The feeling of the Jews about the Fourth Commandment illustrated their
feeling about the whole law. They were glorying in it as _their_
day,--they were not receiving it as _God's_ day; and, therefore, they
were not perceiving the will of God in reference to that day. Nay,
they were contradicting the very customs which they were themselves
practising. They believed they were obeying Moses when they
circumcised a man on the Sabbath-day; they believed they should be
breaking the law if they failed to do so. Circumcision was the sign of
a covenant which God had made with their fathers before He gave them
the law--a covenant of grace and blessing. And yet so much were they
misled by mere appearances, that they thought it an actual sin to make
a man whole on the Sabbath-day. The act which inflicted pain must
please God; that which gave health must offend Him!
There is more in the contradiction which He thus brought home to their
minds than it is possible to express by any commentary upon His words.
This misunderstanding of the very meaning of all God's dealings with
them--this degradation of the law into a cruel letter--of the covenant
into the mere sign or form of the covenant--was that proof of inward
radical atheism (nay, as we shall find in the next chapter, of
something worse than atheism) which our Lord was convicting them of
in His discourses, which they were hereafter to manifest by the
wickedest deeds that had ever been done upon the earth. But, besides
this witness against them, He was giving a lesson to all ages and to
all teachers respecting the duty and the method of piercing through
the outward shell of an institution into the principle which is
embodied in it--respecting the danger and the sin of omitting to do
this through any affected reverence for the institution itself. In the
two pregnant instances of the Sabbath-day and of circumcision, He
showed that if, in any case whatever, we judge according to
appearances, instead of seeking for the meaning and purport of the
divine signs, we shall be likely to repeat the sin of the Jews, and to
deny God when we fancy we are honouring Him most.
'_Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this He whom they seek
to kill? But, lo, He speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto Him.
Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ? Howbeit we
know this man whence He is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth
whence He is._'
These inhabitants of Jerusalem were likely to know more of the anger
which Jesus had provoked by His cure, than the mere multitude which
was collected from all quarters. They knew that their rulers had
sought to kill Him. Their wonder was, that He should be allowed to go
at large, and should show so little fear of any mischiefs that might
befal Him. They thought that some change must have taken place in the
sentiments of the Sanhedrim. Could they have discovered that He was
not an impostor and blasphemer--that He was the very King they were
looking for? Surely that was impossible. They knew exactly from whence
this Man had sprung, where He dwelt, who were His kindred; but who
could declare the generation of the Christ? When He came, no one would
be able to say from what region He came. There would be a mystery
about Him, which would sever Him from all other beings.
There was a mixture of error and truth in this thought. Jesus
distinguished them in the following words:--'_Then cried Jesus in the
temple as He taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am:
and I am not come of myself, but He that sent me is true, whom ye know
not. But I know Him: for I am from Him, and He hath sent me._' There
was, in one sense, no mystery about Him; all was simple, natural,
open. He affected no reserve; He disclaimed no human relationships. He
walked with fishermen; He did not avoid the company of rulers; He ate
and drank with publicans or with Pharisees. The absence of strangeness
and singularity was what was most characteristic of Him. He was like
all other men; He did nothing to raise Himself above them. Where,
then, was the mystery? He was not come of Himself. That God who had
dwelt in the Tabernacle, who had guided them through the
wilderness--that God who, they said, dwelt in that Temple, whom they
were celebrating in that feast--was with Him, was speaking by Him. Of
Him He was bearing witness. They did not know that Being, because He
was true. Their falsehood kept them from Him; there was no sympathy
between them. But He knew Him; He was from Him; His truth He was come
to show forth.
There was something in these words very like those which had called
forth their first indignation against them--'_My Father worketh, and I
work_.' Perhaps they thought He was again speaking blasphemy; perhaps
they were only indignant at His discovery of their untruth. At all
events, we are told they sought to take Him. Some out of the crowd,
it would appear--not officials, for they are spoken of afterwards--gave
signs of an intention to seize Him; '_but no man laid hands on Him,
because His hour was not yet come_.' The Apostle keeps us in mind that
an hour was to come when they would have their way; and that, when it
did come, the will of the Lord of all would be more fully manifested
than it was now in restraining them.
'_And many of the people believed on Him, and said, When Christ
cometh, will He do more miracles than these which this man hath done?
The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things concerning
Him; and the Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers to take
Him._'
The desire to treat Jesus with violence seems to have been confined to
a few. But what are we to think of those many who are said to have
believed on Him? What kind of belief was it? I do not know that we can
answer any question of this kind, except as St. John answers it. He
calls the sentiment of these people _belief_. We have a right,
therefore, to assume that a spiritual power was acting on their minds,
and that they confessed it. The visible signs spoke to them of that
which was invisible. On the other hand, we are told that they talked
of the number of signs which the Christ might be expected to work.
This was the gossip of men upon whom His words had taken no mighty or
secure hold. Those who can deliberate how much evidence ought to
convince them, have never yet surrendered themselves to the full force
of a conviction. But the chief priests and Pharisees were not the
least competent to judge what were deep and what were superficial
impressions. All murmurs and questionings sounded dangerous; they
ought to be suppressed, if it were possible We have heard of their
plotting against Jesus; but it is the first time that we have been
told of any messengers being sent formally from the Sanhedrim to take
Him. He appears to have received it as the foretaste of that
apprehension which would take place at another feast; for--'_Then said
Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto
Him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I
am, thither ye cannot come._' I connect these words with the
appearance of the messengers; I look upon them, therefore, as a
prophecy of His death. But the further we read, the more we shall find
that the language in which He speaks in this Gospel of His departure
out of the world, is at least as applicable to His ascension as to His
passion. His going is always a return. He is here for a little while;
then He must be with Him from whom He came. I beseech you, do not pass
over these expressions as if they were commonplaces, or as if you were
sure you understood them. They are as difficult to us who keep the
festival of the Ascension every year--who say every day, '_I believe
that Jesus ascended on high_'--as they were to those who heard them
first. Nay, unless we seize strongly the first words of this
Gospel--unless we believe that the '_Word was with God, and was God_,'
and that Jesus was the '_Word made flesh_'--I believe they may be
often more difficult; that our familiarity with the mere name and
notion of an ascent into heaven may make us less able to feel than
they were, '_that no man hath ascended into heaven save He which came
down from heaven, even the Son of Man that is in heaven_.'
The guesses of the Jews respecting our Lord's meaning, when He said
they should seek Him but not find Him, were wide of the mark--were as
outward and material as we should expect them to be. Yet there is in
them one of those curious anticipations of the truth--one of those
unconscious prophecies which sometimes occur in the language of the
most thoughtless or evil men.
'_Then said the Jews among themselves, Whither will He go, that we
shall not find Him? will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles,
and teach the Gentiles? What manner of saying is this that He said, Ye
shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye
cannot come?_'
He had broken down the barriers between different classes of
Israelites--between Galilæans, Samaritans, and Jews. Why might not He
carry His designs further? Why might He not go to the dispersed tribes
in heathen lands? Why might He not preach to the heathens themselves?
They were right: this would be the effect of His going away. This was
a part, a great part, of what He meant by it. And it is not till we
realize _this_ sense of the words--till we regard the Ascension as the
redemption and glorification of Humanity at the right hand of God, and
therefore as the necessary step to a Gospel which should include the
dispersed among the Gentiles, and the Gentiles themselves--that we
perceive how it bears upon that great passage which I took as the text
of this sermon:--'_In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus
stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and
drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake He of the
Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy
Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified._)'
The passage through the wilderness was commemorated by the whole of
this festival. This great day of it would seem to have been
especially devoted to the striking of the rock, and perhaps to the
celebration of those wells by which the thirst of the pilgrims was
quenched. That same truth, therefore, which had been taught the woman
of Samaria, as she brought her own single pitcher to Jacob's well,
could here be drawn out of the history of the nation. A whole host had
cried for water. God had told His servant, the shepherd of the people,
where it was to be found. God had shown them that He causes the
springs to flow from the hills; that He cared for the cattle who drank
of them; that He cared more for the wants of the creatures whom He had
made in His image, and redeemed from the oppressor.
Prophets and holy men had discovered--all men had in some measure
discovered--that there are cravings which no fountains on earth can
satisfy. The Jewish nation existed to declare that in God Himself is
the fountain of life; that the spirit can only find its life in Him.
John the Baptist had said that He who had been before Him, and was
coming after Him, would baptize with the Holy Spirit. And now He who
had declared that He was sent from the Father, and was a short time
with them, and would return to Him, declares that whoever believed on
Him should not only be satisfied out of the fulness of God Himself,
but '_that from him should flow rivers of living water_;' that he
should receive only to give; that his blessing should be to
communicate, because that is the blessing of the divine nature, of
which he is admitted to participate.
Had these words stood by themselves, we might interpret them as they
are so often interpreted of the individual believer. We might
say,--'These are the choice gifts, the peculiar treasures, which
Christ bestows upon His most favoured servants,--upon them whose
faith is the most simple and the most full.' There is a true, a most
important, meaning in such language; and we should have no right to
complain of any one who deduced it, and it alone, from our Lord's
discourse at the Tabernacle, if His own beloved disciple had not gone
out of his way to point out another signification of that discourse,
not inconsistent with this, but certainly far wider and deeper, and, I
conceive, most necessary to save this from a perilous abuse. When he
tells us that He spoke this of the Spirit, '_which was not yet given,
because that Jesus was not yet glorified_,' he evidently connects the
fulfilment of the promise with one of the acts which Christ was to do
for mankind. The Spirit had before spoken by the Prophets; when He was
exalted on high, '_the tabernacle of God was indeed to be with men,
and He was to dwell among them, and to be their Father, and they were
to be His children_.' No doubt a man must have faith in Jesus before
rivers of living water can flow from him which shall bless human
beings and make the world fruitful. But it must be faith in Him as the
Head of man, as the Redeemer of the race; it must be faith which
raises the man above self-seeking and self-glorying; it must be faith
that refers its own origin to this very Spirit, which He gives because
He is glorified.
Such a faith, Jesus taught the Jews at the feast of Tabernacles, was
implied in those services and thanksgivings in which they were
engaged. If they understood the dealings of God with their fathers,
this was the blessing to which they must look forward; if they were
content with less, all that had been given them would be taken from
them. Such a faith, brethren, is for us who are keeping another feast
to-day. Call that the Christian Pentecost, if you will; but it
substantiates _this_ promise. Christ ascended on high; Christ poured
out His Spirit upon fishermen and tent-makers. Out of them flowed
rivers of living water that have made the earth glad. A family
gathered out of all kindreds and nations was declared to be the
Tabernacle of God, in which He would dwell. So Whitsuntide testifies.
But, oh! if it should be kept by us as the Tabernacle feast was kept
by the Jews; if there should be the same self-seeking, hardness,
Atheism, in us, as there was in them; what can we expect but that
these words will be spoken to our nation and to the whole
Church?--'_Yet a little while I am with you, and then I go away. And
ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and whither I go, ye cannot
come._'
DISCOURSE XVI.
THE TRUE WITNESS OF CHRIST.
[Lincoln's Inn, Trinity Sunday, May 18, 1856.]
ST. JOHN VIII. 29.
_And He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone;
for I do always those things that please Him._
The belief which was expressed in the question,--'_When Christ cometh,
will He do more miracles than this man doeth?_' appeared not to be a
very stable belief. The effect of the words which Jesus spoke on the
last day of the feast must have been greater, if not more lasting.
'_Many of the people_ (the crowd) _therefore, when they heard this
saying_ (these words), _said, This is the Prophet; others said, This
is the Christ_.' There was no sign, no outward indication of His
power. There was an appeal to a thirst in men's spirits; there was a
promise that those spirits should drink, and that living waters should
flow from them. Those who discovered _the_ Prophet--the representative
of all prophets--in the one who spoke thus to their hearts, were
confessing a Divine and living Word. Those who discovered the Christ
in the person who made this promise had learnt, by some means or
other, that the Christ is He who is anointed with the Spirit that He
may bestow the Spirit.
'_But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the
scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of
the town of Bethlehem, where David was? So there was a division among
the people because of Him._' As I hinted before, the occurrence of
this schism is no unimportant incident in St. John's Gospel. Much of
the meaning of the narrative turns upon the question which produced
it. Was the Christ to prove His right to the homage of His subjects by
establishing His lineal descent from David, by showing that He was
born in the place from which Micah had intimated that the Shepherd of
Israel would come? Or was He at once to address Himself to the
conscience of human beings? Was He to claim a sovereignty over them by
an elder title? Were Scribes and Pharisees to bow down when they had
satisfied their understandings, by spelling over texts, that Jesus
possessed certain outward marks and tokens which were described in
those texts? Or were publicans and sinners to hear that there was One
who could give them the bread and water of life; that they might own
Him, and eat, and drink, and live? Some will say that the first three
Evangelists maintain the one doctrine, the fourth Gospel the other. To
me it seems that St. Matthew and St. Luke, who give our Lord's
genealogies from Abraham or from Adam, rest as little upon those
genealogies as St. Mark or St. John, in whom they are not found; that
all alike appeal to a different kind of evidence from this,--to that
evidence which Pharisees and Scribes could not understand, '_because
they had not repented at the preaching of John_,'--because they had
not come to that living Lord, of whom the Scriptures testified, but
'_thought they had life in them_.' But I do not doubt that in St.
John's day, Christians had begun to dwell on the evidence of
genealogies and of outward marvels, as the Jews had dwelt upon them;
that this was a time of infinite peril to those Christians, and to the
society of which they were members; that it was an especial function
of the beloved disciple to show, not only that the craving for this
evidence was not healthy, but that it was a principal cause of the
rejection of Jesus by the people of God's ancient covenant.
This truth is strongly brought out in the last verses of the 7th
chapter.
'_And some of them would have taken Him; but no man laid hands on Him.
Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they
said unto them, Why have ye not brought Him? The officers answered,
Never man spake like this man. Then answered them the Pharisees, Are
ye also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed
on Him? But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed. Nicodemus
saith unto them, (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them,)
Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he
doeth? They answered and said unto Him, Art thou also of Galilee?
Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. And every man
went unto his own house._'
All here is wonderfully living and characteristic. The faint effort of
the officers to execute the command of their masters; the awe which
held them back; their simple confession of the power which they found
in the words of Jesus; the surprise of the Sanhedrim that the
infection should have reached even their servants; their terror lest
there might be traitors in the camp,--lest any Pharisee or lawyer
(probably some eyes were turned on Nicodemus) should have been
carried away by the impulse to which the crowd, naturally enough, had
yielded; their scorn of the people, as wretched, 'accursed,' men
utterly ignorant of the law;--who does not feel as if he were present
in that convocation of doctors?--as if he were looking at their
perplexed and angry faces?--as if he were hearing their contemptuous
words? But the debate turns ultimately on the impossibility of a
Galilæan Christ. Nicodemus timidly suggests that those who boast of
the law, and call the people cursed for not knowing it, should adhere
to the law in their treatment of an accused person. He is at once put
down by the demand,--'_Art thou of Galilee?_' All arguments of
conscience, even the formalities of law,--so much more precious than
such arguments,--are nothing, unless, after searching and looking, he
can find that a prophet could come out of Galilee. Whether he did
search and look we are not told; but we are told that he found a
prophet in the tomb of Joseph, if he failed to satisfy himself about
His coming from Nazareth.
Then follows the story of the woman taken in adultery. That story has
approved itself to the conscience of Christendom. I feel it to be most
dear and venerable. Some of the Fathers disliked the moral of it, and
therefore were glad to believe it not genuine. I wish I were as sure
that their conclusion was wrong, as that their reason for wishing the
story away was unsound. But impartial critics seem to be agreed that
there is not sufficient justification for retaining it, at least in
this place. I dare not dispute their authority on a question
respecting the weight and value of MSS. I dare not allow affection for
the passage to interfere when truth is at stake. Thoughtful students
maintain that the story belongs to this Gospel, though they cannot
tell to what part of the book it should be transferred. Were it a
question of internal evidence simply, I should say that it does not
seem to me an interpolated fragment _here_; that it supplies a link
between thoughts which otherwise it is less easy to connect. If the
story is withdrawn, the 8th chapter opens with the words,--'_Then
spake Jesus again, I am the Light of the world: he that followeth me
shall not walk in darkness_.' Perhaps I may be deceived by habit and
old association; but I feel as if these words explained how it was
that, when Christ said, '_Let him that is without sin cast the first
stone_,' the '_accusers went out one by one_.' I see in them also an
answer to the charge that He was tolerating sin when He said, '_Go,
and sin no more_.' They show that the sharpest judgment upon sin is
exercised by Him who delivers from it. And the story appears to unite
that exposure of the law-worshippers--who punished breakers of the
law, but did not keep the law--which we found in the last chapter,
with the revelation of a Will, working in us that we may keep the law
in the fullest sense of it, which we shall find in this. Nevertheless,
I am afraid of using these pleas. If the story is genuine, it will
defend itself; if not, the divine Oracles can do without it. The more
sacred we consider them, the more we must be sure that God would have
us receive them in purity, and that He will take better care of them
than we can.
Whatever be the introduction to the words, '_I am the Light of the
world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness_,' we perceive
at once that they are in harmony with all that we have been reading in
St. John. But we ought also to perceive that they are not mere
repetitions of the sentences in the opening of the Gospel, and in the
third chapter. The Light of the world comes forth here detecting,
indeed, and manifesting the darkness in each man, but with a promise
and assurance that it will prove itself mightier than the darkness.
The Word made flesh says to the man who sees nothing but mists all
around him, 'I can bring you into the clear sunshine.' He says to the
man whose breath is stifled, whose limbs have suffered as much from
the atmosphere he has dwelt in as his eyes, 'I am the Light of
Life'--that which illuminates, quickens. There is certainly a progress
and an order in all our Lord's teachings, whether we can trace it or
not. The words on the last day of the feast, which could not be
fulfilled till Christ was glorified, seem to make the conversation
upon which we are now entering necessary. We want to know how the
Water of Life is connected with the Light of Life; we want to know
whence the Light and the Life are both derived. The answer of the
Pharisees to our Lord's words--'_Thou bearest record of thyself; thy
record is not true_'--leads us on in this path of discovery.