Their words are permeated throughout with allusions to the previous
promises and sayings of our Lord, and the very allusions show how
shallow was their understanding of what they thought so plain. He had
said to them that, in that coming day which was so near its dawn, He
would speak to them 'no more in proverbs, but show them plainly of the
Father'; and they answer, with a kind of rapture of astonishment, that
the promised day has come already, and that even now He is speaking to
them 'plainly,' and without mysterious sayings. Did they understand His
words when they thought them so plain? 'I came forth from the Father,
and am come into the world? Again I leave the world and go unto the
Father,' that summary statement of the central mysteries of
Christianity, which the generations have found to be inexhaustible, and
which to so many minds has been absolutely incredible, seemed to the
shallow apprehension of these disciples to be sun-clear. If they had
understood what He meant, could they have spoken thus, or have left Him
so soon?
They begin with what they believed to be a fact, His clear utterance.
Then follows a conviction which has allusion to His previous words.
'Now', say they, 'we know that Thou knowest all things, and needest not
that any man should ask Thee.' He had said to them, 'In that day ye
shall ask Me nothing'; and from the fact that he had interpreted their
unspoken words, and had anticipated their desire to ask what they durst
not ask, they draw, and rightly draw, the conclusion of His divine
Omniscience. They think that therein, in His answer to their question
before it is asked, is the fulfilment of that great promise. Was that
all that He meant? Certainly not. Did He merely mean to say, 'You will
ask Me nothing, because I shall know what you want to know, without
your asking'? No! But He meant, 'Ye shall ask Me nothing, because in
that day you will have with you an illuminating Spirit who will solve
all your difficulties.' So, again, a shallow interpretation empties the
words which they accept of their deepest and most precious meaning.
And then they take yet a further step. First, they begin with a fact;
then from that they infer a conviction; and now, upon the basis of the
inferred conviction, they rear a faith, 'We believe that Thou camest
forth from God.' But what they meant by 'coming forth from God' fell
far short of the greatness of what He meant by the declaration, and
they stand, in this final, articulate confession of their faith, but a
little in advance of Nicodemus the Rabbi, and behind Peter the Apostle
when he said: 'Thou art the Son of the living God.'
So their confession is a strangely mingled warp and woof of insight and
of ignorance. And they may stand for us both as examples to teach us
what we ought to be, and as beacons teaching us what we should not be.
Let me note just one or two lessons drawn from the disciples' demeanour
and confession.
The first remark that I would make is that here we learn what it is
that gives life to a creed--experience. These men had, over and over
again, in our Lord's earlier utterances, heard the declaration that 'He
came forth from God'; and in a sort of fashion they believed it. But,
as so many of our convictions do, it lay dormant and half dead in their
souls. But now, rightly or wrongly, experience had brought them into
contact, as they thought, with a manifest proof of His divine
Omniscience, and the torpid conviction flashed all up at once into
vitality. The smouldering fire of a mere piece of abstract belief was
kindled at once into a glow that shed warmth through their whole
hearts; and although they had professed to believe long ago that He
came from God, now, for the first time, they grasp it as a living
reality. Why? Because experience had taught it to them. It is the only
teacher that teaches us the articles of our creed in a way worth
learning them. Every one of us carries professed beliefs, which lie
there inoperative, bedridden, in the hospital and dormitory of our
souls, until some great necessity or sudden circumstance comes that
flings a beam of light upon them, and then they start and waken. We do
not know the use of the sword until we are in battle. Until the
shipwreck comes, no man puts on the lifebelt in his cabin. Every one of
as has large tracts of Christian truth which we think we most surely
believe, but which need experience to quicken them, and need us to grow
up into the possession of them. Of all our teachers who turn beliefs
assented to into beliefs really believed none is so mighty as Sorrow;
for that makes a man lay a firm hold on the deep things of God's Word.
Then another lesson that I draw from this glad confession is--the bold
avowal that always accompanies certitude. These men's stammering
tongues are loosed. They have a fact to base themselves upon. They have
a piece of assured knowledge inferred from the fact. They have a faith
built upon the certitude of what they know. Having this, out it all
comes in a gush. No man that believes with all his heart can help
speaking. You silent Christians are so, because you do not more than
half grasp the truth that you say you hold. 'Thy word, when shut up in
my bones, was like a fire'; and it ate its way through all the dead
matter that enclosed it, until at last it flamed out heaven high. Can
you say, 'We know and we believe,' with unfaltering confidence? Not 'we
argue'; not 'we humbly venture to think that on the whole'; not 'we are
inclined rather to believe'; but 'we _know_--that Thou knowest all
things, and that Thou hast come from God.' Seek for that blessed
certitude of knowledge, based upon the facts of individual experience,
which 'makes the tongue of the dumb sing,' and changes all the deadness
of an outward profession of Christianity into a living, rejoicing power.
Then, further, I draw this lesson. Take care of indolently supposing
that you understand the depths of God's truth. These Apostles fancied
that they had grasped the whole meaning of the Master's words, and were
glad in them. They fed on them, and got something out of them; but how
far they were from the true perception of their meaning! This
generation abhors mystery, and demands that the deepest truths of the
highest subject, which is religion, shall be so broken down into
mincemeat that the 'man in the street' can understand them in the
intervals of reading the newspaper. There are only too many of us who
are disposed to grasp at the most superficial interpretation of
Christian truth, and lazily to rest ourselves in that. A creed which
has no depth in it is like a picture which has no distance. It is flat
and unnatural, and self-condemned by the very fact. It is better that
we should feel that the smallest word that comes from God is like some
little leaf of a water plant on the surface of a pond; if you lift that
you draw a whole trail after it, and nobody knows how far off and how
deep down are the roots. It is better that we should feel how Infinity
and Eternity press in upon us on all sides, and should take as ours the
temper that recognises that till the end we are but learners, seeing
'in a glass, in a riddle,' and therefore patiently waiting for light
and strenuously striving to stretch our souls to the width of the
infinite truth of God.
II. So, then, look, in the second place, at the sad questions and
forebodings of the Master.
'Do ye _now_ believe?' That does not cast doubt on the reality of their
faith so much as on its permanence and power. 'Behold the hour cometh
that ye shall be scattered'--as He had told them a little while before
in the upper room, like a flock when the shepherd is stricken
down--'every man to his own.' He does not reject their imperfect
homage, though He discerns so clearly its imperfection and its
transiency, but sadly warns them to beware of the fleeting nature of
their present emotion; and would seek to prepare them, by the
knowledge, for the terrible storm that is going to break upon them.
So let us learn two or three simple lessons. One is that the dear Lord
accepts imperfect surrender, ignorant faith and love, of which He knows
that it will soon turn to denial. Oh! if He did not, what would become
of us all? _We_ reject half hearts; we will not have a friendship on
which we cannot rely. The sweetness of vows is all sucked out of them
to our apprehension, if we have reason to believe that they will be
falsified in an hour. But the patient Master was willing to put up with
what you and I will not put up with; and to accept what we reject; and
be pleased that they gave Him even that. His 'charity suffereth long,
and is kind.' Let us not be afraid to bring even imperfect
consecration--
'A little faith all undisproved'--
to His merciful feet.
Then another lesson is the need for Christian men sedulously to search
and make sure that their inward life corresponds with their words and
professions. I wonder how many thousands of people will stand up this
day and say, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ
His only Son,' whose words would stick in their throats if that
question of the Master's was put to them, '_Do_ ye now believe?' And I
wonder how many of us are the fools of our own verbal acknowledgments
of Christ. Self-examination is not altogether a wholesome exercise, and
it may easily be carried too far, to the destruction of the spontaneity
and the gladness of the Christian life. A man may set his pulse going
irregularly by simply concentrating his attention upon it, and there
may be self-examination of the wrong sort, which does harm rather than
good. But, on the other hand, we all need to verify our position, lest
our outward life should fatally slip away from correspondence with our
inward. Our words and acts of Christian profession and service are like
bank notes. What will be the end if there is a whole ream of such going
up and down the world, and no balance of bullion in the cellars to meet
them? Nothing but bankruptcy. Do you see to it that your reserve of
gold, deep down in your hearts, always leaves a margin beyond the notes
in circulation issued by you. And in the midst of your professions hear
the Master saying, '_Do ye_ now believe?'
Another lesson that I draw is, trust no emotions, no religious
experiences, but only Him to whom they turn.
These men were perfectly sincere, and there was a glow of gladness in
their hearts, and a real though imperfect faith when they spoke. In an
hours time where were they?
We often deal far too hard measure to these poor disciples, in our
estimate of their conduct at that critical moment. We talk about them
as cowards. Well, they were better and they were worse than cowards;
for their courage failed second, but their faith had failed first. The
Cross made them dastards because it destroyed their confidence in Jesus
Christ.
'We _trusted_.' Ah! what a world of sorrow there is in those two final
letters of that word! 'We trusted that it had been He who should have
redeemed Israel.' But they do not trust it any more, and so why should
they put themselves in peril for One on whom their faith can no longer
build?
Would we have been any better if we had been there? Suppose you had
stood afar off and seen Jesus die on the cross, would your faith have
lived? Do we not know what it is to be a great deal more exuberant in
our professions of faith--and real faith it is, no doubt--in some quiet
hour when we are with Him by ourselves, than when swords are flashing
and we are in the presence of His antagonists? Do we not know what it
is to grasp conviction at one moment, and the next to find it gone like
a handful of mist from our clutch? Is our Christian life always lived
upon one high uniform level? Have we no experience of hours of
exhaustion coming after deep religious emotion? 'Let him that is
without sin among you cast the first stone'; there will not be many
stones flung if that law be applied. Let us all, recognising our own
weakness, trust to nothing, either in our convictions or our emotions,
but only to Him, and cry, 'Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe!'