In the history of our Lord's life nothing meets us more frequently
than his power of reticence. It has been justly observed that
the things that he did _not_ say and do are as just a subject of
admiration as the things that he said and did.
There is no more certain indication of inward strength than the
power of silence. Hence the proverb that speech is silver and
silence is golden. The Church of the middle ages had her treatises
on "The Grace of Silence."
In the case of our Lord we have to remember first the thirty years
of silence that preluded his ministry; thirty years in which he
lived the life of a humble artisan in the obscure town of Nazareth.
That he was during those years revolving all that higher wisdom
which has since changed the whole current of human society there
is little doubt. That his was a spirit from earliest life ardent
and eager, possessed with the deepest enthusiasm, we learn from
the one revealing flash in the incident recorded of his childhood,
when he entered the school of the doctors in the temple and became
so absorbed in hearing and asking questions that time, place,
and kindred were all forgotten. Yet, eager as he was, he made no
petulant objection to his mother's recall, but went down to Nazareth
with his parents and was subject to them. This ardent soul retreated
within itself, and gathered itself up in silence and obedience.
When, at the age of thirty, he rose in the synagogue of his native
place and declared his great and beautiful mission it is quite
evident that he took everybody by surprise. No former utterances,
nothing in his previous life, had prepared his townsfolk for
this. They said, "How knoweth this man letters? Is not this the
carpenter?" What habitual silence and reticence is here indicated!
For this was the same Jesus whose words, when he did speak, had
that profound and penetrating power that stirred the hearts of
men, and have gone on since stirring them as no other utterances
ever did. But when he did speak his words were more mighty from
the accumulated force of repression. They fell concentrated and
sparkling like diamonds that had been slowly crystallizing in those
years of silence; they were utterances for time and for eternity.
In like manner we see numerous indications that he withdrew from all
that was popular and noisy and merely sensational with a deep and
real distaste. So far as possible he wrought his miracles privately.
He enjoined reticence and silence on his disciples. He said, "The
kingdom of God cometh not with observation." He pointed to the grain
of mustard seed and the hidden leaven as types of its power.
In the same way we see him sometimes receiving in silence prayers
for help which he intended to answer. When the Syro-Phoenician woman
cried to him to heal her daughter, it is said "he answered her never
a word;" yet healing was in his heart. His silence was the magnet
to draw forth her desire, to intensify her faith and reveal to his
disciples what there was in her.
So, too, when word was sent from the sisters of Bethany, "Lord,
behold he whom thou lovest is sick," he received it in the same
silence. It is said, "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus;
when he had heard, therefore, that he was sick, he abode two days
still in the same place where he was." In those two days of apparent
silent neglect, how many weary hours to the anxious friends watching
for him who _could_ help, and who yet did not come! But the silence
and the wailing ended in a deeper joy at the last. The sorrow
of one family was made the means of a record of the Saviour's
tenderness and sympathy and his triumphant power over death, which
is for all time and for every mourner. As he gave Lazarus back whole
and uninjured from the grave, so he then and there promised to do
for every one who believes in him: "He that believeth on me shall
never die."
In the family of the Saviour was a false friend whose falseness was
better known to the Master than perhaps to himself. He knew the
falsity of Judas to his trust in the management of the family purse,
yet he was silent. He sought the sympathy of no friend; he did not
expose him to the others. From time to time he threw out general
warnings that there was one among them that was untrue--warnings
addressed to _his_ conscience alone. But he changed in no degree
his manner toward him; he did not withhold the kiss at meeting
and parting, nor refuse to wash his feet with the others; and the
traitor went out from the last meeting to finish his treachery,
leaving his brethren ignorant of his intended crime. This loving,
forbearing silence with an enemy--keeping him in his family,
treating him with unchanging love yet with warning faithfulness,
never uttering a word of complaint and parting at last in sorrow
more than anger--was the practical comment left by Jesus on his
own words: "Love your enemies, that ye may be the children of
your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to shine
on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on
the unjust." This, the last, the highest grade in the science
of love, is one that few Christians even come within sight of.
To bear an enemy near one's person, perfectly to understand his
machinations, and yet feel only unchanging love and pity, carefully
to guard his character, never to communicate to another the evil
that we perceive, to go on in kindness as the sunshine goes on in
nature--this is an attainment so seldom made that when made it is
hard to be understood. If the example of Jesus is to be the rule by
which our attainments are finally to be measured, who can stand in
the judgment?
The silence of Jesus in his last trial before Herod and Pilate is no
less full of sublime suggestion. We see him standing in a crowd of
enemies clamorous, excited, eager, with false witnesses distorting
his words, disagreeing with each other, agreeing only in one thing:
the desire for his destruction. And Pilate says, "Answerest thou
nothing? Behold how many things they witness against thee." It
was the dead silence that more than anything else troubled and
perplexed the Roman governor. After he has given up his victim to
the brutalities of the soldiery, to the scourging and the crown of
thorns, he sends for him again for a private examination. "Whence
art thou? Speakest thou not to me? Knowest thou not that I have
power to crucify thee and power to release thee?" In all the brief
replies of Jesus there is no effort to clear himself, no denial
of the many things witnessed against him. In fact, from the few
things that he did say on the way to the cross, it would seem
that his soul abode calmly in that higher sphere of love in which
he looked down with pity on the vulgar brutality that surrounded
him. The poor ignorant populace shouting they knew not what, the
wretched scribes and chief priests setting the seal of doom on their
nation, the stolid Roman soldiers trained in professional hardness
and cruelty--he looked down on them all with pity. "Daughters of
Jerusalem," he said to the weeping women, "weep not for me, but weep
for yourselves and for your children." And a few moments later,
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
We are told by the Apostles that this Jesus is the image of the
invisible God. The silence of God in presence of so much that moves
human passions is one of the most awful things for humanity to
contemplate. But if Jesus is his image this silence is not wrathful
or contemptuous, but full of pity and forgiveness.
The silence and the great darkness around the cross of Calvary were
not the silence of gathering wrath and doom. God, the forgiving,
was there, and the way was preparing for a new and unequaled era of
forgiving mercy. The rejected Jesus was exalted to the right hand of
God, not to fulfill a mission of wrath, but to "give repentance and
remission of sins."