words of the text; "He took the damsel by the hand." There must be an
intensity of human sympathy, and there must be an indwelling of the
Divine power. The lesson of the miracle which I have taken for my
starting-point involves both these ideals. The current of womanly
sympathy must flow out deep and strong and clear. Is not this the
typical meaning of Christ's action in the text? The touch of His warm
hand restores the circulation and revives the life in those pale,
motionless, death-like limbs. We want sympathy here, sympathy first
and sympathy last--sympathy reflecting, however faintly, Christ's own
boundless compassion and love. The cold, mechanical formalism of the
relieving officer will not suffice; the haughty assertion of
superiority, the condescending patronage of the fine lady will be
worse than nothing. You must be a sister to your sisters, treading in
the footsteps of your Brother, Jesus Christ. Is not this also the
meaning of those words which He utters to the girl lying helpless
before Him? He speaks to her not in the Greek, the conventional
language of outward life, but in the Syriac, the true language of the
family and the home. It pierces her, notwithstanding her death-like
slumber. He speaks to her, as He speaks to us all, with the voice of a
direct personal love. This is always the language of Christ's words,
the language of Christ's Gospel,--"How hear we every man in our own
tongue wherein we were born?"
And over and above all this, animating, inspiring, sanctifying your
human sympathies, there must be the consciousness of the Divine
presence, the sense of the Divine energy, in your work. You will apply
yourself to it with a strength not your own; the power of the living
Christ will thrill through you. Is not this the interpretation of the
symbolic action, "He took the damsel by the hand"?--He _Himself_,
and not another. "Not I, but Christ in me," will be the inspiring
motive of your work, as it was in St. Paul's. _His_ hand must
guide your hand; nay, His hand must replace your hand, if the touch
shall raise the damsel, and restore her to a better and a happier
life.
And restore her it will; this intense human sympathy inspired by this
consciousness of the Divine indwelling. It never has failed yet, and
it never can fail to work miracles of resurrection and healing, in her
helplessness, in her temptations, in all her struggles and
perplexities, her bodily wants, and her spiritual trials. It will be
to her comfort and strength and hope; it will throb her with the pulse
of an awakened life.
But I have spoken hitherto as if these helpless girls whom you
befriend were the sole counterparts of Jairus's daughter. I have
regarded them as only the patients whom Christ's awakening hands raise
from their death-like slumbers. Is this an adequate representation of
the case, think you? Are there not others even more needy than they of
this beneficent movement? Are we not taught on the highest authority
that it is more blessed to give than to receive? But, if so, have we
not a truer antitype of this damsel whom Christ raised in these
befriended girls? Yes, Christ has taken them by the hand, and has
revived them, has awakened them from the heavy, death-like slumber of
a selfish, self-contained being. Christ has shown them the beauty and
the power of sympathy, and it has been to them the throbbing of a new
life. Surely it is not only the daughters of ancestral lineage and of
Norman blood, not only a Clara Vere de Vere, who are sickening with
disease, and who need Christ's healing hand; is there not in the home
of the professional man many a daughter and many a sister on whose
hand time hangs heavily, whose life is wasting away, fretting with
feverish excitement, or sunk in self-indulgence and apathy, weary of
self, and weary of others? How shall they wake up from their barren
monotony and death-like existence? Sympathy, active sympathy for
others; this, and this alone, can restore them. Mothers, train your
daughters early to think for others, to care for others, to minister
to others. Be assured this will be the most valuable part of their
education. This heaven-born charity is the sovereign antidote to all
the ills of womanhood. Is it some secret sorrow gnawing at the heart,
some outraged feeling, or some harrowing bereavement, or some actual
disappointment? Merge and absorb it in active solicitude for others.
Is it some fierce temptation which shamed you, and each fresh struggle
seems to leave you weaker than before? There will be no room for this
if you devote yourself to the needs of others. All sin is selfishness
in some form or other. Forget sloth; this is the best safeguard
against temptation.
I appeal confidently to all those who have made the trial to say
whether this medicine has healed them where all other medicines have
failed? And, why, why? It is Christ's own love constraining them; it
is Christ's own touch thrilling through their veins; hence they mark
the resurrection--"He took the damsel by the hand; and straightway she
arose and walked."
PILATE.[12]
"Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth?"--JOHN xviii. 38.
St. John is especially distinguished among the four evangelists for
his subtle delineation of character. We do not commonly remember--it
costs us an effort to remember--how very largely we are indebted to
the fourth gospel for our conceptions of the chief personages who bear
a part in evangelical history, where those conceptions are most clear
and distinct. If we analyse the sources of our information, we find
again and again that while something is told us about particular
persons in the other evangelists, yet it is St. John who gives those
touches to the picture which make it stand out with its own
individuality as a real, living, speaking man. The other evangelist
will record a name, or, perhaps, an incident; St. John will add one or
two sayings; and the whole person is instinct with life. The character
flashes out in half-a-dozen words. "From the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaketh." So it is with Philip, with Thomas, with Mary and
Martha, and with several others who might be named. This vividness of
portraiture is our strongest assurance, if assurance were needed, that
the narrative was indeed written by him whose name it bears--by the
beloved disciple and eye-witness himself. For, observe, there is no
effort at delineation of character; there is no delineation of
character at all, properly so called. The evangelist does not describe
the persons whom he introduces; they describe themselves. The
incidental act, the incidental movement or gesture, the incidental
saying, tells the tale. That which he had heard, that which he had
looked upon and his eyes had seen, that which his hands had handled of
the Word of Life--that and that only he declared.
Pilate furnishes a remarkable illustration of this feature in St.
John's gospel. Pilate is the chief agent in the crowning scene of
evangelical history. He is necessarily a prominent figure in all the
four narratives of this crisis. In the first three gospels we learn
much about him. We find him there, as we find him in St. John, at
cross purposes with the Jews. He is represented there, not less than
by St. John, as giving an unwilling consent to the judicial murder of
Jesus. His Roman sense of justice is too strong to allow him to yield
without an effort. His personal courage is too weak to persevere in
the struggle when the consequences threaten to become inconvenient. He
is timid, politic, time-serving, as represented by all alike. He has
just enough conscience to wish to shake off the responsibility, but
far too little conscience to shrink from committing the sin. But in
St. John's narrative we pierce far below the surface. Here he is
revealed to us as the sarcastic, cynical worldling, who doubts
everything, distrusts everything, despises everything. He has an
intense scorn for the Jews, and yet he has a craven dread of them. He
has a certain professional regard for justice, and yet he has no real
belief in truth or honour. Throughout he manifests a malicious irony
in his conduct at this crisis. There is a lofty scorn in his answer
when he repudiates any sympathy with the accusers. "Am I a Jew?" There
is a sarcastic pity in the question which he addresses to the Prisoner
before him, "Art Thou the King of the Jews? Art Thou, then, a
king--Thou poor, weak, helpless fanatic, whom with a single word I
could doom to death?" He is half-bewildered with the incongruity of
the claim; and yet there is a certain propriety that a wild enthusiast
should assert his sovereignty over a nation of bigots; so he
sarcastically adopts the title. "Will you that I release unto you the
King of the Jews?" Even when, at length, he is obliged to yield to the
popular clamour, he will at least have his revenge by a studied
contempt. "Behold your King! Shall I crucify your King?" And to the
very last moment he indulges his cynical scorn. The title on the cross
was, indeed, unconsciously, a proclamation of a Divine truth; but in
its immediate purpose and intent it was the mere gratification of
Pilate's sarcastic humour. "Jesus of Nazareth." Could any good thing
come out of Nazareth? "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." He
has sacrificed his honour to them, but he will not sacrifice his
contempt. "What I have written, I have written."
But it is more especially in the sentence which I have chosen for my
text that the whole character of the man is revealed. The Prisoner
before him had accepted the title of a King. He based His claim to
this title on the fact that He had come to bear witness of the truth.
He declared that those who were themselves of the truth would
acknowledge His claim. They were His rightful subjects; they were the
enfranchised citizens of His kingdom.
Strange language this, in the ears of a cynical, worldly sceptic, to
whom the most attractive hope of humanity was a judicious admixture of
force and fraud. "Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth? And when he
had said this he went out." The altercation could be carried no
farther. Was not human life itself one great query without an answer?
What was truth? "Truth"? This helpless Prisoner claimed to be a King,
and He appealed, forsooth, to His truthfulness as the credential of
His sovereign rights! Was ever any claim more contradictory of all
human experience, more palpably absurd, than this? "Truth"? When had
truth anything to do with founding a kingdom? The mighty engine of
imperial power, the armed sceptre which ruled the world, whence came
it? Certainly it owed nothing to truth. Had not Augustus established
his sovereignty by an unscrupulous use of force, and maintained it by
an astute use of artifice? And his successor, the present occupant of
the imperial throne, was he not an arch dissembler, the darkest of all
dark enigmas? The name of Tiberius was a byword for impenetrable
disguise. Truth might do well enough for fools and enthusiasts; but
for rulers, for diplomatists, for men of the world, it was the wildest
of all wild dreams. "Truth"? What was truth? He had lived too long in
the world to trust to any such hollow delusion. He had listened to the
ceaseless din of philosophical disputations till he was weary of them.
The Stoics, the Epicureans, the Platonists, all had their several
specifics which they vended as truth. All were equally sure, and yet
no two agreed.
He had witnessed, certainly not without contempt, and yet not altogether
without dismay, the rising flood of foreign superstition--Greek,
Syrian, Egyptian, Chaldean--which threatened to deluge the city and
empire, and destroy all the ancient landmarks. Could he believe all or
any of these? In this never-ending conflict of philosophical dogmas
and religious creeds, what could he do but resign himself to
scepticism, to indifference, to a cold and cynical scorn of all
enthusiastic convictions and all definite beliefs? "What is truth?"
And yet as he turned away, neither expecting nor desiring an answer to
a question which he had asked merely to end an inconvenient
controversy, some uneasy misgivings, we may well suppose, flashed
across the mind of this proud, sarcastic worldling, that he was now
brought face to face with truth as he had never been brought before.
There was a reality about every word and action of this Jewish
Prisoner which arrested and overawed him. The calmness with which He
urged His claims, the fearlessness with which He defied death, the
impressive words, the still more impressive silence, the manifest
innocence and rectitude of the Man, if he saw nothing more--these
could not be without their effect even on a Pilate, steeped as he was
in the moral recklessness and the religious despair of his age. At all
events, he would serve the Man if he conveniently could.
But there had been also a nobler element in Pilate's education than
moral scepticism and religious unbelief. He was a Roman governor, and
as a Roman governor he was an administrator of Roman law. It was their
appreciation of law, their respect for law, their study of law, far
more than anything else, which gave its greatness to the character of
the Roman people. Even in the most degraded ages of their history, and
with the worst individual types of men, this is the one bright spot
which relieves the gloom. It is the nobler prerogative of law to set a
standard clear, definite, and precise. I have no concern here with
other obligations to the law which as Christians we are bound to
acknowledge, though, speaking before the chief representatives of
English law and justice, I cannot fail to be reminded of them this
afternoon. But this exhibition of a moral standard is a gain which it
is hardly possible to over-estimate. The standard will not always be
the highest. From the nature of the case it cannot be so. Law deals
with some departments of morality very imperfectly; with others it
does not attempt to deal at all. But still, whenever it is felt, and
so far as it penetrates, it creates an ideal, and begets a habit which
will not be powerless even with the most indifferent and reckless of
men. So it was with Pilate. Theological scepticism had eaten out his
religious principles to the very core. Unscrupulous worldliness and
self-seeking had shattered his moral constitution; but though his
principles were gone, and his character was ruined, still he was
haunted by some lingering sense of professional honour; still the
magnificent ideal of Roman justice and Roman law rose up before him,
and would not lightly be thrust aside. He pleads repeatedly for
justice against the relentless accusers. Three times he declares the
Prisoner's innocence in the same explicit words--"I find no fault in
Him." Once and again he strives to shift the responsibility from his
own shoulders to theirs. "Take ye Him and judge Him according to your
law. Take ye Him and crucify Him." But his efforts are all in vain.
They will have none of this. The deed shall be done, and he shall do
it.
It was not the first, and it would not be the last time that Pilate
found himself in conflict with the Jews. For ten years he was governor
of this turbulent, intractable people. This was an unusually long
period of office under an Emperor like Tiberius, who was constantly
changing his provincial governors from mere suspicion and distrust. It
must have cost Pilate no little trouble to steer his course so long
and so successfully, without foundering either on the suspicions of
his jealous master here or on the bigotry of his stubborn subjects
there. And yet he was constantly wounding the religious
susceptibilities of the Jews. At one time he shocked them by bringing
the military ensigns with the effigies of Caesar within the walls of
Jerusalem; at another he persisted in setting up some gilt shields,
inscribed with a profane heathen dedication, in the palace of Herod
within the holy precincts. In both cases he drove the Jews to the
extreme verge of exasperation. In both cases he exhibits the same
sarcastic and defiant scorn which is apparent here. In both cases
their obstinate zeal or bigotry triumphs, as it triumphs here, and he
is forced, in the end, to retrace his steps and to undo his deed.
So, then, this was only one brief episode in a protracted struggle
between Pilate and the Jewish people. Doubtless, it seemed at the time
quite insignificant compared with those other and fiercer conflicts in
which he was engaged. It is passed over in silence by contemporary
Jewish writers. It concerned the life of a single person only; it was
settled in a single night; and yet it involved nothing less than the
eternal destiny of all mankind.
Ah, there is a terrible irony in God's retributive justice, which so
blinds a man to the true proportions of things. A single moment may do
a wrong which centuries cannot repair. It is a dangerous thing to defy
the truth. The majesty of truth is inviolable, and he who insults it
in a moment of recklessness can never forecast the consequences. Time
and space and notoriety are no measure of importance here. The most
important criminal trial on record in the history of mankind was
hurried through in two or three short hours, under cover of night and
in the grey of early dawn.
This is the great lesson of Pilate's crime. He was surprised by the
truth; he found himself unexpectedly confronted by the truth; and he
could not recognise it. His whole life long he had tampered with
truth; he had despised truth; he had despaired of truth. Truth was the
last thing which he had set before him as the main aim of life. He had
thought much of policy, of artifice, of fraud, of force; but for truth
in any of its manifold forms he had cared just nothing at all. And his
sin had worked out its own retribution. Not truth only, but the very
Truth itself, Truth incarnate, stood before him in a human form, and
he was blind to it; he scorned it; he played with it; he thrust it
aside; he condemned, and he gibbeted it. "Suffered under Pontius
Pilate," is the legend of eternal infamy with which history has
branded his name.
So it is always. The Lord appears suddenly in His temple--in the
shrine of the human heart and conscience; suddenly--at a time and in a
form which we least expect. The truth visits us very frequently under
the disguise of some common event, or some insignificant person. It
surprises us, perhaps, in the accidental saying of some little child,
or in the insidiousness of some mean temptation, or in the emergency
of some trivial choice. It stands before us at once as our suppliant
and our king. We fail to see its majesty veiled in its humble garb. We
treat it as our prisoner when, in fact, it is our judge, and may
become our gaoler. We flatter ourselves that we have power to condemn
or to release it. We have no fault to find with it, but still we
reject it; we crucify it; and before three days are gone it rises from
its grave to bear eternal testimony against us. We could not see the
truth, because we ourselves were not of the truth. Here in this
judicial blindness is the warning of Pilate's example. Like is drawn
to like: like only understands like. The truth is only for the
children of truth.
We must not, however, unduly narrow the sense of truth and of
truthfulness. When our Lord called Himself the truth--when He declared
that the truth should make us free, He meant very much more than is
commonly understood by the word. Veracity is, indeed, truth; but it is
only a small part of the truth. A man may be scrupulously veracious,
strictly a man of honour; he may always say what he believes; he may
always perform what he promises; and yet he may not be, in the highest
sense, true. He may be the slave of a thousand unrealities. A genuine
child of truth is very much more than a speaker of the truth. He is a
doer of the truth, and a thinker of the truth, and a liver of the
truth. He is frank, open, and real in all things. Reality is the very
soul of his being. He cares for nothing which is hollow, shadowy,
superficial. Popularity, wealth, success, worldly ambition, and
display are essentially unreal, because they are external, because
they are transient. Therefore, he estimates them at their true value.
The devotion of scientific men in pursuit of scientific truth wins our
highest admiration. It is not without a thrill of national pride that
we have just bidden God-speed to the gallant company which has started
for the Arctic seas. To face untold hardships and possible death in
such a cause is a worthy and noble aim, for these are realities. But
obviously there are truths of far higher moment to the temporal and
eternal well-being of man than the laws of electricity, or the causes
of the Aurora, or the fauna of the Polar seas. Whence came I? Whither
go I? What is sin? What is conscience? Is there a God in heaven? Is
there a providence, a moral government, a judgment? Is there a
redemption, a sanctification, a life eternal? These are the momentous,
the pressing questions which a man can only shelve at his peril.
Christ is the answer to all these questions. Therefore, He is the
verity of verities. Therefore, He claims for Himself the title of the
truth as His absolute and indefeasible right.
An incapacity to see the truth, when thus presented to us in its
highest form, may arise from different causes. It may spring from
bigoted partisanship, and religious pride, and obstinate formalism, as
in the case of the Jews; or it may spring from cold cynicism, and
worldliness, and dishonesty, as in the case of Pilate. These two
conspire to crucify the truth. As we sow, so also shall we reap.
Pilate's life had been stained in untruthfulness. His government had
been an alternation of violence and artifice. His aim had not been to
rule uprightly, to rule generously, but to rule at any cost. He must
calm the suspicions of his jealous master, and he must quell the
turbulence of an unruly people. Whatever means would conduce to these
ends were to him legitimate means. Uprightness, honour, frankness,
generosity, truth--what were these to him? He had no belief in them,
and why should he practise them? He projected his own motives into his
estimate of mankind at large. He read the characters of others in the
distorted mirror of his own consciousness. Human life, as he viewed
it, was false from beginning to end. It was, after all, the reflection
of his own falsehood which he saw. He was ever looking out for the
unrealities of existence. He had no eye for its realities. Men's
convictions were their foibles: men's beliefs were his playthings.
Untruthfulness, cynicism, distrust, scorn, had withered his soul. They
only will find the truth who believe that the truth may be found.
Pilate had no such belief. He had gone through life asking, half in
bitterness, half in jest, "What is truth?" He had asked it now again,
and the question was fatal. Pilate's temper of mind is a very real
danger in an age like ours. Let us beware of thus jesting with truth,
lest some time, like him, we crucify the truth unawares.
THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.[13]
"Two men went up into the temple to pray."--LUKE xviii. 10.
The teaching of the gospels is, in large portions, a teaching by
contrast. This is the case, to a certain extent, in the historical
narrative, but it is especially so in the parables of our Lord. Thus
we have the contrast of the two brothers in the parable of the
Prodigal Son; the contrast of the two sons in the parable of the
father's vineyard; the contrast of the rich man and the beggar in the
parable of Lazarus and Dives, and the like; the right and the wrong
way of acting are figured, are embodied, are personified in two
living, acting men. So it is here; the right and the wrong spirit in
prayer, the right and the wrong attitude towards God, are set before
us in portraits of imaginary men who might very well have been real
men. If you had gone up to the temple any day, and watched the
worshippers there, you might very likely have seen the counterpart
both of the one and of the other. But there is not only a contrast in
the parable, there is also a paradox, a surprise; the ordinary
estimate of worth is set aside; the judgment of God overrules the
judgment of men; the praise is given where men would give the blame,
and the blame is given where men would give the praise. The object of
the parable is to correct, to cancel, to reverse human judgment.