The Sick Of The Palsy.
“And when He entered again into Capernaum after some days, it was
noised that He was in the house.”—MARK ii. 1 (R.V.).
Jesus returns to Capernaum, and an eager crowd blocks even the approaches
to the house where He is known to be. St. Mark, as we should expect,
relates the course of events, the multitudes, the ingenious device by
which a miracle is obtained, the claim which Jesus advances to yet greater
authority than heretofore, and the impression produced. But St. Luke
explains that there were “sitting by,” having obtained the foremost places
which they loved, Pharisees and doctors of the law from every village of
Galilee and Judæa, and from Jerusalem itself. And this concourse,
evidently preconcerted and unfriendly, explains the first murmurs of
opposition recorded by St. Mark. It was the jealousy of rival teachers
which so readily pronounced Him a blasphemer.
The crowds besieged the very passages, there was no room, no, not around
the door, and even if one might struggle forward, four men bearing a
litter might well despair. But with palsied paralysis at stake, they would
not be repulsed. They gained the roof by an outer staircase, such as the
fugitives from Jerusalem should hereafter use, not going through the
house. Then they uncovered and broke up the roof, by which strong phrases
St. Mark means that they first lifted the tiles which lay in a bed of
mortar or mud, broke through this, and then tore up the poles and light
rafters by which all this covering was supported. Then they lowered the
sick man upon his pallet, in front of the Master as He taught.
It was an unceremonious act. However carefully performed, the audience
below must have been not only disturbed but inconvenienced, and doubtless
among the precise and unmerciful personages in the chief seats there was
many an angry glance, many a murmur, many a conjecture of rebukes
presently to be inflicted on the intruders.
But Jesus never in any circumstances rebuked for intrusion any suppliant.
And now He discerned the central spiritual impulse of these men, which was
not obtrusiveness nor disrespect. They believed that neither din while He
preached, nor rubbish falling among His audience, nor the strange
interruption of a patient and a litter intruded upon His discourse, could
weigh as much with Jesus as the appeal on a sick man’s face. And this was
faith. These peasants may have been far enough from intellectual
discernment of Christ’s Personality and the scheme of salvation. They had
however a strong and practical conviction that He would make whole their
palsied friend.
Now the preaching of faith is suspected of endangering good works. But was
this persuasion likely to make these men torpid? Is it not plain that all
spiritual apathy comes not from over-trust but from unbelief, either
doubting that sin is present death, or else that holiness is life, and
that Jesus has a gift to bestow, not in heaven, but promptly, which is
better to gain than all the world? Therefore salvation is linked with
faith, which earns nothing but elicits all, like the touch that evokes
electricity, but which no man supposes to have made it.
Because they knew the curse of palsy, and believed in a present remedy,
these men broke up the roof to come where Jesus was. They won their
blessing, but not the less it was His free gift.
Jesus saw and rewarded the faith of all the group. The principle of mutual
support and co-operation is the basis alike of the family, the nation, and
the Church. Thus the great Apostle desired obscure and long-forgotten men
and women to help together with him in their prayers. And He who visits
the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation, shows mercy unto many more, unto thousands, in them that love
Him. What a rebuke is all this to men who think it enough that they should
do no harm, and live inoffensive lives. Jesus now bestowed such a blessing
as awoke strange misgivings among the bystanders. He divined the true
burden of that afflicted heart, the dreary memories and worse fears which
haunted that sick bed,—and how many are even now preparing such remorse
and gloom for a bed of pain hereafter!—and perhaps He discerned the
consciousness of some guilty origin of the disease. Certainly He saw there
one whose thoughts went beyond his malady, a yearning soul, with hope
glowing like red sparks amid the ashes of his self-reproach, that a
teacher so gracious as men reported Jesus, might bring with Him a gospel
indeed. We know that he felt thus, for Jesus made him of good cheer by
pardon rather than by healing, and spoke of the cure itself as wrought
less for his sake than as evidence.
Surely that was a great moment when the wistful gaze of eyes which disease
had dimmed, met the eyes which were as a flame of fire, and knew that all
its sullied past was at once comprehended and forgiven.
Jesus said to him, “Son, thy sins are forgiven thee.” The term of
endearment was new to his lips, and very emphatic; the same which Mary
used when she found Him in the temple, the same as when He argued that
even evil men give good gifts unto their children. Such a relation towards
Himself He recognised in this afflicted penitent. On the other hand, the
dry argumentative temper of the critics is well expressed by the short
crackling unemotional utterances of their orthodoxy: “Why doth this man
thus speak? He blasphemeth. Who can forgive sins but one, God.” There is
no zeal in it, no passion for God’s honour, no spiritual insight, it is as
heartless as a syllogism. And in what follows a fine contrast is implied
between their perplexed orthodoxy, and Christ’s profound discernment. For
as He had just read the sick man’s heart, so He “perceived in His spirit
that they so reasoned within themselves.” And He asks them the searching
question, “Whether is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say,
Arise and walk?” Now which is really easier? It is not enough to lay all
the emphasis upon “to say,” as if with Jesus the ease of an utterance
depended on the difficulty of testing it. There is indeed a certain irony
in the question. They doubtless imagined that Jesus was evading their
scrutiny by only bestowing what they could not test. To them forgiveness
seemed more easily offered than a cure. To the Christian, it is less to
heal disease, which is a mere consequence, than sin, which is the source
of all our woes. To the power of Jesus they were alike, and connected with
each other as the symptom and the true disease. In truth, all the
compassion which blesses our daily life is a pledge of grace; and He Who
healeth all our diseases forgiveth also all our iniquities. But since
healing was the severer test in their reckoning, Jesus does not evade it.
He restores the palsied man to health, that they might know that the Son
of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins. So then, pardon does not
lie concealed and doubtful in the councils of an unknown world, it is
pronounced on earth. The Son of man, wearing our nature and touched with
our infirmities, bestows it still, in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments,
in the ministrations of His servants. Wherever He discerns faith, He
responds with assurance of the absolution and remission of sins.
He claims to do this, as men had so lately observed that He both taught
and worked miracles, “with authority.” We then saw that this word
expressed the direct and personal mastery with which He wrought, and which
the apostles never claimed for themselves.
Therefore this text cannot be quoted in defence of priestly absolutions,
as long as these are hypothetical, and depend on the recipient’s
earnestness, or on any supposition, any uncertainty whatever. Christ did
not utter a hypothesis.
Fortunately, too, the argument that men, priestly men, must have authority
on earth to forgive sins, because the Son of man has such authority, can
be brought to an easy test. There is a passage elsewhere, which asserts
His authority, and upon which the claim to share it can be tried. The
words are, “The Father gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He
is the Son of man,” and they are immediately followed by an announcement
of the resurrection to judgment (John v. 27, 29). Is any one prepared to
contend that such authority as that is vested in other sons of men? And if
not that, why this?
But if priestly absolutions are not here, there remains the certainty that
Jesus brought to earth, to man, the gift of prompt effective pardon, to be
realized by faith.
The sick man is ordered to depart at once. Further discourse might perhaps
be reserved for others, but he may not linger, having received his own
bodily and spiritual medicine. The teaching of Christ is not for
curiosity. It is good for the greatly blessed to be alone. And it is
sometimes dangerous for obscure people to be thrust into the centre of
attention.
Hereupon, another touch of nature discovers itself in the narrative, for
it is now easy to pass through the crowd. Men who would not in their
selfishness give place for palsied misery, readily make room for the
distinguished person who has received a miraculous blessing.
The Son Of Man.
“The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.”—MARK ii. 10.
When asserting His power to forgive sins, Jesus, for the first time in our
Gospel, called Himself the Son of man.
It is a remarkable phrase. The profound reverence which He from the first
inspired, restrained all other lips from using it, save only when the
first martyr felt such a rush of sympathy from above poured into his soul,
that the thought of Christ’s humanity was more moving than that of His
deity. So too it is then alone that He is said to be not enthroned in
heaven, but standing, “the Son of man, standing on the right hand of God”
(Acts vii. 56).(5)
What then does this title imply? Beyond doubt it is derived from Daniel’s
vision: “Behold there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a Son
of man, and He came even to the Ancient of Days” (vii. 13). And it was by
the bold and unequivocal appropriation of this verse that Jesus brought
upon Himself the judgment of the council (Matt. xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 62).
Now the first impression which the phrase in Daniel produces is that of
strong and designed contrast between the Son of man and the Eternal God.
We wonder at seeing man “brought nigh” to Deity. Nor may we suppose that
to be “like unto a Son of man,” implies only an appearance of manhood. In
Daniel the Messiah can be cut off. When Jesus uses the epithet, and even
when He quotes the prophecy, He not only resembles a Son of man, He is
truly such; He is most frequently “_the_ Son of man,” the pre-eminent,
perhaps the only one.(6)
But while the expression intimates a share in the lowliness of human
nature, it does not imply a lowly rank among men.
Our Lord often suggested by its use the difference between His
circumstances and His dignity. “The Son of man hath not where to lay His
head:” “Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss,” in each of these we
feel that the title asserts a claim to different treatment. And in the
great verse, God “hath given Him authority to execute judgment, because He
is the Son of man,” we discern that although human hands are chosen as
fittest to do judgment upon humanity, yet His extraordinary dignity is
also taken into account. The title belongs to our Lord’s humiliation, but
is far from an additional abasement; it asserts His supremacy over those
whom He is not ashamed to call brethren.
We all are sons of men; and Jesus used the phrase when He promised that
all manner of sins and blasphemies shall be forgiven to us. But there is a
higher sense in which, among thousands of the ignoble, we single out one
“real man;” and in this sense, as fulfilling the idea, Jesus was the
Second Man. What a difference exists between the loftiest sons of vulgar
men, and the Son of our complete humanity, of the race, “of Man.” The
pre-eminence even of our best and greatest is fragmentary and incomplete.
In their veins runs but a portion of the rich life-blood of the race: but
a share of its energy throbs in the greatest bosom. We seldom find the
typical thinker in the typical man of action. Originality of purpose and
of means are not commonly united. To know all that holiness embraces, we
must combine the energies of one saint with the gentler graces of a second
and the spiritual insight of a third. There is no man of genius who fails
to make himself the child of his nation and his age, so that Shakespeare
would be impossible in France, Hugo in Germany, Goethe in England. Two
great nations slay their kings and surrender their liberties to military
dictators, but Napoleon would have been unendurable to us, and Cromwell
ridiculous across the channel.
Large allowances are to be made for the Greek in Plato, the Roman in
Epictetus, before we can learn of them. Each and all are the sons of their
tribe and century, not of all mankind and all time. But who will point out
the Jewish warp in any word or institution of Jesus? In the new man which
is after His image there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and
uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, but Christ is all
and in all, something of Him represented by each, all of them concentrated
in Him. He alone speaks to all men without any foreign accent, and He
alone is recognised and understood as widely as the voices of nature, as
the sigh of waves and breezes, and the still endurance of the stars.
Reading the Gospels, we become aware that four writers of widely different
bias and temperament have all found an equally congenial subject, so that
each has given a portrait harmonious with the others, and yet unique. It
is because the sum total of humanity is in Christ, that no single writer
could have told His story.
But now consider what this implies. It demands an example from which
lonely women and heroic leaders of action should alike take fire. It
demands that He should furnish meditation for sages in the closet, and
should found a kingdom more brilliant than those of conquerors. It demands
that He should strike out new paths towards new objects, and be supremely
original without deviating from what is truly sane and human, for any
selfish or cruel or unwholesome joy. It demands the gentleness of a sheep
before her shearers, and such burning wrath as seven times over denounced
against the hypocrites of Jerusalem woe and the damnation of hell. It
demands the sensibilities which made Gethsemane dreadful, and the strength
which made Calvary sublime. It demands that when we approach Him we should
learn to feel the awe of other worlds, the nearness of God, the sinfulness
of sin, the folly of laying up much goods for many years; that life should
be made solemn and profound, but yet that it should not be darkened nor
depressed unduly; that nature and man should be made dear to us, little
children, and sinners who are scorned yet who love much, and lepers who
stand afar off—yes, and even the lilies of the field, and the fowls of the
air; that He should not be unaware of the silent processes of nature which
bears fruit of itself, of sunshine and rain, and the fury of storms and
torrents, and the leap of the lightning across all the sky. Thus we can
bring to Jesus every anxiety and every hope, for He, and only He, was
tempted in all points like unto us. Universality of power, of sympathy,
and of influence, is the import of this title which Jesus claims. And that
demand Jesus only has satisfied, Who is the Master of Sages, the Friend of
sinners, the Man of Sorrows, and the King of kings, the one perfect
blossom on the tree of our humanity, the ideal of our nature incarnate,
the Second Adam in Whom the fulness of the race is visible. The Second Man
is the Lord from Heaven. And this strange and solitary grandeur He
foretold, when He took to Himself this title, itself equally strange and
solitary, the Son of man.
The Call And Feast Of Levi.
“And He went forth again by the sea side; and all the multitude
resorted unto Him, and He taught them. And as He passed by, He saw
Levi the _son_ of Alphæus sitting at the place of toll, and He
saith unto him, Follow Me. And he arose and followed Him. And it
came to pass, that He was sitting at meat in his house, and many
publicans and sinners sat down with Jesus and His disciples: for
there were many, and they followed Him. And the scribes of the
Pharisees, when they saw that He was eating with the sinners and
publicans, said unto His disciples, He eateth and drinketh with
publicans and sinners. And when Jesus heard it, He saith unto
them, They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they
that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but
sinners.”—MARK ii. 13-17 (R.V.).
Jesus loved the open air. His custom when teaching was to point to the
sower, the lily, and the bird. He is no pale recluse emerging from a
library to instruct, in the dim religious light of cloisters, a world
unknown except by books. Accordingly we find Him “again by the sea-side.”
And however the scribes and Pharisees may have continued to murmur, the
multitudes resorted to Him, confiding in the evidence of their experience,
which never saw it on this fashion.
That argument was perfectly logical; it was an induction, yet it led them
to a result curiously the reverse of theirs who reject miracles for being
contrary to experience. “Yes,” they said, “we appeal to experience, but
the conclusion is that good deeds which it cannot parallel must come
directly from the Giver of all good.”
Such good deeds continue. The creed of Christ has re-formed Europe, it is
awakening Asia, it has transformed morality, and imposed new virtues on
the conscience. It is the one religion for the masses, the lapsed, and
indeed for the sick in body as truly as in soul; for while science
discourses with enthusiasm upon progress by the rejection of the less fit,
our faith cherishes these in hospitals, asylums, and retreats, and
prospers by lavishing care upon the outcast and rejected of the world. Now
this transcends experience: we never saw it on this fashion; it is
supernatural. Or else let scientific atheism produce its reformed
magdalens, and its homes for the hopelessly diseased and imbecile, and all
“the weakest” who go, as she tenderly assures us, “to the wall.”
Jesus now gave a signal proof of His independence of human judgment, His
care for the despised and rejected. For such a one He completed the
rupture between Himself and the rulers of the people.
Sitting at the receipt of toll, in the act of levying from his own nation
the dues of the conqueror, Levi the publican received the call to become
an Apostle and Evangelist. It was a resolute defiance of the pharisaic
judgment. It was a memorable rebuke for those timid slaves of expediency
who nurse their influence, refuse to give offence, fear to “mar their
usefulness” by “compromising themselves,” and so make their whole life one
abject compromise, and let all emphatic usefulness go by.
Here is one upon whom the bigot scowls more darkly still than upon Jesus
Himself, by whom the Roman yoke is pressed upon Hebrew necks, an apostate
in men’s judgment from the national faith and hope. And such judgments
sadly verify themselves; a despised man easily becomes despicable.
But however Levi came by so strange and hateful an office, Jesus saw in
him no slavish earner of vile bread by doing the foreigner’s hateful work.
He was more willing than they who scorned him to follow the true King of
Israel. It is even possible that the national humiliations to which his
very office testified led him to other aspirations, longings after a
spiritual kingdom beyond reach of the sword or the exactions of Rome. For
his Gospel is full of the true kingdom of heaven, the spiritual
fulfilments of prophecy, and the relations between the Old Testament and
the Messiah.
Here then is an opportunity to show the sneering scribe and carping
Pharisee how little their cynical criticism weighs with Jesus. He calls
the despised agent of the heathen to His side, and is obeyed. And now the
name of the publican is engraven upon one of the foundations of the city
of God.
Nor did Jesus refuse to carry such condescension to its utmost limit,
eating and drinking in Levi’s house with many publicans and sinners, who
were already attracted by His teaching, and now rejoiced in His
familiarity. Just in proportion as He offended the pharisaic scribes, so
did He inspire with new hope the unhappy classes who were taught to
consider themselves castaway. His very presence was medicinal, a rebuke to
foul words and thoughts, an outward and visible sign of grace. It brought
pure air and sunshine into a fever-stricken chamber.
And this was His justification when assailed. He had borne healing to the
sick. He had called sinners to repentance. And therefore His example has a
double message. It rebukes those who look curiously on the intercourse of
religious people with the world, who are plainly of opinion that the
leaven should be hid anywhere but in the meal, who can never fairly
understand St. Paul’s permission to go to an idolater’s feast. But it
gives no licence to go where we cannot be a healing influence, where the
light must be kept in a dark lantern if not under a bushel, where, instead
of drawing men upward, we shall only confirm their indolent
self-satisfaction.
Christ’s reason for seeking out the sick, the lost, is ominous indeed for
the self-satisfied. The whole have no need of a physician; He came not to
call the righteous. Such persons, whatever else they be, are not
Christians until they come to a different mind.
In calling Himself the Physician of sick souls, Jesus made a startling
claim, which becomes more emphatic when we observe that He also quoted the
words of Hosea, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice” (Matt. ix. 13; Hos.
vi. 6). For this expression occurs in that chapter which tells how the
Lord Himself hath smitten and will bind us up. And the complaint is just
before it that when Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah saw his wound, then
went Ephraim to Assyria and sent to king Jareb, but he is not able to heal
you, neither shall he cure you of your wound (Hos. v. 13-vi. 1). As the
Lord Himself hath torn, so He must heal.
Now Jesus comes to that part of Israel which the Pharisees despise for
being wounded and diseased, and justifies Himself by words which must,
from their context, have reminded every Jew of the declaration that God is
the physician, and it is vain to seek healing elsewhere. And immediately
afterwards, He claims to be the Bridegroom, whom also Hosea spoke of as
divine. Yet men profess that only in St. John does He advance such claims
that we should ask, Whom makest Thou Thyself? Let them try the experiment,
then, of putting such words into the lips of any mortal.
The choice of the apostles, and most of all that of Levi, illustrates the
power of the cross to elevate obscure and commonplace lives. He was born,
to all appearance, to an uneventful, unobserved existence. We read no
remarkable action of the Apostle Matthew; as an Evangelist he is simple,
orderly and accurate, as becomes a man of business, but the graphic energy
of St. Mark, the pathos of St. Luke, the profundity of St. John are
absent. Yet his greatness will outlive the world.
Now as Christ provided nobility and a career for this man of the people,
so He does for all. “Are all apostles?” Nay, but all may become pillars in
the temple of eternity. The gospel finds men plunged in monotony, in the
routine of callings which machinery and the subdivision of labour make
ever more colourless, spiritless, and dull. It is a small thing that it
introduces them to a literature more sublime than Milton, more sincere and
direct than Shakespere. It brings their little lives into relationship
with eternity. It braces them for a vast struggle, watched by a great
cloud of witnesses. It gives meaning and beauty to the sordid present, and
to the future a hope full of immortality. It brings the Christ of God
nearer to the humblest than when of old He ate and drank with publicans
and sinners.
The Controversy Concerning Fasting.
“And John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting: and they
come and say unto Him, Why do John’s disciples and the disciples
of the Pharisees fast, but Thy disciples fast not?”—MARK ii. 18
(R.V.).
The Pharisees had just complained to the disciples that Jesus ate and
drank in questionable company. Now they join with the followers of the
ascetic Baptist in complaining to Jesus that His disciples eat and drink
at improper seasons, when others fast. And as Jesus had then replied, that
being a Physician, He was naturally found among the sick, so He now
answered, that being the Bridegroom, fasting in His presence is
impossible: “Can the sons of the bridechamber fast while the Bridegroom is
with them?” A new spirit is working in Christianity, far too mightily to
be restrained by ancient usages; if the new wine be put into such
wineskins it will spoil them, and itself be lost.
Hereupon three remarkable subjects call for attention: the immense
personal claim advanced; the view which Christ takes of fasting; and,
arising out of this, the principle which He applies to all external rites
and ceremonies.
I. Jesus does not inquire whether the fasts of other men were unreasonable
or not. In any case, He declares that His mere presence put everything on
a new footing for His followers who could not fast simply because He was
by. Thus He assumes a function high above that of any prophet or teacher:
He not only reveals duty, as a lamp casts light upon the compass by which
men steer; but He modifies duty itself, as iron deflects the needle.
This is because He is the Bridegroom.
The disciples of John would hereupon recall his words of self-effacement;
that He was only the friend of the Bridegroom, whose fullest joy was to
hear the Bridegroom’s exultant voice.
But no Jew could forget the Old Testament use of the phrase. It is clear
from St. Matthew that this controversy followed immediately upon the last,
when Jesus assumed a function ascribed to God Himself by the very passage
from Hosea which He then quoted. Then He was the Physician for the soul’s
diseases; now He is the Bridegroom, in Whom centre its hopes, its joys,
its affections, its new life. That position in the spiritual existence
cannot be given away from God without idolatry. The same Hosea who makes
God the Healer, gives to Him also, in the most explicit words, what Jesus
now claims for Himself. “I will betroth thee unto Me for ever.... I will
even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord”
(ii. 19, 20). Isaiah too declares “thy Maker is thy husband,” and “as the
bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee”
(liv. 5; lxii. 5). And in Jeremiah, God remembers the love of Israel’s
espousals, who went after Him in the wilderness, in a land that was not
sown (ii. 2). Now all this is transferred throughout the New Testament to
Jesus. The Baptist is not alone in this respect. St. John regards the
Bride as the wife of the Lamb (Rev. xxi. 9). St. Paul would fain present
his Corinthian Church as a pure virgin to Christ, as to one husband (2
Cor. xi. 2). For him, the absolute oneness of marriage is a mystery of the
union betwixt Christ and His Church (Eph. v. 32). If Jesus be not God,
then a relation hitherto exclusively belonging to Jehovah, to rob Him of
which is the adultery of the soul, has been systematically transferred by
the New Testament to a creature. His glory has been given to another.
This remarkable change is clearly the work of Jesus Himself. The marriage
supper of which He spoke is for the King’s son. At His return the cry will
be heard, Behold the Bridegroom cometh. In this earliest passage His
presence causes the joy of the Bride, who said to the Lord in the Old
Testament, Thou art my Husband (Hosea ii. 16).
There is not to be found in the Gospel of St. John a passage more
certainly calculated to inspire, when Christ’s dignity was assured by His
resurrection and ascension, the adoration which His Church has always paid
to the Lamb in the midst of the throne.
II. The presence of the Bridegroom dispenses with the obligation to fast.
Yet it is beyond denial that fasting as a religious exercise comes within
the circle of New Testament sanctions. Jesus Himself, when taking our
burdens upon Him, as He had stooped to the baptism of repentance,
condescended also to fast. He taught His disciples when they fasted to
anoint their head and wash their face. The mention of fasting is indeed a
later addition to the words “this kind (of demon) goeth not out but by
prayer” (Mark ix. 29), but we know that the prophets and teachers of
Antioch were fasting when bidden to consecrate Barnabas and Saul, and they
fasted again and prayed before they laid their hands upon them (Acts xiii.
2, 3).
Thus it is right to fast, at times and from one point of view; but at
other times, and from Jewish and formal motives, it is unnatural and
mischievous. It is right when the Bridegroom is taken away, a phrase which
certainly does not cover all this space between the Ascension and the
Second Advent, since Jesus still reveals Himself to His own though not
unto the world, and is with His Church all the days. Scripture has no
countenance for the notion that we lost by the Ascension in privilege or
joy. But when the body would fain rise up against the spirit, it must be
kept under and brought into subjection (1 Cor. ix. 27). When the closest
domestic joys would interrupt the seclusion of the soul with God, they may
be suspended, though but for a time (1 Cor. vii. 5). And when the supreme
blessing of intercourse with God, the presence of the Bridegroom, is
obscured or forfeited through sin, it will then be as inevitable that the
loyal heart should turn away from worldly pleasures, as that the first
disciples should reject these in the dread hours of their bereavement.
Thus Jesus abolished the superstition that grace may be had by a
mechanical observance of a prescribed regimen at an appointed time. He did
not deny, but rather implied the truth, that body and soul act and
counteract so that spiritual impressions may be weakened and forfeited by
untimely indulgence of the flesh.
By such teaching, Jesus carried forward the doctrine already known to the
Old Testament. There it was distinctly announced that the return from
exile abrogated those fasts which commemorated national calamities, so
that “the fast of the fourth month, and of the fifth, and of the seventh
and of the tenth shall be to the house of Israel joy and gladness,
cheerful feasts” (Zech. vii. 3, viii. 19). Even while these fasts had
lasted they had been futile, because they were only formal. “When ye
fasted and mourned, did ye at all fast unto me? And when ye eat, and when
ye drink, do ye not eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?” (Zech.
vii. 5, 6). And Isaiah had plainly laid down the great rule, that a fast
and an acceptable day unto the Lord was not a day to afflict the soul and
bow the head, but to deny and discipline our selfishness for some good
end, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and
to let the oppressed go free, to deal bread to the hungry, and to bring
home the poor that is cast out (Isa. lviii. 5-7).
The true spirit of fasting breathes an ampler breath in any of the
thousand forms of Christian self-denial, than in those petty abstinences,
those microscopic observances, which move our wonder less by the
superstition which expects them to bring grace than by the childishness
which expects them to have any effect whatever.
III. Jesus now applies a great principle to all external rites and
ceremonies. They have their value. As the wineskin retains the wine, so
are feelings and aspirations aided, and even preserved, by suitable
external forms. Without these, emotion would lose itself for want of
restraint, wasted, like spilt wine, by diffuseness. And if the forms are
unsuitable and outworn, the same calamity happens, the strong new feelings
break through them, “and the wine perisheth, and the skins.” In this
respect, how many a sad experience of the Church attests the wisdom of her
Lord; what losses have been suffered in the struggle between forms that
had stiffened into archaic ceremonialism and new zeal demanding scope for
its energy, between the antiquated phrases of a bygone age and the new
experience, knowledge and requirements of the next, between the frosty
precisions of unsympathetic age and the innocent warmth and freshness of
the young, too often, alas, lost to their Master in passionate revolt
against restraints which He neither imposed nor smiled upon.
Therefore the coming of a new revelation meant the repeal of old
observances, and Christ refused to sew His new faith like a patchwork upon
ancient institutions, of which it would only complete the ruin. Thus He
anticipated the decision of His apostles releasing the Gentiles from the
law of Moses. And He bestowed on His Church an adaptiveness to various
times and places, not always remembered by missionaries among the heathen,
by fastidious critics of new movements at home, nor by men who would
reduce the lawfulness of modern agencies to a question of precedent and
archæology.
The Sabbath.
“And it came to pass, that He was going on the sabbath day through
the cornfields; and His disciples began, as they went, to pluck
the ears of corn. And the Pharisees said unto Him, Behold, why do
they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? And He said unto
them, Did ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was
an hungred, he, and they that were with him? How he entered into
the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, and did eat the
shewbread, which it is not lawful to eat save for the priests, and
gave also to them that were with him? And He said unto them, The
sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: so that the
Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath.”—MARK ii. 23-28 (R.V.).
Twice in succession Christ had now asserted the freedom of the soul
against His Jewish antagonists. He was free to eat with sinners, for their
good, and His followers were free to disregard fasts, because the
Bridegroom was with them. A third attack in the same series is prepared.
The Pharisees now take stronger ground, since the law itself enforced the
obligation of the Sabbath. Even Isaiah, the most free-spirited of all the
prophets, in the same passage where he denounced the fasts of the
self-righteous, bade men to keep their foot from the Sabbath (Isa. lviii.
13, 14). Here they felt sure of their position; and when they found the
disciples, in a cornfield where the long stems had closed over the path,
“making a way,” which was surely forbidden labour, and this by “plucking
the ears,” which was reaping, and then rubbing these in their hands to
reject the chaff, which was winnowing, they cried out in affected horror,
Behold, why do they that which is not lawful? To them it mattered nothing
that the disciples really hungered, and that abstinence, rather than the
slight exertion which they condemned, would cause real inconvenience and
unrest.
Perhaps the answer of our Lord has been as much misunderstood as any other
words He ever spoke. It has been assumed that He spoke across the boundary
between the new dispensation and the old, as One from whose movements the
restraints of Judaism had entirely fallen away, to those who were still
entangled. And it has been inferred that the Fourth Commandment was no
more than such a restraint, now thrown off among the rest. But this is
quite a misapprehension both of His position and theirs. On earth He was a
minister of the circumcision. He bade His disciples to observe and do all
that was commanded from the seat of Moses. And it is by Old Testament
precedent, and from Old Testament principles, that He now refutes the
objection of the Pharisees. This is what gives the passage half its charm,
this discovery of freedom like our own in the heart of the stern old
Hebrew discipline, as a fountain and flowers on the face of a granite
crag, this demonstration that all we now enjoy is developed from what
already lay in germ enfolded in the law.
David and his followers, when at extremity, had eaten the shewbread which
it was not lawful for them to eat. It is a striking assertion. We should
probably have sought a softer phrase. We should have said that in other
circumstances it would have been unlawful, that only necessity made it
lawful; we should have refused to look straight in the face the naked ugly
fact that David broke the law. But Jesus was not afraid of any fact. He
saw and declared that the priests in the Temple itself profaned the
Sabbath when they baked the shewbread and when they circumcised children.
They were blameless, not because the Fourth Commandment remained
inviolate, but because circumstances made it right for them to profane the
Sabbath. And His disciples were blameless also, upon the same principle,
that the larger obligation overruled the lesser, that all ceremonial
observance gave way to human need, that mercy is a better thing than
sacrifice.
And thus it appeared that the objectors were themselves the transgressors;
they had condemned the guiltless.
A little reflection will show that our Lord’s bold method, His startling
admission that David and the priests alike did that which was not lawful,
is much more truly reverential than our soft modern compromises, our
shifty devices for persuading ourselves that in various permissible and
even necessary deviations from prescribed observances, there is no real
infraction of any law whatever.
To do this, we reduce to a minimum the demands of the precept. We train
ourselves to think, not of its full extension, but of what we can compress
it into. Therefore, in future, even when no urgency exists, the precept
has lost all beyond this minimum; its sharp edges are filed away. Jesus
leaves it to resume all its energy, when mercy no longer forbids the
sacrifice.
The text, then, says nothing about the abolition of a Day of Rest. On the
contrary, it declares that this day is not a Jewish but a universal
ordinance, it is made for man. At the same time, it refuses to place the
Sabbath among the essential and inflexible laws of right and wrong. It is
made for man, for his physical repose and spiritual culture; man was not
made for it, as he is for purity, truth, and godliness. Better for him to
die than outrage these; they are the laws of his very being; he is royal
by serving them; in obeying them he obeys his God. It is not thus with
anything external, ceremonial, any ritual, any rule of conduct, however
universal be its range, however permanent its sanctions. The Sabbath is
such a rule, permanent, far-reaching as humanity, made “for man.” But this
very fact, Jesus tells us, is the reason why He Who represented the race
and its interests, was “Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Let those who deny the Divine authority of this great institution ponder
well the phrase which asserts its universal range, and which finds it a
large assertion of the mastery of Christ that He is Lord “even of the
Sabbath.” But those who have scruples about the change of day by which
honour is paid to Christ’s resurrection, and those who would make
burdensome and dreary, a horror to the young and a torpor to the old, what
should be called a delight and honourable, these should remember that the
ordinance is blighted, root and branch, when it is forbidden to minister
to the physical or spiritual welfare of the human race.