_THE MUTE PRIEST._
LUKE i. 5-25, 57-80.
After his personal prelude, our Evangelist goes on to give in detail the
pre-Advent revelations, so connecting the thread of his narrative with
the broken-off thread of the Old Testament. His language, however,
suddenly changes its character and accent; and its frequent Hebraisms
show plainly that he is no longer giving his own words, but that he is
simply recording the narratives as they were told him, possibly by some
member of the Holy Family.
"There was in the days of Herod, king of Judæa." Even the surface-reader
of Scripture will observe how little is made in its pages of the
time-element. There is a purposed vagueness in its chronology, which
scarcely accords with our Western ideas of accuracy and precision. We
observe times and seasons. We strike off the years with the clang of
bells or the hush of solemn services. Each day with us is lifted up into
prominence, having a personality and history all its own, and as we
write its history, we keep it clear of all its to-morrows and its
yesterdays. And so the day grows naturally into a date, and dates
combine into chronologies, where everything is sharp, exact. Not so,
however, was it, or indeed is it, in the Eastern world. Time there, if
we may speak temporally, was of little moment. To that slow-moving and
slow-thinking world one day was a trifle, something atomic; it took a
number of them to make an appreciable quantity. And so they divided
their time, in ordinary speech, not minutely as we do, due into larger
periods, measuring its distances by the shadows of their striking
events. Why is it that we have four Gospels, and in fact a whole New
Testament, without a date? for it cannot possibly be a chance omission.
Is the time-element so subdued and set back, lest the "things temporal"
should lead off our minds from the "things spiritual and eternal"? For
what is time, after all, but a negative quantity? an empty space, in
itself all silent and dead, until our thoughts and deeds strike against
it and make it vocal? Nay, even in the heavenly life we see the same
losing of the time-element, for we read, "There should be time no
longer." Not that it will then disappear, swallowed up in that infinite
duration we call eternity. That would make heaven a confusion; for to
finite minds eternity itself must come in measured beats, striking, like
the waves along the shore, in rhythmic intervals. But _our_ time will be
no longer. It must needs be transfigured, ceasing to be earthly, that it
may become heavenly in its measurement and in its speech. And so in the
Bible, which is a Divine-human book, written for the ages, God has
purposely veiled the times, at any rate the "days" of earthly reckoning.
Even the day of our Lord's birth, and the day of His death, our
chronologies cannot determine: we measure, we guess, but it is randomly,
like the blinded men of Sodom, who wearied themselves to find the door.
In Heaven's reckoning deeds are more than days. Time-beats by
themselves are only broken silences, but put a soul among them, and you
make songs, anthems, and all kinds of music. "In those days" may be a
common Hebraism, but may it not be something more? may it not be an
idiom of celestial speech, the heavenly way of referring to earthly
things? At any rate we know this, that while Heaven is careful to give
us the purpose, the promise, and the fulfilment, the Divine Spirit does
not care to give us the exact moment when the promise became a
realization. And that it is so shows that it is best it should be so.
Silence sometimes may be better than speech.
But in saying all this we do not say that Heaven is unobservant of
earthly times and seasons. They are a part of the Divine order, stamped
on all lives, on all worlds. Our days and nights keep their alternate
step; our seasons observe their processional order, singing in
antiphonal responses; while our world, geared in with other worlds,
strikes off our earthly years and days with an absolute precision. So,
now, the time of the Advent has been Divinely chosen, for whole
millenniums unalterably fixed; nor have the cries of Israel's impatient
hopes been allowed to hurry forward the Divine purpose, so making it
premature. But why should the Advent be so long delayed? In our
off-handed way of thinking we might have supposed the Redeemer would
have come directly after the Fall; and as far as Heaven was concerned,
there was no reason why the Incarnation and the Redemption should not be
effected immediately. The Divine Son was even then prepared to lay aside
His glories, and to become incarnate. He might have been born of the
Virgin of Eden, as well as of the Virgin of Galilee; and even then He
might have offered unto God that perfect obedience by which the "many
are made righteous." Why, then, this strange delay, as the months
lengthen into years, and the years into centuries? The Patriarchs come
and go, and only see the promise "afar off." Then come centuries of
oppression, as Canaan is completely eclipsed by the dark shadow of
Egypt; then the Exodus, the wanderings, the conquest. The Judges
administer a rough-handed justice; Kings play with their little crowns;
Prophets rebuke and prophesy, telling of the "Wonderful" who shall be;
but still the Messiah delays His coming. Why this strange postponement
of the world's hopes, as if prophecy dealt in illusions only? We find
the answer in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (chap. iv. 4). The
"fulness of the time" was not yet come. The time was maturing, but was
not yet ripe. Heaven was long ago prepared for an Incarnation, but Earth
was not; and had the Advent occurred at an earlier stage of the world's
history, it would have been an anachronism the age would have
misunderstood. There must be a leading up to God's gifts, or His
blessings cease to be blessings. The world must be prepared for the
Christ, or virtually He is no Christ, no Saviour to them. The Christ
must come into the world's mind as a familiar thought, He must come into
the world's heart as a deep-felt need, before He can come as the Word
Incarnate.
And when is this "fulness of the time"? "In the days of Herod, king of
Judæa." Such is the phrase that now strikes the Divine hour, and leads
in the dawn of a new dispensation. And what dark days were those to the
Hebrew people, when on the throne of their David sat that Idumean shadow
of the dread Cæsar! Their land swarms with Gentile hordes, and on the
soil devoted to Jehovah rise stately, splendid temples, dedicated to
strange gods. It is one irruption of Paganism, as if the Roman Pantheon
had emptied itself upon the Holy Land. Nay, it seemed as if the Hebrew
faith itself would become extinct, strangled by heathen fables, or at
any rate that she would survive, only the ghost of her other self,
walking like an apparition, with veiled face and sealed lips, amid the
scenes of her former glories. "The days of Herod" were the Hebrew
midnight, but they give us the Bright and Morning Star. And so upon this
dial-plate of Scripture the great Herod, with all his royalties, is
nothing more than the dark, empty shadow which marks a Divine hour, "the
fulness of the time."
Israel's corporate life began with four centuries of silence and
oppression, when Egypt gave them the doubled task, and Heaven grew
strangely still, giving them neither voice nor vision. Is it but one of
the chance repetitions of history that Israel's national life should
end, too, with four hundred years of silence? for such is the
coincidence, if, indeed, we may not call it something more. It is,
however, just such a coincidence as the Hebrew mind, quick to trace
resemblances and to discern signs, would grasp firmly and eagerly. It
would revive their long-deferred and dying hopes, overlaying the near
future with its gold. Possibly it was this very coincidence that now
transformed their hope into expectation, and set their hearts listening
for the advent of the Messiah. Did not Moses come when the task was
doubled? And was not the four hundred years' silence broken by the
thunders of the Exodus, as the I AM, once again asserting Himself, "sent
redemption to His people"? And so, counting back their silent years
since Heaven's last voice came to them through their prophet Malachi,
they caught in its very silences a sound of hope, the footfall of the
forerunner, and the voice of the coming Lord. But where, and how, shall
the long silence be broken? We must go for our answer--and here, again,
we see a correspondence between the new Exodus and the old--to the tribe
of Levi, and to the house of Amram and Jochebed.
Residing in one of the priestly cities of the hill-country of
Judæa--though not in Hebron, as is commonly supposed, for it is most
unlikely that a name so familiar and sacred in the Old Testament would
here be omitted in the New--was "a certain priest named Zacharias."
Himself a descendant of Aaron, his wife, too, was of the same lineage;
and besides being "of the daughters of Aaron," she bore the name of
their ancestral mother, "Elisabeth." Like Abraham and Sarah, they were
both well advanced in years, and childless. But if they were not allowed
to have any lien upon posterity, throwing themselves forward into future
generations, they made up the lack of earthly relationships by
cultivating the heavenly. Forbidden, as they thought, to look forward
down the lines of earthly hopes, they could and did look heavenward; for
we read that they were both "righteous"--a word implying a Mosaic
perfection--"walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord
blameless." We may not be able, perhaps, to give the precise distinction
between "commandments" and "ordinances," for they were sometimes used
interchangeably; but if, as the general use of the words allows us, we
refer the "commandments" to the moral, and the "ordinances" to the
ceremonial law, we see how wide is the ground they cover, embracing, as
they do, the (then) "whole duty of man." Rarely, if ever, do the
Scriptures speak in such eulogistic terms; and that they should here be
applied to Zacharias and Elisabeth shows that they were advanced in
saintliness, as well as in years. Possibly St. Luke had another object
in view in giving us the portraits of these two pre-Advent Christians,
completing in the next chapter the quarternion, by his mention of Simeon
and Anna. It is somewhat strange, to say the least, that the Gentile
Evangelist should be the one to give us this remarkable group--the four
aged Templars, who, "when it was yet dark," rose to chant their matins
and to anticipate the dawn. Whether the Evangelist intended it or not,
his narrative salutes the Old, while it heralds the New dispensation,
paying to that Old a high though unconscious tribute. It shows us that
Hebraism was not yet dead; for if on its central stem, within the
limited area of its Temple courts, such a cluster of beautiful lives
could be found, who will tell the harvest of its outlying branches?
Judaism was not altogether a piece of mechanism, elaborate and exact,
with a soulless, metallic click of rites and ceremonies. It was an
organism, living and sentient. It had nerves and blood. Possessed of a
heart itself, it touched the hearts of its children. It gave them
aspirations and inspirations without number; and even its shadows were
the interpreters, as they were the creations, of the heavenly light. And
if now it is doomed to pass away, outdated and superseded, it is not
because it is bad, worthless; for it was a Divine conception, the "good"
thing, preparing for and proclaiming God's "better thing." Judaism was
the "glorious angel, keeping the gates of light;" and now, behold, she
swings back the gates, welcomes the Morning, and herself then
disappears.
It is the autumn service for the course of Abia--which is the eighth of
the twenty-four courses into which the priesthood was divided--and
Zacharias proceeds to Jerusalem, to perform whatever part of the service
the lot may assign to him. It is probably the evening of the
Sabbath--the presence of the multitude would almost imply that--and this
evening the lot gives to Zacharias the coveted distinction--which could
only come once in a lifetime--of burning incense in the Holy Place. At a
given signal, between the slaying and the offering of the lamb,
Zacharias, barefooted and robed in white, passes up the steps,
accompanied by two assistants, one bearing a golden censer containing
half a pound of the sweet-smelling incense, the other bearing a golden
vessel of burning coals taken from the altar. Slowly and reverently they
pass within the Holy Place, which none but Levites are permitted to
enter; and having arranged the incense, and spread the live coals upon
the altar, the assistants retire, leaving Zacharias alone--alone in the
dim light of the seven-branched candlestick, alone beside that veil he
may not uplift, and which hides from his sight the Holy of Holies, where
God dwells "in the thick darkness." Such is the place, and such the
supreme moment, when Heaven breaks the silence of four hundred years.
It is no concern of ours to explain the phenomenon that followed, or to
tone down its supernatural elements. Given an Incarnation, and then the
supernatural becomes not only probable, but necessary. Indeed, we could
not well conceive of any new revelation without it; and instead of its
being a weakness, a blemish on the page of Scripture, it is rather a
proof of its heavenliness, a hall-mark that stamps its Divinity. Nor is
there any need, believing as we do in the existence of intelligences
other and higher than ourselves, that we apologize for the appearance of
angels, here and elsewhere, in the story; such deference to Sadducean
doubts is not required.
Suddenly, as Zacharias stands with uplifted hands, joining in the
prayers offered by the silent "multitude" without, an angel appears. He
stands "on the right side of the altar of incense," half-veiled by the
fragrant smoke, which curling upwards, filled the place. No wonder that
the lone priest is filled with "fear," and that he is "troubled"--a word
implying an outward tremor, as if the very body shook with the unwonted
agitation of the soul. The angel does not at first announce his name,
but seeks rather to calm the heart of the priest, stilling its tumult
with a "Fear not," as Jesus stilled the waters with His "Peace." Then he
makes known his message, speaking in language most homely and most
human: "Thy prayer is heard." Perhaps a more exact rendering would be,
"Thy request was granted," for the substantive implies a specific
prayer, while the verb indicates a "hearing" that becomes an
"assenting." What the prayer was we may gather from the angel's words;
for the whole message, both in its promise and its prophecy, is but an
amplification of its first clause. To the Jew, childlessness was the
worst of all bereavements. It implied, at least they thought so, the
Divine displeasure; while it effectually cut them off from any personal
share in those cherished Messianic hopes. To the Hebrew heart the
message, "Unto you a son is born," was the music of a lower Gospel. It
marked an epoch in their life-history; it brought the fulfilment of
their desires, and a wealth of added dignities. And Zacharias had
prayed, earnestly and long, that a son might be born to them; but the
bright hope, with the years, had grown distant and dim, until at last it
had dropped down beyond the horizon of their thoughts, and become an
impossibility. But those prayers were heard, yea, and granted, too, in
the Divine purpose; and if the answer has been delayed, it was that it
might come freighted with a larger blessing.
But in saying that this was the specific prayer of Zacharias we do not
wish to disparage his motives, confining his thoughts and aspirations
within a circle so narrow and selfish. This lesser hope of offspring,
like a satellite, revolved around the larger hope of a Messiah, and
indeed grew out of it. It drew all its brightness and all its beauty
from that larger hope, the hope that lighted up the dark Hebrew sky with
the auroras of a new and fadeless dawn. When mariners "take the sun," as
they call it, reading from its disc their longitudes, they bring it down
to their horizon-level. They get the higher in the lower vision, and the
real direction of their looks is not the apparent direction. And if
Zacharias' thoughts and prayers seem to have an earthward drift, his
soul looks higher than his speech; and if he looks along the
horizon-level of earthly hopes, it is that he may read the heavenly
promise. It is not a son that he is looking for, but _the_ Son, the
"Seed" in whom "all the families of the earth shall be blessed." And so,
when the silent tongue regains its powers of speech, it gives its first
and highest doxologies for that other Child, who is Himself the promised
"redemption" and a "horn of salvation;" his own child he sets back, far
back in the shadow (or rather the light) of Him whom he calls the
"Lord." It is the near realization of both these hopes that the angel
now announces.
A son shall be born to them, even in their advanced years, and they
shall call his name "John," which means "The Lord is gracious." "Many
will rejoice with them at his birth," for that birth will be the
awakening of new hopes, the first hour of a new day. "Great in the sight
of the Lord," he must be a Nazarite, abstaining wholly from "wine and
strong drink"--the two Greek words including all intoxicants, however
made. "Filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb"--that original
bias or propensity to evil, if not obliterated, yet more than
neutralized--he shall be the Elijah (in spirit and in power) of
Malachi's prophecy, turning many of Israel's children "to the Lord their
God." "Going before Him"--and the antecedent of "Him" must be "the Lord
their God" of the preceding verse, so early is the purple of Divinity
thrown around the Christ--he "shall turn the hearts of fathers to their
children," restoring peace and order to domestic life, and the
"disobedient" he shall incline "to walk in the wisdom of the just"
(R.V.), bringing back the feet that have erred and slipped to "the paths
of uprightness," which are the "ways of wisdom." In short, he shall be
the herald, making ready a people prepared for the Lord, running before
the royal chariot, proclaiming the coming One, and preparing His way,
then leaving his own little footprints to disappear, thrown up in the
chariot-dust of Him who was greater and mightier than he.
We can easily understand, even if we may not apologize for, the
incredulity of Zacharias. There are crises in our life when, under
profound emotion, Reason herself seems bewildered, and Faith loses her
steadiness of vision. The storm of feeling throws the reflective powers
into confusion, and thought becomes blurred and indistinct, and speech
incoherent and wild. And such a crisis was it now, but intensified to
the mind of Zacharias by all these additions of the supernatural. The
vision, with its accessories of place and time, the message, so
startling, even though so welcome, must necessarily produce a strange
pertubation of soul; and what surprise need there be that when the
priest does speak it is in the lisping accents of unbelief? Could it
well have been otherwise? Peter "wist not that it was true which was
done by the angel, but thought he saw a vision;" and though Zacharias
has none of these doubts of unreality--it is to him no dream of the
moment's ecstasy--still he is not yet aware of the rank and dignity of
his angel-visitant, while he is perplexed at the message, which so
directly contravenes both reason and experience. He does not doubt the
Divine power, let it be observed, but he does seek for a sign that the
angel speaks with Divine authority. "Whereby shall I know this?" he
asks, reminding us by his question of Jacob's "Tell me thy name." The
angel replies, in substance, "You ask whereby you may know this; that
is, you wish to know by whose authority I declare this message to you.
Well, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and I was sent to
speak unto you, and to bring you these good tidings. And since you ask
for a sign, an endorsement of my message, you shall have one. I put the
seal of silence upon your lips, and you shall not be able to speak until
the day when these things shall come to pass, because you believed not
my words." Then the vision ends; Gabriel returns to the songs and
anthems of the skies, leaving Zacharias to carry, in awful stillness of
soul, this new "secret of the Lord."
This infliction of dumbness upon Zacharias has generally been regarded
as a rebuke and punishment for his unbelief; but if we refer to the
parallel cases of Abraham and of Gideon, such is not Heaven's wonted
answer to the request for a sign. We must understand it rather as the
proof Zacharias sought, something at once supernatural and significant,
that should help his stumbling faith. Such a sign, and a most effective
one, it was. Unlike Gideon's dew, that would soon evaporate, leaving
nothing but a memory, this was ever present, ever felt, at least until
faith was exchanged for sight. Nor was it dumbness simply, for the word
(ver. 22) rendered "speechless" implies inability to hear as well as
inability to speak; and this, coupled with the fact mentioned in ver.
62, that "they made signs to him"--which they would scarcely have done
could he have heard their voices--compels us to suppose that Zacharias
had suddenly become deaf as well as dumb. Heaven put the seal of silence
upon his lips and ears, that so its own voice might be more clear and
loud; and so the profound silences of Zacharias' soul were but the blank
spaces on which Heaven s sweet music was written.
How long the interview with the angel lasted we cannot tell. It must,
however, have been brief; for at a given signal, the stroke of the
Magrephah, the attendant priest would re-enter the Holy Place, to light
the two lamps that had been left unlighted. And here we must look for
the "tarrying" that so perplexed the multitude, who were waiting
outside, in silence, for the benediction of the incensing priest.
Re-entering the Holy Place, the attendant finds Zacharias smitten as by
a sudden paralysis--speechless, deaf, and overcome by emotion. What
wonder that the strange excitement makes them oblivious of time, and,
for the moment, all-forgetful of their Temple duties! The priests are
in their places, grouped together on the steps leading up to the Holy
Place; the sacrificing priest has ascended the great brazen altar; ready
to cast the pieces of the slain lamb upon the sacred fire; the Levites
stand ready with their trumpets and their psalms--all waiting for the
priests who linger so long in the Holy Place. At length they appear,
taking up their position on the top of the steps, above the rows of
priests, and above the silent multitude. But Zacharias cannot pronounce
the usual benediction to-day. The "Jehovah bless thee and keep thee" is
unsaid; the priest can only "beckon" to them, perhaps laying his finger
on the silent lips, and then pointing to the silent heavens--to them
indeed silent, but to himself all vocal now.
And so the mute priest, after the days of his ministration are
completed, returns to his home in the hill-country, to wait the
fulfilment of the promises, and out of his deep silences to weave a song
that should be immortal; for the _Benedictus_, whose music girdles the
world to-day, before it struck upon the world's ear and heart, had,
through those quiet months, filled the hushed temple of his soul,
lifting up the priest and the prophet among the poets, and passing down
the name of Zacharias as one of the first sweet singers of the new
Israel.
And so the Old meets, and merges into the New; and at the marriage it is
the speaking hands of the mute priest that join together the two
Dispensations, as each gives itself to the other, never more to be put
asunder, but to be "no longer twain, but one," one Purpose, one Plan,
one Divine Thought, one Divine Word.