that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now,
for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when
they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and
cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice ye in
that day, and leap for joy, for behold your reward is great in heaven;
for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets._
_'But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your
consolation. Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto
you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you when all
men shall speak well of you; for so did their fathers to the false
prophets.'_
On this occasion he uses the word _hunger_ without limitation. Every
true want, every genuine need, every God-created hunger, is a thing
provided for in the idea of the universe; but no attempt to fill a void
otherwise than the Heart of the Universe intended and intends, is or can
be anything but a woe. God forgets none of his children--the naughty
ones any more than the good. Love and reward is for the good: love and
correction for the bad. The bad ones will trouble the good, but shall do
them no hurt. The evil a man does to his neighbour, shall do his
neighbour no harm, shall work indeed for his good; but he himself will
have to mourn for his doing. A sore injury to himself, it is to his
neighbour a cause of jubilation--not for the evil the man does to
himself--over that there is sorrow in heaven--but for the good it
occasions his neighbour. The poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated,
may lament their lot as if God had forgotten them; but God is all the
time caring for them. Blessed in his sight now, they shall soon know
themselves blessed. 'Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall
laugh.'--Welcome words from the glad heart of the Saviour! Do they not
make our hearts burn within us?--They shall be comforted even to
laughter! The poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated, the persecuted,
are the powerful, the opulent, the merry, the loved, the victorious of
God's kingdom,--to be filled with good things, to laugh for very
delight, to be honoured and sought and cherished!
But such as have their poor consolation in this life--alas for
them!--for those who have yet to learn what hunger is! for those whose
laughter is as the crackling of thorns! for those who have loved and
gathered the praises of men! for the rich, the jocund, the full-fed!
Silent-footed evil is on its way to seize them. Dives must go without;
Lazarus must have. God's education makes use of terrible extremes. There
are last that shall be first, and first that shall be last.
The Lord knew what trials, what tortures even awaited his disciples
after his death; he knew they would need every encouragement he could
give them to keep their hearts strong, lest in some moment of dismay
they should deny him. If they had denied him, where would our gospel be?
If there are none able and ready to be crucified for him now, alas for
the age to come! What a poor travesty of the good news of God will
arrive at their doors!
Those whom our Lord felicitates are all the children of one family; and
everything that can be called blessed or blessing comes of the same
righteousness. If a disciple be blessed because of any one thing, every
other blessing is either his, or on the way to become his; for he is on
the way to receive the very righteousness of God. Each good thing opens
the door to the one next it, so to all the rest. But as if these his
assurances and promises and comfortings were not large enough; as if the
mention of any condition whatever might discourage some humble man of
heart with a sense of unfitness, with the fear, perhaps conviction that
the promise was not for him; as if some one might say, 'Alas, I am
proud, and neither poor in spirit nor meek; I am at times not at all
hungry after righteousness; I am not half merciful, and am very ready to
feel hurt and indignant: I am shut out from every blessing!' the Lord,
knowing the multitudes that can urge nothing in their own favour, and
sorely feel they are not blessed, looks abroad over the wide world of
his brothers and sisters, and calls aloud, including in the boundless
invitation every living soul with but the one qualification of unrest or
discomfort, 'Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest.'
_THE YOKE OF JESUS._
At that time Jesus answered and said,--according to Luke, In that hour
Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said,--'I thank thee, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it
seemed good in thy sight.
'All things are delivered unto me of my father; and no man knoweth the
son,'--according to Luke, 'who the son is,'--'but the father; neither
knoweth any man the father,'--according to Luke, 'who the father
is,'--'save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal
him.'--_Matthew_ xi. 25--27; _Luke_ x. 21, 22.
'Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and
lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is
easy, and my burden is light.' _Matthew_ xi. 28--30.
The words of the Lord in the former two of these paragraphs, are
represented, both by Matthew and by Luke, as spoken after the
denunciation of the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum; only
in Luke's narrative, the return of the seventy is mentioned between; and
there the rejoicing of the Lord over the Father's revelation of himself
to babes, appears to have reference to the seventy. The fact that the
return of the seventy is not mentioned elsewhere, leaves us free to
suppose that the words were indeed spoken on that occasion. The
circumstances, however, as circumstances, are to us of little
importance, not being necessary to the understanding of the words.
The Lord makes no complaint against the wise and prudent; he but
recognizes that they are not those to whom his father reveals his best
things; for which fact and the reasons of it, he thanks, or praises his
father. 'I bless thy will: I see that thou art right: I am of one mind
with thee:' something of each of these phases of meaning seems to belong
to the Greek word.
'But why not reveal true things first to the wise? Are they not the
fittest to receive them?' Yes, if these things and their wisdom lie in
the same region--not otherwise. No amount of knowledge or skill in
physical science, will make a man the fitter to argue a metaphysical
question; and the wisdom of this world, meaning by the term, the
philosophy of prudence, self-protection, precaution, specially unfits a
man for receiving what the Father has to reveal: in proportion to our
care about our own well being, is our incapability of understanding and
welcoming the care of the Father. The wise and the prudent, with all
their energy of thought, could never see the things of the Father
sufficiently to recognize them as true. Their sagacity labours in
earthly things, and so fills their minds with their own questions and
conclusions, that they cannot see the eternal foundations God has laid
in man, or the consequent necessities of their own nature. They are
proud of finding out things, but the things they find out are all less
than themselves. Because, however, they have discovered them, they
imagine such things the goal of the human intellect. If they grant there
may be things beyond those, they either count them beyond their reach,
or declare themselves uninterested in them: for the wise and prudent,
they do not exist. They work only to gather by the senses, and deduce
from what they have so gathered, the prudential, the probable, the
expedient, the protective. They never think of the essential, of what in
itself must be. They are cautious, wary, discreet, judicious,
circumspect, provident, temporizing. They have no enthusiasm, and are
shy of all forms of it--a clever, hard, thin people, who take _things_
for the universe, and love of facts for love of truth. They know
nothing deeper in man than mere surface mental facts and their
relations. They do not perceive, or they turn away from any truth which
the intellect cannot formulate. Zeal for God will never eat them up: why
should it? he is not interesting to them: theology may be; to such men
religion means theology. How should the treasure of the Father be open
to such? In their hands his rubies would draw in their fire, and cease
to glow. The roses of paradise in their gardens would blow withered.
They never go beyond the porch of the temple; they are not sure whether
there be any _adytum_, and they do not care to go in and see: why indeed
should they? it would but be to turn and come out again. Even when they
know their duty, they must take it to pieces, and consider the grounds
of its claim before they will render it obedience. All those evil
doctrines about God that work misery and madness, have their origin in
the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of the children.
These wise and prudent, careful to make the words of his messengers rime
with their conclusions, interpret the great heart of God, not by their
own hearts, but by their miserable intellects; and, postponing the
obedience which alone can give power to the understanding, press upon
men's minds their wretched interpretations of the will of the Father,
instead of the doing of that will upon their hearts. They call their
philosophy the truth of God, and say men must hold it, or stand outside.
They are the slaves of the letter in all its weakness and
imperfection,--and will be until the spirit of the Word, the spirit of
obedience shall set them free.
The babes must beware lest the wise and prudent come between them and
the Father. They must yield no claim to authority over their belief,
made by man or community, by church any more than by synagogue. That
alone is for them to believe which the Lord reveals to their souls as
true; that alone is it possible for them to believe with what he counts
belief. The divine object for which teacher or church exists, is the
persuasion of the individual heart to come to Jesus, the spirit, to be
taught what he alone can teach.
Terribly has his gospel suffered in the mouths of the wise and prudent:
how would it be faring now, had its first messages been committed to
persons of repute, instead of those simple fishermen? It would be
nowhere, or, if anywhere, unrecognizable. From the first we should have
had a system founded on a human interpretation of the divine gospel,
instead of the gospel itself, which would have disappeared. As it is, we
have had one dull miserable human system after another usurping its
place; but, thank God, the gospel remains! The little child, heedless
of his trailing cloud of glory, and looking about him aghast in an
unknown world, may yet see and run to the arms open to the children. How
often has not some symbol employed in the New Testament been forced into
the service of argument for one or another contemptible scheme of
redemption, which were no redemption; while the truth for the sake of
which the symbol was used, the thing meant to be conveyed by it, has
lain unregarded beside the heap of rubbish! Had the wise and prudent
been the confidants of God, I repeat, the letter would at once have
usurped the place of the spirit; the ministering slave would have been
set over the household; a system of religion, with its rickety,
malodorous plan of salvation, would not only have at once been put in
the place of a living Christ, but would yet have held that place. The
great brother, the human God, the eternal Son, the living one, would
have been as utterly hidden from the tearful eyes and aching hearts of
the weary and heavy-laden, as if he had never come from the deeps of
love to call the children home out of the shadows of a self-haunted
universe. But the Father revealed the Father's things to his babes; the
babes loved, and began to do them, therewith began to understand them,
and went on growing in the knowledge of them and in the power of
communicating them; while to the wise and prudent, the deepest words of
the most babe-like of them all, John Boanerges, even now appear but a
finger-worn rosary of platitudes. The babe understands the wise and
prudent, but is understood only by the babe.
The Father, then, revealed his things to babes, because the babes were
his own little ones, uncorrupted by the wisdom or the care of this
world, and therefore able to receive them. The others, though his
children, had not begun to be like him, therefore could not receive
them. The Father's things could not have got anyhow into their minds
without leaving all their value, all their spirit, outside the
unchildlike place. The babes are near enough whence they come, to
understand a little how things go in the presence of their father in
heaven, and thereby to interpret the words of the Son. The child who has
not yet 'walked above a mile or two from' his 'first love,' is not out
of touch with the mind of his Father. Quickly will he seal the old bond
when the Son himself, the first of the babes, the one perfect babe of
God, comes to lead the children out of the lovely 'shadows of eternity'
into the land of the 'white celestial thought.' As God is the one only
real father, so is it only to God that any one can be a perfect child.
In his garden only can childhood blossom.
The leader of the great array of little ones, himself, in virtue of his
firstborn childhood, the first recipient of the revelations of his
father, having thus given thanks, and said why he gave thanks, breaks
out afresh, renewing expression of delight that God had willed it thus:
'Even so, father, for so it seemed good in thy sight!' I venture to
translate, 'Yea, O Father, for thus came forth satisfaction before
thee!' and think he meant, 'Yea, Father, for thereat were all thy angels
filled with satisfaction,' The babes were the prophets in heaven, and
the angels were glad to find it was to be so upon the earth also; they
rejoiced to see that what was bound in heaven, was bound on earth; that
the same principle held in each. Compare Matt, xviii. 10 and 14; also
Luke xv. 10. 'See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I
say unto you that their angels in heaven do always behold the face of my
father which is in heaven.... Thus it is not the will before your father
which is in heaven,'--_among the angels who stand before him_, I think
he means,--'that one of these little ones should perish.' 'Even so, I
say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one
sinner that repenteth.'
Having thus thanked his father that he has done after his own 'good and
acceptable and perfect will', he turns to his disciples, and tells them
that he knows the Father, being his Son, and that he only can reveal the
Father to the rest of his children: 'All things are delivered unto me
of my father; and no one knoweth the son but the father; neither knoweth
any one the father save the son, and he to whomsoever the son willeth to
reveal him.' It is almost as if his mention of the babes brought his
thoughts back to himself and his father, between whom lay the secret of
all life and all sending--yea, all loving. The relation of the Father
and the Son contains the idea of the universe. Jesus tells his disciples
that his father had no secrets from him; that he knew the Father as the
Father knew him. The Son must know the Father; he only could know
him--and knowing, he could reveal him; the Son could make the other, the
imperfect children, know the Father, and so become such as he. All
things were given unto him by the Father, because he was the Son of the
Father: for the same reason he could reveal the things of the Father to
the child of the Father. The child-relation is the one eternal, ever
enduring, never changing relation.
Note that, while the Lord here represents the knowledge his father and
he have each of the other as limited to themselves, the statement is one
of fact only, not of design or intention: his presence in the world is
for the removal of that limitation. The Father knows the Son and sends
him to us that we may know him; the Son knows the Father, and dies to
reveal him. The glory of God's mysteries is--that they are for his
children to look into.
When the Lord took the little child in the presence of his disciples,
and declared him his representative, he made him the representative of
his father also; but the eternal child alone can reveal him. To reveal
is immeasurably more than to represent; it is to present to the eyes
that know the true when they see it. Jesus represented God; the spirit
of Jesus reveals God. The represented God a man may refuse; many refused
the Lord; the revealed God no one can refuse; to see God and to love him
are one. He can be revealed only to the child; perfectly, to the pure
child only. All the discipline of the world is to make men children,
that God may be revealed to them.
No man, when first he comes to himself, can have any true knowledge of
God; he can only have a desire after such knowledge. But while he does
not know him at all, he cannot become in his heart God's child; so the
Father must draw nearer to him. He sends therefore his first born, who
does know him, is exactly like him, and can represent him perfectly.
Drawn to him, the children receive him, and then he is able to reveal
the Father to them. No wisdom of the wise can find out God; no words of
the God-loving can reveal him. The simplicity of the whole natural
relation is too deep for the philosopher. The Son alone can reveal God;
the child alone understand him. The elder brother companies with the
younger, and makes him yet more a child like himself. He interpenetrates
his willing companion with his obedient glory. He lets him see how he
delights in his father, and lets him know that God is his father too. He
rouses in his little brother the sense of their father's will; and the
younger, as he hears and obeys, begins to see that his elder brother
must be the very image of their father. He becomes more and more of a
child, and more and more the Son reveals to him the Father. For he knows
that to know the Father is the one thing needful to every child of the
Father, the one thing to fill the divine gulf of his necessity. To see
the Father is the cry of every child-heart in the universe of the
Father--is the need, where not the cry, of every living soul. Comfort
yourselves then, brothers and sisters; he to whom the Son will reveal
him shall know the Father; and the Son came to us that he might reveal
him. 'Eternal Brother,' we cry, 'show us the Father. Be thyself to us,
that in thee we may know him. We too are his children: let the other
children share with thee in the things of the Father.'
Having spoken to his father first, and now to his disciples, the Lord
turns to the whole world, and lets his heart overflow:--St Matthew alone
has saved for us the eternal cry:--'Come unto me all ye that labour and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'--'I know the Father; come
then to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.' He does not here
call those who want to know the Father; his cry goes far beyond them; it
reaches to the ends of the earth. He calls those who are weary; those
who do not know that ignorance of the Father is the cause of all their
labour and the heaviness of their burden. 'Come unto me,' he says, 'and
I will give you rest.'
This is the Lord's own form of his gospel, more intensely personal and
direct, at the same time of yet wider inclusion, than that which, at
Nazareth, he appropriated from Isaiah; differing from it also in this,
that it is interfused with strongest persuasion to the troubled to enter
into and share his own eternal rest. I will turn his argument a little.
'I have rest because I know the Father. Be meek and lowly of heart
toward him as I am; let him lay his yoke upon you as he lays it on me. I
do his will, not my own. Take on you the yoke that I wear; be his child
like me; become a babe to whom he can reveal his wonders. Then shall you
too find rest to your souls; you shall have the same peace I have; you
will be weary and heavy laden no more. I find my yoke easy, my burden
light.'
We must not imagine that, when the Lord says, 'Take my yoke upon you,'
he means a yoke which he lays on those that come to him; 'my yoke' is
the yoke he wears himself, the yoke his father lays upon him, the yoke
out of which, that same moment, he speaks, bearing it with glad
patience. 'You must take on you the yoke I have taken: the Father lays
it upon us.'
The best of the good wine remains; I have kept it to the last. A friend
pointed out to me that the Master does not mean we must take on us a
yoke like his; we must take on us the very yoke he is carrying.
Dante, describing how, on the first terrace of Purgatory, he walked
stooping, to be on a level with Oderisi, who went bowed to the ground by
the ponderous burden of the pride he had cherished on earth, says--'I
went walking with this heavy-laden soul, just as oxen walk in the yoke':
this picture almost always comes to me with the words of the Lord, 'Take
my yoke upon you, and learn of me.' Their intent is, 'Take the other end
of my yoke, doing as I do, being as I am.' Think of it a moment:--to
walk in the same yoke with the Son of Man, doing the same labour with
him, and having the same feeling common to him and us! This, and nothing
else, is offered the man who would have rest to his soul; is required of
the man who would know the Father; is by the Lord pressed upon him to
whom he would give the same peace which pervades and sustains his own
eternal heart.
But a yoke is for drawing withal: what load is it the Lord is drawing?
Wherewith is the cart laden which he would have us help him draw? With
what but the will of the eternal, the perfect Father? How should the
Father honour the Son, but by giving him his will to embody in deed, by
making him hand to his father's heart!--and hardest of all, in bringing
home his children! Specially in drawing this load must his yoke-fellow
share. How to draw it, he must learn of him who draws by his side.
Whoever, in the commonest duties that fall to him, does as the Father
would have him do, bears His yoke along with Jesus; and the Father takes
his help for the redemption of the world--for the deliverance of men
from the slavery of their own rubbish-laden waggons, into the liberty of
God's husbandmen. Bearing the same yoke with Jesus, the man learns to
walk step for step with him, drawing, drawing the cart laden with the
will of the father of both, and rejoicing with the joy of Jesus. The
glory of existence is to take up its burden, and exist for Existence
eternal and supreme--for the Father who does his divine and perfect best
to impart his glad life to us, making us sharers of that nature which is
bliss, and that labour which is peace. He lives for us; we must live for
him. The little ones must take their full share in the great Father's
work: his work is the business of the family.
Starts thy soul, trembles thy brain at the thought of such a burden as
the will of the eternally creating, eternally saving God? 'How shall
mortal man walk in such a yoke,' sayest thou, 'even with the Son of God
bearing it also?'
Why, brother, sister, it is the only burden bearable--the only burden
that can be borne of mortal! Under any other, the lightest, he must at
last sink outworn, his very soul gray with sickness!
He on whom lay the other half of the burden of God, the weight of his
creation to redeem, says, 'The yoke I bear is easy; the burden I draw is
light'; and this he said, knowing the death he was to die. The yoke did
not gall his neck, the burden did not overstrain his sinews, neither did
the goal on Calvary fright him from the straight way thither. He had the
will of the Father to work out, and that will was his strength as well
as his joy. He had the same will as his father. To him the one thing
worth living for, was the share the love of his father gave him in his
work. He loved his father even to the death of the cross, and eternally
beyond it.