_CONCLUSION._
"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou
girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou
shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall
gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. Now this he
spake, signifying by what manner of death he should glorify God. And
when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me. Peter,
turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which
also leaned back on His breast at the supper, and said, Lord, who is
he that betrayed Thee? Peter therefore seeing Him saith to Jesus,
Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will
that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou Me.
This saying therefore went forth among the brethren, that that
disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, that he should
not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to
thee? This is the disciple which beareth witness of these things,
and wrote these things: and we know that his witness is true. And
there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they
should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself
would not contain the books that should be written."--JOHN xxi.
18-25.
Peter, springing up in the boat, and snatching his fisher's coat, and
girding it round him, and dashing into the water, seemed to Jesus a
picture of impetuous, inexperienced, fearless love. And as He looked
upon it another picture began to shine through it from behind and
gradually take its place--the picture of what was to be some years later
when that impetuous spirit had been tamed and chastened, when age had
damped the ardour though it had not cooled the love of youth, and when
Peter should be bound and led out to crucifixion for his Lord's sake. As
Peter wades and splashes eagerly to the shore the eye of Jesus rests on
him with pity, as the eye of a parent who has passed through many of the
world's darkest places rests on the child who is speaking of all he is
to do and to enjoy in life. Fresh from His own agony, our Lord knows how
different a temper is needed for prolonged endurance. But little
disposed to throw cold water on genuine, however miscalculating
enthusiasm, having it for His constant function to fan not to quench the
smoking flax, He does not disclose to Peter all His forebodings, but
merely hints, as the disciple comes dripping out of the water, that
there are severer trials of love awaiting him than those which mere
activity and warmth of feeling can overcome, "When thou wast young,
thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou
shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird
thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not."
To a man of Peter's impulsive and independent temperament no future
could seem less desirable than that in which he should be unable to
choose for himself and do as he pleased. Yet this was the future to
which the love he was now expressing committed him. This love, which at
present was a delightful stimulus to his activities, diffusing joy
through all his being, would gain such mastery over him that he would be
impelled by it to a course of life full of arduous undertaking and
entailing much suffering. The free, spontaneous, self-considering life
to which Peter had been accustomed; the spirit of independence and right
of choosing his own employments which had so clearly shown itself the
evening before in his words, "I go a-fishing"; the inability to own
hindrances and recognise obstacles which so distinctly betrayed itself
in his leaping into the water,--this confident freedom of action was
soon to be a thing of the past. This ardour was not useless; it was the
genuine heat which, when plunged in the chilling disappointments of
life, would make veritable steel of Peter's resolution. But such trial
of Peter's love did await it; and it awaits all love. The young may be
arrested by suffering, or they may be led away from the directions they
had chosen for themselves; but the chances of suffering increase with
years, and what is possible in youth becomes probable and almost certain
in the lapse of a lifetime. So long as our Christian life utters itself
in ways we choose for ourselves and in which much active energy can be
spent and much influence exerted, there is so much in this that is
pleasing to self that the amount of love to Christ required for such a
life may seem very small. Any little disappointment or difficulty we
meet with acts only as a tonic, like the chill of the waters of the lake
at dawn. But when the ardent spirit is bound in the fetters of a
disabled, sickly body; when a man has to lay himself quietly down and
stretch forth his hands on the cross of a complete failure that nails
him down from ever again doing what he would, or of a loss that makes
his life seem a living death; when the irresistible course of events
leads him past and away from the hopefulness and joy of life; when he
sees that his life is turning out weak and ineffectual, even as the
lives of others,--then he finds he has a more difficult part to play
than when he had to choose his own form of activity and vigorously put
forth the energy that was in him. To suffer without repining, to be laid
aside from the stir and interest of the busy world, to submit when our
life is taken out of our own hands and is being moulded by influences
that pain and grieve us--this is found to test the spirit more than
active duty.
The contrast drawn by our Lord between the youth and age of Peter is
couched in language so general that it throws light on the usual course
of human life and the broad characteristics of human experience. In
youth attachment to Christ will naturally show itself in such gratuitous
and yet most pardonable and even touching exhibitions of love as Peter
here made. There is a girding of oneself to duty and to all manner of
attainment. There is no hesitation, no shivering on the brink, no
weighing of difficulties; but an impulsive and almost headstrong
commital of oneself to duties unthought of by others, an honest surprise
at the laxity of the Church, much brave speaking, and much brave acting
too. Some of us, indeed, taking a hint from our own experience, may
affirm that a good deal we hear about youth being warmer in Christ's
service than maturity is not true, and that it had been a very poor
prospect for ourselves if it had been true; and that with greater truth
it may be said that youthful attachment to Christ is often delusive,
selfish, foolish, and sadly in need of amendment. This may be so.
But however this may be, there can be no doubt that in youth we are free
to choose. Life lies before us like the unhewn block of marble, and we
may fashion it as we please. Circumstances may seem to necessitate our
departing from one line of life and choosing another; but,
notwithstanding, all the possibilities are before us. We may make ours a
high and noble career; life is not as yet spoiled for us, or determined,
while we are young. The youth is free to walk whither he will; he is not
yet irrecoverably pledged to any particular calling; he is not yet
doomed to carry to the grave the marks of certain habits, but may gird
on himself whatever habit may fit him best and leave him freest for
Christ's service.
Peter heard the words "Follow Me," and rose and went after Jesus; John
did the same without any special call. There are those who need definite
impulses, others who are guided in life by their own constant love. John
would always absorbedly follow. Peter had yet to learn to follow, to own
a leader. He had to learn to seek the guidance of his Lord's will, to
wait upon that will and to interpret it--never an easy thing to do, and
least of all easy to a man like Peter, fond of managing, of taking the
lead, too hasty to let his thoughts settle and his spirit fixedly
consider the mind of Christ.
It is obvious that when Jesus uttered the words "Follow Me," He moved
away from the spot where they had all been standing together. And yet,
coming as they did after so very solemn a colloquy, these words must
have carried to Peter's mind a further significance than merely an
intimation that the Lord wished His company then. Both in the mind of
the Lord and of Peter there seems still to have been a vivid remembrance
of Peter's denial; and as the Lord has given him opportunity of
confessing his love, and has hinted what this love will lead him to, He
appropriately reminds him that any penalties he might suffer for his
love were all in the path which led straight to where Christ Himself for
ever is. The superiority to earthly distresses which Christ now enjoyed
would one day be his. But while he is beginning to take in these
thoughts Peter turns and sees John following; and, with that promptness
to interfere which characterised him, he asked Jesus what was to become
of this disciple. This question betrayed a want of steadiness and
seriousness in contemplating his own duty, and met therefore with
rebuke: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?
follow thou Me." Peter was prone to intermeddle with matters beyond his
sphere, and to manage other people's affairs for them. Such a
disposition always betrays a lack of devotion to our own calling. To
brood over the easier lot of our friend, to envy him his capacity and
success, to grudge him his advantages and happiness, is to betray an
injurious weakness in ourselves. To be unduly anxious about the future
of any part of Christ's Church, as if He had omitted to arrange for that
future, to act as if we were essential to the well-being of some part of
Christ's Church, is to intermeddle like Peter. To show astonishment or
entire incredulity or misunderstanding if a course in life quite
different from ours is found to be quite as useful to Christ's people
and to the world as ours; to show that we have not yet apprehended how
many men, how many minds, how many methods, it takes to make a world, is
to incur the rebuke of Peter. Christ alone is broad as humanity and has
sympathy for all. He alone can find a place in His Church for every
variety of man.
Coming to the close of this Gospel, we cannot but most seriously ask
ourselves whether in our case it has accomplished its object. We have
admired its wonderful compactness and literary symmetry. It is a
pleasure to study a writing so perfectly planned and wrought out with
such unfailing beauty and finish. No one can read this Gospel without
being the better for it, for the mind cannot pass through so many
significant scenes without being instructed, nor be present at so many
pathetic passages without being softened and purified. But after all the
admiration we have spent upon the form and the sympathy we have felt
with the substance of this most wonderful of literary productions, there
remains the question: Has it accomplished its object? John has none of
the artifice of the modern teacher who veils his didactic purpose from
the reader. He plainly avows his object in writing: "These signs are
written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that believing ye might have life through His name." After half a
century's experience and consideration, he selects from the abundant
material afforded him in the life of Jesus those incidents and
conversations which had most powerfully impressed himself and which
seemed most significant to others, and these he presents as sufficient
evidence of the divinity of his Lord. The mere fact that he does so is
itself very strong evidence of his truth. Here is a Jew, trained to
believe that no sin is so heinous as blasphemy, as the worshipping more
gods than one or making any equal with God--a man to whom the most
attractive of God's attributes was His truth, who felt that the highest
human joy was to be in fellowship with Him in whom is no darkness at
all, who knows the truth, who is the truth, who leads and enables men to
walk in the light as He is in the light. What has this hater of idolatry
and of lying found as the result of a holy, truth-seeking life? He has
found that Jesus, with whom he lived on terms of the most intimate
friendship, whose words he listened to, the working of whose feelings he
had scanned, whose works he had witnessed, was the Son of God. I say the
mere fact that such a man as John seeks to persuade us of the divinity
of Christ goes far to prove that Christ was Divine. This was the
impression His life left on the man who knew Him best, and who was,
judging from his own life and Gospel, better able to judge than any man
who has since lived. It is sometimes even objected to this Gospel that
you cannot distinguish between the sayings of the Evangelist and the
sayings of his Master. Is there any other writer who would be in the
smallest danger of having his words confounded with Christ's? Is not
this the strongest proof that John was in perfect sympathy with Jesus,
and was thus fitted to understand Him? And it is this man, who seems
alone capable of being compared with Jesus, that explicitly sets Him
immeasurably above himself, and devotes his life to the promulgation of
this belief.
John, however, does not expect that men will believe this most
stupendous of truths on his mere word. He sets himself therefore to
reproduce the life of Jesus, and to retain in the world's memory those
salient features which gave it its character. He does not argue nor draw
inferences. He believes that what impressed him will impress others. One
by one he cites his witnesses. In the simplest language he tells us what
Christ said and what He did, and lets us hear what this man and that man
said of Him. He tells us how the Baptist, himself pure to asceticism, so
true and holy as to command the submission of all classes in the
community, assured the people that he, though greater and felt to be
greater than any of their old prophets, was not of the same world as
Jesus. This man who stands on the pinnacle of human heroism and
attainment, reverenced by his nation, feared by princes for the sheer
purity of his character, uses every contrivance of language to make the
people understand that Jesus is infinitely above him, incomparable. He
himself, he said, was of the earth: Jesus was from above and above all;
He was from heaven, and could speak of things He had seen; He was the
Son.
The Evangelist tells us how the incredulous but guileless Nathanael was
convinced of the supremacy of Jesus, and how the hesitating Nicodemus
was constrained to acknowledge Him a teacher sent by God. And so he
cites witness after witness, never garbling their testimony, not making
all bear the one uniform testimony which he himself bears; nay, showing
with as exact a truthfulness how unbelief grew, as how faith rose from
one degree to another, until the climax is reached in Thomas's explicit
confession, "My Lord and my God!" No doubt some of the confessions which
John records were not acknowledgments of the full and proper divinity
of Christ. The term "Son of God" cannot, wherever used, be supposed to
mean that Christ is God. We, though human, are all of us sons of God--in
one sense by our natural birth, in another by our regeneration. But
there are instances in which the interpreter is compelled to see in the
term a fuller significance, and to accept it as attributing divinity to
Christ. When, for example, John says, "No man hath seen God at any time:
the _only-begotten Son_, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath
declared Him," it is evident that he thinks of Christ as standing in a
unique relation to God, which separates Him from the ordinary relation
in which men stand to God. And that the disciples themselves passed from
a more superficial use of the term to a use which had a deeper
significance is apparent in the instance of Peter. When Peter in answer
to the inquiry of Jesus replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God," Jesus replied, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto
thee"; but this was making far too much of Peter's confession if he only
meant to acknowledge Him to be the Messiah. In point of fact, flesh and
blood did reveal the Messiahship of Jesus to Peter, for it was his own
brother Andrew who told Peter that he had found the Messiah, and brought
him to Jesus. Plainly therefore Jesus meant that Peter had now made a
further step in his knowledge and in his faith, and had learned to
recognise Jesus as not only Messiah, but as Son of God in the proper
sense.
In this Gospel, then, we have various forms of evidence. We have the
testimonies of men who had seen and heard and known Jesus, and who,
though Jews, and therefore intensely prejudiced against such a
conception, enthusiastically owned that Christ was in the proper sense
Divine. We have John's own testimony, who writes his Gospel for the
purpose of winning men to faith in Christ's Sonship, who calls Christ
Lord, applying to Him the title of Jehovah, and who in so many words
declares that "the Word was God"--the Word who became flesh in Jesus
Christ. And what is perhaps even more to the purpose, we have
affirmations of the same truth made by Jesus Himself: "Before Abraham
was I am"; "I and the Father are one"; "The glory which I had with Thee
before the world was"; "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Who
that listens to these sayings can marvel that the horrified Jews
considered that He was making Himself equal with God and took up stones
to stone Him for blasphemy? Who does not feel that when Jesus allowed
this accusation to be brought against Him at the last, and when He
allowed Himself to be condemned to death on the charge, He must have put
the same meaning on His words that they put? Otherwise, if He did not
mean to make Himself equal with the Father, would He not have been the
very first to unmask and protest against so misleading a use of
language? Had He not known Himself to be Divine, no member of the
Sanhedrim could have been so shocked as He to listen to such language or
to use it.
But in reading this Gospel one cannot but remark that John lays great
stress on the miracles which Christ wrought. In fact, in announcing his
object in writing it is especially to the miracles he alludes when he
says, "These signs are written that ye might believe." In recent years
there has been a reaction against the use of miracles as evidence of
Christ's claim to be sent by God. This reaction was the necessary
consequence of a defective view of the nature, meaning, and use of
miracles. For a long period they were considered as merely wonders
wrought in order to prove the power and authority of the Person who
wrought them. This view of miracles was so exclusively dwelt upon and
urged, that eventually a reaction came; and now this view is
discredited. This is invariably the process by which steps in knowledge
are gained. The pendulum swings first to the one extreme, and the height
to which it has swung in that direction measures the momentum with which
it swings to the opposite side. A one-sided view of the truth, after
being urged for a while, is found out and its weakness is exposed, and
forthwith it is abandoned as if it were false; whereas it is only false
because it claimed to be the whole truth. Unless it be carried with us,
then, the opposite extreme to which we now pass will in time be found
out in the same way and its deficiencies be exposed.
In regard to miracles the two truths which must be held are: first, that
they were wrought to make known the character and the purposes of God;
and, secondly, that they serve as evidence that Jesus was the revealer
of the Father. They not only authenticate the revelation; they
themselves reveal God. They not only direct attention to the Teacher;
they are themselves the lessons He teaches.
During the Irish famine agents were sent from England to the distressed
districts. Some were sent to make inquiries, and had credentials
explaining who they were and on what mission; they carried documents
identifying and authenticating them. Other agents went with money and
waggon-loads of flour, which were their own authentication. The
charitable gifts told their own story; and while they accomplished the
object the charitable senders of the mission had in view, they made it
easy of belief that they came from the charitable in England. So the
miracles of Christ were not bare credentials accomplishing nothing else
than this--that they certified that Christ was sent from God; they were
at the same time, and in the first place, actual expressions of God's
love, revealing God to men as their Father.
Our Lord always refused to show any bare authentication. He refused to
leap off a pinnacle of the Temple, which could serve no other purpose
than to prove He had power to work miracles. He resolutely and uniformly
declined to work mere wonders. When the people clamoured for a miracle,
and cried, "How long dost Thou make us doubt?" when they pressed Him to
the uttermost to perform some marvellous work solely and merely for the
sake of proving His Messiahship or His mission, He regularly declined.
On no occasion did He admit that such authentication of Himself was a
sufficient cause for a miracle. The main object, then, of the miracles
plainly was not evidential. They were not wrought chiefly, still less
solely, for the purpose of convincing the onlookers that Jesus wielded
super-human power.
What, then, was their object? Why did Jesus so constantly work them? He
wrought them because of His sympathy with suffering men,--never for
Himself, always for others; never to accomplish political designs or to
aggrandise the rich, but to heal the sick, to relieve the mourning;
never to excite wonder, but to accomplish some practical good. He
wrought them because in His heart He bore a Divine compassion for men
and felt for us in all that distresses and destroys. His heart was
burdened by the great, universal griefs and weaknesses of men: "Himself
took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." But this was the very
revelation He came to make. He came to reveal God's love and God's
holiness, and every miracle He wrought was an impressive lesson to men
in the knowledge of God. Men learn by what they see far more readily
than by what they hear, and all that Christ taught by word of mouth
might have gone for little had it not been sealed on men's minds by
these consistent acts of love. To tell men that God loves them may or
may not impress them, may or may not be believed; but when Jesus
declared that He was sent by God, and preached His gospel by giving
sight to the blind, legs to the lame, health to the hopeless, that was a
form of preaching likely to be effectual. And when these miracles were
sustained by a consistent holiness in Him who worked them; when it was
felt that there was nothing ostentatious, nothing self-seeking, nothing
that appealed to mere vulgar wonder in them, but that they were dictated
solely by love,--when it was found that they were thus a true expression
of the character of Him who worked them, and that that character was one
in which human judgment at least could find no stain, is it surprising
that He should have been recognised as God's true representative?
Supposing, then, that Christ came to earth to teach men the fatherhood
and fatherliness of God--could He have more effectually taught it than
by these miracles of healing? Supposing He wished to lodge in the minds
of men the conviction that man, body and soul, was cared for by God;
that the diseased, the helpless, the wretched were valued by Him,--were
not these works of healing the most effectual means of making this
revelation? Have not these works of healing in point of fact proved the
most efficient lessons in those great truths which form the very
substance of Christianity? The miracles are themselves, then, the
revelation, and carry to the minds of men more directly than any words
or arguments the conception of a loving God, who does not abhor the
affliction of the afflicted, but feels with His creatures and seeks
their welfare.
And, as John is careful throughout his Gospel to show, they suggest even
more than they directly teach. John uniformly calls them "signs," and on
more than one occasion explains what they were signs of. He that loved
men so keenly and so truly could not be satisfied with the bodily relief
He gave to a few. The power He wielded over disease and over nature
seemed to hint at a power supreme in all departments. If He gave sight
to the blind, was He not also the light of the world? If He fed the
hungry, was He not Himself the bread which came down from heaven?
The miracles, then, are evidences that Christ is the revealer of the
Father, because they do reveal the Father. As the rays of the sun are
evidences of the sun's existence and heat, so are the miracles evidences
that God was in Christ. As the natural and unstudied actions of a man
are the best evidences of his character; as almsgiving that is not meant
to disclose a charitable spirit, but for the relief of the poor, is
evidence of charity; as irrepressible wit, and not clever sayings
studied for effect, is the best evidence of wit--so these miracles,
though not wrought for the sake of proving Christ's union with the
Father, but for the sake of men, do most effectually prove that He was
one with the Father. Their evidence is all the stronger because it was
not their primary object.
But for us the question remains, What has this Gospel and its careful
picture of Christ's character and work done for us? Are we to close the
Gospel and shut away from us this great revelation of Divine love as a
thing in which we claim no personal share? This exhibition of all that
is tender and pure, touching and hopeful, in human life--are we to look
at it and pass on as if we had been admiring a picture and not looking
into the very heart of all that is eternally real? This accessibility of
God, this sympathy with our human lot, this undertaking of our burdens,
this bidding us be of good cheer--is it all to pass by us as needless
for us? The presence that shines from these pages, the voice that sounds
so differently from all other voices--are we to turn from these? Is all
that God can do to attract us to be in vain? Is the vision of God's
holiness and love to be without effect? In the midst of all other
history, in the tumult of this world's ambitions and contendings,
through the fog of men's fancies and theories, shines this clear,
guiding light: are we to go on as if we had never seen it? Here we are
brought into contact with the truth, with what is real and abiding in
human affairs; here we come into contact with God, and can for a little
look at things as He sees them: are we, then, to write ourselves fools
and blind by turning away as if we needed no such light--by saying, "We
see, and need not be taught?"
_Printed by Hazell Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._