The Husbandmen.
“And He began to speak unto them in parables. A man planted a
vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a pit for the
wine-press, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and
went into another country. And at the season he sent to the
husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of
the fruits of the vineyard. And they took him, and beat him, and
sent him away empty. And again he sent unto them another servant:
and him they wounded in the head, and handled shamefully. And he
sent another; and him they killed: and many others; beating some,
and killing some. He had yet one, a beloved son: he sent him last
unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those
husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us
kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him,
and killed him, and cast him forth out of the vineyard. What,
therefore, will the Lord of the vineyard do? He will come and
destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.
Have ye not read even this Scripture:
The stone which the builders rejected,
The same was made the head of the corner:
This was from the Lord,
And it is marvellous in our eyes?
And they sought to lay hold on Him; and they feared the multitude;
for they perceived that He spake the parable against them: and
they left Him, and went away.”—MARK xii. 1-12 (R.V.).
The rulers of His people have failed to make Jesus responsible to their
inquisition. He has exposed the hollowness of their claim to investigate
His commission, and formally refused to tell them by what authority He did
these things. But what He would not say for an unjust cross-examination,
He proclaimed to all docile hearts; and the skill which disarmed His
enemies is not more wonderful than that which in their hearing answered
their question, yet left them no room for accusation. This was achieved by
speaking to them in parables. The indifferent might hear and not perceive:
the keenness of malice would surely understand but could not easily
impeach a simple story; but to His own followers it would be given to know
the mysteries of the kingdom of God.
His first words would be enough to arouse attention. The psalmist had told
how God brought a vine out of Egypt, and cast out the heathen and planted
it. Isaiah had carried the image farther, and sung of a vineyard in a very
fruitful hill. The Well-beloved, Whose it was, cleared the ground for it,
and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower, and hewed out a
wine-press, and looked that it should bring forth grapes, but it had
brought forth wild grapes. Therefore He would lay it waste. This
well-known and recognized type the Lord now adopted, but modified it to
suit His purpose. As in a former parable the sower slept and rose, and
left the earth to bring forth fruit of itself, so in this, the Lord of the
vineyard let it out to husbandmen and went into a far country. This is our
Lord’s own explanation of that silent time in which no special
interpositions asserted that God was nigh, no prophecies were heard, no
miracles startled the careless. It was the time when grace already granted
should have been peacefully ripening. Now we live in such a period.
Unbelievers desire a sign. Impatient believers argue that if our Master is
as near us as ever, the same portents must attest His presence; and,
therefore, they recognise the gift of tongues in hysterical clamour, and
stake the honour of religion upon faith-healing, and those various obscure
phenomena which the annals of every fanaticism can rival. But the sober
Christian understands that, even as the Lord of the vineyard went into
another country, so Christ His Son (Who in spiritual communion is ever
with His people) in another sense has gone into a far country to receive a
kingdom and to return. In the interval, marvels would be simply an
anachronism. The best present evidence of the faith lies in the superior
fruitfulness of the vineyard He has planted, in the steady advance to rich
maturity of the vine He has imported from another clime.
At this point Jesus begins to add a new significance to the ancient
metaphor. The husbandmen are mentioned. Men there were in the ancient
Church, who were specially responsible for the culture of the vineyard. As
He spoke, the symbol explained itself. The imposing array of chief priests
and scribes and elders stood by, who had just claimed as their prerogative
that He should make good His commission to their scrutiny; and none would
be less likely to mistake His meaning than these self-conscious lovers of
chief seats in the synagogues. The structure of the parable, therefore,
admits their official rank, as frankly as when Jesus bade His disciples
submit to their ordinances because they sit in Moses’ seat. But He passes
on, easily and as if unconsciously, to record that special messengers from
heaven had, at times, interrupted the self-indulgent quietude of the
husbandmen. Because the fruit of the vineyard had not been freely
rendered, a bondservant was sent to demand it. The epithet implies that
the messenger was lower in rank, although his direct mission gave him
authority even over the keepers of the vineyard. It expresses exactly the
position of the prophets, few of them of priestly rank, some of them very
humble in extraction, and very rustic in expression, but all sent in evil
days to faithless husbandmen, to remind them that the vineyard was not
their own, and to receive the fruits of righteousness. Again and again the
demand is heard, for He sent “many others;” and always it is rejected with
violence, which sometimes rises to murder. As they listened, they must
have felt that all this was true, that while prophet after prophet had
come to a violent end, not one had seen the official hierarchy making
common cause with him. And they must also have felt how ruinous was this
rejoinder to their own demand that the people should forsake a teacher
when they rejected him. Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees
believed on Him? was their scornful question. But the answer was plain, As
long as they built the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnished the tombs
of the righteous, and said, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we
would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets, they
confessed that men could not blindly follow a hierarchy merely as such,
since they were not the official successors of the prophets but of those
who slew them. The worst charge brought against them was only that they
acted according to analogy, and filled up the deeds of their fathers. It
had always been the same.
The last argument of Stephen, which filled his judges with madness, was
but the echo of this great impeachment. Which of the prophets did not your
fathers persecute? and they killed them which showed before of the coming
of the Righteous One, of Whom ye have now become the betrayers and
murderers.
That last defiance of heaven, which Stephen thus denounced, his Master
distinctly foretold. And He added the appalling circumstance, that however
they might deceive themselves and sophisticate their conscience, they
really knew Him Who He was. They felt, at the very least, that into His
hands should pass all the authority and power they had so long
monopolized: “This is the Heir; come let us kill Him and the inheritance
shall be ours.” If there were no more, the utterance of these words put
forth an extraordinary claim.
All that should have been rendered up to heaven and was withheld, all that
previous messengers had demanded on behalf of God without avail, all “the
inheritance” which these wicked husbandmen were intercepting, all this
Jesus announces to be His own, while reprehending the dishonesty of any
other claim upon it. And as a matter of fact, if Jesus be not Divine, He
has intercepted more of the worship due to the Eternal, has attracted to
Himself more of the homage of the loftiest and profoundest minds, than any
false teacher within the pale of monotheism has ever done. It is the
bounden duty of all who revere Jesus even as a teacher, of all who have
eyes to see that His coming was the greatest upward step in the progress
of humanity, to consider well what was implied, when, in the act of
blaming the usurpers of the heritage of God, Jesus declared that
inheritance to be His own. But this is not all, though it is what He
declares that the husbandmen were conscious of. The parable states, not
only that He is heir, but heir by virtue of His special relationship to
the Supreme. Others are bondservants or husbandmen, but He is the Son. He
does not inherit as the worthiest and most obedient, but by right of
birth; and His Father, in the act of sending Him, expects even these
bloodstained outlaws to reverence His Son. In such a phrase, applied to
such criminals, we are made to feel the lofty rank alike of the Father and
His Son, which ought to have overawed even them. And when we read that “He
had yet one, a beloved Son,” it seems as if the veil of eternity were
uplifted, to reveal a secret and awful intimacy, of which, nevertheless,
some glimmering consciousness should have controlled the most desperate
heart.
But they only reckoned that if they killed the Heir, the inheritance would
become their own. It seems the wildest madness, that men should know and
feel Who He was, and yet expect to profit by desecrating His rights. And
yet so it was from the beginning. If Herod were not fearful that the
predicted King of the Jews was indeed born, the massacre of the Innocents
was idle. If the rulers were not fearful that this counsel and work was of
God, they would not, at Gamaliel’s bidding, have refrained from the
Apostles. And it comes still closer to the point to observe that, if they
had attached no importance, even in their moment of triumph, to the
prediction of His rising from the dead, they would not have required a
guard, nor betrayed the secret recognition which Jesus here exposes. The
same blind miscalculation is in every attempt to obtain profit or pleasure
by means which are known to transgress the laws of the all-beholding Judge
of all. It is committed every day, under the pressure of strong
temptation, by men who know clearly that nothing but misery can result. So
true is it that action is decided, not by a course of logic in the brain,
but by the temperament and bias of our nature as a whole. We need not
suppose that the rulers roundly spoke such words as these, even to
themselves. The infamous motive lurked in ambush, too far in the back
ground of the mind perhaps even for consciousness. But it was there, and
it affected their decision, as lurking passions and self-interests always
will, as surely as iron deflects the compass. “They caught Him and killed
Him,” said the unfaltering lips of their victim. And He added a
circumstance of pain which we often overlook, but to which the great
minister of the circumcision was keenly sensitive, and often reverted, the
giving Him up to the Gentiles, to a death accursed among the Jews; “they
cast Him forth out of the vineyard.”
All evil acts are based upon an overestimate of the tolerance of God. He
had seemed to remain passive while messenger after messenger was beaten,
stoned, or slain. But now that they had filled up the iniquity of their
fathers, the Lord of the vineyard would come in person to destroy them,
and give the vineyard to others. This last phrase is strangely at variance
with the notion that the days of a commissioned ministry are over, as, on
the other hand, the whole parable is at variance with the notion that a
priesthood can be trusted to sit in exclusive judgment upon doctrine for
the Church.
At this point St. Mark omits an incident so striking, although small, that
its absence is significant. The by-standers said, “God forbid!” and when
the horrified exclamation betrayed their consciousness of the position,
Jesus was content, without a word, to mark their self-conviction by His
searching gaze. “He looked upon them.” The omission would be unaccountable
if St. Mark were simply a powerful narrator of graphic incidents; but it
is explained when we think that for him the manifestation of a mighty
Personage was all in all, and the most characteristic and damaging
admissions of the hierarchy were as nothing compared with a word of his
Lord. Thereupon he goes straight on to record that, besides refuting their
claim by the history of the past, and asserting His own supremacy in a
phrase at once guarded in form and decisive in import, Jesus also appealed
to Scripture. It was written that by special and marvellous interposition
of the Lord a stone which the recognized builders had rejected should
crown the building. And the quotation was not only decisive as showing
that their rejection could not close the controversy; it also compensated,
with a promise of final victory, the ominous words in which their malice
had seemed to do its worst. Jesus often predicted His death, but He never
despaired of His kingdom.
No wonder that the rulers sought to arrest Him, and perceived that He
penetrated and despised their schemes. And their next device is a natural
outcome from the fact that they feared the people, but did not discontinue
their intrigues; for this was a crafty and dangerous attempt to estrange
from Him the admiring multitude.
The Tribute Money.
“And they send unto Him certain of the Pharisees and of the
Herodians, that they might catch Him in talk. And when they were
come, they say unto Him, Master, we know that Thou art true, and
carest not for any one: for Thou regardest not the person of men,
but of a truth teachest the way of God: Is it lawful to give
tribute unto Cæsar, or not? Shall we give, or shall we not give?
But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye Me?
bring Me a penny, that I may see it. And they brought it. And He
saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they
said unto Him, Cæsar’s. And Jesus said unto them, Render unto
Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that
are God’s. And they marvelled greatly at Him.”—MARK xii. 13-17
(R.V.).
The contrast is very striking between this incident and the last. Instead
of a challenge, Jesus is respectfully consulted; and instead of a formal
concourse of the authorities of His religion, He is Himself the authority
to Whom a few perplexed people profess to submit their difficulty.
Nevertheless, it is a new and subtle effort of the enmity of His defeated
foes. They have sent to Him certain Pharisees who will excite the popular
indignation if He yields anything to the foreigner, and Herodians who
will, if He refuses, bring upon Him the colder and deadlier vengeance of
Rome. They flatter, in order to stimulate, that fearless utterance which
must often have seemed to them so rash: “We know that Thou art true, and
carest not for any one, for Thou regardest not the person of men, but of a
truth teachest the way of God.” And they appeal to a higher motive by
representing the case to be one of practical and personal urgency, “Shall
we give, or shall we not give?”
Never was it more necessary to join the wisdom of the serpent to the
innocence of the dove, for it would seem that He must needs answer
directly, and that no direct answer can fail to have the gravest
consequences. But in their eagerness to secure this menacing position,
they have left one weak point in the attack. They have made the question
altogether a practical one. The abstract doctrine of the right to drive
out a foreign power, of the limits of authority and freedom, they have not
raised. It is simply a question of the hour, Shall we give or shall we not
give?
And Jesus baffled them by treating it as such. There was no longer a
national coinage, except only of the half shekel for the temple tax. When
He asked them for a smaller coin, they produced a Roman penny stamped with
the effigy of Cæsar. Thus they confessed the use of the Roman currency.
Now since they accepted the advantages of subjugation, they ought also to
endure its burdens: since they traded as Roman subjects, they ought to pay
the Roman tribute. Not He had preached submission, but they had avowed it;
and any consequent unpopularity would fall not upon Him but them. They had
answered their own question. And Jesus laid down the broad and simple
rule, “Render (pay back) unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto
God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled greatly at Him.” No
wonder they marvelled, for it would be hard to find in all the records of
philosophy so ready and practical a device to baffle such cunning
intriguers, such keenness in One Whose life was so far removed from the
schools of worldly wisdom, joined with so firm a grasp on principle, in an
utterance so brief, yet going down so far to the roots of action.
Now the words of Jesus are words for all time; even when He deals with a
question of the hour, He treats it from the point of view of eternal
fitness and duty; and this command to render unto Cæsar the things which
are Cæsar’s has become the charter of the state against all usurpations of
tyrannous ecclesiastics. A sphere is recognized in which obedience to the
law is a duty to God. But it is absurd to pretend that Christ taught blind
and servile obedience to all tyrants in all circumstances, for this would
often make it impossible to obey the second injunction, and to render unto
God the things which are God’s,—a clause which asserts in turn the right
of conscience and the Church against all secular encroachments. The point
to observe is, that the decision of Jesus is simply an inference, a
deduction. St. Matthew has inserted the word “therefore,” and it is
certainly implied: render unto Cæsar the things which you confess to be
his own, which bear his image upon their face.
Can we suppose that no such inference gives point to the second clause? It
would then become, like too many of our pious sayings, a mere supplement,
inappropriate, however excellent, a make weight, and a platitude. No
example of such irrelevance can be found in the story of our Lord. When,
finding the likeness of Cæsar on the coin, He said, Render, therefore,
unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are
God’s, He at least suggested that the reason for both precepts ran
parallel, and the image of the higher and heavenlier Monarch could be
found on what He claims of us. And it is so. He claims all we have and all
we are. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof:” and “I have
made thee, thou art Mine.” And for us and ours alike the argument holds
good. All the visible universe bears deeply stamped into its substance His
image and superscription. The grandeur of mountains and stars, the
fairness of violet and harebell, are alike revelations of the Creator. The
heavens declare His glory: the firmament showeth His handiwork: the earth
is full of His riches: all the discoveries which expand our mastery over
nature and disease, over time and space, are proofs of His wisdom and
goodness, Who laid the amazing plan which we grow wise by tracing out.
Find a corner on which contrivance and benevolence have not stamped the
royal image, and we may doubt whether that bleak spot owes Him tribute.
But no desert is so blighted, no solitude so forlorn.
And we should render unto God the things which are God’s, seeing His
likeness in His world. “For the invisible things of Him since the creation
of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things which
are made, even His everlasting power and divinity.”
And if most of all He demands the love, the heart of man, here also He can
ask, “Whose image and superscription is this?” For in the image of God
made He man. It is sometimes urged that this image was quite effaced when
Adam fell. But it was not to protect the unfallen that the edict was
spoken “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in
the image of God made He man.” He was not an unfallen man of whom St. Paul
said that he “ought not to have his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the
image and glory of God;” neither were they unfallen, of whom St. James
said, “We curse men which are made after the likeness of God” (Gen. ix. 6;
1 Cor. xi. 7; James iii. 9). Common men, for whom the assassin lurks, who
need instruction how to behave in church, and whom others scorn and curse,
these bear upon them an awful likeness; and even when they refuse tribute
to their king, He can ask them, Whose is this image?
We see it in the intellect, ever demanding new worlds to conquer,
overwhelming us with its victories over time and space. “In apprehension
how like a God.” Alas for us! if we forget that the Spirit of knowledge
and wisdom is no other than the Spirit of the Lord God.
We see this likeness far more in our moral nature. It is true that sin has
spoiled and wasted this, yet there survives in man’s heart, as nowhere
else in our world, a strange sympathy with the holiness and love of God.
No other of His attributes has the same power to thrill us. Tell me that
He lit the stars and can quench them with a word, and I reverence, perhaps
I fear Him; yet such power is outside and beyond my sphere; it fails to
touch me, it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Even the rarer human gifts,
the power of a Czar, the wisdom of Bacon, are thus beyond me, I am
unkindled, they do not find me out. But speak of holiness, even the
stainless holiness of God, undefiled through all eternity, and you shake
the foundations of my being. And why does the reflection that God is pure
humble me more than the knowledge that God is omnipotent? Because it is my
spiritual nature which is most conscious of the Divine image, blurred and
defaced indeed, but not obliterated yet. Because while I listen I am dimly
conscious of my birthright, my destiny, that I was born to resemble this,
and all is lost if I come short of it. Because every child and every
sinner feels that it is more possible for him to be like his God than like
Newton, or Shakespere, or Napoleon. Because the work of grace is to call
in the worn and degraded coinage of humanity, and, as the mint restamps
and reissues the pieces which have grown thin and worn, so to renew us
after the image of Him that created us.
Christ And The Sadducees.
“And there come unto Him Sadducees, which say that there is no
resurrection: and they asked Him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto
us, If a man’s brother die, and leave a wife behind him, and leave
no child, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed
unto his brother. There were seven brethren: and the first took a
wife, and dying left no seed; and the second took her, and died,
leaving no seed behind him; and the third likewise: and the seven
left no seed. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection
whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife.
Jesus said unto them, Is it not for this cause that ye err, that
ye know not the Scriptures, nor the power of God? For when they
shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in
marriage; but are as angels in heaven. But as touching the dead,
that they are raised; have ye not read in the book of Moses, in
_the place concerning_ the Bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I
_am_ the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do
greatly err.”—MARK xii. 18-27 (R.V.).
Christ came that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed. And so it
was, that when He had silenced the examination of the hierarchy, and
baffled their craft, the Sadducees were tempted to assail Him. Like the
rationalists of every age, they stood coldly aloof from popular movements,
and we seldom find them interfering with Christ or His followers, until
their energies were roused by the preaching of His Resurrection, so
directly opposed to their fundamental doctrines.
Their appearance now is extremely natural. The repulse of every other
party left them the only champions of orthodoxy against the new movement,
with everything to win by success, and little to lose by failure. There is
a tone of quiet and confident irony in their interrogation, well befitting
an upper-class group, a secluded party of refined critics, rather than
practical teachers with a mission to their fellow-men. They break utterly
new ground by raising an abstract and subtle question, a purely
intellectual problem, but one which reduced the doctrine of a resurrection
to an absurdity, if only their premises can be made good. And this
peculiarity is often overlooked in criticism upon our Lord’s answer. Its
intellectual subtlety was only the adoption by Christ of the weapons of
his adversaries. But at the same time, He lays great and special stress
upon the authority of Scripture, in this encounter with the party which
least acknowledged it.
Their objection, stated in its simplest form, is the complication which
would result if the successive ties for which death makes room must all
revive together when death is abolished. If a woman has married a second
time, whose wife shall she be? But their statement of the case is
ingenious, not only because they push the difficulty to an absurd and
ludicrous extent, but much more so because they base it upon a Divine
ordinance. If there be a Resurrection, Moses must answer for all the
confusion that will ensue, for Moses gave the commandment, by virtue of
which a woman married seven times. No offspring of any union gave it a
special claim upon her future life. “In the Resurrection, whose wife shall
she be of them?” they ask, conceding with a quiet sarcasm that this absurd
event must needs occur.
For these controversialists the question was solely of the physical tie,
which had made of twain one flesh. They had no conception that the body
can be raised otherwise than as it perished, and they rightly enough felt
certain that on such a resurrection woeful complications must ensue.
Now Jesus does not rebuke their question with such stern words as He had
just employed to others, “Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?” They were
doubtless sincere in their conviction, and at least they had not come in
the disguise of perplexed inquirers and almost disciples. He blames them,
but more gently: “Is it not for this cause that ye err, because ye know
not the Scriptures, nor the power of God?” They could not know one and not
the other, but the boastful wisdom of this world, so ready to point a jibe
by quoting Moses, had never truly grasped the meaning of the writer it
appealed to.
Jesus, it is plain, does not quote Scripture only as having authority with
His opponents: He accepts it heartily: He declares that human error is due
to ignorance of its depth and range of teaching; and He recognizes the
full roll of the sacred books “the Scriptures.”
It has rightly been said, that none of the explicit statements, commonly
relied upon, do more to vindicate for Holy Writ the authority of our Lord,
than this simple incidental question.
Jesus proceeded to restate the doctrine of the Resurrection and then to
prove it; and the more His brief words are pondered, the more they will
expand and deepen.
St. Paul has taught us that the dead in Christ shall rise first (1 Thess.
iv. 16). Of such attainment it is written, Blessed and holy is he that
hath part in the first Resurrection (Rev. xx. 6).
Now since among the lost there could be no question of family ties, and
consequent embarrassments, Jesus confines His statement to these happy
ones, of whom the Sadducee could think no better than that their new life
should be a reproduction of their existence here,—a theory which they did
wisely in rejecting. He uses the very language taken up afterwards by His
apostle, and says, “When they shall rise from the dead.” And He asserts
that marriage is at an end, and they are as the angels in heaven. Here is
no question of the duration of pure and tender human affection, nor do
these words compromise in any degree the hopes of faithful hearts, which
cling to one another. Surely we may believe that in a life which is the
outcome and resultant of this life, as truly as the grain is of the seed,
in a life also where nothing shall be forgotten, but on the contrary we
shall know what we know not now, there, tracing back the flood of their
immortal energies to obscure fountains upon earth, and seeing all that
each has owed half unconsciously to the fidelity and wisdom of the other,
the true partners and genuine helpmeets of this world shall for ever drink
some peculiar gladness, each from the other’s joy. There is no reason why
the close of formal unions which include the highest and most perfect
friendships, should forbid such friendships to survive and flourish in the
more kindly atmosphere of heaven.
What Christ asserts is simply the dissolution of the tie, as an inevitable
consequence of such a change in the very nature of the blessed ones as
makes the tie incongruous and impossible. In point of fact, marriage as
the Sadducee thought of it, is but the counterpoise of death, renewing the
face which otherwise would disappear, and when death is swallowed up, it
vanishes as an anachronism. In heaven “they are as the angels,” the body
itself being made “a spiritual body,” set free from the appetites of the
flesh, and in harmony with the glowing aspirations of the Spirit, which
now it weighs upon and retards. If any would object that to be as the
angels is to be without a body, rather than to possess a spiritual body,
it is answer enough that the context implies the existence of a body,
since no person ever spoke of a resurrection of the soul. Moreover it is
an utterly unwarrantable assumption that angels are wholly without
substance. Many verses appear to imply the opposite, and the cubits of
measurement of the New Jerusalem were “according to the measure of a man,
that is of an angel” (Rev. xxi. 17), which seems to assert a very curious
similarity indeed.
The objection of the Sadducees was entirely obviated, therefore by the
broader, bolder, and more spiritual view of a resurrection which Jesus
taught. And by far the greater part of the cavils against this same
doctrine which delight the infidel lecturer and popular essayist of to-day
would also die a natural death, if the free and spiritual teaching of
Jesus, and its expansion by St. Paul, were understood. But we breathe a
wholly different air when we read the speculations even of so great a
thinker as St. Augustine, who supposed that we should rise with bodies
somewhat greater than our present ones, because all the hair and nails we
ever trimmed away must be diffused throughout the mass, lest they should
produce deformity by their excessive proportions (_De Civitate Dei_, xxii.
19). To all such speculation, he who said, To every seed his own body,
says, Thou fool, thou sowest not that body that shall be. But though Jesus
had met these questions, it did not follow that His doctrine was true,
merely because a certain difficulty did not apply. And, therefore, He
proceeded to prove it by the same Moses to whom they had appealed, and
whom Jesus distinctly asserts to be the author of the book of Exodus. God
said, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly
err.”
The argument is not based upon the present tense of the verb _to be_ in
this assertion, for in the Greek the verb is not expressed. In fact the
argument is not a verbal one at all; or else it would be satisfied by the
doctrine of the immortality of the spirit, and would not establish any
resurrection of the body. It is based upon the immutability of God, and,
therefore, the imperishability of all that ever entered into vital and
real relationship with Him. To cancel such a relationship would introduce
a change into the Eternal. And Moses, to whom they appealed, had heard God
expressly proclaim Himself the God of those who had long since passed out
of time. It was, therefore, clear that His relationship with them lived
on, and this guaranteed that no portion, even the humblest, of their true
personality should perish. Now the body is as real a part of humanity, as
the soul and spirit are, although a much lowlier part. And, therefore, it
must not really die.
It is solemn to observe how Jesus, in this second part of His argument,
passes from the consideration of the future of the blessed to that of all
mankind; “as touching the dead that they are raised.” With others than the
blessed, therefore, God has a real though a dread relationship. And it
will prove hard to reconcile this argument of Christ with the existence of
any time when any soul shall be extinguished.
“The body is for the Lord,” said St. Paul, arguing against the vices of
the flesh, “and the Lord for the body.” From these words of Christ he may
well have learned that profound and far-reaching doctrine, which will
never have done its work in the Church and in the world, until whatever
defiles, degrades, or weakens that which the Lord has consecrated is felt
to blaspheme by implication the God of our manhood, unto Whom all our life
ought to be lived; until men are no longer dwarfed in mines, nor poisoned
in foul air, nor massacred in battle, men whose intimate relationship with
God the Eternal is of such a kind as to guarantee the resurrection of the
poor frames which we destroy.
How much more does this great proclamation frown upon the sins by which
men dishonour their own flesh. “Know ye not,” asked the apostle, carrying
the same doctrine to its utmost limit, “that your bodies are the temples
of the Holy Ghost?” So truly is God our God.
The Discerning Scribe.
“And one of the scribes came, and heard them questioning together,
and knowing that He had answered them well, asked Him, What
commandment is the first of all? Jesus answered, The first is,
Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. The second is
this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none
other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto
Him, Of a truth, Master, Thou hast well said that He is one; and
there is none other but He: and to love Him with all the heart,
and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to
love his neighbour as himself, is much more than all whole burnt
offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered
discreetly, He said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of
God. And no man after that durst ask Him any question.”—MARK xii.
28-34 (R.V.).
The praise which Jesus bestowed upon this lawyer is best understood when
we take into account the circumstances, the pressure of assailants with
ensnaring questions, the sullen disappointment or palpable exasperation of
the party to which the scribe belonged. He had probably sympathized in
their hostility; and had come expecting and desiring the discomfiture of
Jesus. But if so, he was a candid enemy; and as each new attempt revealed
more clearly the spiritual insight, the self-possession and balanced
wisdom of Him Who had been represented as a dangerous fanatic, his
unfriendly opinion began to waver. For he too was at issue with popular
views: he had learned in the Scriptures that God desireth not sacrifice,
that incense might be an abomination to Him, and new moons and sabbaths
things to do away with. And so, perceiving that He had answered them well,
the scribe asked, upon his own account, a very different question, not
rarely debated in their schools, and often answered with grotesque
frivolity, but which he felt to go down to the very root of things.
Instead of challenging Christ’s authority, he tries His wisdom. Instead of
striving to entangle Him in dangerous politics, or to assail with shallow
ridicule the problems of the life to come, he asks, What commandment is
the first of all? And if we may accept as complete this abrupt statement
of his interrogation, it would seem to have been drawn from him by a
sudden impulse, or wrenched by an over-mastering desire, despite of
reluctance and false shame.
The Lord answered him with great solemnity and emphasis. He might have
quoted the commandment only. But He at once supported the precept itself
and also His own view of its importance by including the majestic
prologue, “Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”
The unity of God, what a massive and reassuring thought! Amid the
debasements of idolatry, with its deification of every impulse and every
force, amid the distractions of chance and change, seemingly so capricious
and even discordant, amid the complexities of the universe and its
phenomena, there is wonderful strength and wisdom in the reflection that
God is one. All changes obey His hand which holds the rein; by Him the
worlds were made. The exiled patriarch was overwhelmed by the majesty of
the revelation that his fathers’ God was God in Bethel even as in
Beer-sheba: it charmed away the bitter sense of isolation, it unsealed in
him the fountains of worship and trust, and sent him forward with a new
hope of protection and prosperity. The unity of God, really apprehended,
is a basis for the human will to repose upon, and to become
self-consistent and at peace. It was the parent of the fruitful doctrine
of the unity of nature which underlies all the scientific victories of the
modern world. In religion, St. Paul felt that it implies the equal
treatment of all the human race, when he asked, “Is He the God of Jews
only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yea, of Gentiles also, if so be
that God is one” (Rom iii. 29 R.V.). To be one, he seems to say, implies
being universal also. And if it thus excludes the reprobation of races, it
disproves equally that of individual souls, and all thought of such
unequal and partial treatment as should inspire one with hope of
indulgence in guilt, or with fear that his way is hid from the Lord.
But if this be true, if there be one fountain of all life and loveliness
and joy, of all human tenderness and all moral glory, how are we bound to
love Him. Every other affection should only deepen our adoring loyalty to
Him Who gives it. No cold or formal service can meet His claim, Who gives
us the power to serve. No, we must love Him. And as all our nature comes
from Him, so must all be consecrated: that love must embrace all the
affections of “heart and soul” panting after Him, as the hart after the
waterbrooks; and all the deep and steady convictions of the “mind,” musing
on the work of His hand, able to give a reason for its faith; and all the
practical homage of the “strength,” living and dying to the Lord. How
easy, then, would be the fulfilment of His commandments in detail, and how
surely it would follow. All the precepts of the first table are clearly
implied in this.
In such another commandment were summed up also the precepts which
concerned our neighbour. When we love him as ourselves (neither
exaggerating his claims beyond our own, nor allowing our own to trample
upon his), then we shall work no ill to our neighbour, and so love shall
fulfil the law. There is none other commandment greater than these.
The questioner saw all the nobility of this reply; and the disdain, the
anger, and perhaps the persecution of his associates could not prevent him
from an admiring and reverent repetition of the Saviour’s words, and an
avowal that all the ceremonial observances of Judaism were as nothing
compared with this.
While he was thus judging, he was being judged. As he knew that Jesus had
answered well, so Jesus saw that he answered discreetly; and in view of
his unprejudiced judgment, his spiritual insight, and his frank approval
of One Who was then despised and rejected, He said, Thou art not far from
the kingdom of God. But he was not yet within it, and no man knows his
fate.
Sad yet instructive it is to think that he may have won the approval of
Christ, and heard His words, so full of discernment and of desire for his
adherence, and yet never crossed the invisible and mysterious boundary
which he then approached so nearly. But we also may know, and admire, and
confess the greatness and goodness of Jesus, without forsaking all to
follow Him.
His enemies had been defeated and put to shame, their murderous hate had
been denounced, and the nets of their cunning had been rent like cobwebs;
they had seen the heart of one of their own order kindled into open
admiration, and they henceforth renounced as hopeless the attempt to
conquer Jesus in debate. No man after that durst ask Him any questions.
He will now carry the war into their own country. It will be for them to
answer Jesus.
David’s Lord.
“And Jesus answered and said, as He taught in the temple, How say
the scribes that the Christ is the Son of David? David himself
said in the Holy Spirit,—
The Lord said unto my Lord,
Sit Thou on my right hand,
Till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet.
David himself calleth Him Lord; and whence is He His son? And the
common people heard Him gladly. And in His teaching He said,
Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and _to
have_ salutations in the marketplaces, and chief seats in the
synagogues, and chief places at feasts: they which devour widows’
houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; these shall receive
greater condemnation.”—MARK xii. 35-40 (R.V.).
Jesus, having silenced in turn His official interrogators and the
Sadducees, and won the heart of His honest questioner, proceeded to submit
a searching problem to His assailants. Whose son was the Messiah? And when
they gave Him an obvious and shallow answer, He covered them with
confusion publicly. The event is full of that dramatic interest which St.
Mark is so well able to discern and reproduce. How is it then that he
passes over all this aspect of it, leaves us ignorant of the defeat and
even of the presence of the scribes, and free to suppose that Jesus stated
the whole problem in one long question, possibly without an opponent at
hand to feel its force?
This is a remarkable proof that his concern was not really for the
pictorial element in the story, but for the manifestation of the power of
his Master, the “authority” which resounds through his opening chapters,
the royalty which he exhibits at the close. To him the vital point is that
Jesus, upon openly claiming to be the Christ, and repelling the vehement
attacks which were made upon Him as such, proceeded to unfold the
astonishing greatness which this implied; and that after asserting the
unity of God and His claim upon all hearts, He demonstrated that the
Christ was sharer of His throne.
The Christ, they said, was the Son of David, and this was not false: Jesus
had wrought many miracles for suppliants who addressed Him by that title.
But was it all the truth? How then did David call Him Lord? A greater than
David might spring from among his descendants, and hold rule by an
original and not merely an ancestral claim: He might not reign as a son of
David. Yet this would not explain the fact that David, who died ages
before His coming, was inspired to call Him _My_ Lord. Still less would it
satisfy the assertion that God had bidden Him sit beside Him on His
throne. For the scribes there was a serious warning in the promise that
His enemies should be made His footstool, and for all the people a
startling revelation in the words which follow, and which the Epistle to
the Hebrews has unfolded, making this Son of David a priest for ever,
after another order than that of Aaron.
No wonder that the multitude heard with gladness teaching at once so
original, so profound, and so clearly justified by Scripture.
But it must be observed how remarkably this question of Jesus follows up
His conversation with the scribe. Then He had based the supreme duty of
love to God upon the supreme doctrine of the Divine Unity. He now proceeds
to show that the throne of Deity is not a lonely throne, and to demand,
Whose Son is He Who shares it, and Whom David in Spirit accosts by the
same title as his God?
St. Mark is now content to give the merest indication of the final
denunciation with which the Lord turned His back upon the scribes of
Jerusalem, as He previously broke with those of Galilee. But it is enough
to show how utterly beyond compromise was the rupture. The people were to
beware of them: their selfish objects were betrayed in their very dress,
and their desire for respectful salutations and seats of honour. Their
prayers were a pretence, and they devoured widows’ houses, acquiring under
the cloke of religion what should have maintained the friendless. But
their affected piety would only bring upon them a darker doom.
It is a tremendous impeachment. None is entitled to speak as Jesus did,
who is unable to read hearts as He did. And yet we may learn from it that
mere softness is not the meekness He demands, and that, when sinister
motives are beyond doubt, the spirit of Jesus is the spirit of burning.
There is an indulgence for the wrongdoer which is mere feebleness and half
compliance, and which shares in the guilt of Eli. And there is a dreadful
anger which sins not, the wrath of the Lamb.
The Widow’s Mite.
“And He sat down over against the treasury, and beheld how the
multitude cast money into the treasury: and how many that were
rich cast in much. And there came a poor widow, and she cast in
two mites, which make a farthing. And He called unto Him His
disciples, and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, This poor
widow cast in more than all they which are casting into the
treasury; for they all did cast in of their superfluity; but she
of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her
living.”—MARK xii. 41-44 (R.V.).
With words of stern denunciation Jesus for ever left the temple. Yet He
lingered, as if reluctant, in the outer court; and while the storm of His
wrath was still resounding in all hearts, observed and pointed out an
action of the lowliest beauty, a modest flower of Hebrew piety in the vast
desert of formality. It was not too modest, however, to catch, even in
that agitating hour, the eye of Jesus; and while the scribes were
devouring widows’ houses, a poor widow could still, with two mites which
make a farthing, win honourable mention from the Son of God. Thus He ever
observes realities among pretences, the pure flame of love amid the sour
smoke which wreathes around it. What He saw was the last pittance, cast to
a service which in reality was no longer God’s, yet given with a noble
earnestness, a sacrifice pure from the heart.
1. His praise suggests to us the unknown observation, the unsuspected
influences which surround us. She little guessed herself to be the one
figure, amid a glittering group and where many were rich, who really
interested the all-seeing Eye. She went away again, quite unconscious that
the Lord had converted her two mites into a perennial wealth of
contentment for lowly hearts, and instruction for the Church, quite
ignorant that she was approved of Messiah, and that her little gift was
the greatest event of all her story. So are we watched and judged in our
least conscious and our most secluded hours.
2. We learn St. Paul’s lesson, that, “if the readiness is there, it is
acceptable according as a man hath, and not according as he hath not.”
In war, in commerce, in the senate, how often does an accident at the
outset blight a career for ever. One is taken in the net of circumstances,
and his dipped wings can never soar again. But there is no such disabling
accident in religion. God seeth the heart. The world was redeemed by the
blighted and thwarted career of One Who would fain have gathered His own
city under His wing, but was refused and frustrated. And whether we cast
in much, or only possess two mites, an offering for the rich to mock, He
marks, understands, and estimates aright.
And while the world only sees the quantity, He weighs the motive of our
actions. This is the true reason why we can judge nothing before the time,
why the great benefactor is not really pointed out by the splendid
benefaction, and why many that are last shall yet be first, and the first
last.
3. The poor widow gave not a greater proportion of her goods, she gave
all; and it has been often remarked that she had still, in her poverty,
the opportunity of keeping back one half. But her heart went with her two
mites. And, therefore, she was blessed. We may picture her return to her
sordid drudgery, unaware of the meaning of the new light and peace which
followed her, and why her heart sang for joy. We may think of the Spirit
of Christ which was in her, leading her afterwards into the Church of
Christ, an obscure and perhaps illiterate convert, undistinguished by any
special gift, and only loved as the first Christians all loved each other.
And we may think of her now, where the secrets of all hearts are made
known, followed by myriads of the obscure and undistinguished whom her
story has sustained and cheered, and by some who knew her upon earth, and
were astonished to learn that this was she. Then let us ask ourselves, Is
there any such secret of unobtrusive lowly service, born of love, which
the future will associate with me?