'But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man
doth not cast out demons, but by Beelzebub, the prince
of the demons.'--MATT. xii. 24.
Mark's Gospel tells us that this astonishing explanation of Christ
and His work was due to the ingenious malice of an ecclesiastical
deputation, sent down from Jerusalem to prevent the simple folk in
Galilee from being led away by this new Teacher. They must have been
very hard put to it to explain undeniable but unwelcome facts, when
they hazarded such a preposterous theory.
Formal religionists never know what to make of a man who is in
manifest touch with the unseen. These scribes, like Christ's other
critics, judged themselves in judging Him, and bore witness to the
very truths that they were eager to deny. For this ridiculous
explanation admits the miraculous, recognises the impossibility of
accounting for Christ on any naturalistic hypothesis, and by its
very outrageous absurdity indicates that the only reasonable
explanation of the facts is the admission of His divine message and
authority. So we may learn, even from such words as these, how the
glory of Jesus Christ shines, though distorted and blurred, through
the fogs of prejudice and malice.
I. Note, then, first, the unwelcome and undeniable facts that insist
upon explanation.
I have said that these hostile critics attest the reality of the
miracles. I know that it is not fashionable at present to attach
much weight to the fact that none of all the enemies that saw them
ever had a doubt about the reality of Christ's miracles. I know
quite well that in an age that believed in the possibility of the
supernatural, as this age does not, credence would be more easy, and
that such testimony is less valuable than if it had come from a jury
of scientific twentieth century sceptics. But I know, on the other
hand, that for long generations the expectation of the miraculous
had died out before Christ came; that His predecessor, John the
Baptist, made no such claims; and that, at first, at all events,
there was no expectation of Jesus working miracles, to lead to any
initial ease of acceptance of His claims. And I know that there were
never sharper and more hostile eyes brought to bear upon any man and
his work than the eyes of these ecclesiastical 'triers.' It would
have been so easy and so triumphant a way of ending the whole
business if they could have shown, what they were anxious to be able
to show, that the miracle was a trick. And so I venture to think
that not without some weight is the attestation from the camp of the
enemy, 'This man casteth out demons.'
But you have to remember that amongst the facts to be explained is
not only this one of Christ's works having passed muster with His
enemies, but the other of His own reiterated and solemn claim to
have the power of working what we call miracles. Now, I wish to
dwell on that for one moment, because it is fashionable to put one's
thumb upon it nowadays. It is not unusual to eliminate from the
Gospel narrative all that side of it, and then to run over in
eulogiums about the rest. But what we have to deal with is this
fact, that the Man whom the world admits to be the consummate flower
of humanity, meek, sane, humble, who has given all generations
lessons in self-abnegation and devotion, claimed to be able to raise
the dead, to cast out demons, and to do many wonderful works. And
though we should be misrepresenting the facts if we said that He did
what His followers have too often been inclined to do, _i.e._
rested the stress of evidence upon that side of His work, yet it is
an equal exaggeration in the other direction to do, as so many are
inclined to do to-day, _i.e._ disparage the miraculous evidence
as no evidence at all. 'Go and tell John the things that ye see and
hear,'--that is His own answer to the question, 'Art Thou He that
should come?' And though I rejoice to believe that there are far
loftier and more blessed answers to it than these outward signs and
tokens, they _are_ signs and tokens; and they are part of the
whole facts that have to be accounted for.
I would venture to widen the reference of my text for a moment, and
include not only the actual miracles of our Lord's earthly life, but
all the beneficent, hallowing, elevating, ennobling, refining
results which have followed upon the proclamation of His truth in
the world ever since. I believe, as I think Scripture teaches me to
believe, that in the world today Christ is working; and that it is a
mistake to talk about the results of 'Christianity,' meaning thereby
some abstract system divorced from Him. It is the working of Jesus
Christ in the world that has brought 'nobler manners, purer laws';
that has given a new impulse and elevation to art and literature;
that has lifted the whole tone of society; that has suppressed
ancient evils; that has barred the doors of old temples of devildom,
of lust, and cruelty, and vice; and that is still working in the
world for the elevation and the deifying of humanity. And I claim
the whole difference between 'B.C. and A.D.'--the whole difference
between Christendom and Heathendom--as being the measure of the
continuous power with which Jesus Christ has grappled with and
throttled the snakes that have fastened on men. That continuous
operation of His in delivering from the powers of evil has, indeed,
not yielded such results as might have been expected. But just as on
earth He was hindered in the exercise of His supernatural power by
men's unbelief, so that 'He could do no mighty works, save that He
laid His hands on a few sick folk' here and there, 'and healed
them,' so He has been thwarted by His Church, and hindered in the
world, from manifesting the fulness of His power. But yet,
sorrowfully admitting that, and taking as deserved the scoffs of the
men that say, 'Your Christianity does not seem to do so very much
after all,' I still venture to allege that its record is unique; and
that these are facts which wise men ought to take into account, and
have some fairly plausible way of explaining.
II. Secondly, note the preposterous explanation. 'This man doth not
cast out demons, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons.' That
is the last resort of prejudice so deep that it will father an
absurdity rather than yield to evidence. And Christ has no
difficulty in putting it aside, as you may remember, by a piece of
common sense: 'If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against
himself, and his kingdom cannot stand.' There is an old play which
has for its title, _The Devil as an Ass._ He is not such an ass
as that, to build up with one hand and cast down with the other. As
the proverb has it, 'Hawks do not pick out hawks' eyes.' But this
plainly hopeless attempt to account for Christ and His work may be
turned into a witness for both, and yield not unimportant lessons.
This explanation witnesses to the insufficiency of all explanations
which omit the supernatural. These men felt that they had to do with
a Man who was in touch with a whole world of unseen powers; and that
they had here to deal with something to which ordinary measuring
lines were palpably inapplicable. And so they fell back upon 'by
Beelzebub'; and they thereby admitted that humanity without
something more at the back of it never made such a man as that. And
I beg you to lay that to heart. It is very easy to solve an
insoluble problem if you begin by taking all the insoluble elements
out of it. And that is how a great deal of modern thinking does with
Christianity. Knock out all the miracles; pooh-pooh all Christ's
claims; say nothing about Incarnation; declare Resurrection to be
entirely unhistorical, and you will not have much difficulty in
accounting for the rest; and it will not be worth the accounting
for. But here is the thing to be dealt with, that _whole_ life,
the Christ of the Gospels. And I venture to say that any explanation
professing to account for Him which leaves out His coming from an
unseen world, and His possession of powers above this world of sense
and nature, is ludicrously inadequate. Suppose you had a chain which
for thousands of years had been winding on to a drum, and link after
link had been rough iron, and all at once there comes one of pure
gold, would it be reasonable to say that it had been dug from the
same mine, and forged in the same fires, as its black and ponderous
companions? Generation after generation has passed across the earth,
each begetting sons after its own likeness; and lo! in the midst of
them starts up one sinless Man. Is it reasonable to say that He is
the product of the same causes which have produced all the millions,
and never another like Him? Surely to account for Jesus without the
supernatural is hopeless.
Further, this explanation may be taken as an instance showing the
inadequacy of all theories and explanations of Christ and
Christianity from an unbelieving point of view. It was the first
attempt of unbelievers to explain where Christ's power came from.
Like all first attempts, it was crude, and it has been amended and
refined since. Earlier generations did not hesitate to call the
Apostles liars, and Christ's contemporaries did not hesitate to call
Him 'this deceiver.' We have got beyond that; but we still are met
by explanations of the power of the Gospel and of Christ, its
subject and Author, which trace these to ignoble elements, and do
not shrink from asserting that a blunder or a hallucination lies at
the foundation.
Now, I am not going to enter upon these matters at any length, but I
would just recall to you our Lord's broad, simple principle: 'A
corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither doth a good tree
bring forth evil fruit.' And I would apply that all round. Christian
teachers have often made great mistakes, as it seems to me, by
tracing the prevalence of the power of some heathen religions to
their vices and lies. No system has ever had great moral power in
this world but by reason of its excellences and truths. Mohammedanism,
for instance, swept away, and rightly, a mere formal superstition which
called itself Christianity, because it grasped the one truth: 'There is
no God but God'; and it had faith of a sort. Monasticism held the
field in Europe, with all its faults, for centuries, because it enshrined
the great Christian truth of self-sacrifice and absolute obedience.
And you may take it as a fixed rule, that howsoever some 'mixture of
falsehood doth ever please,' as Bacon says, in his cynical way, the
reason for the power of any great movement has been the truth that was
in it and not the lie; and the reason why great men have exercised
influence has been their greatness and their goodness, and not their
smallnesses and their vices.
I apply that all round, and I ask you to apply it to Christianity;
and in the light of such plain principles to answer the question:
'Where did this Man, so fair, so radiant, so human and yet so
superhuman, so universal and yet so individual--where did He come
from? and where did the Gospel, which flows from Him, and which has
done such things in the world as it has done--where did it come
from? 'Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?' If it
is true that Jesus Christ is either mistakenly represented in the
Gospels, or that He made enthusiastic claims which cannot be
verified; and if it is true that the faith in a Resurrection on
which Christianity is suspended, and which has produced such fruits
as we know have been produced, is a delusion; then all I can say is
that the noblest lives that ever were lived in the world have found
their impulse in a falsehood or a dream; and that the richest
clusters that ever have yielded wine for the cup have grown upon a
thorn. If like produces like, you cannot account for Christ and
Christianity by anything short of the belief in His Divine mission.
Serpents' eggs do not hatch out into doves. This Man, when He
claimed to be God's Son and the world's Saviour, was no brain-sick
enthusiast; and the results show that the Gospel which His followers
proclaim rests upon no lie.
Again, this explanation is an instance of the credulity of unbelief.
Think of the mental condition which could swallow such an
explanation of such a Worker and such work. It is more difficult to
believe the explanation than the alternative which it is framed to
escape. So it is always. The difficulties of faith are small by
comparison with those of unbelief, gnats beside camels, and that
that is so is plain from the short duration of each unbelieving
explanation of Jesus. One can remember in the compass of one's own
life more than one assailant taking the field with much trumpeting
and flag-waving, whose attack failed and is forgotten. The child's
story tells of a giant who determined to slay his enemy, and
belaboured an empty bed with his club all night, and found his foe
untouched and fresh in the morning. The Gospel is here; what has
become of its assailants? They are gone, and the limbo into which
the scribes' theory has passed will receive all the others. So we
may be quite patient, and sure that the sieve of time, which is
slowly and constantly working, will riddle out all the rubbish, and
cast it on the dunghill where so many exploded theories rot
forgotten.
III. And now, one word about the last point; and that is--the true
explanation.
Now, at this stage of my sermon, I must not be tempted to say a word
about the light which our Lord throws, in these declarations in the
context, into that dim unseen world. His words seem to me to be too
solemn and didactic to be taken as accommodations to popular
prejudice, and a great deal too grave to be taken as mere metaphor.
And I, for my part, am not so sure that, apart from Him, I know all
things in heaven and earth, as to venture to put aside these solemn
words of His--which lift a corner of the veil which hides the
unseen--and to dismiss them as unworthy of notice. Is it not a
strange thing that a world which is so ready to believe in spiritual
communications when they are vouched for by a newspaper editor, is
so unwilling to believe them when they are in the Bible? And is it
not a strange thing that scientists, who are always taunting
Christians with the importance they attach to man in the plan of the
universe, and ask if all these starry orbs were built for him,
should be so incredulous of teachings which fill the waste places
with loftier beings? But that is by the way.
What does Christ say in the context? He tells the secret of His power.
'I, by the Spirit of God, cast out demons.' And then He goes on to
speak about a conflict that He wages with a strong man; and about His
binding the strong man, and spoiling his house. All which, being
turned into modern language, is just this, that the Lord, by His
incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and government at
the right hand of God, has broken the powers of evil in their central
hold. He has crushed the serpent's head; and though He may still, as
Milton puts it, 'swinge the scaly horror of his folded tail,' it is
but the flurries of the dying brute. The conquering heel is firm on
his head. So, brethren, evil is conquered, and Christ is the Conqueror;
and by His work in life and death He has delivered them that were held
captive of the devil. And you and I may, if we will, pass into 'the
liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.'
That is the only explanation of Him--in His person, in His character,
in His work, and in the effects of that work in the world--that
covers all the facts, and will hold water. All others fail, and they
mostly fail by boldly eliminating the very facts that need to be
accounted for. Let us rather look to Him, thankful that our Brother
has conquered; and let us put our trust in that Saviour. For, if His
explanation is true, then a very solemn personal consideration arises
for each of us, 'If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out demons, then
the Kingdom of God is come unto you,' it stands beside us; it calls
for our obedience. Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, can cast the
evils out of our natures. It is the Incarnate Christ, the Divine
Christ, the crucified Christ, the ascended Christ, the indwelling
Christ, who will so fill our hearts that there shall be no aching
voids there to invite the return of the expelled tyrants. If any
other reformation pass upon us than the thorough one of receiving Him
by faith into our hearts, then, though they may be swept and garnished,
they will be empty; and the demons will come back. With Jesus
inside--they will be outside.
'MAKE THE TREE GOOD'
'... Make the tree good, and his fruit good....'
--MATT. xii. 33.
In this Gospel we find that our Lord twice uses this image of a tree
and its fruit. In the Sermon on the Mount He applies it as a test to
false teachers, who hide, beneath the wool of the sheep's clothing,
the fangs and paws of ravening wolves. He says, 'By their deeds ye
shall know them; for as is the tree so is its fruit.' That is a
rough and ready test, which applies rather to the teacher than to
his doctrine, but it applies, to some extent, to the doctrine too,
on the hypothesis that the teacher's life fairly represents it. Of
course, it is not the only thing that we have to take into account;
but it may prick many a bladder, and unmask many an error, and it is
the way by which the masses generally judge of systems and of their
apostles. A saintly life has more power than dusty volumes of
controversy.
But in our text Christ applies the same thoughts in rather a deeper
fashion. Here the lesson that He would have us draw is of the
connection between character and conduct; how what we do is
determined by what we are, and how, not of course with the same
absolute regularity and constancy, but still somewhat in the same
fashion as the fruit is true to the tree, so, after all allowance
made for ups and downs, for the irregular play of will and
conscience, for the strife that is waged within a man, for the
temptations of external circumstances, and the like--still, in
general, as is the inner man, so is the outward manifestation. The
facts of a life are important mainly as registering and making
visible the inner condition of the doer. Now, that seems very
elementary. Everybody believes that 'out of the heart are the issues
of life,' as a wise man said long ago, but it is one of the truths
that, if grasped and worked into our consciousness, and out in our
lives, would do much to revolutionise them. And so, though it is a
very old story, and though we all admit it, I wish now to come face
to face with the consequences of this thought, that behind action
lies character, and that Doing is the second step, and Being is the
first.
I. I would ask you to notice how here we are confronted with the
great problem for every man.
'Make the tree good.' It takes a good man to do good things. So how
shallow is all that talk, 'do, do, do,' this, that, and the other
thing. All right, but _be_; that is the first thing; or, as
Christ said, 'Make the tree good, and the fruit' will take care of
itself. So do you not see how, if that is true about us, we are each
brought full front up to this, 'Am I trying to make my tree good?
And what kind of success am I having in the attempt?' The water that
rises from some spring will bring up with it, in solution, a trace
of a bed of salt through which it has come, and of all the minerals
in the soil through which it has passed. And as its sparkling waters
come out into the light, if one could analyse them completely, one
might register a geological section of the strata through which it
has risen. So, our acts bear in them a revelation of all the hidden
beds through which they have risen; and sometimes they are bitter
and salt, but they are always true to the self whose apocalypse they
are to the world, or at all events to God.
Therefore, brethren, I have to urge this, that we shall not be doing
our true work as men and women, if we are simply trying to better our
actions, important as these are. By this saying the centre of gravity
is shifted, and in one aspect, the deeds are made less important. The
condition of the hidden man of the heart is the all-important thing.
Christ's word comes to each of us as the briefest statement of all
that it is our highest duty and truest wisdom to aim at in life--'Make
the tree good.'
If you have ever tried it honestly, and have not been contented with
the superficial cleaning up of outsides, which consists in shifting
the dirt into another place only, not in getting rid of it, I know
what met you almost as soon as you began, like some great black rock
that rises in a mountain-pass, and forbids all farther advance--the
consciousness that you were _not_ good met you. I am not going
to talk theological technicalities. Never mind about phrases--they
have been the ruin of a great deal of earnest preaching--call it what
you like, here is a fact, that whenever a man sets himself, with
anything like resolute determination and rigid self-examination, to
the task of getting himself right, he finds that he is wrong. That
being the case, each of us has to deal with a tremendous problem; and
the more earnestly and honestly we try to deal with it, the more we
shall feel how grave it is. You can cure a great deal, I know. God
forbid that I should say one word that seems to deny a man's power to
do much in the direction of self-improvement, but after all that is
done, again you are brought short up on this fact, the testimony of
conscience. And so I see men labouring at a task as vain as that of
those who would twist the sands into ropes, according to the old
fable. I see men seeking after higher perfection of purity than they
will ever attain. That is the condition of us all, of course, for our
ideal must always outrun our realisation, else we may as well lie down
and die. But there is a difference between the imperfect approximation,
which we feel to be imperfect, and yet feel to be approximation, and
the despairing consciousness, that I am sure a great many of my
audience have had, more or less, that I have a task set for me that is
far beyond my strength. 'Talk about making the tree good! I cannot do
it.' So men fold their hands, and the foiled endeavour begets despair.
Or, as is the case with some of you, it begets indifference, and you
do not care to try any more, because you have tried so often, and have
made nothing of it.
There is the problem, how 'make the tree good,' the tree being bad,
or, at all events, if you do not like that broad statement, the tree
having an element of badness, if I may so say, in and amongst any
goodness that it has. I do not care which of the two forms of
statement you take, the fact remains the same.