had said Himself at the former feast (John v. 31). They thought they
were confuting Him out of His own mouth; for surely to call Himself
the Light of the world was as great a pretension as to call Himself
the Christ. Could His own testimony be accepted for one assertion more
than for the other? It was an all-important inquiry. The more
earnestly the Pharisees pursued it--the more determined they were not
to be content with any half solution of it--the better. If they had
been in earnest, they would have been compelled to ask themselves--'And
what evidence _can_ we have that will satisfy us whether such a claim
as this is well-founded or not? What _can_ convince us whether one
who says he is our Light, and the Light of the world, is uttering the
most profound truth, or the most portentous falsehood?' They would
then have been driven to plain facts. They must have considered how
the sun proves itself to be a light to any man, or a light to all men;
and what comfort there would be in learning from books that that is
the function which it ought to perform, the blessing which men ought
to receive from it. They were not in earnest; they would not grapple
with facts. Facts were for that cursed people which did not know the
law. What had doctors to do with such common things as the sun? What
had the sun to do with the letters which they copied out? Something,
perhaps, with the letter of that 19th Psalm, which begins with the
light in the firmament, and ends with the law that enlightens the
heart. But that was metaphorical language, poetical language--very
beautiful, and sacred, and divine--but to be treated as if it meant
nothing.
To this test, however, our Lord, who preached a Gospel to men, was
bringing His own assertions, His own character, His own office. He did
not, like those Prophets and Christs who bore witness of themselves,
produce evidence to show how much He was above human beings. He did
not, like the doctors of the law, judge and condemn. But He came
speaking of a Father from whom He had proceeded, and to whom He was
returning. He came speaking to men's consciences, making them judges
of themselves. Either he had come from a Father, or He had not. If He
had, that Father would bear witness of Him; that Father would show
whether He knew Him, and was testifying truly of Him. It was not Jesus
of Nazareth saying, 'I am the Christ;' it was a Father speaking of a
Son, a Son of a Father, to beings who could not live without either. I
have translated, as nearly as my poor language can, His mighty words.
Read them and meditate upon them till you find depths in them of which
I have only caught the faintest glimpse.
'_The Pharisees therefore said unto Him, Thou bearest record of
thyself; thy record is not true. Jesus answered and said unto them,
Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know
whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and
whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. And yet if I
judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father
that sent me. It is also written in your law, that the testimony of
two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father
that sent me beareth witness of me._'
Everything, you will perceive, turns upon this relation of a Son to a
Father--upon their eternal distinctness, upon their eternal unity. The
word '_Father_' was now, as before, that which at once confused the
Jews, and filled them with horror. '_They said therefore to Him, Where
is thy Father?_' 'What dost Thou mean? Dost Thou mean that the God
there in those heavens is Thy Father?' No! Surely the _Jupiter
tonans_, whom they worshipped under the name of the Jehovah the God of
Abraham, was _not_ the Father of whom He spake. He said therefore,
'_Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye would have
known my Father also_.' It was a fuller, bolder assertion than was
contained in the words, '_My Father worketh, and I work_.' It affirmed
that they could know the Father of all in a Man; that they could not
know Him except in a man. This was the answer to their '_Where?_' This
overthrew their notion of Godhead--the frightful intellectual idol to
which they were bowing down. But if He had spoken blasphemy before, He
had spoken it more clearly and terribly now. St. John felt this; for
he thinks it necessary to explain why Jesus was not stoned for using
such language:--'_These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as He
taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on Him; for His hour was
not yet come_.'
Then He repeats the words which He spoke before at the feast, but with
an addition which deepens their force. '_Then said Jesus again unto
them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins:
whither I go, ye cannot come._'
He would go away from them, and they could not follow Him. But how is
that departure and that incapacity connected with their dying in sin?
I believe the sense will become clearer as we read on in the chapter;
but we shall not understand what follows, if we leave this question
unconsidered. Throughout He has been teaching that the coming to Him
with the feet, that the seeing Him with the eyes, was not that coming
and that seeing which could do them any good, which could make them
truer men. That belief which is not dependent upon sight--that belief
which was in Him as the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever--that
belief which would be in Him when He had gone away from the
world--that, and that only, would raise them above themselves, would
unite them to the Father, would make them partakers of His true and
eternal life. Sin, the separation from God, must be the state of their
spirits,--those spirits must gravitate to earth, and claim their
portion with the flesh,--unless they could look upwards, and assert
their share in their Lord's ascension, in His victory over the grave
and hell.
The next verses will show, I think, that this is the force of the one
upon which I have been commenting.
'_Then said the Jews, Will He kill Himself? because He saith, Whither
I go, ye cannot come. And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am
from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said
therefore unto you, That ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe
not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins._'
The Jews did not now suppose that He was going to the dispersed among
the Gentiles. They perceived that His words pointed to a departure out
of the world. 'But how could He know that He was going to leave it?
Would He take the matter into His own hands? Did He mean that
disappointment and anger at their rejection of Him would drive Him to
self-murder?' The suggestion was not a serious one; merely the mock of
some priest, thrown out for the sake of degrading Him in the minds of
the people. Our Lord's words are not an answer to it, but an
exposition of the sentence which had provoked it, and of the cause
which had made that sentence unintelligible to them. They _could_ only
think of leaving the world as a _descent_, by one means or another,
into the grave. The idea of an _ascent_, of a return of a spirit to
its proper home, was utterly strange to them. This was a proof that
they needed one to come from above, that they might be delivered from
their downward, earthbound nature. This was a proof that they needed
one who was not of this world to come, who might lift them above it;
that they, too, might find their way to their Father's house. If they
would not believe in Him as such a Messenger from the Father, as such
a deliverer from the world, they must become the victims of sin, the
heirs of death.
'_They said therefore to Him, Who art thou?_' 'What kind of being dost
thou claim to be, who pronouncest judgment upon us,--who tellest us
that we are to die in our sins?' There is a mixture, it seems to me,
of indignation and of curiosity in the question. They want Him to tell
them what He is, and what His right is to censure them and prophesy
death to them. The reply, according to our translators, was, '_The
same which I said unto you from the beginning_.' I do not suppose they
were satisfied with this rendering themselves, or that any one ever
has been. Λαλεῖν is more properly to speak than to say. Λαλῶ must
be the present tense, not the past. Yet I do not think we can better
their version by giving, as some have done, a mystical force to the
words τὴν ἀρχὴν; as if that was a name which Christ claimed for
Himself. Some of the Gnostics, and some of the Fathers, no doubt,
supposed that Christ is called The Beginning in the first chapter of
this Gospel, as He is, undoubtedly, in the first chapter of the
Apocalypse. But, were that so, I do not see what room there would be
for this meaning here, or how the sentence could be construed if we
introduced it. If we follow the order of the words, we may perhaps
preserve the grammar of the sentence, and its connexion with the
verses which follow, without deviating very widely from the
signification which it conveyed to the minds of King James's
translators. '_That in the beginning of which I am speaking to you. I
have many things to speak and to judge concerning you. But He that
sent me is true; and the things which I have heard from Him, those I
speak to the world._' The answer may be either a direct one to the
question, '_Who art thou?_' 'I have always been that Light of the
world of which I am speaking now;' or the emphasis may be on the word
'_speak_.' 'I am not speaking to you any different words from those
which I have been always speaking to you. I am not pronouncing any
judgment upon you which you have not heard pronounced in your
consciences long ago. There are many dark spots in those consciences
which I must bring to light; many harder speeches still which you must
hear from me. I am come from a true Being; from Him who is true. I
speak to the world that which I know to be His mind and will.' 'They
did not understand,' says the Apostle, (this was their misery,) 'that
it was the mind and will of a Father He was proclaiming to them; that
it was from Him who loved them they were shrinking and turning away.'
'_They understood not that He spake to them of the Father. Then said
Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye
know that I am He, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father
hath taught me, I speak these things._'
As He speaks of _their_ lifting up the Son of Man, it is clear that He
means here what He meant in the conversation with Nicodemus. '_As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so was the Son of Man
to be lifted up._' They would be the means of raising Him to that
throne. They would place Him on that cross which should declare in
letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, 'This is the King!' But as He
adds _then ye shall know_, it is clear also that He must allude to the
events which would succeed the crucifixion, and not to it merely. The
cross would say, 'This is the Son of Man; one with all men.' The
resurrection and ascension would say, 'This is the Son of God; one
with the Father.' The Cross would afterwards be felt to gather the
whole message into itself, to be the witness of the love of the
Father to the world; of the eternal union of the Son with the Father;
of the might of that Spirit which dwells in them, and proceeds from
them, to bind all things into one. But what I said before applies also
here. When Christ speaks of His departure from the world, the idea of
ascension, of a return to the glory which He had with the Father
before the worlds were, is always coming forth through the darkness of
the passion.
And even that idea is not sufficient, unless this be added to
it:--'_And He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me
alone; for I do always those things that please Him_.'
His going to the Father is not enough without the assurance of His
continual abiding in the Father. No change of place or circumstance,
no progress in the world's history, no development of the Divine
purpose, must interfere with the calm belief of a unity of the Father
and the Son in the Spirit, which was in the beginning, is now, and
ever shall be, world without end.
It is of this unity, brethren, that this day testifies; which is
therefore a more wonderful and glorious day than that which testifies
of the ascension of the Son to the right hand of the Father, or of the
descent of the Spirit to fill the earth and the hearts of men with
rivers of living water. But we can know little of the depth and
sweetness of this day, if we forget how Christ revealed the mystery of
it; how He both said and proved that to know Him is to know the
Father! For that blessed doctrine, upon which Fathers and Reformers
lived and died, we are fast substituting one which seems to put the
Son at an infinite distance from the Father; which seems to make the
will of the Son not the revelation of the Father's will, but the
contrast to it. Nay, our orthodoxy--so strangely like what would have
been called heresy in other days--is even daring to affirm that we may
believe anything dark or malignant respecting the character of the
Father, if only _we_ gather from the Bible that that is its testimony
concerning Him. Frightful contradiction! to set up a book against Him
whom we believe to be its author! to say that a book, which is from
first to last a denunciation of false and cruel gods, may possibly
proclaim to us a false and cruel God, and that we should be bound to
accept its message if it did! Gracious Father, deliver thy Church from
doctrines which teach us that we are not to hallow thy name above all
books and letters which thou in thy mercy hast bestowed upon us!
Deliver us from those who teach us that we can see Thee anywhere
except in thy Only-begotten Son; or that, if Thou art revealed in Him,
Thou canst be anything but Light without darkness, Truth without
falsehood, Love without cruelty. Teach us to hate all counterfeits of
Thee; all notions of Thee which are derived from our darkness, our
falsehood, our cruelty. Teach us to worship the Eternal Trinity, the
One God of perfect charity blessed for ever. AMEN.
DISCOURSE XVII.
THE TWO FATHERS.
[Lincoln's Inn, First Sunday after Trinity, May 25, 1856.]
ST. JOHN VIII. 43.
_Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my
word._
Those words of which I spoke to you last Sunday seem to have taken a
sudden hold of some who listened to them. '_While He was speaking
these things, many believed on Him._' When we recollect what those
words were, we may at first wonder at this impression. He spoke of
'_the Father being always with Him; of His doing always those things
which pleased the Father_.' Was not His discourse concerning a Father
that which provoked His hearers most; that which shocked some of them
most? Undoubtedly. And yet, if He spoke truly, if He did come to bear
witness of a Father, if the Father did bear witness of Him, this must
have been the discourse which _attracted_ His hearers most--which had
most power over them. The revelation of a man who was always in the
presence of God, who delighted in Him, in whom He delighted, was the
revelation which the heart and conscience of every man was waiting
for. The heart and conscience might be closed against it by sensual
indulgence, still more by spiritual pride; but it could break through
both; it could prove itself true by overcoming both.
In this case, then, as in like cases which have occurred before, I
should be very loth to explain away St. John's words,--to criticise
the quality of the faith which he attributes to these hearers of our
Lord. If we say, as some people would, that it was mere head faith, I
do not think we shall make our own minds clearer; I am sure we shall
be in great danger of denying the facts which the Apostle reports to
us. Our Lord's words did not appeal to the understanding; they were
not argumentative; we cannot account for their influence by any
processes of logic. So far as one can judge from a very simple
statement, they went straight to the heart; the faith which they
called forth was a faith of the heart.
Does it appear, then, that the men who thus believed in Christ were
satisfactory to Him? Let us follow the narrative. It will tell us all
upon that subject that we need to know.
'_Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue
in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free._'
This expression, '_If ye continue or abide in my word_,' denotes very
clearly, I think, that they had not merely listened to a _saying_
which went forth from His lips, and been affected by it; that they had
confessed the force of a _word_, which entered into them as light
enters into the eye, as heat makes itself felt through the body. And
if they traced this word to its source; if they acknowledged the
living Word from whom it flowed; if they turned to Him as to one who
was near them and with them,--not for a moment, but always; if they
trusted in Him, and not in themselves; then they should be--what?
saints? divines? doctors? No; but what is much better than any of the
three,--what all the three should wish to be raised into,--_disciples_.
They will then be learners, learners sitting continually at the feet of
the true Teacher.
And this shall be the result of that daily, hourly learning, of that
change from the condition of men who know everything to the condition
of men who know nothing. '_They shall know the_ TRUTH.' The Word shall
guide them, counsel them, encourage them, scourge them. He shall
prepare them to see that which is. He shall lead them away from
fleeting shadows to the eternal Substance, to Him who changes not.
Here is a promise, the highest that the highest Being can make to man;
for it is the promise of sharing His own nature, of dwelling with Him
and in Him. And there is another appended to it, which, though not
greater in itself, comes nearer to human experience; commends itself
more directly to our sense of oppression and misery. '_The truth shall
make you free._' Truth and liberty are inseparable companions; neither
can live long apart from the other. The bondage to appearances, the
bondage to death, the bondage to the unseen horrors which haunt the
conscience,--how shall this be broken? Our Lord says, '_The truth
shall make you free_.' 'If you abide in my word,--if you adhere to me
as the Lord of your spirit, you shall come to know Him who is truth,
and He shall break every chain from your neck; He shall give you the
freedom of the sons of God.'
However unintelligible His other words may have been to them, surely
this magnificent promise will have looked most inviting to the Jews;
to those, at least, of them who were not vehemently prepossessed
against the speaker, who did not count Him an impostor. The next
sentence seems to say that it was not so. '_They answered Him, We be
Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou,
Ye shall be made free?_' Who were they who said this? We should
certainly gather from the previous passage,--'_those Jews who had
believed on Him_.' At any rate, St. John takes no pains to distinguish
them from the rest. If they were not the only objectors to our Lord's
words, they must have joined in the objection. There is deep
instruction in the thought that they did. The voice of Jesus had
reached them. It had not merely floated about them, but had penetrated
within them. He stood before them who did always the things that
pleased His Father. The first sense of having discovered the Divine
Man must have been one of delight,--the greatest, keenest delight
which they had ever experienced. Then this Divine Man points upwards
to a truth in which He Himself is believing and resting. He says He
can make them inheritors of that. But at the same moment He looks down
into them. He detects a hollowness within them,--a quailing at the
thought of this truth,--a secret dislike of it--a preference for that
which is hostile to it. They are conscious of a chill. The keen
pleasure has been succeeded by a pain as keen. The hope which He holds
out to them they cannot grasp. The evil which He has laid bare is near
and present. Their pride is awakened; they think of the glory of their
descent; they cannot bear to be spoken of as slaves.
We often treat their words as a mere outrageous contradiction of fact.
They had been in bondage, we say, to Babylonians and Persians; they
_were_ in bondage to the Romans; they complained of the yoke; it was
fretting them continually. How monstrous to say, 'We have never been
in bondage!' I believe that in speaking so we are not doing them
justice, and that we are likely to miss the force of our Lord's answer
to them. A modern Roman, in the sight of French or Austrian bayonets,
might deny indignantly that he was a slave. He might say, 'I belong to
the city which has ruled the world. I am one of those citizens whom it
was a shame and wickedness to beat with rods. How dare you speak to me
as if I were like an American Negro, liable to be bought and sold, at
the mercy of an owner or a driver?' We should not be astonished, I
think, at such language. We should understand it, and not feel
ourselves justified in replying to it by referring to a foreign
tyranny, which may be all the more galling to him because he loathes
the name of bondsman. And there was another sense in which a Jew might
affirm that he, being a son of Abraham, had never been in bondage. As
our Lord had spoken of truth, He might think of his privilege not to
be the servant of any false god. Τίνι may serve for this sense as well
as for the other. He would exclaim indignantly, 'The truth shall make
us free? To what abomination,--to what lying idol have we ever yielded
ourselves?'
Our Lord does not complain of them for affixing too strong a meaning
to the word bondage. He does not appeal to the places for the receipt
of custom, as proofs that the seed of Abraham had lost their
independence. But He convicts them of having fallen into a slavery,
domestic, personal, abject. He says that this slavery, though it may
have caused their subjection to the Romans, would not be removed or
abated if that were to cease. And, further, He affirms that slavery
to a false god--that which lies beneath all idolatry--might be more
justly attributed to the seed of Abraham than to any descendants of
Ham.
The first of these allegations is contained in the words which contain
also the justification of His assurance that He can break their
fetters, and give them a higher liberty than they had ever attained or
dreamed of. '_Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin
is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for
ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you
free, ye shall be free indeed._' It is common to quote the first of
these verses without the second. Preachers tell their hearers that
they have committed sin, and are therefore the servants of sin. They
say nothing of the Son who abideth in the house into which sin has
intruded itself. I believe, brethren, that by making this separation,
we put the sense of Scripture, as well as the honesty of our minds, in
the utmost peril. I might use stronger language,--I might say we all
but destroy both. We try to conceive of evil apart from good, of
disobedience apart from obedience. We cannot do it. God's eternal law
will not let us do it. If you want me to understand the corruption and
depravity of my nature, you must tell me from what it is drawing me
aside. You do me an infinite injury, if you tell me that sin is close
to me, unless you tell me also that the great Enemy of Sin is close to
me, and that I am violently tearing myself from Him when I give myself
over to it. It is possible, no doubt, to find, in the height or the
depth, another sense for these words than this, as it is possible to
find another sense for any words, if the one which is nearest and most
obvious should for some reason be disagreeable to us. And I am
certain, brethren, that we shall all seek for some new, ingenious, and
elaborate interpretation, or shall embrace it when it is presented to
us--I am certain that we shall call the literal interpretation
mystical, and shall persuade ourselves that the one we have put in the
place of it is literal--unless we perceive that it corresponds both
with the context of the New Testament and with our own necessities. I
call upon you to see whether what I am saying is not true of each one
of us. Let each man ask himself, 'Is not the sin of which Christ
speaks, with me? Is not the Son of whom He speaks, with me? Has not
the usurper of the house separated me from the Lord of the house? Is
not the Lord of the house ready to put down the usurper, and to make
me free indeed?'