, He so loved them that
He must needs come and die for them. Like Nehemiah, the Jewish patriot in the
court of the Persian king, He could not stay in heaven’s court while His
brethren far away on earth were in an evil case; He must ask and obtain leave to
go down to their assistance. Or, like Mary, He must procure an alabaster box-a
human body-fill it with the fine essence of a human soul, and pour out His soul
unto death on the cross for our salvation. The spirit of Jesus, yea, the spirit
of the Eternal God, is the spirit of Mary and of Nehemiah, and of all who are
likeminded with them. In reverence we ought rather to say, the spirit of such is
the spirit of Jesus and of God; and yet it is needful at times to put the matter
in the inverse way. For somehow we are slow to believe that love is a reality
for God. We almost shrink, as if it were an impiety, from ascribing to the
Divine Being attributes which we confess to be the noblest and most heroic in
human character. Hence the practical value of the sanction here given by Jesus
to the association of the anointing in Bethany with the crucifixion on Calvary.
He, in effect, says to us thereby: Be not afraid to regard my death as an act of
the same kind as that of Mary: an act of pure, devoted love. Let the aroma of
her ointment circulate about the neighborhood of my cross, and help you to
discern the sweet savor of my sacrifice. Amid all your speculations and theories
on the grand theme of redemption, take heed that ye fail not to see in my death
my loving heart, and the loving heart of my Father, revealed.

Mary’s “good work” further resembled Christ’s in its self-sacrificing character.
It was not without an effort and a sacrifice that that devoted woman performed
her famous act of homage. All the evangelists make particular mention of the
costliness of the ointment. Mark and John represent the murmuring disciples as
estimating its value at the round sum of three hundred pence; equal, say, to the
wages of a laboring man for a whole year at the then current rate of a denarius
per day. This was a large sum in itself; but what is more particularly to be
noted, it was a very large sum for Mary. This we learn from Christ’s own words,
as recorded by the second evangelist. “She hath done what she could,” He kindly
remarked of her, in defending her conduct against the harsh censures of His
disciples. It was a remark of the same kind as that which He made a day or two
after in Jerusalem concerning the poor widow whom He saw casting two mites into
the temple treasury; and it implied that Mary had expended all her resources on
that singular tribute of respect to Him whom her soul loved. All her earnings,
all her little hoard, had been given in exchange for that box, whose precious
contents she poured on the Saviour’s person. Hers was no ordinary love: it was a
noble, heroic, self-sacrificing devotion, which made her do her utmost for its
object.

Herein the woman of Bethany resembled the Son of man. He, too, did what He
could. Whatever it was possible for a holy being to endure in the way of
humiliation, temptation, sorrow, suffering, yea, even in the way of becoming
“sin” and “a curse,” He willingly underwent. All through His life on earth He
scrupulously abstained from doing aught that might tend to make his cup of
affliction come short of absolute fullness. He denied himself all the advantages
of divine power and privilege; He emptied Himself; He made Himself poor; He
became in all possible respects like His sinful brethren, that He might qualify
Himself for being a merciful and trustworthy High Priest to them in things
pertaining to God. Such sacrifices in life and death did His love impose on Him.

While imposing sacrifices, love, by way of compensation, makes them easy. It is
not only love’s destiny, but it is love’s delight, to endure hardships, to bear
burdens for the object loved. It is not satisfied till it has found an
opportunity of embodying itself in a service involving cost, labor, pain. The
things from which selfishness shrinks love ardently longs for. These
reflections, we believe, are applicable to Mary. With her love to Jesus, it was
more easy for her to do what she did than to refrain from doing it. But love’s
readiness and eagerness to sacrifice herself are most signally exemplified in
the case of Jesus Himself. It was indeed His pleasure to suffer for our
redemption. Far from shrinking from the cross, He looked forward to it with
earnest desire; and when the hour of His passion approached, He spoke of it as
the hour of His glorification. He had no thought of achieving our salvation at
the smallest possible cost to Himself. His feeling was rather akin to this: “The
more I suffer the better: the more thoroughly shall I realize my identity with
my brethren; the more completely will the sympathetic, burden-bearing,
help-bringing instincts and yearnings of my love be satisfied.” Yes: Jesus had
more to do than to purchase sinners for as small a price as would be accepted
for their ransom. He had to do justice to His own heart; He had adequately to
express its deep compassion; and no act of limited or calculated dimensions
would avail to exhaust the contents of that whose dimensions were immeasurable.
Measured suffering, especially when endured by so august a personage, might
satisfy divine justice, but it could not satisfy divine love. A third feature
which fitted Mary’s “good work” to be an emblem of the Saviour’s, was its
magnificence. This also appeared in the expenditure connected with the act of
anointing, which was not only such as involved a sacrifice for a person of her
means, but very liberal with reference to the purpose in hand. The quantity of
oil employed in the service was, according to John, not less than a pound
weight. This was much more than could be said to be necessary. There was an
appearance of waste and extravagance in the manner of the anointing, even
admitting the thing in itself to be right and proper. Whether the disciples
would have objected to the ceremony, however performed, does not appear; but it
was evidently the extravagant amount of ointment expended which was the
prominent object of their displeasure. We conceive them as saying in effect:
“Surely less might have done; the greater part at least, if not the whole of
this anointment, might have been saved for other uses. This is simply senseless,
prodigal expenditure.”

What to the narrow-hearted disciples seemed prodigality was but the princely
magnificence of love, which, as even a heathen philosopher could tell, considers
not for how much or how little this or that can be done, but how it can be done
most gracefully and handsomely. And what seemed to them purposeless waste served
at least one good purpose. It symbolized a similar characteristic of Christ’s
good work as the Saviour of sinners. He did His work magnificently, and in no
mean, economical way. He accomplished the redemption of “many” by means adequate
to redeem all. “With Him is plenteous redemption.” He did not measure out His
blood in proportion to the number to be saved, nor limit His sympathies as the
sinner’s friend to the elect. He shed bitter tears for doomed souls; He shed His
blood without measure, and without respect to numbers, and offered an atonement
which was sufficient for the sins of the world. Nor was this attribute of
universal sufficiency attaching to His atoning work one to which He was
indifferent. On the contrary, it appears to have been in His thoughts at the
very moment He uttered the words authorizing the association of Mary’s deed of
love with the gospel. For He speaks of that gospel, which was to consist in the
proclamation of His deed of love in dying for sinners, as a gospel for the whole
world; evidently desiring that, as the odor of Mary’s ointment filled the room
in which the guests were assembled, so the aroma of His sacrifice might be
diffused as an atmosphere of saving health among all the nations.

We may say, therefore, that in defending Mary against the charge of waste, Jesus
was at the same time defending Himself; replying by anticipation to such
questions as these: To what purpose weep over doomed Jerusalem? why sorrow for
souls that are after all to perish? why trouble Himself about men not elected to
salvation? why command His gospel to be preached to every creature, with an
emphasis which seems to say He wishes every one saved, when He knows only a
definite number will believe the report? why not confine His sympathies and His
solicitudes to those who shall be effectually benefited by them? why not
restrict His love to the channel of the covenant? why allow it to overflow the
embankments like a river in full flood?

Such questions betray ignorance of the conditions under which even the elect are
saved. Christ could not save any unless He were heartily willing to save all,
for that willingness is a part of the perfect righteousness which it behoved Him
to fulfill. The sum of duty is, Love God supremely, and thy neighbor as thyself;
and “neighbor” means, for Christ as for us, every one who needs help, and whom
He can help. But not to dwell on this, we remark that such questions show
ignorance of the nature of love. Magnificence, misnamed by churls extravagance
and waste, is an invariable attribute of all true love. David recognized this
truth when he selected the profuse anointing of Aaron with the oil of
consecration at his installation into the office of high priest as a fit emblem
of brotherly love. There was “waste” in that anointing too, as well as in the
one which took place at Bethany. For the oil was not sprinkled on the head of
Aaron, though that might have been sufficient for the purpose of a mere
ceremony. The vessel was emptied on the high priest’s person, so that its
contents flowed down from the head upon the beard, and even to the skirts of the
sacerdotal robes. In that very waste lay the point of the resemblance for David.
It was a feature that was likely to strike his mind, for he, too, was a wasteful
man in his way. He had loved God in a manner which exposed him to the charge of
extravagance. He had danced before the Lord, for example, when the ark was
brought up from the house of Obededom to Jerusalem, forgetful of his dignity,
exceeding the bounds of decorum, and, as it might seem, without excuse, as a
much less hearty demonstration of his feelings would have served the purpose of
a religious solemnity.

David, Mary, Jesus, all loving, devoted beings, prophets, apostles, martyrs,
confessors, belong to one company, and come all under one condemnation. They
must all plead guilty to a waste of affection, sorrow, labor, tears; all live so
as to earn for themselves the blame of extravagance, which is their highest
praise. David dances, and Michal sneers; prophets break their hearts for their
people’s sins and miseries, and the people make sport of their grief; Marys
break their alabaster boxes, and frigid disciples object to the waste; men of
God sacrifice their all for their religious convictions, and the world calls
them fools for their pains, and philosophers bid them beware of being martyrs by
mistake; Jesus weeps over sinners that will not come to Him to be saved, and
thankless men ask, Why shed tears over vessels of wrath fitted for destruction?

We have thus seen that Mary’s good deed was a fit and worthy emblem of the good
deed of Jesus Christ in dying on the cross. We are now to show that Mary herself
is in some important respects worthy to be spoken of as a model Christian. Three
features in her character entitle her to this honorable name.

First among these is her enthusiastic attachment to the person of Christ. The
most prominent feature in Mary’s character was her power of loving, her capacity
of self devotion. It was this virtue, as manifested in her action, that elicited
the admiration of Jesus. He was so delighted with the chivalrous deed of love,
that He, so to speak, canonized Mary on the spot, as a king might confer
knighthood on the battlefield on a soldier who had performed some noble feat of
arms. “Behold,” He said in effect, “here is what I understand by Christianity:
an unselfish and uncalculating devotion to me as the Saviour of sinners, and as
the Sovereign of the kingdom of truth and righteousness. Therefore, wherever the
gospel is preached, let this that this woman heath done be spoken of, not merely
as a memorial of her, but to intimate what I expect of all who believe in me.”
In so commending Mary, Jesus gives us to understand in effect that devotion is
the chief of Christian virtues. He proclaims the same doctrine afterwards taught
by one who, though last, was the first of all the apostles in his comprehension
of the mind of Christ-the Apostle Paul. That glowing panegyric on charity, so
well known to all readers of his epistles, in which he makes eloquence,
knowledge, faith, the gift of tongues, and the gift of prophecy, do obeisance to
her, as the sovereign virtue, is but the faithful interpretation in general
terms of the encomium pronounced on the woman of Bethany. The story of the
anointing and the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians may
be read with advantage together. In making love the test and measure of
excellence, Jesus and Paul, and the rest of the apostles (for they all shared
the Master’s mind at last), differ widely from the world religious and
Chorologies. Pharisees and Sadducees, scrupulous religionists, and unscrupulous
men of no religion, agree in disliking ardent, enthusiastic, chivalrous
devotion, even in the most noble cause. They are wise and prudent, and their
philosophy might be embodied in such maxims as these: “Be not too catholic in
your sentiments, too warm in your sympathies, too keen in your sense of duty;
never allow your heart to get the better of your head, or your principles to
interfere with your interest.” So widely diffused is the dislike to earnestness,
especially in good, that all nations have their proverbs against enthusiasm. The
Greeks had their mhden a!gan, the Latins their ne quid nimis; expressing
skepticism in proverb-maker and proverb-quoter as to the possibility of wisdom
being enthusiastic about any thing. The world is prosaic, not poetic, in
temperament-prudential, not impulsive: it abhors eccentricity in good or in
evil; it prefers a dead level of mediocrity, moderation, and self-possession;
its model man is one who never forgets himself, either by sinking below himself
in folly or wickedness, or by rising above himself, and getting rid of meanness,
pride, selfishness, cowardice, and vanity in devotion to a noble cause. The
twelve were like the world in their temperament at the time of the anointing:
they seem to have regarded Mary as a romantic, quixotic, crazy creature, and her
action as absurd and indefensible. They objected not, of course, to her love of
Jesus; but they deemed the manner of its manifestation foolish, as the money
spent on the ointment might have been applied to a better purpose-say, to the
relief of the destitute-and Jesus loved nothing the less, seeing that, according
to His own teaching, all philanthropic actions were deeds of kindness to
Himself. And, on first thoughts, one is half inclined to say that they had
reason on their side, and were far wiser, while not less devoted to Jesus than
Mary. But look at their behavior on the day of their Lord’s crucifixion, and
learn the difference between them and her. Mary loved so ardently as to be
beyond calculations of consequences or expenses; they loved so coldly, that
there was room for fear in their hearts: therefore, while Mary spent her all on
the ointment, they all forsook their Master, and fled to save their own lives.
Whence we can see that, despite occasional extravagances, apparent or real, that
spirit is wisest as well as noblest which makes us incapable of calculation, and
proof against temptations arising therefrom. One rash, blundering, but heroic
Luther is worth a thousand men of the Erasmus type, unspeakably wise, but cold,
passionless, timid, and time-serving. Scholarship is great, but action is
greater; and the power to do noble actions comes from love.

How great is the devoted Mary compared with the coldhearted disciples! She does
noble deeds, and they criticize them. Poor work for a human being, criticism,
especially the sort that abounds in fault-finding! Love does not care for such
occupation; it is too petty for her generous mind. If there be room for praise,
she will give that in unstinted measure; but rather than carp and blame, she
prefers to be silent. Then observe again how love in Mary becomes a substitute
for prescience. She does not know that Jesus is about to die, but she acts as if
she did. Such as Mary can divine; the instincts of love, the inspiration of the
God of love, teach them to do the right thing at the right time, which is the
very highest attainment of true wisdom. On the other hand, we see in the case of
the disciples how coldness of heart consumes knowledge and makes men stupid.
They had received far more information than Mary concerning the future. If they
did not know that Jesus was about to be put to death, they ought to have known
from the many hints and even plain intimations which had been given them. But,
alas! they had forgot all these. And why? For the same reason which makes all
men so forgetful of things pertaining to their neighbors. The twelve were too
much taken up with their own affairs. Their heads were filled with vain dreams
of worldly ambition, and so their Master’s words were forgotten almost as soon
as they were uttered, and it became needful that He should tell them
pathetically and reproachfully: “The poor ye have always with you, but me ye
have not always.” Men so minded never understand the times, so as to know what
Israel ought to do, or to approve the conduct of those who do know. A second
admirable feature in Mary’s character was the freedom of her spirit. She was not
tied down to methods and rules of well-doing. The disciples, judging from their
language, seem to have been great methodists, servile in their adherence to
certain stereotyped modes of action. “This ointment,” said they, “might have
been sold for much, and given to the poor.” They understand that charity to the
poor is a very important duty: they know that their Master often referred to it;
and they make it every thing. “Charity,” in the sense of almsgiving, is their
hobby. When Judas went out to betray his Lord, they fancied that he was gone to
distribute what remained of the supper among some poor persons of his
acquaintance. Their very ideas of well-doing appear to be method-ridden. Good
works with them do not seem to be co-extensive with noble deeds of all sorts.
The phrase is technical, and limited in its application to a confined circle of
actions of an expressly and obviously religious and benevolent nature. Not so
with Mary. She knows of more ways of doing good than one. She can invent ways of
her own. She is original, creative, not slavishly imitative. And she is as
fearless as she is original. She cannot only imagine forms of well-doing out of
the beaten track, but she has the courage to realize her conceptions. She is not
afraid of the public. She does not ask beforehand, What will the twelve think of
this? With a free mind she forms her plan, and with prompt, free hand she
forthwith executes it. For this freedom Mary was indebted to her large heart.
Love made her original in thought and conduct. People without heart cannot be
original as she was. They may addict themselves to good works from one motive or
another; but they go about them in a very slavish, mechanical way. They have to
be told by some individual in whom they confide, or more commonly, by custom or
fashion, what to do; and hence they never do any good which is not in vogue. But
Mary needed no counselor: she took counsel of her own heart. Love told her
infallibly what was the duty of the hour; that her business for the present was
not to give alms, but to anoint the person of the great High Priest.

We may learn from the example of Mary that love is, not less than necessity, the
mother of invention. A great heart has fully as much to do with spiritual
originality as a clever head. What is needed to fill the church with original
preachers, original givers, original actors in all departments of Christian
work, is not more brains, or more training, or more opportunities, but above
all, more heart. When there is little love in the Christian community, it
resembles a river in dry weather, which not only keeps within its banks, but
does not even occupy the whole of its channel, leaving large beds of gravel or
sand lying high and dry on both sides of the current. But when the love of God
is shed abroad in the hearts of her members, the church becomes like the same
river in time of rain. The stream begins to rise, all the gravel beds gradually
disappear, and at length the swollen flood not only fills its channel, but
overflows its banks, and spreads over the meadows. New methods of well-doing are
then attempted, and new measures of well-doing reached; new songs are indited
and sung; new forms of expression for old truths are invented, not for the sake
of novelty, but in the creative might of a new spiritual life.

It was love that made Mary free from fear, as well as from the bondage of
mechanical custom. “Love,” saith one who knew love’s power well, “casteth out
fear.” Love can make even shrinking, sensitive women bold-bolder even than men.
It can teach us to disregard that thing called public opinion, before which all
mankind cowers. It was love that made Peter and John so bold when they stood
before the Sanhedrin. They had been with Jesus long enough to love Him more than
their own life, and therefore they quailed not before the face of the mighty. It
was love that made Jesus Himself so indifferent to censure, and so disregardful
of conventional restraints in the prosecution of His work. His heart was so
devoted to His philanthropic mission, that He set at defiance the world’s
disapprobation; nay, probably did not so much as think of it, except when it
obtruded itself upon His notice. And what love did for Mary, and for Jesus, and
for the apostles in after days, it does for all. Wherever it exists in liberal
measure, it banishes timidity and shyness, and the imbecility which accompanies
these, and brings along with it power of character and soundness of mind. And to
crown the encomium, we may add, that while it makes us bold, love does not make
us impudent. Some men are bold because they are too selfish to care for other
people’s feelings. Those who are bold through love may dare to do things which
will be found fault with; but they are always anxious, as far as possible, to
please their neighbors, and to avoid giving offence.

One remark more let us make under this head. The liberty which springs from love
can never be dangerous. In these days many people are greatly alarmed at the
progress of broad school theology. And of the breadth that consists in skeptical
indifference to catholic Christian truth we do well to be jealous. But, on the
other hand, of the breadth and freedom due to consuming love for Christ, and all
the grand interests of His kingdom, we cannot have too much. The spirit of
charity may indeed treat as comparatively light matters, things which men of
austere mind deem of almost vital importance, and may be disposed to do things
which men more enamored of order and use and wont than of freedom may consider
licentious innovations. But the harm done will be imaginary rather than real;
and even if it were otherwise, the impulsive Marys are never so numerous in the
church that they may not safely be tolerated. There are always a sufficient
number of prosaic, order-loving disciples to keep their quixotic brethren in due
check.

Finally, the nobility of Mary’s spirit was not less remarkable than its freedom.
There was no taint of vulgar utilitarianism about her character. She thought
habitually, not of the immediately, obviously, and materially useful, but of the
honorable, the lovely, the morally beautiful. Hard, practical men might have
pronounced her a romantic, sentimental, dreamy mystic; but a more just,
appreciative estimate would represent her as a woman whose virtues were heroic
and chivalrous rather than commercial. Jesus signalized the salient point in
Mary’s character by the epithet which He employed to describe her action. He did
not call it a useful work, but a good, or, better still, a noble work. And yet,
while Mary’s deed was characteristically noble, it was not the less useful. All
good deeds are useful in some way and at some time or other. All noble and
beautiful things-thoughts, words, deeds-contribute ultimately to the benefit of
the world. Only the uses of such deeds as Mary’s-of the best and noblest
needs-are not always apparent or appreciable. If we were to make immediate,
obvious, and vulgar uses the test of what is right, we should exclude not only
the anointing in Bethany, but all fine poems and works of art, all sacrifices of
material advantage to truth and duty; every thing, in fact, that has not tended
directly to increase outward wealth and comfort, but has merely helped to redeem
the world from vulgarity, given us glimpses of the far-off land of beauty and
goodness, concerning which we now and then but faintly dream, brought us into
contact with the divine and the eternal, made the earth classic ground, a field
where heroes have fought, and where their bones are buried, and where the
moss-grown stone stands to commemorate their valor. In this nobility of spirit
Mary was pre-eminently the Christian. For the genius of Christianity is
certainly not utilitarian. Its counsel is: “Whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are venerable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, think of these things.” All these things
are emphatically useful; but it is not of their utility, but of themselves, we
are asked to think, and that for a very good reason. Precisely in order to be
useful, we must aim at something higher than usefulness; just as, in order to be
happy, we must aim at something higher than happiness. We must make right
revealed to us by an enlightened conscience and a loving pure heart our rule of
duty, and then we may be sure that uses of all kinds will be served by our
conduct, whether we foresee them or not; whereas, if we make calculations of
utility our guide in action, we shall leave undone the things which are noblest
and best, because as a rule the uses of such things are least obvious, and
longest in making their appearance. Supremely useful to the world is the heroic
devotion of the martyr; but it takes centuries to develop the benefits of
martyrdom; and if all men had followed the maxims of utilitarian philosophy, and
made utility their motive to action, there would never have been any martyrs at
all. Utilitarianism tends to trimming and time-serving; it is the death of
heroism and self-sacrifice; it walks by sight, and not by faith; it looks only
to the present, and forgets the future; it seats prudence on the throne of
conscience; it produces not great characters, but at best petty busybodies.
These things being considered, it need not surprise us to find that the term
“usefulness,” of such frequent recurrence in the religious vocabulary of the
present day, has no place in the New Testament.

Four further observations may fitly close these meditations on the memorable
transactions in Bethany.

1. In all the attributes of character hitherto enumerated, Mary was a model of
genuinely evangelic piety. The evangelic spirit is a Spirit of noble love and
fearless liberty. It is a counterfeit evangelicism that is a slave to the past,
to tradition, to fixed customs and methods in religion. The true name for this
temper and tendency is legalism.

2. From Christ’s defense of Mary we may learn that being found fault with is not
infallible evidence of being wrong. A much-blamed man is commonly considered to
have done something amiss, as the only possible reason for his being censured.
But, in truth, he may only have done something unusual; for all unusual things
are found fault with-the unusually good as well as, nay, more than, the
unusually bad. Hence it comes that Paul makes the apparently superfluous remark,
that there is no law against love and its kindred graces. In point of fact,
these virtues are treated as if illegal and criminal whenever they exceed the
usual stinted niggard measure in which such precious metals are found in the
world. Was not He who perfectly embodied all the heavenly graces flung out of
existence by the world as a person not to be tolerated? Happily the world
ultimately comes round to a juster opinion, though often too late to be of
service to those who have suffered wrong. The barbarians of the island of Malta,
who, when they saw the viper fastened on Paul’s hand, thought he must needs be a
murderer, changed their minds when he shook off the reptile unharmed, and
exclaimed, “He is a god.” Hence we should learn this maxim of prudence, not to
be too hasty in criticizing if we want to have credit for insight and
consistency. But we should discipline ourselves to slowness in judging from far
higher considerations. We ought to cherish a reverence for the character and for
the personality of all intelligent responsible beings, and to be under a
constant fear of making mistakes, and calling good evil, and evil good. In the
words of an ancient philosopher, “We ought always to be very careful when about
to blame or praise a man, lest we speak not rightly. For this purpose it is
necessary to learn to discriminate between good and bad men. For God is
displeased when one blames a person like Himself, or praises one unlike Himself.
Do not imagine that stones and sticks, and birds and serpents, are holy, and
that men are not. For of all things the holiest is a good man, and the most
detestable a bad.”

3. If we cannot be Christians like Mary, let us at all events not be disciples
like Judas. Some may think it would not be desirable that all should be like the
woman of Bethany: plausibly alleging that, considering the infirmity of human
nature, it is necessary that the romantic, impulsive, mystic school of
Christians should be kept in check by another school of more prosaic,
conservative, and so to say, plebeian character; while perhaps admitting that a
few Christians like Mary in the church help to preserve religion from
degenerating into coarseness, vulgarity, and formalism. Be this as it may, the
church has certainly no need for Judases. Judas and Mary! these two represent
the two extremes of human character. The one exemplifies Plato’s pa)ntwn
marw)taton (hatefullest of all things), the other his pa)ntwn i(erw)taton
(holiest of all things). Characters so diverse compel us to believe in a heaven
and a hell. Each one goeth to his and her own place: Mary to the land of the
real; Judas to the land of the false, who sell their conscience and their God
for gold.

4. It is worthy of notice how naturally and appropriately Jesus, in His
magnanimous defense of Mary’s generous, large-hearted deed, rises to the full
height of prophetic prescience, and anticipates for His gospel a world-wide
diffusion: “Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world.” Such
a gospel could be nothing less than world-wide in sympathy, and no one who
understood it and its Author could fail to have a burning desire to go into all
the world and preach it unto every creature. This universalistic touch in
Christ’s utterance at this time, far from taking us by surprise, rather seems a
matter of course. Even critics of the naturalistic school allow its genuineness.
“This word in Bethany,” says one of the ablest writers on the Gospel history
belonging to this school, “is the solitary quite reliable word of the last
period of Christ’s life concerning the world-wide career which Jesus saw opening
up for Himself and His cause.” If therefore the twelve remained narrow Judaists
to the end, it was not due to the absence of the universalistic element in their
Master’s teaching, but simply to this, that they remained permanently as
incapable of appreciating Mary’s act, and the gospel whereof it was an emblem,
as they showed themselves at this time. That they did so continue, however, we
do not believe; and the best evidence of this is that the story of Mary of
Bethany has attained a place in the evangelic records.


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  CHAPTER 55: 02.19.     FIRSTFRUITS OF THE GENTILES
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Firstfruits of the Gentiles

John 12:20-23 This narrative presents interesting points of affinity with that
contained in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel-the story of the woman by the
well. In both Jesus comes into contact with persons outside the pale of the
Jewish church; in both He takes occasion from such contact to speak in glowing
language of an hour that is coming, yea, now is, which shall usher in a glorious
new era for the kingdom of God; in both He expresses, in the most intense,
emphatic terms, His devotion to His Father’s will, His faith in the future
spread of the gospel, and His lively hope of a personal reward in glory; in
both, to note yet one other point of resemblance, He employs, for the expression
of His thought, agricultural metaphors: in one case, the earlier, borrowing His
figure from the process of reaping; in the other, the later, from that of
sowing.

But, besides resemblances, marked differences are observable in these two
passages from the life of the Lord Jesus. Of these the most outstanding is this,
that while on the earlier occasion there was nothing but enthusiasm, joy, and
hope in the Saviour’s breast, on the present occasion these feelings are blended
with deep sadness. His soul is not only elated with the prospect of coming
glory, but troubled as with the prospect of impending disaster. The reason is
that His death is nigh: it is within three days of the time when He must be
lifted up on the cross; and sentient nature shrinks from the bitter Cut of
suffering. But while we observe the presence of a new emotion here, we also see
that its presence produces no abatement in the old emotions manifested by Jesus
in connection with His interview with the woman of Samaria. On the contrary, the
near prospect of death only furnishes the Saviour with the means of giving
enhanced intensity to the expression of His devotion and His faith and hope.
Formerly He said that the doing of His Father’s will was more to Him than meat;
now He says in effect that it is more to Him than life. At the beginning He had
seen by the eye of faith a vast extent of fields, white already to the harvest,
in the wide wilderness of Gentile lands; now He not only continues to see these
fields in spite of His approaching passion, but He sees them as the effect
thereof-a whole world of golden grain growing out of one corn of wheat cast into
the ground, and rendered fruitful of life by its own death. At the well of
Sychar He had spoken with lively hope of the wages in store for Himself, and all
fellow-laborers in the kingdom of God, whether sowers or reapers; here death is
swallowed up in victory, through the power of His hope. To suffer is to enter
into glory; to be lifted up on the cross is to be exalted to heaven, and seated
on the throne of a world-wide dominion. The men who desired to see Jesus while
He stood in one of the courts of the temple were, the evangelist informs us,
Greeks. Whence they came, whether from east or from west, or from north or from
south, we know not; but they were evidently bent on entering into the kingdom of
God. They had got so far on the way to the kingdom already. The presumption, at
least, is that they had left Paganism behind, and had embraced the faith of One
living, true God, as taught by the Jews, and were come at this time up to
Jerusalem to worship at the Passover as Jewish proselytes. But they had not, it
would seem, found rest to their souls: there was something more to be known
about God which was still hid from them. This they hoped to learn from Jesus,
with whose name and fame they had somehow become acquainted. Accordingly, an
opportunity presenting itself to them of communicating with one of those who
belonged to His company, they respectfully expressed to him their desire to meet
his Master. “Sir,” said they, “we would see Jesus.” In themselves the words
might be nothing more than the expression of a curious wish to get a passing
glimpse of one who was understood to be a remarkable man. Such an interpretation
of the request, however, is excluded by the deep emotion it awakened in the
breast of Jesus. Idle curiosity would not have stirred His soul in such a
fashion. Then the notion that these Greeks were merely curious strangers is
entirely inconsistent with the connection in which the story is introduced. John
brings in the present narrative immediately after quoting a reflection made by
the Pharisees respecting the popularity accruing to Jesus from the resurrection
of Lazarus. “Perceive ye,” said they to each other, “how ye prevail nothing?
Behold, the world has gone after Him.” “Yes, indeed,” rejoins the evangelist in
effect, “and that to an extent of which ye do not dream. He whom ye hate is
beginning to be inquired after, even by Gentiles from afar, as the following
history will show.”

We do right, then, to regard the Greek strangers as earnest inquirers. They were
true seekers after God. They were genuine spiritual descendants of their
illustrious countrymen Socrates and Plato, whose utterances, written or
unwritten, were one long prayer for light and truth, one deep unconscious sigh
for a sight of Jesus. They wanted to see the Saviour, not with the eye of the
body merely, but, above all, with the eye of the spirit. The part played by the
two disciples named in the narrative, in connection with this memorable
incident, claims a brief notice. Philip and Andrew had the honor to be the
medium of communication between the representatives of the Gentile world and Him
who had come to fulfill the desire and be the Saviour of all nations. The devout
Greeks addressed themselves to the former of these two disciples, and he in turn
took his brother-disciple into his counsels. How Philip came to be selected as
the bearer of their request by these Gentile inquirers, we do not know.
Reference has been made to the fact that the name Philip is Greek, as implying
the probability that the disciple who bore it had Greek connections, and the
possibility of a previous acquaintance between him and the persons who accosted
him on this occasion. There may be something in these conjectures, but it is
more important to remark that the Greeks were happy in their choice of an
intercessor. Philip was himself an inquirer, and had an inquirer’s sympathy with
all who might be in a similar state of mind. The first time he is named in the
Gospel history he is introduced expressing his faith in Jesus, as one who had
carefully sought the truth, and who, having at length found what he sought,
strove to make others partakers of the blessing. “Philip findeth Nathanael, and
saith unto him, We have found Him of whom Moses, in the law and the prophets,
did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” The exactness and fullness of
this confession speaks to careful and conscientious search. And Philip has still
the inquirer’s temper. A day or two subsequent to this meeting with the Greeks,
we find him making for himself the most important request: “Lord, show us the
Father, and it sufficeth us.” But why, then, does this sympathetic disciple not
convey the request of the Greeks direct to Jesus? Why take Andrew with him, as
if afraid to go alone on such an errand? Just because the petitioners are Greeks
and Gentiles. It is one thing to introduce a devout Jew like Nathanael to Jesus,
quite another to introduce Gentiles, however devout. Philip is pleased that his
Master should be inquired after in such a quarter, but he is not sure about the
propriety of acting on his first impulse. He hesitates, and is in a flurry of
excitement in presence of what he feels to be a new thing, a significant event,
the beginning of a religious revolution. His inclination is to play the part of
an intercessor for the Greeks; but he distrusts his own judgment, and, before
acting on it, lays the case before his brother-disciple and fellow-townsman
Andrew, to see how it will strike him. The result of the consultation was, that
the two disciples came and told their Master. They felt that they were perfectly
safe in mentioning the matter to Him, and then leaving Him to do as He pleased.
From the narrative of the evangelist we learn that the communication of the two
disciples mightily stirred the soul of Jesus. Manifestations of spiritual
susceptibility, by persons who were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, did
always greatly move His feelings. The open-mindedness of the people of Sychar,
the simple faith of the Roman centurion, the quick-witted faith of the
Syro-Phoenician woman, the gratitude of the Samaritan leper, touched Him
profoundly. Such exhibitions of spiritual life in unexpected quarters came upon
His spirit like breezes on an Aeolian harp, drawing forth from it sweetest tones
of faith, hope, joy, charity; and, alas! also sometimes sad, plaintive tones of
disappointment and sorrow, like the sighing of the autumn wind among Scottish
pines, when He thought of the unbelief and spiritual deadness of the chosen
people for whom He had done so much. Never was His heart more deeply affected
than on the present occasion. No marvel! What sight more moving than that of a
human being seeking after God, the fountain of light and of life! Then the
spontaneity of these Greek inquirers is beautiful. It is something to be
thankful for in this unspiritual, unbelieving world, when one and another, here
and there, responds to God’s call, and receives a divine word which has been
spoken to him. But here we have the rare spectacle of men coming uncalled: not
sought after by Christ, and accepting Him offering Himself to them as a Saviour
and Lord, but seeking Him, and begging it as a great favor to be admitted to His
presence, that they may offer Him their sincere homage, and hear Him speak words
of eternal life. They come, too, from a most unusual quarter; and, what is still
more worthy to be noticed, at a most critical time. Jesus is just about to be
conclusively rejected by His own people; just on the point of being crucified by
them. Some have shut their eyes, and stopped their ears, and hardened their
hearts in the most determined manner against Him and His teaching; others, not
insensible to His merits, have meanly and heartlessly concealed their
convictions, fearing the consequences of an open profession. The saying of the
Prophet Esaias has been fulfilled in His bitter experience, “Who hath believed
our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Pharisaism,
Sadduceeism, ignorance, indifference, fickleness, cowardice, have confronted Him
on every side. How refreshing, amidst abounding contradiction, stupidity, and
dull insusceptibility, this intimation brought to Him at the eleventh hour:
“Here are certain Greeks who are interested in you, and want to see you!” The
words fall on His ear like a strain of sweet music; the news is reviving to His
burdened spirit like the sight of a spring to a weary traveler in a sandy
desert; and in the fullness of His joy He exclaims: “The hour is come that the
Son of man should be glorified.” Rejected by His own people, He is consoled by
the inspiring assurance that He shall be believed on in the world, and accepted
by the outlying nations as all their salvation and all their desire. The
thoughts of Jesus at this time were as deep as His emotions were intense.
Specially remarkable is the first thought to which He gave utterance in these
words: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
He speaks here with the solemnity of one conscious that he is announcing a truth
new and strange to his hearers. His object is to make it credible and
comprehensible to His disciples, that death and increase may go together. He
points out to them that the fact is so in the case of grain; and He would have
them understand that the law of increase, not only in spite but in virtue of
death, will hold true equally in His own case. “A grain of wheat, by dying,
becometh fruitful; so I must die in order to become, on a large scale, an object
of faith and source of life. During my lifetime I have had little success. Few
have believed, many have disbelieved; and they are about to crown their unbelief
by putting me to death. But my death, so far from being, as they fancy, my
defeat and destruction, will be but the beginning of my glorification. After I
have been crucified, I shall begin to be believed in extensively as the Lord and
Saviour of men.”

Having by the analogy of the corn of wheat set forth death as the condition of
fruitfulness, Jesus, in a word subsequently spoken, proclaimed His approaching
crucifixion as the secret of His future power. “I,” said He, “if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” He used the expression “lifted up”
in a double sense-partly, as the evangelist informs us, in allusion to the
manner of His death, partly with reference to His ascension into heaven; and He
meant to say, that after He had been taken up into glory, He would, through His
cross, attract the eyes and hearts of men towards Himself. And, strange as such
a statement might appear before the event, the fact corresponded to the
Saviour’s expectation. The cross-symbol of shame!-did become a source of glory;
the sign of weakness became an instrument of moral power. Christ crucified,
though to unbelieving Jews a stumbling-block, and to philosophic Greeks
foolishness, became to many believers the power of God and the wisdom of God. By
His voluntary humiliation and meek endurance of suffering the Son of God drew
men to Him in sincerest faith, and devoted reverential love. The largeness of
Christ’s desires and expectations is very noteworthy. He speaks of “much fruit,”
and of drawing “all men” unto Him. Of course we are not to look here for an
exact definition of the extent of redemption. Jesus speaks as a man giving
utterance, in the fullness of his heart, to his high, holy hope; and we may
learn from His ardent words, if not the theological extent of atonement, at
least the extensiveness of the Atoner’s good wishes. He would have all men
believe in Him and be saved. He complained with deep melancholy of the fewness
of believers among the Jews; He turned with unspeakable longing to the Gentiles,
in hope of a better reception from them. The greater the number of believers at
any time and in any place, the better He is pleased; and He certainly does not
contemplate with indifference the vast amount of unbelief which still prevails
in all quarters of the world. His heart is set on the complete expulsion of the
prince of this world from his usurped dominion, that He Himself may reign over
all the kingdoms of the earth. The narrative contains a word of application
addressed by Jesus to His disciples in connection with the law of increase by
death, saying in effect that it applied to them as well as to Himself. This
appears at first surprising, insomuch that we are tempted to think that the
sayings alluded to are brought in here by the evangelist out of their true
historical connection. But on reconsideration we come to think otherwise. We
observe that in all cases, wherever it is possible, Christ in His teaching takes
His disciples into partnership with Himself. He does not insist on those aspects
of truth which are peculiar to Himself, but rather on those which are common to
Him with His followers. If there be any point of contact at all, any sense in
which what He states of Himself is true of those who believe in Him, He seizes
on that, and makes it a prominent topic of discourse. So He did on the occasion
of the meeting by the well; so when He first plainly announced to His disciples
that He was to be put to death. And so also He does here. Here, too, He asserts
a fellowship between Himself and His followers in respect to the necessity of
death as a condition of fruitfulness. And the fellowship asserted is not a
far-fetched conceit: it is a great practical reality. The principle laid down is
this, that in proportion as a man is a partaker of Christ’s suffering in His
estate of humiliation shall he be a partaker of the glory, honor, and power
which belong to His estate of exaltation. This principle holds true even in this
life. The bearing of the cross, the undergoing of death, is the condition of
fruit bearing both in the sense of personal sanctification and in the sense of
effective service in the kingdom of God. In the long-run the measure of a man’s
power is the extent to which he is baptized into Christ’s death. We must fill up
that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in our flesh for His body’s
sake, which is the church, if we would be the honored instruments of advancing
that great work in the world for which He was willing, like a corn of wheat, to
fall into the ground and die.

Striking as this saying is, it is not to be reckoned among those which contain a
distinct contribution to the doctrine of the cross. No new principle or view is
contained therein, only old views restated, the views taught in the first and
second lessons being combined-death a condition of life and of power. Even the
very original word concerning the corn of wheat shows us no new aspect of
Christ’s death, but only helps by a familiar analogy to understand how death can
be a means of increase. The main use of the foregoing chapter is to show us the
beginnings of that Christian universalism which Jesus anticipated in speaking of
Mary’s act of anointing, and to serve as a foil to the chapter that follows
concerning the doom of Jerusalem.


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  CHAPTER 56: 02.20.     O JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM!
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O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! or, Discourse On the Last Things

Mat 21:1-46; Mat 22:1-46; Mat 23:1-39; Mat 24:1-51; Mat 25:1-46; Mark 11:1-33;
Mark 12:1-44; Mark 13:1-37; Luk 19:29-48; Luk 20:1-47; Luk 21:1-38. The few days
intervening between the anointing and the Passover were spent by Jesus in daily
visits to Jerusalem in company with His disciples, returning to Bethany in the
evening. During that time He spoke much in public and in private, on themes
congenial to His feelings and situation: the sin of the Jewish nation, and
specially of its religious leaders; the doom of Jerusalem, and the end of the
world. The record of His sayings during these last days fills five chapters of
Matthew’s Gospel-a proof of the deep impressions which they made on the mind of
the twelve.

Prominent among these utterances, which together form the dying testimony of the
“Prophet of Nazareth,” stands the great philippic delivered by Him against the
scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem. This terrible discourse had been preceded by
various encounters between the speaker and His inverate foes, which were as the
preliminary skirmishes that form the prelude to a great engagement. In these
petty fights Jesus had been uniformly victorious, and had overwhelmed His
opponents with confusion. They had asked Him concerning His authority for taking
upon Him the office of a reformer, in clearing the temple precincts of traders;
and he had silenced them by asking in reply their opinion of John’s mission, and
by speaking in their hearing the parables of the Two Sons, the Vinedressers, and
the Rejected Stone, wherein their hypocrisy, unrighteousness, and ultimate
damnation were vividly depicted. They had tried to catch Him in a trap by an
ensnaring question concerning the tribute paid to the Roman government; and he
had extricated Himself with ease, by simply asking for a penny, and pointing to
the emperor’s head on it, demanding of His assailants, “Whose is this image and
superscription?” and on receiving the reply, “Caesar’s,” giving His judgment in
these terms: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and
unto God the things that are God’s.” Twice foiled, the Pharisees (with their
friends the Herodians) gave place to their usual foes, but present allies, the
Sadducees, who attempted to puzzle Jesus on the subject of the resurrection,
only to be ignominiously discomfited; whereupon the pharisaic brigade returned
to the charge, and through the mouth of a lawyer not yet wholly perverted
inquired, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” To this question Jesus
gave a direct and serious reply, summing up the whole law in love to God and
love to man, to the entire contentment of His interrogator. Then, impatient of
further trifling, He blew a trumpet-peal, the signal of a grand offensive
attack, by propounding the question, “What think ye of Christ, whose son is He?”
and taking occasion from the reply to quote the opening verse of David’s martial
psalm, asking them to reconcile it with their answer. In appearance fighting the
Pharisees with their own weapons, and framing a mere theological puzzle, He was
in reality reminding them who He was, and intimating to them the predicted doom
of those who set themselves against the Lord’s anointed.

Thereupon David’s Son and David’s Lord proceeded to fulfil the prophetic figure,
and to make a footstool of the men who sat in Moses’ seat, by delivering that
discourse in which, to change the figure, the Pharisee is placed in a moral
pillory, a mockery and a byword to all after ages; and a sentence is pronounced
on the pharisaic character inexorably severe, yet justified by fact, and
approved by the conscience of all true Christians. This anti-pharisaic speech
may be regarded as the final, decisive, comprehensive, dying testimony of Jesus
against the most deadly and damning form of evil prevailing in His age, or that
can prevail in any age-religious hypocrisy; and as such it forms a necessary
part of the Righteous One’s witness-bearing in behalf of the truth, to which His
disciples are expected to say Amen with no faltering voice. For the spirit of
moral resentment is as essential in Christian ethics as the spirit of mercy; nor
can any one who regards the anti-pharisaic polemic of the Gospel history as a
scandal to be ashamed of, or a blemish to be apologized for, or at least as a
thing which, however necessary at the time, propriety now requires us to treat
with neglect-a practice too common in the religious world-be cleared of the
suspicion of having more sympathy at heart with the men by whom the Lord was
crucified than with the Lord Himself. Blessed is he who is not ashamed of
Christ’s sternest words; who, far from stumbling at those bold prophetic
utterances, has rather found in them an aid to faith at the crisis of his
religious history, as evincing an identity between the moral sentiments of the
Founder of the faith and his own, and helping him to see that what he may have
mistaken for, and what claimed to be, Christianity, was not that at all, but
only a modern reproduction of a religious system which the Lord Jesus Christ
could not endure, or be on civil terms with. Yea, and blessed is the church
which sympathizes with, and practically gives effect to, Christ’s warning words
in the opening of this discourse against clerical ambition, the source of the
spiritual tyrannies and hypocrisies denounced. Every church needs to be on its
guard against this evil spirit. The government of the Jewish church,
theoretically theocratic, degenerated at last into rabbinism; and it is quite
possible for a church which has for its motto, “One is your Master, even
Christ,” to fall into a state of abject subjection to the power of ambitious
ecclesiastics.

Without for a moment admitting that there is any thing in these invectives
against hypocrisy to be apologized for, we must nevertheless advert to the view
taken of them by some recent critics of the sceptical school. These speeches,
then, we are told, are the rash, unqualified utterances of a young man, whose
spirit was unmellowed by years and experience of the world; whose temperament
was poetic, therefore irritable, impatient, and unpractical; and whose temper
was that of a Jew, morose, and prone to bitterness in controversy. At this time,
we are further to understand, provoked by persevering opposition, He had lost
self-possession, and had abandoned Himself to the violence of anger, His bad
humor having reached such a pitch as to make Him guilty of actions seemingly
absurd, such as that of cursing the fig-tree. He had, in fact, become reckless
of consequences, or even seemed to court such as were disastrous; and, weary of
conflict, sought by violent language to precipitate a crisis, and provoke His
enemies to put Him to death.

These are blasphemies against the Son of man as unfounded as they are injurious.
The last days of Jesus were certainly full of intense excitement, but to a
candid mind no traces of passion are discernible in His conduct. All His
recorded utterances during those days are in a high key, suited to one whose
soul was animated by the most sublime feelings. Every sentence is eloquent,
every word tells; but all throughout is natural, and appropriate to the
situation. Even when the terrible attack on the religious leaders of Israel
begins, we listen awestruck, but not shocked. We feel that the speaker has a
right to use such language, that what He says is true, and that all is said with
commanding authority and dignity, such as became the Messianic King. When the
speaker has come to an end, we breathe freely, sensible that a delicate though
necessary task has been performed with not less wisdom than fidelity. Deep and
undisguised abhorrence is expressed in every sentence, such as it would be
difficult for any ordinary man, yea, even for an extraordinary one, to cherish
without some admixture of that wrath which worketh not the righteousness of God.
But in the antipathies of a Divine Being the weakness of passion finds no place:
His abhorrence may be deep, but it is also ever calm; and we challenge
unbelievers to point out a single feature in this discourse inconsistent with
the hypothesis that the speaker is divine. Nay, leaving out of view Christ’s
divinity, and criticizing His words with a freedom unfettered by reverence, we
can see no traces in them of a man carried headlong by a tempest of anger. We
find, after strictest search, no loose expressions, no passionate exaggerations,
but rather a style remarkable for artistic precision and accuracy. The pictures
of the ostentatious, place-hunting, title-loving rabbi; of the hypocrite, who
makes long prayers and devours widows’ houses; of the zealot, who puts himself
to infinite trouble to make converts, only to make his converts worse rather
than better men; of the Jesuitical scribe, who teaches that the gold of the
temple is a more sacred, binding thing to swear by than the temple itself; of
the Pharisee, whose conscience is strict or lax as suits his convenience; of the
whited sepulchres, fair without, full within of dead men’s bones; of the men
whose piety manifests itself in murdering living prophets and garnishing the
sepulchres of dead ones-are moral daguerreotypes which will stand the minutest
inspection of criticism, drawn by no irritated, defeated man, feeling sorely and
resenting keenly the malice of his adversaries, but by one who has gained so
complete a victory, that He can make sport of His foes, and at all events runs
no risk of losing self-control. The aim of the discourse, equally with its
style, is a sufficient defense against the charge of bitter personality. The
direct object of the speaker was not to expose the blind guides of Israel, but
to save from delusion the people whom they were misguiding to their ruin. The
audience consisted of the disciples and the multitude who heard Him gladly. It
is most probable that many of the blind guides were present; and it would make
no difference to Jesus whether they were or not, for He had not two ways of
speaking concerning men-one before their faces, another behind their backs. It
is told of Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, and the determined opponent
of Philip of Macedon, that he completely broke down in that king’s presence on
the occasion of his first appearance before him as an ambassador from his native
city. But a greater than Demosthenes is here, whose sincerity and courage are as
marvelous as His wisdom and eloquence, and who can say all He thinks of the
religious heads of the people in their own hearing. Still, in the present
instance, the parties formally addressed were not the heads of the people, but
the people themselves; and it is worthy of notice how carefully discriminating
the speaker was in the counsel which He gave them. He told them that what He
objected to was not so much the teaching of their guides, as their lives: they
might follow all their precepts with comparative impunity, but it would be fatal
to follow their example. How many reformers in similar circumstances would have
joined doctrine and practice together in one indiscriminate denunciation! Such
moderation is not the attribute of a man in a rage. But the best clew of all to
the spirit of the speaker is the manner in which His discourse ends: “O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” Strange ending for one filled with angry passion! O
Jesus, Jesus! how Thou rises above the petty thoughts and feelings of ordinary
men! Who shall fathom the depths of Thy heart? What mighty waves of
righteousness, truth, pity, and sorrow roll through Thy bosom!

Having uttered that piercing cry of grief, Jesus left the temple, never, so far
as we know, to return. His last words to the people of Jerusalem were: “Behold,
your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me
henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the
Lord.” On the way from the city to Bethany, by the Mount of Olives, the rejected
Saviour again alluded to its coming doom. The light-hearted disciples had drawn
His attention to the strength and beauty of the temple buildings, then in full
view. In too sad and solemn a mood for admiring mere architecture, He replied in
the spirit of a prophet: “See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you,
There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown
down.”

Arrived at Mount Olivet, the company sat down to take a leisurely view of the
majestic pile of which they had been speaking. How different the thoughts and
feelings suggested by the same object to the minds of the spectators! The twelve
look with merely outward eye; their Master looks with the inward eye of
prophecy. They see nothing before them but the goodly stones; He sees the
profanation in the interior, greedy traders within the sacred precincts,
religion so vitiated by ostentation, as to make a poor widow casting her two
mites into the treasury, in pious simplicity, a rare and pleasing exception. The
disciples think of the present only; Jesus looks forward to an approaching doom,
fearful to contemplate, and doubtless backward too, over the long and checkered
history through which the once venerable, now polluted, house of God had passed.
The disciples are elated with pride as they gaze on this national structure, the
glory of their country, and are happy as thoughtless men are wont to be; the
heart of Jesus is heavy with the sadness of wisdom and prescience, and of love
that would have saved, but can now do nothing but weep, and proclaim the awful
words of doom.

Yet, with all their thoughtlessness, the twelve could not quite forget those
dark forebodings of their Master. The weird words haunted their minds, and made
them curious to know more. Therefore they came to Jesus, or some of them-Mark
mentions Peter, James, John, and Andrew-and asked two questions: when Jerusalem
should be destroyed; and what should be the signs of His coming, and of the end
of the world. The two events referred to in the questions-the end of Jerusalem,
and the end of the world-were assumed by the questioners to be contemporaneous.
It was a natural and by no means a singular mistake. Local and partial judgments
are wont to be thus mixed up with the universal one in men’s imaginations; and
hence almost every great calamity which inspires awe leads to anticipations of
the last day. Thus Luther, when his mind was clouded by the dark shadow of
present tribulation, would remark: “The world cannot stand long, perhaps a
hundred years at the outside. At the last will be great alterations and
commotions, and already there are great commotions among men. Never had the men
of law so much occupation as now. There are vehement dissensions in our
families, and discord in the church.” In apostolic times Christians expected the
immediate coming of Christ with such confidence and ardor, that some even
neglected their secular business, just as towards the close of the tenth century
people allowed churches to fall into disrepair because the end of the world was
deemed close at hand. In reality, the judgment of Jerusalem and that of the
world at large were to be separated by a long interval. Therefore Jesus treated
the two things as distinct in His prophetic discourse, and gave separate answers
to the two questions which the disciples had combined into one, that respecting
the end of the world being disposed of first. The answer He gave to this
question was general and negative. He did not fix a time, but said in effect:
“The end will not be till such and such things have taken place,” specifying six
antecedents of the end in succession, the first being the appearance of false
Christs. Of these He assured His disciples there would be many, deceiving many;
and most truly, for several quack Messiahs did appear even before the
destruction of Jerusalem, availing themselves of, and imposing on, the general
desire for deliverance, even as quack doctors do in reference to bodily
ailments, and succeeding in deceiving many, as unhappily in such times is only
too easy. But among the number of their dupes were found none of those who had
been previously instructed by the true Christ to regard the appearance of
pseudo-Christs merely as one of the signs of an evil time. The deceivers of
others were for them a preservative against delusion. The second antecedent is,
“wars and rumors of wars.” Nation must rise against nation: there must be times
of upheaving and dissolution; declines and falls of empires, and risings of new
kingdoms on the ruins of the old. This second sign would be accompanied by a
third, in the shape of commotions in the physical world, emblematic of those in
the political. Famines, earthquakes, pestilences, etc., would occur in divers
places.

Yet these things, however dreadful, would be but the beginning of sorrows; nor
would the end come till those signs had repeated themselves again and again. No
one could tell from the occurrence of such phenomena that the end would be now;
he could only infer that it was not yet.

Next in order come persecutions, with all the moral and social phenomena of
persecuting times. Christians must undergo a discipline of hatred among the
nations because of the Name they bear, and as the reputed authors of all the
disasters which befall the people among whom they live. Times must come when, if
the Tiber inundate Rome, if the Nile overflow not his fields, if drought,
earthquake, famine, or plague visit the earth, the cry of the populace will
forthwith be, “The Christians to the lions!”

Along with persecutions, as a fifth antecedent of the end, would come a sifting
of the church. Many would break down or turn traitors; there would spring up
manifold animosities, schisms, and heresies, each named from its own false
prophet. The prevalence of these evils in the church would give rise to much
spiritual declension. “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax
cold.” The last thing that must happen ere the end come is the evangelization of
the world; which being achieved, the end would at length arrive. From this sign
we may guess that the world will last a long while yet; for, according to the
law of historical probability, it will be long ere the gospel shall have been
preached to all men for a witness. Ardent Christians or enthusiastic students of
prophecy who think otherwise must remember that sending a few missionaries to a
heathen country does not satisfy the prescribed condition. The gospel has not
been preached to a nation for a witness, that is, so as to form a basis of moral
judgment, till it has been preached to the whole people as in Christendom. This
has never yet been done for all the nations, and at the present rate of progress
it is not likely to be accomplished for centuries to come.

Having rapidly sketched an outline of the events that must precede the end of
the world, Jesus addressed Himself to the more special question which related to
the destruction of Jerusalem. He could now speak on that subject with more
freedom, after He had guarded against the notion that the destruction of the
holy city was a sign of His own immediate final coming. “When, then,” He
began-the introductory formula signifying, to answer now your first question-“ye
shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in
the holy place, then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains;” the
abomination of desolation being the Roman army with its eagles-abominable to the
Jew, desolating to the land. When the eagles appeared, all might flee for their
life; resistance would be vain, obstinacy and bravery utterly unavailing. The
calamity would be so sudden that there would be no time to save any thing. It
would be as when a house is on fire; people would be glad to escape with their
life. It would be a fearful time of tribulation, unparalleled before or after.
Woe to poor nursing mothers in those horrible days, and to such as were with
child! What barbarities and inhumanities awaited them! The calamities that were
coming would spare nobody, not even Christians. They would find safety only in
flight, and they would have cause to be thankful that they escaped at all. But
their flight, though unavoidable, might be more or less grievous according to
circumstances; and they should pray for what might appear small mercies, even
for such alleviations as that they might not have to flee to the mountains in
winter, when it is cold and comfortless, or on the Sabbath, the day of rest and
peace.

After giving this brief but graphic sketch of the awful days approaching,
intolerable by mortal men were they not shortened “for the elect’s sake,” Jesus
repeated His warning word against deception, as if in fear that His disciples,
distracted by such calamities, might think “surely now is the end.” He told them
that violence would be followed by apostasy and falsehood, as great a trial in
one way as the destruction of Jerusalem in another. False teachers should arise,
who would be so plausible as almost to deceive the very elect. The devil would
appear as an angel of light; in the desert as a monk, in the shrine as an object
of superstitious worship. But whatever men might pretend, the Christ would not
be there; nor would His appearance take place then, nor at any fixed calculable
time, but suddenly, unexpectedly, like the lightning flash in the heavens. When
moral corruption had attained its full development, then would the judgment
come. In the following part of the discourse, the end of the world seems to be
brought into immediate proximity to the destruction of the holy city. If a long
stretch of ages was to intervene, the perspective of the prophetic picture seems
at fault. The far-distant mountains of the eternal world, visible beyond and
above the near hills of time in the foreground, want the dim-blue haze, which
helps the eye to realize how far off they are. This defect in Matthew’s
narrative, which we have been taking for our text, is supplied by Luke, who
interprets the tribulation (qli)yij) so as to include the subsequent
long-lasting dispersion of Israel among the nations. The phrase he employs to
denote this period is significant, as implying the idea of lengthened duration.
It is “the times of the Gentiles” (kairoi( e)qnw~n). The expression means, the
time when the Gentiles should have their opportunity of enjoying divine grace,
corresponding to the time of gracious visitation enjoyed by the Jews referred to
by Jesus in His lament over Jerusalem. There is no reason to suppose Luke coined
these phrases; they bear the stamp of genuineness upon them. But if we assume,
as we are entitled to do, that not Luke the Pauline universalist, but Jesus
Himself, spoke of a time of merciful visitation of the Gentiles, then it follows
that in His eschatological discourse He gave clear intimation of a lengthened
period during which His gospel was to be preached in the world; even as He did
on other occasions, as in the parable of the wicked husbandman, in which He
declared that the vineyard should be taken from its present occupants, and given
to others who would bring forth fruit. For it is incredible that Jesus should
speak of a time of the Gentiles analogous to the time of merciful visitation
enjoyed by the Jews, and imagine that the time of the Gentiles was to last only
some thirty years. The Jewish kairos lasted thousands of years: it would be only
mocking the poor Gentiles to dignify the period of a single generation with the
name of a season of gracious visitation. The parable of the fig-tree, employed
by Jesus to indicate the sure connection between the signs foregoing and the
grand event that was to follow, seems at first to exclude the idea of a
protracted duration, but on second thoughts we shall find it does not. The point
of the parable lies in the comparison of the signs of the times to the first
buds of the fig-tree. This comparison implies that the last judgment is not the
thing which is at the doors. The last day is the harvest season, but from the
first buds of early summer to the harvest there is a long interval. The parable
further suggests the right way of understanding the statement: “This generation
shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.” Christ did not mean that the
generation then living was to witness the end, but that in that generation all
the things which form the incipient stage in the development would appear. It
was the age of beginnings, of shoots and blossoms, not of fruit and ingathering.
In that generation fell the beginnings of Christianity and the new world it was
to create, and also the end of the Jewish world, of which the symbol was a
fig-tree covered with leaves, but without any blossom or fruit, like that Jesus
Himself had cursed, by way of an acted prophecy of Israel’s coming doom. The
buds of most things in the church’s history appeared in that age: of gospel
preaching, of antiChristian tendencies, of persecutions, heresies, schisms, and
apostasies. All these, however, had to grow to their legitimate issues before
the end came. How long the development would take, no man could tell, not even
the Son of Man. It was a state secret of the Almighty, into which no one should
wish to pry. This statement, that the time of the end is known alone to God,
excludes the idea that it can be calculated, or that data are given in Scripture
for that purpose. If such data be given, then the secret is virtually disclosed.
We therefore regard the calculations of students of prophecy respecting the
times and seasons as random guesses unworthy of serious attention. The death-day
of the world needs to be hid for the purposes of providence as much as the
dying-day of individuals. And we have no doubt that God has kept His secret;
though some fancy they can cast the world’s horoscope from prophetic numbers, as
astrologers were wont to determine the course of individual lives from the
positions of the stars.

Though the prophetic discourse of Jesus revealed nothing as to times, it was not
therefore valueless. It taught effectively two lessons-one specially for the
benefit of the twelve, and the other for all Christians and all ages. The lesson
for the twelve was, that they might dismiss from their minds all fond hopes of a
restoration of the kingdom to Israel. Not reconstruction, but dissolution and
dispersion, was Israel’s melancholy doom. The general lesson for all in this
discourse is: “Watch, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” The call
to watchfulness is based on our ignorance of the time of the end, and on the
fact that, however long delayed the end may be, it will come suddenly at last,
as a thief in the night. The importance of watching and waiting, Jesus
illustrated by two parables, the Absent Goodman and the Wise and Foolish
Virgins. Both parables depict the diverse conduct of the professed servants of
God during the period of delay. The effect on some, we are taught, is to make
them negligent, they being eye-servants and fitful workers, who need oversight
and the stimulus of extraordinary events. Others, again, are steady, equal,
habitually faithful, working as well when the master is absent as when they are
under his eye. The treatment of both on the master’s return corresponds to their
respective behavior-one class being rewarded, the other punished. Such is the
substance of the parable of the Absent Goodman. Luke gives an important
appendix, which depicts the conduct of persons in authority in the house of the
absent Lord. While the common servants are for the most part negligent, the
upper servants play the tyrant over their fellows. This is exactly what church
dignitaries did in after ages; and the fact that Jesus contemplated such a state
of things, requiring from the nature of the case the lapse of centuries to bring
it about, is another proof that in this discourse His prophetic eye swept over a
vast tract of time. Another remark is suggested by the great reward promised to
such as should not abuse their authority: “He will make him ruler over all that
he hath.” The greatness of the reward indicates an expectation that fidelity
will be rare among the stewards of the house. Indeed, the Head of the church
seems to have apprehended the prevalence of a negligent spirit among all His
servants, high and low; for He speaks of the lord of the household as so
gratified with the conduct of the faithful, that he girds himself to serve them
while they sit at meat. Has not the apprehension been too well justified by
events? The parable of the Ten Virgins, familiar to all, and full of
instruction, teaches us this peculiar lesson, that watching does not imply
sleepless anxiety and constant thought concerning the future, but quiet, steady
attention to present duty. While the bridegroom tarried, all the virgins, wise
and foolish alike, slumbered and slept, the wise differing from their sisters in
having all things in readiness against a sudden call. This is a sober and
reasonable representation of the duty of waiting by one who understands what is
possible; for, in a certain sense, sleep of the mind in reference to eternity is
as necessary as physical sleep is to the body. Constant thought about the great
realities of the future would only result in weakness, distraction, and madness,
or in disorder, idleness, and restlessness; as in Thessalonica, where the
conduct of many who watched in the wrong sense made it needful that Paul should
give them the wholesome counsel to be quiet, and work, and eat bread earned by
the labor of their own hands. The great prophetic discourse worthily ended with
a solemn representation of the final judgment of the world, when all mankind
shall be assembled to be judged either by the historical gospel preached to them
for a witness, or by its great ethical principle, the law of charity written on
their hearts; and when those who have loved Christ and served Him in person, or
in His representatives-the poor, the destitute, the suffering-shall be welcomed
to the realms of the blessed, and those who have acted contrariwise shall be
sent away to keep company with the devil and his angels.


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  CHAPTER 57: 02.21.     THE MASTER SERVING
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The Master Serving; or, Another Lesson In Humility Section I - The Washing

John 13:1-11

Up to this point the fourth evangelist has said very little indeed of the
special relations of Jesus and the twelve. Now, however, he abundantly makes up
for any deficiency on this score. The third part of his Gospel, which begins
here, is, with the exception of two chapters relating the history of the
passion, entirely occupied with the tender, intimate intercourse of the Lord
Jesus with “His own,” from the evening before His death to the time when He
departed out of the world, leaving them behind! The thirteenth and four
following chapters relate scenes and discourses from the last hours spent by the
Saviour with His disciples, previous to His betrayal into the hands of His
enemies. He has uttered His final word to the outside world, and withdrawn
Himself within the bosom of His own family; and we are privileged here to see
Him among His spiritual children, and to hear His farewell Words to them in view
of His decease. It becomes us to enter the supper chamber with deep reverence.
“Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is
holy ground.” The first thing we see, on entering, is Jesus washing His
disciples’ feet. Marvellous spectacle! and the evangelist has taken care, in
narrating the incident, to enhance its impressiveness by the manner in which he
introduces it. He has put the beautiful picture in the best light for being seen
to advantage. The preface to the story is indeed a little puzzling to
expositors, the sentences being involved, and the sense somewhat obscure. Many
thoughts and feelings crowd into the apostle’s mind as he proceeds to relate the
memorabilia of that eventful night; and, so to speak, they jostle one another in
the struggle for utterance. Yet it is not very difficult to disentangle the
meaning of these opening sentences. In the first, John adverts to the peculiar
tenderness with which Jesus regarded His disciples on the eve of His
crucifixion, and in prospect of His departure from the earth to heaven. “Before
the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should
depart out of this world”-how at such an hour did He feel towards those who had
been His companions throughout the years of His public ministry, and whom He was
soon to leave behind Him? “He loved them unto the end.” Not selfishly engrossed
with His own sorrows, or with the prospect of His subsequent joys, He found room
in His heart for His followers still; nay, His love burned out towards them with
extraordinary ardor, and His whole care was by precept and example, by words of
comfort, warning, and instruction, to prepare them for future duty and trial, as
the narrative here commencing would abundantly demonstrate. The second verse of
the preface alludes parenthetically to a fact which served as a foil to the
constancy of Jesus: “The devil having already put it into the heart of Judas
Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him.” John would say: “Jesus loved His
disciples to the end, though they did not all so love Him. One of them at this
very moment entertained the diabolic purpose of betraying his Lord. Yet that
Lord loved even him, condescending to wash even his feet; so endeavoring, if
possible, to overcome his evil with good.” The aim of the evangelist, in the
last sentence of his preface, is to show by contrast what a wondrous
condescension it was in the Saviour to wash the feet of any of the disciples.
Jesus knowing these things-these things being true of Him: that “the Father had
given all things into His hands”-sovereign power over all flesh; “that He was
come from God”-a divine being by nature, and entitled to divine honors; “and
that He was about to return to God,” to enter on the enjoyment of such
honors-did as is here recorded. He, the August Being who had such intrinsic
dignity, such a consciousness, such prospects-even “He riseth from supper and
lath aside His garments, and took a towel and girded Himself. After that He
poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe
them with the towel wherewith He was girded.” The time when all this took place
was, it would seem, about the commencement of the evening meal. The words of the
evangelist rendered in the English version “supper being ended,” may be
translated supper being begun, or better, supper-time having arrived; and from
the sequel of the narrative, it is evident that in this sense they must be
understood here. The supper was still going on when Jesus introduced the subject
of the traitor, which He did not only after He had washed the feet of His
disciples, but after He had resumed His seat at the table, and given an
explanation of what He had just done. That explanation will fall to be more
particularly considered afterwards; but meantime it bears on its face that the
occasion of the feet-washing was some misbehavior on the part of the disciples.
Jesus had to condescend, we judge, because His disciples would not condescend.
This impression is confirmed by a statement in Luke’s Gospel, that on the same
evening a strife arose among the twelve which of them should be accounted the
greatest. Whence that new strife arose we know not, but it is possible that the
old quarrel about place was revived by the words uttered by Jesus as they were
about to sit down to meat: “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with
you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof until
it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” The allusion to the kingdom was quite
sufficient to set their imaginations on fire and re-awaken old dreams about
thrones, and from old dreams to old feuds and jealousies the transition was
natural and easy; and so we can conceive how, even before the supper began, the
talk of the brethren had waxed noisy and warm. Or the point in dispute may have
been in what order they should sit at table, or who should be the servant for
the occasion, and wash the feet of the company. Any one of these suppositions
might account for the fact recorded by Luke; for it does not require much to
make children quarrel. The expedient employed by Jesus to divert the minds of
His disciples from unedifying themes of conversation, and to exorcise ambitious
passions from their breasts, was a most effectual one. The very preliminaries of
the feet-washing scene must have gone far to change the current of feeling. How
the spectators must have stared and wondered as the Master of the feast rose
from His seat, laid aside His upper garment, girt Himself with a towel, and
poured out water into a basin, doing all with the utmost self-possession,
composure, and deliberation! With which of the twelve Jesus made a beginning we
are not informed; but we know, as we might have guessed without being told, who
was the first to speak his mind about the singular transaction. When Peter’s
turn came, he had so far recovered from the amazement, under whose influence the
first washed may have yielded passively to their Lord’s will, as to be capable
of reflecting on the indecency of such an inversion of the right relation
between master and servants. Therefore, when Jesus came to him, that outspoken
disciple asked, in astonishment, “Lord, washest Thou my feet?” His spirit rose
in rebellion against the proposal, as one injurious to the dignity of his
beloved Lord, and as an outrage upon his own sense of reverence. This impulse of
instinctive aversion was by no means discreditable to Peter, and it was
evidently not regarded with disapprobation by his Master. The reply of Jesus to
his objection is markedly respectful in tone: “What I do,” He said, “thou
knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter,” virtually admitting that the
proceeding in question needed explanation, and that Peter’s opposition was, in
the first place, perfectly natural. “I acknowledge,” He meant to say, “that my
present action is an offence to the feelings of reverence which you rightly
cherish towards me. Nevertheless, suffer it. I do this for reasons which you do
not comprehend now, but which you shall understand ere long.” Had Peter been
satisfied with this apologetic reply, his conduct would have been entirely free
from blame. But He was not content, but persisted in opposition after Jesus had
distinctly intimated His will, and vehemently and stubbornly exclaimed: “Thou
shalt never wash my feet!” The tune here changes utterly. Peter’s first word was
the expression of sincere reverence; his second is simply the language of
unmitigated irreverence and downright disobedience. He rudely contradicts his
Master, and at the same time, we may add, flatly contradicts himself. His whole
behavior on this occasion presents an odd mixture of moral opposites:
self-abasement and self-will, humility and pride, respect and disrespect for
Jesus, to whom he speaks now as one whose shoe-latchet he is not worthy to
unloose, and anon as one to whom he might dictate orders. What a strange man!
But, indeed, how strange are we all!

Peter having so changed his tone, Jesus found it needful to alter His tone too,
from the apologetic mildness of the first reply to that of magisterial
sternness. “If I wash thee not,” He said gravely, “thou hast no part with me;”
meaning, “Thou hast taken up a most serious position, Simon Peter, the question
at issue being simply, Are you, or are you not, to be admitted into my
kingdom-to be a true disciple, and to have a true disciple’s reward?” On a
surface view, it is difficult to see how this could be the state of the
question. One is tempted to think that Jesus was indulging in exaggeration, for
the purpose of intimidating a refractory disciple into compliance with His will.
If we reject this method of interpretation as incompatible with the character of
the speaker and the seriousness of the occasion, we are thrown back on the
inquiry, What does washing in this statement mean? Evidently it signifies more
than meets the ear, more than the mere literal washing of the feet, and is to be
regarded as a symbol of the washing of the soul from sin, or still more
comprehensively, and in our opinion more correctly, as representing all in
Christ s teaching and work which would be compromised by the consistent carrying
out of the principle on which Peter’s opposition to the washing of his feet by
Jesus was based. On either supposition the statement of Jesus was true: in the
former case obviously; in the latter not so obviously, but not less really, as
we proceed to show.

Observe, then, what was involved in the attitude assumed by Peter. He virtually
took his stand on these two positions: that he would admit of nothing which
seemed inconsistent with the personal dignity of his Lord, and that he would
adopt as his rule of conduct his own judgment in preference to Christ’s will;
the one position being involved in the question, Dost Thou wash my feet? the
other in the resolution, Thou shalt never wash my feet. In other words, the
ground taken up by this disciple compromised the whole sum and substance of
Christianity, the former principle sweeping away Christ’s whole state and
experience of humiliation, and the latter not less certainly sapping the
foundation of Christ’s lordship. That this is no exaggeration on our part, a
moment’s reflection will show. Look first at the objection to the feet washing
on the score of reverence. If Jesus might not wash the feet of His disciples
because it was beneath His dignity, then with equal reason objection might be
taken to any act involving self-humiliation. One who said, Thou shalt not wash
my feet, because the doing of it is unworthy of Thee, might as well say, Thou
shalt not wash my soul, or do aught towards that end, because it involves
humiliating experiences. Why, indeed, make a difficulty about a trifling matter
of detail? Go to the heart of the business at once, and ask, “Shall the Eternal
Son of God become flesh, and dwell among us? shall He who was in the form of God
lay aside His robes of state, and gird Himself with the towel of humanity, to
perform menial offices for His own creatures? shall the ever-blessed One become
a curse by enduring crucifixion? shall the Holy One degrade Himself by coming
into close companionship with the depraved sons of Adam? shall the Righteous One
pour His life-blood into a basin, that there may be a fountain wherein the
unrighteous may be cleansed from their guilt and iniquity?” In short,
incarnation, atonement, and Christ’s whole earthly experience of temptation,
hardship, indignity, and sorrow, must go if Jesus may not wash a disciple’s
feet. Not less clearly is Christ’s lordship at an end if a disciple may give Him
orders, and say, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” If Peter meant any thing more
by these words than a display of temper and caprice, he meant this: that he
would not submit to the proposed operation, because his moral feelings and his
judgment told him it was wrong. He made his own reason and conscience the
supreme rule of conduct. Now, in the first place, by this position the principle
of obedience was compromised, which requires that the will of the Lord, once
known, whether we understand its reason or perceive its goodness or not, shall
be supreme. Then there are other things much more important than the washing of
the feet, to which objection might be taken on the score of reason or conscience
with equal plausibility. For example, Christ tells us that those who would be
His disciples, and obtain entrance into His kingdom, must be willing to part
with earthly goods, and even with nearest and dearest friends. To many men this
seems unreasonable; and on Peter’s principle they should forthwith say, “I will
never do any such thing.” Or again, Christ tells us that we must be born again,
and that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood. To me these doctrines may
seem incomprehensible, and even absurd; and therefore, on Peter’s principle, I
may turn my back on the great Teacher, and say, “I will not have this speaker of
dark, mystic sayings for my master.” Once more, Christ tells us that we must
give the kingdom of God the first place in our thoughts, and dismiss from our
hearts carking care for to-morrow. To me this may appear in my present mood
simply impossible; and therefore, on Peter’s principle, I may set aside this
moral requirement as utopian, however beautiful, without even seriously
attempting to comply with it.

Now that we know whither Peter’s refusal tends, we can see that Jesus spake the
simple truth when He said: “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” Look
at that refusal as an objection to Christ humbling Himself. If Christ may not
humble Himself, then, in the first place, He can have no part with us. The Holy
Son of God is forbidden by a regard to His dignity to become in any thing like
unto His brethren, or even to acknowledge them as His brethren. The grand
paternal law, by which the Sanctifier is identified with them that are to be
sanctified, is disannulled, and all its consequences made void. A great
impassable gulf separates the Divine Being from His creatures. He may stand on
the far-off shore, and wistfully contemplate their forlorn estate; but He
cannot, He dare not-His majesty forbids it-come near them, and reach forth a
helping hand. But if the Son of God may have no part with us, then, in the
second place, we can have no part with Him. We cannot share His fellowship with
the Father, if He come not forth to declare Him. We can receive no acts of
brotherly kindness from Him. He cannot deliver us from the curse of the law, or
from the fear of death; He cannot succor us when we are tempted; He cannot wash
our feet; nay, what is a far more serious matter, He cannot wash our souls. If
there is to be no fountain opened for sin in the human nature of Emmanuel
sinners must remain impure. For a God afar off is not able, even if He were
willing, to purify the human soul. A God whose majesty, like an iron fate, kept
Him aloof from sinners, could not even effectively forgive them. Still less
could He sanctify them. Love alone has sanctifying virtue, and what room is
there for love in a Being who cannot humble Himself to be a servant?

Look now at Peter’s refusal as resistance to Christ’s will. In this view also it
justified the saying, “Thou hast no part with me.” It excluded from salvation;
for if Jesus is not to be Lord, He will not be Saviour. It excluded from
fellowship; for Jesus will have no communion with self-will. His own attitude
towards His Father was, “not my will, but Thine;” and He demands this attitude
towards Himself in turn from all His disciples. He will be the Author of eternal
salvation, only to them that obey Him. Not that He would have us be always
servants, blindly obeying a Lord whose will we do not understand. His aim is to
advance us ultimately to the status of friends, doing His will intelligently and
freely-not as complying mechanically with an outward commandment, but as being a
law to ourselves. But we can attain that high position only by beginning with a
servant’s obedience. We must do, and suffer to be done to us, what we know not
now, in order that we may know hereafter the philosophy of our duty to our Lord,
and of our Lord’s dealings with us. And the perfection of obedience lies in
doing that which reverence unenlightened finds peculiarly hard, viz. in letting
the Lord change places with us, and if it seem good to Him, humble Himself to be
our servant.

It was a serious thing, therefore, to say, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” But
Peter was not aware how serious it was. He knew not what he said, or what he
did. He had hastily taken up a position whose ground and consequences he had not
considered. And his heart was right, though his temper was wrong. Therefore the
stern declaration of Jesus at once brought him to reason, or rather to unreason
in an opposite direction. The idea of being cut off from his dear Master’s
sympathy or favor through his waywardness drove him in sheer fright to the
opposite extreme of overdone compliance; and he said in effect, “If my interest
in Thee depends on my feet being washed, then, Lord, wash my whole body-hands,
head, feet, and all.” How characteristic! how like a child, in whose heart is
much foolishness, but also much affection, and who can always be managed by the
bands of love! There is as yet a sad want of balance in this disciple’s
character: he goes, swinging like a pendulum, from one extreme to another; and
it will take some time ere he settle down into a harmonious equipoise of all
parts of his being-intellect, will, heart, and conscience. But the root of the
matter is in him: he is sound at the core; and after the due amount of mistakes,
he will become a wise man by and by. He is clean, and needs not more than to
have his feet washed. Jesus Himself admits it of him, and of all his
brother-disciples-save one, who is unclean all over.

Section II - The Explanation

John 13:12-20

Peter’s resistance overcome, the washing proceeded without further interruption.
When the process had come to an end, Jesus, putting on again His upper garment,
resumed His seat, and briefly explained to His disciples the purport of the
action. “Know ye,” He inquired, “what I have done unto you?” Then, answering His
own question, He went on to say: “Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well;
for so I am. If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also
ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye
should do as I have done to you.”

It was another lesson in humility which Jesus had been giving “His own,”-a
lesson very similar to the earlier ones recorded in the synoptical Gospels.
John’s Christ, we see here, teaches the same doctrine as the Christ of the three
first evangelists. The twelve, as they are depicted in the fourth Gospel, are
just such as we have found them in Matthew, Mark, and Luke-grievously needing to
be taught meekness and brotherly kindness; and Jesus teaches them these virtues
in much the same way here as elsewhere-by precept and example, by symbolic act,
and added word of interpretation. Once He held up a little child, to shame them
out of ambitious passions; here He rebukes their pride, by becoming the menial
of the household. At another time He hushed their angry strife by adverting to
His own self-humiliation, in coming from heaven to be a minister to men’s needs
in life and in death; here He accomplishes the same end, by expressing the
spirit and aim of His whole earthly ministry in a representative, typical act of
condescension. This lesson, like all the rest, Jesus gave with the authority of
one who might lay down the law. In the very act of playing the servant’s part,
He was asserting His sovereignty. He reminds His disciples, when the service is
over, of the titles they were wont to give Him, and in a marked, emphatic manner
He accepts them as His due. He tells them distinctly that He is indeed their
Teacher, whose doctrine it is their business to learn, and their Lord, whose
will it is their duty to obey. His humility, therefore, is manifestly not an
affectation of ignorance as to who and what He is. He knows full well who He is,
whence He has come, whither He is going; His humility is that of a king, yea, of
a Divine Being. The pattern of meekness is at the same time one who prescribes
Himself to His followers as a pattern, and demands that they fix their attention
on His behavior, and strive to copy it. In making this demand, Jesus is
obviously very thoroughly in earnest. He is not less earnest in requiring the
disciples to wash one another’s feet, than He was in insisting that He Himself
should wash the feet of one and all. As He said to Peter in express words, “If I
wash thee not, thou hast no part with me;” so He says to them all in effect,
though not in words, “If ye wash not each other, if ye refuse to serve one
another in love, ye have again no part with me.” This is a hard saying; for if
it be difficult to believe in the humiliation of Christ, it is still more
difficult to humble ourselves. Hence, notwithstanding the frequency and urgency
with which the Saviour declares that we must have the spirit manifested in His
humiliation for us dwelling in us, and giving birth in our life to conduct
kindred to His own, even sincere disciples are constantly, though it may be half
unconsciously, inventing excuses for treating the example of their Lord as
utterly inimitable, and therefore in reality no example at all. Even the
apparently unanswerable argument employed by Jesus to enforce imitation does not
escape secret criticism. “Verily, verily,” saith He, “a servant is not greater
than his lord, neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.” “It may,”
say we, “be more incumbent on the servant to humble himself than on the master,
but in some respects it is also more difficult. The master can afford to
condescend: his action will not be misunderstood, but will be taken for what it
is. But the servant cannot afford to be humble: he must assert himself, and
assume airs, in order to make himself of any consequence.” The great Master knew
too well how slow men would ever be to learn the lesson He had just been
teaching His disciples. Therefore He appended to His explanation of the
feet-washing this reflection: “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do
them,” hinting at the rarity and difficulty of such high morality as He had been
inculcating, and declaring the blessedness of the few who attained unto it. And
surely the reflection is just! Is not the morality here enjoined indeed rare?
Are not the virtues called into play by acts of condescension and charity most
high and difficult? Who dreams of calling them easy? How utterly contrary they
are to the native tendencies of the human heart! how alien from the spirit of
society! Is it the way of men to be content with the humblest place, and to seek
their felicity in serving others? Doth not the spirit that is in us lust unto
envy, strive ambitiously for positions of influence, and deem it the greatest
happiness to be served, and to be exempt from the drudgery of servile tasks? The
world itself does not dispute the difficulty of Christ-like virtue; it rather
exaggerates its difficulty, and pronounces it utopian and impracticable-merely a
beautiful, unattainable ideal. And as for the sincere disciple of Jesus, no
proof is needed to convince him of the arduousness of the task appointed him by
his Lord. He knows by bitter experience how far conduct lags behind knowledge,
and how hard it is to translate admiration of unearthly goodness into imitation
thereof. His mind is familiarly conversant with the doctrine and life of the
Saviour; he has read and re-read the Gospel story, fondly lingering over its
minutest details; his heart has burned as he followed the footsteps of the
Blessed One walking about on this earth, ever intent on doing good: sweeter to
his ear than the finest lyric poems are the stories of the woman by the well,
the sinner in the house of Simon, and of Zacchaeus the publican; those touching
incidents of the little child upheld as a pattern of humility, and of the Master
washing quarrelsome disciples’ feet, and the exquisite parables of the Lost
Sheep, the Prodigal, and the Good Samaritan. But when he has to close his New
Testament, and go away into the rude, ungodly, matter-of-fact world, and be
there a Christ-like man, and do the things which he knows so intimately, and
counts himself blessed in knowing, alas, what a descent! It is like a fall from
Eden into a state of mere sin and misery. And the longer he lives, and the more
he gets mixed up with life’s relations and engagements, the further he seems to
himself to degenerate from the gospel pattern; till at length he is almost
ashamed to think or speak of the beauties of holiness exhibited therein, and is
tempted to adopt a lower and more worldly tone, out of a regard to sincerity,
and in fear of becoming a mere sentimental hypocrite like Judas, who kissed his
Master at the very moment he was betraying Him. In proportion to the difficulty
and the rarity of the virtue prescribed is the felicity of those who are enabled
to practice it. Theirs is a threefold blessedness. First, they have the joy
connected with the achievement of an arduous task. Easy undertakings bring small
pains, but they also bring small pleasures; rapturous delight is reserved for
those who attempt and accomplish that which passes for impossible. And what
raptures can be purer, holier, and more intense than those of the man who has at
length succeeded in making the mind of the meek and lowly One his own; who,
after long climbing, has reached the alpine summit of self-forgetful,
self-humbling love! Those who practice the things here enjoined further win for
themselves the approbation of their Lord. A master is pleased when a pupil
understands his lesson, but a lord is pleased only when his servants do his
bidding. Christ, being Lord as well as Master, demands that we shall not only
know but do. And in proportion to the peremptoriness of the demand is the
satisfaction with which the Lord of Christians regards all earnest efforts to
comply with His will and to follow His example. And to all who make such efforts
it is a great happiness to be assured of the approval of Him whom they serve.
The thought, “I am guided in my present action by the spirit of Jesus, and He
approves what I do,” sustains the mind in peace, even when one has not the
happiness to win the approbation of his fellow-men; which is not an impertinent
remark here, for it will often happen to us to please men least when we are
pleasing the Lord most. You shall please many men by a prudent selfishness much
more readily than by a generous uncalculating devotion to what is right. “Men
will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself;” and they will wink at very
considerable deviations from the line of pure Christian morality in the
prosecution of self-interest, provided you be successful. Even religious people
will often vex and grieve you by advices savoring much more of worldly wisdom
than of Christian simplicity and godly sincerity. But if Christ approve, we may
make shift to do without the sympathy and approbation of men. Their approbation
is at most but a comfort; His is matter of life and death. The third element in
the felicity of the man who is not merely a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the
perfect law of Christ, is that he escapes the guilt of unimproved knowledge. It
is a religious commonplace that to sin against light is more heinous than to sin
in ignorance. “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is
sin.” And, of course, the clearer the light the greater the responsibility. Now,
in no department of Christian truth is knowledge clearer than in that which
belongs to the department of ethics. There are some doctrines which the church,
as a whole, can hardly be said to know, they are so mysterious, or so disputed.
But the ethical teaching of Jesus is simple and copious in all its leading
features; it is universally understood, and as universally admired. Protestants
and Papists, Trinitarians, Socinians, and Deists, are all at one here. Happy
then are they, of all sects and denominations, who do the things which all know
and agree in admiring; for a heavy woe lies on those who do them not. The woe is
not indeed expressed, but it is implied in Christ’s words. The common Lord of
all believers virtually addresses all Christendom here, saying: “Ye behold the
sunlight of a perfect example; ye have been made acquainted with a high and
lovely ideal of life, such as pagan moralists never dreamed of. What are ye
doing with your light? Are ye merely looking at it, and writing books about it,
and boasting of it, and talking of it, meanwhile allowing men outside the pale
of the church to surpass you in humane and philanthropic virtue? If this is all
the use you are making of your knowledge, it will be more tolerable for pagans
at the day of judgment than for you.”

Having made the reflection we have been considering, Jesus followed it up with a
word of apology for the tone of suspicion with which it was uttered, and which
was no doubt felt by the disciples. “I speak not,” He said, “of you all: I know
whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth
bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” The remark may be thus
paraphrased: “In hinting at the possibility of a knowledge of right,
unaccompanied by corresponding action, I have not been indulging in gratuitous
insinuation. I do not indeed think so badly of you all as to imagine you capable
of deliberate and habitual neglect of known duty. But there is one among you who
is capable of such conduct. I have chosen you twelve, and I know the character
of every one of you; and, as I said a year ago, after asking a question which
hurt your feelings, that one of you had a devil, so now, after making a
suspicious reflection, I say there is one among you whose character illustrates
negatively its meaning; one who knows, but will not do; who puts sentiment in
place of action, and admiration in place of imitation; one who, having eaten
bread with me as a familiar friend, will repay me for all my kindness, not by
loving obedience, but by lifting up his heel against me.” The infirmity of
sincere disciples Jesus could patiently bear with: but the Judas-character-in
which correct thinking and fine sentiment are combined with falseness of heart
and practical laxity, in which to promise is put in place of performance, and to
utter the becoming word about a matter is substituted for doing the appropriate
deed-such a character His soul utterly abhorred. Who can doubt that it was not
in vain that sincere disciples had been so long in the society of One who was so
exacting in His ideal, and that they really did strive in after years to fulfil
their Master’s will, and serve one another in love?


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  CHAPTER 58: 02.22.     IN MEMORIAM
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In Memoriam; or, Fourth Lesson On the Doctrine of the Cross Mat 26:26-29; Mark
14:22-25; Luk 22:17-20; 1Co 11:23-26. The Lord’s Supper is a monument sacred to
the memory of Jesus Christ. “This do in remembrance of me.” In Bethany Jesus had
spoken as if He desired that Mary should be kept in remembrance in the preaching
of His Gospel; in the supper chamber He expressed His desire to be remembered
Himself. He would have Mary’s deed of love commemorated by the rehearsal of her
story; He would have His own deed of love commemorated by a symbolic action, to
be often repeated throughout the ages to the end of the world. The rite of the
Supper, besides commemorating, is likewise of use to interpret the Lord’s death.
It throws important light on the meaning of that solemn event. The institution
of this symbolic feast was in fact the most important contribution made by Jesus
during His personal ministry to the doctrine of atonement through the sacrifice
of Himself. Therefrom more clearly than from any other act or word performed or
spoken by Him, the twelve might learn to conceive of their Master’s death as
possessing a redemptive character. Thereby Jesus, as it were, said to His
disciples: My approaching passion is not to be regarded as a mere calamity, or
dark disaster, falling out contrary to the divine purpose or my expectation; not
as a fatal blow inflicted by ungodly men on me and you, and the cause which is
dear to us all; not even as an evil which may be overruled for good; but as an
event fulfilling, not frustrating, the purpose of my mission, and fruitful of
blessing to the world. What men mean for evil, God means for good, to bring to
pass to save much people alive. The shedding of my blood, in one aspect the
crime of wicked Jews, is in another aspect my own voluntary act. I pour forth my
blood for a gracious end, even for the remission of sins. My death will initiate
a new dispensation, and seal a new testament; it will fulfil the purpose, and
therefore take the place, of the manifold sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, and
in particular of the Paschal lamb, which is even now being eaten. I shall be the
Paschal Lamb of the Israel of God henceforth; at once protecting them from
death, and feeding their souls with my crucified humanity, as the bread of
eternal life.

These truths are very familiar to us, however new and strange they may have been
to the disciples; and we are more accustomed to explain the Supper by the death,
than the death by the Supper. It may be useful, however, here to reverse the
process, and, imagining ourselves in the position of the twelve, as witnesses to
the institution of a new religious symbol, to endeavor to rediscover therefrom
the meaning of the event with which it is associated, and whose significance it
is intended to shadow forth. Let us, then, take our stand beside this ancient
monument, and try to read the Runic inscription on its weather-worn surface.

1. First, then, we perceive at once that it is to the death of Jesus this
monument refers. It is not merely erected to His memory in general, but it is
erected specially in memory of His decease. All things point forward to what was
about to take place on Calvary. The sacramental acts of breaking the bread and
pouring out the wine manifestly look that way. The words also spoken by Jesus in
instituting the Supper all involve allusions to His death. Both the fact and the
manner of His death are hinted at, by the distinction He makes between His body
and His blood: “This is my body,” “This is my blood.” Body and blood are one in
life, and become separate things only by death; and not by every kind of death,
but by one whose manner involves blood-shedding, as in the case of sacrificial
victims. The epithets applied to the body and the blood point at death still
more clearly. Jesus speaks of His body as “given”-as if to be slain or “broken”
in sacrifice, and of His blood as “shed.” Then, finally, by describing the blood
about to be shed as the blood of a new testament, the Saviour put it beyond all
doubt what He was alluding to. Where a testament is, there must also be the
death of the testator. And though an ordinary testator may die an ordinary
death, the Testator of the new testament must die a sacrificial death; for the
epithet new implies a reference to the old Jewish covenant, which was ratified
by the sacrifice of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings of oxen, whose blood was
sprinkled on the altar and on the people, and called by Moses “the blood of the
covenant.”

2. The mere fact that the Lord’s Supper commemorates specially the Lord’s death,
implies that that death must have been an event of a very important character.
By instituting a symbolic rite for such a purpose, Jesus, as it were, said to
His disciples and to us: “Fix your eyes on Calvary, and watch what happens
there. That is the great event in my earthly history. Other men have monuments
erected to them because they have lived lives deemed memorable. I wish you to
erect a monument to me because I have died: not forgetful of my life indeed, yet
specially mindful of my death; commemorating it for its own sake, not merely for
the sake of the life whereof it is the termination. The memory of other men is
cherished by the celebration of their birthday anniversaries; but in my case,
better is the day of my death than the day of my birth for the purpose of a
commemorative celebration. My birth into this world was marvelous and momentous;
but still more marvelous and momentous is my exit out of it by crucifixion. Of
my birth no festive commemoration is needed; but of my death keep alive the
memory by the Holy Supper till I come again. remembering it well, you remember
all my earthly history; for of all it is the secret, the consummation, and the
crown.” But why, in a history throughout so remarkable, should the death be thus
singled out for commemoration? Was it its tragic character that won for it this
distinction? Did the Crucified One mean the Supper which goes by His Name to be
a mere dramatic representation of His passion, for the purpose of exciting our
feelings, and eliciting a sympathetic tear, by renewing the memory of His dying
sorrows? So to think of the matter were to degrade our Christian feast to the
level of the pagan festival of Adonis, “Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer’s day.” Or
was it the foul wrong and shameful indignity done to the Son of God by the
wicked men who crucified Him that Jesus wished to have kept in perpetual
remembrance? Was the Holy Supper instituted for the purpose of branding with
eternal infamy a world that knew no better use to make of the Holy One than to
nail Him to a tree, and felt more kindness even for a robber than for Him?
Certainly the world well deserved to be thus held up to reprobation; but the Son
of man came not to condemn sinners, but to save them; and it was not in His
loving nature to erect an enduring monument to His own resentment or to the
dishonor of His murderers. The blood of Jesus speaketh better things than that
of Abel. Or was it because His death on the cross, in spite of its indignity and
shame, was glorious, as a testimony to His invincible fidelity to the cause of
truth and righteousness, that Jesus instructed His followers to keep it ever in
mind, by the celebration of the new symbolic rite? Is the festival of the Supper
to be regarded as a solemnity of the same kind as those by which the early
church commemorated the death of the martyrs? Is the Coenâ Domini simply the
natalitia of the great Protomartyr? So Socinians would have us believe. To the
question why the Lord wished the memory of His crucifixion to be specially
celebrated in His church the Racovian Catechism replies: “Because of all
Christ’s actions, it (the voluntary enduring of death) was the greatest and most
proper to Him. For although the resurrection and exaltation of Christ were far
greater, these were acts of God the Father rather than of Christ.” In other
words, the death above all things deserves to be remembered, because it was the
most signal and sublime act of witness-bearing on Christ’s part to the truth,
the glorious copestone of a noble life of self-sacrificing devotion to the high
and perilous vocation of a prophet. That Christ’s death was all this is of
course true, and that it is worthy of remembrance as an act of martyrdom is
equally true; but whether Jesus instituted the Holy Supper for the purpose of
commemorating His death exclusively, principally, or at all as a martyrdom, is a
different question. On this point we must learn the truth from Christ’s own
lips. Let us return, then, to the history of the institution, to learn His mind
about the matter.

3. Happily the Lord Jesus explained with particular clearness in what aspect He
wished His death to be the subject of commemorative celebration. In distributing
to His disciples the sacramental bread, He said, “This is my body, given, or
broken, for you;” thereby intimating that His death was to be commemorated
because of a benefit it procured for the communicant. In handing to the
disciples the sacramental cup, He said, “Drink ye all of it; for this is my
blood of the new testament, shed (for you and) for many for the remission of
sins;” thereby indicating the nature of the benefit procured by His death, on
account of which it was worthy to be remembered. In this creative word of the
new dispensation Jesus represents His death as a sin-offering, atoning for
guilt, and purchasing forgiveness of moral debt. His blood was to be shed for
the remission of sins. In view of this function the blood is called the blood of
the new testament, in apparent allusion to the prophecy of Jeremiah, which
contains a promise of a new covenant to be made by God with the house of
Israel-a covenant whose leading blessing should be the forgiveness of iniquity,
and called new, because, unlike the old, it would be a covenant of pure grace,
of promises unclogged with legal stipulations. By mentioning His blood and the
new covenant together, Jesus teaches that, while annulling, He would at the same
time fulfil the old, in introducing the new. The new covenant would be ratified
by sacrifice, even as was the old one at Sinai, and remission of sin would be
granted after blood-shedding. But in bidding His disciples drink the cup, the
Lord intimates that after His death there will be no more need of sacrifices.
The sin-offering of blood will be converted into a thank-offering of wine, a cup
of salvation, to be drunk with grateful, joyful hearts by all who through faith
in His sacrifice have received the pardon of their sins. Finally, Jesus
intimates that the new covenant concerns the many, not the few-not Israel alone,
but all nations: it is a gospel which He bequeaths to sinners of mankind.

Well may we drink of this cup with thankfulness and joy; for the “new covenant”
(new, yet far older than the old), of which it is the seal, is in all respects
well ordered and sure. Well ordered; for surely it is altogether a good and
God-worthy constitution of things which connects the blessing of pardon with the
sacrificial death of Him through whom it comes to us. It is good in the
interests of righteousness: for it provides that sin shall not be pardoned till
it has been adequately atoned for by the sacrifice of the sinner’s Friend; and
it is just and right that without the shedding of the Righteous One’s blood
there should be no remission for the unrighteous. Then this economy serves well
the interest of divine love, as it gives that love a worthy career, and free
scope to display its magnanimous nature, in bearing the burden of the sinful and
the miserable. And yet once more, the constitution of the new covenant is
admirably adapted to the great practical end aimed at by the scheme of
redemption, viz. the elevation of a fallen, degraded race out of a state of
corruption into a state of holiness. The gospel of forgiveness through Christ’s
death is the moral power of God to raise such as believe it out of the world’s
selfishness, and enmities, and baseness, into a celestial life of devotion,
self-sacrifice, patience, and humility. If by faith in Christ be understood
merely belief in the opus operatum of a vicarious death, the power of such a
faith to elevate is more than questionable. But when faith is taken in its true
scriptural sense, as implying not only belief in a certain transaction, the
endurance of death by one for others, but also, and more especially, hearty
appreciation of the spirit of the deed and the Doer, then its purifying and
ennobling power is beyond all question. “The love of Christ constraineth me;”
and “I am crucified with Christ,” as the result of such faith.

How poor is the Socinian scheme of salvation in comparison with this of the new
covenant! In that scheme pardon has no real dependence on the blood of Jesus: He
died as a martyr for righteousness, not as a Redeemer for the unrighteous. We
are forgiven on repenting by a simple word of God. Forgiveness cost the Forgiver
no trouble or sacrifice; only a word, or stroke of the pen signing a document,
“Thus saith the Lord.” What a frigid transaction! What cold relations it implies
between the Deity and His creatures! How vastly preferable a forgiveness which
means a giving for, and costs the Forgiver sorrow, sweat, pain, blood, wounds,
death-a forgiveness coming from a God who says in effect: “I will not, to save
sinners, repeal the law which connects sin with death as its penalty; but I am
willing for that end to become myself the law’s victim.” Such a forgiveness is
at once an act of righteousness and an act of marvelous love; whereas
forgiveness without satisfaction, though at first sight it may appear both
rational and generous, manifests neither God’s righteousness nor His love. A
Socinian God, who pardons without atonement, is destitute alike of a passionate
abhorrence of sin and of a passionate love to sinners.

Jesus once said, “He loveth much who hath much forgiven him.” It is a deep
truth, but there is another not less deep to be put alongside of it: we must
feel that our forgiveness has cost the Forgiver much in order to love Him much.
It is because they feel this that true professors of the catholic faith exhibit
that passionate devotion to Christ which forms such a contrast to the cold
intellectual homage paid by the Deist to his God. When the catholic Christian
thinks of the tears, agonies, bloody sweat, shame, and pain endured by the
Redeemer, of His marred vision, broken heart, pierced side, lacerated hands and
feet, his bosom burns with devoted love. The story of the passion opens all the
fountains of feeling; and by no other way than the via dolorosa could Jesus have
ascended the throne of His people’s hearts. The new covenant inaugurated by
Christ’s death is sure as well as orderly. It is reliably sealed by the blood of
the Testator. For, first, what better guarantee can we have of the good-will of
God? “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends.” “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for
us.” Looking at the matter in the light of justice, again, this covenant is
equally sure. God is not unrighteous, to forget His Son’s labor of love. As He
is true, Christ shall see of the travail of His soul. It cannot be otherwise
under the moral administration of Jehovah. Can the God of truth break His word?
Can the Judge of all the earth permit one, and especially His own Son, to give
Himself up, out of purest love, to sorrow, and pain, and shame, for His
brethren, without receiving the hire which He desires, and which was promised
Him-many souls, many lives, many sinners saved? Think of it: holiness suffering
for righteousness’ sake, and yet not having the consolation of doing something
in the way of destroying unrighteousness, and turning the disobedient to the
obedience of the just; love, by the impulse of its nature, and by covenant
obligations, laid under a necessity of laboring for the lost, and yet doomed by
the untowardness, or apathy, or faithlessness of the Governor of the universe to
go unrewarded-love’s labor lost, nobody the better for it, things remaining as
before: no sinner pardoned, delivered from the pit and restored to holiness; no
chosen people brought out of darkness into marvelous light! Such a state of
things cannot be in God’s dominions. The government of God is carried on in the
interest of Holy Love. It gives love free scope to bear others’ burdens: it
arranges that if she will do so, she shall feel the full weight of the burden
she takes upon her; but it also arranges, by an eternal covenant of truth and
equity, that when the burden has been borne, the Burden-bearer shall receive His
reward in the form He likes best-in souls washed, pardoned, sanctified, and led
to everlasting glory by Himself as His ransomed brethren or children. The
principle of vicarious merit involved in the doctrine that we are pardoned
simply because Christ died for our sins, when looked at with unprejudiced eyes,
commends itself to reason as well as to the heart. It means practically a
premium held out to foster righteousness and love. This offered premium carried
Jesus through His heavy task. It was because, relying on His Father’s promise,
He saw the certain joy of saving many before Him, that He endured the cross. It
is the same principle, in a restricted application of it, which stimulates
Christians to fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of their Lord. They
know that, if they be faithful, they shall not live unto themselves, but shall
benefit Christ’s mystic body the church, and also the world at large. If the
fact were otherwise, there would be very little either of moral fidelity or of
love in the world. If the moral government of the universe made it impossible
for one being to benefit another by prayer or loving pains, impossible for ten
good men to be a shield to Sodom, for the elect to be a salt to the earth, men
would give up trying to do it; generous concern about public well-being would
cease, and universal selfishness become the order of the day. Or if this state
of things should not ensue, we should only have darkness in a worse form: the
inscrutable enigma of Righteousness crucified without benefit to any living
creature-a scandal and a reproach to the government and character of God. If,
therefore, we are to hold fast our faith in the divine holiness, justice,
goodness, and truth, we must believe that the blood of Jesus doth most certainly
procure for us the remission of sins; and likewise, that the blood of His
saints, though neither available nor necessary to obtain for sinners the
blessing of pardon before the divine tribunal-Christ’s blood alone being capable
of rendering us that service, and having rendered it effectually and once for
all-is nevertheless precious in God’s sight, and makes the people precious among
whom it is shed, and is by God’s appointment, in manifold ways, a source of
blessing unto a world unworthy to number among its inhabitants men whom it knows
not how to use otherwise than as lambs for the slaughter.

4. The sacrament of the Supper exhibits Christ not merely as a Lamb to be slain
for a sin-offering, but as a Paschal Lamb to be eaten for spiritual nourishment.
“Take, eat, this is my body.” By this injunction Jesus taught the twelve, and
through them all Christians, to regard His crucified humanity as the bread of
God for the life of their souls. We must eat the flesh and drink the blood of
the Son of man spiritually by faith, as we eat the bread and drink the wine
literally with the mouth. In regarding Christ as the Bread of Life, we are not
to restrict ourselves to the one benefit mentioned by Him in instituting the
feast, the remission of sins, but to have in view all His benefits tending to
our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. Christ is the Bread of Life in
all His offices. As a Prophet, He supplies the bread of divine truth to feed our
minds; as a Priest, He furnishes the bread of righteousness to satisfy our
troubled consciences; as a King, He presents Himself to us as an object of
devotion, that shall fill our hearts, and whom we may worship without fear of
idolatry. As often as the Lord’s Supper is celebrated we are invited to
contemplate Christ as the food of our souls in this comprehensive sense. As
often as we eat the bread and drink the cup we declare that Christ has been, and
is now, our soul’s food in all these ways. And as often as we use this Supper
with sincerity we are helped to appropriate Christ as our spiritual food more
and more abundantly. Even as a symbol or picture-mysticism and magic apart-the
Holy Supper aids our faith. Through the eye it affects the heart, as do poetry
and music through the ear. The very mysticism and superstition that have grown
around the sacraments in the course of ages are a witness to their powerful
influence over the imagination. Men’s thoughts and feelings were so deeply
stirred they could not believe such power lay in mere symbols; and by a
confusion of ideas natural to an excited imagination they imputed to the sign
all the virtues of the things signified. By this means faith was transferred
from Christ the Redeemer, and the Spirit the Sanctifier, to the rite of baptism
and the service of the mass. This result shows the need of knowledge and
spiritual discernment to keep the imagination in check, and prevent the eyes of
the understanding from being put out by the dazzling glare of fancy. Some,
considering how thoroughly the eyes of the understanding have been put out by
theories of sacramental grace, have been tempted to deny that sacraments are
even means of grace, and to think that institutions which have been so fearfully
abused ought to be allowed to fall into desuetude. This is a natural re-action,
but it is an extreme opinion. The sober, true view of the matter is, that
sacraments are means of grace, not from any magic virtue in them or in the
priest administering them, but as helping faith by sense, and still more by the
blessing of Christ and the working of His Spirit, as the reward of an
intelligent, sincere, believing use of them.

This, then, is what we have learned from the monumental stone. The Lord’s Supper
commemorates the Lord’s death; points out that death as an event of transcendent
importance; sets it forth, indeed, as the ground of our hope for the pardon of
sin; and finally exhibits Christ the Lord, who died on the Cross, as all to us
which our spirits need for health and salvation-our mystic bread and wine. This
rite, instituted by Jesus on the night on which He was betrayed, He meant to be
repeated not merely by the apostles, but by His believing people in all ages
till He came again. So we learn from Paul; so we might have inferred, apart from
any express information. An act so original, so impressive, so pregnant with
meaning, so helpful to faith, once performed, was virtually an enactment. In
performing it, Jesus said in effect: “Let this become a great institution, a
standing observance in the community to be called by my Name.” The meaning of
the ordinance determines the Spirit in which it should be observed. Christians
should sit down at the table in a spirit of humility, thankfulness, and
brotherly love; confessing sin, devoutly thanking God for His covenant of grace,
and His mercy to them in Christ, loving Him who loved them, and washed them from
their sins in His own blood, and who daily feedeth their souls with heavenly
food, and giving Him all glory and dominion; and loving one another-loving all
redeemed men and believers in Jesus as brethren, and taking the Supper together
as a family meal; withal praying that an ever-increasing number may experience
the saving efficacy of Christ’s death. After this fashion did the apostles and
the apostolic church celebrate the Supper at Pentecost, after Jesus had ascended
to glory. Continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread
from house to house, they did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of
heart. Would that we now could keep the feast as they kept it then! But how much
must be done ere that be possible! The moss of Time must be cleared away from
the monumental stone, that its inscription may become once more distinctly
legible; the accumulated debris of a millennium and a half of theological
controversies about sacraments must be carted out of sight and mind; the truth
as it is in Jesus must be separated from the alloy of human error; the homely
rite of the Supper must be divested of the state robes of elaborate ceremonial
by which it has been all but stifled, and allowed to return to congenial
primitive simplicity. These things, so devoutly to be wished, will come at
last-if not on earth, in that day when the Lord Jesus will drink new wine with
His people in the kingdom of His Father.


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  CHAPTER 59: 02.23.     JUDAS ISCARIOT
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Judas Iscariot Mat 26:20-23; Mark 14:17-21; Luk 22:21-23; John 13:21-30.

Besides the feet-washing and the institution of the Supper, yet another scene
occurred on the night preceding the Lord’s death, helping to render it forever
memorable. On the same night, during the course of the evening meal, Jesus
exposed and expelled the false disciple, who had undertaken to deliver his
Master into the hands of those who sought His life. Already, while occupied with
the washing, He had made premonitory allusions to the fact that there was a
traitor among the twelve, hinting that they were not all clean, and insinuating
that there was one of them who knew and would not do. Having finished and
explained the service of lowly love, He next proceeded to the unwelcome task of
indicating distinctly to which of the disciples He had been alluding. With
spirit troubled at thought of the painful duty, and shuddering in presence of
such satanic wickedness, He introduced the subject by making the general
announcement: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.”
Thereafter, in answer to inquiries, He indicated the particular individual, by
explaining that the traitor was he to whom He should give a sop or morsel after
He had dipped it. The fact then announced was new to the disciples, but it was
not new to their Master. Jesus had known all along that there was a traitor in
the camp. He had even hinted as much a full year before. But, excepting on that
one occasion, He had not spoken of the matter hitherto, but had patiently borne
it as a secret burden on His own heart. Now, however, the secret may be hid no
longer. The hour is come when the Son of man must be glorified. Judas, for his
part, has made up his mind to be the instrument of betraying his Lord to death;
and such bad work, once resolved on, should by all means be done without delay.
Then Jesus wants to be rid of the false disciple’s company. He desires to spend
the few last hours of His life in tender, confidential fellowship with His
faithful ones, free from the irritation and distraction caused by the presence
of an undeclared yet deadly enemy. Therefore He does not wait till it pleases
Judas to depart; He bids him go, asserting His authority over him even after he
has renounced his allegiance and given himself up to the devil’s service.
Reaching the sop, He says to him in effect: “I know thee, Judas; thou art the
man: thou host resolved to betray me: away, then, and do it.” And then He says
expressly: “That thou does, do quickly.” It was an order to go, and go at once.

Judas took the hint. He “went immediately out,” and so finally quitted the
society of which he had been an unworthy member. One wonders how such a man ever
got in-how he ever was admitted into such a holy fellowship-how he came to be
chosen one of the twelve. Did Jesus not know the real character of this man when
He chose Him? The words of our Lord, spoken just before, forbid us to think
this. “I know,” said He, while expounding the feet-washing, “whom I have
chosen,” meaning, evidently, to claim knowledge of them all, Judas included, at
the time He chose them. Did He then choose Judas, knowing what he was, that He
might have among the twelve one by whom He might be betrayed, and the Scriptures
in that particular be fulfilled? So He seems to hint in the declaration just
alluded to; for He goes on to say: “But that the scripture may be fulfilled, He
that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” But it is not
credible that Iscariot was chosen merely to be a traitor, as an actor might be
chosen by a theater manager to play the part of Iago. The end pointed at in the
scripture quoted might be ultimately served by his being chosen, but that end
was not the motive of the choice. We may regard these two points as certain: on
the one hand, that Judas did not become a follower of Jesus with treacherous
intentions; and on the other, that Jesus did not elect Judas to be one of the
twelve because He foreknew that he would eventually become a traitor.

If the choice of the false disciple was not due either to ignorance or to
foreknowledge, how is it to be explained? The only explanation that can be given
is, that, apart from secret insight, Judas was to all appearance an eligible
man, and could not be passed over on any grounds coming under ordinary
observation. His qualities must have been such, that one not possessing the eye
of omniscience, looking on him, would have been disposed to say of him what
Samuel said of Eliab: “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.” In that case,
his election by Jesus is perfectly intelligible. The Head of the church simply
did what the church has to do in analogous instances. The church chooses men to
fill sacred offices on a conjunct view of ostensible qualifications, such as
knowledge, zeal, apparent piety, and correctness of outward conduct. In so doing
she sometimes makes unhappy appointments, and confers dignity on persons of the
Judas type, who dishonor the positions they fill. The mischief resulting is
great; but Christ has taught us, by His example in choosing Judas, as also by
the parable of the tares, that we must submit to the evil, and leave the remedy
in higher hands. Out of evil God often brings good, as He did in the case of the
traitor.

Supposing Judas to have been chosen to the apostleship on the ground of apparent
fitness, what manner of man would that imply? A vulgar, conscious hypocrite,
seeking some mean by-end, while professedly aiming at a higher? Not necessarily;
not probably. Rather such an one as Jesus indirectly described Judas to be when
He made the reflection: “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”
The false disciple was a sentimental, plausible, self-deceived pietist, who knew
and approved the good, though not conscientiously practicing it; one who, in
,aesthetic feeling, in fancy, and in intellect, had affinities for the noble and
the holy, while in will and in conduct he was the slave of base, selfish
passions; one who, in the last resource, would always put self uppermost, yet
could zealously devote himself to well-doing when personal interests were not
compromised-in short, what the Apostle James calls a two-minded man. In thus
describing Judas, we draw not the picture of a solitary monster. Men of such a
type are by no means so rare as some may imagine. History, sacred and profane,
supplies numerous examples of them, playing an important part in human affairs.
Balaam, who had the vision of a prophet and the soul of a miser, was such a man.
Robespierre, the evil genius of the French Revolution, was another. The man who
sent thousands to the guillotine had in his younger days resigned his office as
a provincial judge, because it was against his conscience to pronounce sentence
of death on a culprit found guilty of a capital offence. A third example, more
remarkable than either, may be found in the famous Greek Alcibiades, who, to
unbounded ambition, unscrupulousness, and licentiousness, united a warm
attachment to the greatest and best of the Greeks. The man who in after years
betrayed the cause of his native city, and went over to the side of her enemies,
was in his youth an enthusiastic admirer and disciple of Socrates. How he felt
towards the Athenian sage may be gathered from words put into his mouth by Plato
in one of his dialogues-words which involuntarily suggest a parallel between the
speaker and the unworthy follower of a greater than Socrates: “I experience
towards this man alone (Socrates) what no one would believe me capable of, a
sense of shame. For I am conscious of an inability to contradict him, and
decline to do what he bids me; and when I go away I feel myself overcome by the
desire of popular esteem. Therefore I flee from him, and avoid him. But when I
see him, I am ashamed of my admissions, and oftentimes I would be glad if he
ceased to exist among the living; and yet I know well, that were that to happen,
I should be still more grieved.” The character of Judas being such as we have
described, the possibility at least of his turning a traitor becomes
comprehensible. One who loves himself more than any man, however good, or any
cause, however holy, is always capable of bad faith more or less heinous. He is
a traitor at heart from the outset, and all that is wanted is a set of
circumstances calculated to bring into play the evil elements of his nature. The
question therefore arises, What were the circumstances which converted Judas
from a possible into an actual traitor? This is a question very hard indeed to
answer. The crime committed by Iscariot, through which he has earned for himself
“a frightful renown,” remains, in spite of all the discussion whereof it has
been the subject, still mysterious and unaccountable. Many attempts have been
made to assign probable motives for the nefarious deed, some tending to excuse
the doer, and others to aggravate his guilt; all more or less conjectural, and
none perfectly satisfactory. As for the Gospel narratives, they do not explain,
but merely record, the wickedness of Judas. The synoptical evangelists do indeed
mention that the traitor made a bargain with the priests, and received from them
a sum of money for the service rendered; and John, in his narrative of the
anointing at Bethany, takes occasion to state that the faultfinding disciple was
a thief, appropriating to his own uses money out of the common purse, of which
he had charge. These facts, of course, show Iscariot to have been a covetous
man. None but a man of greedy, covetous spirit could have taken money for such a
service. A vindictive man, whose vanity had been wounded, or who fancied himself
in some way wronged, might play the traitor for love of revenge, but he would
scorn to be paid for his work. The petty pilfering from the bag was also a sure
sign of a mean, sordid soul. Perhaps the very fact of his being the purse-bearer
to the company of Jesus may be regarded as an indication that his heart hankered
after greed. He got the bag to carry, we imagine, because the other disciples
were all supremely careless about money matters, while he had decided
proclivities towards finance, and showed a desire to have charge of the
superfluous funds. All the rest would be only too glad to find a brother willing
to take the trouble; and having imbibed the spirit of their Master’s precept,
Take no thought for the morrow, they would not think of presenting themselves as
rival candidates for the office. The evangelists do therefore most distinctly
represent Judas as a covetous man. But they do not represent his covetousness as
the sole, or even as the principal, motive of his crime. That, indeed, it can
hardly have been. For, in the first place, would it not have been a better
speculation to have continued pursebearer, with facilities for appropriating its
contents, than to sell his Master for a paltry sum not exceeding five pounds?
Then what could induce a man whose chief and ruling passion was to amass money
to become a disciple of Jesus at all? Surely following Him who had no place
where to lay His head was not a likely way to money-making! Then, finally, how
account for the repentance of the traitor, so great in its vehemence, though
most unholy in its nature, on the hypothesis that his sole object was to gain a
few pieces of silver? Avarice may make a man of splendid talents thoroughly
mercenary and unscrupulous, as is said to have been the case with the famous
Duke of Marlborough; but it is rarely, indeed, that a man given up to avaricious
habits takes seriously to heart the crimes committed under their influence. It
is the nature of avarice to destroy conscience, and to make all things, however
sacred, venal. Whence, then, that mighty volcanic up heaving in the breast of
Judas? Surely other passions were at work in his soul when he sold his Lord than
the cold and hardening love of gain!

Pressed by this difficulty, some have suggested that, in betraying Jesus, Judas
was actuated principally by feelings of jealousy or spite, arising out of
internal dissensions or imagined injuries. This suggestion is in itself not
improbable. Offences might very easily come from various sources. The mere fact
that Judas was not a Galilean, but a native of another province, might give rise
to misunderstanding. Human sympathies and antipathies depend on very little
things. Kinsmanship, a common name, or a common birthplace, have far more power
than the grand bonds which connect us with all the race. In religion the same
remark holds good. The ties of a common Lord, a common hope, and a common
spiritual life, are feeble as compared with those of sect and sectional
religious custom and opinion. Then who knows what offences sprang from those
disputes among the disciples who should be the greatest in the kingdom? What if
the man of Kerioth had been made to feel that, whoever was to be the greatest,
he at least had no chance, not being a Galilean? The mean, narrow habits of
Judas as treasurer would be a third cause of bad feeling in the apostolic
company. Supposing his dishonesty to have escaped observation, his tendency to
put the interest of the bag above the objects for which its contents were
destined, and so to dole out supplies either for the company or for the poor
grudgingly, would be sure to be noticed, and, being noticed, would certainly, in
such an outspoken society, not fail to be remarked on.

These reflections show how ill-feeling might have arisen between Judas and his
fellow-disciples; but what we have to account for is the hatred of the false
disciple against his Master. Had Jesus, then, done any thing to offend the man
by whom He was betrayed? Yes! He had seen through him, and that was offence
enough! For, of course, Judas knew that he was seen through. Men cannot live
together in close fellowship long without coming to know with what feelings they
are regarded by each other. If I distrust a brother, he will find it out, even
should I attempt to conceal it. But the guileless and faithful One would make no
attempt at concealment. He would not, indeed, offensively obtrude His distrust
on the notice of Judas, but neither would He studiously hide it, to make matters
go smoothly between them. He who so faithfully corrected the faults of the other
disciples would do His duty to this one also, and make him aware that he
regarded his spirit and evil habits with disapprobation, in order to bring him
to repentance. And what the effect of such dealing would be it is not difficult
to imagine. On a Peter, correction had a most wholesome influence; it brought
him at once to a right mind. In the case of a Judas the result would be very
different. The mere consciousness that Jesus did not think well of him, and
still more the shame of an open rebuke, would breed sullen resentment and
ever-deepening alienation of heart; till at length love was turned to hatred,
and the impenitent disciple began to cherish vindictive passions. The manner in
which the betrayal was gone about supports the idea that the agent was actuated
by malicious, revengeful feelings. Not content with giving such information as
would enable the Jewish authorities to get their Victim into their hands, Judas
conducted the band that was sent to apprehend his Master, and even pointed Him
out to them by an affectionate salutation. To one in a vengeful mood that kiss
might be sweet; but to a man in any other mood, even though he were a traitor,
how abhorrent and abominable! The salutation was entirely gratuitous: it was not
necessary for the success of the plot; for the military detachment was furnished
with torches, and Judas could have indicated Jesus to them while he himself kept
in the background. But that way would not satisfy a bosom friend turned to be a
mortal enemy.

Along with malice and greed, the instinct of self-preservation may have had a
place among the motives of Judas. Perfidy might be recommended by the
suggestions of selfish prudence. The traitor was a shrewd man, and believed that
a catastrophe was near. He understood better than his single-minded brethren the
situation of affairs; for the children of this world are wiser in their
generation than the children of light. The other disciples, by their generous
enthusiasms and patriotic hopes, were blinded to the signs of the times; but the
false disciple, just because he was less noble, was more discerning. Disaster,
then, being imminent, what was to be done? What but turn king’s evidence, and
make terms for himself, so that Christ’s loss might be his gain? If this
baseness could be perpetrated under pretense of provocation, why then, so much
the better!

These observations help to bring the crime of Judas Iscariot within the range of
human experience, and on this account it was worth our while to make them; for
it is not desirable that we should think of the traitor as an absolutely unique
character, as the solitary perfect incarnation of satanic wickedness. We should
rather so think of his crime as that the effect of contemplating it on our minds
shall be to make us, like the disciples, ask, Is it I? “Who can understand his
errors? Keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins.” There have been many
traitors besides Judas, who, from malice or for gain, have played false to noble
men and noble causes; some of them perhaps even worse men than he. It was his
unenviable distinction to betray the most exalted of all victims; but many who
have been substantially guilty of his sin have not taken it so much to heart,
but have been able to live happily after their deed of villainy was wrought.

Yet, while it is important for our warning not to conceive of Judas as an
isolated sinner, it is also most desirable that we should regard his crime as an
incomprehensible mystery of iniquity. It is in this light that the fourth
evangelist would have us look at it. He could have told us much about the mutual
relations of Judas and Jesus tending to explain the deed of the former. But he
has not chosen to do so. The only explanation he gives of the traitor’s crime
is, that Satan had taken possession of him. This he mentions twice over in one
chapter, as if to express his own horror, and to awaken similar horror in his
readers. And to deepen the impression, after relating the exit of Judas, he adds
the suggestive reflection that it took place after nightfall: “He then, having
received the sop, went immediately out: and it was night.” Fit time for such an
errand!

Judas went out and betrayed his Lord to death, and then he went and took his own
life. What a tragic accompaniment to the crucifixion was that suicide! What an
impressive illustration of the evil of a double mind! To be happy in some
fashion, Judas should either have been a better man or a worse. Had he been
better, he would have been saved from his crime; had he been worse, he would
have escaped torment before the time. As it was, he was bad enough to do the
deed of infamy, and good enough to be unable to bear the burden of its guilt.
Woe to such a man! Better for him, indeed, that he had never been born!

What a melancholy end was that of Judas to an auspicious beginning! Chosen to be
a companion of the Son of man, and an eye and ear witness of His work, once
engaged in preaching the gospel and casting out devils; now possessed of the
devil himself, driven on by him to damnable deeds, and finally employed by a
righteous Providence to take vengeance on his own crime. In view of this
history, how shallow the theory that resolves all moral differences between men
into the effect of circumstances! Who was ever better circumstanced for becoming
good than Judas? Yet the very influences which ought to have fostered goodness
served only to provoke into activity latent evil.

What a bitter cross must the constant presence of such a man as Judas have been
to the pure, loving heart of Jesus! Yet how patiently it was borne for years!
Herein He is an example and a comfort to His true followers, and for this end
among others had He this cross to bear. The Redeemer of men had a companion who
lifted up his heel against Him, that in this as in all other respects He might
be like unto, and able to succor, His brethren. Has any faithful servant of
Christ to complain that his love has been requited by hatred, his truth with bad
faith; or that he is obliged to treat as a true Christian one whom he more than
suspects to be a hypocrite? It is a hard trial, but let him look unto Jesus and
be patient


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  CHAPTER 60: 02.24.     THE DYING PARENT AND THE LITTLE ONES
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The Dying Parent and the Little Ones Section I - Words of Comfort and Counsel to
the Sorrowing Children John 13:31-35; John 14:1-4, John 14:15-21. The exit of
Judas into the darkness of night, on his still darker errand, was a summons to
Jesus to prepare for death. Yet He was thankful for the departure of the
traitor. It took a burden off His heart, and allowed Him to breathe and to speak
freely; and if it brought Him, in the first place, near to His last sufferings,
it brought Him also near to the ulterior joy of resurrection and exaltation to
glory. Therefore His first utterance, after the departure took place, was an
outburst of unfeigned gladness. When the false disciple was gone out, and the
sound of his retiring footsteps had died away, Jesus said: “Now is the Son of
man glorified: and God is glorified in Him; and God shall glorify Him in
Himself, yea, He shall straightway glorify Him.” But while, by a faith which
substantiated things hoped for, and made evident things not visible, Jesus was
able to see in present death coming glory, He remembered that He had around Him
disciples to whom, in their weakness, His decease and departure would mean
simply bereavement and desolation. Therefore He at once turned His thoughts to
them, and proceeded to say to them such things as were suitable to their inward
state and their outward situation. In His last words to His own the Saviour
employed two different styles of speech. First, He spoke to them as a dying
parent addressing his children; and then He assumed a loftier tone, and spoke to
them as a dying Lord addressing His servants, friends, and representatives. The
words of comfort and counsel spoken by Jesus in the former capacity, we find in
the passages cited from the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of John’s Gospel;
while the directions of the departing Lord to His future Apostles are recorded
in the two chapters which follow. We have to consider in this chapter the dying
Parent’s last words to His sorrowing children.

These, it will be observed, were not spoken in one continuous address. While the
dying Parent spake, the children kept asking Him child’s questions. First one,
then another, then a third, and then a fourth, asked Him a question, suggested
by what He had been saying. To these questions Jesus listened patiently, and
returned answer as He could. The answers He gave, and the things He meant to say
without reference to possible interrogations, are mixed up together in the
narrative. It will be convenient for our purpose to separate these from those,
and to consider first, taken together, the words of comfort spoken by Jesus to
His disciples, and then their questionings of Him, with the replies which these
elicited. This method will make these words stand out in all their exquisite
simplicity and appropriateness. To show how very simple and suitable they were,
we may here state them in the fewest possible words. They were these: 1. I am
going away; in my absence find comfort in one another’s love (John 13:31-35). 2.
I am going away; but it is to my Father’s house, and in due season I will come
back and take you thither (John 14:1-4). 3. I am going away; but even when I am
away I will be with you in the person of my alter ego, the Comforter (John
14:15-21).

Knowing to whom He speaks, Jesus begins at once with the nursery dialect. He
addresses His disciples not merely as children, but as “little children;” by the
endearing name expressing His tender affection towards them, and His compassion
for their weakness. Then He alludes to His death in a delicate roundabout way,
adapted to childish capacity and feelings. He tells them He is going a road they
cannot follow, and that they will miss Him as children miss their father when he
goes out and never returns. “Yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me:
and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you.”

After this brief, simple preface Jesus went on to give His little ones His first
dying counsel, viz. that they should love one another in His absence. Surely it
was a counsel well worthy to come first! For what solace can be greater to
orphaned ones than mutual love? Let the world be ever so dark and cheerless,
while brothers in affliction are true brothers to each other in sympathy and
reciprocal helpfulness, they have an unfailing well-spring of joy in the desert
of sorrow. If, on the other hand, to all the other ills of life there be added
alienation, distrust, antagonism, the bereaved are desolate indeed; their night
of sorrow hath not even a solitary star to alleviate its gloom.

Anxious to secure due attention to a precept in itself most seasonable, and even
among the disciples needing enforcement, Jesus conferred on it all the dignity
and importance of a new commandment, and made the love enjoined therein the
distinctive mark of Christian discipleship. “A new commandment,” said He, “I
give unto you, that ye love one another;” thus, on that memorable night, adding
a third novelty to those already introduced-the new sacrament and the new
covenant. The commandment and the covenant were new in the same sense; not as
never having been heard of before, but as now for the first time proclaimed with
the due emphasis, and assuming their rightful place of supremacy above the
details of Mosaic moral legislation and the shadowy rites of the legal religious
economy. Now love was to be the outstanding royal law, and free grace was to
antiquate Sinaitic ordinances. And why now? In both cases, because Jesus was
about to die. His death would be the seal of the New Testament, and it would
exemplify and ratify the new commandment. Hence He goes on to say, after giving
forth that new law, “as I have loved you.” The past tense is not to be
interpreted strictly here: the perfect must be taken as a future perfect so as
to include the death which was the crowning act of the Saviour’s love. “Love one
another,” Jesus would say, “as I shall have loved you, and as ye shall know that
I have loved you when ye come to need the consolation of so loving each other.”
So understanding His words, we see clearly why He calls the law of love new. His
own love in giving His life for His people was a new thing on earth; and a love
among His followers, one towards another, kindred in spirit and ready to do the
same thing if needful, would be equally a novelty at which the world would
stare, asking in wonder whence it came, till at length it perceived that the men
who so loved had been with Jesus. The second word of comfort spoken by Jesus to
the little ones He was about to leave was, in its general aspect, an exhortation
to faith: “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, and believe in me;”
in its more special aspect a promise that He would return to take them to be
with Him for ever. The exhortation embraces in its scope the whole interests of
the disciples, secular and spiritual, temporal and eternal. Their dying Master
recommends them first to exercise faith in God, mainly with reference to
temporal anxieties. He says to them, in effect: “I am going to leave you, my
children; but be not afraid. You shall not be in the world as poor orphans,
defenceless and unprovided for; God my Father will take care of you; trust in
Divine Providence, and let peace rule in your hearts.” Having thus exhorted them
to exercise faith in God the Provider, Jesus next exhorts His little ones to
believe in Himself, with special reference to those spiritual and eternal
interests for the sake of which they had left all and followed Him. “Believing
in God for food and raiment, believe in me too, and be assured that all I said
to you about the kingdom and its joys and rewards is true. Soon ye will find it
very hard to believe this: it will seem to you as if the promises I made were
deceptive, and the kingdom a dream and a hallucination. But do not allow such
dark thoughts to take possession of your minds: recollect what you know of me;
and ask yourselves whether it is likely that He whose companions you have been
during these years would deceive you with romantic promises that were never to
be fulfilled.” The kingdom and its rewards; these were the things which Jesus
had encouraged His followers to expect. Of these, accordingly, He proceeded next
to speak, in the style suited to the character he had assumed-that, viz., of a
dying parent addressing his children. “In my Father’s house,” said He, “are many
mansions. I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again, and receive
you unto myself.” Such, in its more specific form, was the second word of
consolation. What a cheering prospect it held out to the disciples! In the hour
of despondency the little ones would think themselves orphans, without a home
either in earth or in heaven. But their Friend assures them that they should not
merely have a home, but a splendid one; not merely a humble shed to shelter them
from the storm, but a glorious palace to reside in, in a region where storms
were unknown-a house with a great many rooms in it, supplying abundant
accommodation for them all, incomparably more capacious than the temple which
had been the earthly dwelling-place of God. His own death, which would appear to
them so great a calamity, would simply mean His going before to prepare for them
a place in that splendid mansion, and in due season His departure would be
followed by a return to take them to be with Himself. What was implied in
preparing a place when He should come again, He did not explain. He only added,
as if coaxing them to take a cheerful view of the situation, “Whither I go ye
know, and the way ye know;” meaning, Think whither I go, to the Father, and
think of my death as merely the way thither: and so let not my absence from the
world make you sad, nor my death seem something dreadful. To the student of New
Testament theology, interested in tracing the resemblances and contrasts in
different types of doctrine, this second word of consolation spoken by Christ to
His disciples has special interest, as containing substantially the idea of a
Forerunner, one of the striking thoughts of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The
writer of that epistle tells his Hebrew readers that Jesus has gone into heaven
not merely as a High Priest, but as a Forerunner, this being one of the
novelties and glories of the new dispensation; for no high priest of Israel went
into the Most Holy Place as a forerunner, but only as a substitute, going for
the people into a place whither they might not follow him. Jesus, on the other
hand, goes into the heavenly sanctuary, not only for us, but before us, going
into a place whither we may follow Him; no place being screened off, barred, or
locked against us. Similar is the thought which the fourth evangelist puts into
the mouth of Jesus here, speaking as the great High Priest of humanity.

These child-like yet profound sayings of the Lord Jesus are not only cheering,
but most stimulating to the imagination. The “many mansions” suggest many
thoughts. We think with pleasure of the vast numbers which the many-mansioned
house is capable of containing. We may too, harmlessly, though perhaps
fancifully, with the saints of other ages, think of the lodgings in the Father’s
house as not only many in number, but also as many in kind, corresponding to the
classes or ranks of the residents. But to some the most comfortable thought of
all suggested by this pregnant poetic word is the certainty of an eternal life.
To men who have doubted concerning the life beyond, the grand desideratum is not
detailed information respecting the site, and the size, and the architecture of
the celestial city, but to know for certain that there is such a city, that
there is an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. This desideratum
is supplied in this word of Christ. For whatever the many mansions may mean
besides, they do at the least imply that there is a state of happy existence to
be reached by believers, as He in whom they believe reached it, viz. through
death. The life everlasting, whatever its conditions, is undoubtedly taught
here. And it is taught with authority. Jesus speaks as one who knows, not (like
Socrates) as one who merely has an opinion on the subject. At his farewell
meeting with his friends before he drank the hemlock cup, the Athenian sage
discussed with them the question of the immortality of the soul. On that
question he strongly maintained the affirmative; but still only as one who
looked on it as a fair subject for discussion, and knew that there was a good
deal to be said on both sides. But Jesus does more than maintain the affirmative
on the subject of the life to come. He speaks thereon with oracular confidence,
offering to us not the frail raft of a probable opinion, whereon we may
perilously sail down the stream of life towards death; but the strong ship of a
divine word, wherein one may sail securely, for which Socrates and his
companions sighed. And He so speaks with a full sense of the responsibility He
thereby takes upon Himself. “If it were not so,” He remarked to His disciples,
“I would have told you;” which is as much as to say, that one should not
encourage such expectations as He had led them to entertain unless he were sure
of his ground. It was not enough to have an opinion about the world to come: one
who took the responsibility of asking men to leave this present world for its
sake should be quite certain that it was a reality, and not a dream. What
condescension to the weakness of the disciples is shown in this self- justifying
reflection of their Lord! What an aid also it lends to our faith in the reality
of future bliss! For such an one as Jesus Christ would not have spoken in this
way unless He had possessed authentic information about the world beyond. In the
third word of consolation, the leading thought is the promise of another
Comforter, who should take the place of Him who was going away, and make the
bereaved feel as if He were still with them. In the second word of comfort Jesus
had said that He was going to provide a home for the little ones, and that then
He would return and take them to it. In this third final word He virtually
promises to be present with them by substitute, even when He is absent. “I will
pray the Father,” He says, “and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may
abide with you for ever” (not for a season, as has been the case with me). Then
He tells them who this wonderful Comforter is: His name is “the Spirit of
Truth.” Then, lastly, He gives them to understand that this Spirit of Truth will
be a Comforter to them, by restoring, as it were, the consciousness of His own
presence, so that the coming of this other Comforter will just be, in a sense,
His own spiritual return. “I will not leave you comfortless,” He assures them:
“I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you;” promising thereby not a
different thing, but the same thing which He had promised just before, in
different terms. How the other Comforter would make Himself an alter ego of the
departed one, He does not here distinctly explain. At a subsequent stage in His
discourse He did inform His disciples how the wonder would be achieved. The
Spirit would make the absent Jesus present to them again, by bringing to their
remembrance all His words, by testifying of Him, and by guiding them into an
intelligent apprehension of all Christian truth. All this, though not said here,
is sufficiently hinted at by the name given to the new Paraclete. He is called
the Spirit of Truth, not the Holy Spirit, as elsewhere, because He was to
comfort by enlightening the minds of the disciples in the knowledge of Christ,
so that they should see Him clearly by the spiritual eye, when He was no longer
visible to the eye of the body. This spiritual vision, when it came, was to be
the true effectual consolation for the absence of the Jesus whom the eleven had
known after the flesh. It would be as the dawn of day, which banishes the fears
and discomforts of the night. While the night lasts, all comforts are but
partial alleviations of discomfort. A father’s hand and voice have a reassuring
effect on the timid heart of his child, as they walk together by night; but
while the darkness lasts, the little one is liable to be scared by objects dimly
seen, and distorted by fear-stricken fancy into fantastic forms. “In the
night-time men (much more children) think every bush a thief;” and all can
sympathize with the sentiment of Rousseau, “It is my nature to be afraid of
darkness.” Light is welcome, even when it only reveals to us the precise nature
and extent of our miseries. If it do not in that case drive sorrow away, it
helps at least to make it calm and sober. Such cold comfort, however, was not
what Jesus promised His followers. The Spirit of Truth was not to come merely to
show them their desolation in all its nakedness, and to reconcile them to it as
inevitable, by teaching them to regard their early hopes as romantic dreams, the
kingdom of God as a mere ideal, and the death of Jesus as the fate that awaits
every earnest attempt to realize that ideal. Miserable comfort this! to be told
that all earnest religion must end in infidelity, and all enthusiasm in despair!
The third word of consolation was introduced by an injunction laid by Jesus on
His disciples. “If ye love me,” said He to them, “keep my commandments.” It is
probable that the speaker meant here to set the true way of showing love over
against an unprofitable, bootless one, which His hearers were in danger of
taking; that, namely, of grieving over His loss. We may paraphrase the words so
as to indicate the connection of thought somewhat as follows: “If ye love me,
show not your love by idle sorrow, but by keeping my commandments, whereby ye
shall render to me a real service. Let the precepts which I have taught you from
time to time be your concern, and be not troubled about yourselves. Leave your
future in my hands; I will look after it: for I will pray the Father, and he
will send you another Comforter.” But this paraphrase, though true so far as it
goes, does not exhaust the meaning of this weighty word. Jesus prefaces the
promise of the Comforter by an injunction to keep His commandments, because He
wishes His disciples to understand that the fulfilment of the promise and the
keeping of the commandments go together. This truth is hinted at by the word
“and,” which forms the link of connection between precept and promise; and it is
reiterated under various modes of expression in the passage we are now
considering. The necessity of moral fidelity in order to spiritual illumination
is plainly taught when the promised Comforter is described as a Spirit “whom the
world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” It is
still more plainly taught in the last verse of this section: “He that hath my
commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me
shall be loved of my Father; and I will love him, and will manifest myself to
him.” As in His first great sermon (on the mount) Jesus had said, “Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they shall see God;” so, in His farewell discourse to His
own, He says in effect: Be pure in heart, and through the indwelling Spirit of
Truth ye shall see me, even when I am become invisible to the world.

Life and light go together: such is the doctrine of the Lord Jesus, as of all
Scripture. Keeping in mind this great truth, we comprehend the diverse issues of
religious perplexities; in one resulting in the illuminism of infidelity; in
another, in an enlightened, unwavering faith. The “illumination” which consists
in the extinction of the heavenly luminaries of faith and hope is the penalty of
not faithfully keeping Christ’s commandments; that which consists in the
restoration of spiritual lights after a temporary obscuration by the clouds of
doubt is the reward of holding fast moral integrity when faith is eclipsed, and
of fearing God while walking in darkness. A man, e.g., who, having believed for
a time the divinity of Christ and the life to come, ends by believing that Jesus
was only a deluded enthusiast, and that the divine kingdom is but a beautiful
dream, will not be found to have made any great effort to realize his own ideal,
certainly not to have been guilty of the folly of suffering for it. To many, the
creed which resolves all religion into impracticable ideals is very convenient.
It saves a world of trouble and pain; it permits them to think fine thoughts,
without requiring them to do noble actions, and it substitutes romancing about
heroism in the place of being heroes.

Section II - The Children’s Question, and the Adieu John 13:36-38, John 14:5-7,
John 14:22-31. The questions put successively by four of the little ones to
their dying Parent now invite our attention. The first of these was asked by the
disciple who was ever the most forward to speak his mind-Simon Peter. His
question had reference to the intimation made by Jesus about His going away.
Peter had noted and been alarmed by that intimation. It seemed to hint at
danger; it plainly spoke of separation. Tormented with uncertainty, terrified by
the vague presentiment of hidden peril, grieved at the thought of being parted
from his beloved Master, he could not rest till he had penetrated the mystery;
and at the very first pause in the discourse he abruptly inquired, “Lord,
whither goest Thou?” thinking, though he did not say, “Where Thou goest, I will
go.”

It was to this unexpressed thought that Jesus directed His reply. He did not say
where He was going; but, leaving that to be inferred from His studied reserve,
and from the tone in which He spoke, He Simply told Peter: “Whither I go, thou
cast not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards.” By this answer He
showed He had not forgotten that it was with children He had to deal. He does
not look for heroic behavior on the part of Peter and his brother disciples at
the approaching crisis. He does indeed expect that they shall play the hero by
and by, and follow Him on the martyr’s path bearing their cross, in accordance
with the law of discipleship proclaimed by Himself in connection with the first
announcement of His own death. But meantime He expects them to behave simply as
little children, running away in terror when the moment of danger arrives.

While this was the idea Jesus had of Peter, it was not the idea which Peter had
of himself. He thought himself no child, but a man every inch. Dimly
apprehending what following his Master meant, he deemed himself perfectly
competent to the task now, and felt almost aggrieved by the poor opinion
entertained of his courage. “Why,” he therefore asked in a tone of injured
virtue, “Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now?” Is it because there is danger,
imprisonment, death, in the path? If that be all, it is no good reason, for “I
will lay down my life for Thy sake.” Ah, that “why,” how like a child; that
self-confidence, what an infallible mark of spiritual weakness!

If the answer of Jesus to Peter’s fist question was indirect and evasive, that
which He gave to his second was too plain to be mistaken. “Wilt thou,” He said,
taking up the disciple’s words, “Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied
me thrice.” Better for Peter had he been content with the first reply! Yet no:
not better, only pleasanter for the moment. It was good for Peter to be thus
bluntly told what his Lord thought of him, and to be shown once for all his own
picture drawn by an unerring hand. It was just what was needed to lead him to
self-knowledge, and to bring on a salutary crisis in his spiritual history.
Already more than once he had been faithfully dealt with for faults springing
from his characteristic vices of forwardness and self-confidence. But such
correction in detail had produced no deep impression, no decisive lasting effect
on his mind. He was still ignorant of himself, still as forward, self-confident,
and self-willed as ever, as the declaration he had just made most clearly
showed. There was urgent need, therefore, for a lesson that would never be
forgotten; for a word of correction that would print itself indelibly on the
erring disciple’s memory, and bear fruit throughout his whole after life. And
here it is at last, and in good season. The Lord tells His brave disciple that
he will forthwith play the coward; He tells His attached disciple, to whom
separation from his Master seems mofre dreadful than death, that he will, ere
many hours are past, deny all acquaintance or connection with Him whom he so
fondly loves. He tells him all this at a time when the prophecy must be followed
by its fulfilment almost as fast as a flash of lightning is followed by its peal
of thunder. The prediction of Jesus, so minutely circumstantial, and the denial
of Peter, so exactly corresponding, both by themselves so remarkable, and coming
so close together, will surely help to make each other impressive; and it will
be strange indeed if the two combined do not, by the blessing of God, in answer
to the Master’s intercessory prayer, make of the fallen disciple quite another
man. The result will doubtless prove the truth of another prophetic word
reported by Luke as having been spoken by the Lord to His disciple on the same
occasion. The chaff will be separated from the wheat in Peter’s character; he
will undergo a great change of spirit; and being converted from self-confidence
and self-will to meekness and modesty, he will be fit at length to strengthen
others, to be a shepherd to the weak, and, if needful, to bear his cross, and so
follow his Master through death to glory. The second question proceeded from
Thomas, the melancholy disciple, slow to believe, and prone to take sombre views
of things. The mind of this disciple fastened on the statement wherewith Jesus
concluded His second word of consolation: “Whither I go, the way ye know.” That
statement seemed to Thomas not only untrue, but unreasonable. For himself, he
was utterly unconscious of possessing the knowledge for which the speaker had
given His hearers credit; and, moreover, he did not see how it was possible for
any of them to possess it. For Jesus had never yet distinctly told them whither
He was going; and not knowing the terminus ad quem, how could any one know the
road which led thereto? Therefore, in a dry, matter-of-fact, almost cynical
tone, this second interlocutor remarked: “Lord, we know not whither Thou goest,
and how can we know the way?” This utterance was thoroughly characteristic of
the man, as we know him from John’s portraiture. While the practical-minded
Peter asks Jesus where He is going, determined if possible to follow Him, Thomas
does not think it worth his while to make any such inquiry. Not that he is
unconcerned about the matter. He would like well to know whither his Lord is
bound; and, if it were possible, he would be as ready as his brother disciple to
keep Him company. Danger would not deter him. He had said once before, “Let us
go, that we may die with Him,” and he could say the same thing honestly again;
for though he is gloomy, he is not selfish or cowardly. But just as on that
earlier occasion, when Jesus, disregarding the warnings of His disciples,
resolved to go from Peraea to Judea on a visit to the afflicted family of
Bethany, Thomas took the darkest view of the situation, and looked on death as
the certain fate awaiting them all, so now he resigns himself to a hopeless,
desponding mood. The thought of the Master’s departure makes him so sad that he
has no heart to ask questions concerning the why or the whitherward. He resigns
himself to ignorance on these matters as an inevitable doom. Whither? whither? I
know not; who can tell? The future is dark. The Father’s house you spoke of,
where in the universe can it be? Is there really such a place at all?

Even the question put by Thomas, “How can we know the way?” is not so much a
question as an apology for not asking questions. It is not a demand for
information, but a gentle complaint against Jesus for expecting His disciples to
be informed. It is not the expression of a desire for knowledge, but an excuse
for ignorance. The melancholy disciple is for the present hopeless of knowing
either end or way, and therefore he is incurious and listless. Far from seeking
light, he is rather in the humor to exaggerate the darkness. As Jonah in his
angry mood indulged in querulousness, so Thomas in his sadness delights in
gloom. He waits not eagerly for the dawn of day; he rather takes pleasure in the
night, as congenial to his present frame of mind. Good men of melancholic
temperament are, at the best, like men walking amid the solemn gloom of a
forest. Sadness is the prevailing feeling in their souls, and they are content
to have occasional broken glimpses of heaven, like peeps of the sky through the
leafy roof of the wood. But Thomas is so heavy-hearted that he hardly cares even
for a glimpse of the celestial world; he looks not up, but walks through the
dark forest at a slow pace, with his eyes fixed upon the ground. The
argumentative proclivities of this disciple appear in his words as well as his
proneness to despondency. Another man in despairing mood might have said: We
know neither end nor way; we are utterly in the dark both as to whither you are
going, and as to the road by which you are to go thither. But Thomas must needs
reason; his mental habit leads him to represent one piece of ignorance as the
necessary consequence of another: We know not the terminus ad quem, and
therefore it is impossible that we can know the way. This man is afflicted with
the malady of thought; he gives reasons for every thing, and he will demand
reasons for every thing. Here he demonstrates the impossibility of a certain
kind of knowledge; at another crisis we shall find him insisting on palpable
demonstration that his Lord is indeed risen from the dead.

How does Jesus reply to the lugubrious speech of Thomas? Most compassionately
and sympathetically, now as at another time. To the curious question of Peter He
returned an evasive answer; to the sad- hearted Thomas, on the other hand, He
vouchsafes information which had not been asked. And the information given is
full even to redundancy. The disciple had complained of ignorance concerning the
end, and especially concerning the way; and it would have been a sufficient
reply to have said, The Father is the end, and I am the way. But the Master, out
of the fulness of His heart, said more than this. With firm, emphatic tones He
uttered this oracular response, meant for the ear not of Thomas alone, but of
all the world: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto
the Father but by me.”

Comparing this momentous declaration with the preceding word of consolation, we
observe a change in the mode of presenting the truth. The Father Himself takes
the place of the Father’s house with its many mansions, as the end; and Jesus,
instead of being the guide who shall one day lead His children to the common
home, becomes Himself the way. The kind Master alters His language, in gracious
accommodation to childish capacities. Of Christians at the best it may be said,
in the words of Paul, that now, in this present time-life, they see the heavenly
and the eternal as through a glass, in enigmas. But the disciples at this crisis
in their history were not able to do even so much. Jesus had held up before
their eyes the brightly-polished mirror of a beautiful parable concerning a
house of many mansions, and they had seen nothing there; no image, but only an
opaque surface. The future remained dark and hidden as before. What, then, was
to be done? Just what Jesus did. Persons must be substituted for places.
Disciples weak in faith must be addressed in this fashion: Can ye not comprehend
whither I am going? Think, then, to whom I go. If ye know nothing of the place
called heaven, know at least that ye have a Father there. And as for the way to
heaven, let that for you mean me. Knowing me, ye need no further knowledge;
believing in me, ye may look forward to the future, even to death itself,
without fear or concern. On looking more narrowly into the response given by
Jesus to Thomas, we find it by no means easy to satisfy ourselves as to how
precisely it should be expounded. The very fulness of this saying perplexes us;
it is dark with excess of light. Interpreters differ as to how the Way, the
Truth, and the Life are to be distinguished, and how they are related to each
other. One offers, as a paraphrase of the text: I am the beginning, the middle,
and the end of the ladder which leads to heaven; another: I am the example, the
teacher, the giver of eternal life; while a third subordinates the two last
attributes to the first, and reads: I am the true way of life. Each view is true
in itself, yet one hesitates to accept either of them as exhausting the meaning
of the Saviour’s words.

Whatever be the preferable method of interpreting these words of our Lord, two
things at least are clear from them. Jesus sets Himself forth here as all that
man needs for eternal salvation, and as the only Saviour. He is way, truth,
life, every thing; and He alone conducts to the Father. He says to men in
effect: “What is it you want? Is it light? I am the light of the world, the
revealer of the Father: for this end I came, that I might declare Him. Or is it
reconciliation you want? I by that very death which I am about to endure am the
Reconciler. My very end in dying is to bring you who are for off nigh to God, as
to a forgiving, gracious Father. Or is it life, spiritual, never-ending life,
you seek? Believe in me, and ye shall never die; or though ye die, I will raise
you again to enter on an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and that
fadeth not away, eternal in the heavens. Let all who seek these things look to
me. Look to me for light, not to rabbis or philosophers; not even to nature and
providence. These last do indeed reveal God, but they do so dimly. The light of
creation is but the starlight of theology, and the light of providence is but
its moonlight, while I am the sunlight. My Father’s Name is written in
hieroglyphics in the works of creation; in providence and history it is written
in plain letters, but so far apart that it takes much study to put them
together, and so spell out the divine Name: in me the divine Name is written so
that he may read who runs, and the wisdom of God is become milk for babes. Look
to me also for reconciliation, not to legal sacrifices. That way of approaching
God is antiquated now. I am the new, the living, the eternal way into the holy
of holies, through which all may draw near to the divine presence with a true
heart, in full assurance of faith. Look to me, finally, for eternal blessedness.
I am He who, having died, shall rise again, and live forevermore, and shall hold
in my hands the keys of Hades and of death, and shall open the kingdom of heaven
to all believers.” The doctrine that in Christ is the fulness of grace and truth
is very comforting to those who know Him; but what of those who know Him not, or
who possess only such an implicit, unconscious knowledge as hardly merits the
name? Does the statement we have been considering exclude such from the
possibility of salvation? It does not. It declares that no man cometh to the
Father but by Christ, but it does not say how much knowledge is required for
salvation. It is possible that some may be saved by Christ, and for His sake,
who know very little about Him indeed. This we may infer from the case of the
disciples themselves. What did they know about the way of salvation at this
period? Jesus addresses them as persons yet in ignorance concerning Himself,
saying: “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” Nevertheless,
He has no hesitation in speaking to them as persons who should be with Him in
the Father’s house. And what shall we say of Job, and the Syro-Phoenician woman,
and the Ethiopian eunuch, and Cornelius, and we may add, after Calvin, the
Syrian courtier Naaman? We cannot say more than the great theologian of Geneva
has himself said concerning such cases: “I confess,” he writes, “that in a
certain respect their faith was implicit, not only as to the person of Christ,
but as to His virtue and grace, and the office assigned Him by the Father.
Meanwhile it is certain that they were imbued with principles which gave some
taste of Christ, however slight.” It is doubtful whether even so much can be
said of Naaman; though Calvin, without evidence, and merely to meet the
exigencies of a theory, argues that it would have been too absurd, when Elisha
had spoken to him of little matters, to have been silent on the most important
subject. Or if we grant to Naaman the slight taste contended for, must we not
grant it also, with Justin Martyr and Zwingli, to Socrates and Plato and others,
on the principle that all true knowledge of God, by whomsoever possessed and
however obtained, whether it be sunlight, moonlight, or starlight, is virtually
Christian; in other words, that Christ, just because He is the only light, is
the light of every man who hath any light in him? This principle, while it has
its truth, may very easily be perverted into an argument against a supernatural
revelation. Hence in its very first chapter, Of the Holy Scripture, the
Westminster Confession broadly asserts that the light of nature and the works of
creation and providence are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of
His will which is necessary unto salvation. While strongly maintaining this
truth, however, we must beware of being drawn into a tone of disparagement in
speaking of what way be learnt of God from those lower sources. While walking in
the sunlight, we rust not despise the dimmer luminaries of the night, or forget
their existence, as in the day-time men forget the moon and the stars. By so
doing we should be virtually disparaging the Scriptures themselves. For much
that is in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, is but a record of what
inspired men had learned from observation of God’s works in creation, and of His
ways in providence. All cannot, indeed, see as much there as they saw. On the
contrary, a revelation was needed not only to make known truths lying beyond the
teachings of natural religion, but even to direct men’s dim eyes to truths
which, though visible in nature, were in fact for the most part not seen. The
Bible, in the quaint language of Calvin, is a pair of spectacles, through which
our weak eyes see the glory of God in the world. Yet what is seen through the
spectacles by weak eyes is in many passages just what might be seen by strong
eyes without their aid-“nothing being placed there which is not visible in the
creation.”

These observations may help us to cherish hope for those whose opportunities of
knowing Him who is “the way, the truth, and the life” are small. They do not,
however, justify those who, having abundant facilities for knowing Christ, are
content with the minimum of knowledge. There is more hope for the heathen than
for such men. To their number no true Christian can belong. A genuine disciple
may know little to begin with: this was the case even with the apostles
themselves; but he will not be satisfied to be in the dark. He will desire to be
enlightened in the knowledge of Christ, and will pray, “Lord, show us the
Father.”

Such was the prayer of Philip, the third disciple who took part in the dialogue
at the supper-table. Philip’s request, like Thomas’s question, was a virtual
denial of a statement previously made by Jesus. “If ye had known me,” Jesus had
said to Thomas, “ye should have known my Father also;” and then He had added,
“and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.” This last statement Philip
felt himself unable to homologate. “Seen the Father! would it were so! nothing
would gratify us more: Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” In
itself, the prayer of this disciple was most devout and praiseworthy. There can
be no loftier aspiration than that which seeks the knowledge of God the Father,
no better index of a spiritual mind than to account such knowledge the summum
bonum, no more hopeful symptom of ultimate arrival at the goal than the candor
which honestly confesses present ignorance. In these respects the sentiments
uttered by Philip were fitted to gratify his Master. In other respects, however,
they were not so satisfactory. The ingenuous inquirer had evidently a very crude
notion of what seeing the Father amounted to. He fancied it possible, and he
appears to have wished, to see the Father as he then saw Jesus-as an outward
object of vision to the eye of the body. Then, supposing that to be his wish,
how foolish the reflection, “and it sufficeth us”! What good could a mere
external vision of the Father do any one? And finally that same reflection
painfully showed how little the disciples had gained hitherto from intercourse
with Jesus. They had been with Him for years, yet had not found rest and
satisfaction in Him, but had still a craving for something beyond Him; while
what they craved they had, without knowing it, been getting from Him all along.

Such ignorance and spiritual incapacity so late in the day were very
disappointing. And Jesus was disappointed, but, with characteristic patience,
not irritated. He took not offence either at Philip’s stupidity, or at the
contradiction he had given to His own statement (for He would rather be
contradicted than have disciples pretend to know when they do not), but
endeavored to enlighten the little ones somewhat in the knowledge of the Father.
For this end He gave great prominence to the truth that the knowledge of the
Father and of Himself, the Son, were one; that He that hath seen the Son hath
seen the Father. The better to fix this great principle in the minds of His
hearers, He put it in the strongest possible manner, by treating their ignorance
of the Father as a virtual ignorance of Himself. “Have I,” He asked, “been so
long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?” Then He went on to
reason, as if to be ignorant of the Father was to be so far ignorant of Himself
as in effect to deny His divinity. “Believest thou not,” He again asked, “that I
am in the Father, and the Father in me?” and then He followed up the question
with a reference to those things which went to prove the asserted identity-His
words and His works. Nor did He stop even here, but proceeded next to speak of
still more convincing proofs of His identity with the Father, to be supplied in
the marvellous works which should afterwards be done by the apostles themselves
in His Name, and through powers granted to them by Himself in answer to their
prayers. The first question put by Jesus to Philip, “Hast thou not known me?”
was something more than a logical artifice to make stupid disciples reflect on
the contents of the knowledge they already possessed. It hinted at a real fact.
The disciples had really not yet seen Jesus, for as long as they had been with
Him. They knew Him, and they did not know Him: they knew not that they knew, nor
what they knew. They were like children, who can repeat the Catechism without
understanding its sense, or who possess a treasure without being capable of
estimating its value. They were like men looking at an object through a
telescope without adjusting the focus, or like an ignorant peasant gazing up at
the sky on a winter night, and seeing the stars which compose a constellation,
such as the Bear or Orion, yet not recognizing the constellation itself. The
disciples were familiar with the words, parables, discourses, etc., spoken, and
with the miraculous works done, by their Master, but they knew these only as
isolated particulars; the separate rays of light emanating from the fountain of
divine wisdom, power, and love in Jesus, had never been gathered into a focus,
so as to form a distinct image of Him who came in the flesh to reveal the
invisible God. They had seen many a star shine out in the spiritual heavens
while in Christ’s company; but the stars had not yet assumed to their eye the
aspect of a constellation. They had no clear, full, consistent, spiritual
conception of the mind, heart, and character of the man Christ Jesus, in whom
dwelt all the fulness of Godhead bodily. Nor would they possess such a
conception till the Spirit of Truth, the promised Comforter, came. The very
thing He was to do for them was to show them Christ; not merely to recall to
their memories the details of His life, but to show them the one mind and spirit
which dwelt amid the details, as the soul dwells in the body, and made them an
organic whole, and which once perceived, would of itself recall to recollection
all the isolated particulars at present lying latent in their consciousness.
When the apostles had got that conception, they would know Christ indeed, the
same Christ whom they had known before, yet different, a new Christ, because a
Christ comprehended-seen with the eye of the spirit, as the former had been seen
with the eye of the flesh. And when they had thus seen Christ, they would feel
that they had also seen the Father. The knowledge of Christ would satisfy them,
because in Him they should see with unveiled face the glory of the Lord. The
soul-satisfying vision of God being a future good to be attained after the
advent of the Comforter, it could not have been the intention of Jesus to assure
the disciples that they possessed it already, still less to force it on them by
a process of reasoning. When He said, “From henceforth ye know Him (the Father),
and have seen Him,” He evidently meant: “Ye now know how to see Him, viz. by
reflecting on your intercourse with me. And the sole object of the statements
made to Philip concerning the close relations between the Father and the speaker
evidently was to impress upon the disciples the great truth that the solution of
all religious difficulties, the satisfaction of all longings, was to be found in
the knowledge of Himself. “Know me,” Jesus would say, “trust me, pray to me, and
all shall be well with you. Your mind shall be filled with light, your heart
shall be at rest; you shall have every thing you want; your joy shall be full.”
A most important lesson this; but also one which, like Philip and the other
disciples, all are slow to learn. How few, even of those who confess Christ’s
divinity, do see in Him the true perfect Revealer of God! To many Jesus is one
Being, and God is another and quite a different Being; though the truth that
Jesus is divine is all the while honestly acknowledged. That great truth lies in
the mind like an unfructifying seed buried deep in the soil, and we may say of
it what has been said of the doctrine of the soul’s immortality: “One may
believe it for twenty years, and only in the twenty-first, in some great moment,
discover with astonishment the rich contents of this belief, the warmth of this
naphtha spring.” Impressions of God have been received from one quarter,
impressions of Christ from another; and the two sets of impressions lie side by
side in the mind, incompatible, yet both receiving house-room. Hence, when a
Christian begins to carry out consistently the principle that, Jesus being God,
to know Jesus is to know God, he is apt to experience a painful conflict between
a new and an old class of ideas about the Divine Being. Two Gods-a christianize
God, and a sort of pagan divinity-struggle for the place of sovereignty; and
when at last the conflict ends in the enthronement in the mind and heart of the
God whom Jesus revealed, the day-dawn of a new spiritual life has arrived.

One most prominent idea in the conception of God as revealed by Jesus Christ is
that expressed by the name Father. According to the doctrine of our Lord and
Saviour, God is not truly known till He is thought of and heartly believed in as
a Father; neither can any God who is not regarded as a Father satisfy the human
heart. Hence His own mode of speaking concerning God was in entire accordance
with this doctrine. He did not speak to men about the Deity, or the Almighty.
Those epithets which philosophers are so fond of applying to the Divine Being,
the Infinite, the Absolute, etc., never crossed His lips. No words ever uttered
by Him could suggest the idea of the gloomy arbitrary tyrant before whom the
guilty conscience of superstitious heathenism cowers. He spake evermore, in
sermon, parable, model prayer, and private conversation, of a Father. Such
expressions as “the Father,” “my Father,” “your Father,” were constantly on His
tongue; and all He taught concerning God harmonized perfectly with the feelings
these expressions were fitted to call forth.

Yet notwithstanding all His pains, and all the beauty of His utterances
concerning the Being whom no man hath seen, Jesus, it is to be feared, has only
imperfectly succeeded in establishing the worship of the Father. From ignorance
or from preference, men still extensively worship God under other names and
categories. Some deem the paternal appellation too homely, and prefer a name
expressive of more distant and ceremonious relations. The Deity, or the
Almighty, suffices them. Philosophers dislike the appellation Father, because it
makes the personality of God too prominent. They prefer to think of the
Uncreated as an Infinite, Eternal Abstraction-an object of speculation rather
than of faith and love. Legal-minded professors of religion take fright at the
word Father. They are not sure what they have a right to use it, and they deem
it safer to speak of God in general terms, which take nothing for granted, as
the Judge, the Taskmaster, or the Lawgiver. The worldly, the learned, and the
religious, from different motives, thus agree in allowing to fall into desuetude
the name into which they have been baptized, and only a small minority worship
the Father in spirit and in truth.

Superficial readers of the gospel may cherish the idea that the name Father,
applied to God by Jesus, is simply or mainly a sentimental poetic expression,
whose loss were no great matter for regret. There could not be a greater
mistake. The name, in Christ’s lips, always represents a definite thought, and
teaches a great truth. When He uses the term to express the relation of the
Invisible One to Himself, He gives us a glimpse into the mystery of the Divine
Being, telling us that God is not abstract being, as Platonists and Arians
conceived Him; not the absolute, incapable of relations; not a passionless
being, without affections; but one who eternally loves, and is loved, in whose
infinite nature the family affections find scope for ceaseless play-One in
three: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three persons in one divine substance. Then
again, when He calls God Father, in reference to mankind in general, as He does
repeatedly, He proclaims to men sunk in ignorance and sin this blessed truth:
“God, my Father, is your Father too; cherishes a paternal feeling towards you,
though ye be so marred in moral vision that He might well not know you, and so
degenerate that He might well be ashamed to own you; and I His Son am come, your
elder brother, to bring you back to your Father’s house. Ye are not worthy to be
called His sons, for ye have ceased to bear His image, and ye have not yielded
Him filial obedience and reverence; nevertheless, He is willing to be a Father
unto you, and receive you graciously in His arms. Believe this, and become in
heart and conduct sons of God, that ye may enjoy the full, the spiritual and
eternal, benefit of God’s paternal love.” When, finally, He calls God Father,
with special reference to His own disciples, He assures them that they are the
objects of God’s constant, tender, and effective care; that all His power,
wisdom, and love are engaged for their protection, preservation, guidance, and
final eternal salvation; that their Father in heaven will see that they lack no
good, and will make all things minister to their interest, and in the end secure
to them their inheritance in the everlasting kingdom. “Fear not,” is His
comforting message to His little chosen flock, “it is your Father’s good
pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

We have now to notice the fourth and last of the children’s questions, which was
put by Judas, “not Iscariot” (he is otherwise occupied), but the other disciple
of that name, also called Lebbaeus and Thaddeus. In His third word of
consolation Jesus had spoken of a re-appearance (after His departure) specially
and exclusively to “His own.” “The world,” He had said, “seeth me no more; but
ye see me,” that is, shall see after a little while. Now two questions might
naturally be asked concerning this exclusive manifestation: How was it possible?
and what was the reason of it? How could Jesus make Himself visible to His
disciples, and yet remain invisible to all others? and granting the possibility,
why not show Himself to the world at large? It is not easy to decide which of
these two difficulties Judas had in his mind, for his question might be
interpreted either way. Literally translated, it was to this effect: “Lord, what
has happened, that Thou art about to manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the
world?” The disciple might mean, like Nicodemus, to ask, “How can these things
be?” or he might mean, “We have been hoping for the coming of Thy kingdom in
power and glory, visible to the eyes of all men: what has led Thee to change Thy
plans?” In either case the question of Judas was founded on a misapprehension of
the nature of the promised manifestation. He imagined that Jesus was to reappear
corporeally, after His departure to the Father, therefore so as to be visible to
the outward eye, and not of this one or that one, but of all, unless He took
pains to hide Himself from some while revealing Himself to others. Neither Judas
nor any of his brethren was capable as yet of conceiving a spiritual
manifestation, not to speak of finding therein a full compensation, for the loss
of the corporeal presence. Had they grasped the thought of a spiritual presence,
they could have had no difficulty in reconciling visibility to one with
invisibility to another; for they would have understood that the vision could be
enjoyed only by those who possessed the inward sense of sight.

How was a question dictated by incapacity to understand the subject to which it
referred to be answered? Just as you would explain the working of the electric
telegraph to a child. If your child asked you, Father, how is it that you can
send a message by the telegraph to my uncle or aunt in America, so far, far
away? you would not think of attempting to explain to him the mysteries of
electricity. You would take him to a telegraph office, and bid him look at the
man actually engaged in sending a message, and tell him, that as the man moved
the handle, a needle in America pointed at letters of the alphabet, which, when
put together, made up words which said just what you wished to say. In this way
it was that Jesus answered the question of Judas. He did not attempt to explain
the difference between a spiritual and a corporeal manifestation, but simply
said in effect: Do you so and so, and what I have promised will come true. “If a
man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will
come unto him, and make our abode with him.” It is just the former statement
repeated, in a slightly altered, more pointed form. Nothing new is said, because
nothing new can be said intelligibly. The old promise is simply so put as to
arrest attention on the condition of its fulfilment. “if a man love me, he will
keep my words:” attend to that, my children, and the rest will follow. The
divine Trinity-Father, Son, and Spirit-will verily dwell with the faithful
disciple, who with trembling solicitude strives to observe my Commandments. As
for those who love me not, and keep not my sayings, and believe not on me, it is
simply impossible for them to enjoy such august company. The pure in heart alone
shall see God.

Jesus had now spoken all He meant to say to His disciples in the capacity of a
dying parent addressing his sorrowing children. It remained now only to wind up
the discourse, and bid the little ones adieu. In drawing to a close, Jesus does
not imagine that He has removed all difficulties and dispelled all gloom from
the minds of the disciples. On the contrary, He is conscious that all He has
said has made but a slight impression. Nevertheless, He will say no more in the
way of comfort. There is, in the first place, no time. Judas and his band, the
prince of this world, whose servants Judas and all his associates are, may now
be expected at any moment, and He must hold Himself in readiness to go and meet
the enemy. Then, secondly, to add any thing further would be useless. It is not
possible to make things any clearer to the disciples in their present state by
any amount of speech. Therefore He does not attempt it, but refers them for all
other explanations to the promised Comforter, and proceeds to utter the words of
farewell: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you,”-words touching at
all times, unspeakably affecting in the circumstances of the Speaker and
hearers. We know not but they did more to comfort the dispirited little ones
than all that had been said before. There is a pathos and a music in the very
sound of them, apart from their sense, which are wonderfully soothing. We can
imagine, indeed, that as they were spoken, the poor disciples were overtaken
with a fit of tenderness, and burst into tears. That, however, would do them
good. Sorrow is healed by weeping: the sympathy which melts the heart at the
same time comforts it. This touching sympathetic farewell is more than a good
wish: it is a promise-a promise made by One who knows that the blessing promised
is within reach. It is like the cheering word spoken by David to brothers in
affliction: “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen twine
heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” David spoke that word from experience, and
even so does Jesus speak here. The peace He offers His disciples is His own
peace-“my peace:” not merely peace of His procuring, but peace of His
experiencing. He has had peace in the world, in spite of sorrow and
temptation-perfect peace through faith. Therefore He can assure them that such a
thing is possible. They, too, can have peace of mind and heart in the midst of
untoward tribulation. The world can neither understand nor impart such peace,
the only peace it knows any thing about being that connected with prosperity,
which trouble can destroy as easily as a breath of wind agitates the calm
surface of the sea. But there is a peace which is independent of outward
circumstances, whose sovereign virtue and blessed function it is to keep the
heart against fear and care. Such peace Jesus had Himself enjoyed; and He gives
His disciples to understand that through faith and singleness of mind they may
enjoy it also. The farewell word is not only a promise made by One who knows
whereof He speaks, but the promise of One who can bestow the blessing promised.
Jesus does not merely say: Be of good cheer; ye may have peace, even as I have
had peace, in spite of tribulation. He says moreover, and more particularly,
Such peace as I have had I bequeath to you as a dying legacy, I bestow on you as
a parting gift. The inheritance of peace is made over to the little ones by a
last will and testament, though, being minors, they do not presently enter into
actual possession. When they arrive at their majority they shall inherit the
promise, and delight themselves in the abundance of peace. The after-experience
of the disciples proved that the promise made to them by their Lord had not been
false and vain. The apostles, as Jesus foretold, found in the world much
tribulation; but in the midst of all they enjoyed perfect peace. Trusting in the
Lord, and doing good, they were without fear and without care. In every thing,
by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, they made their requests known
unto God; and the peace of God, which passeth understanding, did verily keep
their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Jesus had not yet said His last word to the little ones. Seeing in their faces
the signs of grief, in spite of all that He had spoken to comfort them, He
abruptly threw out an additional remark, which gave to the whole subject of His
departure quite a new turn. He had been telling them, all through His farewell
address, that though He was going away, He would come again to them, either
personally or by deputy, in the body at last, in the Spirit meanwhile. He now
told them, that apart from His return, His departure itself should be an
occasion of joy rather than of sorrow, because of what it signified for Himself.
“Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you:” extract
comfort from that promise by all means. But “if ye loved me (as ye ought), ye
would rejoice because I said, I go unto the Father,” forgetting yourselves, and
thinking what a happy change it would be for me. Then he added: “For my Father
is greater than I.” The connection between this clause and the foregoing part of
the sentence is somewhat obscure, as is also its theological import. Our idea,
however, is, that when Jesus spake these words He was thinking of His death, and
meeting an objection thence arising to the idea of rejoicing in His departure.
“You are going to the Father,” one might have said, “yes; but by what a way!”
Jesus replies: The way is rough, and abhorrent to flesh and blood; but it is the
way my Father has appointed, and that is enough for me; for my Father is greater
than I. So interpreting the words, we only make the speaker hint therein at a
thought which we find Him plainly expressing immediately after in His concluding
sentence, where He represents His voluntary endurance of death as a
manifestation to the world of His love to the Father, and as an act of obedience
to His commandment. And now, finally, by word and act, Jesus strives to impress
on the little children the solemn reality of their situation. First, He bids
them mark what He has told them of His departure, that when the separation takes
place they may not be taken by surprise. “Now I have told you before it come to
pass, that when it is come to pass ye might believe.” Then He gives them to
understand that the parting hour is at hand. Hereafter He will not talk much
with them; there will not be opportunity; for the prince of this world cometh.
Then He adds words to this effect: “Let him come; I am ready for him. He has
indeed nothing in me; no claim upon me; no power over me; no fault which he can
charge against me. Nevertheless, I yield myself up into his hands, that all men
may see that I love the Father, and am loyal to His will: that I am ready to die
for truth, for righteousness, for the unrighteous.” Then, lastly, with firm,
resolute voice, He gives the word of command to all to rise up from the couches
on which they have been reclining, doubtless suiting His own action to the word:
“Arise, let us go hence.” From the continuation of the discourse, as recorded by
John, as well as from the statement made by him at the commencement of the
eighteenth chapter of his Gospel (“When Jesus had spoken these words, He went
forth,” etc.), we infer that the company did not at this point leave the
supper-chamber. They merely assumed a new attitude, and exchanged the recumbent
for a standing posture, as if in readiness to depart. This movement was, in the
circumstances, thoroughly natural. It fitly expressed the resolute temper of
Jesus; and it corresponded to the altered tone in which He proceeded to address
His disciples. The action of rising formed, in fact, the transition from the
first part of His discourse to the second. Better than words could have done, it
altered the mood of mind, and prepared the disciples for listening to language
not soft, tender, and familiar as heretofore, but stern, dignified, impassioned.
It struck the keynote, if we may so express it, by which the speaker passed from
the lyric to the heroic style. It said, in effect: Let us have done with the
nursery dialect, which, continued longer, would but enervate: let me speak to
you now for a brief space as men who have got to play an important part in the
world. Arise; shake off languor, and listen, while I utter words fitted to fire
you with enthusiasm, to inspire you with courage, and to impress you with a
sense of the responsibilities and the honors connected with your future
position. So understanding the rising from the table, we shall be prepared to
listen along with the disciples, and to enter on the study of the remaining
portion of Christ’s farewell discourse, without any feeling of abruptness.


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  CHAPTER 61: 02.25.1.     DYING CHARGE TO THE FUTURE APOSTLES
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Dying Charge to the Future Apostles Section I - The Vine and its Branches

John 15:1-15 The subject of discourse in these chapters is the future work of
the apostles-its nature, honors, hardships, and joys. Much that is said therein
admits of application to Christians in general, but the reference in the first
place is undoubtedly to the eleven then present; and only by keeping this in
mind can we get a clear idea of the import of the discourse as a whole. The
first part of this charge to the future apostles has for its object to impress
upon them that they have a great work before them. The keynote of the passage
may be found in the words: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and
ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit
should remain.” Jesus would have His chosen ones understand that He expects more
of them than that they shall not lose heart when He has left the earth. They
must be great actors in the world, and leave their mark permanently on its
history: they must, in fact, take His place, and be in His stead, and carry on
the work He had begun, in His name and through His aid. To put their duty
clearly before the minds of His disciples, Jesus made large use of a beautiful
figure drawn from the vine-tree, which He introduced at the very outset of His
discourse. “I am the true vine;” that is the theme, which in the sequel is
worked out with considerable minuteness of detail-figure and interpretation
being freely mixed up together in the exposition. The question has often been
asked, What led Jesus to adopt this particular emblem as the vehicle of His
thoughts? and many conjectural answers have been hazarded. In absence of
information in the narrative, however, we must be content to remain in ignorance
on this point, without attempting to supply the missing link in the association
of ideas. This is no great hardship; for, after all, what does it matter how a
metaphor is suggested (a thing which even the person employing the metaphor
often does not know), provided it be in itself apt to the purpose to which it is
applied? Of the aptness of the metaphor here employed there can be no doubt in
the mind of any one who attentively considers the felicitous use which the
speaker made of it.

Turning our attention, then, to the discourse of Jesus on His own chosen text,
we cannot but be struck with the manner in which He hurries on at once to speak
of fruit. We should have expected that, in introducing the figure of the vine,
He would in the first place state fully in terms of the figure how the case
stood. After hearing the words, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the
husbandman,” we expect to hear, “and ye, my disciples, are the branches, through
which the vine brings forth fruit.” That, however, is not said here; but the
speaker passes on at once to tell His hearers how the branches (of which no
mention has been made) are dealt with by the divine Husbandman; how the
fruitless branches, on the one hand, are lopped off, while the fruitful ones are
pruned that they may become still more productive. This shows what is uppermost
in the mind of Jesus. His heart’s desire is that His disciples may be
spiritually fruitful. “Fruit, fruit, my disciples,” He exclaims in effect; “ye
are useless unless ye bear fruit: my Father desires fruit, even as I do; and His
whole dealing with you will be regulated by a purpose to increase your
fruitfulness.”

While urgent in His demand for fruit, Jesus does not, we observe, in any part of
this discourse on the vine, indicate wherein the expected fruit consists. When
we consider to whom He is speaking, however, we can have no doubt as to what He
principally intends. The fruit He looks for is the spread of the gospel and the
ingathering of souls into the kingdom of God by the disciples, in the discharge
of their apostolic vocation. Personal holiness is not overlooked; but it is
required rather as a means towards fruitfulness than as itself the fruit. It is
the purging of the branch which leads to increased fertility. The next sentence
(“Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you”) it seems best
to regard as a parenthesis, in which for a moment the figure of the vine is lost
sight of. The mention of branches which, as unproductive, are cut off, recalls
to the Lord’s thoughts the case of one who had already been cut off-the false
disciple Judas-and leads Him naturally to assure the eleven that He hopes better
things of them. The process of excision had already been applied among them in
one instance: therefore they should not be high-minded, but fear. But, on the
other hand, as He had said before in connection with the feet-washing, that they
were clean, with one exception; so now He would say they were all clean, without
exception, through the word which He had spoken to them. As branches they might
need pruning, but there would be no occasion for cutting off.

Having strongly declared the indispensableness of fruit-bearing in order to
continued connection with the vine, Jesus proceeded next to set forth the
conditions of fruitfulness, and (what we should have expected at the very
commencement of the discourse) the relation subsisting between Himself and His
disciples. “I am the vine,” He said (to take the latter first), “ye are the
branches.” By this statement He explains why He is so urgent that His disciples
should be fruitful. The reason is, that they are the media through which He
Himself brings forth fruit, serving the same purpose to Him that the branches
serve to the vine. His own personal work had been to choose and train them-to
fill them, so to speak, with he sap of divine truth; and their work was now to
turn that sap into grapes. The Father in heaven, by sending Him into the world,
had planted Him in the earth, a new, mystic, spiritual vine; and He had produced
them, the eleven, as His branches. Now His personal ministry was at an end; and
it remained for the branches to carry on the work to its natural consummation,
and to bring forth a crop of fruit, in the shape of a church of saved men
believing in His name. If they failed to do this, His labor would be all in
vain.

Returning now to the conditions of fruitfulness, we find Jesus expressing them
in these terms: “Abide in me, and I in you.” These words point to a dependence
of the disciples on their Lord under two forms, which by help of the analogy of
a tree and its branches it is easy to distinguish. The branch abides in the vine
structurally; and the vine abides in the branch through its sap, vitally. Both
of these abidings are necessary to fruit-bearing. Unless the branch be
organically connected with the stem, the sap which goes to make fruit cannot
pass into it. On the other hand, although the branch be organically connected
with the stem, yet if the sap of the stem do not ascend into it (a case which is
possible and common in the natural world), it must remain as fruitless as if it
were broken off and lying on the ground.

All this is clear; but when we ask what do the two abidings signify in reference
to the mystic vine, the answer is not quite so easy. The tendency here is to run
the two into one, and to make the distinction between them merely nominal. The
best way to come at the truth is to adhere as closely as possible to the natural
analogy. What, then, would one say most nearly corresponded to the structural
abiding of the branch in the tree? We reply, abiding in the doctrine of Christ,
in the doctrine He taught; and acknowledging Him as the source whence it had
been learned. In other words, “Abide in me” means, Hold and profess the truth I
have spoken to you, and give yourselves out merely as my witnesses. The other
abiding, on the other hand, signifies the indwelling of the Spirit of Jesus in
the hearts of those who believe. Jesus gives His disciples to understand that,
while abiding in His doctrine, they must also have His Spirit abiding in them;
that they must not only hold fast the truth, but be filled with the Spirit of
truth. As thus distinguished, the two abidings are not only different in
conception, but separable in fact. On the one hand, there may be Christian
orthodoxy in the letter where there is little or no spiritual life; and there
may, on the other hand, be a certain species of spiritual vitality, a great
moral, and in some respects most Christian-like earnestness, accompanied with
serious departure from the faith. The one may be likened unto a dead branch on a
living tree, bleached, bark-less, moss-grown, and even in summer leafless,
stretching out like a withered arm from the trunk into which it is inserted, and
with which it still maintains an organic structural connection. The other is a
branch cut off by pride or self-will from the tree, full of the tree’s sap, and
clothed with verdure at the moment of excision, and foolishly imagining, because
it does not wither at once, that it can live and grow and blossom independently
of the tree altogether. Have such things never been since Christianity began?
Alas, would it were so! In the grand primeval forest of the Church too many dead
orthodoxies have ever been visible; and as for branches setting up for the
themselves, their name is legion. The two abidings, which we have seen to be not
only separable, but often separated, cannot be separated without fatal effects.
The result ever is in the end to illustrate the truth of Christ’s words,
“Without, or severed from, me ye can do nothing.” Dead orthodoxy is notoriously
impotent. Feeble, timid, torpid, averse to any thing arduous, heroic, stirring
in thought or conduct at best, it becomes at last insincere and demoralizing:
salt without savor, fit only to be thrown out; worthless vine-wood, good for
nothing except for fuel, and not worth much even for that purpose. Heresies, not
abiding in the doctrine of Christ, are equally helpless. At first, indeed, they
possess a spurious ephemeral vitality, and make a little noise in the world; but
by and by their leaf begins to wither, and they bring forth no abiding fruit.
The conception of a dead branch, applied to individuals as distinct from
churches or the religious world viewed collectively, is not without difficulty.
A dead branch on a tree was not always dead: it was produced by the vital force
of the tree, and had some of the tree’s life in it. Does the analogy between
natural and spiritual branches hold at this point? Not in any sense, as we
believe, that would compromise the doctrine of perseverance in grace, nowhere
taught more clearly than in the words of our Lord. At the same time, it cannot
be denied that there is such a thing as abortive religious experience. There are
blossoms on the tree of life which are blasted by spring frosts, green fruits
which fall off ere they ripen, branches which become sickly and die. Jonathan
Edwards, a high Calvinist, but also a candid, shrewd observer of facts, remarks:
“I cannot say that the greater part of supposed converts give reason by their
conversation to suppose that they are true converts. The proportion may perhaps
be more truly represented by the proportion of the blossoms on a tree which
abide and come to mature fruit, to the whole number of blossoms in spring.” The
permanency of many spiritual blossoms is here denied, but the very denial
implies an admission that they were blossoms. That some branches should become
unfruitful, and even die, while others flourish and bring forth fruit, is a
great mystery, whose explanation lies deeper than theologians of the Arminian
school are willing to admit. Yet, while this is true, the responsibility of man
for his own spiritual character cannot be too earnestly insisted on. Though the
Father, as the husbandman, wields the pruning-knife, the process of purging
cannot be carried on without our consent and cooperation. For that process means
practically the removal of moral hindrances to life and growth-the cares of
life, the insidious influence of wealth, the lusts of the flesh, and the
passions of the soul-evils which cannot be overcome unless our will and all our
moral powers be brought to bear against them. Hence Jesus lays it upon His
disciples as a duty to abide in Him, and have Him abiding in them, and resolves
the whole matter at last, in plain terms, into keeping His commandments. If they
diligently and faithfully do their part, the divine Husbandman, He assures them,
will not fail to give them liberally all things needful for the most abundant
fruitfulness. “Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” The
doom of branches coming short in either of the two possible ways, is very
plainly declared by Jesus. The doom of the branch which, while in Him
structurally, beareth not fruit, either because it is absolutely dead and dry,
or because it is afflicted with a vice which makes it barren, is to be taken
away-judicially severed from the tree. The doom of the branch which will not
abide in the vine, is not to be cut off-for that it does itself-but to be thrown
out of the vineyard, there to lie till it be withered, and at length, at a
convenient season, to be gathered, along with all its self-willed, erratic
brethren, into a heap, and burned in a bonfire like the dry rubbish of a garden.
In the latter portion of the discourse on the vine, Jesus expresses His high
expectations with respect to the fruitfulness of the apostolic branches, and
suggests a variety of considerations which, acting on the minds of the disciples
as motives, might lead to the fulfilment of His hopes. As to the former, He gave
the disciples to understand that He expected of them not only fruit, but much
fruit, and fruit not only abundant in quantity, but good in quality; fruit that
should remain, grapes whose juice should be worthy of preservation as wine in
bottles; a church that should endure till the world’s end.

These two requirements, taken together, amount to a very high demand. It is very
hard indeed to produce fruit at once abundant and enduring. The two requirements
to a certain extent limit each other. Aiming at high quality leads to undue
thinning of the clusters, while aiming at quantity may easily lead to
deterioration in the quality of the whole. The thing to be studied is to secure
as large an amount of fruit as is consistent with permanence; and, on the other
hand, to cultivate excellence as far as is consistent with obtaining a fair crop
which will repay labor and expense. This is, so to speak, the ideal theory of
vine culture; but in practice we must be content with something short of the
perfect realization of our theory. We cannot, for example, rigorously insist
that all the fruit shall be such as can endure. Many fruits of Christian labor
are only transient means towards other fruits of a permanent nature; and if we
satisfy the law of Christ so far as to produce much fruit, some of which shall
remain, we do well. The permanent portion of a man’s work must always be small
in proportion to the whole. At highest, it can only bear such a proportion to
the whole as the grape-juice bears to the grapes out of which it is pressed. A
small cask of wine represents a much larger bulk of grapes; and in like manner
the perennial result of a Christian life is very inconsiderable in volume
compared with the mass of thoughts, words, and deeds of which that life was made
up. One little book, for instance, may preserve to all generations the soul and
essence of the thoughts of a most gifted mind, and of the graces of a noble
heart. Witness that wondrous book the Pilgrim’s Progress, which contains more
wine in it than may be found in the ponderous folios of some wordy authors,
whose works are but huge wine-casks with very little wine in them, and sometimes
hardly even the scent of it. To satisfy these two requirements, two virtues are
above all needful, viz. diligence and patience-the one to insure quantity, the
other to insure superior quality. One must know both how to labor and how to
wait; never idle, yet never hurrying. Diligence alone will not suffice. Bustling
activity does a great many things badly, but nothing well. On the other hand,
patience unaccompanied by diligence degenerates into indolence, which brings
forth no fruit at all, either good or bad. The two virtues must go together; and
when they do, they never fail to produce, in greater or less abundance, fruit
that remaineth in a holy exemplary life whose memory is cherished for
generations, in an apostolic church, in books or in philanthropic institutions,
in the character of descendants, scholars, or hearers. When the two requirements
are taken as applying to all believers in Christ, the term “much” must be
understood relatively. It is not required of all indiscriminately to produce an
absolutely large quantity of fruit, but only of those who, like the apostles,
have been chosen and endowed to occupy distinguished positions. Of him to whom
little is given shall little be required. For men of few talents it is better
not to attempt much, but rather to endeavor to do well the little for which they
have capacity. Aspiration is good in the abstract; but to aspire to exceed the
appointed dimensions of our career, is to supply a new illustration of the old
fable of the frog and the ox. The man who would be and do more than he is fit
for, is worse than useless. He brings forth, not the sweet, wholesome fruits of
the Spirit, but the inflated fruits of vanity, which, like the apples of Sodom,
are fair and delicious to the eye and soft to the touch, but are yet full of
wind, and, being pressed, explode like a puff-ball. The demand for much fruit,
while very exacting as towards the apostles, to whom it in the first place
refers, has a gracious aspect towards the world. The fruit which Jesus expected
from His chosen ones was the conversion of men to the faith of the gospel-the
ingathering of souls into the kingdom of God. A demand for much fruit in this
sense is an expression of good-will to mankind, a revelation of the Saviour’s
loving compassion for a world lying in sin, and error, and darkness. In making
this demand, Jesus says in effect to His apostles: Go into the world, bent on
evangelizing all the nations; be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth,
and subdue it. Ye cannot bring too many to the obedience of faith; the greater
the number of those who believe on me through your word, the better I shall be
pleased. We have here, in short, but an echo of the impassioned utterances of
that earlier occasion, when Jesus welcomed death as the condition of abundant
fruitfulness, and the cross as a power by whose irresistible attraction He
should draw all unto Him. From the high requirements of the Lord, we pass on to
the arguments with which He sought to impress on the disciples the duty of
bringing forth much and abiding fruit. Of these there are no less than six,
grouped in pairs. The first pair we find indicated in the words: “Herein is my
Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, and that ye may be my disciples.” In
other words, Jesus would have His chosen ones remember that the credit, both of
the divine Husbandman, and of Himself, the vine, largely depended on their
behavior. The world would judge by results. If they, the apostles, abounded in
fruitfulness, it would be remarked that God had not sent Christ into the world
in vain; and their success would be ascribed to Him whose disciples they had
been. If they failed, men would say: God planted a vine which has not thriven;
and the vine produced branches which have borne no fruit; or in plain terms,
Christ chose agents who have done nothing. The force of these arguments for
fruitfulness is more obvious in the case of these apostles, the founders of the
Church, than in reference to the present condition of the Church, when the honor
of Christ and of God the Father seems to depend in a very small measure on the
conduct of individuals. The whole stress then lay on eleven men. Now it is
distributed over millions. Nevertheless, there is great need, even yet, for
spiritually fruitful life in the Church, to uphold the honor of Christ’s name;
for there is a tendency at the present time to look on Christianity as used up.
The old vine stock is considered by many to be effete, and past fruit-bearing;
and a new plant of renown is called for. This idea can be exploded effectually
only in one way, viz. by the rising up of a generation of Christians whose life
shall demonstrate that the “true vine” is not one of the things that wax old and
vanish away, but possesses eternal vitality, sufficient not only to produce new
branches and new clusters, but to shake itself clear of dead branches, and of
all the moss by which it may have become overgrown in the course of ages. A
second pair of motives to fruitfulness we find hinted at in the words: “These
things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your
joy might be fulfilled.” Jesus means to say, that the continuance of His joy in
the disciples, and the completion of their own joy as believers in Him, depended
on their being fruitful. The emphasis in the first clause lies on the word
“remain.” Jesus has joy in His disciples even now, though spiritually crude,
even as the gardener hath joy in the clusters of grapes when they are green,
sour, and uneatable. But He rejoices in them at present, not for what they are,
but because of the promise that is in them of ripe fruit. If that promise were
not fulfilled, He should feel as the gardener feels when the blossom is nipped
by frost, or the green fruit destroyed by mildew; or as a parent feels when a
son belies in his manhood the bright promise of his youth. He can bear delay,
but He cannot bear failure. He can wait patiently till the process of growth has
passed through all its stages, and can put up with all the unsatisfactory
qualities of immaturity, for the sake of what they shall ripen into. But if they
never ripen-if the children never become men, if the pupils never become
teachers-then He will exclaim, in bitter disappointment: “Woe is me! my soul
desired ripe fruit; and is this what I find after waiting so long?” In the
second clause the stress lies on the word “fulfilled.” It is not said or
insinuated that a Christian can have no joy till his character be matured and
his work accomplished. The language of Jesus is quite compatible with the
assertion that even at the very commencement of the spiritual life there may be
a great, even passionate, outburst of joy. But, on the other hand, that language
plainly implies that the joy of the immature disciple is necessarily precarious,
and that the joy which is stable and full comes only with spiritual maturity.
This is a great practical truth, which it concerns all disciples to bear in
mind. Joy in the highest sense is one of the ripe fruits of the Holy Spirit, the
reward of perseverance and fidelity. Rejoicing at the outset is good, so far as
it goes; but all depends on the sequel. If we stop short and grow not, woe to
us; for failure in all things, and specially in religion, is misery. If we be
comparatively unfruitful, we may not be absolutely unhappy, but we can never
know the fulness of joy; for it is only to the faithful servant that the words
are spoken: “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” The perfect measure of bliss
is for the soldier who hath won the victory, for the reaper celebrating
harvest-home, for the athlete who hath gained the prize of strength, skill, and
swiftness. The two last considerations by which Jesus sought to impress on His
disciples the duty of being fruitful, were the honorable nature of their
apostolic calling, and the debt of gratitude they owed to Him who had called
them, and who was now about to die for them. The dignity of the apostleship, in
contrast to the menial position of the disciple, He described in these terms:
“Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord
doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my
Father I have made known unto you.” In other words, the disciples had been
apprentices, the apostles would be partners: the disciples had been as
government clerks; the apostles would be confidential ministers of the king: the
disciples had been pupils in the school of Jesus; the apostles would be the
treasurers of Christian truth, the reporters and expositors of their Master’s
doctrine, the sole reliable sources of information concerning the letter and
spirit of His teaching. What office could possibly be more important than
theirs? and how needful that they should realize their responsibilities in
connection with it!

While endeavoring to walk worthy of so high a vocation, it would become the
apostles also to bear in mind their obligations to Him who had called them to
the apostolic office. The due consideration of these would be an additional
stimulus to diligence and fidelity. Hence Jesus is careful to impress on His
disciples that they owe all they are and will be to Him. “Ye did not choose me,
but I chose you,” He tells them. He wishes them to understand that they had
conferred no benefit on Him by becoming His disciples: the benefit was all on
their side. He had raised them from obscurity to be the lights of the world, to
be the present companions and future friends and representatives of the Christ.
Having done so much for them, He was entitled to ask that they would earnestly
endeavor to realize the end for which He had chosen them, and to fulfil the
ministry to which they were ordained.

One thing more is noteworthy in this discourse on the true vine-the reiteration
of the commandment to love one another. At the commencement of the farewell
address, Jesus enjoined on the disciples brotherly love as a source of
consolation under bereavement; here He re-enjoins it once and again as a
condition of fruitfulness. Though He does not say it in so many words, He
evidently means the disciples to understand that abiding in each other by love
is just as necessary to their success as their common abiding in Him by faith.
Division, party strife, jealousy, will be simply fatal to their influence, and
to the cause they represent. They must be such fast friends that they will even
be willing to die for each other. Had Christians always remembered the
commandment of love, on which Christ so earnestly insisted, what a different
history the Church would have had! how much more fruitful she would have been in
all the great results for which she was instituted!

Section II - Apostolic Tribulations and Encouragements John 15:18-27; John
16:1-15. From apostolic duties Jesus passed on to speak of apostolic
tribulations. The transition was natural; for all great actors in God’s cause,
whose fruit remains, are sure to be more or less men of sorrow. To be hated and
evil entreated is one of the penalties of moral greatness and spiritual power;
or, to put it differently, one of the privileges Christ confers on His
“friends.”

Hatred is very hard to bear, and the desire to escape it is one main cause of
unfaithfulness and unfruitfulness. Good men shape their conduct so as to keep
out of trouble, and through excess of cowardly prudence degenerate into
spiritual nonentities. It was of the first importance that the apostles of the
Christian faith should not become impotent through this cause. For this reason
Jesus introduces the subject of tribulation here. He would fortify His disciples
for the endurance of sufferings by speaking of them beforehand. “These things,”
saith He, in the course of His address on the unpleasant theme, as if
apologizing for its introduction, “have I spoken unto you that ye should not be
scandalized,” that is, be taken by surprise when the time of trouble came. To
nerve the young soldiers of the cross, the Captain of salvation has recourse to
various expedients, among which the first is to tell them, without disguise,
what they have to expect, that familiarity with the dark prospect may make it
less terrible. Of the world’s hatred Jesus speaks as an absolutely certain
matter, not even deeming it necessary to assert its certainty, but assuming that
as a thing of course: “If the world hate you”-as of course it will. Farther on
He describes, without euphemism or circumlocution, the kind of treatment they
shall receive at the world’s hands: “They shall put you out of the synagogues;
yea, but the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he offereth
service unto God.” Harsh, appalling words; but since such things were to be, it
was well to know the worst.

Jesus further tells His disciples that whatever they may have to suffer, they
can be no worse off than He has been before them. “If the world hate you, ye
know that it has hated me before you.” Poor comfort, one is disposed to say; yet
it is not so poor when you consider the relative position of the parties. He who
has already been hated is the Lord; they who are to be hated are but the
servants. Of this Jesus reminds His disciples, repeating and recalling to their
remembrance a word He had already spoken the same evening. The consideration
ought at least to repress murmuring; and, duly laid to heart, it might even
become a source of heroic inspiration. The servant should be ashamed to complain
of a lot from which his Master is not, and does not wish to be, exempted; he
should be proud to be a companion in tribulations with One who is so much his
superior, and regard his experience of the cross not as a fate, but as a
privilege. A third expedient employed by Jesus to reconcile the apostles to the
world’s hatred, is to represent it as a necessary accompaniment of their
election. This thought, well weighed, has great force. Love ordinarily rests on
a community of interest. Men love those who hold the same opinions, occupy the
same position, follow the same fashions, pursue the same ends with themselves;
and they regard all who differ from them in these respects with indifference,
dislike, or positive animosity, according to the degree in which they are made
sensible of the contrast. Hence arises a dilemma for the chosen ones. Either
they must forfeit the honor, privileges, and hope of their election, and descend
into the dark world which is without God and without hope; or they must be
content, while retaining their position as called out of darkness, to accept the
drawbacks which adhere to it, and to be hated by those who love the darkness
rather than the light, because their life is evil. What true child of light will
hesitate in his choice? To show the disciples that they have no alternative but
to submit patiently to their appointed lot as the chosen ones, Jesus enters yet
more deeply into the philosophy of the world’s hatred. He explains that what in
the first place will be hatred to them, will mean in the second place hatred to
Himself; and in the last place, and radically, ignorance of and hostility to God
His Father. In setting forth this truth, He takes occasion to make some severe
reflections on the unbelieving world of Judea, in which He had Himself labored.
He puts the worst construction on its unbelief; declares it to be utterly
without excuse; accuses those who have been guilty of it, of hating Him without
a cause, that is, of hating one whose whole character and conduct, words and
works, should have won their faith and love; and in their hatred of Him He sees
revealed a hatred of that very God for whose glory they professed to be so
zealous.

How painful is the view here given of the world’s enmity to truth and its
witnesses! One would like to see, in the bitterness with which the messengers of
truth have been received (not excepting the case of Jesus), the result of a
pardonable misunderstanding. And without doubt this is the origin of not a few
religious animosities. There have been many sins committed against the Son of
man, and those like-minded, which were only in a very mitigated degree sins
against the Holy Ghost. Were it otherwise, alas for us all! For who has not
persecuted the Son of man or His interest, cherishing ill-feeling and uttering
bitter words against His members, if not against Him personally, under the
influence of prejudice; yea, it may be, going the length of inflicting material
injury on the apostles of unfamiliar, unwelcome truths, in obedience to the
blind impulses of panic fear or selfish passion?

If there be few who have not in one way or another persecuted, there are perhaps
also few of the persecuted who have not taken too sombre views of the guilt of
their persecutors. Men who suffer for their convictions are greatly tempted to
regard their opponents as in equal measure the opponents of God. The wrongs they
endure provoke them to think and speak of the wrong-doers as the very children
of the devil. Then it gives importance to one’s cause, and dignity to one’s
sufferings, to conceive of the former as God’s, and of the latter as endured for
God’s sake. Finally, broadly to state the question at stake as one between God’s
friends and God’s foes, satisfies both the intellect and the conscience-the
former demanding a status quaestionis which is simple and easily understood; the
latter, one which puts you obviously in the right, and your adversaries
obviously in the wrong.

All this shows that much candor, humility, and patience of spirit, is needed
before one can safely say, “He that hateth me hateth God.” Nevertheless, it
remains true that a man’s real attitude towards God is revealed by the way in
which he treats God’s present work and His living servants. On this principle
Jesus judged His enemies, though He cherished no resentment, and was ever ready
to make due allowance for Ignorance. In spite of His charity, He believed and
said that the hostility He had encountered sprang from an evil will, and a
wicked, godless heart. He had in view mainly the leaders of the opposition who
organized the mob of the ignorant and the prejudiced into a hostile army. These
men He unhesitatingly denounced as haters of God, truth, and righteousness; and
He pointed to their treatment of Himself as the conclusive evidence of the fact.
His appearance and ministry among them had stripped off the mask, and shown them
in their real character as hypocrites, pretending to sanctity, but inwardly full
of baseness and impiety, who hated genuine goodness, and could not rest till
they had got it flung out of the world and nailed to a cross. With the history
and the sayings of Christ before our eyes, we must beware lest we carry
apologies for unbelief too far.

Jesus having spoken, as in a brief digression, of His bitter experience in the
past, very naturally goes on next to express the hope which He cherishes of a
brighter future. Hitherto He has been despised and rejected of men, but He
believes it will not always be so. The world, Jewish and Gentile, will ere long
begin to change its mind, and the Crucified One will become an object of faith
and reverence. This hope He builds on a strong and sure foundation, even the
combined testimony of the Spirit of truth and of His own apostles. “But,” saith
He, His face brightening as He speaks, “when the Comforter (of whom He had
spoken to His little ones, and to whom He now alludes as His own Comforter not
less than theirs) is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the
Spirit which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me.” What results
the Spirit would bring about by His testimony He does not here state. To that
point He speaks shortly after, on discovering that His hearers have not
apprehended His meaning, or at least have failed to find in His words any
comfort for themselves. Meantime He hastens to intimate that the disciples as
well as the Spirit of truth will have a share in the honorable work of redeeming
from disgrace their Master’s name and character. They also should bear witness,
as they were well qualified to do, having been with Him from the beginning of
His ministry, and knowing fully His doctrine and manner of life. In this future
witness-bearing of the Spirit and of the apostles, Jesus sought comfort to His
own heart under the depressing weight of a gloomy retrospect, and the immediate
prospect of crucifixion. But not the less did He mean the disciples also to seek
from the same quarter strength to encounter their tribulations. In truth, no
considerations could tend more effectually to reconcile generous minds to a hard
lot, than those implied in what Jesus had just said, viz. that the apostles
would suffer in a cause favored by Heaven, and tending to the honor of Him whom
they loved more than life. Who would not choose to be on the side for which the
Divine Spirit fights, even at the risk of receiving wounds? Who would not be
happy to be reproached and evil-entreated for a name which is worthy to be above
every name, especially if assured that the sufferings endured contributed
directly to the exaltation of that blessed name to its rightful place of
sovereignty? It was just such considerations which more than any thing else
supported the apostles under their great and manifold trials. They learned to
say: “For Christ’s sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as
sheep for the slaughter. But what does it matter? The Church is spreading;
believers are multiplying on every side, springing up an hundred-fold from the
seed of the martyrs’ blood; the name of our Lord is being magnified. We will
gladly suffer, therefore, bearing witness to the truth.”

Having premised these observations concerning the aids to endurance, Jesus
proceeded at length to state distinctly, in words already quoted, what the
apostles would have to endure. On these words we make only one additional
remark, viz., that the disciples would learn from them not only the nature of
their future tribulations, but the quarter whence they were to come. The world,
against whose hatred their Master forewarns them in this part of His discourse,
is not the irreligious, sceptical, easy-going, gross-living world of paganism.
It is the world of antiChristian Judaism; of synagogue-frequenting men,
accustomed to distinguish themselves from “the world” as the people of God, very
zealous after a fashion for God’s glory, fanatically in earnest in their
religious opinions and practices, utterly intolerant of dissent, relentlessly
excommunicating all who deviated from established belief by a hair’s-breadth,
and deeming their death no murder, but a religious service, an acceptable
sacrifice to the Almighty. To this Jewish world is assigned the honor of
representing the entire cosmos of men alienated from God and truth; and if
hatred to the good be the central characteristic of worldliness, the honor was
well earned, for it was among the Jews that the power of hating attained its
maximum degree of intensity. No man could hate like a religious Jew of the
apostolic age: he was renowned for his diabolic capacity of hating. Even a Roman
historian, Tacitus, commemorates the “hostile odium” of the Jewish race against
all mankind; and the experience of the Christian apostles fully justified the
prominence given to the Jew by Jesus in discoursing on the world’s hatred. It
was to the unbelieving Jews they mainly owed their knowledge of what the world’s
hatred meant. The pagan world despised them rather than hated them. The Greek
laughed, and the Roman passed by in contemptuous indifference, or at most
opposed temperately, as one who would rather not. But the persevering,
implacable, malignant hostility of the Jewish religionist!-it was bloodthirsty,
it was pitiless, it was worthy of Satan himself. Truly might Jesus say to the
Jews, with reference thereto, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of
your father ye will do.”

What a strange fruit was this wicked spirit of hatred to grow upon the goodly
vine which God had planted in the holy land! Chosen to be the vehicle of
blessing to the world, Israel ends by becoming the enemy of the world, “contrary
to all men,” so as to provoke even the humane to regard and treat her as a
nuisance, whose destruction from the face of the earth would be a common cause
of congratulation. Behold the result of election abused! Peculiar favors
minister to pride, instead of stirring up the favored ones to devote themselves
to their high vocation as the benefactors of mankind; and a divine commonwealth
is turned into a synagogue of Satan, and God’s most deadly foes are those of His
own house. Alas! the same phenomenon has reappeared in the Christian Church. The
world that is most opposed to Christ, Antichrist itself, is to be found not in
heathendom, but in Christendom; not among the irreligious and the skeptical, but
among those who account themselves the peculiar people of God. The announcement
made by Jesus concerning their future tribulations, produced, as was to be
expected, a great sensation among the disciples. The dark prospect revealed by
thy momentary lifting of the veil utterly appalled them. Consternation appeared
in their faces, and sorrow filled their hearts. To be forsaken by their Master
was bad enough, but to be left to such a fate was still worse, they thought.
Jesus noticed the impression He had produced, and did what He could to remove
it, and help the poor disciples to recover their composure.

First, He makes a sort of apology for speaking of such painful matters, to this
effect: “I would gladly have been silent concerning your coming troubles, and I
have been silent as long as possible; but I could not think of leaving you
without letting you know what was before you, which accordingly I have done now,
as the hour of my departure is at hand.” The kind feeling which dictated the
statement thus paraphrased is manifest; but the statement itself appears
inconsistent with the records of the other Gospels, from which we learn that the
hardships connected with discipleship in general, and with the apostleship in
particular, were a frequent subject of remark in the intercourse of Jesus with
the twelve. The difficulty has been variously dealt with by commentators. Some
admit the contradiction, and assume that such earlier discourses concerning
persecutions as are found-e.g. in the tenth chapter of Matthew-are introduced by
the evangelist out of their chronological order. Others insist on the difference
between the earlier utterances and the present in respect to plainness:
representing the former as vague and general, like the early illusions made by
Jesus to His own death; the latter as particular, definite, and unmistakable,
like the announcements which Jesus made respecting His passion towards the end
of His ministry. A third class of expositors make the novelty of this discourse
on the world’s hatred lie in the explanation given therein of its cause and
origin; while a fourth class insist that the grand distinction between this
discourse and all that went before is to be found in the fact that it is a
farewell discourse, and therefore one which, owing to the situation, made quite
a novel impression. Where so much difference of opinion prevails, it would be
unbecoming to dogmatize. Our own opinion, however, is, that the peculiarity of
the present utterance concerning apostolic tribulations lies in the manner or
style, rather than in the matter. On former occasions, especially on the
occasion of the trial mission of the twelve, Jesus had said much the same
things: He had spoken of scourging in synagogues at least, if not of
excommunication from them, and had alluded to death by violence as at least a
possible fate for the apostles of the kingdom. But He had said all things in a
different way. There He preached concerning persecution; here He makes an
awfully real announcement. There is all the difference between that discourse
and the present communication that there would be between a sermon on the text,
“It is appointed unto men once to die,” and a special intimation to an
individual, “This year thou shalt die.” The sermon may say far more about death
than the intimation, but in how different a manner, and with what a different
effect! The next expedient for curing grief to which Jesus has recourse is
friendly remonstrance. He gently taunts the disciples for their silence, which
He regards as a token of hopeless, despairing sorrow. “But now I go my way to
Him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest Thou? But because I
have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart.” “Why,” He means
to say, “are you so utterly cast down? have you no questions to ask me about my
departure? You were full of questions at the first. You were curious to know
whither I was going. I would be thankful to have that question asked over again,
or indeed to have any question put to me, whether wise or foolish. The most
childish interrogations would be better than the gloom of speechless despair.”
As the question, “Whither guest Thou?” had been sufficiently answered already,
it might have been superfluous to ask it again. There were, however, other
questions, neither superfluous nor impertinent, which the disciples might have
taken occasion to ask from the communication just made to them concerning their
future lot, and which they probably would have asked had they not been so
depressed in spirit. “If,” they might have said, “it is to fare so ill with us
after you go, why do not you stay? While you have been with us you have
sheltered us from the world’s hatred, and you tell us that when you, our leader
and head, are gone, that hatred will be directed against us, your followers. If
so, how can we possibly regard your departure as any thing but a calamity?”

These unspoken questions Jesus proceeds in the next place to answer. He boldly
asserts that whatever they may think, it is for their good that He should go
away. The assertion, true in other respects also, is made with special reference
to the work of the apostleship. In the early part of His farewell address, Jesus
had explained to His disciples how His departure would affect them as private
persons or individual believers. He had assured them that when “the Comforter”
came, He would make them feel as if their departed Master were returned to them
again; yea, as if He were more really present to them than ever He had been.
Here His object is to show the bearing of His departure on their work as
apostles, and to make them understand that His going away would be good for them
as public functionaries. The proof of this assertion follows; its substance is
to this effect: “When I leave you and go to my father, two desiderata of
essential importance for the success of your work as apostles will be supplied.
Then you will have receptive hearers, and you yourselves will be competent to
preach. Neither of these desiderata exists for the present. The world has
rejected me and my words; and you, though sincere, are very ignorant, and
understand not what I have taught you. After my ascension, there will be a great
alteration in both respects: the world will be more ready to hear the truth, and
you will be able to declare it intelligently. The change cannot come till then;
for it will be brought about by the work of the Comforter, the Spirit of truth,
and He cannot come till I go.” In the section of His discourse of which we have
given the general meaning, Jesus sketches in rapid outline, first the Spirit’s
converting work in the world, and then His enlightening work in the minds of the
apostles. The former He describes in these terms: “When He is come, He will
convince (produce serious thought and conviction in) the world about sin,
righteousness, and judgment.” Then He explains in what special aspects the
Spirit will bring these great moral realities before men’s minds; and here He
but expounds what He has already said concerning the Spirit’s testimony in His
own behalf. He tells His disciples that the Comforter, witnessing for Himself in
the hearts and consciences of men, will convince them of sin specially as
unbelievers in Him; of righteousness in connection with His departure to the
Father; and of judgment (to come), because the prince of this world is judged
already (that is, shall have been, when the Comforter commences His work). The
second and third explanatory remarks are enigmatical, and instead of throwing
light on the subject in hand, seem rather to involve it in darkness. They have
given rise to so much dispute and diversity of opinion, that to expatiate on
them were vain, and to dogmatize presumption. One great point of dispute has
been: What righteousness does Jesus allude to-His own, or that of sinners? Does
He mean to say that the Spirit will convince the world, after He has left the
earth, that He was a righteous man? or does He mean that the Spirit will teach
men to see in the Crucified One the Lord their righteousness? Our own opinion
is, that He means neither, and both. Righteousness is to be taken in its
undefined generality: and the idea is, that the Spirit will make use of the
exaltation of Christ to make men think earnestly on the whole subject of
righteousness; to show them the utterly rotten character of their own
righteousness, whose crowning feat was to crucify Jesus; to bring home to their
hearts the solemn truth that the Crucified One was the Just One; and ultimately
to put them on a track for finding in Jesus their true righteousness, by raising
in their minds the question, Why then did the Just One suffer? The meaning of
the third explanatory remark we take to be to this effect: “When I am crucified,
the god of this world shall have been judged. Both this world and its god,
indeed, but the latter only finely and irreversibly-the world, though presently
following Satan, being convertible. When I am ascended, the Spirit will use the
then past judgment of Satan to convince men of a judgment to come; teaching them
to see therein a prophecy of a final separation between me and all who
obstinately persist in unbelief, and so, by the terrors of perdition, bringing
them to repentance and faith.”

What Jesus says of the enlightening work of the Spirit on the minds of the
disciples, amounts to this: He will fit you to be intelligent and trustworthy
witnesses to me, and to be guides of the Church in doctrine and practice. For
these high purposes two things would be necessary: that they should understand
Christian truth, and that they should possess the gift of prophecy, so as to be
able to foretell in its general outlines the future, for the warning and
encouragement of believers. Both these advantages Jesus promises them as fruits
of the Spirit’s enlightening influence. He assures them that, when the Comforter
is come, He will guide them unto all the truth He had himself taught them,
recalling things forgotten, explaining things not understood, developing germs
into a system of doctrine which was entirely above their present power of
comprehension. He further informs them that this same Spirit will show them
things to come-such as the rise of heresies and apostasies, the coming of
Antichrist, the conflict between light and darkness, and their final issue, as
described in the Book of Revelation.

Such were the changes to be brought about in the world and in the disciples by
the advent of the Comforter. Great beneficent changes truly; but why cannot they
take place before Jesus leaves the world? The answer to this question is hinted
at by Jesus, when He says of the Spirit: “He shall not speak of Himself,” and
“He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.” The personal ministry of
Jesus behoved to come to an end before the ministry of the Spirit began, because
the latter is merely an application of the former. The Spirit does not speak as
from Himself: He simply takes of the things relating to Christ, and shows them
to men-to unbelievers, for their conviction and conversion; to believers, for
their enlightenment and sanctification. But till Jesus had died, risen,
ascended, the essentials about Him would remain incomplete; the materials for a
gospel would not be ready to hand. There could be neither apostolic preaching,
nor the demonstration of the Spirit with power accompanying it. It must be
possible for the apostles and the Spirit to bear witness of One who, though
perfectly holy, had been crucified, to show the world the heinousness of its
sin. They must have it in their power to declare that God hath made that same
Jesus whom they have crucified both Lord and Christ, exalted to heavenly glory,
before their hearers can be pricked in the heart, and made to exclaim in terror,
“Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Only after Jesus had ascended to glory,
and become invisible to mortal eyes, could men be made to understand that He was
not only personally a righteous man, but the Lord their righteousness. Then the
question would force itself upon their minds: What could be the meaning of the
Lord of glory becoming man, and dying on the cross? and by the teaching of the
Spirit they would learn to reply, not as in the days of their ignorance, “He
suffers for His own offences,” but, “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried
our sorrows; He was wounded for our transgressions.”

Finally, not till the apostles were in a position to say that their Lord was
gone to heaven, could they bring to bear with full effect on the impenitent the
doctrine of a judgment. Then they could say, Christ is seated on the heavenly
throne a Prince and a Saviour to all who believe, but also a Judge to those who
continue in rebellion and unbelief. “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye
perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all
they that put their trust in Him.”

All this the disciples for the present did not understand. Of the Spirit’s work
on the conscience of the world and in their own minds, and of the relation in
which the third person of the Trinity stood to the second, they had simply no
conception. Hence Jesus does not enlarge on these topics, but restricts Himself
to what is barely necessary to indicate the truth. But the time came when the
disciples did get to understand these matters, and then they fully appreciated
the eulogium of their Lord on the dispensation of the Comforter. Then they
acknowledged that the assertion was indeed true that it was expedient for them
that He should go away, and smiled when they remembered that they had once
thought otherwise; yea, they perceived that the word “expedient,” far from being
too strong, was rather a weak expression, chosen in gracious accommodation to
their feeble spiritual capacity, instead of the stronger one “indispensable.”
Then they felt, as we imagine good men feel about death when they have got to
heaven. On this side the grave “Timorous mortals start and shrink To cross the
narrows sea; And linger, shivering, on the brink, And fear to launch away.” But
to those on the other side how insignificant a matter must death seem, and how
strange must it appear to their purged vision, that it should ever have been
needful to prove to them that it was better to depart to heaven than to remain
in a world of sin and sorrow!


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  CHAPTER 62: 02.25.2.     DYING CHARGE TO THE FUTURE APOSTLES
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Dying Charge to the Future Apostles Section III - The Little While, and the End
of the Discourse

John 16:16-33 The eulogium on the dispensation of the Comforter winds up with a
paradox. Jesus has been telling His disciples that His departure will be
beneficial for them in various respects, but particularly in this, that they
shall attain thereafter to a clear, full comprehension of Christian truth. In
effect, what He has said is: It is good for you that I go, for not till I become
invisible physically, shall I be visible to you spiritually: I must be withdrawn
from the eye of your flesh, before I can be seen by the eye of your mind. Hence
He fitly ends His discourse on the Comforter by repeating a riddle, which He had
propounded in a less pointed form in His first farewell address: “A little
while, and ye no longer see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me;
because I go to the Father.” This riddle, like all riddles, is very simple when
we have the key to it. As in that other paradoxical saying of Jesus, concerning
losing and saving life, the principal word, “see,” is used in two senses,-first
in a physical, and then, in the second clause, in a spiritual sense. Hence the
possibility of one event, the departure of Christ to the Father, becoming a
cause at once of not seeing and of seeing. When Jesus ascended to heaven, the
disciples saw Him no more as they saw Him then in the supper-chamber. But
immediately thereafter they began to see Him in another way. The idea of His
life did sweetly creep into the eye and prospect of their soul. And the sight
was satisfying: it justified the glowing language in which their Master had
spoken of it before He left them. Though they saw Him no more in the flesh, yet,
believing in Him, to quote the words of the Apostle Peter, they rejoiced with
joy unspeakable and full of glory. For the present, however, the disciples have
no conception of the vision and the joy which await them. Their Lord’s words
have no meaning for them; they are a riddle indeed, yea, a contradiction.
Standing around the inspired speaker, they whisper remarks to each other
concerning the strange enigmatical words He has just uttered about a little
while, and about seeing and not seeing, and about going to the Father. The
riddle has evidently served one purpose at least: it has roused the disciples
out of the stupor of grief, and awakened for a little their curiosity. That,
however, is the amount of the service it has rendered: it has created surprise,
but it has conveyed no sense; the hearers are constrained to confess, “We cannot
tell what He saith.” Yet we observe, they ask no questions of Jesus. They would
like to do so at this point, but they do not feel able to take the liberty;
restrained, we imagine, by respect for the lofty sustained tone in which their
Master has been addressing them in the second part of His farewell discourse.
Jesus, however, reads a question in their countenances, and kindly favors them
with a word of explanation. That word does not, strictly speaking, explain the
riddle. Jesus does not tell His disciples what the little while means, nor does
He distinguish the two kinds of seeing: He leaves the enigma to be solved, as it
only can be, by experience. All He attempts is to make it conceivable how the
same event which in immediate prospect causes sorrow, may, after its occurrence,
be a cause of joy. For this purpose He compares the crisis through which the
disciples are about to pass, not, as we have already done, to the solemn event
by which a Christian makes his exit out of this world into a better, but to the
event with which human life begins. The comparison is apt to the purpose for
which it is introduced; but we cannot with certainty, not to say propriety,
pursue it into detail. Interpreters who aspire to understand all mysteries and
all knowledge, have raised many questions thereanent, such as: Who is
represented by the mother in the parable-Christ, or the disciples? When does the
sorrow begin, and when and in what does it end? The answers given to these
questions are very various. According to one, Jesus Himself is the new man, and
the sorrow He alludes to is His own death, viewed as the redemption of sinful
humanity. Another will have it that Jesus represents His own disciples as with
child of a spiritual Christ, who will be born when the Comforter comes. Most
make the time of sorrow begin with Christ’s passion, but there is much
difference of opinion as to when it ends. One makes the joy date from the
resurrection, which, after a little while of painful separation, restored Jesus
to His sorrowing disciples; another extends the “little while” to Pentecost,
when the Church was born into the world a new man in Christ; a third makes the
little while a long while indeed, by making the words “I will see you again”
refer to Christ’s second coming, and to the blessed era when the new heavens and
the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, for which the whole creation
groans, shall at length come into being.

We do not think it necessary to pronounce on these disputed points. As little do
we think it necessary to give the analogy a doctrinal turn, and find in it a
reference to regeneration. What Jesus has in view throughout this part of His
discourse is not the new birth, either of the disciples or of the Church, but
the spiritual illumination of the apostles; their transition from the chrysalis
into the winged state, from an ignorant implicit faith to a faith developed and
intelligent; their initiation into the highest grade of the Christian mysteries,
when they should see clearly things presently unintelligible, and be Epopts in
the kingdom of heaven. For them, as for Christians generally (for there is a
sense in which the experience of the apostles repeats itself in the spiritual
history of many believers), this crisis is not less important than the initial
one by which men pass from death into life. It is a great thing to be
regenerated, but it is a not less great thing to be illuminated. It is a great,
ever-memorable time that, when Christ first enters the heart, an object of faith
and love; but it is an equally important crisis when Christ, after having
departed perhaps for a season, leaving the mind clouded with doubt and the heart
oppressed with sorrow, returns never to depart, driving away wintry frosts and
darkness, and bringing light, gladness, summer warmth, and spiritual
fruitfulness to the soul. Verily one might be content that Christ, as he first
knew Him, should depart, for the sake of having his sorrow after a little while
turned into such joy!

Having shown, by a familiar and pathetic analogy, the possibility of present
sorrow being transmuted into great joy, Jesus proceeds next to describe, by a
few rapid strokes, the characteristics of the state at which the apostles will
ere long arrive. First among these He mentions an enlarged comprehension of
truth; for it is to this He refers when He says, “In that day ye shall ask me
nothing.” He means that they will then ask Him no questions such as they had
been asking all along, and especially that night-child’s questions, asked with a
child’s curiosity, and also with a child’s incapacity to understand the answers.
The questioning spirit of childhood would be replaced by the understanding
spirit of manhood. The truths of the kingdom would no longer, as heretofore, be
inscrutable mysteries to them: they should have an unction from the Holy One,
and should know all things.

Some think this too much to be said of any Christian, not even excepting the
apostles themselves, while in the earthly state, and therefore argue that the
day alluded to here is that of Christ’s second coming, or of His happy reunion
with His own in the kingdom of His Father. And without doubt it is true that in
that final day only shall Christians know as they are known, and have absolutely
no need to ask any questions. Then, “ ‘Midst power that knows no limit, And
wisdom free from bound, The beatific vision Shall glad the saints around,” as it
can never gladden them here below. Still, the statement before us has a relative
truth in reference to this present life. While, in comparison with the perfect
state, the clearest vision of any Christian is but a seeing in a glass darkly,
the degree of illumination attained by the apostles might be described, without
exaggeration, in contrast to their ignorance as disciples, as that of men who
needed not any longer to ask questions. In promising His disciples that they
would ere long attain this high degree, Jesus was but saying in effect, that as
apostles they would be teachers, not scholars-doctors of divinity, with titles
conferred by Heaven itself-capable of answering questions of young disciples,
similar to those which they once asked themselves. The second feature of the
apostolic illumination mentioned by Jesus is unlimited influence with God
through prayer. Of this He speaks with much emphasis: “Verily, verily, I say
unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you.”
That is to say, the apostles were to have at command the whole power of God: the
power of miracles, to heal diseases; of prophecy, to foretell things to come
bearing on the Church’s interest, and which it was desirable that believers
should know; of providence, to make all events subservient to their well-being,
and that of the cause in which they labored. The promise in its substance,
though not in its miraculous accidents, is made to all who aspire to Christian
manhood, and is fulfilled to all who reach it. In the next sentence, Jesus, if
we mistake not, particularizes a third feature in the state of spiritual
maturity to which He would have His disciples aspire. It is a heart enlarged to
desire, ask, and expect great things for themselves, the Church, and the world.
“Hitherto,” He says to them, “have ye asked nothing in my name.” There was a
reason for this, distinct from the spiritual state of the twelve. The time had
not yet come for asking any thing in Christ’s name: they could not fitly or
naturally make “Christ’s sake” their plea till Christ’s work was completed, and
He was glorified. But Jesus meant more than this by His remark. He meant to say,
what was in fact most true, that hitherto His disciples had asked little in any
name. Their desires had been petty, their ideas of what to ask obscure and
crude; any wishes of large dimensions they had cherished had been of a worldly
character, and therefore such as God could not grant. They had been like
children, to whom a penny appears greater than a thousand pounds does to a
wealthy man. But Jesus hints, though He does not plainly say, that it will be
otherwise with the apostles after the advent of the Comforter. Then they will be
poor boys grown to rich merchants, whose ideas of enjoyment have enlarged with
their outward fortunes. Then they will be able to pray such prayers as that of
Paul in his Roman prison in behalf of the Ephesian Church, and of the Church in
all ages; able to pray the Lord’s prayer, and especially to say, “Thy kingdom
come,” with a comprehensiveness of meaning, a fervency of desire, and an
assurance of faith, whereof at present they have simply no conception. Hitherto
they have been but as children, asking of their father trifles, toys, pence:
then they shall make large demands on the riches of God’s grace, for themselves,
the Church, and the world.

Along with this enlargement, Jesus promises, will come fullness of joy. What is
asked, the Father will grant; and the answer to prayer will fill the cup of joy
to the brim. Hope may be deferred for a season, but in the end will come the
unspeakable joy of hope fulfilled. “Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may
be full.” So it turned out in the experience of the apostles. They had fulness
of joy in the Holy Ghost, in His work in their own hearts and in the world. The
law ought to hold good still. But why, then, is the cause of Christianity not
progressing, but rather, one might almost say, retrograding? We must answer this
question by asking others: How many have large hearts cherishing comprehensive
desires? How many with their whole soul desire for themselves above all things
sanctification and illumination? How many earnestly, passionately desire the
conversion of the heathen, the unity and peace and purity of the Church, the
prevalence of righteousness in society at large? We are straitened in our own
hearts, not in God. The farewell discourse is now at an end. Jesus has said to
His disciples what time permits, and what they are able to hear. He does not
imagine that He has conveyed much instruction to their minds, or that He has
done much for them in the way of consolation. He has a very humble idea of the
character and practical effect of the address He has just delivered. Casting a
glance backwards at the whole, while perhaps specially alluding to what had been
said just before, He remarks: “These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs.”
A few parables or figurative sayings about the house of many mansions, and about
the Divine Trinity coming to make their abode with the faithful, and about the
vine and its branches, and about maternal sorrows and joys: such, in the
speaker’s view, is the sum of His discourse.

Conscious of the inevitable deficiency not only of the present discourse, but of
His whole past teaching, Jesus takes occasion for the third time to repeat the
promise of future spiritual illumination, this time speaking of Himself as the
illuminator, and representing the doctrine of the Father as the great subject of
illumination. “The time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs,
but I shall show you plainly of the Father.” The time referred to is still the
era dating from the ascension. Shortly thereafter the disciples would begin to
experience the fulfilment of Philip’s prayer, to understand what their Lord
meant by His going to the Father, and to realize its blessed consequences for
themselves. Then would their exalted Lord, through the Spirit of truth, speak to
them plainly of these and all other matters; plainly in comparison with His
present mystic, hidden style of speech, if not so plainly as to falsify the
statements in other places of Scripture concerning the partiality and dimness of
all spiritual knowledge in this earthly state of being. Of the good time coming
Jesus has yet another thing to say; not a new thing, but an old thing said in a
new, wondrously kind, and pathetic way. It has reference to the hearing of
prayer, and is to this effect: “In the day of your enlightenment you will, as I
have already hinted, pray not less than heretofore, but far more, and you will
use my name as your plea to be heard. Let me once more assure you that you shall
be heard. In support of this assurance, I might remind you that I will be in
heaven with the Father, ever ready to speak a word in your behalf, saying,
‘Father, hear them for my sake, whose name they plead in their petitions.’ But I
do not insist on this, not only because I believe you do not need to be assured
of my continued interest in your welfare, but more especially because my
intercession will not be necessary. My Father will not need to be entreated to
hear you, the men who have been with me in all my temptations, who have loved me
with leal-hearted affection, who have believed in me as the Christ, the Son of
the living God, while the world at large has regarded me as an impostor and a
blasphemer. For these services to His Son my Father loves you, is grateful to
you-in a sense accounts Himself your debtor.” What heart, what humanity, what
poetry is in all this!-poetry, and also truth; truth unspeakably comforting not
only to the eleven faithful companions of Jesus, but to all sincere believers in
Him.

Having alluded to the faith of His disciples-so meritorious, because so
rare-Jesus takes occasion, in closing His discourse, and at the close of His
life, solemnly to declare its truth. “I came forth from the Father, and am come
into the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father.” The first part
only of this statement the disciples believed; the second they did not yet
understand: but Jesus puts both together, as the two halves of one whole truth,
either of which necessarily implies the other. The declaration is a most
momentous one: it sums up the history of Christ; it is the substance of the
Christian faith; it asserts doctrines utterly incompatible with a merely human
view of Christ’s person, and makes His divinity the fundamental article of the
creed.

These last words of Jesus burst on the disciples like a star suddenly shining
out from the clouds in a dark night. At length one luminous utterance had
pierced through the haze of their Master’s mysterious discourse, and they
fancied that now at last they understood its import. Jesus had just told them
that He came forth from the Father into the world. That, at least, they
understood; it was because they believed it that they had become disciples.
Delighted to have heard something to which they could give a hearty response,
they make the most of it, and inform their Master that the intelligible, plain
speaking on His part, and the intelligent apprehending on theirs which He had
projected into the future, were already in existence. “Lo,” said they, with
emphasis on the temporal particle, “now Thou speakest plainly, and speakest no
proverb. Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any
man should ask Thee: in this we believe that Thou camest forth from God.”

Alas, how impossible it is for children to speak otherwise than as children! The
disciples, in the very act of professing their knowledge, betray their utter
ignorance. The statement beginning with the second “now” indicates an almost
ludicrous misapprehension of what Jesus had said about their asking Him no
questions in the day of their enlightenment. He meant they would not then need
to ask questions as learners: they took Him to mean that He Himself had no need
to be asked questions as to who He was and whence He came, His claim to a
heavenly descent being already admitted, at least by them. And as to the
inference drawn from that statement, “By this we believe,” we can make nothing
of it. After many attempts to understand the logic of the disciples, we must
confess ourselves utterly baffled. The only way by which we can put a tolerable
sense on the words, is to regard the phrase translated by “this” as an adverb of
time, and to read “at this present moment: “Meanwhile, whatever additional light
may be in store for us in the future, we even now believe that Thou camest forth
from God. This translation, however, is not favored, or even suggested, by any
of the critics. That the disciples did honestly believe what they professed to
believe, was true. Jesus had just before admitted as much. But they did not
understand what was involved in their belief. They did not comprehend that the
coming of Jesus from the Father implied a going thither again. They had not
comprehended that at the beginning of the discourse; they did not comprehend it
when the discourse was finished; they would not comprehend it till their Lord
had taken His departure, and the Spirit had come who should make all things
plain. In consequence of this ignorance, their faith would not carry them
through the evil hour that was now very near. The death of their Master, the
first step in the process of His departure, would take them by surprise, and
make them flee panic-stricken like sheep attacked by wolves. So Jesus plainly
told them. “Do ye now believe?” He said; “behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now
come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me
alone.”

Stern fact sternly announced; but however stern, Jesus is not afraid to look it
in the face. His heart is in perfect peace, for He has two great consolations.
He has a good conscience: He can say, “I have overcome the world.” He has held
fast His moral integrity against incessant temptation. The prince of this world
has found none of his spirit in Him, and for that very reason is going to
crucify Him. But by that proceeding Satan will not nullify, but rather seal, His
victory. Outward defeat by worldly power will be but the index and measure of
His spiritual conquest. The world itself knows well that putting Him to death is
but the second best way of overcoming Him. His enemies would have been much
better pleased if they had succeeded in intimidating or bribing Him into
compromise. The ungodly powers of the world always prefer corruption to
persecution as a means of getting rid of truth and righteousness; only after
failing in attempts to debauch conscience, and make men venal, do they have
recourse to violence.

Christ’s other source of consolation in prospect of death is the approval of His
Father: “I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” The Father has been
with Him all along. On three critical occasions-at the baptism, on the hill of
transfiguration, in the temple a few days ago-the Father had encouraged Him with
an approving voice. He feels that the Father is with Him still. He expects that
He will be with Him when He is deserted by His chosen ones, and all through the
awful crisis at hand, even in that darkest, bitterest moment, when the loss of
His Father’s sensible presence will extort from Him the cry: “My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken me?” He expects that His Father will be with Him then,
not to save Him from the sense of desertion (He would not wish to be saved from
that, for He would know by experience that sorest of all sorrows, that in this,
as in all other respects, He might be like His brethren, and be able to succor
them when they are tempted to despair), but to sustain Him under the sore
affliction, and enable Him with filial faith to cry “My God” even when
complaining of being forsaken.

Free from all anxiety for Himself, Jesus bids His disciples also be of good
cheer; and for the same reason why He Himself is without fear, viz., because He
has overcome the world. He will have them understand that His victory is theirs
too. “Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world, therefore so have ye in
effect;”-such is His meaning. Men of Socinianizing tendencies would interpret
the words differently. They would read: I have overcome the world, therefore so
may ye. Follow my example, and manfully fight the battle of righteousness in
spite of tribulations. The meaning is good enough, so far as it goes. It does
nerve one for the battle of life to know that the Lord of glory has been through
it before him. It is an inspiring thought that He has even been a combatant at
all; for who would not follow when the divine Captain of salvation leads through
suffering to glory? Then, when we think that this august combatant has been
completely victorious in the fight, His example becomes still more cheering. His
victory shows that the god of this world is not omnipotent; that it is always in
the power of any one to overcome him simply by being willing to bear the cross.
Looking at Jesus enduring the contradiction of sinners even unto death, and
despising the shame of crucifixion, His followers get more heart to fight the
good fight of faith. But while this is true, it is the smallest part of the
truth. The grand fact is that Christ’s victory is the victory of His followers,
and insures that they too shall conquer. Jesus fought His battle not as a
private person, but as a public character, as a representative man. And all are
welcome to claim the benefits of His victory-the pardon of sin, power to resist
the evil one, admission into the everlasting kingdom. Because Christ hath
overcome, we may say to all, Be of good cheer. The victory of the Son of God in
human nature is an available source of consolation for all who partake of that
nature. It is the privilege of every man (as well as the duty) to acknowledge
Christ as his representative in this great battle. “The Head of every man is
Christ.” All who sincerely recognize the relationship will get the benefit of
it. Claim kindred with the High Priest, and you shall receive from Him mercy and
grace to help in your hour of need. Lay it to heart that men are not isolated
units, every one fighting his own battle without help or encouragement. We are
members one of another, and above all, we have in Christ an elder brother. We
have at least a human relationship to Him, if not a regenerate one. Let us
therefore look up to Him as our Head in all things: as our King, and lay down
the weapons of our rebellion; as our Priest, and receive from Him the pardon of
our sins; as our Lord, to be ruled by His will, defended by His might, and
guided by His grace. If we do this, the accuser of the brethren will have no
chance of prevailing against us. The words of St. John in the Apocalypse will be
fulfilled in our history: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by
the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”


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  CHAPTER 63: 02.26.     THE INTERCESSORY PRAYER
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The Intercessory Prayer

John 17:1-26 The prayer uttered by Jesus at the close of His farewell address to
His disciples, of unparalleled sublimity, whether we regard its contents or the
circumstances amid which it was offered up, it was for years our fixed purpose
to pass over in solemn, reverent silence, without note or comment. We
reluctantly depart from our intention now, constrained by the considerations
that the prayer was not offered up mentally by Jesus, but in the hearing and for
the instruction of the eleven men present; that it has been recorded by one of
them for the benefit of the Church in all ages; and that what it hath pleased
God to preserve for our use we must endeavor to understand, and may attempt to
interpret. The prayer falls naturally into three divisions, in the first of
which Jesus prays for Himself, in the second for His disciples, and in the third
for the Church which was to be brought into existence by their preaching. The
prayer of Jesus for Himself (John 17:1-5) contains just one petition, with two
reasons annexed. The petition is, “Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son;”
in which the manner of address, simple, familiar, confidential, is noteworthy.
“Father!”-such is the first word of the prayer, six times repeated in its
course, with or without epithet attached, and the name which Jesus gives to Him
to whom His prayer is addressed. He speaks to God as if He were already in
heaven, as indeed He expressly says He is a little farther on: “Now I am no more
in the world.” The significant phrase, “the hour is come,” is it not less worthy
of notice. How much it expresses!-filial obedience, filial intimacy, filial hope
and joy. The hour! It is the hour for which He has patiently waited, which He
has looked forward to with eager expectation, yet has never sought to hurry on;
the hour appointed by His Father, about which Father and Son have always had an
understanding, and of which none but they have had any knowledge. That hour is
come, and its arrival is intimated as a plea in support of the petition: “Thou
knowest, Father, how patiently I have waited for what I now ask, not wearying in
well-doing, nor shrinking from the hardships of my earthly lot. Now that my work
is finished, grant me the desire of my heart, and glorify me.”

“Glorify me,” that is, “take me to be with Thyself.” The prayer of Jesus is that
His Father would be pleased now to translate Him from this world of sin and
sorrow into the state of glory He left behind when He became man. Thus He
explains His own meaning when He repeats His request in a more expanded form, as
given in the fifth verse: “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own
self, with the glory I had with Thee before the world was,” i.e. with the glory
He enjoyed in the bosom of the Father before His incarnation as God’s eternal
Son.

It is observable that in this prayer for Himself Jesus makes no allusion to His
approaching sufferings. Very shortly after, in Gethsemane, He prayed: “O my
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me!” But here is no mention of
the cup of sorrow, but only of the crown of glory. For the present heaven is in
full view, and its anticipated glories make Him oblivious of every thing else.
Not till He is gone out into the night do the sulphureous clouds begin to gather
which overshadow the sky and shut out the celestial world from sight. Yet the
coming passion, though not mentioned, is virtually included in the prayer. Jesus
knows that He must pass through suffering to glory, and that He must behave
Himself worthily under the last trial, in order to reach the desired goal.
Therefore the uttered prayer includes this unuttered one: “Carry me well through
the approaching struggle; let me pass through the dark valley to the realms of
light without flinching or fear.” The first reason annexed to the prayer is,
“That Thy Son also may glorify Thee.” Jesus seeks His own glorification merely
as a means to a higher end, the glorification of God the Father. And in so
connecting the two glorifyings as means and end, He but repeats to the Father
what He had said to His disciples in His farewell address. He had told them that
it was good for them that He should go, as not till His departure would any deep
impression be made on the world’s conscience with respect to Himself and His
doctrine. He now tells His Father in effect: “It is good for Thy glory that I
leave the earth and go to heaven; for henceforth I can promote Thy glory in the
world better there than by a prolonged sojourn here.” To enforce the reason,
Jesus next declares that what He desires is to glorify the Father in His office
as the Saviour of sinners: “As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He
should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” Interpreted in the
light of this sentence, the prayer means: “Thou sentest me into the world to
save sinners, and hitherto I have been constantly occupied in seeking the lost,
and communicating eternal life to such as would receive it. But the time has
come when this work can be best carried on by me lifted up. Therefore exalt me
to Thy throne, that from thence, as a Prince and a Saviour, I may dispense the
blessings of salvation.”

It is important to notice how Jesus defines His commission as the Saviour. He
represents it at once as concerning all flesh, and as specially concerning a
select class, thus ascribing to His work a general and a particular reference,
in accordance with the teaching of the whole New Testament, which sets forth
Christ at one time as the Saviour of all men, at another as the Saviour of His
people, of the elect, of His sheep, of those who believe. This style of speaking
concerning the redeeming work of our Saviour it is our duty and our privilege to
imitate, avoiding extremes, both that of denying or ignoring the universal
aspects of Christ’s mission, and that of maintaining that He is in the same
sense the Saviour of all, or that He will and must eventually save all. Both
extremes are excluded by the carefully selected words of Jesus in His
intercessory prayer. On the one hand, He speaks of all flesh as belonging to His
jurisdiction as the Saviour of humanity at large as the mass into which the
leaven is to be deposited, with a view to leavening the whole lump. On the other
hand, there is an obvious restriction on the universality of the first clause in
the terms of the second. The advocates of universal restoration have no support
for their tenet here. They may indeed ask: If Jesus has power over all flesh, is
it credible that He will not use it to the uttermost? In reply, we shall not
seek to evade the question, by resolving the power claimed into a mere
mediatorial sovereignty over the whole solely for the sake of a part, because we
know that the elect part is chosen not merely for its own sake, but also for the
sake of the whole, to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and the
leaven to leaven the corrupt mass. We simply observe that the power of the
Saviour is not compulsory. Men are not saved by force as machines, but by love
and grace as free beings; and there are many whom brooding love would gather
under its wings who prefer remaining outside to their own destruction. The
essence of eternal life is defined in the next sentence of the prayer, and
represented as consisting in the knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus
Christ His messenger, knowledge been taken comprehensively as including faith,
love, and worship, and the emphasis lying on the objects of such knowledge. The
Christian religion is here described in opposition to paganism on the one hand,
with its many gods, and to Judaism on the other, which, believing in the one
true God, rejected the claims of Jesus to be the Christ. It is further so
described as to exclude by anticipation Arian and Socinian views of the person
of Christ. The names of God and of Jesus are put on a level as objects of
religious regard, whereby an importance is assigned to the latter incompatible
with the dogma that Jesus is a mere man. For eternal life cannot depend on
knowing any man, however wise and good: the utmost that can be said of the
benefit derivable from such knowledge is that it is helpful towards knowing God
better, which can be affirmed not only of Jesus, but of Moses, Paul, John, and
all the apostles.

It may seem strange that, in addressing His Father, Jesus should deem it needful
to explain wherein eternal life consists; and some, to get rid of the
difficulty, have supposed that the sentence is an explanatory reflection
interwoven into the prayer by the evangelist. Yet the words were perfectly
appropriate in the mouth of Jesus Himself. The first clause is a confession by
the man Jesus of His own faith in God His Father as the supreme object of
knowledge; and the whole sentence is really an argument in support of the
prayer, Glorify Thy Son. The force of the declaration lies in what it implies
respecting the existing ignorance of men concerning the Father and His Son. It
is as if Jesus said: Father, Thou knowest that eternal life consists in knowing
Thee and me. Look around, then, and see how few possess such knowledge. The
heathen world knoweth Thee not-it worships idols: the Jewish world is equally
ignorant of Thee in spirit and in truth; for, while boasting of knowing Thee, it
rejects me. The whole world is overspread with a dark veil of ignorance and
superstition. Take me out of it, therefore, not because I am weary of its sin
and darkness, but that I may become to it a sun. Hitherto my efforts to
illuminate the darkness have met with small success. Grant me a position from
which I can send forth light over all the earth. But why does the Saviour here
alone, in the whole Gospel history, call Himself Jesus Christ? Some see in this
compound name, common in the apostolic age, another proof that this verse is an
interpolation. Again, however, without reason, for the style in which Jesus
designates Himself exactly suits the object He has in view. He is pleading with
the Father to take Him to glory, that He may the more effectually propagate the
true religion. What more appropriate in this connection than to speak of Himself
objectively under the name by which He should be known among the professors of
the true religion? The second reason pleaded by Jesus in support of His prayer,
is that His appointed service has been faithfully accomplished, and now claims
its guerdon “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which
Thou gavest me to do. Now, therefore, glorify Thou me.” The great Servant of God
speaks here not only with reference to the past, but by anticipation with
reference to His passion already endured in purpose; so that the “I have
finished” of the prayer is equivalent in meaning to the “It is finished” spoken
from the cross. And what He says concerning Himself is true; the declaration,
though one which no other human being could make without abatement, is on His
part no exaggerated, boastful piece of self-laudation, but the sober, humble
utterance of a conscience void of offence towards God and towards men. Nor can
we say that the statement, though true, was ultroneous and uncalled-for. It was
necessary that Jesus should be able to make that declaration; and though the
fact declared was well known to God, it was desirable to proclaim in the hearing
of the eleven, and unto the whole Church through their record, the grounds on
which His claim to be rewarded with glory rested, for the strengthening of
faith. For as our faith and hope towards God are based on the fact that Jesus
Christ was able to make the declaration in question, so they are confirmed by
the actual making of it, His protestation that He has kept His covenant of work
being to us, as it were, a seal of the covenant of grace, serving the same end
as the sacrament of the Supper.

Having offered this brief petition for Himself, Jesus proceeded to pray for His
disciples at much greater length, all that follows having reference to them
mainly, and from the sixth to the twentieth verse referring to them exclusively.
The transition is made by a special declaration, applying the general one of the
preceding sentence to that part of Christ’s personal work which consisted in the
training of these men: “I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest
me out of the world.” After this introductory statement follows a short
description of the persons about to be prayed for. Jesus gives His disciples a
good character. First, scrupulously careful not to exaggerate the importance of
the service He has rendered in training them for the apostolate, He acknowledges
that they were good when He got them: “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them
me:” they were pious, devout men, God-taught, God-drawn, God-given. Then He
testifies that since they had been with Him they had sustained the character
they had when they joined His company: “They have kept Thy word.” And finally,
He bears witness that the men whom His Father had given Him had been true
believers in Himself, and had received all His words as the very truth of God,
and Himself as one sent forth into the world by God. Here, surely, is a generous
eulogy on disciples, who, while sincere and devoted to their Master, were, as we
know, exceedingly faulty in conduct, and slow to learn.

Having thus generously praised His humble companions, Jesus intimates His
intention to pray for them: “I pray for them.” But the prayer comes not just
yet; for some prefatory words must be premised, to give the prayer more emphasis
when it does come. First, the persons prayed for are singled out as for the
moment the sole objects of a concentrated solicitude. “I pray for them: I pray
not for the world.” The design of Jesus in making this statement is not, of
course, to intimate the absolute exclusion of the world from His sympathies. Not
exclusion, but concentration in order to eventual inclusion, is His purpose
here. He would have His Father fix His special regards on this small band of
men, with whom the fortunes of Christianity are bound up. He prays for them as a
mother dying might pray exclusively for her children-not that she is indifferent
to the interest of all beyond, but that her family, in her solemn situation, is
for her the natural legitimate object of an absorbing, all-engrossing
solicitude. He prays for them as the precious fruit of His life-labor, the hope
of the future, the founders of the Church, the Noah’s ark of the Christian
faith, the missionaries of the truth to the whole world; for them alone, but for
the world’s sake-it being the best thing He can do for the world meantime to
commend them to the Father’s care.

What Jesus means to ask for the men thus singled out, we can now guess for
ourselves. It is that His Father would keep them, now that He is about to leave
them. But before the request come two reasons why it should be granted. The
first is expressed in these terms: “They are Thine: and all mine are Thine, and
Thine are mine; and I am glorified in them;”-and means in effect this: “It is
Thy business, Thy interest, to keep these men. They are Thine; Thou gravest them
me: keep Thine own. Although since they became my disciples they have been mine,
that makes no difference: they are still Thine; for between me and Thee is no
distinction of meum and tuum. Then I am glorified in them: my cause, my name, my
doctrine, are to be henceforth identified with them; and if they miscarry, my
interest will be shipwrecked. Therefore, as Thou values the honor of Thy Son,
keep these men.” The other reason why the request about to be proffered should
be granted is: “And now I am no more in the world.” The Master, about to depart
from the earth, commends to His Father’s care those whom He is leaving behind
without a head. And now at length comes the prayer for the eleven, ushered in
with due solemnity by a new emphatic address to the Hearer of prayer: “Holy
Father, keep in Thine own name those whom Thou hast given me, that they may be
one, as we are.” The epithet “holy” suits the purport of the prayer, which is
that the disciples may be kept pure in faith and practice, separate from all
existing error and sin, that they may be eventually a salt to the corrupt world
in which their Lord is about to leave them. The prayer itself embraces two
particulars. The first is that the disciples may be kept in the name of the
Father, which Jesus has manifested to them; that is, that they may continue to
believe what He had taught them of God, and so become His instruments for
diffusing the knowledge of the true God and the true religion throughout the
earth. The second is, that they may be one, that is, that they may be kept in
love to each other, as well as in the faith of the divine name; separate from
the world, but not divided among themselves. These two things, truth and love,
Jesus asks for His own, as of vital moment: truth as the badge of distinction
between His Church and the world; love as the bond which unites believers of the
truth into a holy brotherhood of witness-bearers to the truth. These two things
the Church should ever keep in view as of co-ordinate importance: not
sacrificing love to truth, dividing those who should be one by insisting on too
minute and detailed a testimony; nor sacrificing truth to love, making the
Church a very broad, comprehensive society, but a society without a vocation or
raison d’être, having no truth to guard and teach, or testimony to bear.

Having commended His disciples to His Father’s care, Jesus next gives an account
of His own stewardship as their Master, and protests that He has faithfully kept
them in divine truth. He claims to have done His duty by them all, not even
excepting Judas, in whose case He admits failure, but at the same time clears
Himself of blame. The reference to the false disciple shows how conscientious He
is in rendering His account. He feels, as it were, put on His defense with
reference to the apostate; and supposing Himself to be asked the question, What
have you to say about this man? He replies in effect: “I admit I have not been
able to keep him from falling, but I have done all I could. The son of perdition
is not lost through my fault.” We know how well entitled Jesus was to make this
protestation. In the next part of the prayer Jesus defines the sense in which He
asks that His disciples may be kept, and in doing this virtually offers new
reasons why the petition should be heard. He commends them to His Father’s care
as the depositaries of truth, worth keeping on that account, and needing to be
kept, because of the world’s dislike of the truth. And He explains that by
keeping He means not translation out of the world, but preservation in the world
from its moral evil, their presence there as a salt being necessary, and their
purity not less needful, that the salt might not be without savor and virtue.
This explanation He meant not for the ear of His Father alone, but also for the
ears of His disciples. He wished them to understand that two things were equally
to be shunned-conformity to the world, and weariness of the world. They must
abide in the truth, and they must abide in the world for the truth’s sake;
mindful, for their consolation, that when they felt the world’s hatred most,
they were doing most good, and that the weight of their cross was the measure of
their influence. The keeping asked by Jesus for His own is but the continuance
and perfecting of an existing moral condition. He needs not to ask His Father
now for the first time to separate His disciples in spirit and character from
the world. That they are already; that they were when first they joined His
society; that they have continued to be. This, in justice to them, their Master
is careful to state twice over in this portion of His prayer. “They,” He
testifies, “are not of the world, even as I am not of the world,” putting them
on a level with Himself with characteristic magnanimity, and not without truth;
for the persons thus described, though in many respects defective, were very
unworldly, caring nothing for the world’s trinity-riches, honors, and
pleasures-but only for the words of eternal life.

Yet, notwithstanding their sincerity, the eleven still needed not only keeping,
but perfecting; and therefore their Master went on to pray for their
sanctification in the truth, having in view not only their perseverance, growth,
and maturity in grace as private Christians, but more especially their spiritual
equipment for the office of the apostleship. Hence He goes on in the next breath
to make mention of their apostolic vocation, showing that that is principally in
His eye: “As Thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them
into the world.” That they may be fitted for their mission is His intense
desire. Hence He proceeds to speak of His own sanctification as a means towards
their apostolic sanctification as the end, as if His own ministry were merely
subordinate to theirs. For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might
be sanctified through the truth.” Remarkable words, whose meaning is obscure,
and has been much debated, but in which we may at least with confidence discover
a singular display of condescension and love. Jesus speaks here like a parent
who lives for the sake of His children, having a regard to their moral training
in all His personal habits, denying Himself pleasures for their benefit, and
making it His chief end and care to form their characters, perfect their
education, and fit them for the duties of the position which they are destined
to fill. The remainder of the prayer (with exception of the two closing
sentences) respects the Church at large-those who should believe in Christ
through the word of the apostles, heard from their lips, or reported in their
writings. What Jesus desires for the body of believers is partly left to be
inferred; for when He says, “I pray not for these alone,” He intimates that He
desires for the parties next to be prayed for the same things He has already
asked for his disciples: preservation in the truth, and from the evil in the
world, and sanctification by the truth. The one blessing He expressly asks for
the Church is “unity.” His heart’s desire for believers in Him is “that they all
may be one.” His ideal of the Church’s unity is very high, its divine exemplar
being the unity subsisting between the persons in the Godhead, and specially
between the Father and the Son, and its ground the same divine unity: “one as we
are one, and in us who are one,” bound together as closely and harmoniously by
the common name into which they are baptized, and by which they are called. This
unity, desirable for its own sake, Jesus specially desiderates, because of the
moral power which it will confer on the Church as an institute for propagating
the Christian faith: “That the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.” Now
this end is one which cannot be promoted unless the unity of believers be in
some way made manifest. A unity which is not apparent can have no effect on the
world, but must needs be as a candle under a bushel, which gives no light, nay,
ceases to be a light, and goes out. There can be no doubt, therefore, that our
Lord had a visible unity in view; and the only question is how that is to be
reached. The first and most obvious way is by union in one church organization,
with appointed means for representing the whole body, and expressing its united
mind; such, e.g., as the oecumenical councils of the early centuries. This, the
most complete manifestation of unity, was exhibited in the primitive Church. In
our day incorporating union on a great scale is not possible, and other methods
of expressing the feeling of catholicity must be resorted to. One method that
might be tried is that of confederation, whereby independent church
organizations might be united after the fashion of the United States of America,
or of the Greek republics, which found a centre of unity in the legislative and
judicial assembly called the Amphictyonic Council. But whatever may be thought
of that, one thing is certain, that the unity of believers in Christ must be
made more manifest as an undeniable fact somehow, if the Church is to realize
her vocation as a holy nation called out of darkness to show forth the virtues
of Him whose name she bears, and win for Him the world’s homage and faith. It is
true, indeed, that the unity of the Church does find expression in its creed; by
which we mean not the sectional creed of this or that denomination, but the
creed within the creeds, expressive of the catholic orthodoxy of Christendom,
and embracing the fundamentals, and only the fundamentals, of the Christian
faith. There is a Church within all the churches to which this creed is the
thing of value, all else being, in the esteem of its members, but the husk
containing the precious kernel. But the existence of that Church is a fact known
by faith, not by sight: its influence is little felt by the world; and however
thankful we may be for the presence in the midst of ecclesiastical organizations
of this holy commonwealth, we cannot accept it as the realization of the ideal
which the Saviour had in His mind when He uttered the words, “That they all may
be one.” In the next two sentences Jesus fondly lingers over this prayer,
repeating, expanding, enforcing the petition in language too deep for our
fathoming line, but which plainly conveys the truth that without unity the
Church can neither glorify Christ, commend Christianity as divine, nor have the
glory of Christ abiding on herself. And this is a truth which, on reflection,
approves itself to reason. Wrangling is not a divine thing, and it needs no
divine influence to bring it about. Anybody can quarrel; and the world, knowing
that, has little respect for a quarrelling Church. But the world opens its eyes
in wonder at a community in which peace and concord prevail, saying, Here is
something out of the common course-selfishness and self-will rooted out of human
nature: nothing but a divine influence could thus subdue the centrifugal forces
which tend to separate men from each other. The endearing name Father, with
which the next sentence begins, marks the commencement of a new final paragraph
in the prayer of the great High Priest. Jesus at this point casts a glance
forward to the end of things, and prays for the final consummation of God’s
purpose with regard to the Church: that the Church militant may become the
Church triumphant; that the body of saints, imperfectly sanctified on earth, may
become perfectly sanctified and glorified in heaven, with Himself where He will
be, beholding His glory, and changed into the same image by the Spirit of God.

Then comes the conclusion, in which Jesus returns from the distant future to the
present, and gathers in His thoughts from the Church at large to the company
assembled in the supper-chamber, Himself and His disciples. These two closing
sentences serve the same use in Christ’s prayer that the phrase “for Christ’s
sake” serves in ours. They contain two pleas-the service of the parties prayed
for, and the righteousness of the Being prayed to-the last coming first,
embodied in the title, “O righteous Father.” The services, merits, and claims of
Jesus and His disciples are specifically mentioned as matters to which the
righteous Father will doubtless attach the due weight. The world’s ignorance of
God is alluded to, to enhance the value of the acknowledgment which He has
received from His Son and His Son’s companions. That ignorance explains why
Jesus deems it necessary to say, “I have known Thee.” Even His knowledge was not
a thing of course in such a world. It was an effort for the man Jesus to retain
God in His knowledge, quite as much as to keep Himself unspotted from the
world’s corruptions. It was as hard for Him to know and confess God as Father in
a world that in a thousand ways practically denied that Fatherhood, as to live a
life of love amid manifold temptations to self-seeking. In truth, the two
problems were one. To be light in the midst of darkness, love in the midst of
selfishness, holiness in the midst of depravity, are in effect the same thing.

While pleading His own merit, Jesus forgets not the claims of His disciples. Of
them He says in effect: They have known Thee at second- hand through me, as I
have known Thee at first-hand by direct intuition. Not content with this
statement, He expatiates on the importance of these men as objects of divine
care, representing that they are worth keeping, as already possessing the
knowledge of God’s name, and destined ere long to know it yet more perfectly, so
that they shall be able to make it known as an object of homage to others, and
God shall be able to love them even as He loved His own Son, when He was in the
world faithfully serving His heavenly Father. “And I have declared unto them Thy
name, and will declare it; that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in
them, and I in them.” Wonderful words to be uttered concerning mere earthen
vessels!


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  CHAPTER 64: 02.27.     THE SHEEP SCATTERED
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The Sheep Scattered Section I - “All The Disciples Forsook Him, and Fled.”

Mat 26:36-41; Mat 26:55-56; Mat 26:69-75; John 18:15-18. From the
supper-chamber, in which we have lingered so long, we pass into the outside
world, to witness the behavior of the eleven in the great final crisis. The
passages cited describe the part they played in the solemn scenes connected with
their Master’s end. That part was a sadly unheroic one. Faith, love, principle,
all gave way before the instincts of fear, shame, and self-preservation. The
best of the disciples-the three who, as most reliable, were selected by Jesus to
keep Him company in the garden of Gethsemane-utterly failed to render the
service expected of them. While their Lord was passing through His agony, they
fell asleep, as they had done before on the Mount of Transfiguration. Even the
picked men thus proved themselves to be raw recruits, unable to shake off
drowsiness while they did duty as sentinels. “What! could ye not watch with me
one hour?” Then, when the enemy appeared, both these three and the other eight
ran away panic-stricken. “All the disciples forsook Him, and fled.” And finally,
that one of their number who thought himself bolder than his brethren, not only
forsook, but denied his beloved Master, declaring with an oath, “I know not the
man.” The conduct of the disciples at this crisis in their history, so weak and
so unmanly, naturally gives rise to two questions: How should they have acted?
and why did they act as they did-what were the causes of their failure?

Now, to take up the former of these questions first, when we try to form to
ourselves a distinct idea of the course of action demanded by fidelity, it is
not at once quite apparent wherein the disciples, Peter of course excepted, were
at fault. What could they do when their Lord was apprehended, but run away?
Offer resistance? Jesus had positively forbidden that just immediately before.
On the appearance of the band of armed men, “when they which were about Him saw
what would follow, they said unto Him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword?”
Without waiting for a reply, one of them smote the servant of the high priest,
and cut off his right ear. The fighting disciple, John informs us, was Simon
Peter. He had brought a sword with him, one of two in the possession of the
company, from the supper-chamber to Gethsemane, thinking it might be needed, and
fully minded to use it if there was occasion; and, coward as he proved himself
afterwards among the serving-men and maids, he was no such arrant coward in the
garden. He used his weapon boldly if not skillfully, and did some execution,
though happily not of a deadly character. Thereupon Jesus interposed to prevent
further bloodshed, uttering words variously reported, but in all the different
versions clearly inculcating a policy of non-resistance. “Put up again thy sword
into his place,” He said to Peter, adding as His reason, “for all they that take
the sword shall perish with the sword;” which was as much as to say, “In this
kind of warfare we must necessarily have the worst of it.” Then He went on to
hint at higher reasons for non-resistance than mere considerations of prudence
or expediency. “Thinkest thou,” He asked the warlike disciple, “that I cannot
now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve legions
of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must
be?” He could meet human force by superior, divine, celestial force if He chose,
but He did not choose; for to overpower His enemies would be to defeat His own
purpose in coming to the world, which was to conquer, not by physical force, but
by truth and love and godlike patience; by drinking the cup which His Father had
put into His hands, bitter though it was to flesh and blood.

Quite in harmony with these utterances in Gethsemane are the statements made by
Jesus on the same subject ere He left the supper-room, as recorded by Luke. In
the letter, indeed, these statements seem to point at a policy the very opposite
of non-resistance. Jesus seems to say that the great business and duty of the
hour, for all who are on His side, is to furnish themselves with swords: so
urgent is the need, that he who wants a weapon must sell his garment to buy one.
But the very emphasis with which He speaks shows that His words are not to be
taken in the literal prosaic sense. It is very easy to see what He means. His
object is by graphic language to convey to His disciples an idea of the gravity
of the situation. “Now,” He would say, “now is the day, yea, the hour of battle:
if my kingdom be one of this world, as ye have imagined, now is the time for
fighting, not for dreaming; now matters have come to extremities, and ye have
need of all your resources: equip yourselves with shoes and purse and knapsack,
and above all, with swords and warlike courage.” The disciples did not
understand their Lord’s meaning. They put a stupid, prosaic interpretation upon
this part, as upon so many other parts, of His farewell discourse. So, with
ridiculous seriousness, they said: “Lord, behold, here are two swords.” The
foolish remark provoked a reply which should surely have opened their eyes, and
kept Peter from carrying the matter so far as to take one of the swords with
him. “It is enough,” said Jesus, probably with a melancholy smile on His face,
as He thought of the stupid simplicity of those dear childish and childlike men:
“It is enough.” Two swords: well, they are enough only for one who does not mean
to fight at all. What were two swords for twelve men, and against a hundred
weapons of offence? The very idea of fighting in the circumstances was
preposterous: it had only to be broadly stated to appear an absurdity. The
disciples, then, were not called on to fight for their Master, that He might not
be delivered to the Jews. What else, then, should they have done? Was it their
duty to suffer with Him, and, carrying out the professions of Peter, to go with
Him to prison and to death? This was not required of them either. When Jesus
surrendered Himself into the hands of His captors, He proffered the request
that, while taking Him into custody, they should let His followers go their way.
This He did not merely out of compassion for them, but as the Captain of
salvation making the best terms for Himself and for the interests of His
kingdom; for it was not less necessary to these that the disciples should live
than that He Himself should die. He gave Himself up to death, that there might
be a gospel to preach; He desired the safety of His disciples, that there might
be men to preach it. Manifestly, therefore, it was not the duty of the disciples
to expose themselves to danger: their duty lay rather, one would say, in the
direction of taking care of their life for future usefulness.

Where, then, if not in failing to fight for or suffer with their Lord, did the
fault of the eleven lie? It lay in their lack of faith. “Believe in God, and
believe in me,” Jesus had said to them at the commencement of His farewell
address, and at the critical hour they did neither. They did not believe that
all would yet end well both with them and their Master, and especially that God
would provide for their safety without any sacrifice of principle, or even of
dignity, on their part. They put confidence only in the swiftness of their feet.
Had they possessed faith in God and in Jesus, they would have witnessed their
Lord’s apprehension without dismay, assured both of His return and of their own
safety; and, as feeling might incline, would either have followed the officers
of justice to see what happened, or, averse to exciting and painful scenes,
would have retired quietly to their dwellings until the tragedy was finished.
But wanting faith, they neither calmly followed nor calmly retired; but
faithlessly and ignominiously forsook their Lord, and fled. The sin lay not so
much in the outward act, but in the inward state of mind of which it was the
index. They fled in unbelief and despair, as men whose hope was blasted, from a
man whose cause was lost, and whom God had abandoned to His enemies.

Having ascertained wherein the disciples were at fault, we have now to inquire
into the causes of their misconduct; and here, at the outset, we recall to mind
that Jesus anticipated the breakdown of His followers. He did not count on their
fidelity, but expected desertion as a matter of course. When Peter offered to
follow Him wheresoever He might go, He told him that ere cock-crowing next
morning he would deny Him thrice. At the close of the farewell address He told
all the disciples that they would leave Him alone. On the way to the Mount of
Olives He repeated the statement in these terms: “All ye shall be offended
because of me this night; for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the
sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.” And on all these occasions the
tone in which He spoke was rather prophetic than reproachful. He expected His
disciples to be panic-stricken, just as one should expect sheep to flee on the
appearance of a wolf, or women to faint in presence of a scene of carnage. From
this leniency we should infer that, in the view of Jesus, the sin of the
disciples was one of infirmity; and that this was the view which He took
thereof, we know from the words He addressed to the three drowsy brethren in
Gethsemane. “Watch and pray,” He said to them, “that ye enter not into
temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The kind
judgment thus expressed, though pronounced with special reference to the
shortcoming of Peter, James, and John in the garden, manifestly applies to the
whole conduct of all the disciples (not even excepting Peter’s denial)
throughout the terrible crisis. Jesus regarded the eleven as men whose
attachment to Himself was above suspicion, but who were liable to fall, through
the weakness of their flesh, on being exposed to sudden temptation. But what are
we to understand by the weakness of the flesh? Mere instinctive love of life,
dread of danger, fear of man? No; for these instincts continued with the
apostles through life, without leading, except in one instance, to a repetition
of their present misconduct. Not only the flesh of the disciples, but even the
willing spirit, was weak. Their spiritual character at this season was deficient
in certain elements which give steadiness to the good impulses of the heart, and
mastery over the infirmities of sentient nature. The missing elements of
strength were: forethought, clear perceptions of truth, self-knowledge, and the
discipline of experience. For want of forethought it came to pass that the
apprehension of their Lord took the eleven by surprise. This may seem hardly
credible, after the frequent intimations Christ had given them of His
approaching death; after the institution of the Supper, the farewell address,
the reference to the traitor, the prophetic announcement concerning their own
frailty, and the discourse about the sword, which was like a trumpet-peal
calling to battle. Yet there can be no doubt that such was the fact. The eleven
went out to Gethsemane without any definite idea of what was coming. These raw
recruits actually did not know that they were on the march to the battle-field.
The sleep of the three disciples in the garden is sufficient proof of this. Had
the three sentinels been thoroughly impressed with the belief that the enemy was
at hand, weary and sad though they were, they would not have fallen asleep. Fear
would have kept them awake. “Know this, that if the good man of the house had
known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not
have suffered his house to be broken up.” The breakdown of the disciples at the
final crisis was due in part also to the want of clear perceptions of truth.
They did not understand the doctrine concerning Christ. They believed their
Master to be the Christ, the Son of the living God; but their faith was twined
around a false theory of Messiah’s mission and career. In that theory the cross
had no place. So long as the cross was only spoken about, their theory remained
firmly rooted in their minds, and the words of their Master were speedily
forgotten. But when the cross at length actually came, when the things which
Jesus had foretold began to be fulfilled, then their theory went down like a
tree suddenly smitten by a whirlwind, carrying the woodbine plant of their faith
along with it. From the moment that Jesus was apprehended, all that remained of
faith in their minds was simply a regret that they had been mistaken: “We
trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel.” How could any one
act heroically in such circumstances? A third radical defect in the character of
the disciples was self- ignorance. One who knows his weakness may become strong
even at the weak point; but he who knows not his weak points cannot be strong at
any point. Now the followers of Jesus did not know their weakness. They credited
themselves with an amount of fidelity and valor which existed only in their
imagination, all adopting as their own the sentiment of Peter: “Though I should
die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee.” Alas! they did not know how much fear
of man was in them, how much abject cowardice in presence of danger. Of course,
when danger actually appeared, the usual consequence of self-conscious valor
followed. All these stout-hearted disciples forsook their Master, and fled. The
last, and not the least, cause of weakness in the disciples was their
inexperience of such scenes as they were now to pass through. Experience of war
is one great cause of the coolness and courage of veteran soldiers in the midst
of danger. Practical acquaintance with the perils of military life makes them
callous and fearless. But Christ’s disciples were not yet veterans. They were
now but entering into their first engagement. Hitherto they had experienced only
such trials as befall even the rawest recruits. They had been called on to leave
home, friends, fishing-boats, and their earthly all, to follow Jesus. But these
initial hardships do not make a soldier; no, nor even the discipline of the
drill-sergeant, nor the donning of a uniform. For behold the green soft youth
with his bright uniform brought face to face with the stern reality of battle.
His knees smite each other, his heart sickens, perchance he faints outright, and
is carried to the rear, unable to take any part in the fight. Poor lad, pity
him, do not scorn him; he may turn out a brave soldier yet. Even Frederick the
Great ran away from his first battle. The bravest of soldiers probably do not
feel very heroic the first time they are under fire.

These observations help us to understand how it came to pass that the little
flock was scattered when Jesus their shepherd was smitten. The explanation
amounts in substance to a proof that the disciples were sheep, not yet fit to be
shepherds of men. That being so, we do not wonder at the leniency of Jesus, to
which reference has already been made. No one expects sheep to do any thing else
than flee when the wolf cometh. Only in shepherds is craven fear severely
reprehensible. Bearing this in mind, we shall more readily forgive Peter for
denying his Lord in an unguarded moment, than for his cowardice at Antioch some
years after, when he gave the cold shoulder to his Gentile brethren, through
fear of the Jewish sectaries from Jerusalem. Peter was a shepherd then, and it
was his duty to lead the sheep, or even to carry them against their inclination
into the wide green pastures of Christian liberty, instead of tamely following
those who, by their scrupulosity, showed themselves to be but lambs in Christ’s
flock. His actual behavior was very culpable and very mischievous. For though in
reality not leading, but led, he, as an apostle, enjoyed the reputation and
influence of a chief shepherd, and therefore had no option but either to lead or
to mislead; and he did mislead, to such an extent that even Barnabas was carried
away by his dissimulation. It is a serious thing for the Church when those who
are shepherds in office and influence are sheep in opinion and heart; leaders in
name, led in fact.

Section II - Sifted as Wheat

Luk 22:31-32 This fragment of the conversation at the supper-table is important,
as showing us the view taken by Jesus of the crisis through which His disciples
were about to pass. In form an address to Peter, it is really a word in season
to all, and concerning all. This is evident from the use of the plural pronoun
in addressing the disciple directly spoken to. “Satan,” says Jesus, “hath
desired to have (not thee, but) you:” thee, Simon, and also all thy brethren
along with thee. The same thing appears from the injunction laid on Peter to
turn his fall to account for the benefit of his brethren. The brethren, of
course, are not the other disciples then present alone, but all who should
believe as well. The apostles, however, are not to be excluded from the
brotherhood who were to be benefited by Peter’s experience; on the contrary,
they are probably the parties principally and in the first place intended.

Looking, then, at this utterance as expressive of the judgment of Jesus on the
character of the ensuing crisis in the history of the future apostles, we find
in it three noticeable particulars.

1. First, Jesus regards the crisis as a sifting-time for the disciples. Satan,
the accuser of the brethren, skeptical of their fidelity and integrity, as of
Job’s and of all good men’s, was to sift them as wheat, hopeful that they would
turn out mere chaff, and become apostates like Judas, or at least that they
would make a miserable and scandalous breakdown. In this respect this final
crisis was like the one at Capernaum a year before. That also was a sifting-time
for Christ’s discipleship. Chaff and wheat were then, too, separated, the chaff
proving to be out of all proportion to the wheat, for “many went back, and
walked no more with Him.” But alongside of this general resemblance between the
two crises-the minor and the major we may call them-an important difference is
to be observed. In the minor crisis, the chosen few were the pure wheat, the
fickle multitude being the chaff; in the major, they are both wheat and chaff in
one, and the sifting is not between man and man, but between the good and the
bad, the precious and the vile, in the same man. The hearts of the eleven
faithful ones are to be searched, and all their latent weakness discovered: the
old man is to be divided asunder from the new; the vain, self-confident,
self-willed, impetuous Simon son of Jonas, from the devoted, chivalrous, heroic,
rock-like Peter. This distinction between the two crises implies that the later
was of a more searching character than the earlier; and that it was so indeed,
is obvious on a moment’s reflection. Consider only how different the situation
of the disciples in the two cases! In the minor crisis, the multitude go, but
Jesus remains; in the major, Jesus Himself is taken from them, and they are left
as sheep without a shepherd. A mighty difference truly, sufficiently explaining
the difference in the conduct of the same men on the two occasions. It was no
doubt very disappointing and disheartening to see the mass of people who had
lately followed their Master with enthusiasm, dispersing like an idle mob after
seeing a show. But while the Master remained, they would not break their hearts
about the defection of spurious disciples. They loved Jesus for His own sake,
not for His popularity or for any other by-end. He was their teacher, and could
give them the bread of eternal truth, which, and not the bread that perisheth,
was what they were in quest of: He was their Head, their Father, their Elder
Brother, their spiritual Husband, and they would cling to Him through all
fortunes, with filial, brotherly, wifely fidelity, He being more to them than
the whole world outside. If their prospects looked dark even with Him, where
could they go to be any better? They had no choice but to remain where they
were.

Remain accordingly they did, faithfully, manfully; kept steadfast by sincerity,
a clear perception of the alternatives, and ardent love to their Lord. But now,
alas! when it is not the multitude, but Jesus Himself, that leaves them-not
forsaking them, indeed, but torn from them by the strong hand of worldly
power-what are they to do? Now they may well ask Peter’s question, “To whom
shall we go?” despairing of an answer. He whose presence was their solace at a
trying, discouraging season, who at the worst, even when His doctrine was
mysterious and His conduct incomprehensible, was more to them than all else in
the world at its best; even He is rift from their side, and now they are utterly
forlorn, without a master, a champion, a guide, a friend, a father. Worse still,
in losing Him they lose not merely their best friend, but their faith. They
could believe Jesus to be the Christ, although the multitude apostatized; for
they could regard such apostasy as the effect of ignorance, shallowness,
insincerity. But how can they believe in the Messiahship of one who is led away
to prison in place of a throne; and instead of being crowned a king, is on His
way to be executed as a felon? Bereft of Jesus in this fashion, they are bereft
of their Christ as well. The unbelieving world asks them, “Where is thy God?”
and they can make no reply.

“Christ and we against the world;” “Christ in the world’s power, and we left
alone:” such, in brief, was the difference between the two sifting seasons. The
results of the sifting process were correspondingly diverse. In the one case, it
separated between the sincere and the insincere; in the other, it discovered
weakness even in the sincere. The men who on the earlier occasion stood
resolutely to their colors, on the later fled panic-stricken, consulting for
their safety without dignity, and, in one case at least, with shameful disregard
of truth. Behold how weak even good men are without faith! With faith, however
crude or ill-informed, you may overcome the whole world; without the faith that
places God consciously at your side, you have no chance. Satan will get
possession of you and sift you, and cause you to equivocate with Abraham, feign
madness with David, dissemble and swear falsely or profanely with Peter. No one
can tell how far you may fall if you lose faith in God. The just live justly,
nobly, only by their faith.

2. Jesus regards the crisis through which His disciples are to pass as one
which, though perilous, shall not prove deadly to their faith. His hope is that
though they fall, they shall not fall away; though the sun of faith be eclipsed,
it shall not be extinguished. He has this hope even in regard to Peter, having
taken care to avert so disastrous a catastrophe. “I have prayed for thee, that
thy faith fail not.” And the result was as He anticipated. The disciples showed
themselves weak in the final crisis, but not wicked. Satan tripped them up, but
he did not enter into and possess them. In this respect they differed to toto
coelo from Judas, who not only lost his faith, but cast away his love, and,
abandoning his Lord, went over to the enemy, and became a tool for the
accomplishment of their wicked designs. The eleven, at their worst, continued
faithful to their Master in heart. They neither committed, nor were capable of
committing, acts of perfidy, but even in fleeing identified themselves with the
losing side. But Peter, what of him? was not he an exception to this statement?
Well, he certainly did more than fail in faith; and we have no wish to extenuate
the gravity of his offence, but would rather see in it a solemn illustration of
the close proximity into which the best men may be brought with the worst. At
the same time, it is only just to remark that there is a wide difference between
denying Christ among the servants of the high priest, and betraying Him into the
hands of the high priest himself for a sum of money. The latter act is the crime
of a traitor knave; the former might be committed by one who would be true to
his master on all occasions in which his interests seemed seriously involved. In
denying Jesus, Peter thought that he was saving himself by dissimulation,
without doing any material injury to his Lord. His act resembled that of Abraham
when he circulated the lying story about his wife being his sister, to protect
himself from the violence of licentious strangers. That was certainly a very
mean, selfish act, most unworthy of the father of the faithful. Peter’s act was
not less mean and selfish, but also not more. Both were acts of weakness rather
than of wickedness, for which few, even among good men, can afford to throw
stones at the patriarch and the disciple. Even those who play the hero on great
occasions will at other times act very unworthily. Many men conceal and belie
their convictions at the dinner-table, who would boldly proclaim their
sentiments from the pulpit or the platform. Standing in the place where Christ’s
servants are expected to speak the truth, they draw their swords bravely in
defense of their Lord; but, mixing in society on equal terms, they too often say
in effect, “I know not the man.” Peter’s offence, therefore, if grave, is
certainly not uncommon. It is committed virtually, if not formally, by
multitudes who are utterly incapable of public deliberate treason against truth
and God. The erring disciple was much more singular in his repentance than in
his sin. Of all who in mere acts of weakness virtually deny Christ, how few,
like him, go out and weep bitterly! That Peter did not fall as Judas fell,
utterly and irrevocably, was due in part to a radical difference between the two
men. Peter was at heart a child of God; Judas, in the core of his being, had
been all along a child of Satan. Therefore we may say that Peter could not have
sinned as Judas sinned, nor could Judas have repented as Peter repented. Yet,
while we say this, we must not forget that Peter was kept from falling away by
special grace granted to him in answer to his Master’s prayers. The precise
terms in which Jesus prayed for Peter we do not know; for the prayer in behalf
of the one disciple has not, like that for the whole eleven, been recorded. But
the drift of these special intercessions is plain, from the account given of
them by Jesus to Peter. The Master had prayed that His disciple’s faith might
not fail. He had not prayed that he might be exempt from Satan’s sifting
process, or even kept from falling; for He knew that a fall was necessary, to
show the self-confident disciple his own weakness. He had prayed that Peter’s
fall might not be ruinous; that his grievous sin might be followed by godly
sorrow, not by hardening of heart, or, as in the case of the traitor, by the
sorrow of the world, which worketh death: the remorse of a guilty conscience,
which, like the furies, drives the sinner headlong to damnation. And in Peter’s
repentance, immediately after his denials, we see the fulfilment of his Master’s
prayer, special grace being given to melt his heart, and overwhelm him with
generous grief, and cause him to weep out his soul in tears. Not by his piety or
goodness of heart was the salutary result produced, but by God’s Spirit and
God’s providence conspiring to that end. But for the cock-crowing, and the
warning words it recalled to mind, and the glance of Jesus’ eye, and the tender
mercy of the Father in heaven, who can tell what sullen devilish humors might
have taken possession of the guilty disciple’s heart! Remember how long even the
godly David gave place to the devil, and harbored in his bosom the demons of
pride, falsehood, and impenitence, after his grievous fall; and see how far it
was from being a matter of course that Peter, immediately after denying Christ,
should come under the blessed influence of a broken and contrite spirit, or even
that the spiritual crisis through which he passed had a happy issue at all. By
grace he was saved, as are we all.

3. Jesus regards the crisis about to be gone through by His disciples as one
which shall not only end happily, but result in spiritual benefit to themselves,
and qualify them for being helpful to others. This appears from the injunction
He lays on Peter: “When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” Jesus
expects the frail disciple to become strong in grace, and so able and willing to
help the weak. He cherishes this expectation with respect to all, but specially
in regard to Peter, assuming that the weakest might and ought eventually to
become the strongest; the last first, the greatest sinner the greatest saint;
the most foolish the wisest, most benignant, and sympathetic of men.

How encouraging this genial, kindly view of moral shortcoming to such as have
erred! The Saviour says to them in effect, There is no cause for despair: sin
cannot only be forgiven, but it can even be turned to good account both for
yourselves and for others. Falls, rightly improved, may become stepping-stones
to Christian virtue, and a training for the office of a comforter and guide. How
healing such a view to the troubled conscience! Men who have erred, and who take
a serious thought of their sin, are apt to consume their hearts and waste their
time in bitter reflections on their past misconduct. Christ gives them more
profitable work to do. “When thou art converted,” He says to them, “strengthen
thy brethren:” cease from idle regrets over the irrevocable past, and devote
thyself heart and soul to labors of love; and let it help thee to forgive
thyself, that from thy very faults and follies thou mayest learn the meekness,
patience, compassion, and wisdom necessary for carrying on such labors with
success. But while very encouraging to those who have sinned, Christ’s words to
Simon contain no encouragement to sin. It is a favorite doctrine with some-that
we may do evil that good may come; that we must be prodigals in order to be good
Christians; that a mud bath must precede the washing of regeneration and the
baptism of the soul in the Redeemer’s blood. This is a false, pernicious
doctrine, of which the Holy One could not be the patron. Do evil that good may
come, say you? And what if the good come not? It does not come, as we have seen,
as a matter of course; nor is it the likelier to come that you make the hope of
its coming the pretext for sinning. If the good ever come, it will come through
the strait gate of repentance. You can become wise, gracious, meek, sympathetic,
a burden-bearer to the weak, only by going out first and weeping bitterly. But
what chance is there of such a penitential melting of heart appearing in one who
adopts and acts on the principle that a curriculum of sin is necessary to the
attainment of insight, self-knowledge, compassion, and all the humane virtues?
The probable issue of such a training is a hardened heart, a seared conscience,
a perverted moral judgment, the extirpation of all earnest convictions
respecting the difference between right and wrong; the opinion that evil leads
to good insensibly transforming itself into the idea that evil is good, and
fitting its advocate for committing sin without shame or compunction.

“And dare we to this fancy give, That had the wild-oat not been sown, The soil,
left barren, scarce had grown The grain by which a man may live?

Oh, if we held the doctrine sound, For life outliving heats of youth;

Yet who would preach it as a truth To those that eddy round and round?

Hold thou the good: define it well: For fear divine Philosophy Should push
beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the lords of hell.” In Peter’s case good
did come out of evil. The sifting time formed a turning-point in his spiritual
history: the sifting process had for its result a second conversion more
thorough than the first-a turning from sin, not merely in general, but in
detail; from besetting sins, in better informed if not more fervent repentance,
and with a purpose of new obedience less self-reliant, but just on that account
more reliable. A child hitherto-a child of God, indeed, yet only a child-Peter
became a man strong in grace, and fit to bear the burden of the weak. Yet it is
worthy of notice, as showing how little sympathy the Author of our faith had
with the doctrine that evil may be done for the sake of good, that Jesus, while
aware how Peter’s fall would end, did not on that account regard it as
desirable. He said not, “I have desired to sift thee,” but assigns the task of
sifting the disciple to the evil spirit who in the beginning tempted our first
parent to sin by the specious argument, “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil,” reserving to Himself the part of an intercessor, who prays that the evil
permitted may be overruled for good. “Satan hath desired to have you:” “I have
prayed for thee.” What words could more strongly convey the idea of guilt and
peril than these, which intimate that Simon is about to do a deed which is an
object of desire to the evil one, and which makes it necessary that he should be
specially prayed for by the Saviour of souls? Men must go elsewhere in quest of
support for apologetic or pantheistic views of sin. But it may be thought that
the reference to Satan tends in another way to weaken moral earnestness, by
encouraging men to throw the blame of their falls on him. Theoretically
plausible, this objection is practically contrary to fact; for the patrons of
lax notions of sin are also the unbelievers in the personality of the devil.
“The further the age has removed from the idea of a devil, the laxer it has
become in the imputation and punishment of sin. The older time, which did not
deny the temptations and assaults of the devil, was yet so little inclined on
that account to excuse men, that it regarded the neglect of resistance against
the evil spirit, or the yielding to him, as the extreme degree of guilt, and
exercised against it a judicial severity from which we shrink with horror. The
opposite extreme to this strictness is the laxity of recent criminal
jurisprudence, in which judges and physicians are too much inclined to excuse
the guilty from physical or psychical grounds, while the moral judgment of
public opinion is slack and indulgent. It is undeniable that to every sin not
only a bad will, but also the spell of some temptation, contributes; and when
temptation is not ascribed to the devil, the sinner does not on that account
impute blame to his bad will, but to temptations springing from some other
quarter, which he does not derive from sin, but from nature, although nature
tempts only when under the influence of sin. The world and the flesh are indeed
powers of temptation, not through their natural substance, but through the
influence of the bad with which they are infected. But when, as at present, the
seduction to evil is referred to sensuality, temperament, physical lusts and
passions, circumstances, or fixed ideas, monomanias, etc., guilt is taken off
the sinner’s shoulders, and laid upon something ethically indifferent or simply
natural.” The view presented by Jesus of His disciple’s fall cannot therefore be
charged with weakening the sense of responsibility; on the contrary, it is a
view tending at once to inspire hatred of sin and hope for the sinner. It
exhibits sin about to be committed as an object of fear and abhorrence; and,
already committed, as not only forgivable, being repented of, but as capable of
being made serviceable to spiritual progress. It says to us, on the one hand,
Trifle not with temptation, for Satan is near, seeking thy soul’s ruin-“fear,
and sin not;” and, on the other hand, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,”-despair not: forsake thy sins, and thou
shalt find mercy.

Section III - Peter and John John 18:15-18; John 19:25-27.

Though all the disciples, without exception, forsook Jesus at the moment of His
apprehension, two of them soon recovered their courage sufficiently to return
from flight, and follow after their Master as He was being led away to judgment.
One of these was Simon Peter, ever original both in good and in evil, who, we
are told, followed Jesus “afar off unto the high priest’s palace, to see the
end.” The other, according to the general, and we think correct, opinion of
interpreters, was John. He is indeed not named, but merely described as another,
or rather the other, disciple; but as John himself is our informant, the fact is
almost certain evidence that he is the person alluded to. “The other disciple,”
who “was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of
the high priest,” is the well-known unnamed one who so often meets us in the
fourth Gospel. Had the man whose conduct was so outstanding been any other than
the evangelist, he would certainly not have remained nameless in a narrative so
minutely exact, that even the name of the servant whose ear Peter cut off is not
deemed too insignificant to be recorded.

These two disciples, though very different in character, seem to have had a
friendship for each other. On various occasions besides the present we find
their names associated in a manner suggestive of a special attachment. At the
supper-table, when the announcement concerning the traitor had been made, Peter
gave the disciple whom Jesus loved a sign that he should ask who it should be of
whom He spake. Three times in the interval between the resurrection and the
ascension the two brethren were linked together as companions. They ran together
to the sepulchre on the resurrection morning. They talked together
confidentially concerning the stranger who appeared at early dawn on the shores
of the Sea of Galilee, when they were out on their last fishing expedition, the
disciple whom Jesus loved, on recognizing the Risen One, saying unto Peter, “It
is the Lord.” They walked together shortly after on the shore, following
Jesus-Peter by commandment, John by the voluntary impulse of his own loving
heart. An intimacy cemented by such sacred associations was likely to be
permanent, and we find the two disciples still companions after they had entered
on the duties of the apostleship. They went up together into the temple at the
hour of prayer; and, having got into trouble through the healing of the lame man
at the temple gate, they appeared together before the ecclesiastical tribunal,
to be tried by the very same men, Annas and Caiaphas, who had sat in judgment
upon their Lord, companions now at the bar, as they had been before in the
palace, of the high priest.

Such a friendship between the two disciples as these facts point to, is by no
means surprising. As belonging to the inner circle of three whom Jesus honored
with His confidence on special occasions, they had opportunities for becoming
intimate, and were placed in circumstances tending to unite them in the closest
bonds of spiritual brotherhood. And, notwithstanding their characteristic
differences, they were fitted to be special friends. They were both men of
marked originality and force of character, and they would find in each other
more sources of interest than in the more commonplace members of the apostolic
band. Their very peculiarities, too, far from keeping them apart, would rather
draw them together. They were so constituted that each would find in the otter
the complement of himself. Peter was masculine, John was feminine, in
temperament; Peter was the man of action, John the man of thought and feeling;
Peter’s part was to be a leader and a champion, John’s was to cling, and trust,
and be loved; Peter was the hero, and John the admirer of heroism. In their
respective behavior at this crisis, the two friends were at once like and unlike
each other. They were like in this, that they both manifested a generous
solicitude about the fate of their Master. While the rest retired altogether
from the scene, they followed to see the end. The common action proceeded in
both probably from the same motives. What these motives were we are not told,
but it is not difficult to guess. A certain influence may be assigned, in the
first place, to natural activity of spirit. It was not in the nature either of
Peter or of John to be listless and passive while such grave events were going
on. They could not sit at home doing nothing while their Lord was being tried,
sentenced, and treated as a malefactor. If they cannot prevent, they will at
least witness, His last sufferings. The same irrepressible energy of mind which,
three days after, made these two disciples run to see the empty grave, now
impels them to turn their steps towards the judgment-hall to witness the
transactions there.

Besides activity of mind, we perceive in the conduct of the two disciples a
certain spirit of daring at work. We learn from the Acts of the Apostles, that
when Peter and John appeared before the council in Jerusalem, the rulers were
struck with their boldness. Their boldness then was only what was to be expected
from men who had behaved as they did at this crisis. By that time, it is true,
they had, in common with all their brethren, experienced a great spiritual
change; but yet we cannot fail to recognize the identity of the characters. The
apostles had but grown to such spiritual manhood as they gave promise of in the
days of their discipleship. For it was a brave thing in them to follow, even at
a distance, the band which had taken Jesus a prisoner. The rudiments at least of
the martyr character were in men who could do that. Mere cowards would not have
acted so. They would have eagerly availed themselves of the virtual sanction
given by Jesus to flight, comforting their hearts with the thought that, in
consulting for their safety, they were but doing the duty enjoined on them. But
the conduct of the two brethren sprang, we believe, mainly from their ardent
love to Jesus. When the first paroxysm of fear was past, solicitude for personal
safety gave place to generous concern about the fate of one whom they really
loved more than life. The love of Christ constrained them to think not of
themselves, but of Him whose hour of sorrow was come. First they slacken their
pace, then they halt, then they look round; and as they see the armed band
nearing the city, they are cut to the heart, and they say within themselves, “We
cannot leave our dear Master in His time of peril; we must see the issue of this
painful business.” And so with anguished spirit they set out towards Jerusalem,
Peter first, and John after him. The two brethren, companions thus far, diverged
widely on arriving at the scene of trial and suffering. John clung to his
beloved Lord to the last. He was present, it would appear, at the various
examinations to which Jesus was subjected, and heard with his own ears the
judicial process of which he has given so interesting an account in his Gospel.
When the iniquitous sentence was executed, he was a spectator. He took his stand
by the foot of the cross, where he could see all, and not only be seen, but even
be spoken to, by his dying Master. There he saw, among other things, the strange
phenomenon of blood and water flowing from the spear-wound in the Saviour’s
side, which he so carefully records in his narrative. There he heard Christ’s
dying words, and among them those addressed to Mary of Nazareth and himself: to
her, “Woman, behold thy son;” to him, “Behold thy mother.”

John was thus persistently faithful throughout. And Peter, what of him? Alas!
what need to tell the familiar story of his deplorable weakness in the hall or
inner court of the high priest’s palace? how, having obtained an entrance
through the street door by the intercession of his brother disciple, he first
denied to the portress his connection with Jesus; then repeated his denial to
other parties, with the addition of a solemn oath; then, irritated by the
repetition of the charge, and perhaps by the consciousness of guilt, a third
time declared, not with a solemn oath, but with the degrading accompaniment of
profane swearing, “I know not the man;” then, finally, hearing the cock crow,
and catching Jesus’ eye, and remembering the words, “Before the cock crow thou
shalt deny me thrice,” went out to the street and wept bitterly!

What became of Peter after this melancholy exhibition we are not informed. In
all probability he retired to his lodging, humbled, dispirited, crushed, there
to remain overwhelmed with grief and shame, till he was roused from stupor by
the stirring tidings of the resurrection morn. This difference in conduct
between the two disciples corresponded to a difference in their characters. Each
acted according to his nature. It is true, indeed, that the circumstances were
not the same for both parties, being favorable for one, unfavorable for the
other. John had the advantage of a friend at court, being somehow known to the
high priest. This circumstance gained him admission into the chamber of
judgment, and gave him security against all personal risk. Peter, on the other
hand, not only had no friends at court, but might not unnaturally fear the
presence there of personal foes. He had made himself obnoxious by his rash act
in the garden, and might be apprehensive of getting into trouble in consequence.
That such fears would not have been altogether groundless, we learn from the
fact stated by John, that one of the persons who charged Peter with being a
disciple of Jesus was a kinsman of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, and that
he brought his charge against the disciple in this form: “Did I not see thee in
the garden with Him?” It is therefore every way likely that the consciousness of
having committed an offence which might be resented, made Peter anxious to
escape identification as one of Christ’s disciples. His unseasonable courage in
the garden helped to make him a coward in the palace-yard.

Making all due allowance for the effect of circumstances, however, we think that
the difference in the behavior of the two disciples was mainly due to a
difference in the men themselves. Though he had been guilty of no imprudence in
the garden, Peter, we fear, would have denied Jesus in the hall; and, on the
other hand, supposing John had been placed in Peter’s position, we do not
believe that he would have committed Peter’s sin. Peter’s disposition laid him
open to temptation, while John’s, on the other hand, was a protection against
temptation. Peter was frank and familiar, John was dignified and reserved;
Peter’s tendency was to be on hail fellow-well-met terms with everybody, John
could keep his own place and make other people keep theirs. It is easy to see
what an important effect this distinction would have on the conduct of parties
placed in Peter’s position. Suppose John in Peter’s place, and let us see how he
might have acted. Certain persons about the court, possessing neither authority
nor influence, interrogate him about his connection with Jesus. He is neither
afraid nor ashamed to acknowledge his Lord, but nevertheless he turns away and
gives the interrogators no answer. They have no right to question him. The
spirit which prompts their questions is one with which he has no sympathy, and
he feels that it will serve no good purpose to confess his discipleship to such
people. Therefore, like his Master when confronted with the false witnesses, he
holds his peace, and withdraws from company with which he has nothing in common,
and for which he has no respect. To protect himself from inconvenient
interrogation by such dignified reserve, is beyond Peter’s capacity. He cannot
keep people who are not fit company for him at their distance; he is too frank,
too familiar, too sensitive to public opinion, without respect to its quality.
If a servant-maid ask him a question about his relation to the Prisoner at the
bar, he cannot brush past her as if he heard her not. He must give her an
answer; and as he feels instinctively that the animus of the question is against
his Master, his answer must needs be a lie. Then, unwarned by this encounter of
the danger arising from too close contact with the hangers-on about the palace,
the foolish disciple must involve himself more inextricably into the net, by
mingling jauntily with the servants and officers gathered around the fire which
has been kindled on the pavement of the open court. Of course he has no chance
of escape here; he is like a poor fly caught in a spider’s web. If these men,
with the insolent tone of court menials, charge him with being a follower of the
man whom their masters have now got into their power, he can do nothing else
than blunder out a mean, base denial. Poor Peter is manifestly not equal to the
situation. It would have been wiser in him to have staid at home, restraining
his curiosity to see the end. But he, like most men, was to learn wisdom only by
bitter experience. The contrast we have drawn between the characters of the two
disciples suggests the thought, What a different thing growth in grace may be
for different Christians! Neither John nor Peter was mature as yet, but
immaturity showed itself in them in opposite ways. Peter’s weakness lay in the
direction of indiscriminate cordiality. His tendency was to be friends with
everybody. John, on the other hand, was in no danger of being on familiar terms
with all and sundry. It was rather too easy for him to make a difference between
friends and foes. He could take a side, and keep it; he could even hate with
fanatical intensity, as well as love with beautiful womanly devotion. Witness
his proposal to call down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritan villages!
That was a proposal which Peter could not have made; it was not in his nature to
be so truculent against any human being. So far, his good nature was a thing to
be commended, if in other respects it laid him open to temptation. The faults of
the two brethren being so opposite, growth in grace would naturally assume two
opposite forms in their respective experiences. In Peter it would take the form
of concentration; in John, of expansion. Peter would become less charitable;
John would become more charitable. Peter would advance from indiscriminate
goodwill to a moral decidedness which should distinguish between friends and
foes, the Church and the world; John’s progress, on the other hand, would
consist in ceasing to be a bigot, and in becoming imbued with the genial,
humane, sympathetic spirit of his Lord. Peter, in his mature state, would care
much less for the opinions and feelings of men than he did at the present time;
John, again, would care much more.

We add a word on the question, Was it right or was it wrong in these two
disciples to follow their Lord to the place of judgment? In our view it was
neither right nor wrong in itself. It was right for one who was able to do it
without spiritual harm; wrong for one who had reason to believe that, by doing
it, he was exposing himself to harm. The latter was Peter’s case, as the former
seems to have been John’s. Peter had been plainly warned of his weakness; and,
had he laid the warning to heart, he would have avoided the scene of temptation.
By disregarding the warning, he wilfully rushed into the tempter’s arms, and of
course he caught a fall. His fall reads a lesson to all who, without seeking
counsel of God or disregarding counsel given, enter on undertakings beyond their
strength.


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  CHAPTER 65: 02.28.     THE SHEPHERD RESTORED
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The Shepherd Restored Section I - Too Good News to be True Mat 28:17; Mark
16:11-15; Luk 24:11, Luk 24:13-22, Luk 24:36-42; John 20:20, John 20:24-29. The
black day of the crucifixion is past; the succeeding day, the Jewish Sabbath,
when the Weary One slept in His rock-hewn tomb, is also past; the first day of a
new week and of a new era has dawned, and the Lord is risen from the dead. The
Shepherd has returned to gather His scattered sheep. Surely a happy day for
hapless disciples! What rapturous joy must have thrilled their hearts at the
thought of a reunion with their beloved Lord! with what ardent hope must they
have looked forward to that resurrection morn! So one might think; but the real
state of the case was not so. Such ardent expectations had no place in the minds
of the disciples. The actual state of their minds at the resurrection of Christ
rather resembled that of the Jewish exiles in Babylon, when they heard that they
were to be restored to their native land. The first effect of the good news was
that they were as men that dreamed. The news seemed too good to be true. The
captives who had sat by the rivers of Babylon, and wept when they remembered
Zion, had ceased to hope for a return to their own country, and indeed to be
capable of hoping for any thing. “Grief was calm and hope was dead” within them.
Then, when the exiles had recovered from the stupor of surprise, the next effect
of the good tidings was a fit of over-joy. They burst into hysteric laughter and
irrepressible song.

Very similar was the experience of the disciples in connection with the rising
of Jesus from the dead. Their grief was not indeed calm, but their hope was
dead. The resurrection of their Master was utterly unexpected by them, and they
received the tidings with surprise and incredulity. This appears from the
statements of all the four evangelists. Matthew states that on the occasion of
Christ’s meeting with His followers in Galilee after He was risen, some doubted,
while others worshipped. Mark relates that when the disciples heard from Mary
Magdalene that Jesus was alive, and had been seen of her, “they believed not;”
and that when the two disciples who journeyed toward Emmaus told their brethren
of their meeting with Jesus on the way, “neither believed they them.” He further
relates how, on a subsequent occasion, when Jesus Himself met with the whole
eleven at once, He “upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart,
because they believed not them which had seen Him after He was risen.” In full
accordance with these statements of the two first evangelists are those of Luke,
whose representation of the mental attitude of the disciples towards the
resurrection of Jesus is very graphic and animated. According to him, the
reports of the women seemed to them “as idle tales, and they believed them not.”
The two brethren vaguely alluded to by Mark as walking into the country when
Jesus appeared to them, are represented by Luke as sad in countenance, though
aware of the rumors concerning the resurrection; yea, as so depressed in
spirits, that they did not recognize Jesus when He joined their company and
entered into conversation with them. The resurrection was not a fact for them:
all they knew was that their Master was dead, and that they had vainly trusted
that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel. The same evangelist also
Informs us that on the first occasion when Jesus presented Himself in the midst
of His disciples, they did recognize the resemblance of the apparition to their
deceased Lord, but thought it was only His ghost, and accordingly were terrified
and affrighted; insomuch that, in order to charm away their fear, Jesus showed
them His hands and feet, and besought them to handle His body, and so satisfy
themselves that He was no ghost, but a substantial human being, with flesh and
bones like another man.

Instead of general statements, John gives an example of the incredulity of the
disciples concerning the resurrection, as exhibited in its extreme form by
Thomas. This disciple he represents as so incredulous, that he refused to
believe until he should have put his finger into the prints of the nails, and
thrust his hand into the wound made by the spear in the Saviour’s side. That the
other disciples shared the incredulity of Thomas, though in a less degree, is
implied in the statement made by John in a previous part of his narrative, that
when Jesus met His disciples on the evening of the day on which He rose, “He
showed unto them His hands and His side.” The women who had believed in Christ
had no more expectation of His resurrection than the eleven. They set forth
towards the sepulchre on the morning of the first day of the week, with the
intention of embalming the dead body of Him whom they loved. They sought the
living among the dead. When the Magdalene, who was at the tomb before the rest,
found the grave empty, her idea was that some one had carried away the dead body
of her Lord. When the incredulity of the disciples did at length give place to
faith, they passed, like the Hebrew exiles, from extreme depression to
extravagant joy. When the doubt of Thomas was removed, he exclaimed in rapture,
“My Lord and my God!” Luke relates that when they recognized their risen Lord,
the disciples “believed not for joy,” as if toying with doubt as a stimulus to
joy. The two disciples with whom Jesus conversed on the way to Emmaus, said to
each other when He left them, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked
with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?” In yet another
most important respect did the eleven resemble the ancient Hebrew exiles at the
time of their recall. While their faith and hope were palsied during the
interval between the death and the resurrection of Jesus, their love remained in
unabated vitality. The expatriated Jew did not forget Jerusalem in the land of
strangers. Absence only made his heart grow fonder. As he sat by the rivers of
Babylon, listless, motionless, in abstracted dreamy mood, gazing with glassy
eyes on the sluggish waters, the big round tears stole quietly down his cheeks,
because he had been thinking of Zion. The exile of poetic soul did not forget
what was due to Jerusalem’s honor. He was incapable of singing the Lord’s songs
in the hearing of a heathen audience, who cared nothing for their meaning, but
only for the style of execution. He disdained to prostitute his talents for the
entertainment of the voluptuous oppressors of Israel, even though thereby he
might procure his restoration to the beloved country of his birth, as the
Athenian captives in Sicily are said to have done by reciting the strains of
their favorite poet Euripides in the hearing of their Sicilian masters. The
disciples were not less true to the memory of their Lord. They were like a
“widow indeed,” who remains faithful to her deceased husband, and dotes on his
virtues, though his reputation be at zero in the general esteem of the world.
Call Him a deceiver who might, they could not believe that Jesus had been a
deceiver. Mistaken He as well as they might have been, but an impostor-never!
Therefore, though He is dead and their hope gone, they still act as men who
cherish the fondest attachment to their Master whom they have lost. They keep
together like a bereaved family, with blinds down, so to speak, shutting and
barring their doors for fear of the Jews, identifying themselves with the
Crucified, and as His friends dreading the ill-will of the unbelieving world.
Admirable example to all Christians how to behave themselves in a day of
trouble, rebuke, and blasphemy, when the cause of Christ seems lost, and the
powers of darkness for the moment have all things their own way. Though faith be
eclipsed and hope extinguished, let the heart ever be loyal to its true Lord!
The state of mind in which the disciples were at the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead, is of great moment in an apologetic point of view. Their
despair after their Lord’s crucifixion gives great weight to the testimony borne
by them to the fact of His resurrection. Men in such a mood were not likely to
believe in the latter event except because it could not reasonably be
disbelieved. They would not be lightly satisfied of its truth, as men are apt to
be in the case of events both desired and expected: they would skeptically exact
superabundant evidence, as men do in the case of events desirable but not
expected. They would be slow to believe on the testimony of others, and might
even hesitate to believe their own eyes. They would not be able, as M. Renan
supposes, to get up a belief in the resurrection of Jesus, from the simple fact
that His grave was found empty on the third day after His death, by the women
who went to embalm His body. That circumstance, on being reported, might make a
Peter and a John run to the sepulchre to see how matters stood; but, after they
had found the report of the women confirmed, it would still remain a question
how the fact was to be explained; and Mary Magdalene’s theory, that some one had
carried off the corpse, would not appear at all improbable.

These inferences of ours, from what we know concerning the mental condition of
the disciples, are fully borne out by the Gospel accounts of the reception they
gave to the risen Jesus at His first appearances to them. One and all of them
regarded these appearances skeptically, and took pains to satisfy themselves, or
made it necessary that Jesus should take pains to satisfy them, that the visible
object was no ghostly apparition, but a living man, and that man none other than
He who had died on the cross. The disciples doubted now the substantiality, now
the identity, of the person who appeared to them. They were therefore not
content with seeing Jesus, but at His own request handled Him. One of their
number not only handled the body to ascertain that it possessed the
incompressibility of matter, but insisted on examining with skeptical curiosity
those parts which had been injured by the nails and the spear. All perceived the
resemblance between the object in view and Jesus, but they could not be
persuaded of the identity, so utterly unprepared were they for seeing the Dead
One alive again; and their theory at first was just that of Strauss, that what
they saw was a ghost or spectra. And the very fact that they entertained that
theory makes it impossible for us to entertain it. We cannot, in the face of
that fact, accept the Straussian dogma, that “the faith in Jesus as the Messiah,
which by His violent death had received an apparently fatal shock, was
subjectively restored by the instrumentality of the mind, the power of
imagination and nervous excitement.” The power of imagination and nervous
excitement we know can do much. It has often happened to men in an abnormal,
excited state to see projected into outward space the creations of a heated
brain. But persons in a crazy state like that-subject to hallucination-are not
usually cool and rational enough to doubt the reality of what they see; nor is
it necessary in their case to take pains to overcome such doubts. What they need
rather, is to be made aware that what they think they see is not a reality: the
very reverse of what Christ had to do for the disciples, and did, by solemn
assertion that He was no spirit, by inviting them to handle Him, and so satisfy
themselves of His material substantiality, and by partaking of food in their
presence. When we keep steadily before our eyes the mental condition of the
eleven at the time of Christ’s resurrection, we see the transparent falsehood
and absurdity of the theft theory invented by the Jewish priests. The disciples,
according to this theory, came by night, while the guards were asleep, and stole
the dead body of Jesus, that they might be able to circulate the belief that He
was risen again. Matthew tells that even before the resurrection the murderers
of our Lord were afraid this might be done; and then, to prevent any fraud of
this kind, they applied to Pilate to have a guard put upon the grave, who
accordingly contemptuously granted them permission to take what steps they
pleased to prevent all resurrectionary proceedings on the part either of the
dead or of the living, scornfully replying, “Ye have a watch: go your way, make
it as sure as ye can.” This accordingly they did, sealing the stone and setting
a watch. Alas! their precautions prevented neither the resurrection nor belief
in it, but only supplied an illustration of the folly of those who attempt to
manage providence, and to control the course of the world’s history. They gave
themselves much to do, and it all came to nothing. Not that we are disposed to
deny the astuteness of these ecclesiastical politicians. Their scheme for
preventing the resurrection was very prudent, and their mode of explaining it
away after hand very plausible. The story they invented was really a very
respectable fabrication, and was certain to satisfy all who wanted a decent
theory to justify a foregone conclusion, as in fact it seems to have done; for,
according to Matthew, it was commonly reported in after years. It was not
improbable that soldiers should fall asleep by night on the watch, especially
when guarding a dead body, which was not likely to give them any trouble; and in
the eyes of the unbelieving world, the followers of the Nazarene were capable of
using any means for promoting their ends. But granting all this, and even
granting that the Sanhedrists had been right in their opinion of the character
of the disciples, their theft theory is ridiculous. The disciples, even if
capable of such a theft, so far as scruples of conscience were concerned, were
not in a state of mind to think of it, or to attempt it. They had not spirit
left for such a daring action. Sorrow lay like a weight of lead on their hearts,
and made them almost as inanimate as the corpse they are supposed to have
stolen. Then the motive for the theft is one which could not have influenced
them then. Steal the body to propagate a belief in the resurrection! What
interest had they in propagating a belief which they did not entertain
themselves? “As yet they knew not the Scriptures, that He must rise again from
the dead;” nor did they remember aught that their Master had said on this
subject before His decease. To some this latter statement has appeared hard to
believe; and to get over the difficulty, it has been suggested that the
predictions of our Lord respecting His resurrection may not have been so
definite as they appear in the Gospels, but may have assumed this definite form
after the event, when their meaning was clearly understood. We see no occasion
for such a supposition. There can be no doubt that Jesus spoke plainly enough
about His death at least; and yet His death, when it happened, took the
disciples as much by surprise as did the resurrection. One explanation suffices
in both cases. The disciples were not clever, quick-witted, sentimental men such
as Renan makes them. They were stupid, slow-minded persons; very honest, but
very unapt to take in new ideas. They were like horses with blinders on, and
could see only in one direction-that, namely, of their prejudices. It required
the surgery of events to insert a new truth into their minds. Nothing would
change the current of their thoughts but a damwork of undeniable fact. They
could be convinced that Christ must die only by His dying, that He would rise
only by His rising, that His kingdom was not to be of this world, only by the
outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and the vocation of the Gentiles. Let us
be thankful for the honest stupidity of these men. It gives great value to their
testimony. We know that nothing but facts could make such men believe that which
nowadays they get credit for inventing. The apologetic use which we have made of
the doubts of the disciples concerning the resurrection of Christ is not only
legitimate, but manifestly that which was intended by their being recorded. The
evangelists have carefully chronicled these doubts that we might have no doubt.
These things were written that we might believe that Jesus really did rise from
the dead; for the apostles attached supreme importance to that fact, which they
had doubted in the days of their disciple hood. It was the foundation of their
doctrinal edifice, an essential part of their gospel. The Apostle Paul correctly
summed up the gospel preached by the men who had been with Jesus, as well as by
himself, in these three items: “that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He rose again the third day,
according to the Scriptures.” All the eleven thoroughly agreed with Paul’s
sentiment, that if Christ were not risen, their preaching was vain, and the
faith of Christians was also vain. There was no gospel at all, unless He who
died for men’s sins rose again for their justification. With this conviction in
their minds, they constantly bore witness to the resurrection of Jesus wherever
they went. So important a part of their work did this witness-bearing seem to
them, that when Peter proposed the election of one to fill the place of Judas he
singled it out as the characteristic function of the apostolic office. “Of these
men,” he said, “which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus
went in and out among us, . . . must one become a witness with us of His
resurrection.” With this supreme value attached to the fact of Christ’s rising
again in apostolic preaching, it is our duty most heartily to sympathize. Modern
unbelievers, like some in the Corinthian church, would persuade us that it does
not matter whether Jesus rose or not, all that is valuable in Christianity being
quite independent of mere historical truth. With these practically agree many
believers addicted to an airy spiritualism, who treat mere supernatural facts
with contemptuous neglect, deeming the high doctrines of the faith as alone
worthy of their regard. To persons of this temper such studies as those which
have occupied us in this chapter seem a mere waste of time; and if they spoke as
they feel, they would say, “Let these trifles alone, and give us the pure and
simple gospel.” Intelligent, sober, and earnest Christians differ toto caelo
from both these classes of people. In their view Christianity is in the first
place a religion of supernatural facts. These facts occupy the principal place
in their creed. They know that if these facts are honestly believed, all the
great doctrines of the faith must sooner or later be accepted; and, on the other
hand, they clearly understand that a religion which despises, not to say
disbelieves, these facts, is but a cloudland which must soon be dissipated, or a
house built on sand which the storm will sweep away. Therefore, while
acknowledging the importance of all revealed truth, they lay very special stress
on revealed facts. Believing with the heart the precious truth that Christ died
for our sins, they are careful with the apostles to include in their gospel
these items of fact, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.

Section II - The Eyes of the Disciples Opened Mark 16:14; Luk 24:25-32, Luk
24:44-46; John 20:20-23.

Jesus showed Himself alive after His passion to His disciples in a body, for the
first time, on the evening of His resurrection day. It was the fourth time He
had made Himself visible since He rose from the dead. He had appeared in the
morning first of all to Mary of Magdala. She had earned the honor thus conferred
on her by her pre-eminent devotion. Of kindred spirit with Mary of Bethany, she
had been foremost among the women who came to Joseph’s tomb to embalm the dead
body of the Saviour. Finding the grave empty, she wept bitter tears, because
they had taken away her Lord, and she knew not where they had laid Him. Those
tears, sure sign of deep true love, had not been unobserved of the Risen One.
The sorrows of this faithful soul touched His tender heart, and brought Him to
her side to comfort her. Turning round in distress from the sepulchre, she saw
Him standing by, but knew Him not. “Jesus saith to her, Woman, why weepest thou?
whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to be the gardener, replies, Sir, if thou
hast borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him
away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary.” Startled with the familiar voice, she looks
more attentively, and forthwith returns the benignant salutation with an
expressive word of recognition, “Rabboni.” Thus “to holy tears, in lonely hours,
Christ risen appears.” The second appearance was vouchsafed to Peter. Concerning
this private meeting between Jesus and His erring disciple we have no details:
it is simply mentioned by Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians, and by Luke in
his Gospel; but we can have no doubt at all as to its object. The Risen Master
remembered Peter’s sin; He knew how troubled he was in mind on account of it; He
desired without delay to let him know he was forgiven; and out of delicate
consideration for the offender’s feelings He contrived to meet him for the first
time after his fall, alone. In the course of the day Jesus appeared, for the
third time, to the two brethren who journeyed to Emmaus. Luke has given greater
prominence to this third appearance than to any other in his narrative, probably
because it was one of the most interesting of the anecdotes concerning the
resurrection which he found in the collections out of which he compiled his
Gospel. And, in truth, any thing more interesting than this beautiful story
cannot well be imagined. How vividly is the whole situation of the disciples
brought before us by the picture of the two friends walking along the way, and
talking together of the things which had happened, the sufferings of Jesus three
days ago, and the rumors just come to their ears concerning His resurrection;
and as they talked, vibrating between despair and hope, now brooding
disconsolately on the crucifixion of Him whom till then they had regarded as the
Redeemer of Israel, anon wondering if it were possible that He could have risen
again! Then how unspeakably pathetic the behavior of Jesus throughout this
scene! By an artifice of love He assumes the incognito, and, joining the company
of the two sorrowful men, asks them in a careless way what is the subject about
which they are talking so sadly and seriously; and on receiving for reply a
question expressive of surprise that even a stranger in Jerusalem should not
know the things which have come to pass, again asks dryly and indifferently,
“What things?” Having thereby drawn out of them their story, He proceeds in turn
to show them that an intelligent reader of the Old Testament ought not to be
surprised at such things happening to one whom they believed to be Christ,
taking occasion to expound unto them “in all the Scriptures the things
concerning Himself,” without saying that it is of Himself He speaks. On the
arrival of the travellers at the village whither the two brethren were bound,
the unknown One assumes the air of a man who is going farther on, as it would
not become a stranger to thrust himself into company uninvited; but receiving a
pressing invitation, He accepts it, and at last the two brethren discover to
their joy whom they have been entertaining unawares. This appearing of Jesus to
the two brethren by the way was a sort of prelude to that which He made on the
evening of the same day in Jerusalem to the eleven, or rather the ten. As soon
as they had discovered whom they had had for a guest, Cleopas and his companion
set out from Emmaus to the Holy City, eager to tell the friends there the
stirring news. And, behold, while they are in the very act of telling what
things were done in the way, and how Jesus became known to them in the breaking
of bread, Jesus Himself appeared in the midst of them, uttering the kindly
salutation, “Peace be unto you!” He is come to do for the future apostles what
He has already done for the two friends: to show Himself alive to them after His
passion, and to open their understandings that they might understand the
Scriptures, and see that, according to what had been written before of the
Christ, it behooved Him to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.

While the general design of the two appearances is the same, we observe a
difference in the order of procedure followed by Jesus. In the one case He
opened the eyes of the understanding first, and the eyes of the body second; in
the other, He reversed this order. In His colloquy with the two brethren He
first showed them that the crucifixion and the rumored resurrection were in
perfect accordance with Old Testament Scriptures, and then at the close made
Himself visible to their bodily eyes as Jesus risen. In other words, He first
taught them the true scriptural theory of Messiah’s earthly experience, and then
He satisfied them as to the matter of fact. In the meeting at night with the
ten, on the other hand, he disposed of the matter of fact first, and then took
up the theory afterwards. He convinced His disciples, by showing them His hands
and His feet, and by eating food, that He really was risen; and then He
proceeded to show that the fact was only what they ought to have expected as the
fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. In thus varying the order of revelation,
Jesus was but adapting His procedure to the different circumstances of the
persons with whom He had to deal. The two friends who journeyed to Emmaus did
not notice any resemblance between the stranger who joined their company and
their beloved Lord, of whom they had been thinking and speaking. “Their eyes
were holden, that they should not know Him.” The main cause of this, we believe,
was sheer heaviness of heart. Sorrow made them unobserving. They were so
engrossed with their own sad thoughts that they had no eyes for outward things.
They did not take the trouble to look who it was that had come up with them; it
would have made no difference though the stranger had been their own father. It
is obvious how men in such a mood must be dealt with. They can get outward
vision only by getting the inward eye first opened. The diseased mind must be
healed, that they may be able to look at what is before them, and see it as it
is. On this principle Jesus proceeded with the two brethren. He accommodated
Himself to their humor, and led them on from despair to hope, and then the
outward senses recovered their perceptive power, and told who the stranger was.
“You have heard,” He said in effect, “a rumor that He who was crucified three
days ago is risen. You regarded this rumor as an incredible story. But why
should you? You believe Jesus to be the Christ. If He was the Christ, His rising
again was to be expected as much as the passion, for both alike are foretold in
the Scriptures which ye believe to be the Word of God.” These thoughts having
taken hold of their minds, the hearts of the two brethren begin to burn with the
kindling power of a new truth; the day-dawn of hope breaks on their spirit; they
waken up as from an oppressive dream; they look outward, and, lo, the man who
has been discoursing to them is Jesus Himself! With the ten the case was
different. When Jesus appeared in the midst of them, they were struck at once
with the resemblance to their deceased Master. They had been listening to the
story of Cleopas and his companion, and were in a more observing mood. But they
could not believe that what they saw really was Jesus. They were terrified and
affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit-the ghost or spectre of the
Crucified. The first thing to be done in this case, therefore, manifestly was to
allay the fear awakened, and to convince the terrified disciples that the being
who had suddenly appeared was no ghost, but a man: the very man He seemed to be,
even Jesus Himself. Not till that has been done can any discourse be profitably
held concerning the teaching of the Old Testament on the subject of Messiah’s
earthly history. To that task accordingly Jesus forthwith addressed Himself, and
only when it was successfully accomplished did He proceed to expound the true
Messianic theory.

Something analogous to the difference we have pointed out in the experience of
the two and the ten disciples in connection with belief in the resurrection may
be found in the ways by which different Christians now are brought to faith. The
evidences of Christianity are commonly divided into two great categories-the
external and the internal; the one drawn from outward historical facts, the
other from the adaptation of the gospel to man’s nature and needs. Both sorts of
evidence are necessary to a perfect faith, just as both sorts of vision, the
outward and the inward, were necessary to make the disciples thorough believers
in the fact of the resurrection. But some begin with the one, some with the
other. Some are convinced first that the gospel story is true, and then perhaps
long after waken up to a sense of the importance and preciousness of the things
which it relates. Others, again, are like Cleopas and his companion; so
engrossed with their own thoughts as to be incapable of appreciating or seeing
facts, requiring first to have the eyes of their understanding enlightened to
see the beauty and the worthiness of the truth as it is in Jesus. They may at
one time have had a kind of traditional faith in the facts as sufficiently well
attested. But they have lost that faith, it may be not without regret. They are
skeptics, and yet they are sad because they are so, and feel that it was better
with them when, like others, they believed. Yet, though they attempt it, they
cannot restore their faith by a study of mere external evidences. They read
books dealing in such evidences, but they are not much impressed by them. Their
eyes are holden, and they know not Christ coming to them in that outward way.
But He reveals Himself to them in another manner. By hidden discourse with their
spirits He conveys into their minds a powerful sense of the moral grandeur of
the Christian faith, making them feel that, true or not, it is at least worthy
to be true. Then their hearts begin to burn: they hope that what is so beautiful
may turn out to be objectively true; the question of the external evidences
assumes a new interest to their minds; they inquire, they read, they look; and,
lo, they see Jesus revived, a true historical person for them: risen out of the
grave of doubt to live for evermore the sun of their souls, more precious for
the temporary loss; coming “Apparelled in more precious habit, More moving,
delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of their soul, than ever
He did before they doubted.” From these remarks on the order of the two
revelations made by Jesus to His disciples-of Himself to the eye of their body,
and of the scriptural doctrine of the Messiah to the eye of their mind-we pass
to consider the question, What did the latter revelation amount to? What was the
precise effect of those expositions of Scripture with which the risen Christ
favored His hearers? Did the disciples derive therefrom such an amount of light
as to supersede the necessity of any further illumination? Had Jesus Himself
done the work of the Spirit of Truth, whose advent He had promised before He
suffered, and led them into all truth? Certainly not. The opening of the
understanding which took place at this time did not by any means amount to a
full spiritual enlightenment in Christian doctrine. The disciples did not yet
comprehend the moral grounds of Christ’s sufferings and resurrection. Why He
underwent these experiences they knew not; the words “ought” and “behooved”
meant for them as yet nothing more than that, according to Old Testament
prophecies rightly understood, the things which had happened might and should
have been anticipated. They were in the same state of mind as that in which we
can conceive the Jewish Christians to whom the Epistle to the Hebrews was
addressed to have been after perusing the contents of that profound writing.
These Christians were ill grounded in gospel truth: they saw not the glory of
the gospel dispensation, nor its harmony with that which went before, and under
which they had been themselves educated. In particular, the divine dignity of
the Author of the Christian faith seemed to them incompatible with His earthly
humiliation. Accordingly, the writer of the epistle set himself to prove that
the divinity, the temporary humiliation, and the subsequent glorification of the
Christ were all taught in the Old Testament Scriptures, quoting these liberally
for that purpose in the early chapters of his epistle. He did, in fact, by his
written expositions for his readers, what Jesus did by His oral expositions for
His hearers. And what shall we say was the immediate effect of the writer’s
argument on the minds of those who attentively perused it? This, we imagine,
that the crude believer on laying down the book would be constrained to admit:
“Well, he is right: these things are all written in the Scriptures of the
Messiah; and therefore no one of them, not even the humiliation and suffering at
which I stumble, can be a reason for rejecting Jesus as the Christ.” A very
important result, yet a very elementary one. From the bare concession that the
real life of Jesus corresponded to the ideal life of the Messiah as portrayed in
the Old Testament, to the admiring, enthusiastic, and thoroughly intelligent
appreciation of gospel truth exhibited by the writer himself in every page of
his epistle, what a vast distance! Not less was the distance between the state
of mind of the disciples after Jesus had expounded to them the things in the
law, and the prophets, and the psalms concerning Himself, and the state of
enlightenment to which they attained as apostles after the advent of the
Comforter. Now they knew the alphabet merely of the doctrine of Christ; then
they had arrived at perfection, and were thoroughly initiated into the mystery
of the gospel. Now a single ray of light was let into their dark minds; then the
daylight of truth poured its full flood into their souls. Or we may express the
difference in terms suggested by the narrative given by John of the events
connected with this first appearance of the risen Jesus to His disciples. John
relates, that, at a certain stage in the proceedings, Jesus breathed on the
disciples, and said unto them, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” We are not to
understand that they then and there received the Spirit in the promised fulness.
The breath was rather but a sign and earnest of what was to come. It was but an
emblematic renewal of the promise, and a first installment of its fulfilment. It
was but the little cloud like a man’s hand that portended a plenteous rain, or
the first gentle puff of wind which precedes the mighty gale. Now they have the
little breath of the Spirit’s influence, but not till Pentecost shall they feel
the rushing wind. So great is the difference between now and then: between the
spiritual enlightenment of the disciples on the first Christian Sabbath evening,
and that of the apostles in after days.

It was but the day of small things with these disciples yet. The small things,
however, were not to be despised; nor were they. What value the ten set on the
light they had received we are not indeed told, but we may safely assume that
their feelings were much of kin to those of the two brethren who journeyed
towards Emmaus. Conversing together on the discourse of Jesus after His
departure, they said one unto another, “Did not our heart burn within us while
He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?” The
light they had got might be small, but it was new light, and it had all the
heart-kindling, thought-stirring power of new truth. That conversation on the
road formed a crisis in their spiritual history. It was the dawn of the gospel
day; it was the little spark which kindles a great fire; it deposited in their
minds a thought which was to form the germ or centre of a new system of belief;
it took away the veil which had been upon their faces in the reading of the Old
Testament, and was thus the first step in a process which was to issue in their
beholding with open face, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, and in their
being changed into the same image, from glory to glory, by the Lord the Spirit.
Happy the man who has got even so far as these two disciples at this time!

Some disconsolate soul may say, Would that happiness were mine! For the comfort
of such a forlorn brother, let us note the circumstances in which this new light
arose for the disciples. Their hearts were set a- burning when they had become
very dry and withered: hopeless, sick, and life-weary, through sorrow and
disappointment. It is always so: the fuel must be dry that the spark may take
hold. It was when the people of Israel complained, “Our bones are dried and our
hope is lost, we are cut off for our parts,” that the word went forth: “Behold,
O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your
graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.” So with these disciples of
Jesus. It was when every particle of the sap of hope had been bleached out of
them, and their faith had been reduced to this, “We trusted that it had been He
which should have redeemed Israel,” that their hearts were set burning by the
kindling power of a new truth. So it has been in many an instance since then.
The fire of hope has been kindled in the heart, never to be extinguished, just
at the moment when men were settling down into despair; faith has been revived
when a man seemed to himself to be an infidel; the light of truth has arisen to
minds which had ceased to look for the dawn; the comfort of salvation has
returned to souls which had begun to think that God’s mercy was clean gone for
ever. “When the Son of man cometh shall He find faith on the earth?”

There is nothing strange in this. The truth is, the heart needs to be dried by
trial before it can be made to burn. Till sorrow comes, human hearts do not
catch the divine fire; there is too much of this world’s life-sap in them. That
was what made the disciples so slow of heart to believe all that the prophets
had spoken. Their worldly ambition prevented them from learning the spirituality
of Christ’s kingdom, and pride made them blind to the glory of the cross. Hence
Jesus justly upbraided them for their unbelief and their mindless stupidity. Had
their hearts been pure, they might have known beforehand what was to happen. As
it was, they comprehended nothing till their Lord’s death had blighted their
hope and blasted their ambition, and bitter sorrow had prepared them for
receiving spiritual instruction.

Section III - The Doubt of Thomas

John 20:24-29

“Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came”
on that first Christian Sabbath evening, and showed Himself to His disciples.
One hopes he had a good reason for his absence; but it is at least possible that
he had not. In his melancholy humor he may simply have been indulging himself in
the luxury of solitary sadness, just as some whose Christ is dead do now spend
their Sabbaths at home or in rural solitudes, shunning the offensive
cheerfulness or the drowsy dullness of social worship. Be that as it may, in any
case he missed a good sermon; the only one, so far as we know, in the whole
course of our Lord’s ministry, in which He addressed Himself formally to the
task of expounding the Messianic doctrine of the Old Testament. Had he but known
that such a discourse was to be delivered that night! But one never knows when
the good things will come, and the only way to make sure of getting them is to
be always at our post. The same melancholy humor which probably caused Thomas to
be an absentee on the occasion of Christ’s first meeting with His disciples
after He rose from the dead, made him also skeptical above all the rest
concerning the tidings of the resurrection. When the other disciples told him on
his return that they had just seen the Lord, he replied with vehemence: “Except
I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my fingers into the
print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” He was
not to be satisfied with the testimony of his brethren: he must have palpable
evidence for himself. Not that he doubted their veracity; but he could not get
rid of the suspicion that what they said they had seen was but a mere ghostly
appearance by which their eyes had been deceived. The skepticism of Thomas was,
we think, mainly a matter of temperament, and had little in common with the
doubt of men of rationalistic proclivities, who are inveterately incredulous
respecting the supernatural, and stumble at every thing savoring of the
miraculous. It has been customary to call Thomas the Rationalist among the
twelve, and it has even been supposed that he had belonged to the sect of the
Sadducees before he joined the society of Jesus. On mature consideration, we are
constrained to say that we see very little foundation for such a view of this
disciple’s character, while we certainly do not grudge modern doubters any
comfort they may derive from it. We are quite well aware that among the sincere,
and even the spiritually-minded, there are men whose minds are so constituted
that they find it very difficult to believe in the supernatural and the
miraculous: so difficult, that it is a question whether, if they had been in
Thomas’s place, the freest handling and the minutest inspection of the wounds in
the risen Saviour’s body would have availed to draw forth from them an
expression of unhesitating faith in the reality of His resurrection. Nor do we
see any reason à priori for asserting that no disciple of Jesus could have been
a person of such a cast of mind. All we say is, there is no evidence that
Thomas, as a matter of fact, was a man of this stamp. Nowhere in the Gospel
history do we discover any unreadiness on his part to believe in the
supernatural or the miraculous as such. We do not find, e.g. that he was
skeptical about the raising of Lazarus: we are only told that, when Jesus
proposed to visit the afflicted family in Bethany, he regarded the journey as
fraught with danger to his beloved Master and to them all, and said, “Let us
also go, that we may die with Him.” Then, as now, he showed Himself not so much
the Rationalist as the man of gloomy temperament, prone to look upon the dark
side of things, living in the pensive moonlight rather than in the cheerful
sunlight. His doubt did not spring out of his system of thought, but out of the
state of his feelings.

Another thing we must say here concerning the doubt of this disciple. It did not
proceed from unwillingness to believe. It was the doubt of a sad man, whose
sadness was due to this, that the event whereof he doubted was one of which he
would most gladly be assured. Nothing could give Thomas greater delight than to
be certified that his Master was indeed risen. This is evident from the joy he
manifested when he was at length satisfied. “My Lord and my God!” that is not
the exclamation of one who is forced reluctantly to admit a fact he would rather
deny. It is common for men who never had any doubts themselves to trace all
doubt to bad motives, and denounce it indiscriminately as a crime. Now,
unquestionably, too many doubt from bad motives, because they do not wish and
cannot afford to believe. Many deny the resurrection of the dead, because it
would be to them a resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt. But this is
by no means true of all. Some doubt who desire to believe; nay, their doubt is
due to their excessive anxiety to believe. They are so eager to know the very
truth, and feel so keenly the immense importance of the interests at stake, that
they cannot take things for granted, and for a time their hand so trembles that
they cannot seize firm hold of the great objects of faith-a living God; an
incarnate, crucified, risen Saviour; a glorious eternal future. Theirs is the
doubt peculiar to earnest, thoughtful, pure-hearted men, wide as the poles
asunder from the doubt of the frivolous, the worldly, the vicious: a holy, noble
doubt, not a base and unholy; if not to be praised as positively meritorious,
still less to be harshly condemned and excluded from the pale of Christian
sympathy-a doubt which at worst is but an infirmity, and which ever ends in
strong, unwavering faith. That Jesus regarding the doubt of the heavy-hearted
disciple as of this sort, we infer from His way of dealing with it. Thomas
having been absent on the occasion of His first appearing to the disciples, the
risen Lord makes a second appearance for the absent one’s special benefit, and
offers him the proof desiderated. The introductory salutation being over, He
turns Himself at once to the doubter, and addresses him in terms fitted to
remind him of his own statement to his brethren, saying: “Reach hither thy
finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my
side: and be not faithless, but believing.” There may be somewhat of reproach
here, but there is far more of most considerate sympathy. Jesus speaks as to a
sincere disciple, whose faith is weak, not as to one who hath an evil heart of
unbelief. When demands for evidence were made by men who merely wanted an excuse
for unbelief, He met them in a very different manner. “A wicked and adulterous
generation,” He was wont to say in such a case, “seeketh after a sign, and there
shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of the Prophet Jonas.”

Having ascertained the character of Thomas’s doubt, let us now look at his
faith. The melancholy disciple’s doubts were soon removed. But how? Did Thomas
avail himself of the offered facilities for ascertaining the reality of his
Lord’s resurrection? Did he actually put his fingers and hand into the nail and
spear wounds? Opinions differ on this point, but we think the probability is on
the side of those who maintain the negative. Several things incline us to this
view. First, the narrative seems to leave no room for the process of
investigation. Thomas answers the proposal of Jesus by what appears to be an
immediate profession of faith. Then the form in which that profession is made is
not such as we should expect the result of a deliberate inquiry to assume. “My
Lord and my God!” is the warm, passionate language of a man who has undergone
some sudden change of feeling, rather than of one who has just concluded a
scientific experiment. Further, we observe there is no allusion to such a
process in the remark made by Jesus concerning the faith of Thomas. The disciple
is represented as believing because he has seen the wounds shown, not because he
has handled them. Finally, the idea of the process proposed being actually gone
through is inconsistent with the character of the man to whom the proposal was
made. Thomas was not one of your calm, cold-blooded men, who conduct inquiries
into truth with the passionless inpartiality of a judge, and who would have
examined the wounds in the risen Saviour’s body with all the coolness with which
anatomists dissect dead carcasses. He was a man of passionate, poetic
temperament, vehement alike in his belief and in his unbelief, and moved to
faith or doubt by the feelings of his heart rather than by the reasonings of his
intellect. The truth, we imagine, about Thomas was something like this. When,
eight days before, he made that threat to his brother disciples, he did not
deliberately mean all he said. It was the whimsical utterance of a melancholy
man, who was in the humor to be as disconsolate and miserable as possible.
“Jesus risen! the thing is impossible, and there’s an end of it. I won’t believe
except I do so and so. I don’t know if I shall believe when all’s done.” But
eight days have gone by, and, lo, there is Jesus in the midst of them, visible
to the disciple who was absent on the former occasion as well as to the rest.
Will Thomas still insist on applying his rigorous test? No, no! His doubts
vanish at the very sight of Jesus, like morning mists at sunrise. Even before
the Risen One has laid bare His wounds, and uttered those half-reproachful, yet
kind, sympathetic words, which evince intimate knowledge of all that has been
passing through His doubting disciple’s mind, Thomas is virtually a believer;
and after he has seen the ugly wounds and heard the generous words, he is
ashamed of his rash, reckless speech to his brethren, and, overcome with joy and
with tears, exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”

It was a noble confession of faith-the most advanced, in fact, ever made by any
of the twelve during the time they were with Jesus. The last is first; the
greatest doubter attains to the fullest and firmest belief. So has it often
happened in the history of the Church. Baxter records it as his experience, that
nothing is so firmly believed as that which hath once been doubted. Many
Thomases have said, or could say, the same thing of themselves. The doubters
have eventually become the soundest and even the warmest believers. Doubt in
itself is a cold thing, and, as in the case of Thomas, it often utters harsh and
heartless sayings. Nor need this surprise us; for when the mind is in doubt the
soul is in darkness, and during the chilly night the heart becomes frozen. But
when the daylight of faith comes, the frost melts, and hearts which once seemed
hard and stony show themselves capable of generous enthusiasm and ardent
devotion.

Socinians, whose system is utterly overthrown by Thomas’s confession naturally
interpreted, tell us that the words “My Lord and my God” do not refer to Jesus
at all, but to the Deity in heaven. They are merely an expression of
astonishment on the part of the disciple, on finding that what he had doubted
was really come to pass. He lifts up his eyes and his hands to heaven, as it
were, and exclaims, My Lord and my God! it is a fact: The crucified Jesus is
restored to life again. This interpretation is utterly desperate. It disregards
the statement of the text, that Thomas, in uttering these words, was answering
and speaking to Jesus, and it makes a man bursting with emotion speak frigidly;
for while the one expression “My God” might have been an appropriate utterance
of astonishment, the two phrases, “My Lord and my God,” are for that purpose
weak and unnatural.

We have here, therefore, no mere expression of surprise, but a profession of
faith most appropriate to the man and the circumstances; as pregnant with
meaning as it is pithy and forcible. Thomas declares at once his acceptance of a
miraculous fact, and his belief in a momentous doctrine. In the first part of
his address to Jesus he recognizes that He who was dead is alive: My Lord, my
beloved Master! it is even He-the very same person with whom we enjoyed such
blessed fellowship before He was crucified. In the second part of his address he
acknowledges Christ’s divinity, if not for the first time, at least with an
intelligence and an emphasis altogether new. From the fact he rises to the
doctrine: My Lord risen, yea, and therefore my God; for He is divine over whom
death hath no power. And the doctrine in turn helps to give to the fact of the
resurrection additional certainty; for if Christ be God, death could have no
power over Him, and His resurrection was a matter of course. Thomas having
reached the sublime affirmation, “My God,” has made the transition from the low
platform of faith on which he stood when he demanded sensible evidence, to the
higher, on which it is felt that such evidence is superfluous.

We have now to notice, in the last place, the remark made by the Lord concerning
the faith just professed by His disciple. “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because
thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and
yet have believed.” This reflection on the blessedness of those who believe
without seeing, though expressed in the past tense, really concerned the future.
The case supposed by Jesus was to be the case of all believers after the
apostolic age. Since then no one has seen, and no one can believe because he has
seen, as the apostles saw. They saw, that we might be able to do without seeing,
believing on their testimony. But what does Jesus mean by pronouncing a
beatitude on those who see not, yet believe?

He does not mean to commend those who believe without any inquiry. It is one
thing to believe without seeing, another thing to believe without consideration.
To believe without seeing is to be capable of being satisfied with something
less than absolute demonstration, or to have such an inward illumination as
renders us to a certain extent independent of external evidence. Such a faculty
of faith is most needful; for if faith were possible only to those who see,
belief in Christianity could not extend beyond the apostolic age. But to believe
without consideration is a different matter altogether. It is simply not to care
whether the thing believed be true or false. There is no merit in doing that.
Such faith has its origin in what is base in men-in their ignorance, sloth, and
spiritual indifference; and it can bring no blessing to its possessors. Be the
truths credited ever so high, holy, blessed, what good can a faith do which
receives them as matters of course without inquiry, or without even so much as
knowing what the truths believed mean? The Lord Jesus, then, does not here
bestow a benediction on credulity. As little does He mean to say that all the
felicity falls to the lot of those who have never, like Thomas, doubted. The
fact is not so. Those who believe with facility do certainly enjoy a blessedness
all their own. They escape the torment of uncertainty, and the current of their
spiritual life flows on very smoothly. But the men who have doubted, and now at
length believe, have also their peculiar joys, with which no stranger can
intermeddle. Theirs is the joy experienced when that which was dead is alive
again, and that which was lost is found. Theirs is the rapture of Thomas when he
exclaimed, with reference to a Saviour thought to be gone for ever, “My Lord and
my God.” Theirs is the bliss of the man who, having dived into a deep sea,
brings up a pearl of very great price. Theirs is the comfort of having their
very bygone doubts made available for the furtherance of their faith, every
doubt becoming a stone in the hidden foundation on which the superstructure of
their creed is built, the perturbations of faith being converted into
confirmations, just as the perturbations in the planetary motions, at first
supposed to throw doubt on Newton’s theory of gravitation, were converted by
more searching inquiry into the strongest proof of its truth.

What, then, does the Lord Jesus mean by these words? Simply this: He would have
those who must believe without seeing, understand that they have no cause to
envy those who had an opportunity of seeing, and who believed only after they
saw. We who live so far from the events, are very apt to imagine that we are
placed at a great disadvantage as compared with the disciples of Jesus. So in
some respects we are, and especially in this, that faith is more difficult for
us than for them. But then we must not forget that, in proportion as faith is
difficult, it is meritorious, and precious to the heart. It is a higher
attainment to be able to believe without seeing, than to believe because we have
seen; and if it cost an effort, the trial of faith but enhances its value. We
must remember, further, that we never reach the full blessedness of faith till
what we believe shines in the light of its own self-evidence. Think you the
disciples were happy men because they had seen their risen Lord and believed?
They were far happier when they had attained to such clear insight into the
whole mystery of redemption, that proof of this or that particular fact or
doctrine was felt to be quite unnecessary. To that felicity Jesus wished His
doubting disciple to aspire; and by contrasting his case with that of those who
believe without seeing, He gives us to know that it is attainable for us also.
We, too, may attain the blessedness of a faith raised above all doubt by its own
clear insight into divine truth. If we are faithful, we may rise to this from
very humble things. We may begin, in our weakness, with being Thomases, clinging
eagerly to every spar of external evidence to save ourselves from drowning, and
end with a faith amounting almost to sight, rejoicing in Jesus as our Lord and
God, with a joy unspeakable and full of glory.


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  CHAPTER 66: 02.29.     THE UNDER-SHEPHERDS ADMONISHED
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The Under-Shepherds Admonished Section I - Pastoral Duty

John 21:15-17

“I go a-fishing,” said Simon to his companions, some time after they and he had
returned from Jerusalem to the neighborhood of the Galilean lake. “We also go
with thee,” replied Thomas and Nathanael, and James and John, and two others
unnamed, making with Peter seven, probably all of the eleven who were fishermen
by trade. One and all went on that fishing expedition con amore. It was an
expedition, we presume, in the first place, in quest of food, but it was
something more. It was a return to dear old ways, amid familiar scenes, which
called up pleasing reminiscences of bygone times. It was a recreation and a
solace, most welcome and most needful to men who had passed through very painful
and exciting experiences; a holiday for men fatigued by sorrow, and surprise,
and watching. Every student with overtasked brain, every artisan with over
strained sinews, can conceive the abandon with which those seven disciples threw
themselves into their boats, and sailed out into the depths of the Sea of
Tiberias to ply their old craft.

Out on the waters that night, what were these men’s thoughts? From the
significant allusion made by Jesus to Peter’s youth in the colloquy of next
morning, we infer they were something like the following: “After all, were it
not better to be simple fishermen than to be apostles of the Christian religion?
What have we got by following Jesus? Certainly not what we expected. And have we
any reason to expect better things in the future? Our Master has told us that
our future lot will be very much like His own-a life of sorrow, ending probably
in martyrdom. But here, in our native province of Galilee, pursuing our old
calling, we might think, believe, act as we pleased, shielded by obscurity from
all danger. Then how delightfully free and independent this rustic life by the
shores of the lake! In former days, ere we left our nets and followed Jesus, we
girded ourselves with our fishermen’s coats, and walked whither we would. When
we shall have become apostles, all that will be at an end. We shall be burdened
with a heavy load of responsibility; obliged continually to think of others, and
not to please ourselves; liable to have our personal liberty taken away, yea,
even our very life.” In putting such words into the mouths of the disciples, we
do not violate probability; for such feelings as the words express are both
natural and common in view of grave responsibilities and perils about to be
incurred. Perhaps no one ever put his hand to the plough of an arduous
enterprise, without indulging for at least a brief space in such a looking back.
It is an infirmity which easily besets human nature.

Yet, natural as it comes to men to look back, it is not wise. Regretful thoughts
of the past are for the most part delusive; they were so, certainly, in the case
of the disciples. If the simple life they left behind them was so very happy,
why did they leave it? Why so prompt to forsake their nets and their boats, and
to follow after Jesus? Ah! fishing in the blue waters of the Sea of Galilee did
not satisfy the whole man. Life is more than meat, and the kingdom of God is
man’s chief end. Besides, the fisherman’s life has its drawbacks, and is by no
means so romantic as it seems at the distance of years. You may sometimes go out
with your nets, and toil all night, and catch nothing. This was what actually
happened on the present occasion. “That night they caught nothing.” The
circumstance probably helped to break the spell of romance, and to waken the
seven disciples out of a fond dream. Be that as it may, there was One who knew
all their thoughts, and who would see to it that they did not indulge long in
the luxury of reactionary feeling. “When the morning was now come, Jesus stood
on the shore.” He is come to show Himself for the third time to His
disciples-not, as before, to convince them that He is risen, but to induce them
to dedicate their whole minds and hearts to their future vocation as fishers of
men, and as under-shepherds of the flock, preparatory to His own departure from
the world. His whole conduct on this occasion is directed to that object. First,
He gives them directions for catching a great haul of fish, to remind them of
their former call to be His apostles, and to be an encouraging sign or symbol of
their success in their apostolic work. Then He invites them to dine on fish
which He had procured, roasted on a fire of His own kindling on the shore, to
cure them of earthly care, and to assure them that if they seek to serve the
kingdom with undivided heart, all their wants will be attended to. Finally, when
the morning meal is over, He enters into conversation, in the hearing of all,
with the disciple who had been the leader in the night adventure on the lake,
and addresses him in a style fitted to call forth all his latent enthusiasm, and
intended to have a similar effect on the minds of all present. On the surface,
the words spoken by Jesus to Peter seem to concern that disciple alone; and the
object aimed at appears to be to restore him to a position as an apostle, which
he might not unnaturally think he had forfeited by his conduct in the high
priest’s palace. This, accordingly, is the view commonly taken of this
impressive scene on the shore of the lake. And whether we agree with that view
or not, we must admit that, for some reason or other, the Lord Jesus wished to
recall to Peter’s remembrance his recent shortcomings. Traces of allusion to
past incidents in the disciple’s history during the late crisis are
unmistakable. Even the time selected for the conversation is significant. It was
when they had dined that Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him; it was after they
had supped Jesus gave His disciples His new commandment of love, and that Peter
made his vehement protestation of devotion to his Master’s cause and person. The
name by which the risen Lord addressed His disciple-not Peter, but Simon son of
Jonas-was fitted to remind him of his weakness, and of that other occasion on
which, calling him by the same name, Jesus warned him that Satan was about to
sift him as wheat. The thrice-repeated question, “Lovest thou me?” could not
fail painfully to remind Peter of his threefold denial, and so to renew his
grief. The form in which the question was first put-“Lovest thou me more than
these?”-contains a manifest allusion to Peter’s declaration, “Though all shall
be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended.” The injunction,
“Feed my sheep,” points back to the prophetic announcement made by Jesus on the
way to the Mount of Olives, “All ye shall be offended because of me this night;
for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall
be scattered abroad,” and means, Suffer not the sheep to be scattered, as ye
were for a season scattered yourselves. The injunction, “Feed my lambs,”
associated with the first question, “Lovest thou me more than these?” makes us
think of the charge, “When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren;” the
idea suggested in both cases being the same, viz. that the man who has fallen
most deeply, and learned most thoroughly his own weakness, is, or ought to be,
best qualified for strengthening the weak-for feeding the lambs.

Notwithstanding all these allusions to Peter’s fall, we are unable to acquiesce
in the view that the scene here recorded signified the formal restoration of the
erring disciple to his position as an apostle. We do not deny that, after what
had taken place, that disciple needed restoration for his own comfort and peace
of mind. But our difficulty is this: Had he not been restored already? What was
the meaning of that private meeting between him and Jesus, and what its
necessary result? Who can doubt that after that meeting the disciple’s mind was
at ease, and that thereafter he was at peace, both with himself and with his
Master? Or if evidence is wanted of the fact, look at Peter’s behavior on
recognizing Jesus from the boat, as He stood on the shore in the gray morning,
casting himself as he was into the sea, in his haste to get near his beloved
Lord. Was that the behavior of a man afflicted with a guilty conscience? But it
may be replied, There was still need for a formal public restoration, the
scandal caused by Peter’s sin being public. This we doubt; but even granting it,
what then? Why did the restoration not take place sooner, at the first or second
meeting in Jerusalem? Then, does the scene by the shores of the lake really look
like a formal transaction? Can we regard that casual, easy, familiar meeting and
colloquy after breakfast with two-thirds of the disciples as an ecclesiastical
diet, for the solemn purpose of restoring a fallen brother to church fellowship
and standing? The idea is too frigid and pedantic to be seriously entertained.
Then one more objection to this theory remains to be stated, viz. that it fails
to give unity to the various parts of the scene. It may explain the questioning
to which Jesus subjected Peter, but it does not explain the prophetic reference
to his future history with which He followed it up. Between “I allow you,
notwithstanding past misdemeanors, to be an apostle,” and “I forewarn you that
in that capacity you shall not have the freedom of action in which you rejoiced
in former days,” there is no connection traceable. Peter’s fall did not suggest
such a turn of thought; for it sprang not from the love of freedom, but from the
fear of man. Not the restoration of Peter to a forfeited position, but his
recall to a more solemn sense of his high vocation, do we find in this scene.
Not “I allow you,” but “I urge you,” seems to us to be the burthen of Christ’s
words to this disciple, and through him to all his brethren. By all
considerations He would move them to address themselves heart and soul to their
apostolic work, and let boats and nets and every thing else alone for ever. “By
the memory of thine own weakness,” He would say to Simon for that end; “by my
forgiving love, and thy gratitude for it; by the need of brother disciples,
which thine own past frailty may teach thee to understand and compassionate; by
the ardent attachment which I know you cherish towards myself: by these and all
kindred considerations, I charge thee, on the eve of my departure, be a hero,
play the man, be strong for others, not for thyself, ‘feed the flock of God,
taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly.’ Shrink not from
responsibility, covet not ease, bend thy neck to the yoke, and let love make it
light. Sweet is liberty to thy human heart; but patient, burden-bearing love,
though less pleasant, is far more noble.”

Such being the message which Jesus meant for all present, Peter was most
appropriately selected as the medium for conveying it. He was an excellent text
on which to preach a sermon on self-consecration. His character and conduct
supplied all the poetry, and argument, and illustration necessary to give pathos
and point to the theme. How dear to his impetuous, passionate spirit,
unrestrained freedom! And what heart is not touched by the thought of such a man
schooling his high, mettlesome soul into patience and submission? The young,
frolicsome, bounding fisherman, girding on his coat, and going hither and
thither at his own sweet will; the aged saintly apostle, meek as a lamb,
stretching forth his arms to be bound for the martyr’s doom: what a moving
contrast! Had that passionate man, in some senses the strongest character among
the twelve, been in other senses the weakest, then who could better illustrate
men’s need of shepherding? Had he learnt his own weakness, and through his
knowledge thereof grown stronger? Then how better state the general duty of the
strong to help the weak, than by assigning to this particular disciple the
special duty of taking care of the weakest? To say to Peter, “Feed my lambs,”
was to say to all the apostles, “Feed my sheep.” In requiring Peter to show his
love by performing the part of shepherd to the little flock of believers, Jesus
adapted His demand to the spiritual capacity of the disciple. Love to the
Saviour does not necessarily take the form of feeding the sheep; in immature and
inexperienced disciples, it rather takes the form of being sheep. It is only
after the weak have become strong, and established in grace, that they ought to
become shepherds, charging themselves with the care of others. In laying on
Peter and his brethren pastoral duties, therefore, Jesus virtually announces
that they have now passed, or are about to pass, out of the category of the weak
into the category of the strong. “Hitherto,” He virtually says to them, “ye have
been as sheep, needing to be guided, watched over, and defended by the wisdom
and courage of another. Now, however, the time is arrived when ye must become
shepherds, able and willing to do for the weak what I have done for you.
Hitherto ye have left me to care for you; henceforth you must accustom
yourselves to be looked to as guardians, even as I have been by you. Hitherto ye
have been as children under me, your parent; henceforth ye must yourselves be
parents, taking charge of the children. Hitherto ye have been as raw recruits,
liable to panic, and fleeing from danger; henceforth ye must be captains
superior to fear, and by your calm determination inspire the soldiers of the
cross with heroic daring.” In short, Jesus here in effect announces to Peter and
to the rest that they are now to make the transition from boyhood to manhood,
from pupilage to self-government, from a position of dependence and exemption
from care to one of influence, authority, and responsibility, as leaders and
commanders in the Christian community, doing the work for which they have been
so long under training. Such a transition and transformation did accordingly
take place shortly after in the history of the disciples. They assumed the
position of Christ’s deputies or substitutes after His ascension, Peter being
the leading or representative man, though not the Pope, in the infant Church;
and their character was altered to fit them for their high functions. The timid
disciples became bold apostles. Peter, who weakly denied the Lord in the
judgment-hall, heroically confessed Him before the Sanhedrin. The ignorant and
stupid disciples, who had been continually misunderstanding their Master’s
words, became filled with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, so that men
listened to their words as they had been wont to listen to the words of Jesus
Himself.

We have said that love to Christ does not impose on all His disciples the duty
of a shepherd; showing itself rather in by far the larger number in simply
hearing the shepherd’s voice and following him, and generally in a willingness
to be guided by those who are wiser than themselves. We must add, that all who
are animated by the spirit of love to the Redeemer, will be either shepherds or
sheep, actively useful in caring for the souls of others, or thankfully using
the provision made for the care of their own souls. Too many, however, come
under neither designation. Some are sheep indeed, but sheep going astray; others
are neither sheep nor shepherds, being self-reliant, yet indisposed to be
helpful; too self-willed to be led, yet disinclined to make their strength and
experience available for their brethren, utilizing all their talents for the
exclusive service of their own private interests. Such men are to be found in
Church and State, sedulously holding back from office and responsibility, and
severely criticizing those who have come under the yoke; animadverting on their
timidity and bondage, as unbroken colts, it they could speak, might animadvert
on the tameness of horses in harness, the bits and bridles that form a part of
church harness, in the shape of formulas and confessions, coming in for a double
share of censure.Now, it is all very well to be wild colts, rejoicing in
unrestrained liberty, for a season in youth; but it will not do to be spurning
the yoke all one’s lifetime. “Ye, then, that are strong ought to bear the
infirmities of the weak, and not to please yourselves.” It is no doubt most
agreeable to be free from care, and to walk about unfettered in opinion and
action, and, shaking off those who would hang on our skirts, to live the life of
gods, careless of mankind. But it is not the chief end of any man, least of all
of a wise and strong man, to be free from care or trouble. He who has a
Christian heart must feel that he is strong and wise for the sake of others who
want strength and wisdom; and he will undertake the shepherd’s office, though
shrinking with fear and trembling from its responsibilities, and though
conscious also that in so doing he is consenting to have his liberty and
independence greatly circumscribed. The yoke of love which binds us to our
fellows is sometimes not easy, and the burden of caring for them not light; but,
on the whole, it is better and nobler to be a drudge and a slave at the bidding
of love, than to be a free man through the emancipating power of selfishness.
Better Peter a prisoner and martyr for the gospel, than Simon inculcating on his
Lord the selfish policy, “Save Thyself,” or lying in luxurious ease on the hill
of Transfiguration, exclaiming, “Lord, it is good to be here.” Better Peter
bound by others, and led whither he would not, as a good shepherd to be
sacrificed for the sheep, than Simon girding on his own garment, and walking
along with the careless jaunty air of a modern pococurantist. A life on the
ocean wave, a life in the woods, a life in the mountains or in the clouds, may
be fine to dream and sing of; but the only life out of which genuine heroism and
poetry comes, is that which is spent on this solid prosaic earth in the lowly
work of doing good. Note now, finally, the evidence supplied in Peter’s answers
to his Lord’s questions, that he is indeed fitted for the responsible work to
which he is summoned. It is not merely that he can appeal to Jesus Himself, as
one who knows all things, and say, “Thou knowest that I love Thee;” for, as we
have already hinted, every sincere disciple can do that. Two specific signs of
spiritual maturity are discernible here, not to be found in those who are weak
in grace, not previously found in Peter himself. There is, first, marked
modesty-very noticeable in so forward a man. Peter does not now make any
comparisons between himself and his brethren as he had done previously. In spite
of appearances, he still protests that he does love Jesus; but he takes care not
to say, “I love Thee more than those.” He not only does not say this, but he
manifestly does not think it: the bragging spirit has left him; he is a humble,
subdued, wise man, spiritually equipped for the pastorate, just because he has
ceased to think himself supremely competent for it. The second mark of maturity
discernible in Peter’s replies is godly sorrow for past shortcoming: “Peter was
grieved because He (Jesus) said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me?” He was
grieved because by the threefold interrogation he was reminded that the
threefold denial of which he had been guilty afforded ground for calling his
love in question. Observe particularly the feeling produced by this delicate
reference to his former sins. It was grief, not irritation, anger, or shame.
There is no pride, passion, vanity in this man’s soul, but only holy, meek
contrition; no sudden coloring is observable in his countenance, but only the
gracious softened expression of a penitent, chastised spirit. The man who can so
take allusions to his sins is not only fit to tend the sheep, but even to nurse
the lambs. He will restore those who have fallen in a spirit of meekness. He
will be tender towards offenders, not with the spurious charity which cannot
afford to condemn sin strongly, but with the genuine charity of one who has
himself received mercy for sins sincerely repented of. By his benignant sympathy
sinners will be converted unto God in unfeigned sorrow for their offences, and
in humble hope of pardon; and by his watchful care many sheep will be kept from
ever straying from the fold.

Section II - Pastor Pastorum

John 21:19-22 To be a dutiful under-shepherd is, in another view, to be a
faithful sheep, following the Chief Shepherd whithersoever He goes. Pastors are
not lords over God’s heritage, but mere servants of Christ, the great Head of
the Church, bound to regard His will as their law, and His life as their model.
In the scene by the lake Jesus took pains to make His disciples understand this.
He did not allow them to suppose that, in committing to their pastoral charge
His flock, He was abdicating His position as Shepherd and Bishop of souls.
Having said to Peter, “Feed my lambs,” “Feed my sheep,” He said to him, as His
final word, “Follow me.” It is implied in the narrative, that while Jesus said
this, He arose and walked away from the spot where the disciples had just taken
their morning meal. Whither He went we are not told, but it may have been
towards that “mountain in Galilee,” the preappointed rendezvous where the risen
Saviour met “above five hundred brethren at once.” The sheep have doubtless been
wending thither to meet their divine Shepherd, as in a secluded upland fold; and
it is more than possible that the object of the journey in which Peter is
invited to join his Master, is to introduce him to the flock which had just been
committed to his care. Be this as it may, Peter obeyed the summons, and rose at
once to follow Jesus. His first impression probably was that he was to be the
solitary attendant of his Lord, and a natural wish to ascertain the state of the
case led him to look behind to see what his companions were doing. On turning
round, he observed the disciple whom Jesus loved, and whom he too loved,
following close in his footsteps; and the question forthwith rose to his lips,
“Lord, and what of this man?” The question was elliptical, but it meant: John is
coming after us; Is the same lot in store for him that you have prophesied for
me? Shall he too be bound and led whither he would not; or shall he, as the
disciple most dearly beloved, be exempted from the hardships I am fated to
endure? That another and a happier fortune was reserved for John seemed, we
believe, probable to Peter. He could not but recall to mind that memorable scene
in which John’s mother made her ambitious request for her two sons; and in spite
of what Jesus had said to them about tasting of His cup, and being baptized with
His baptism, he, Peter, might well imagine that John’s desire would be
fulfilled, and that he would live to see the kingdom come, and to share its
glories; especially as one and all of the disciples, down to the very last day
of their Lord’s sojourn on earth, still expected the kingdom to be restored to
Israel very soon. If such was Peter’s thought, it is not surprising that he
should ask, if not with envy, at least with a sadder sense of his own loss,
“Lord, what of this man?” Adversity is hard to bear at best, but hardest of all
when personal ill-fortune stands in glaring contrast with the prosperity of a
brother who started on his career at the same time, and with no better prospects
than the man whom he has far outstripped in the race. To such considerations,
however, Jesus paid little respect in His reply to Peter’s question. “If I
will,” He said, “that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou
me.” “How stern and unfeeling!” one is tempted to exclaim. Might not Jesus at
least have reminded Simon, for his comfort, of the words He once uttered to
James and John: “Ye shall drink of my cup”? Would it not have helped Peter more
cheerfully to follow his Master in the arduous path of the cross, to have told
him that, in whatever manner John might die, he too would have to suffer for the
gospel; that his life, whether long or short, would be full of tribulation; that
participation in the glory of the kingdom did not depend on longevity; that, in
fact, the first to die would be the first to enter into glory? But no, it might
not be. To administer such comfort would have been to indulge the disciple’s
weakness. One who has to play a soldier’s part must be trained with military
rigor. Effeminacy, sighing after happiness, brooding over the felicity we have
missed, are out of place in an apostle’s character; and Jesus, to whom such
dispositions are most abhorrent, will take good care not to give them any
countenance. He will have all His followers, and specially the heads of His
people, to be heroes-“Ironsides,” prompt to do bidding, fearless of danger,
patient of fatigue, without a trace of selfish softness. He will give no quarter
even to natural weaknesses, disregards present pain, cares not how we smart
under rebuke, provided only He gain His end-the production of character
temptation-proof. Having this end in view, Jesus took no trouble to correct
Peter’s misapprehensions about his brother disciple. Misapprehensions, we say,
for such they indeed were. John did not tarry till the Lord came in the sense in
which Peter understood the words. He lived, indeed, till the close of the first
Christian century, therefore long after the Lord’s coming to execute judgment on
Jerusalem. But except for the longevity he enjoyed, the last of the apostles was
in no respect to be envied. The Church was militant all his days: he took part
in many of its battles, and received therein many scars. Companion with Peter in
the Church’s first conflict with the world, he was a prisoner in Patmos for the
word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ, after Peter had fallen
asleep. One might perhaps say that, owing to temperament, the life of John was
less stirring than that of his brother apostle. He was a man of less
impetuosity, though not of less intensity; and there was, perhaps, not so much
in his character provocative of the world’s opposition. Both by his virtues and
by his infirmities Peter was predestined to be the champion of the faith, the
Luther of the apostolic age, giving and receiving the hardest blows, and bearing
the brunt of the battle. John, on the other hand, was the Melanchthon among the
apostles, without, however, Melanchthon’s tendency to yield; and as such,
enjoyed probably a quieter, and, on the whole, more peacefull life. But this
difference between the two men was, after all, quite subordinate; and, all
things considered, we may say that John drank not less deeply of Christ’s cup
than did Peter. There was nothing glorious or enviable in his lot on earth,
except the vision in Patmos of the glory yet to be revealed. Yet while all this
was clear to His prescient eye, Jesus did not condescend to give any
explanations concerning the appointed lot of the beloved disciple, but allowed
Peter to think what he pleased about the future of his friend. “If I will,” He
said, “that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” not meaning to give any
information, as contemporary believers imagined, but rather refusing to give any
in the bluntest and most peremptory manner. “Suppose”-such is the import of the
words-“Suppose it were my pleasure that John should remain on the earth till I
return to it, what is that to thee? Suppose I were to grant him to sit on my
right hand in my Messianic kingdom, what, I ask again, is that to thee? Suppose
John were not to taste of death, but, surviving till my second advent, were,
like another Elijah, to be wafted directly into heaven, or to be endowed in his
body with the power of an endless life, still what is that to thee? Follow thou
Me.” The emphatic repetition of this injunction is very significant. It shows,
for one thing, that when Jesus said to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” He had no
intention of making him a pastor of pastors, a shepherd or bishop over his
fellow-disciples. In Roman Catholic theology the lambs are the lay members of
the church, and the sheep are the under shepherds-the whole body of the clergy,
the Pope excepted. How strange, if this be true, that Peter should be checked
for looking after one of the flock, and asking so simple a question as that,
“Lord, and what shall this man do?” Jesus replies to him as if he were a
busybody, meddling with matters with which he had no concern. And, indeed,
busybodyism was one of Peter’s faults. He was fond of looking after and managing
other people; he tried once and again to manage the Lord Himself. Curiously
enough, it is from this apostle that the Church gets the needful warning against
the too common vice just named. “Let none of you,” he writes in his first
epistle, “suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a
busybody in other men’s matters;” literally, as a bishop intruding into
another’s diocese. Evidently the frequent rebukes administered to Peter by his
Master had made a lasting impression on him. Heavy as was the load of
responsibility laid upon this disciple at this time, it did not amount to any
thing so formidable as that involved in being a visible Christ, so to speak, to
the whole Church. Neither Peter nor any other man is able to bear that burden,
and happily no one is required to do so. The responsibility of even the highest
in the Church is restricted within comparatively narrow limits. The main
business, even of the chief under-shepherds, is not to make others follow
Christ, but to follow Him themselves. It is well that our Lord made this plain
by the words addressed to the representative man among the apostles; for
Christians of active, energetic, and earnest natures are very apt to have very
exaggerated ideas of their responsibilities, and to take on themselves the care
of the whole world, and impose on themselves the duty of remedying every evil
that is done under the sun. They would be defenders-general of the faith
wherever assailed, redressers-general of all wrongs, curates-general of all
souls. There is something noble as well as quixotic in this temper; and it were
not the best sign of a man’s moral earnestness if he had not at some time of his
life known somewhat of this fussy, over-zealous spirit. Still it should be
understood that the Head of the Church imposes on no man such unlimited
responsibility, and that, when self-imposed, it does not conduce to a man’s real
usefulness. No one man can do all other men’s work, and no one man is
responsible for all other men’s errors and failures; and each man contributes
most effectually and surely to the good of the whole by conducting his own life
on godly principles. The world is full of evils-scepticism, superstition,
ignorance, immorality, on every side-a sight saddening in the extreme. What,
then, am I to do?” This one thing above all: Follow thou Christ. Be thou a
believer, let who will be infidels. Let thy religion be reasonable, let who will
pin their faith to a fallible human authority, and place their religion in
fantastic ritualisms and gross idolatries. Be thou holy, an example of sobriety,
justice, and godliness, though all the world should become a sweltering chaos of
impurity, fraud, and impiety. Say with Joshua of old, “If it seem good unto you
to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; but as for me and my
house, we will serve the Lord.” The repeated injunction, “Follow thou me,”
whilst restricting individual responsibility, prescribes undivided attention to
personal duty. Christ demands of His disciples that they follow Him with
integrity of heart, without distraction, without murmuring, envy, or
calculations of consequences. Peter was, it is to be feared, not yet up to the
mark in this respect. There was yet lingering in his heart a vulgar hankering
after happiness as the chief end of man. Exemption from the cross still appeared
to him supremely desirable, and he probably fancied that special favor on
Christ’s part towards a particular disciple would show itself in granting such
exemption. He did not yet understand that Christ oftenest shows special favor to
His followers by making them in a remarkable degree partakers of His bitter cup
and His bloody baptism. The grand enthusiasm of Paul, which made him desire to
know Jesus in the fellowship of His sufferings, had not yet taken possession of
Simon’s breast. When an arduous and perilous piece of service was to be done,
those who were selected to be the forlorn hope seemed to him objects of pity
rather than of envy. Far from volunteering for such a service, he would rather
congratulate himself on having escaped it; and the highest conceivable virtue,
in case one were so unlucky as not to escape, would, in his opinion, be
submission to the inevitable. Peter was deficient also as yet in the military
virtue of unquestioning obedience to orders, which is the secret of an army’s
strength. A general says to one, Go, and he Goeth; to another, Come, and he
cometh: he appoints to one corps its station here, and to another its station
there; and no one ventures to ask why, or to make envious comparisons. There is
an absolute surrender of the individual will to the will of the commander; and
so far as thoughts of preference are concerned each man is a machine, having a
will, a head, a hand, a heart, only for the effective performance of his own
appointed task. Peter had not yet attained to this pitch of self-abnegation. He
could not do simply what he was bidden, but must needs look round to see what
another was doing. Nor let us think this a small offence in him. It was a breach
of discipline which could not be overlooked by the Commander of the faithful.
Implicit obedience is as necessary in the Church as it is in the army. The old
soldier Loyola understood this, and hence he introduced a system of military
discipline into the constitution of the so called “Society of Jesus.” And the
history of that society shows the wisdom of the founder; for whatever we may
think of the quality of the work done, we cannot deny the energy of the Jesuitic
fraternity, or the devotion of its members. Such devotion as the Jesuit renders
to the will of his spiritual superior Christ demands of all His people; and to
none except Himself can it be rendered without impiety. He would have every
believer give himself up to His will in cheerful, exact, habitual obedience,
deeming all His orders wise, all His arrangements good, acknowledging His right
to dispose of us as He pleases, content to serve Him in a little place or in a
large one, by doing or by suffering, for a long period or a short, in life or by
death, if only He be glorified. This is our duty, and it is also our
blessedness. So minded, we shall be delivered from all care of consequences,
from ambitious views of our responsibilities, from imaginary grievances, from
envy, fretfulness and the restlessness of self-will. We shall no longer be
distracted or tormented with incessant looking round to see what is become of
this or that fellow-disciple, but be able to go on with our own work in
composure and peace. We shall not trouble ourselves either about our own future
or about that of any other person, but shall healthily and happily live in the
present. We shall get rid for ever of fear, and care, and scheming, and
disappointment, and chagrin, and, like larks at heaven’s gate, sing:

“Father, I know that all my life Is portioned out by Thee, And the changes that
will surely come I do not fear to see; But I ask Thee for a present mind, Intent
on serving Thee.

I would not have the restless will That hurries to and fro, Seeking for some
great thing to do, Or secret thing to know;

I would be treated as a child, And guided where I go.”

Thus, brother, “go thou thy way till the end be;” and “thou shalt rest, and
stand in thy lot at the end of the days.”


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  CHAPTER 67: 02.30.     POWER FROM ON HIGH
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Power From On High Mat 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luk 24:47-53; Acts 1:1-8. From
Galilee the disciples, of their own accord or by direction, found their way back
to Jerusalem, where their risen Lord showed Himself to them once more, and for
the last time, to give them their final instructions, and to bid them farewell.
Of this last meeting no distinct notice is taken in the Gospels. Each of the
synoptical evangelists, however, has preserved some of the last words spoken by
Jesus to His disciples ere He ascended to heaven. Among these we reckon the
closing verses of Matthew’s Gospel, where we read: “All authority hath been
given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:
and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Of this last word
Mark gives, in the close of his Gospel, an abbreviated version, in these terms:
“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” In
Luke’s narrative the words spoken by Jesus on the occasion of His final
appearance to the eleven are so interwoven with those which He spoke to them on
the evening of His resurrection day, that, but for the supplementary and more
circumstantial account given by the same author in the Book of the Acts, we
should never have thought of making a distinction, far less have known where to
place the boundary line. On comparing the two accounts, however, we can see that
words spoken at two different times are construed together into one continuous
discourse; and we have no great difficulty in determining what belongs to the
first appearance and what to the last. According to the Book of Acts, Jesus, in
His last conversation with His disciples, spoke to them of their apostolic
duties as witnesses unto Himself and preachers of His gospel; of the promise of
the Spirit, whose descent was to fit them for their work; and of what they
should do till the promise should be fulfilled. Now these are just the topics
adverted to in the verses cited from the last chapter of Luke’s Gospel. There is
first the apostolic commission to preach repentance and remission of sins in the
name of Jesus among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem; and a virtual
injunction laid on the disciples to be faithful witnesses to all things they had
seen and heard in their Lord’s company, and especially to His resurrection from
the dead. Then there is the renewal of this promise, here called the “promise of
my Father.” Then, finally, there is the direction to wait for the promised
blessing in the holy city: “But tarry ye at Jerusalem until ye be clothed with
power from on high.” All these sayings bear internal evidence of being last
words, from their fitness to the situation. It was natural and needful that
Jesus should thus speak to His chosen agents at the hour of His final departure,
giving them instructions for their guidance in their future apostolic labors,
and in the short interval that was to elapse before those labors began. Even the
business-like brevity and matter-of-fact tone of these last words betray the
occasion on which they were uttered. On first thoughts, we should perhaps have
expected a more pathetic style of address in connection with a farewell meeting;
but, on reflection, we perceive that every thing savoring of sentimentality
would have been beneath the dignity of the situation. In the farewell address
before the passion, pathos was in place; but in the farewell words before the
ascension, it would have been misplaced. In the former case, Jesus was a parent
speaking His last words of counsel and comfort to His sorrowing children; in the
latter, He was “as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave
authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter
to watch;” and His manner of speech was adapted to the character He sustained.
And yet the tone adopted by Jesus in His last interview with the eleven was not
purely magisterial. The Friend was not altogether lost in the Master. He had
kind words as well as commands for His servants. What could be kinder and more
encouraging than that word: “And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of
the world “? And is there not an accent of friendship in that utterance, in
which Jesus, now about to ascend to glory, seems by anticipation to resume the
robe of divine majesty, which He laid aside when He became man: “All power is
given unto me in heaven and in earth”? Why does He say that now? Not for the
purpose of self- exaltation; not to put a distance between Himself and His
quondam companions, and, as it were, degrade them from the position of friends
to that of mere servants. No; but to cheer them on their way through the world
as the messengers of the kingdom; to make them feel that the task assigned them
was not, as it might well seem, an impossible one. “I have all power,” saith He
in effect, “in heaven, and jurisdiction over all the earth: go ye therefore into
all the world, making disciples of all the nations, nothing doubting that all
spiritual influences and all providential agencies will be made subservient to
the great errand on which I send you.”

Jesus had kind actions as well as kind words for His friends at parting. There
was indeed no farewell kiss, or shaking of hands, or other symbolic act in use
among men who bid each other adieu; but the manner of the ascension was most
gracious and benignant towards those whom the ascending One left behind. Jesus
moved upwards as if lifted from the earth by some celestial attraction, with His
face looking downwards upon His beloved companions, and with His hand stretched
out in an attitude of benediction. Hence the eleven grieved not for their Lord’s
disappearance. They marvelled indeed, and gazed eagerly and wonderingly towards
the skies, as if trying to penetrate the cloud which received their Master’s
person; but the parting left no sadness behind. They bowed their heads in
worship towards the ascended Christ, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy,
as if they had gained, not lost a friend, and as if the ascension were not a
sunset but a sunrise-as indeed it was, not for them alone, but for the whole
world. Of that miraculous event, by which our High Priest passed within the veil
into the celestial sanctuary, we may not speak. Like the transfiguration, it is
a topic on which we know not what to say; an event not to be explained, but to
be devoutly and joyfully believed, in company with the kindred truth declared by
the two men in white apparel to the disciples, who said: “Ye men of Galilee, why
stand ye gazing into heaven? This same Jesus, which was taken up from you into
heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.”
Wherefore we pass from the ascension to make some observations on the great
commission given by the Lord to His apostles for the last time, just before He
was taken up into glory. That commission was worthy of Him from whom it
emanated, whether we regard Him as Son of God or as Son of man. “Go ye into all
the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” Surely this is the
language of a Divine Being. What mere man ever entertained a plan of beneficence
embracing the whole human race within its scope? and who but one possessing all
power in heaven and on earth could dare to hope for success in so gigantic an
undertaking? Then how full of grace and love the matter of the commission! The
errand on which Jesus sends His apostles is to preach repentance and remission
of sins in His name, and to make a peaceful conquest of the world to God by the
word of reconciliation through His death. Such philanthropy approves itself to
be at once divine and most intensely human. And mark, as specially
characteristic of the gracious One, the direction, “beginning at Jerusalem.” The
words indicate a plan of operations adapted at once to the circumstances of the
world, and to the capacities and idiosyncrasies of the agents; but they do more.
They open a window into the heart of Jesus, and show Him to be the same who
prayed on the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Why
begin at Jerusalem? Because “Jerusalem sinners” most need to repent and to be
forgiven; and because Jesus would show forth in them at the outset the full
extent of His long-suffering, for a pattern to them who should afterwards
believe, in Samaria, Antioch, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

It was in every way a commission worthy of Jesus, as the Son of God and Saviour
of sinners, to give. But what a commission for poor Galilean fishermen to
receive! what a burden of responsibility to lay upon the shoulders of any poor
mortal! Who is sufficient for these things? Jesus knew the insufficiency of His
instruments. Therefore, having invested them with official authority, He
proceeded to speak of an investment with another kind of power, without which
the official must needs be utterly ineffectual. “And, behold,” He said, “I send
the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye at Jerusalem till ye be clothed
with power from on high.”

‘‘Power from on high :” the expression has a mystical sound, and its sense seems
difficult to define; yet the general meaning is surely plain enough. The thing
signified is not altogether or chiefly a power to work miracles, but just what
Jesus had spoken of at such length in his farewell address before His death.
“Power from on high “means: All that the apostles were to gain from the mission
of the Comforter-enlightenment of mind, enlargement of heart, sanctification of
their faculties, and transformation of their characters, so as to make them
whetted swords and polished shafts for subduing the world unto the truth; these,
or the effect of these combined, constituted the power for which Jesus directed
the eleven to wait. The power, therefore, was a spiritual power, not a magical;
an inspiration, not a possession; a power which was not to act as a blind
fanatical force, but to manifest itself as a spirit of love and of a sound mind.
After the power descended, the apostles were to be not less rational, but more;
not mad, but sober-minded; not excited rhapsodists, but calm, clear, dignified
expositors of divine truth, such as they appear in Luke’s history of their
ministry. In a word, they were to be less like their past selves and more like
their Master: no longer ignorant, childish, weak, carnal, but initiated into the
mysteries of the kingdom, and habitually under the guidance of the Spirit of
grace and holiness.

Such being the power promised, it was evidently indispensable to success. Vain
were official titles-apostles, evangelists, pastors, teachers, rulers; vain
clerical robes, without this garment of divine power to clothe the souls of the
eleven. Vain then, and equally vain now. The world is to be evangelized, not by
men invested with ecclesiastical dignities and with parti-colored garments, but
by men who have experienced the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and who are visibly
endued with the divine power of wisdom, and love, and zeal. As the promised
power was indispensable, so it was in its nature a thing simply to be waited
for. The disciples were directed to tarry till it came. They were neither to
attempt to do without it, nor were they to try to get it up. And they were wise
enough to follow their instructions. They fully understood that the power was
needful, and that it could not be got up, but must come down. All are not
equally wise. Many virtually assume that the power Christ spake of can be
dispensed with, and that in fact it is not a reality, but a chimera. Others,
more devout, believe in the power, but not in man’s impotence to invest himself
with it. They try to get the power up by working themselves and others into a
frenzy of excitement. Failure sooner or later convinces both parties of their
mistake, showing the one that to produce spiritual results something more than
eloquence, intellect, money, and organization are required; and showing the
other that true spiritual power cannot be produced, like electric sparks, by the
friction of excitement, but must come sovereignly and graciously down from on
high.


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  CHAPTER 68: 02.31.     WAITING
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Waiting

Acts 1:12-14

After that the Lord was parted from them, and carried up into heaven, the eleven
returned to Jerusalem, and did as they had been commanded. They assembled
together in an upper room in the city, and, in company with the believing women,
and Mary the mother of Jesus, and His kinsmen and other brethren, amounting in
all to one hundred and twenty, waited for Power and for Light as men who wait
for the dawn; or as men who have come to see a panorama wait for the lifting of
the curtain that hides from view scenes which their eyes have not seen, nor
their ears heard of, nor hath it entered into their hearts to conceive. These
verses from the first chapter of the “Acts” show us the disciples and the rest
in the act of so waiting.

How solemn is the situation of these men at this crisis in their history! They
are about to undergo a spiritual transformation; to pass, so to speak, from the
chrysalis to the winged state. They are on the eve of the great illumination
promised by Jesus before His death. The Spirit of Truth is about to come and
lead them into all Christian truth. The day-star is about to arise in their
hearts, after the dreary, pitchy night of mental perplexity and despairing
sorrow through which they have recently passed. They are about to be endowed
with power of utterance and of character proportional to their enlarged
comprehension of the words and work of Christ, so that men hearing them shall be
amazed, and say one to another: “Behold, are not all these which speak
Galileans? And now hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born the
wonderful works of God.” With a dim presentiment of what is coming, with hearts
which throb and swell under the excitement of expectation, and heaving with
wondering thoughts of the great things about to be revealed, they sit there in
that upper room for ten long days, and wait for the promise of the rather.
Verily it is an impressive, a sublime scene. But how do they wait? Do they sit
still and silent, Quaker fashion, all that time expecting the descent of the
Power? No; the meeting in the upper room was not a Quaker meeting. They prayed,
they even transacted business; for in those days Peter stood up and proposed the
election of a new apostle in the room of Judas, gone to his own place. Nor was
their meeting a dull one, as those may imagine who have never passed through any
great spiritual crisis, and to whom waiting on God is a synonym for listless
indolence. The hundred and twenty believers did not, we may be sure, suffer from
ennui. Prayers and supplications alone filled up many blessed hours. For to men
in the situation of the disciples prayer is not the dull “devotional” form with
which we in these degenerate days are too familiar. It is rather a wrestling
with God, during which hours passed unobserved, and the day breaks before one is
aware. “These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication.” They
prayed without fainting, without wearying, with one heart and mind.

Besides praying, the waiting disciples doubtless spent part of their time in
reading the Scriptures. This is not stated; but it may be assumed as a matter of
course, and it may also be inferred from the manner in which Peter handled Old
Testament texts in his address to the people on the day of Pentecost. That
Pentecostal sermon bears marks of previous preparation. It was in one sense an
extempore effusion, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, but in another it
was the fruit of careful study. Peter and his brethren had, without doubt,
reperused all those passages which Jesus had expounded on the evening of the day
on which He rose from the dead, and among them that psalm of David, whose words
the apostle quoted in his first gospel sermon, in support of the doctrine of
Christ’s resurrection. We may find evidence of the minute, careful attention
bestowed on that and other Messianic portions of Scripture in the exactness with
which the quotation is given. The four verses of the psalm stand word for word
in Peter’s discourse as they do in the original text-a fact all the more
remarkable that New Testament speakers and writers do not, as a rule, slavishly
adhere to the ipsissima verba in their Old Testament citations, but quote texts
somewhat freely. The spiritual exercises of those ten days would be further
diversified by religious conversation. The reading of Scripture would naturally
give rise to comments and queries. The brethren who had been privileged to hear
Jesus expound the things which were written in the law, and in the prophets, and
in the psalms concerning Himself, on the night of His resurrection-day, would
not fail to give their fellow-believers the benefit of instructions through
which their own understandings had been opened. Peter, who was so prompt to
propose the election of a new witness to the resurrection of Jesus, would be not
less prompt to tell the company in the upper room what the risen Jesus had said
about these Old Testament texts. He would freely speak to them of the meaning
Jesus taught him to find in the sixteenth Psalm just as he took the liberty of
doing afterwards in addressing the multitude in the streets of Jerusalem. When
that psalm had been read, he would say: “Men and brethren, thus and thus did the
Lord Jesus interpret these words ;” just as, when the 109th Psalm had been read,
he stood up and said: “Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been
fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning
Judas: for it is written, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell
therein; and his bishopric let another take. Wherefore” let us choose another to
fill his place.

Thus did the brethren occupy themselves during these ten days. They prayed, they
read the Scriptures, they conferred together on what they read and on what they
expected to see. So they continued waiting with one accord in one place till the
day of Pentecost was fully come, when suddenly there came a sound from heaven as
of a rushing mighty wind, filling all the house where they were sitting; and
there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and they were all
filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit
gave them utterance. Then the promise was fulfilled, the Power had come down
from on high, in a manner illustrating the words of the prophet: “Since the
beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither
hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what he hath prepared for him that
waiteth for him.” The events of Pentecost were the answer to the prayers offered
up during those ten days, which we may call the incubation period of the
Christian Church. And that the lesson of encouragement to be learned from this
fact may not be lost, it may be well to remember that the prayers of those
assembled in the upper room were not essentially different from the prayers of
saints at any other period in the Church’s history. They had reference to much
the same objects. The eleven and the others prayed for the promised Power, for
additional light on the meaning of Scripture, for the coming of the divine
kingdom on earth. And while they prayed for these things, we believe, with
peculiar fervor, they did not pray for them with extraordinary intelligence. Of
them, perhaps more emphatically than of most, it might be said that they knew
not what to pray for as they ought. They had very indistinct ideas, we believe,
of the “power,” of its nature, and of the effects it was to produce. That they
had crude, and even erroneous ideas of the “kingdom,” we know; for it is
recorded that on the very day of His ascension they asked Jesus the question,
“Dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” In this brief question
three gross misconceptions are contained. It is assumed that Christ was to reign
personally on the earth, a great king, like David. The disciples had no idea
whatever of an ascension into heaven. Then the kingdom they expect is merely a
national Jewish one. “Dost Thou,” they ask, “restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Finally, the kingdom looked for by them is political, not spiritual: it is not a
new creation, but a kingdom of earth restored from a present prostrate condition
to former power and splendor. The notions of the eleven concerning the kingdom
continued to be much the same to the day of Pentecost as they had been on the
day of the ascension. It is true that Jesus had, in His reply to their question,
made a statement which, if rightly understood, was fitted to correct their
misconceptions. Formally a declinature to give information on the subject about
which the disciples were curious, that reply afforded a sufficiently clear and
full explanation of the real state of the case. When He spoke of the power which
they should receive, Jesus not obscurely hinted that the work of inaugurating
the kingdom was to be done by the apostles as His commissioners, not by Himself
in person. And the same thing is implied in the words, “Ye shall be witnesses
unto me,” for witnesses would be needed only for one who was himself unseen. By
connecting the “power” with the descent of the Holy Ghost, Jesus in effect
corrected the third mistake of the eleven concerning the kingdom-the notion,
viz., that it was to be of a political nature. Power arising out of a baptism of
the Spirit is moral, not political, in its character; and a kingdom founded
through such power is not a kingdom of this world, but one whose subjects and
citizens consist of men believing the truth: “of the truth,” as Jesus Himself
put it in speaking of His kingdom before Pilate. And, in the last place, the
words, “Witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria,
and unto the uttermost parts of the earth,” were certainly fitted to banish from
the minds of the eleven the dream of a merely national Jewish kingdom. If it was
but the kingdom of Israel that was to be restored, to what purpose bear witness
to Jesus to the world’s end? Such witness-bearing speaks to a kingdom of a
universal nature, embracing people of every tongue and kindred under heaven.
From the reply of their Lord the disciples might thus have gathered the true
idea of the kingdom, as one founded on faith in Christ; presided over by a king,
no longer present bodily, but omnipresent spiritually; not limited to one
country, but embracing all who were of the truth in all parts of the world. This
great idea, however, they did not take out of the words on which we have been
commenting. They were to learn the nature of the kingdom, not from the teaching
of Jesus, but from the events of providence. The panorama of the kingdom of God
was to be hid from their eyes till the curtain was lifted in three distinct
historical movements-the ascension, the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost on
the multitude who had come to keep the feast, and the conversion of Samaritans
and the Gentiles. The first of these movements had already taken place when the
disciples assembled themselves together in the upper room to wait for the
promise of the Father. Jesus had ascended, so that they now knew that the seat
of empire, the capital of the kingdom, was to be in heaven, not in Jerusalem.
This was a valuable piece of knowledge, but it was not all that was needed. Only
a small part of the panorama was yet visible to the spectators, and they were
still in the dark as to the nature and extent of the coming kingdom. They
expected to see a panorama of a new Palestine, not of a new heaven and a new
earth wherein should dwell righteousness; and they doubtless continued to
cherish this expectation till the curtain was uplifted, and facts showed what
they had unwittingly been praying for, when they at length learned that the
Hearer of prayer not only does for His people what they ask, but far above what
they even think. This waiting scene, looked at in relation to the subsequent
events recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, not to say the whole history of the
Church, suggests another observation. We may learn therefrom what significance
may lie in things apparently very insignificant. We had occasion to make this
remark in connection with the first meeting of Jesus with five of those who
afterwards became members of the chosen band of twelve, and we think it
seasonable to repeat it here now. To the contemporary Jewish world that meeting
in the upper room, if they knew of its existence, would appear a very
contemptible matter, yet it was the only thing of perennial interest in Judea at
the time. The hope of Israel, yea, of the world, lay in that small congregation.
For small as it was, God was with those who formed it. Infidels who believe not
in supernatural influence smile at such words; but even they must acknowledge
that some source of power was centred in that little community, for they
multiplied with a rapidity surpassing that of the Israelites in Egypt. Those who
reject divine influence impose on themselves the burden of a very laborious
explanation of the fact. For those who believe in that influence it is enough to
say the little flock grew great, not by might, nor by power of this world, but
by God’s Spirit. It was their Father’s good pleasure to give them the kingdom.
And now, in taking leave of those men with whom we have so long held goodly
fellowship, it may be well here to indicate in a sentence, by way of résumé, the
sum of the teaching they had received from their Master. By such a summary,
indeed, it is impossible to convey an adequate idea of the training for their
future career which they had enjoyed, seeing that by far the most important part
of that training consisted in the simple fact of being for years with such an
one as Jesus. Yet it may be well to let our readers see at a glance that,
unsystematic and occasional as was the instruction communicated by Jesus to His
disciples, therein differing utterly from the teaching given in theological
schools, yet in the course of the time during which He and they were together
lessons of priceless worth were given by the Divine Master to His pupils on not
a few subjects of cardinal importance. To enumerate the topics, as far as
possible in the order in which they have been considered in this work, Jesus
gave His disciples lessons on the nature of the divine kingdom; on prayer; on
religious liberty, or the nature of true holiness; on His own Person and claims;
on the doctrine of the cross and the import of His death; on humility and
kindred virtues, or on the right Christian temper required of disciples both in
their private life and in their ecclesiastical life; on the doctrine of
self-sacrifice; on the leaven of Pharisaism and Sadduceeism, and the woes it was
to bring on the Jewish nation; on the mission of the Comforter, to convince the
world and to enlighten themselves. The teaching conveyed, assuming that we have
even an approximately correct account of it in the Gospels, was fitted to make
the disciples what they were required to be as the apostles of a spiritual and
universal religion: enlightened in mind, endowed with a charity wide enough to
embrace all mankind, having their conscience tremulously sensitive to all claims
of duty, yet delivered from all superstitious scruples, emancipated from the
fetters of custom, tradition, and the commandments of men, and possessing
tempers purged from pride, self-will, impatience, angry passions,
vindictiveness, and implacability. That they were slow to learn, and even when
their Master left them were far from perfect, we have frankly admitted; still
they were men of such excellent moral stuff, that it might be confidently
anticipated that having been so long with Jesus they would prove themselves
exceptionally good and noble men when they came before the world as leaders in a
great movement, called to act on their own responsibility. Not, certainly, as we
believe, without the aid of the promised power from on high, not without the
enlightening, sanctifying influence of the Paraclete; yet even those who have no
faith in supernatural influence must admit on purely psychological grounds, that
men who had received such an exceptional training were likely to acquit
themselves wisely, bravely, heroically as public characters. According to the
actual narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, they did so acquit themselves.
According to a well-known school of critics, they acquitted themselves very
poorly indeed-in a manner utterly unworthy of their great Master. Which view is
the more credible, that of the evangelist Luke, or that of Dr. Baur?


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-alexander-b-bruce/
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