CHAPTER XIV.

The Cruse Of Ointment.

“Now after two days was _the feast of_ the passover and the

unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how

they might take Him with subtilty, and kill Him: for they said,

Not during the feast, lest haply there shall be a tumult of the

people. And while He was in Bethany in the house of Simon the

leper, as He sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster

cruse of ointment of spikenard very costly; _and_ she brake the

cruse, and poured it over His head. But there were some that had

indignation among themselves, _saying_, To what purpose hath this

waste of the ointment been made? For this ointment might have been

sold for above three hundred pence, and given to the poor. And

they murmured against her. But Jesus said, Let her alone; why

trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on Me. For ye have

the poor always with you, and whensoever ye will ye can do them

good: but Me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: she

hath anointed My body aforehand for the burying. And verily I say

unto you, Wheresoever the gospel shall be preached throughout the

whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken

of for a memorial of her.”—MARK xiv. 1-9 (R.V.).

Perfection implies not only the absence of blemishes, but the presence, in

equal proportions, of every virtue and every grace. And so the perfect

life is full of the most striking, and yet the easiest transitions. We

have just read predictions of trial more startling and intense than any in

the ancient Scripture. If we knew of Jesus only by the various reports of

that discourse, we should think of a recluse like Elijah or the Baptist,

and imagine that His disciples, with girded loins, should be more ascetic

than St. Anthony. We are next shown Jesus at a supper gracefully accepting

the graceful homage of a woman.

From St. John we learn that this feast was given six days before the

passover. The other accounts postponed the mention of it, plainly because

of an incident which occurred then, but is vitally connected with a

decision arrived at somewhat later by the priests. Two days before the

passover, the council finally determined that Jesus must be destroyed.

They recognised all the dangers of that course. It must be done with

subtlety; the people must not be aroused; and therefore they said, Not on

the feast-day. It is remarkable, however, that at the very time when they

so determined, Jesus clearly and calmly made to His disciples exactly the

opposite announcement. “After two days the passover cometh, and the Son of

man is delivered up to be crucified” (Matt. xxvi. 2). Thus we find at

every turn of the narrative that their plans are over-ruled, and they are

unconscious agents of a mysterious design, which their Victim comprehends

and accepts. On one side, perplexity snatches at all base expedients; the

traitor is welcomed, false witnesses are sought after, and the guards of

the sepulchre bribed. On the other side is clear foresight, the deliberate

unmasking of Judas, and at the trial a circumspect composure, a lofty

silence, and speech more majestic still.

Meanwhile there is a heart no longer light (for He foresees His burial),

yet not so burdened that He should decline the entertainment offered Him

at Bethany.

This was in the house of Simon the leper, but St. John tells us that

Martha served, Lazarus sat at meat, and the woman who anointed Jesus was

Mary. We naturally infer some relationship between Simon and this favoured

family; but the nature of the tie we know not, and no purpose can be

served by guessing. Better far to let the mind rest upon the sweet picture

of Jesus, at home among those who loved Him; upon the eager service of

Martha; upon the man who had known death, somewhat silent, one fancies, a

remarkable sight for Jesus, as He sat at meat, and perhaps suggestive of

the thought which found utterance a few days afterwards, that a banquet

was yet to come, when He also, risen from the grave, should drink new wine

among His friends in the kingdom of God. And there the adoring face of her

who had chosen the better part was turned to her Lord with a love which

comprehended His sorrow and His danger, while even the Twelve were

blind—an insight which knew the awful presence of One upon his way to the

sepulchre, as well as one who had returned thence. Therefore she produced

a cruse of very precious ointment, which had been “kept” for Him, perhaps

since her brother was embalmed. And as such alabaster flasks were commonly

sealed in making, and only to be opened by breaking off the neck, she

crushed the cruse between her hands and poured it on His head. On His feet

also, according to St. John, who is chiefly thinking of the embalming of

the body, as the others of the anointing of the head. The discovery of

contradiction here is worthy of the abject “criticism” which detects in

this account a variation upon the story of her who was a sinner. As if two

women who loved much might not both express their loyalty, which could not

speak, by so fair and feminine a device; or as if it were inconceivable

that the blameless Mary should consciously imitate the gentle penitent.

But even as this unworthy controversy breaks in upon the tender story, so

did indignation and murmuring spoil that peaceful scene. “Why was not this

ointment sold for much, and given to the poor?” It was not common that

others should be more thoughtful of the poor than Jesus.

He fed the multitudes they would have sent away; He gave sight to

Bartimæus whom they rebuked. But it is still true, that whenever generous

impulses express themselves with lavish hands, some heartless calculator

reckons up the value of what is spent, and especially its value to “the

poor;” the poor, who would be worse off if the instincts of love were

arrested and the human heart frozen. Almshouses are not usually built by

those who declaim against church architecture; nor is utilitarianism

famous for its charities. And so we are not surprised when St. John tells

us how the quarrel was fomented. Iscariot, the dishonest pursebearer, was

exasperated at the loss of a chance of theft, perhaps of absconding

without being so great a loser at the end of his three unrequited years.

True that the chance was gone, and speech would only betray his

estrangement from Jesus, upon Whom so much good property was wasted. But

evil tempers must express themselves at times, and Judas had craft enough

to involve the rest in his misconduct. It is the only indication in the

Gospels of intrigue among the Twelve which even indirectly struck at their

Master’s honour.

Thus, while the fragrance of the ointment filled the house, their

parsimony grudged the homage which soothed His heart, and condemned the

spontaneous impulse of Mary’s love.

It was for her that Jesus interfered, and His words went home.

The poor were always with them: opportunities would never fail those who

were so zealous; and whensoever they would they could do them

good,—whensoever Judas, for example, would. As for her, she had wrought a

good work (a high-minded and lofty work is implied rather than a useful

one) upon Him, Whom they should not always have. Soon His body would be in

the hands of sinners, desecrated, outraged. And she only had comprehended,

however dimly, the silent sorrow of her Master; she only had laid to heart

His warnings; and, unable to save Him, or even to watch with Him one hour,

she (and through all that week none other) had done what she could. She

had anointed His body beforehand for the burial, and indeed with clear

intention “to prepare Him for burial” (Matt. xxvi. 12).

It was for this that His followers had chidden her. Alas, how often do our

shrewd calculations and harsh judgments miss the very essence of some

problem which only the heart can solve, the silent intention of some deed

which is too fine, too sensitive, to explain itself except only to that

sympathy which understands us all. Men thought of Jesus as lacking

nothing, and would fain divert His honour to the poor; but this woman

comprehended the lonely heart, and saw the last inexorable need before

Him. Love read the secret in the eyes of love, and this which Mary did

shall be told while the world stands, as being among the few human actions

which refreshed the lonely One, the purest, the most graceful, and perhaps

the last.

The Traitor.

“And Judas Iscariot, he that was one of the twelve, went away unto

the chief priests, that he might deliver Him _unto them_. And

they, when they heard it, were glad, and promised to give him

money. And he sought how he might conveniently deliver Him unto

them. And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they

sacrificed the passover, His disciples say unto Him, Where wilt

Thou that we go and make ready that Thou mayest eat the passover?

And He sendeth two of His disciples, and saith unto them, Go into

the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of

water: follow him; and wheresoever he shall enter in, say to the

goodman of the house, the Master saith, Where is My guest-chamber,

where I shall eat the passover with My disciples? And he will

himself shew you a large upper room furnished and ready: and there

make ready for us. And the disciples went forth, and came into the

city, and found as He had said unto them: and they made ready the

passover.”—MARK xiv. 10-16 (R.V.).

It was when Jesus rebuked the Twelve for censuring Mary, that the patience

of Judas, chafing in a service which had grown hateful, finally gave way.

He offered a treacherous and odious help to the chiefs of his religion,

and these pious men, too scrupulous to cast blood-money into the treasury

or to defile themselves by entering a pagan judgment hall, shuddered not

at the contact of such infamy, warned him not that perfidy will pollute

the holiest cause, cared as little then for his ruin as when they asked

what to them was his remorseful agony; but were glad, and promised to give

him money. By so doing, they became accomplices in the only crime by which

it is quite certain that a soul was lost. The supreme “offence” was

planned and perpetrated by no desperate criminal. It was the work of an

apostle, and his accomplices were the heads of a divinely given religion.

What an awful example of the deadening power, palsying the conscience,

petrifying the heart, of religious observances devoid of real trust and

love.

The narrative, as we saw, somewhat displaced the story of Simon’s feast,

to connect this incident more closely with the betrayal. And it now

proceeds at once to the passover, and the final crisis. In so doing, it

pauses at a curious example of circumspection, intimately linked also with

the treason of Judas. The disciples, unconscious of treachery, asked where

they should prepare the paschal supper. And Jesus gave them a sign by

which to recognise one who had a large upper room prepared for that

purpose, to which he would make them welcome. It is not quite impossible

that the pitcher of water was a signal preconcerted with some disciple in

Jerusalem, although secret understandings are not found elsewhere in the

life of Jesus. What concerns us to observe is that the owner of the house

which the bearer entered was a believer. To him Jesus is “the Master,” and

can say “Where is My guest-chamber?”

So obscure a disciple was he, that Peter and John required a sign to guide

them to his house. Yet his upper room would now receive such a

consecration as the Temple never knew. With strange feelings would he

henceforth enter the scene of the last supper of his Lord. But now, what

if he had only admitted Jesus with hesitation and after long delay? We

should wonder; yet there are lowlier doors at which the same Jesus stands

and knocks, and would fain come in and sup. And cold is His welcome to

many a chamber which is neither furnished nor made ready.

The mysterious and reticent indication of the place is easily understood.

Jesus would not enable His enemies to lay hands upon Him before the time.

His nights had hitherto been spent at Bethany; now first it was possible

to arrest Him in the darkness, and hurry on the trial before the Galileans

at the feast, strangers and comparatively isolated, could learn the danger

of their “prophet of Galilee.” It was only too certain that when the blow

was struck, the light and fickle adhesion of the populace would transfer

itself to the successful party. Meanwhile, the prudence of Jesus gave Him

time for the Last Supper, and the wonderful discourse recorded by St.

John, and the conflict and victory in the Garden. When the priests

learned, at a late hour, that Jesus might yet be arrested before morning,

but that Judas could never watch Him any more, the necessity for prompt

action came with such surprise upon them, that the arrest was accomplished

while they still had to seek false witnesses, and to consult how a

sentence might best be extorted from the Governor. It is right to observe

at every point, the mastery of Jesus, the perplexity and confusion of His

foes.

And it is also right that we should learn to include, among the woes

endured for us by the Man of Sorrows, this haunting consciousness that a

base vigilance was to be watched against, that He breathed the air of

treachery and vileness.

Here then, in view of the precautions thus forced upon our Lord, we pause

to reflect upon the awful fall of Judas, the degradation of an apostle

into a hireling, a traitor, and a spy. Men have failed to believe that one

whom Jesus called to His side should sink so low.

They have not observed how inevitably great goodness rejected brings out

special turpitude, and dark shadows go with powerful lights; how, in this

supreme tragedy, all the motives, passions, moral and immoral impulses are

on the tragic scale; what gigantic forms of baseness, hypocrisy, cruelty,

and injustice stalk across the awful platform, and how the forces of hell

strip themselves, and string their muscles for a last desperate wrestle

against the powers of heaven, so that here is the very place to expect the

extreme apostasy. And so they have conjectured that Iscariot was only half

a traitor. Some project misled him of forcing his Master to turn to bay.

Then the powers which wasted themselves in scattering unthanked and

unprofitable blessings would exert themselves to crush the foe. Then he

could claim for himself the credit deserved by much astuteness, the

consideration due to the only man of political resource among the Twelve.

But this well-intending Judas is equally unknown to the narratives and the

prophecies, and this theory does not harmonise with any of the facts.

Profound reprobation and even contempt are audible in all the narratives;

they are quite as audible in the reiterated phrase, “which was one of the

Twelve,” and in almost every mention of his name, as in the round

assertion of St. John, that he was a thief and stole from the common

purse. Only the lowest motive is discernible in the fact that his project

ripened just when the waste of the ointment spoiled his last hope from

apostleship,—the hope of unjust gain, and in his bargaining for the

miserable price which he still carried with him when the veil dropped from

his inner eyes, when he awoke to the sorrow of the world which worketh

death, to the remorse which was not penitence.

One who desired that Jesus should be driven to counter-measures and yet

free to take them, would probably have favoured His escape when once the

attempt to arrest Him inflicted the necessary spur and certainly he would

have anxiously avoided any appearance of insult. But it will be seen that

Judas carefully closed every door against his Lord’s escape, and seized

Him with something very like a jibe on his recreant lips.

No, his infamy cannot be palliated, but it can be understood. For it is a

solemn and awful truth, that in every defeat of grace the reaction is

equal to the action; they who have been exalted unto heaven are brought

down far below the level of the world; and the principle is universal that

Israel cannot, by willing it, be as the nations that are round about, to

serve other gods. God Himself gives him statutes that are not good. He

makes fat the heart and blinds the eyes of the apostate. Therefore it

comes that religion without devotion is the mockery of honest worldlings;

that hypocrisy goes so constantly with the meanest and most sordid lust of

gain, and selfish cruelty; that publicans and harlots enter heaven before

scribes and pharisees; that salt which has lost its savour is fit neither

for the land nor for the dung-hill. Oh, then, to what place of shame shall

a recreant apostle be thrust down?

Moreover it must be observed that the guilt of Judas, however awful, is

but a shade more dark than that of his sanctimonious employers, who sought

false witnesses against Christ, extorted by menace and intrigue a sentence

which Pilate openly pronounced to be unjust, mocked His despairing agony,

and on the resurrection morning bribed a pagan soldiery to lie for the

Hebrew faith. It is plain enough that Jesus could not and did not choose

the apostles through foreknowledge of what they would hereafter prove, but

by His perception of what they then were, and what they were capable of

becoming, if faithful to the light they should receive.

Not one, when chosen first, was ready to welcome the purely spiritual

kingdom, the despised Messiah, the life of poverty and scorn. They had to

learn, and it was open to them to refuse the discipline. Once at least

they were asked, Will ye also go away? How severe was the trial may be

seen by the rebuke of Peter, and the petition of “Zebedee’s children” and

their mother. They conquered the same reluctance of the flesh which

overcame the better part in Judas. But he clung desperately to secular

hope, until the last vestige of such hope was over. Listening to the

warnings of Christ against the cares of this world, the lust of other

things, love of high places and contempt of lowly service, and watching

bright offers rejected and influential classes estranged, it was

inevitable that a sense of personal wrong, and a vindictive resentment,

should spring up in his gloomy heart. The thorns choked the good seed.

Then came a deeper fall. As he rejected the pure light of self-sacrifice,

and the false light of his romantic daydreams faded, no curb was left on

the baser instincts which are latent in the human heart. Self-respect

being already lost, and conscience beaten down, he was allured by low

compensations, and the apostle became a thief. What better than gain,

however sordid, was left to a life so plainly frustrated and spoiled? That

is the temptation of disillusion, as fatal to middle life as the passions

are to early manhood. And this fall reacted again upon his attitude

towards Jesus. Like all who will not walk in the light, he hated the

light; like all hirelings of two masters, he hated the one he left. Men

ask how Judas could have consented to accept for Jesus the bloodmoney of a

slave. The truth is that his treason itself yielded him a dreadful

satisfaction, and the insulting kiss, and the sneering “Rabbi,” expressed

the malice of his heart. Well for him if he had never been born. For when

his conscience awoke with a start and told him what thing he had become,

only self-loathing remained to him. Peter denying Jesus was nevertheless

at heart His own; a look sufficed to melt him. For Judas, Christ was

become infinitely remote and strange, an abstraction, “the innocent

blood,” no more than that. And so, when Jesus was passing into the holiest

through the rent veil which was His flesh, this first Antichrist had

already torn with his own hands the tissue of the curtain which hides

eternity.

Now let us observe that all this ruin was the result of forces continually

at work upon human hearts. Aspiration, vocation, failure, degradation—it

is the summary of a thousand lives. Only it is here exhibited on a vast

and dreadful scale (magnified by the light which was behind, as images

thrown by a lantern upon a screen) for the instruction and warning of the

world.

The Sop.

“And when it was evening He cometh with the twelve. And as they

sat and were eating, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, One of you

shall betray Me, _even_ he that eateth with Me. They began to be

sorrowful, and to say unto Him one by one, Is it I? And He said

unto them, _It is_ one of the twelve, he that dippeth with Me in

the dish. For the Son of man goeth, even as it is written of Him:

but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed!

good were it for that man if he had not been born.”—MARK xiv.

17-21 (R.V.).

In the deadly wine which our Lord was made to drink, every ingredient of

mortal bitterness was mingled. And it shows how far is even His Church

from comprehending Him, that we think so much more of the physical than

the mental and spiritual horrors which gather around the closing scene.

But the tone of all the narratives, and perhaps especially of St. Mark’s,

is that of the exquisite Collect which reminds us that our Lord Jesus

Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked

men, as well as to suffer death on the cross. Treason and outrage, the

traitor’s kiss and the weakness of those who loved Him, the hypocrisy of

the priest and the ingratitude of the mob, perjury and a mock trial, the

injustice of His judges, the brutal outrages of the soldiers, the worse

and more malignant mockery of scribe and Pharisee, and last and direst,

the averting of the face of God, these were more dreadful to Jesus than

the scourging and the nails.

And so there is great stress laid upon His anticipation of the misconduct

of His own.

As the dreadful evening closes in, having come to the guest chamber “with

the Twelve”—eleven whose hearts should fail them and one whose heart was

dead, it was “as they sat and were eating” that the oppression of the

traitor’s hypocrisy became intolerable, and the outraged One spoke out.

“Verily I say unto you, One of you shall betray Me, even he that eateth

with Me.” The words are interpreted as well as predicted in the plaintive

Psalm which says, “Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did

also eat of My bread, hath lifted up his heel against Me.” And perhaps

they are less a disclosure than a cry.

Every attempt to mitigate the treason of Judas, every suggestion that he

may only have striven too wilfully to serve our Lord by forcing Him to

take decided measures, must fail to account for the sense of utter wrong

which breathes in the simple and piercing complaint “one of you ... even

he that eateth with Me.” There is a tone in all the narratives which is at

variance with any palliation of the crime.

No theology is worth much if it fails to confess, at the centre of all the

words and deeds of Jesus, a great and tender human heart. He might have

spoken of teaching and warnings lavished on the traitor, and miracles

which he had beheld in vain. What weighs heaviest on His burdened spirit

is none of these; it is that one should betray Him who had eaten His

bread.

When Brutus was dying he is made to say—

“My heart doth joy, that yet, in all my life,

I found no man, but he was true to me.”

But no form of innocent sorrow was to pass Jesus by.

The vagueness in the words “one of you shall betray Me,” was doubtless

intended to suggest in all a great searching of heart. Coming just before

the institution of the Eucharistic feast, this incident anticipates the

command which it perhaps suggested: “Let a man examine himself, and so let

him eat.” It is good to be distrustful of one’s self. And if, as was

natural, the Eleven looked one upon another doubting of whom He spake,

they also began to say to Him, one by one (first the most timid, and then

others as the circle narrowed), Is it I? For the prince of this world had

something in each of them,—some frailty there was, some reluctance to bear

the yoke, some longing for the forbidden ways of worldliness, which

alarmed each at this solemn warning, and made him ask, Is it, can it be

possible, that it is I? Religious self-sufficiency was not then the

apostolic mood. Their questioning is also remarkable as a proof how little

they suspected Judas, how firmly he bore himself even as those

all-revealing words were spoken, how strong and wary was the temperament

which Christ would fain have sanctified. For between the Master and him

there could have been no more concealment.

The apostles were right to distrust themselves, and not to distrust

another. They were right, because they were so feeble, so unlike their

Lord. But for Him there is no misgiving: His composure is serene in the

hour of the power of darkness. And His perfect spiritual sensibility

discerned the treachery, unknown to others, as instinctively as the eye

resents the presence of a mote imperceptible to the hand.

The traitor’s iron nerve is somewhat strained as he feels himself

discovered, and when Jesus is about to hand a sop to him, he stretches

over, and their hands meet in the dish. That is the appointed sign: “It is

one of the Twelve, he that dippeth with Me in the dish,” and as he rushes

out into the darkness, to seek his accomplices and his revenge, Jesus

feels the awful contrast between the betrayer and the Betrayed. For

Himself, He goeth as it is written of Him. This phrase admirably expresses

the co-operation of Divine purpose and free human will, and by the woe

that follows He refutes all who would make of God’s fore-knowledge an

excuse for human sin. He then is not walking in the dark and stumbling,

though men shall think Him falling. But the life of the false one is worse

than utterly cast away: of him is spoken the dark and ominous word, never

indisputably certain of any other soul, “Good were it for him if that man

had not been born.”

“That man!” The order and emphasis are very strange. The Lord, who felt

and said that one of His chosen was a devil, seems here to lay stress upon

the warning thought, that he who fell so low was human, and his frightful

ruin was evolved from none but human capabilities for good and evil. In

“the Son of man” and “that man,” the same humanity was to be found.

For Himself, He is the same to-day as yesterday. All that we eat is His.

And in the most especial and far-reaching sense, it is His bread which is

broken for us at His table. Has He never seen traitor except one who

violated so close a bond? Alas, the night when the Supper of the Lord was

given was the same night when He was betrayed.

Bread And Wine.

“And as they were eating, He took bread, and when He had blessed

He brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take ye: this is My body.

And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave to them,

and they all drank of it. And He said unto them, This is My blood

of the covenant, which is shed for many. Verily I say unto you, I

will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I

drink it new in the kingdom of God.”—MARK xiv. 22-25 (R.V.).

How much does the Gospel of St. Mark tell us about the Supper of the Lord?

He is writing to Gentiles. He is writing probably before the sixth chapter

of St. John was penned, certainly before it reached his readers. Now we

must not undervalue the reflected light thrown by one Scripture upon

another. Still less may we suppose that each account conveys all the

doctrine of the Eucharist. But it is obvious that St. Mark intended his

narrative to be complete in itself, even if not exhaustive. No serious

expositor will ignore the fulness of any word or action in which later

experience can discern meanings, truly involved, although not apparent at

the first. That would be to deny the inspiring guidance of Him who sees

the end from the beginning. But it is reasonable to omit from the

interpretation of St. Mark whatever is not either explicitly there, or

else there in germ, waiting underneath the surface for other influences to

develope it. For instance, the “remembrance” of Christ in St. Paul’s

narrative may (or it may not) mean a sacrificial memorial to God of His

Body and His Blood. If it be, this notion was to be conveyed to the

readers of this Gospel hereafter, as a quite new fact, resting upon other

authority. It has no place whatever here, and need only be mentioned to

point out that St. Mark did not feel bound to convey the slightest hint of

it. A communion, therefore, could be profitably celebrated by persons who

had no glimmering of any such conception. Nor does he rely, for an

understanding of his narrative, upon such familiarity with Jewish ritual

as would enable his readers to draw subtle analogies as they went along.

They were so ignorant of these observances that he had just explained to

them on what day the passover was sacrificed (ver. 12).

But this narrative conveys enough to make the Lord’s Supper, for every

believing heart, the supreme help to faith, both intellectual and

spiritual, and the mightiest of promises, and the richest gift of grace.

It is hard to imagine that any reader would conceive that the bread in

Christ’s hands had become His body, which still lived and breathed; or

that His blood, still flowing in His veins, was also in the cup He gave to

His disciples. No resort could be made to the glorification of the risen

Body as an escape from the perplexities of such a notion, for in whatever

sense the words are true, they were spoken of the body of His humiliation,

before which still lay the agony and the tomb.

Instinct would revolt yet more against such a gross explanation, because

the friends of Jesus are bidden to eat and drink. And all the analogy of

Christ’s language would prove that His vivid style refuses to be tied down

to so lifeless and mechanical a treatment. Even in this Gospel they could

discover that seed was teaching, and fowls were Satan, and that they were

themselves His mother and His brethren. Further knowledge of Scripture

would not impair this natural freedom of interpretation. For they would

discover that if animated language were to be frozen to such literalism,

the partakers of the Supper were themselves, though many, one body and one

loaf, that Onesimus was St. Paul’s very heart, that leaven is hypocrisy,

that Hagar is Mount Sinai, and that the veil of the temple is the flesh of

Christ (1 Cor. x. 17; Philem. ver. 12; Luke xii. 1; Gal. iv. 25; Heb. x.

20). And they would also find, in the analogous institution of the paschal

feast, a similar use of language (Exod. xii. 11).

But when they had failed to discern the doctrine of a transubstantiation,

how much was left to them. The great words remained, in all their spirit

and life, “Take ye, this is My Body ... this is My Blood of the Covenant,

which is shed for many.”

(1) So then, Christ did not look forward to His death as to ruin or

overthrow. The Supper is an institution which could never have been

devised at any later period. It comes to us by an unbroken line from the

Founder’s hand, and attested by the earliest witnesses. None could have

interpolated a new ordinance into the simple worship of the early Church,

and the last to suggest such a possibility should be those sceptics who

are deeply interested in exaggerating the estrangements which existed from

the first, and which made the Jewish Church a keen critic of Gentile

innovation, and the Gentiles of a Jewish novelty.

Nor could any genius have devised its vivid and pictorial earnestness, its

copious meaning, and its pathetic power over the heart, except His, Who

spoke of the Good Shepherd and of the Prodigal Son. And so it tells us

plainly what Christ thought about His own death. Death is to most of us

simply the close of life. To Him it was itself an achievement, and a

supreme one. Now it is possible to remember with exultation a victory

which cost the conqueror’s life. But on the Friday which we call Good,

nothing happened except the crucifixion. The effect on the Church, which

is amazing and beyond dispute, is produced by the death of her Founder,

and by nothing else. The Supper has no reference to Christ’s resurrection.

It is as if the nation exulted in Trafalgar, not in spite of the death of

our great Admiral, but solely because he died; as if the shot which slew

Nelson had itself been the overthrow of hostile navies. Now the history of

religions offers no parallel to this. The admirers of the Buddha love to

celebrate the long spiritual struggle, the final illumination, and the

career of gentle helpfulness. They do not derive life and energy from the

somewhat vulgar manner of his death. But the followers of Jesus find an

inspiration (very displeasing to some recent apostles of good taste) in

singing of their Redeemer’s blood. Remove from the Creed (which does not

even mention His three years of teaching) the proclamation of His death,

and there may be left, dimly visible to man, the outline of a sage among

the sages, but there will be no longer a Messiah, nor a Church. It is

because He was lifted up that He draws all men unto Him. The perpetual

nourishment of the Church, her bread and wine, are beyond question the

slain body of her Master and His blood poured out for man.

What are we to make of this admitted fact, that from the first she thought

less of His miracles, His teaching, and even of His revelation of the

Divine character in a perfect life, than of the doctrine that He who thus

lived, died for the men who slew Him? And what of this, that Jesus

Himself, in the presence of imminent death, when men review their lives

and set a value on their achievements, embodied in a solemn ordinance the

conviction that all He had taught and done was less to man than what He

was about to suffer? The Atonement is here proclaimed as a cardinal fact

in our religion, not worked out into doctrinal subtleties, but placed with

marvellous simplicity and force, in the forefront of the consciousness of

the simplest. What the Incarnation does for our bewildering thoughts of

God, the absolute and unconditioned, that does the Eucharist for our

subtle reasonings upon the Atonement.

(2) The death of Christ is thus precious, because He Who is sacrificed for

us can give Himself away. “Take ye” is a distinct offer. And so the

communion feast is not a mere commemoration, such as nations hold for

great deliverances. It is this, but it is much more, else the language of

Christ would apply worse to that first supper whence all our Eucharistic

language is derived, than to any later celebration. When He was absent,

the bread would very aptly remind them of His wounded body, and the wine

of His blood poured out. It might naturally be said, Henceforward, to your

loving remembrance this shall be my Body, as indeed, the words, As oft as

ye drink it, are actually linked with the injunction to do this in

remembrance. But scarcely could it have been said by Jesus, looking His

disciples in the face, that the elements were then His body and blood, if

nothing more than commemoration were in His mind. And so long as popular

Protestantism fails to look beyond this, so long will it be hard pressed

and harassed by the evident weight of the words of institution. These are

given in Scripture solely as having been spoken then, and no

interpretation is valid which attends chiefly to subsequent celebrations,

and only in the second place to the Supper of Jesus and the Eleven.

Now the most strenuous opponent of the doctrine that any change has passed

over the material substance of the bread and wine, need not resist the

palpable evidence that Christ appointed these to represent Himself. And

how? Not only as sacrificed for His people, but as verily bestowed upon

them. Unless Christ mocks us, “Take ye” is a word of absolute assurance.

Christ’s Body is not only slain, and His Blood shed on our behalf; He

gives Himself _to_ us as well as _for_ us; He is ours. And therefore

whoever is convinced that he may take part in “the sacrament of so great a

mystery” should realize that he there receives, conveyed to him by the

Author of that wondrous feast, all that is expressed by the bread and

wine.

(3) And yet this very word “Take ye,” demands our co-operation in the

sacrament. It requires that we should receive Christ, as it declares that

He is ready to impart Himself, utterly, like food which is taken into the

system, absorbed, assimilated, wrought into bone, into tissue and into

blood. And if any doubt lingered in our minds of the significance of this

word, it is removed when we remember how belief is identified with

feeding, in St. John’s Gospel. “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to

Me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.... He

that believeth hath eternal life. I am the bread of life.” (John vi. 35,

47, 48.) If it follows that to feed upon Christ is to believe, it also

follows quite as plainly that belief is not genuine unless it really feeds

upon Christ.

It is indeed impossible to imagine a more direct and vigorous appeal to

man to have faith in Christ than this, that He formally conveys, by the

agency of His Church, to the hands and lips of His disciples, the

appointed emblem of Himself, and of Himself in the act of blessing them.

For the emblem is food in its most nourishing and in its most stimulating

form, in a form the best fitted to speak of utter self-sacrifice, by the

bruised corn of broken bread, and by the solemn resemblance to His sacred

blood. We are taught to see, in the absolute absorption of our food into

our bodily system, a type of the completeness wherewith Christ gives

Himself to us.

That gift is not to the Church in the gross, it is “divided among” us; it

individualizes each believer; and yet the common food expresses the unity

of the whole Church in Christ. Being many we are one bread.

Moreover, the institution of a meal reminds us that faith and emotion do

not always exist together. Times there are when the hunger and thirst of

the soul are like the craving of a sharp appetite for food. But the wise

man will not postpone his meal until such a keen desire returns, and the

Christian will seek for the Bread of life, however his emotions may flag,

and his soul cleave unto the dust. Silently and often unaware, as the

substance of the body is renovated and restored by food, shall the inner

man be strengthened and built up by that living Bread.

(4) We have yet to ask the great question, what is the specific blessing

expressed by the elements, and therefore surely given to the faithful by

the sacrament. Too many are content to think vaguely of Divine help, given

us for the merit of the death of Christ. But bread and wine do not express

an indefinite Divine help, they express the body and blood of Christ, they

have to do with His Humanity. We must beware, indeed, of limiting the

notion overmuch. At the Supper He said not “My flesh,” but “My body,”

which is plainly a more comprehensive term. And in the discourse when He

said “My Flesh is meat indeed,” He also said “I am the bread of life....

He that eateth Me, the same shall live by Me.” And we may not so carnalize

the Body as to exclude the Person, who bestows Himself. Yet is all the

language so constructed as to force the conviction upon us that His body

and blood, His Humanity, is the special gift of the Lord’s Supper. As man

He redeemed us, and as man He imparts Himself to man.

Thus we are led up to the sublime conception of a new human force working

in humanity. As truly as the life of our parents is in our veins, and the

corruption which they inherited from Adam is passed on to us, so truly

there is abroad in the world another influence, stronger to elevate than

the infection of the fall is to degrade; and the heart of the Church is

propelling to its utmost extremities the pure life of the Second Adam, the

Second Man, the new Father of the race. As in Adam all die, even so in

Christ shall all be made alive; and we who bear now the image of our

earthy progenitor shall hereafter bear the image of the heavenly.

Meanwhile, even as the waste and dead tissues of our bodily frame are

replaced by new material from every meal, so does He, the living Bread,

impart not only aid from heaven, but nourishment, strength to our poor

human nature, so weary and exhausted, and renovation to what is sinful and

decayed. How well does such a doctrine of the sacrament harmonize with the

declarations of St. Paul: “I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth

in me.” “The Head, from whom all the body being supplied and knit together

through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God” (Gal.

ii. 20; Col. ii. 19).

(5) In the brief narrative of St. Mark, there are a few minor points of

interest.

Fasting communions may possibly be an expression of reverence only. The

moment they are pressed further, or urged as a duty, they are strangely

confronted by the words, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread.”

The assertion that “they all drank,” follows from the express commandment

recorded elsewhere. And while we remember that the first communicants were

not laymen, yet the emphatic insistence upon this detail, and with

reference only to the cup, is entirely at variance with the Roman notion

of the completeness of a communion in one kind.

It is most instructive also to observe how the far-reaching expectation of

our Lord looks beyond the Eleven, and beyond His infant Church, forward to

the great multitude which no man can number, and speaks of the shedding of

His blood “for many.” He, who is to see of the travail of His soul and to

be satisfied, has already spoken of a great supper when the house of God

shall be filled. And now He will no more drink of the fruit of the vine

until that great day when the marriage of the Lamb having come, and His

Bride having made herself ready, He shall drink it new in the consummated

kingdom of God.

With the announcement of that kingdom He began His gospel: how could the

mention of it be omitted from the great gospel of the Eucharist? or how

could the Giver of the earthly feast be silent concerning the banquet yet

to come?

The Warning.

“And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the mount of

Olives. And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended: for

it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be

scattered abroad. Howbeit, after I am raised up, I will go before

you into Galilee. But Peter said unto Him, Although all shall be

offended, yet will not I. And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say

unto thee, that thou to-day, _even_ this night, before the cock

crow twice, shalt deny me thrice. But he spake exceeding

vehemently, If I must die with Thee, I will not deny Thee. And in

like manner also said they all.”—MARK xiv. 26-31 (R.V.).

Some uncertainty attaches to the position of Christ’s warning to the

Eleven in the narrative of the last evening. Was it given at the supper,

or on Mount Olivet; or were there perhaps premonitory admonitions on His

part, met by vows of faithfulness on theirs, which at last led Him to

speak out so plainly, and elicited such vainglorious protestations, when

they sat together in the night air?

What concerns us more is the revelation of a calm and beautiful nature, at

every point in the narrative. Jesus knows and has declared that His life

is now closing, and His blood already “being shed for many.” But that does

not prevent Him from joining with them in singing a hymn. It is the only

time when we are told that our Saviour sang, evidently because no other

occasion needed mention; a warning to those who draw confident inferences

from such facts as that “none ever said He smiled,” or that there is no

record of His having been sick. It would surprise such theorists to

observe the number of biographies much longer than any of the Gospels,

which also mention nothing of the kind. The Psalms usually sung at the

close of the feast are cxv. and the three following. The first tells how

the dead praise not the Lord, but we will praise Him from this time forth

for ever. The second proclaims that the Lord hath delivered my soul from

death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. The third bids all

the nations praise the Lord, for His merciful kindness is great and His

truth endureth for ever. And the fourth rejoices because, although all

nations compassed me about, yet I shall not die, but live and declare the

works of the Lord; and because the stone which the builders rejected is

become the head stone of the corner. Memories of infinite sadness were

awakened by the words which had so lately rung around His path: “Blessed

is He that cometh in the name of the Lord;” but His voice was strong to

sing, “Bind the sacrifice with cords, even to the horns of the altar;” and

it rose to the exultant close, “Thou art my God, and I will praise Thee:

Thou art my God, I will exalt Thee. O give thanks unto the Lord for He is

good, for His mercy endureth for ever.”

This hymn, from the lips of the Perfect One, could be no “dying

swan-song.” It uplifted that more than heroic heart to the wonderful

tranquillity which presently said, “When I am risen, I will go before you

into Galilee.” It is full of victory. And now they go unto the Mount of

Olives.

Is it enough considered how much of the life of Jesus was passed in the

open air? He preached on the hill side; He desired that a boat should be

at His command upon the lake; He prayed upon the mountain; He was

transfigured beside the snows of Hermon; He oft-times resorted to a garden

which had not yet grown awful; He met His disciples on a Galilean

mountain; and He finally ascended from the Mount of Olives. His

unartificial normal life, a pattern to us, not as students but as men—was

spent by preference neither in the study nor the street.

In this crisis, most solemn and yet most calm, He leaves the crowded city

into which all the tribes had gathered, and chooses for His last

intercourse with His disciples, the slopes of the opposite hill side,

while overhead is glowing, in all the still splendour of an Eastern sky,

the full moon of Passover. Here then is the place for one more emphatic

warning. Think how He loved them. As His mind reverts to the impending

blow, and apprehends it in its most awful form, the very buffet of God Who

Himself will smite the Shepherd, He remembers to warn His disciples of

their weakness. We feel it to be gracious that He should think of them at

such a time. But if we drew a little nearer, we should almost hear the

beating of the most loving heart that ever broke. They were all He had. In

them He had confided utterly. Even as the Father had loved Him, He also

had loved them, the firstfruits of the travail of His soul. He had ceased

to call them servants and had called them friends. To them He had spoken

those affecting words, “Ye are they which have continued with me in My

temptations.” How intensely He clung to their sympathy, imperfect though

it was, is best seen by His repeated appeals to it in the Agony. And He

knew that they loved Him, that the spirit was willing, that they would

weep and lament for Him, sorrowing with a sorrow which He hastened to add

that He would turn into joy.

It is the preciousness of their fellowship which reminds Him how this,

like all else, must fail Him. If there is blame in the words, “Ye shall be

offended,” this passes at once into exquisite sadness when He adds that

He, Who so lately said, “Them that Thou gavest Me, I have guarded,” should

Himself be the cause of their offence, “All ye shall be caused to stumble

because of Me.” And there is an unfathomable tenderness, a marvellous

allowance for their frailty in what follows. They were His sheep, and

therefore as helpless, as little to be relied upon, as sheep when the

shepherd is stricken. How natural it was for sheep to be scattered.

The world has no parallel for such a warning to comrades who are about to

leave their leader, so faithful and yet so tender, so far from

estrangement or reproach.

If it stood alone it would prove the Founder of the Church to be not only

a great teacher, but a genuine Son of man.

For Himself, He does not share their weakness, nor apply to Himself the

lesson of distrustfulness which He teaches them; He is of another nature

from these trembling sheep, the Shepherd of Zechariah, “Who is My fellow,

saith the Lord of Hosts.” He does not shrink from applying to Himself this

text, which awakens against Him the sword of God (Zechariah xiii. 7).

Looking now beyond the grave to the resurrection, and unestranged by their

desertion, He resumes at once the old relation; for as the shepherd goeth

before his sheep, and they follow him, so He will go before them into

Galilee, to the familiar places, far from the city where men hate Him.

This last touch of quiet human feeling completes an utterance too

beautiful, too characteristic to be spurious, yet a prophecy, and one

which attests the ancient predictions, and which involves an amazing

claim.

At first sight it is surprising that the Eleven who were lately so

conscious of weakness that each asked was he the traitor, should since

have become too self-confident to profit by a solemn admonition. But a

little examination shows the two statements to be quite consistent. They

had wronged themselves by that suspicion, and never is self-reliance more

boastful than when it is reassured after being shaken. The institution of

the Sacrament had invested them with new privileges, and drawn them nearer

than ever to their Master. Add to this the infinite tenderness of the last

discourse in St. John, and the prayer which was for them and not for the

world. How did their hearts burn within them as He said, “Holy Father,

keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given Me.” How incredible must it

then have seemed to them, thrilling with real sympathy and loyal

gratitude, that they should forsake such a Master.

Nor must we read in their words merely a loud and indignant

self-assertion, all unworthy of the time and scene. They were meant to be

a solemn vow. The love they professed was genuine and warm. Only they

forgot their weakness; they did not observe the words which declared them

to be helpless sheep entirely dependent on the Shepherd, whose support

would speedily seem to fail.

Instead of harsh and unbecoming criticism, which repeats almost exactly

their fault by implying that we should not yield to the same pressure, let

us learn the lesson, that religious exaltation, a sense of special

privilege, and the glow of generous emotions, have their own danger.

Unless we continue to be as little children, receiving the Bread of Life,

without any pretence to have deserved it, and conscious still that our

only protection is the staff of our Shepherd, then the very notion that we

are something, when we are nothing, will betray us to defeat and shame.

Peter is the loudest in his protestations; and there is a painful egoism

in his boast, that even if the others fail, he will never deny Him. So in

the storm, it is he who should be called across the waters. And so an

early reading makes him propose that he alone should build the tabernacles

for the wondrous Three.

Naturally enough, this egoism stimulates the rest. For them, Peter is

among those who may fail, while each is confident that he himself cannot.

Thus the pride of one excites the pride of many.

But Christ has a special humiliation to reveal for his special

self-assertion. That day, and even before that brief night was over,

before the second cock-crowing (“the cock-crow” of the rest, being that

which announced the dawn) he shall deny his Master twice. Peter does not

observe that his eager contradictions are already denying the Master’s

profoundest claims. The others join in his renewed protestations, and

their Lord answers them no more. Since they refuse to learn from Him, they

must be left to the stern schooling of experience. Even before the

betrayal, they had an opportunity to judge how little their good

intentions might avail. For Jesus now enters Gethsemane.

In The Garden.

“And they come unto a place which was named Gethsemane: and He

saith unto His disciples, Sit ye here, while I pray. And He taketh

with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly amazed,

and sore troubled. And He saith unto them, My soul is exceeding

sorrowful even unto death: abide ye here, and watch. And He went

forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it

were possible, the hour might pass away from Him. And He said,

Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee: remove this cup

from Me: howbeit not what I will, but what Thou wilt. And He

cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon,

sleepest thou? couldest thou not watch one hour? Watch and pray,

that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing,

but the flesh is weak. And again He went away, and prayed, saying

the same words. And again He came, and found them sleeping, for

their eyes were very heavy; and they wist not what to answer Him.

And He cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now,

and take your rest: it is enough; the hour is come; behold, the

Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be

going: behold, he that betrayeth Me is at hand.”—MARK xiv. 32-42

(R.V.).

All Scripture, given by inspiration of God, is profitable; yet must we

approach with reverence and solemn shrinking, the story of our Saviour’s

anguish. It is a subject for caution and for reticence, putting away all

over-curious surmise, all too-subtle theorizing, and choosing to say too

little rather than too much.

It is possible so to argue about the metaphysics of the Agony as to forget

that a suffering human heart was there, and that each of us owes his soul

to the victory which was decided if not completed in that fearful place.

The Evangelists simply tell us how He suffered.

Let us begin with the accessories of the scene, and gradually approach the

centre.

In the warning of Jesus to His disciples there was an undertone of deep

sorrow. God will smite Him, and they will all be scattered like sheep.

However dauntless be the purport of such words, it is impossible to lose

sight of their melancholy. And when the Eleven rejected His prophetic

warning, and persisted in trusting the hearts He knew to be so fearful,

their professions of loyalty could only deepen His distress, and intensify

His isolation.

In silence He turns to the deep gloom of the olive grove, aware now of the

approach of the darkest and deadliest assault.

There was a striking contrast between the scene of His first temptation

and His last; and His experience was exactly the reverse of that of the

first Adam, who began in a garden, and was driven thence into the desert,

because he failed to refuse himself one pleasure more beside ten thousand.

Jesus began where the transgression of men had driven them, in the desert

among the wild beasts, and resisted not a luxury, but the passion of

hunger craving for bread. Now He is in a garden, but how different from

theirs. Close by is a city filled with foemen, whose messengers are

already on His track. Instead of the attraction of a fruit good for food,

and pleasant, and to be desired to make one wise, there is the grim

repulsion of death, and its anguish, and its shame and mockery. He is now

to be assailed by the utmost terrors of the flesh and of the spirit. And

like the temptation in the wilderness, the assault is three times renewed.

As the dark “hour” approached, Jesus confessed the two conflicting

instincts of our human nature in its extremity—the desire of sympathy, and

the desire of solitude. Leaving eight of the disciples at some distance,

He led still nearer to the appointed place His elect of His election, on

whom He had so often bestowed special privilege, and whose faith would be

less shaken by the sight of His human weakness, because they had beheld

His Divine glory on the holy mount. To these He opened His heart. “My soul

is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; abide ye here and watch.” And He

went from them a little. Their neighbourhood was a support in His dreadful

conflict, and He could at times return to them for sympathy; but they

might not enter with Him into the cloud, darker and deadlier than that

which they feared on Hermon. He would fain not be desolate, and yet He

must be alone.

But when He returned, they were asleep. As Jesus spoke of watching for one

hour, some time had doubtless elapsed. And sorrow is exhausting. If the

spirit do not seek for support from God, it will be dragged down by the

flesh into heavy sleep, and the brief and dangerous respite of oblivion.

It was the failure of Peter which most keenly affected Jesus, not only

because his professions had been so loud, but because much depended on his

force of character. Thus, when Satan had desired to have them, that he

might sift them all like wheat, the prayers of Jesus were especially for

Simon, and it was he when he was converted who should strengthen the rest.

Surely then he at least might have watched one hour. And what of John, His

nearest human friend, whose head had reposed upon His bosom? However keen

the pang, the lips of the Perfect Friend were silent; only He warned them

all alike to watch and pray, because they were themselves in danger of

temptation.

That is a lesson for all time. No affection and no zeal are a substitute

for the presence of God realised, and the protection of God invoked.

Loyalty and love are not enough without watchfulness and prayer, for even

when the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, and needs to be upheld.

Thus, in His severest trial and heaviest oppression, there is neither

querulousness nor invective, but a most ample recognition of their good

will, a most generous allowance for their weakness, a most sedulous

desire, not that He should be comforted, but that they should escape

temptation.

With His yearning heart unsoothed, with another anxiety added to His heavy

burden, Jesus returned to His vigil. Three times He felt the wound of

unrequited affection, for their eyes were very heavy, and they wist not

what to answer Him when He spoke.

Nor should we omit to contrast their bewildered stupefaction, with the

keen vigilance and self-possession of their more heavily burdened Lord.

If we reflect that Jesus must needs experience all the sorrows that human

weakness and human wickedness could inflict, we may conceive of these

varied wrongs as circles with a common centre, on which the cross was

planted. And our Lord has now entered the first of these; He has looked

for pity but there was no man; His own, although it was grief which

pressed them down, slept in the hour of His anguish, and when He bade them

watch.

It is right to observe that our Saviour had not bidden them to pray with

Him. They should watch and pray. They should even watch with Him. But to

pray for Him, or even to pray with Him, they were not bidden. And this is

always so. Never do we read that Jesus and any mortal joined together in

any prayer to God. On the contrary, when two or three of them asked

anything in His name, He took for Himself the position of the Giver of

their petition. And we know certainly that He did not invite them to join

His prayers, for it was as He was praying in a certain place that when He

ceased, one of His disciples desired that they also might be taught to

pray (Luke xi. 1). Clearly then they were not wont to approach the mercy

seat hand in hand with Jesus. And the reason is plain. He came directly to

His Father; no man else came unto the Father but by Him; there was an

essential difference between His attitude towards God and ours.

Has the Socinian ever asked himself why, in this hour of His utmost

weakness, Jesus sought no help from the intercession of even the chiefs of

the apostles?

It is in strict harmony with this position, that St. Matthew tells us, He

now said not Our Father, but My Father. No disciple is taught, in any

circumstances to claim for himself a monopolized or special sonship. He

may be in his closet and the door shut, yet must he remember his brethren

and say, Our Father. That is a phrase which Jesus never addressed to God.

None is partaker of His Sonship; none joined with Him in supplication to

His Father.

The Agony.

“And He saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto

death: abide ye here, and watch. And He went forward a little, and

fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour

might pass away from Him. And He said, Abba, Father, all things

are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from Me: howbeit not what

I will, but what Thou wilt. And He cometh, and findeth them

sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest

thou not watch one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into

temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

And again He went away, and prayed, saying the same words. And

again He came, and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very

heavy; and they wist not what to answer Him. And He cometh the

third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest:

it is enough; the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed

into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going: behold, he that

betrayeth Me is at hand.”—MARK xiv. 34-42 (R.V.).

Sceptics and believers have both remarked that St. John, the only

Evangelist who was said to have been present, gives no account of the

Agony.

It is urged by the former, that the serene composure of the discourse in

his Gospel leaves no room for subsequent mental conflict and recoil from

suffering, which are inconsistent besides with his conception of a Divine

man, too exalted to be the subject of such emotions.

But do not the others know of composure which bore to speak of His Body as

broken bread, and seeing in the cup the likeness of His Blood shed, gave

it to be the food of His Church for ever?

Was the resignation less serene which spoke of the smiting of the

Shepherd, and yet of His leading back the flock to Galilee? If the

narrative was rejected as inconsistent with the calmness of Jesus in the

fourth Gospel, it should equally have repelled the authors of the other

three.

We may grant that emotion, agitation, is inconsistent with unbelieving

conceptions of the Christ of the fourth Gospel. But this only proves how

false those conceptions are. For the emotion, the agitation, is already

there. At the grave of Lazarus the word which tells that when He groaned

in spirit He was troubled, describes one’s distress in the presence of

some palpable opposing force (John xi. 34). There was, however, a much

closer approach to His emotion in the garden, when the Greek world first

approached Him. Then He contrasted its pursuit of self-culture with His

own doctrine of self-sacrifice, declaring that even a grain of wheat must

either die or abide by itself alone. To Jesus that doctrine was no smooth,

easily announced theory, and so He adds, “Now is My soul troubled, and

what shall I say? Father save Me from this hour. But for this cause came I

unto this hour” (John xii. 27).

Such is the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, by no means that of its modern

analysts. Nor is enough said, when we remind them that the Speaker of

these words was capable of suffering; we must add that profound agitation

at the last was inevitable, for One so resolute in coming to this hour,

yet so keenly sensitive of its dread.

The truth is that the silence of St. John is quite in his manner. It is so

that he passes by the Sacraments, as being familiar to his readers,

already instructed in the gospel story. But he gives previous discourses

in which the same doctrine is expressed which was embodied in each

Sacrament,—the declaration that Nicodemus must be born of water, and that

the Jews must eat His flesh and drink His blood. It is thus that instead

of the agony, he records that earlier agitation. And this threefold

recurrence of the same expedient is almost incredible except by design.

St. John was therefore not forgetful of Gethsemane.

A coarser infidelity has much to say about the shrinking of our Lord from

death. Such weakness is pronounced unworthy, and the bearing of multitudes

of brave men and even of Christian martyrs, unmoved in the flames, is

contrasted with the strong crying and tears of Jesus.

It would suffice to answer that Jesus also failed not when the trial came,

but before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession, and won upon the

cross the adoration of a fellow-sufferer and the confession of a Roman

soldier. It is more than enough to answer that His story, so far from

relaxing the nerve of human fortitude, has made those who love Him

stronger to endure tortures than were emperors and inquisitors to invent

them. What men call His weakness has inspired ages with fortitude.

Moreover, the censure which such critics, much at ease, pronounce on Jesus

expecting crucifixion, arises entirely from the magnificent and unique

standard by which they try Him; for who is so hard-hearted as to think

less of the valour of the martyrs because it was bought by many a lonely

and intense conflict with the flesh?

For us, we accept the standard; we deny that Jesus in the garden came

short of absolute perfection; but we call attention to the fact that much

is conceded to us, when a criticism is ruthlessly applied to our Lord

which would excite indignation and contempt if brought to bear on the

silent sufferings of any hero or martyr but Himself.

Perfection is exactly what complicates the problem here.

Conscious of our own weakness, we not only justify but enjoin upon

ourselves every means of attaining as much nobility as we may. We “steel

ourselves to bear,” and therefore we are led to expect the same of Jesus.

We aim at some measure of what, in its lowest stage, is callous

insensibility. Now that word is negative; it asserts the absence or

paralysis of a faculty, not its fulness and activity. Thus we attain

victory by a double process; in part by resolutely turning our mind away,

and only in part by its ascendancy over appreciated distress. We

administer anodynes to the soul. But Jesus, when he had tasted thereof,

would not drink. The horrors which were closing around Him were perfectly

apprehended, that they might perfectly be overcome.

Thus suffering, He became an example for gentle womanhood, and tender

childhood, as well as man boastful of his stoicism. Moreover, He

introduced into the world a new type of virtue, much softer and more

emotional than that of the sages. The stoic, to whom pain is no evil, and

the Indian laughing and singing at the stake, are partly actors and partly

perversions of humanity. But the good Shepherd is also, for His

gentleness, a lamb. And it is His influence which has opened our eyes to

see a charm unknown before, in the sensibility of our sister and wife and

child. Therefore, since the perfection of manhood means neither the

ignoring of pain nor the denying of it, but the union of absolute

recognition with absolute mastery of its fearfulness, Jesus, on the

approach of agony and shame, and who shall say what besides, yields

Himself beforehand to the full contemplation of His lot. He does so, while

neither excited by the trial, nor driven to bay by the scoffs of His

murderers, but in solitude, in the dark, with stealthy footsteps

approaching through the gloom.

And ever since, all who went farthest down into the dread Valley, and on

whom the shadow of death lay heaviest, found there the footsteps of its

conqueror. It must be added that we cannot measure the keenness of the

sensibility thus exposed to torture. A physical organization and a

spiritual nature fresh from the creative hand, undegraded by the

transmitted heritage of ages of artificial, diseased and sinful habit,

unblunted by one deviation from natural ways, undrugged by one excess, was

surely capable of a range of feeling as vast in anguish as in delight.

The sceptic supposes that a torrent of emotion swept our Saviour off His

feet. The only narratives he can go upon give quite the opposite

impression. He is seen to fathom all that depth of misery, He allows the

voice of nature to utter all the bitter earnestness of its reluctance, yet

He never loses self-control, nor wavers in loyalty to His Father, nor

renounces His submission to the Father’s will. Nothing in the scene is

more astonishing than its combination of emotion with self-government.

Time after time He pauses, gently and lovingly admonishes others, and

calmly returns to His intense and anxious vigil.

Thus He has won the only perfect victory. With a nature so responsive to

emotion, He has not refused to feel, nor abstracted His soul from

suffering, nor silenced the flesh by such an effort as when we shut our

ears against a discord. Jesus sees all, confesses that He would fain

escape, but resigns Himself to God.

In the face of all asceticisms, as of all stoicisms, Gethsemane is the

eternal protest that every part of human nature is entitled to be heard,

provided that the spirit retains the arbitration over all.

Hitherto nothing has been assumed which a reasonable sceptic can deny. Nor

should such a reader fail to observe the astonishing revelation of

character in the narrative, its gentle pathos, its intensity beyond what

commonly belongs to gentleness, its affection, its mastery over the

disciples, its filial submission. Even the rich imaginative way of

thinking, which invented the parables and sacraments, is in the word “this

cup.”

But if the story of Gethsemane can be vindicated from such a point of

view, what shall be said when it is viewed as the Church regards it? Both

Testaments declare that the sufferings of the Messiah were supernatural.

In the Old Testament it was pleasing to the Father to bruise Him. The

terrible cry of Jesus to a God who had forsaken Him is conclusive evidence

from the New Testament. And if we ask what such a cry may mean, we find

that He is a curse for us, and made to be sin for us, Who knew no sin.

If the older theology drew incredible conclusions from such words, that is

no reason why we should ignore them. It is incredible that God was angry

with His Son, or that in any sense the Omniscient One confused the Saviour

with the sinful world. It is incredible that Jesus ever endured

estrangement as of lost souls from the One Whom in Gethsemane He called

Abba Father, and in the hour of utter darkness, My God, and into whose

Fatherly hands He committed His Spirit. Yet it is clear that He is being

treated otherwise than a sinless Being, as such, ought to expect. His

natural standing-place is exchanged for ours. And as our exceeding misery,

and the bitter curse of all our sin fell on Him, Who bore it away by

bearing it, our pollution surely affected His purity as keenly as our

stripes tried His sensibility. He shuddered as well as agonized. The deep

waters in which He sank were defiled as well as cold. Only this can

explain the agony and bloody sweat. And as we, for whom He endured it,

think of this, we can only be silent and adore.

Once more, Jesus returns to His disciples, but no longer to look for

sympathy, or to bid them watch and pray. The time for such warnings is now

past: the crisis, “the hour” is come, and His speech is sad and solemn.

“Sleep on now and take your rest, it is enough.” Had the sentence stopped

there, none would ever have proposed to treat it as a question, “Do ye now

sleep on and take your rest?” It would plainly have meant, “Since ye

refuse My counsel and will none of my reproof, I strive no further to

arouse the torpid will, the inert conscience, the inadequate affection.

Your resistance prevails against My warning.”

But critics fail to reconcile this with what follows, “Arise, let us be

going.” They fail through supposing that words of intense emotion must be

interpreted like a syllogism or a lawyer’s parchment.

“For My part, sleep on; but your sleep is now to be rudely broken: take

your rest so far as respect for your Master should have kept you watchful;

but the traitor is at hand to break such repose, let him not find you

ignobly slumbering. ‘Arise, he is at hand that doth betray Me.’ ”

This is not sarcasm, which taunts and wounds. But there is a lofty and

profound irony in the contrast between their attitude and their

circumstances, their sleep and the eagerness of the traitor.

And so they lost the most noble opportunity ever given to mortals, not

through blank indifference nor unbelief, but by allowing the flesh to

overcome the spirit. And thus do multitudes lose heaven, sleeping until

the golden hours are gone, and He who said, “Sleep on now,” says, “He that

is unrighteous, let him be unrighteous still.”

Remembering that defilement was far more urgent than pain in our Saviour’s

agony, how sad is the meaning of the words, “the Son of man is betrayed

into the hands of sinners,” and even of “the sinners,” the representatives

of all the evil from which He had kept Himself unspotted.

The one perfect flower of humanity is thrown by treachery into the

polluted and polluting grasp of wickedness in its many forms; the traitor

delivers Him to hirelings; the hirelings to hypocrites; the hypocrites to

an unjust and sceptical pagan judge; the judge to his brutal soldiery; who

expose Him to all that malice can wreak upon the most sensitive

organization, or ingratitude upon the most tender heart.

At every stage an outrage. Every outrage an appeal to the indignation of

Him who held them in the hollow of His hand. Surely it may well be said,

Consider Him who endured such contradiction; and endured it from sinners

against Himself.

The Arrest.

“And straightway, while He yet spake, cometh Judas, one of the

twelve, and with him a multitude with swords and staves, from the

chief priests and the scribes and the elders. Now he that betrayed

Him had given them a token, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that

is He; take Him, and lead Him away safely. And when he was come,

straightway he came to Him, and saith, Rabbi; and kissed Him. And

they laid hands on Him, and took Him. But a certain one of them

that stood by drew his sword, and smote the servant of the high

priest, and struck off his ear. And Jesus answered and said unto

them, Are ye come out, as against a robber, with swords and staves

to seize Me? I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye

took Me not; but _this is done_ that the scriptures might be

fulfilled. And they all left Him and fled. And a certain young man

followed with Him, having a linen cloth cast about him, over _his_

naked body: and they lay hold on him; but he left the linen cloth,

and fled naked.”—MARK xiv. 43-52 (R.V.).

St. Mark has told this tragical story in the most pointed and the fewest

words. The healing of the ear of Malchus concerns him not, that is but one

miracle among many; and Judas passes from sight unfollowed: the thought

insisted on is of foul treason, pitiable weakness, brute force

predominant, majestic remonstrance and panic flight. From the central

events no accessories can distract him.

There cometh, he tells us, “Judas, one of the Twelve.” Who Judas was, we

knew already, but we are to consider how Jesus felt it now. Before His

eyes is the catastrophe which His death is confronted to avert—the death

of a soul, a chosen and richly dowered soul for ever lost—in spite of so

many warnings—in spite of that incessant denunciation of covetousness

which rings through so much of His teaching, which only the presence of

Judas quite explains, and which His terrible and searching gaze must have

made like fire, to sear since it could not melt—in spite of the outspoken

utterances of these last days, and doubtless in spite of many prayers, he

is lost: one of the Twelve.

And the dark thought would fall cold upon Christ’s heart, of the

multitudes more who should receive the grace of God, His own dying love,

in vain. And with that, the recollection of many an hour of

loving-kindness wasted on this familiar friend in whom He trusted, and who

now gave Him over, as he had been expressly warned, to so cruel a fate.

Even toward Judas, no unworthy bitterness could pollute that sacred heart,

the fountain of unfathomable compassions, but what speechless grief must

have been there, what inconceivable horror. For the outrage was dark in

form as in essence. Judas apparently conceived that the Eleven might, as

they had promised, rally around their Lord; and he could have no

perception how impossible it was that Messiah should stoop to escape under

cover of their devotion, how frankly the good Shepherd would give His life

for the sheep. In the night, he thought, evasion might yet be attempted,

and the town be raised. But he knew how to make the matter sure. No other

would as surely as himself recognise Jesus in the uncertain light. If he

were to lay hold on Him rudely, the Eleven would close in, and in the

struggle, the prize might yet be lost. But approaching a little in

advance, and peaceably, he would ostentatiously kiss his Master, and so

clearly point Him out that the arrest would be accomplished before the

disciples realized what was being done.

But at every step the intrigue is overmastered by the clear insight of

Jesus. As He foretold the time of His arrest, while yet the rulers said,

Not on the feast day, so He announced the approach of the traitor, who was

then contriving the last momentary deception of his polluting kiss.

We have already seen how impossible it is to think of Judas otherwise than

as the Church has always regarded him, an apostate and a traitor in the

darkest sense. The milder theory is at this stage shattered by one small

yet significant detail. At the supper, when conscious of being suspected,

and forced to speak, he said not, like the others, “Lord,” but “Rabbi, is

it I?” Now they meet again, and the same word is on his lips, whether by

design and in Satanic insolence, or in hysterical agitation and

uncertainty, who can say?

But no loyalty, however misled, inspired that halting and inadequate

epithet, no wild hope of a sudden blazing out of glories too long

concealed is breathed in the traitor’s Rabbi!

With that word, and his envenomed kiss, the “much kissing,” which took

care that Jesus should not shake him off, he passes from this great

Gospel. Not a word is here of his remorse, or of the dreadful path down

which he stumbled to his own place. Even the lofty remonstrance of the

Lord is not recorded: it suffices to have told how he betrayed the Son of

man with a kiss, and so infused a peculiar and subtle poison into Christ’s

draught of deadly wine. That, and not the punishment of that, is what St.

Mark recorded for the Church, the awful fall of an apostle, chosen of

Christ; the solemn warning to all privileged persons, richly endowed and

highly placed; the door to hell, as Bunyan has it, from the very gate of

Heaven.

A great multitude with swords and staves had come from the rulers.

Possibly some attempt at rescue was apprehended from the Galileans who had

so lately triumphed around Jesus. More probably the demonstration was

planned to suggest to Pilate that a dangerous political agitation had to

be confronted.

At all events, the multitude did not terrify the disciples: cries arose

from their little band, “Lord shall we smite with the sword?” and if Jesus

had consented, it seems that with two swords the Eleven whom declaimers

make to be so craven, would have assailed the multitude in arms.

Now this is what points the moral of their failure. Few of us would

confess personal cowardice by accepting a warning from the fears of the

fearful. But the fears of the brave must needs alarm us. It is one thing

to defy death, sword in hand, in some wild hour of chivalrous

effort—although the honours we shower upon the valiant prove that even

such fortitude is less common than we would fain believe. But there is a

deep which opens beyond this. It is a harder thing to endure the silent

passive anguish to which the Lamb, dumb before the shearers, calls His

followers. The victories of the spirit are beyond animal strength of

nerve. In their highest forms they are beyond the noble reach of

intellectual resolution. How far beyond it we may learn by contrasting the

excitement and then the panic of the Eleven with the sublime composure of

their Lord.

One of them, whom we know to have been the impulsive Simon, showed his

loss of self-control by what would have been a breach of discipline, even

had resistance been intended. While others asked should they smite with

the sword, he took the decision upon himself, and struck a feeble and

abortive blow, enough to exasperate but not to disable. In so doing he

added, to the sorrows of Jesus, disobedience, and the inflaming of angry

passion among His captors.

Strange it is, and instructive, that the first act of violence in the

annals of Christianity came not from her assailants but from her son. And

strange to think with what emotions Jesus must have beheld that blow.

St. Mark records neither the healing of Malchus nor the rebuke of Peter.

Throughout the events which now crowd fast upon us, we shall not find him

careful about fulness of detail. This is never his manner, though he loves

any detail which is graphic, characteristic, or intensifying. But his

concern is with the spirit of the Lord and of His enemies: he is blind to

no form of injustice or insult which heightened the sufferings of Jesus,

to no manifestation of dignity and self-control overmastering the rage of

hell. If He is unjustly tried by Caiaphas, it matters nothing that Annas

also wronged Him. If the soldiers of Pilate insulted Him, it matters

nothing that the soldiers of Herod also set Him at nought. Yet the flight

of a nameless youth is recorded, since it adds a touch to the picture of

His abandonment.

And therefore he records the indignant remonstrance of Jesus upon the

manner of His arrest. He was no man of violence and blood, to be arrested

with a display of overwhelming force. He needed not to be sought in

concealment and at midnight.

He had spoken daily in the temple, but then their malice was defeated,

their snares rent asunder, and the people witnessed their exposure. But

all this was part of His predicted suffering, for Whom not only pain but

injustice was foretold, Who should be taken from prison and from judgment.

It was a lofty remonstrance. It showed how little could danger and

betrayal disturb His consciousness, and how clearly He discerned the

calculation of His foes.

At this moment of unmistakable surrender, His disciples forsook Him and

fled. One young man did indeed follow Him, springing hastily from slumber

in some adjacent cottage, and wrapped only in a linen cloth. But he too,

when seized, fled away, leaving his only covering in the hands of the

soldiers.

This youth may perhaps have been the Evangelist himself, of whom we know

that, a few years later, he joined Paul and Barnabas at the outset, but

forsook them when their journey became perilous.

It is at least as probable that the incident is recorded as a picturesque

climax to that utter panic which left Jesus to tread the winepress alone,

deserted by all, though He never forsook any.

Before Caiaphas.

“And they led Jesus away to the high priest: and there come

together with him all the chief priests and the elders and the

scribes. And Peter had followed Him afar off, even within, into

the court of the high priest; and he was sitting with the

officers, and warming himself in the light _of the fire_. Now the

chief priests and the whole council sought witness against Jesus

to put Him to death; and found it not. For many bare false witness

against Him, and their witness agreed not together. And there

stood up certain, and bare false witness against Him, saying, We

heard Him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands,

and in three days I will build another made without hands. And not

even so did their witness agree together. And the high priest

stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest Thou

nothing? what is it which these witness against Thee? But He held

His peace and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked Him,

and saith unto Him, Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?

And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting at

the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven. And

the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What further need

have we of witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye?

And they all condemned Him to be worthy of death. And some began

to spit on Him, and to cover His face, and to buffet Him, and to

say unto Him, Prophesy: and the officers received Him with blows

of their hands”—MARK xiv. 53-65 (R.V.).

We have now to see the Judge of quick and dead taken from prison and

judgment, the Preacher of liberty to the captives bound, and the Prince of

Life killed. It is the most solemn page in earthly story; and as we read

St. Mark’s account, it will concern us less to reconcile his statements

with those of the other three, than to see what is taught us by his

especial manner of regarding it. Reconciliation, indeed, is quite

unnecessary, if we bear in mind that to omit a fact is not to contradict

it. For St. Mark is not writing a history but a Gospel, and his readers

are Gentiles, for whom the details of Hebrew intrigue matter nothing, and

the trial before a Galilean Tetrarch would be only half intelligible.

St. John, who had been an eye-witness, knew that the private inquiry

before Annas was vital, for there the decision was taken which subsequent

and more formal assemblies did but ratify. He therefore, writing last,

threw this ray of explanatory light over all that the others had related.

St. Luke recorded in the Acts (iv. 27) that the apostles recognised, in

the consent of Romans and Jews, and of Herod and Pilate, what the Psalmist

had long foretold, the rage of the heathen and the vain imagination of the

peoples, and the conjunction of kings and rulers. His Gospel therefore

lays stress upon the part played by all of these. And St. Matthew’s

readers could appreciate every fulfilment of prophecy, and every touch of

local colour. St. Mark offers to us the essential points: rejection and

cruelty by His countrymen, rejection and cruelty over again by Rome, and

the dignity, the elevation, the lofty silence and the dauntless testimony

of his Lord. As we read, we are conscious of the weakness of His crafty

foes, who are helpless and baffled, and have no resort except to abandon

their charges and appeal to His own truthfulness to destroy Him.

He shows us first the informal assembly before Caiaphas, whither Annas

sent Him with that sufficient sign of his own judgment, the binding of His

hands, and the first buffet, inflicted by an officer, upon His holy face.

It was not yet daylight, and a formal assembly of the Sanhedrim was

impossible. But what passed now was so complete a rehearsal of the

tragedy, that the regular meeting could be disposed of in a single verse.

There was confusion and distress among the conspirators. It was not their

intention to have arrested Jesus on the feast day, at the risk of an

uproar among the people. But He had driven them to do so by the expulsion

of their spy, who, if they delayed longer, would be unable to guide their

officers. And so they found themselves without evidence, and had to play

the part of prosecutors when they ought to be impartial judges. There is

something frightful in the spectacle of these chiefs of the religion of

Jehovah suborning perjury as the way to murder; and it reminds us of the

solemn truth, that no wickedness is so perfect and heartless as that upon

which sacred influences have long been vainly operating, no corruption so

hateful as that of a dead religion. Presently they would cause the name of

God to be blasphemed among the heathen, by bribing the Roman guards to lie

about the corpse. And the heart of Jesus was tried by the disgraceful

spectacle of many false witnesses, found in turn and paraded against Him,

but unable to agree upon any consistent charge, while yet the shameless

proceedings were not discontinued. At the last stood up witnesses to

pervert what He had spoken at the first cleansing of the temple, which the

second cleansing had so lately recalled to mind. They represented Him as

saying, “I am able to destroy this temple made with hands,”—or perhaps, “I

will destroy” it, for their testimony varied on this grave point—“and in

three days I will build another made without hands.” It was for

blaspheming the Holy Place that Stephen died, and the charge was a grave

one; but His words were impudently manipulated to justify it. There had

been no proposal to substitute a different temple, and no mention of the

temple made with hands. Nor had Jesus ever proposed to destroy anything.

He had spoken of their destroying the Temple of His Body, and in the use

they made of the prediction they fulfilled it.

As we read of these repeated failures before a tribunal so unjust, we are

led to suppose that opposition must have sprung up to disconcert them; we

remember the councillor of honourable estate, who had not consented to

their counsel and deed, and we think, What if, even in that hour of evil,

one voice was uplifted for righteousness? What if Joseph confessed Him in

the conclave, like the penitent thief upon the cross?

And now the high priest, enraged and alarmed by imminent failure, rises in

the midst, and in the face of all law cross-questions the prisoner,

Answerest Thou nothing? What is it which these witness against Thee? But

Jesus will not become their accomplice; He maintains the silence which

contrasts so nobly with their excitement, which at once sees through their

schemes and leaves them to fall asunder. And the urgency of the occasion,

since hesitation now will give the city time to rise, drives them to a

desperate expedient. Without discussion of His claims, without considering

that some day there _must_ be some Messiah, (else what is their faith and

who are they?) they will treat it as blasphemous and a capital offence

simply to claim that title. Caiaphas adjures Him by their common God to

answer, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? So then they were not

utterly ignorant of the higher nature of the Son of David: they remembered

the words, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee. But the only

use they ever made of their knowledge was to heighten to the uttermost the

Messianic dignity which they would make it death to claim. And the

prisoner knew well the consequences of replying. But He had come into the

world to bear witness to the truth, and this was the central truth of all.

“And Jesus said, I am.” Now Renan tells us that He was the greatest

religious genius who ever lived, or probably ever shall live. Mill tells

us that religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on

this Man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity. And Strauss

thinks that we know enough of Him to assert that His consciousness was

unclouded by the memory of any sin. Well then, if anything in the life of

Jesus is beyond controversy, it is this, that the sinless Man, our ideal

representative and guide, the greatest religious genius of the race, died

for asserting upon oath that He was the Son of God. A good deal has been

said lately, both wise and foolish, about Comparative Religion: is there

anything to compare with this? Lunatics, with this example before their

eyes, have conceived wild and dreadful infatuations. But these are the

words of Him whose character has dominated nineteen centuries, and changed

the history of the world. And they stand alone in the records of mankind.

As Jesus spoke the fatal words, as malice and hatred lighted the faces of

His wicked judges with a base and ignoble joy, what was His own thought?

We know it by the warning that He added. They supposed themselves judges

and irresponsible, but there should yet be another tribunal, with justice

of a far different kind, and there they should occupy another place. For

all that was passing before His eyes, so false, hypocritical and

murderous, there was no lasting victory, no impunity, no escape: “Ye shall

see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the

clouds of heaven.” Therefore His apostle Peter tells us that in this hour,

when He was reviled and reviled not again, “He committed Himself to Him

that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter ii. 23).

He had now quoted that great vision in which the prophet Daniel saw Him

brought near unto the Ancient of Days, and invested with an everlasting

dominion (Dan. vii. 13, 14.). But St. Matthew adds one memorable word. He

did not warn them, and He was not Himself sustained, only by the mention

of a far-off judgment: He said they should behold Him thus “henceforth.”

And that very day they saw the veil of their temple rent, felt the world

convulsed, and remembered in their terror that He had foretold His own

death and His resurrection, against which they had still to guard. And in

the open sepulchre, and the supernatural vision told them by its keepers,

in great and notable miracles wrought by the name of Jesus, in the

desertion of a great multitude even of priests, and their own fear to be

found fighting against God, in all this the rise of that new power was

thenceforth plainly visible, which was presently to bury them and their

children under the ruins of their temple and their palaces. But for the

moment the high-priest was only relieved; and he proceeded, rending his

clothes, to announce his judgment, before consulting the court, who had no

further need of witnesses, and were quite content to become formally the

accusers before themselves. The sentence of this irregular and informal

court was now pronounced, to fit them for bearing part, at sunrise, in

what should be an unbiassed trial; and while they awaited the dawn Jesus

was abandoned to the brutality of their servants, one of whom He had

healed that very night. They spat on the Lord of Glory. They covered His

face, an act which was the symbol of a death sentence (Esther vii. 8), and

then they buffeted Him, and invited Him to prophesy who smote Him. And the

officers “received Him” with blows.

What was the meaning of this outburst of savage cruelty of men whom Jesus

had never wronged, and some of whose friends must have shared His

superhuman gifts of love? Partly it was the instinct of low natures to

trample on the fallen, and partly the result of partizanship. For these

servants of the priests must have seen many evidences of the hate and

dread with which their masters regarded Jesus. But there was doubtless

another motive. Not without fear, we may be certain, had they gone forth

to arrest at midnight the Personage of whom so many miraculous tales were

universally believed. They must have remembered the captains of fifty whom

Elijah consumed with fire. And in fact there was a moment when they all

fell prostrate before His majestic presence. But now their terror was at

an end: He was helpless in their hands; and they revenged their fears upon

the Author of them.

Thus Jesus suffered shame to make us partakers of His glory; and the veil

of death covered His head, that He might destroy the face of the covering

cast over all peoples, and the veil that was spread over all nations. And

even in this moment of bitterest outrage He remembered and rescued a soul

in the extreme of jeopardy, for it was now that the Lord turned and looked

upon Peter.

The Fall Of Peter.

“And as Peter was beneath in the court, there cometh one of the

maids of the high priest; and seeing Peter warming himself, she

looked upon him, and saith, Thou also wast with the Nazarene,

_even_ Jesus. But he denied, saying, I neither know, nor

understand what thou sayest: and he went out into the porch; and

the cock crew. And the maid saw him, and began again to say to

them that stood by, This is _one_ of them. But he again denied it.

And after a little while again they that stood by said to Peter,

Of a truth thou art _one_ of them; for thou art a Galilæan. But he

began to curse, and to swear, I know not this man of whom ye

speak. And straightway the second time the cock crew. And Peter

called to mind the word, how that Jesus said unto him, Before the

cock crow twice, thou shalt deny Me thrice. And when he thought

thereon, he wept”—MARK xiv. 66-72 (R.V.).

The fall of Peter has called forth the easy scorn of multitudes who never

ran any risk for Christ. But if he had been a coward, and his denial a

dastardly weakness, it would not be a warning for the whole Church, but

only for feeble natures. Whereas the lesson which it proclaims is this

deep and solemn one, that no natural endowments can bear the strain of the

spiritual life. Peter had dared to smite when only two swords were

forthcoming against the band of Roman soldiers and the multitude from the

chief priests. After the panic in which all forsook Jesus, and so

fulfilled the prediction “ye shall leave Me alone,” none ventured so far

as Peter. John indeed accompanied him; but John ran little risk, he had

influence and was therefore left unassailed, whereas Peter was friendless

and a mark for all men, and had made himself conspicuous in the garden. Of

those who declaim about his want of courage few indeed would have dared so

much. And whoever misunderstands him, Jesus did not. He said to him,

“Satan hath desired to have you (all) that he may sift you like wheat, but

I have prayed for thee (especially) that thy strength fail not.” Around

him the fiercest of the struggle was to rage, as around some point of

vantage on a battlefield; and it was he, when once he had turned again,

who should stablish his brethren (Luke xxii. 31, 32).

God forbid that we should speak one light or scornful word of this great

apostle! God grant us, if our footsteps slip, the heart to weep such tears

as his.

Peter was a loving, brave and loyal man. But the circumstances were not

such as human bravery could deal with. Resistance, which would have

kindled his spirit, had been forbidden to him, and was now impossible. The

public was shut out, and he was practically alone among his enemies. He

had come “to see the end,” and it was a miserable sight that he beheld.

Jesus was passive, silent, insulted: His foes fierce, unscrupulous and

confident. And Peter was more and more conscious of being alone, in peril,

and utterly without resource. Moreover sleeplessness and misery lead to

physical languor and cold,(13) and as the officers had kindled a fire, he

was drawn thither, like a moth, by the double wish to avoid isolation and

to warm himself. In thus seeking to pass for one of the crowd, he showed

himself ashamed of Jesus, and incurred the menaced penalty, “of him shall

the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh.” And the method of

self-concealment which he adopted only showed his face, strongly

illuminated, as St. Mark tells us, by the flame.

If now we ask for the secret of his failing resolution, we can trace the

disease far back. It was self-confidence. He reckoned himself the one to

walk upon the waters. He could not be silent on the holy mount, when Jesus

held high communion with the inhabitants of heaven. He rebuked the Lord

for dark forebodings. When Jesus would wash his feet, although expressly

told that he should understand the act hereafter, he rejoined, Thou shalt

never wash my feet, and was only sobered by the peremptory announcement

that further rebellion would involve rejection. He was sure that if all

the rest were to deny Jesus, he never should deny Him. In the garden he

slept, because he failed to pray and watch. And then he did not wait to be

directed, but strove to fight the battle of Jesus with the weapons of the

flesh. Therefore he forsook Him and fled. And the consequences of that

hasty blow were heavy upon him now. It marked him for the attention of the

servants: it drove him to merge himself in the crowd. But his bearing was

too suspicious to enable him to escape unquestioned. The first assault

came very naturally, from the maid who kept the door, and had therefore

seen him with John. He denied indeed, but with hesitation, not so much

affirming that the charge was false as that he could not understand it.

And thereupon he changed his place, either to escape notice or through

mental disquietude; but as he went into the porch the cock crew. The girl

however was not to be shaken off: she pointed him out to others, and since

he had forsaken the only solid ground, he now denied the charge angrily

and roundly. An hour passed, such an hour of shame, perplexity and guilt,

as he had never known, and then there came a still more dangerous attack.

They had detected his Galilean accent, while he strove to pass for one of

them. And a kinsman of Malchus used words as threatening as were possible

without enabling a miracle to be proved, since the wound had vanished:

“Did I myself not see thee in the garden with Him?” Whereupon, to prove

that his speech had nothing to do with Jesus, he began to curse and swear,

saying, I know not the man. And the cock crew a second time, and Peter

remembered the warning of his Lord, which then sounded so harsh, but now

proved to be the means of his salvation. And the eyes of his Master, full

of sorrow and resolution, fell on him. And he knew that he had added a

bitter pang to the sufferings of the Blessed One. And the crowd and his

own danger were forgotten, and he went out and wept.

It was for Judas to strive desperately to put himself right with man: the

sorrow of Peter was for himself and God to know.

What lessons are we taught by this most natural and humbling story? That

he who thinketh he standeth must take heed lest he fall. That we are in

most danger when self-confident, and only strong when we are weak. That

the beginning of sin is like the letting out of water. That Jesus does not

give us up when we cast ourselves away, but as long as a pulse of love

survives, or a spark of loyalty, He will appeal to that by many a subtle

suggestion of memory and of providence, to recall His wanderer to Himself.

And surely we learn by the fall of this great and good apostle to restore

the fallen in the spirit of meekness, considering ourselves lest we also

be tempted, remembering also that to Peter, Jesus sent the first tidings

of His resurrection, and that the message found him in company with John,

and therefore in the house with Mary. What might have been the issue of

his anguish if these holy ones had cast Him off?