'Why askest thou me concerning that which is good?' he rejoins. 'One
there is who is good.--But if thou wouldest enter into life, keep the
commandments.'
'Which?'
'Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not
steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy
mother; and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.'
'All these things have I observed: what lack I yet?'
'If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'
Let us regard the story.
As Jesus went out of a house (see St. Mark x. 10 and 17), the young man
came running to him, and kneeling down in the way, addressed him as
'Good Master.'
The words with which the Lord interrupts his address reveal the whole
attitude of the Lord's being. At that moment, at every and each moment,
just as much as when in the garden of Gethsemane, or encountering any
of those hours which men call crises of life, his whole thought, his
whole delight, was in the thought, in the will, in the being of his
Father. The joy of the Lord's life, that which made it life to him, was
the Father; of him he was always thinking, to him he was always
turning. I suppose most men have some thought of pleasure or
satisfaction or strength to which they turn when action pauses, life
becomes for a moment still, and the wheel sleeps on its own swiftness:
with Jesus it needed no pause of action, no rush of renewed
consciousness, to send him home; his thought was ever and always his
Father. To its home in the heart of the Father his heart ever turned.
That was his treasure-house, the jewel of his mind, the mystery of his
gladness, claiming all degrees and shades of delight, from peace and
calmest content to ecstasy. His life was hid in God. No vain show could
enter at his eyes; every truth and grandeur of life passed before him
as it was; neither ambition nor disappointment could distort them to
his eternal childlike gaze; he beheld and loved them from the bosom of
the Father. It was not for himself he came to the world--not to
establish his own power over the doings, his own influence over the
hearts of men: he came that they might know the Father who was his joy,
his life. The sons of men were his Father's children like himself: that
the Father should have them all in his bosom was the one thought of his
heart: that should be his doing for his Father, cost him what it might!
He came to do his will, and on the earth was the same he had been from
the beginning, the eternal first. He was not interested in himself, but
in his Father and his Father's children. He did not care to hear
himself called good. It was not of consequence to him. He was there to
let men see the goodness of the Father in whom he gloried. For that he
entered the weary dream of the world, in which the glory was so dulled
and clouded. 'You call _me_ good! You should know my Father!'
For the Lord's greatness consisted in his Father being greater than he:
who calls into being is greater than who is called. The Father was
always the Father, the Son always the Son; yet the Son is not of
himself, but by the Father; he does not live by his own power, like the
Father. If there were no Father, there would be no Son. All that is the
Lord's is the Father's, and all that is the Father's he has given to
the Son. The Lord's goodness is of the Father's goodness; because the
Father is good the Son is good. When the word _good_ enters the ears of
the Son, his heart lifts it at once to his Father, the Father of all.
His words contain no denial of goodness in himself: in his grand
self-regard he was not the original of his goodness, neither did he care
for his own goodness, except to be good: it was to him a matter of course.
But for his Father's goodness, he would spend life, suffering, labour,
death, to make that known! His other children must learn to give him
his due, and love him as did the primal Son! The Father was all in all
to the Son, and the Son no more thought of his own goodness than an
honest man thinks of his honesty. When the good man sees goodness, he
thinks of his own evil: Jesus had no evil to think of, but neither does
he think of his goodness; he delights in his Father's. 'Why callest
thou me good? None is good save one, even God.'
Checked thus, the youth turns to the question which, working in his
heart, had brought him running, and made him kneel: what good thing
shall he do that he may have eternal life? It is unnecessary to inquire
precisely what he meant by _eternal life_. Whatever shape the thing
took to him, that shape represented a something he needed and had not
got--a something which, it was clear to him, could be gained only in
some path of good. But he thought to gain a thing by a doing, when the
very thing desired was _a being_: he would have that as a possession
which must possess him.
The Lord cared neither for isolated truth nor for orphaned deed. It was
truth in the inward parts, it was the good heart, the mother of good
deeds, he cherished. It was the live, active, knowing, breathing good
he came to further. He cared for no speculation in morals or religion.
It was good men he cared about, not notions of good things, or even
good actions, save as the outcome of life, save as the bodies in which
the primary live actions of love and will in the soul took shape and
came forth. Could he by one word have set at rest all the questionings
of philosophy as to the supreme good and the absolute truth, I venture
to say that word he would not have uttered. But he would die to make
men good and true. His whole heart would respond to the cry of sad
publican or despairing pharisee, 'How am I to be good?'
When the Lord says, 'Why askest thou me concerning that which is good?'
we must not put emphasis on the _me_, as if the Lord refused the
question, as he had declined the epithet: he was the proper person to
ask, only the question was not the right one: the good thing was a
small matter; the good Being was all in all. [Footnote: As it stands,
it is difficult to read the passage without putting emphasis on the
_me_, which spoils the sense. I think it would better be, 'Why dost
thou ask me concerning &c.?'] 'Why ask me about the good thing? There
is one living good, in whom the good thing, and all good, is alive and
ever operant. Ask me not about the good thing, but the good person, the
good being--the origin of all good'--who, because he is, can make good.
He is the one live good, ready with his life to communicate living
good, the power of being, and so doing good, for he makes good itself
to exist. It is not with this good thing and that good thing we have to
do, but with that power whence comes our power even to speak the word
_good_. We have to do with him to whom no one can look without the need
of being good waking up in his heart; to think about him is to begin to
be good. To do a good thing is to do a good thing; to know God is to be
good. It is not to make us do all things right he cares, but to make us
hunger and thirst after a righteousness possessing which we shall never
need to think of what is or is not good, but shall refuse the evil and
choose the good by a motion of the will which is at once necessity and
choice. You see again he refers him immediately as before to his
Father.
But I am anxious my reader should not mistake. Observe, the question in
the young man's mind is not about the doing or not doing of something
he knows to be right; had such been the case, the Lord would have
permitted no question at all; the one thing he insists upon is the
_doing_ of the thing we know we ought to do. In the instance present,
the youth looking out for some unknown good thing to do, he sends him
back to the doing of what he knows, and that in answer to his question
concerning the way to eternal life.
A man must have something to do in the matter, and may well ask such a
question of any teacher! The Lord does not for a moment turn away from
it, and only declines the form of it to help the youth to what he
really needs. He has, in truth, already more than hinted where the
answer lies, namely, in God himself, but that the youth is not yet
capable of receiving; he must begin with him farther back: 'If thou
wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments;'--for verily, if the
commandments have nothing to do with entering into life, why were they
ever given to men? This is his task--he must keep the commandments.
Then the road to eternal life is the keeping of the commandments! Had
the Lord _not_ said so, what man of common moral sense would ever dare
say otherwise? What else can be the way into life but the doing of what
the Lord of life tells the creatures he has made, and whom he would
have live for ever, that they must do? It is the beginning of the way.
If a man had kept all those commandments, yet would he not therefore
have in him the life eternal; nevertheless, without keeping of the
commandments there is no entering into life; the keeping of them is the
path to the gate of life; it is not life, but it is the way--so much of
the way to it. Nay, the keeping of the commandments, consciously or
unconsciously, has closest and essential relation to eternal life.
The Lord says nothing about the first table of the law: why does he not
tell this youth as he did the lawyer, that to love God is everything?
He had given him a glimpse of the essence of his own life, had pointed
the youth to the heart of all--for him to think of afterwards: he was
not ready for it yet. He wanted eternal life: to love God with all our
heart, and soul, and strength, and mind, is to know God, and to know
him _is_ eternal life; that is the end of the whole saving matter; it
is no human beginning, it is the grand end and eternal beginning of all
things; but the youth was not capable of it. To begin with that would
be as sensible as to say to one asking how to reach the top of some
mountain, 'Just set your foot on that shining snow-clad peak, high
there in the blue, and you will at once be where you wish to go.' 'Love
God with all your heart, and eternal life is yours:'--it would have
been to mock him. Why, he could not yet see or believe that that was
eternal life! He was not yet capable of looking upon life even from
afar! How many _Christians_ are? How many know that they are not? How
many care that they are not? The Lord answers his question directly,
tells him what to do--a thing he can do--to enter into life: he must
keep the commandments!--and when he asks, 'Which?' specifies only those
that have to do with his neighbour, ending with the highest and most
difficult of them.
'But no man can perfectly keep a single commandment of the second table
any more than of the first.'
Surely not--else why should they have been given? But is there no
meaning in the word _keep_, or _observe_, except it be qualified by
_perfectly_? Is there no keeping but a perfect keeping?
'None that God cares for.'
There I think you utterly wrong. That no keeping but a perfect one will
_satisfy_ God, I hold with all my heart and strength; but that there is
none else he cares for, is one of the lies of the enemy. What father is
not pleased with the first tottering attempt of his little one to walk?
What father would be satisfied with anything but the manly step of the
full-grown son?
When the Lord has definitely mentioned the commandments he means, the
youth returns at once that he _has_ observed those from his youth up:
are we to take his word for it? The Lord at least takes his word for
it: he looked on him and loved him. Was the Lord deceived in him? Did
he tell an untruth? or did the Master believe he had kept the
commandments perfectly? There must be a keeping of the commandments,
which, although anything but perfect, is yet acceptable to the heart of
him from whom nothing is hid. In that way the youth had kept the
commandments. He had for years been putting forth something of his
life-energy to keep them. Nor, however he had failed of perfection, had
he missed the end for which they were given him to keep. For the
immediate end of the commandments never was that men should succeed in
obeying them, but that, finding they could not do that which yet must
be done, finding the more they tried the more was required of them,
they should be driven to the source of life and law--of their life and
his law--to seek from him such reinforcement of life as should make the
fulfilment of the law as possible, yea, as natural, as necessary. This
result had been wrought in the youth. His observance had given him no
satisfaction; he was not at rest; but he desired eternal life--of which
there was no word in the law: the keeping of the law had served to
develop a hunger which no law or its keeping could fill. Must not the
imperfection of his keeping of the commandments, even in the lower
sense in which he read them, have helped to reveal how far they were
beyond any keeping of his, how their implicit demands rose into the
infinitude of God's perfection?
Having kept the commandments, the youth needed and was ready for a
further lesson: the Lord would not leave him where he was; he had come
to seek and to save. He saw him in sore need of perfection--the thing
the commonplace Christian thinks he can best do without--the thing the
elect hungers after with an eternal hunger. Perfection, the perfection
of the Father, is eternal life. 'If thou wouldest be perfect,' said the
Lord. What an honour for the youth to be by him supposed desirous of
perfection! And what an enormous demand does he, upon the supposition,
make of him! To gain the perfection he desired, the one thing lacking
was, that he should sell all that he had, give it to the poor, and
follow the Lord! Could this be all that lay between him and entering
into life? God only knows what the victory of such an obedience might
at once have wrought in him! Much, much more would be necessary before
perfection was reached, but certainly the next step, to sell and
follow, would have been the step into life: had he taken it, in the
very act would have been born in him that whose essence and vitality is
eternal life, needing but process to develop it into the glorious
consciousness of oneness with The Life.
There was nothing like this in the law: was it not hard?--Hard to let
earth go, and take heaven instead? for eternal life, to let dead things
drop? to turn his hack on Mammon, and follow Jesus? lose his rich
friends, and he of the Master's household? Let him say it was hard who
does not know the Lord, who has never thirsted after righteousness,
never longed for the life eternal!
The youth had got on so far, was so pleasing in the eyes of the Master,
that he would show him the highest favour he could; he would take him
to be with him--to walk with him, and rest with him, and go from him
only to do for him what he did for his Father in heaven--to plead with
men, he a mediator between God and men. He would set him free at once,
a child of the kingdom, an heir of the life eternal.
I do not suppose that the youth was one whom ordinary people would call
a lover of money; I do not believe he was covetous, or desired even the
large increase of his possessions; I imagine he was just like most good
men of property: he valued his possessions--looked on them as a good. I
suspect that in the case of another, he would have regarded such
possession almost as a merit, a desert; would value a man more who had
_means_, value a man less who had none--like most of my readers. They
have not a notion how entirely they will one day have to alter their
judgment, or have it altered for them, in this respect: well for them
if they alter it for themselves!
From this false way of thinking, and all the folly and unreality that
accompany it, the Lord would deliver the young man. As the thing was,
he was a slave; for a man is in bondage to what ever he cannot part
with that is less than himself. He could have taken his possessions
from him by an exercise of his own will, but there would have been
little good in that; he wished to do it by the exercise of the young
man's will: that would be a victory indeed for both! So would he enter
into freedom and life, delivered from the bondage of mammon by the
lovely will of the Lord in him, one with his own. By the putting forth
of the divine energy in him, he would escape the corruption that is in
the world through lust--that is, the desire or pleasure of _having_.
The young man would not.
Was the Lord then premature in his demand on the youth? Was he not
ready for it? Was it meant for a test, and not as an actual word of
deliverance? Did he show the child a next step on the stair too high
for him to set his foot upon? I do not believe it. He gave him the very
next lesson in the divine education for which he was ready. It was
possible for him to respond, to give birth, by obedience, to the
redeemed and redeeming will, and so be free. It was time the demand
should be made upon him. Do you say, 'But he would not respond, he
would not obey!'? Then it was time, I answer, that he should refuse,
that he should know what manner of spirit he was of, and meet the
confusions of soul, the sad searchings of heart that must follow. A
time comes to every man when he must obey, or make such refusal--_and
know it_.
Shall I then be supposed to mean that the refusal of the young man was
of necessity final? that he was therefore lost? that because he
declined to enter into life the door of life was closed against him?
Verily, I have not so learned Christ. And that the lesson was not lost,
I see in this, that he went away sorrowful. Was such sorrow, in the
mind of an earnest youth, likely to grow less or to grow more? Was all
he had gone through in the way of obedience to be of no good to him?
Could the nature of one who had kept the commandments be so slight
that, after having sought and talked with Jesus, held communion with
him who is the Life, he would care less about eternal life than before?
Many, alas! have looked upon his face, yet have never seen him, and
have turned back; some have kept company with him for years, and denied
him; but their weakness is not the measure of the patience or the
resources of God. Perhaps this youth was never one of the Lord's so
long as he was on the earth, but perhaps when he saw that the Master
himself cared nothing for the wealth he had told him to cast away,
that, instead of ascending the throne of his fathers, he let the people
do with him what they would, and left the world the poor man he had
lived in it, by its meanest door, perhaps then he became one of those
who sold all they had, and came and laid the money at the apostles'
feet. In the meantime he had that in his soul which made it heavy: by
the gravity of his riches the world held him, and would not let him
rise. He counted his weight his strength, and it was his weakness.
Moneyless in God's upper air he would have had power indeed. Money is
the power of this world--power for defeat and failure to him who holds
it--a weakness to be overcome ere a man can be strong; yet many decent
people fancy it a power of the world to come! It is indeed a little
power, as food and drink, as bodily strength, as the winds and the
waves are powers; but it is no mighty thing for the redemption of men;
yea, to the redemption of those who have it, it is the saddest
obstruction. To make this youth capable of eternal life, clearly--and
the more clearly that he went away sorrowful--the first thing was to
make a poor man of him! He would doubtless have gladly devoted his
wealth to the service of the Master, yea, and gone with him, _as a rich
man_, to spend it for him. But part with it to free him for his
service--that he could not--_yet_!
And how now would he go on with his keeping of the commandments? Would
he not begin to see more plainly his shortcomings, the larger scope of
their requirements? Might he not feel the keeping of them more
imperative than ever, yet impossible without something he had not? The
commandments can never be kept while there is a strife to keep them:
the man is overwhelmed in the weight of their broken pieces. It needs a
clean heart to have pure hands, all the power of a live soul to keep
the law--a power of life, not of struggle; the strength of love, not
the effort of duty.
One day the truth of his conduct must dawn upon him with absolute
clearness. Bitter must be the discovery. He had refused the life
eternal! had turned his back upon The Life! In deepest humility and
shame, yet with the profound consolation of repentance, he would return
to the Master and bemoan his unteachableness. There are who, like St.
Paul, can say, 'I did wrong, but I did it in ignorance; my heart was
not right, and I did not know it:' the remorse of such must be very
different from that of one who, brought to the point of being capable
of embracing the truth, turned from it and refused to be set free. To
him the time will come, God only knows its hour, when he will see the
nature of his deed, _with the knowledge that he was dimly seeing it so
even when he did it_: the alternative had been put before him. And all
those months, or days, or hours, or moments, he might have been
following the Master, hearing the words he spoke, through the windows
of his eyes looking into the very gulfs of Godhead!
The sum of the matter in regard to the youth is this:--He had begun
early to climb the eternal stair. He had kept the commandments, and by
every keeping had climbed. But because he was _well to do_--a phrase of
unconscious irony--he felt well to be--quite, but for that lack of
eternal life! His possessions gave him a standing in the world--a
position of consequence--of value in his eyes. He knew himself looked
up to; he liked to be looked up to; he looked up to himself because of
his _means_, forgetting that _means_ are but tools, and poor tools too.
To part with his wealth would be to sink to the level of his inferiors!
Why should he not keep it? why not use it in the service of the Master?
What wisdom could there be in throwing away such a grand advantage? He
could devote it, but he could not cast it from him! He could devote it,
but he could not devote himself! He could not make himself naked as a
little child and let his Father take him! To him it was not the word of
wisdom the 'Good Master' spoke. How could precious money be a hindrance
to entering into life! How could a rich man believe he would be of more
value without his money? that the casting of it away would make him one
of God's Anakim? that the battle of God could be better fought without
its impediment? that his work refused as an obstruction the aid of
wealth? But the Master had repudiated money that he might do the will
of his Father; and the disciple must be as his master. Had he done as
the Master told him, he would soon have come to understand. Obedience
is the opener of eyes.
There is this danger to every good youth in keeping the commandments,
that he will probably think of himself more highly than he ought to
think. He may be correct enough as to the facts, and in his deductions,
and consequent self-regard, be anything but fair. He may think himself
a fine fellow, when he is but an ordinarily reasonable youth, trying to
do but the first thing necessary to the name or honour of a man.
Doubtless such a youth is exceptional among youths; but the number of
fools not yet acknowledging the first condition of manhood nowise
alters the fact that he who has begun to recognize duty, and
acknowledge the facts of his being, is but a tottering child on the
path of life. He is on the path; he is as wise as at the time he can
be; the Father's arms are stretched out to receive him; but he is not
therefore a wonderful being; not therefore a model of wisdom; not at
all the admirable creature his largely remaining folly would, in his
worst moments, that is when he feels best, persuade him to think
himself; he is just one of God's poor creatures. What share this
besetting sin of the _good young man_ may have had in the miserable
failure of this one, we need not inquire; but it may well be that he
thought the Master under-valued his work as well as his wealth, and was
less than fair to him.