judgment-hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave
him no answer._' Pilate may have had a misgiving that he and the
prisoner were not in their right relations to each other. There was
something in the criminal which judged Him. He shook off the feeling,
as most would have done, by boasting of his superiority. '_Speakest
thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee,
and have power to release thee?_' No doubt he watched the countenance
of Jesus, to see if such words did not make Him quail. The calm answer
came: '_Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were
given thee from above; therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath
the greater sin_.' He did not dispute the authority of the governor or
of the empire. It was God-given authority. They believed it was their
own. He told them whence it was derived. The heavier sin lay with
those who boasted that they were chosen by the righteous God, and who
sought the aid of the rulers of the world to put down Right. Pilate
was convinced that Jesus was not a rebel, whatever his words about a
kingdom might mean. '_From thenceforth he sought to release Him: but
the Jews cried out, If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's
friend. He that maketh himself a king, speaketh against Cæsar._' The
governor had too much Roman sense not to see through this petty
sacerdotal artifice, this affected reverence for a ruler whom, as
Jews, they hated. '_When he heard that saying_,' probably to indulge
his scorn of men who were driving him into an act that he disliked;
perhaps--though I think there is over-refinement in attributing that
motive to him--because he fancied he should have the people on his
side against the priests--'_He brought Jesus forth, and sat down in
the judgment-seat, in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the
Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the Passover, and
about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!
But they cried out. Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!
Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief
priests answered, We have no king but Cæsar._'
If Pilate had had a deliberate scheme of policy to extract from a
turbulent province a solemn recantation of the faith which had kept
alive its national existence from age to age, he could not have
effected his purpose more perfectly than he did by this proceeding.
For an unusual crowd must have been assembled; it was the feast which
celebrated the deliverance of the land from a foreign tyrant, and its
allegiance to an invisible king. There and then the rulers of the land
severed all ties except those which bound them as servants to the
emperors. If Pilate had been (as indeed he was) a prophet of God, he
could not have proclaimed more solemnly and awfully that the Jewish
people were thenceforth ineffectual for any moral purpose, as
witnesses against human tyranny or human idolatry, and that there is
no real alternative for any people between the acknowledgment of _the_
Man as King and the worship of a military tyrant or Man-God. This,
therefore, is the crisis in the history of that day and of the world.
'_Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they
took Jesus and led Him away._'
All the Evangelists speak of the title on the cross. St. John dwells
upon it with great emphasis: '_And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on
the cross. And the writing was, Jesus of Nazareth the King of the
Jews. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus
was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and
Greek, and Latin. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate,
Write not, The King of the Jews; but that He said, I am King of the
Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written._'
If we have understood the meaning of this Gospel, we shall feel the
emphasis of the words, '_What I have written, I have written_.' The
Jews had declared, '_We have no king but Cæsar_.' But they cannot
prevent the servant of Cæsar from declaring, in bitter mockery, to all
men who could read Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, 'This Man, whom they
have forced me to put to death as an evil-doer, is their King. Look
up, and see what kind of a king they have.' The insult was felt by
them; they must bear it. And that Hebrew nation has said by the
prophets and apostles whom it has sent forth, has said by all who have
believed through their word, has said in their own tongue, has said in
Greek and in Latin to the nations which Alexander vanquished and
civilized, to the new world of the West which Julius Cæsar reclaimed
from chaos, 'Our King is your King; to this malefactor you must bow
down; by this sign you must conquer, or be conquered.'
'_Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments,
and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also His coat: now
the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said
therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it,
whose it shall be: that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which saith,
They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast
lots. These things therefore the soldiers did._' Do you ask how St.
John could speak of that act of the soldiers whilst Jesus was hanging
there? Do you ask how he could dwell upon fulfilments of the Scripture
at such a time? Think a moment! Would anything give you the same
impression of horror, if you were standing by an ordinary deathbed, as
the sight of men contending for the raiment and goods of him who was
leaving them? Is there anything so horrible as the thought how much
death is regarded as only an event which gives the survivors a right
to appropriate the things which the man has no more use for? If we had
not been told that it was so when the Prince of the whole earth was
dying, how much less we should know of the indifference which it is
possible for human beings to feel! How much less we shall know of what
He had to bear! '_These things therefore the soldiers did_,' in the
sight of the Cross, under the eye of the Son of God. We might in their
place have done the same; there was nothing in the mere sight of the
suffering to prevent it. '_They parted my raiment among them; for my
vesture did they cast lots._' Thus a man of the old world, dying in
desertion and darkness, expressed a part of his suffering, not a less
intense part of it than the dryness of the '_throat with thirst, than
the melting of the heart like wax_.' And that suffering was all
_fulfilled_, all raised to its most intense point in Him who gave
Himself for all, that all might be brought within the power of a love
which they seemed utterly incapable of perceiving. I am sure there is
immeasurably more in these words than I can enter into or dream of;
but I dare not leave realities for metaphors at such a time. It may be
lawful to speak of the divisions in Christ's Church as the rending of
His seamless robe; they are that, and much more than that; they are
the rending of His body and of His heart. But they are too awful, and
the Cross is too awful, to permit plays of the fancy. Let us ask God
to keep us from them, that we may have some faint perception of the
truth of His grief, as He entered into the inmost experience of ours.
'_Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother's
sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus
therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved,
He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the
disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her
unto his own home. After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now
accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.
Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge
with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When
Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and
He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost._'
This is all which St. John tells us of the Cross, and of the words
that were spoken upon it. We may think it little; but it has been
found enough for tens of thousands of men and women dying on their
beds, by the sword, at the stake. When they have doubted, and have
even been led by religious teachers to doubt, whether human affections
did not belong to frail and sinful mortality, the words, '_Woman,
behold thy son: son, behold thy mother_,' coming from the Divine lips,
have testified to them that selfishness only is accursed, that all
which belongs to love is imperishable. When they have felt the
intensity of bodily pain, and have felt how little they could obey the
dreary command to think of their souls; the cry, '_I thirst_,' has
bound them to Him who knew the fulness of their sorrow, who entered
into the wants, not of souls, but of men. And when all sight of the
future has been shut out, and there has been in their minds only the
sense of evil triumphant and exulting, a voice which no clamour could
drown has said to them, '_It is finished_.' 'The battle is fought; the
victory is won. A little while, and the hosts which look so mighty
now, shall be seen no more for ever.'
'_The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies
should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath-day, (for that
Sabbath-day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be
broken, and that they might be taken away. Then came the soldiers, and
brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with
Him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was dead already,
they brake not His legs: but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced
His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that
saw it bare record, and his record is true: and He knoweth that he
saith true, that ye might believe._'
That some in St. John's day had begun to deny that Jesus Christ was
come in the flesh, nay, that he regarded this denial as _the_
anti-Christian doctrine, we know from his Epistle. His Gospel is the
answer to this denial, because it begins from the divine ground, and
shows how impossible it is to maintain that ground, unless we believe
in the Word made flesh. He that saw the water and the blood then bare
record of the fact, the import of which concerned the life of the
Church and of every man. If we look at the subject from this point of
view, we are not obliged to decide whether St. John spoke of the water
and the blood in a common sense, as a point of evidence, or in a
sacramental sense, as involving a high mystery. The common sense _is_
the sacramental sense; the evidence of Christ's actual relation to our
nature is the assurance that He cleanses it of its defilement, that He
endues it with a new and higher life. What more is conveyed by this
sign, or, rather, what a force it gives to the whole history of the
crucifixion, St. John himself must tell us.
'_For these things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled,
A bone of Him shall not be broken. And again another Scripture saith,
They shall look on Him whom they pierced._'
To understand the fulfilments of Scripture of which the Apostle
speaks, by merely fitting the words which he quotes to some fact, I
believe to be impossible. There is a fact always answering to the
words; but its import, its connexion with the life of our Lord and the
life of man, must be ascertained by meditating on the context: that
context being found, not always in the letters of a book, but quite as
often in a portion of history, or in an institution and the purposes
for which it existed. Here is a type instance. The words, '_A bone
shall not be broken_,' are brought to the Apostle's mind by seeing
that the usual custom of breaking the legs of crucified malefactors
was not followed in the case of our Lord. But those words recalled to
him and to his countrymen the feast of the Passover, and all that is
declared respecting it in the 12th chapter of Exodus. The fulfilment,
then, of these words was the fulfilment of the whole Passover service;
the translation of the national deliverance which it spoke of into a
complete and universal deliverance; the substitution of the Lamb of
God that taketh away the sin of the world, for the lamb whose blood
was sprinkled upon the door-posts of the houses that the angel of
death might not touch them.
The other quotation is even more remarkable; it is taken from the 12th
chapter of Zechariah. '_And I will pour upon the house of David, and
upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of
supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and
they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and
shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his
first-born._'
One fulfilment of Scripture at the Cross was in the rending of the
vesture by the soldiers, and in the mockery of the priests. The last,
representing the inward hatred of the Jewish nation, is more fearful
than the mere recklessness of the heathen officials. How utterly
overwhelming it would have been to the Apostle, if he could have
supposed that either the recklessness or the hatred was mightier than
the divine love which was manifested there! But the pierced side
recalled the words of the old prophet. There was a witness in them
that even hatred would prove weak at last; that even upon the
inhabitants of Jerusalem and the house of David a power would come
from that Cross that nothing should resist. It said, 'The will of
eternal Love may be contended with long. It must prevail at last and
for ever.'
With the assurance that Scripture shall yet receive this grand and
complete fulfilment the history of the crucifixion closes. St. John,
like the other Evangelists, records the burial in Joseph's tomb. He
introduces one particular into their narratives which, for the
students of his Gospel, is full of interest. '_And there came also
Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night; and brought a
mixture of myrrh, and aloes, about an hundred pound weight._'
On the night of which St. John speaks, Nicodemus had heard the words,
'_As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world, that He
sent His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish, but have everlasting life._' As the eyes of the ruler
turned to the Cross, may there not have come to him a sense of divine,
unutterable love, stronger than death, which will have made these dark
words intelligible? May there not have come to himself, in that hour,
the pangs of the second birth of which all his Jewish lore had taught
him nothing? May he not have hoped that for the body he was anointing,
there would also be a second birth, a resurrection morn?
DISCOURSE XXVIII.
THE RESURRECTION.
[Lincoln's Inn, 11th Sunday after Trinity (Afternoon), August 3,
1856.]
ST. JOHN XX. 30, 31.
_And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his
disciples, which are not written in this book: but these 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._
This morning I went through the narrative of our Lord's Passion, which
is contained in the 18th and 19th chapters of this Gospel. I propose
to examine, this afternoon, the narrative of the resurrection, and of
the events that followed it, which is contained in the 20th and 21st
chapters.
Those who have formed a vague notion of the fourth Gospel, as the
Gospel _according to the Spirit_, the other three being represented as
Gospels _according to the flesh_, will expect that St. John should
attach far less importance than his predecessors did to the
resurrection of our Lord's body out of the grave. They will suppose
that he must have sympathised much more in those passages of St.
Paul's Epistle to the Romans, in which he speaks of our being risen
with Christ, than with the 15th chapter of the Epistle to the
Corinthians, in which he makes that resurrection, which many among
them denied, the very centre of his message to mankind.
I hope we have not gone thus far in the study of St. John without
discovering that this conception of his character and purpose is an
entirely false one. In whatever sense St. John's Gospel is a spiritual
one, he has spoken of Christ's presence at feasts, family and
national, of His hunger and fatigue, of His friendship for special
persons, of actual bodily suffering in the hour of death, at least as
much as any of the four. He takes more, not less, pains than the
others, in recording incidents. No plain person ever felt that his
story, if it is ever so divine, is not human. I may have made this
observation very often, but I will repeat it even to weariness, rather
than that it should be forgotten, since upon the recollection of it
depends all hope of our understanding the beloved disciple, or of our
gaining anything from him. It is true that he has carried us back to
the beginning of all things, instead of introducing us to the manger
in Bethlehem, or telling us first of the preaching of John in the
wilderness. It is true that he has told us of the Word who was with
God, before he has used the name of Jesus Christ. It is true that
throughout his Gospel he has been presenting to us Jesus Christ as the
Word of God, the Giver of light and life to men. It is true that this
has been his explanation of the signs which Jesus did when He fed the
multitude, or healed the sick, or raised the dead. It is true that
this has been his explanation of those parables in the natural world,
by which the Creator of that world revealed to men the mysteries of
the kingdom of God. It is true that, by following this method, St.
John interprets to us those names, Son of God and Son of Man, kingdom
of God, kingdom of heaven, which occur so continually in the previous
Gospels. It is true that he brings out in its fulness their
declaration, that the office of the Christ was to baptize with the
Holy Spirit, and to deliver men from the spirit of evil. It is true
that the Name in which St. Matthew declares that the disciples were to
baptize all nations, is unfolded to us by St. John with a distinctness
and fulness with which it had never been unfolded before.
And _therefore_ I think St. John must be even more careful than the
other Evangelists to speak of the resurrection as a distinct, definite
event: to set it before us in language which shall give us no excuse
for supposing that he is merely talking of our spiritual nature, or of
Christ's spiritual nature; in language which shall fix it upon our
minds as a fact that was accomplished upon this earth. Of evidence, as
I have remarked to you before, the other Evangelists give us very
little. They assume that it was not possible that the Son of God
should be holden by death, that the marvel which angels desired to
look into was that He should have submitted to death. Only so far as
that conviction took hold of men's minds could they believe in a
resurrection, though a body of the most incredulous and learned
witnesses should conspire to affirm it. St. John cannot have attached
more weight to this kind of evidence than they did. His whole Gospel
has been showing that it is an evidence which the living Word presents
to the hearts and consciences of men, that alone produces any
practical conviction. He must have felt, even more than his
brother-disciples did, that the Word of life could not be overcome by
death; that the great contradiction of all, which could only be
explained by the truth that the highest life is the life of love, was
in His undergoing death. He, therefore, more than any one else, must
have felt the resurrection to be necessary, to be implied in the
relation of Christ to his Father. He has again and again told us that
the return of Christ to the Father was that to which He looked forward
as the return to His natural state and proper home; at the same time
as the consummation of the work He had done upon earth. He is so
impressed with this conviction, it was so much his work to impress us
with this conviction, that he will not relate, as St. Luke does, the
fact of the ascension in the sight of the disciples. _That_ is taken
for granted. All that he has written would be unmeaning, if his Master
were not gone to the Father to prepare mansions for His disciples. But
the victory of the Spirit over the flesh, the proof that He who was
united to the Father and united to a mortal body, overcame, in virtue
of His divine fellowship, his fellowship with dust, and made that body
free from its bondage--this must be spoken of as the proper
termination of His earthly conflict. For by this He justified fully
the feeling of mankind, which all the teaching of Scripture had
confirmed, but which no prophet or saint had been able to justify to
himself, that death is an intruder into this world of ours; that it is
not less an intruder because all have yielded to it, and must yield to
it; that there is a law of life which is higher than the law of death;
that we cannot be satisfied till that law is promulgated and
vindicated, not for one here and there, but for the whole race in the
person of its Head.
With these thoughts in our minds, let us consider the following
verses: '_The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when
it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away
from the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and
to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have
taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not_ where they
have laid Him. Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple,
and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together: and the other
disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he
stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went
he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the
sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was
about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together
in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which
came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. For as yet they
knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. Then
the disciples went away again unto their own home._'
The points wherein this narrative differs from those in the earlier
Gospels, are those which refer to the Apostle himself and to St.
Peter. There is more, you will perceive, not less, of detail than
elsewhere. The Apostles look into the sepulchre; they see the linen
clothes and the napkin. We are told where the napkin is lying. These
are not points of evidence, in the sense in which we commonly use that
word. If we repeated them ever so often, or multiplied them ever so
much, they would not establish the fact. They have served a much
higher and more practical purpose. They have brought the fact home to
the minds of multitudes as a fact. They have taken it out of the
region of mist and shadow. They have connected it with a Person. Their
very minuteness leads us to think of Him, not of them. They say to us,
as they said to the Apostles, not 'There is a resurrection,' but '_He_
is risen.'
By speaking of himself, St. John is able to make us acquainted with
the process of conviction in one mind. He does not indeed, dwell upon
any mental struggles. He just hints at the dull unbelief with which
he began; at the eagerness, more of curiosity than of hope, with which
he ran to the sepulchre; at the timidity or awe which hindered him
from going in; at the dawn of faith when he saw the clothes. It is all
very simple and childlike. What surprises some of us most is, that he
should blame himself for not having known the Scriptures, '_that He
must rise again from the dead_.' What Scriptures could have told him
this so clearly? Are there any which positively and formally announce
it to us who read them in this day,--any, at all events, which we
could blame a plain wayfarer for not connecting with it? Have not
learned men of our own, able and vehement opposers of infidelity,
affirmed that there are no traces of a belief in a future state among
the writers of the Old Testament, nay, urged the absence of such
traces as a proof of their divine legation? And has not St. John
himself produced evidence enough that those who pored over the
Scriptures most could not identify Jesus as the Person in whom their
prophecies were to meet? We must go back, I believe, to the language
of which I have spoken so often, if we would see our way through this
difficulty. If the old Scriptures said nothing of a Word of God, of a
divine Lord of men's spirits and bodies, it was impossible to conclude
from them that He, or any one, would rise again from the dead. As long
as St. John was blind to the fact that they _did_ speak of such a One,
that they were speaking of Him from beginning to end, that He only
gave any unity to their histories or their prophecies; so long the
most incessant diligence could not enable him to discover in these
Scriptures more than dark hints of a triumph over death,--hints which
never could support a practical belief, could never overcome the
objections of sense and experience. The moment they found _this_ Word
speaking in all the words of the Bible, the moment they believed that
Jesus was the Word made flesh, the Scriptures became full even to
overflowing with these tidings. Not to see them there was to see there
only dead letters.