Pastor Pastorum
Or The
Schooling of the Apostles
By Our Lord
By
Rev. Henry Latham M.A.
Master of Trinity Hall Cambridge
Cambridge: Deighton Bell And Co.
London: George Bell And Sons
1899
CONTENTS
Preface.
Introductory Chapter.
Chapter II. Human Freedom.
Chapter III. Of Revelation.
Chapter IV. Our Lord’s Use Of Signs.
Chapter V. The Laws Of The Working Of Signs.
Chapter VI. From The Temptation To The Ministry In Galilee.
Chapter VII. The Preaching To The Multitudes.
Chapter VIII. The Choosing Of The Apostles.
Chapter IX. The Schooling Of The Apostles. The Mission To The Cities.
Chapter X. To Those Who Have, Is Given.
Chapter XI. From The Mount To Jerusalem.
Chapter XII. The Later Lessons.
Chapter XIII. The Lessons Of The Resurrection.
Chronological Appendix.
Index Of Texts.
General Index.
Footnotes
PREFACE.
Of the general purport of this book, and of what led to the writing, I
have said all that is necessary in the Introductory Chapter. The ideas it
contains were growing into distinctness during the five and thirty years
of my College work, and to many of my old pupils they will offer little
that is new.
But although the book took its source from teaching; and instruction—but
instruction divorced from examinations—is in some degree my object still,
yet it is meant, not so much for professed students, as for that large
body of the public, who entertain the desire, happily spreading fast among
the young, of understanding with as great exactness as possible what it
was that Christ visibly effected, and what means He employed in bringing
it about.
I have avoided all technical terms of Divinity or Philosophy, and where,
as in Chapters II. and III., I have been led to touch on theological
speculations, I have tried to present the matter in as familiar a form as
I could. Frequently, I have explained in the notes some geographical and
other particulars which a large majority among my readers may not require
to be told; in this case I must be pardoned for consulting the interest of
the minority.
A didactic purpose and a literary one, do not always run readily side by
side. A teacher who desires to inculcate certain principles or ideas, is
ever on the look out for illustrations and recurs to his topic again and
again. So, having, as I thought, certain topics to teach, I have brought
them back into view more often than I should have done if I had written
solely with a literary view.
I have not commonly given accounts of what has been said by others on the
points of which I treat, or criticised conclusions different from mine,
for I know that this manner of treatment is not in favour with the present
generation. I recollect the reason of an undergraduate, in my early days,
for preferring the instruction of his private tutor to that officially
provided—“The Lecturer tells you that Hermann says it is this, and Wunder
says it is that, but Blank (the private tutor) tells you what it _is_.”
With the same view of making the book readable by the general public, I
have abstained from apologising when I have advanced a notion not commonly
received. In my first draft I had made such apologies for what I say on
the second and third Temptations, on the Mission to the Cities, the
Transfiguration, the Denials of Peter and some minor points—but I
afterwards thought it better to leave them out, and to disclaim here once
for all, any intention to dogmatize, or to fail in respect toward the
weighty authorities with whom I have ventured to disagree.
In many cases, however, the views that I have taken rather supplement than
supplant those that are commonly received. Writers on Divinity have not so
much opposed them, as failed to notice the points on which I dwell. There
is however one topic—the parable of the Unjust Steward, on which I find
myself at variance with all the writers on the subject I know of,
excepting perhaps Calvin, who begins his Comment on Luke xvi. 1 by saying
“The main drift of this parable, is, that we must shew kindness and lenity
in dealing with our neighbours.” He does not, however, follow up this view
as I have done.
Though in so difficult a matter I cannot be confident of being right, yet
I do feel convinced, that the accepted interpretation of the parable, viz.
that it is intended to teach the right use of riches—“the really wise use
of mammon” as Göbel puts it—is wholly inadequate. So simple a moral would
have been pointed by a simpler tale. Surely the riches would have been
made the giver’s own. Moreover the salient point of the outward story,
that which first catches attention, always answers in our Lord’s parables
to a cardinal matter in the interpretation. Here that salient point lies
in the words “Take thy bond and sit down quickly and write fifty” and this
has but a very oblique bearing on the true use of riches; the distinctive
point of the outward parable is the exercise of delegated power, and the
spiritual bearing must be in conformity with this.
I have everywhere followed the Revised Version, and I must warn readers
that where italics occur in the _longer_ passages they are not _mine_,
except in passage on p. 101. They are introduced, not to mark words
important for my purpose, but simply because they are found in the Revised
Version where they indicate, of course, that the corresponding word is
wanting in the Greek. For the course of events I have generally followed
the Gospel of St Mark up to the time of the feast of Tabernacles; and
after that the Gospel of St John. Of the great historical value of the
latter I have, like most biblical students, become more deeply sensible,
the more closely I have studied it. Speaking of the absence of miracles
wrought in public during the week of the Passion, p. 430, I have not
noticed Matt. xxi. 14, because I believe the Evangelist to refer to
miracles that had taken place during earlier visits to Jerusalem. It was
beyond the scope of my book to discuss the differences of character of the
different Gospels.
In a few instances I follow an order of events different from that which
is most commonly taken. This order I have shewn in a Chronological
Appendix, in which I have tabulated the chief events of our Lord’s
Ministry, taking them month by month from the time of the Baptism to that
of the great day of Pentecost. I have made this Appendix more full, in
point of reference and arguments in support of the dates, than would have
been quite necessary for readers of this book, because I thought it might
be made useful generally to students of the Gospel History.
I have to thank several persons for their assistance and advice,
especially Canon Huxtable, without whose kind encouragement at the outset
the book might not have been written. I must note that I have made use of
an idea on Luke xii. 49, which I first came upon, many years ago, in a
small publication of the Rev. A. H. Wratislaw, then one of the Tutors of
Christ’s College; and that I was in like manner set on a track of thought
by a sermon on the Temptation, by T. Colani, published at Strasburg in
1860. I have acknowledged my obligations to Bishop Ellicott’s “Historical
Lectures,” and Edersheim’s “Jesus the Messiah.” Many members of my own
College, and many other friends have assisted me greatly with advice and
corrections.
Although my book is not written with any thesis about the Gospels to
support, still I trust that I have cleared away difficulties here and
there, and have shewn, in small matters, how one account undesignedly
supports another. If what I have said shall lead to discussion on some of
the questions raised, or if I shall induce younger men to apply
themselves, in some of those directions towards which I have pointed, to
work of a literary kind waiting to be done, I shall not have spent my time
and pains without result.
TRINITY HALL LODGE,
_May 1st, 1890_.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
In this opening chapter I propose to lay before the reader the leading
ideas which will be developed in the book. This will necessitate some
repetition, but many readers want to know at starting whither the author
is going to take them, and whether his notions are such that they will
care for his company.
In the course of lecturing on the Gospels, being myself interested in
questions of education, my attention turned to the way in which our Lord
taught His disciples. Following the Gospel History with this view, I
recognised in the train of circumstances through which Christ led the
disciples, no less than in what He said to them, an assiduous care in
training them to acquire certain qualities and habits of mind. I observed
also method and uniformity both in what He did and in what He refrained
from doing. Certain principles seem to govern His actions and to be
observed regularly so far as we can see, but we have no ground for stating
that our Lord came to resolutions on these points and bound Himself to
observe them. A man sometimes sees his duty so clearly at one moment that
he wishes to make the decision of that moment dominant over his life and
he embodies it in a resolve, but we must suppose that Christ at each
moment did what was best. So that what I call a Law of His conduct is only
a generalization from His biography, and means no more than that, in such
and such circumstances He usually acted in such and such ways. I can
easily conceive that He might have swerved from these Laws had there been
occasion.
I have fancied that I got glimpses of the processes by means of which the
Apostles of the Gospels—striving among themselves who should be greatest,
looking for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, and dismayed at the
apprehension of their Master—were trained to become the Apostles of the
Acts,—testifying boldly before rulers and councils, giving the right hand
of fellowship to one who had not companied with them, and breaking through
Jewish prejudices, to own that there were no men made by God who were
common or unclean. The shape which much of the outward course of Christ’s
life took, His choice of Galilee as a scene of action, His withdrawal from
crowds and His wanderings in secluded regions were admirably adapted to
the educating of the Apostles; while His sending them, two and two,
through the cities was a direct lesson in that self-reliance which reposes
on a trust in God. Were not these courses ordered to these ends? The
training was wonderfully fitted to bring about the changes which occurred.
That this fashioning of the disciples should have been a very principal
object with our Lord is easy to conceive. For what, except His followers,
did He leave behind as the visible outcome of His work? He had founded no
institution and had left no writings as a possession for after time. The
Apostles were the salt to season and preserve the world, and if they had
not savour whence could help be sought? Is it not then likely that the
best means would be employed for choosing and shaping instruments for the
work; and can we do better than mark the Divine wisdom so engaged?
On many sides the work of Christ stretches away into infinity. God’s
purpose in having created the world, and put free intelligences into it,
as well as the changes which Christ’s death may have wrought in the
relation of men’s souls to God, belong to that infinite side of things,
which we cannot explore. But we _can_ follow the treatment by which Christ
moulded the disciples, because the changes are not wrought in them by a
magical transformation, but come about gradually as the result of what
they saw and heard and did.
Changes are brought about in the disciples by an education, superhuman
indeed in its wisdom, superhuman in its insight into the habits of mind
which were wanted, and into the modes by which such habits might be
fostered, but not superhuman in the means employed. We can analyse the
influences which are brought to bear, judge what they were likely to
effect, and estimate fairly well what they did effect, because they were
the same in kind as we now find working in the world. Christ’s ways,
therefore, in this province of His work fall within the range of our
understanding. The learners are taught less by what they are told than by
what they see and do. They are trained not only by listening, but by
following and—what was above all—by being suffered, as in the mission to
the cities of Israel, to take part in their Master’s work.
They are altered by their companionship with our Lord, insensibly, just as
we see the complexion of a man’s character alter by his being thrown into
the constant society of a stronger nature. But Christ works on them no
magical change. Our Lord never transforms men so as to obliterate their
old nature, and substitute a new one; new powers and a new life spring up
from contact with Him, but the powers work through the old organs, and the
life flows through the old channels; they would not be the same men, or
preserve their individual responsibility if it were otherwise. God’s grace
works with men, it is true, but it uses the organization it finds; and as
much cultivation and shaping of the disposition is required for turning
God’s Grace to account, as for making the most of any other good gift.
Christ’s particular care to leave the disciples their proper independence
is everywhere apparent. They come to Him of their deliberate will. They
are not stricken by any over-mastering impression, or led captive by
moving words. They are not forced to break with their old selves; their
growth in steadfastness comes of a better knowledge of their Lord, and the
more they advance in understanding God’s ways and therefore in believing,
the stronger are the grounds of assurance which are granted to them; the
more they have, the more is given them; the most attached are granted
most.
Christ, we find, draws out in His disciples the desired qualities of
self-devotion and of healthy trust in God, without effacing the stamp of
the individual nature of each man. He cherishes and respects personality.
The leader of a sect or school of thought is often inclined to lose
thought of the individual in his care for the society which he is
establishing, or to expect his pupils to take his own opinions ready made,
in a block. He is apt to be impatient if one of them attempts to think for
himself. His aim very commonly is
“To make his own the mind of other men,”
and a pupil who asserts his own personality, and is not content with
reflecting his master’s, is not of the sort he wants.
But our Lord was a teacher of a very different kind. He reverenced
whatever the learner had in him of his own, and was tender in fostering
this native growth. He was glad when His words roused a man into thinking
on his own account, even in the way of objection. When the Syro-phœnician
woman turns His own saying against Him, with the rejoinder, “Yes Lord, yet
the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs,” He applauds her
Faith the more for the independent thought that went with it. Men, in His
eyes, were not mere clay in the hands of the potter, matter to be moulded
to shape. They were organic beings, each growing from within, with a life
of his own—a personal life which was exceedingly precious in His and His
Father’s eyes—and He would foster this growth so that it might take after
the highest type.
Neither did He mean that what He told men should only be stored in their
memories as in a treasure-house, there to be kept intact. They were to
“take heed _how_ they heard.” With Christ, the part that the man had to do
of himself went for infinitely more than what was done for him by another.
If men had the will and the power to turn to their own moral nutriment the
mental food which was given them, it would be well; but if His words
merely lay in their memories, without affecting them or germinating within
them, then they were only as seeds falling on sterile spots.
The training of the disciples was partly practical, turning on what they
saw our Lord do and were set or suffered to do themselves, and partly it
came from what they heard. I want the reader to go along with me in
marking how this training of the Apostles was adapted to generate the
qualities which the circumstances of their situation demanded when Christ
left the world; and it is in the practical part of the work that this is
most readily traced.
The selection of the Apostles may serve as an instance of what I mean.
They were to preach a gospel to the poor—the movement was to spread upward
from below. This will be found to be the law of growth of great moral
principles which have established their sway among mankind. The Apostles
therefore were chosen from a class which, though not the poorest, had
sympathies with the poor. Again the Apostles were to be witnesses of the
resurrection to after times; it was important, therefore, that they should
possess qualities which would make men trust them; had they been
imaginative, had they been enthusiasts, this would have been a bar to the
accepting of their evidence; but the Apostles were singularly
literal-minded men, so little suspecting a metaphorical meaning in their
Master’s sayings, that when He told them to beware of the leaven of the
Pharisees, they thought it meant that, having no bread with them, they
would be constrained to eat some not made in the proper way. We see no
exaggeration in them, no wild fervour, nothing that belongs to the
religious fanatic. Our Lord never employs the force that such fanaticism
affords; when He meets with what seems the result of emotion, as when the
woman breaks out with “Blessed is the womb that bare thee,” He always
brings back to mind that doing is more than feeling.
We shall have to note, moreover, the progressive way in which our Lord
taught His followers self-reliance and faith, and the tender care with
which He lets His hold of them go by degrees. Wandering along with our
Lord, they grow into a capacity for marking greatness, and trusting
themselves to a superior nature. When they are sent, two and two, through
the cities of Israel, they learn to use responsibility, and to feel that
His power could still protect them even when He was not by. They lacked
nothing then, for Christ provided for them; but the time should come when
they would complete their training and have real work to do, and then they
would have to employ all gifts which had fallen to them. For the real
conflict, both the purse and the sword are to be taken; prudence and
judgment and courage must be brought into play in doing God’s work as they
are in doing that of every day life.
And when Christ leaves the world, the disciples are not for long exposed
to the revulsion which the crucifixion would cause. They are not suffered
to feel their Master’s loss and miss Him all at once. They are not left to
suppose that He had altogether gone, that His cause had failed and all was
over; so that they had better wake from their delusion and go back, with
blighted hope and faith, to Galilee and their boats and nets. Soon comfort
came. The work for which they had been trained was still to go on, only
not in the way they had expected. Their following Christ was not to be a
mere episode in their lives: they had not been wrong in thinking that they
should serve Him all their days. Christ is near them still, and they see
Him now and again. For forty days or more they felt that He was in their
neighbourhood, and might at any time appear; any stranger who accosted
them might turn out to be He. Thus they are carried through the time when
the effects of shock on their mind and moral nature was most to be feared,
and they are brought one step nearer to the power of realising that Christ
is with them. After the Ascension, He is withdrawn from the eye of sense
altogether, His presence will henceforth be purely spiritual, but no
sooner do they lose sight of Him in the body than the Comforter comes to
their souls. So long as men walked by the guidance of one whom they saw by
their side, they would not throw themselves on unseen spiritual aid. The
Comforter would not come unless the Lord went away, but as soon as He was
gone the comfort came.
I now come to the oral teaching. Here we note the same fitness of the
means to the end, but the purpose in view is a more abstract one: a
quality very essential for Christ’s purpose is _expansiveness_. The truths
which He revealed and the commandments He gave were to be accepted by
different nations, and in various states of society: they belonged
therefore to what is primary in the nature of man. It is in this that
Christ’s doctrine differs from all systems. It does not belong to one age
or one nationality but to all. Whether this character of Universality was
due to prospective wisdom or to chance, I do not now discuss; I only say
that the substance of Christ’s teaching is suitable for men in different
conditions; that the form in which it is put makes this teaching easy for
the ignorant to retain; and that the circumstances which accompanied it
were singularly conducive to its spread. Christ arose amongst a nation
which was the most strikingly individualised of all peoples, but He
transmitted the type of Humanity in its most general form. We mark in Him
no trace of one race or of one epoch; He was emphatically the Son of Man.
In all His sayings and doings, our Lord was most careful to leave the
individual room to grow. Some of the “negative characteristics” of our
Lord’s teaching arise out of this universality. If we go to Him looking
for a Social system or an Ecclesiastical polity we find nothing of the
sort. Humanitarian theorists have turned in disappointment from His word;
but a system suited to our age must have been unsuited to Gospel times.
Christ gave no system for recasting Society by positive Law, and no
ecclesiastical Polity, for men could make laws better when the
circumstances which called for them arose. He gave no system of
philosophy, for such systems are only the ways of looking at some of the
enigmas of life, which suit the cast of mind of the nation or the
generation which shapes the system. So different nations and generations
should be left to make their systems as of old, only a new truth was
declared, and a new force was set to work, which systems would henceforth
have to take into account.
Again, the next world is what all want to know about. If the founder of a
religion would win men’s ears, he must set this before them. But, as we
cannot conceive a life under conditions wholly different from that we
lead, any description must be misleading. False notions besides
engendering devotees and fanatics, would sap human activity and arrest
progress. Hence Christ speaks to the fact of a future existence, but says
nothing of the mode. He assures us that eternal life awaits those
accounted worthy, but of the nature of this life He says nothing. He gives
no details on which imagination can dwell.
Farther, Christ leaves no ritual. For a ritual belongs to those outward
things which must change; it would in time symbolize a view no longer
taken, and if some should still cling to it from the idea that it had a
magic worth of its own, then it would stand in the way of the truth it was
meant to set forth.
Laws, Systems, and Ritual, then, were raiment to be changed as times went
on; with them therefore succeeding generations were left to deal. The form
must come of man, so to man the shaping of it is left. But Christ gave
what was more than raiment and more than form. “The words that I have
spoken unto you,” said He, “are Spirit and are life.” He gave _seed
thoughts_ which should lie in men’s hearts, and germinate when fit
occasion came.
These thoughts were clothed in terse sayings, such as a man would carry in
his head and dwell on the more because he did not see to the bottom of
them all at once. Moreover some of these sayings, for instance, “For
whosoever hath, to him shall be given,”(1) will startle the hearer as
being contrary to what he would expect; and the more he is perplexed, the
more he is provoked to think, and thereby a greater impression is made.
Other truths are wrapped up in parables. The form of the parable, not the
matter it conveys, concerns me now. It is a form of speech which imbeds
itself deeply in the memories of men and was admirably suited to preserve
a genuine record during the time when the Gospel should subsist as an oral
tradition. It put what was most important into the shape which made it
most easy to recollect. Nothing except proverbs takes hold of men’s
memories so firmly as tales. The most ancient literary possessions of the
world are, probably, certain stories containing a moral. Of course our
Lord’s teaching in parables answered greater ends than this of making His
lessons easy to retain: but this form of teaching agreed wonderfully well
with what the circumstances required. Next to tales in respect of being
easily remembered, come narratives of detached striking acts. So the
materials of the Gospel History, sayings, parables, narratives of signs
and wonders, are cast into the forms best calculated for safe transmission
through a period of tradition.
We find the same suitableness of the form to the needs of the case, in the
shape in which the whole Gospel has been delivered to us. I refer to its
being narrative instead of didactic, and coming from the Evangelists
instead of from Christ. If our Lord had left writings of His own, every
letter of them would have been invested with such sanctity that there
could have been no independent investigation of truth. Its place would
have been taken by commentatorial works on the delivered word. When
writings are set before us and we are told, “All truth lies there; look no
further;” then our ingenuity is directed to extract diversities of
meanings from the given words; for matter must be set forth in human
speech, and human speech conveys different meanings to differently biased
minds.
The Jews regarded their sacred books as the actual words of God; hence
came that subserviency to the letter, and that stretching of formulae
which brought them to play fast and loose with their consciences. The
Scribes looked on their Law as a conveyancer on a deed: they were bound by
the letter, and this led them to regard the Almighty as One dealing with
men under the terms of a contract. This drew them out of the road which
led to a true knowledge of God, and helped to make them “blind leaders of
the blind.” Our Lord breaks down this slavery to the letter of the
Scripture which He found existing, and He is careful not to build up a new
bondage to His own words.
When matter has come down by oral tradition, men can hardly worship the
letter of it. We possess only brief memoirs collected by men, the dates
and history of the composition of which are far from certain, so that room
is left for criticism and judgment. The revelation of God is, therefore,
not so direct that men will be awestricken and shut their minds at the
sight of it; but human intelligence can be brought to bear on the records,
whereby their meaning is brought out, and men’s intellects are braced by
the exploration of lofty regions. Men may without irreverence raise the
question, whether the narrator had rightly understood Christ’s sayings,
and properly connected them with the circumstances out of which they
arose.
Our Lord, in Galilee at any rate, spoke Aramaic, and we have merely the
Greek; we have only fragments of His teaching; we possess different
versions, agreeing indeed in essentials, but with such differences, that
we are forced to admit in the writers a human possibility of error. We
have our Lord’s words it is true, but not in the order, or in the
connection, in which they were spoken. There is not only room for human
judgment but a necessity for it. Hence the form in which our Lord’s
utterances have come down to us is suited to the plan which seems to run
through all our Lord’s teaching; it calls for the free play of the human
mind, and leaves room for the admission of a certain choice as to what we
accept as revealed truth.
It is true that some Divines have endeavoured to do what our Lord was
careful not to do—they have, by theories of verbal inspiration,
endeavoured to put our Gospels in the position that actual writings of our
Lord would have held; and, so far as they have succeeded, they have
brought about the evils which attended the notions of the scribes. But the
form in which we have the Gospels does not lend itself to such a theory.
If men go wrong in this way they have only themselves to blame.
There is another way in which this form of the Gospels answers to the plan
of Christ’s teaching. He impressed men, above all, by His Personality, and
the record of His life is preserved to us in that form which is best
adapted to preserve personality and store it up for the future, viz. the
form of memoirs put together by contemporaries, or by those who were
familiar with contemporaries.
History and literature furnish many instances of men who have made their
mark in virtue of a striking _personality_; whose reputation rests, not on
any visible tokens,—not on kingdoms conquered, institutions founded, books
written, or inventions perfected or anything else that they _did_,—but
mainly on what they _were_. Their merely having passed along a course on
earth, and lived and talked and acted with others, has left lasting
effects on mankind.
This may serve to put us in the way of understanding what was wrought by
the Personality of Christ: for our Lord’s disciples followed Jesus of
Nazareth for this above all,—that he _was_ Jesus of Nazareth. Those of His
own time had felt this Personality working on them while they saw Him and
listened to Him. It is consistent, then, with what we gather of His
prospective care, that He should so provide, that after generations should
have as nearly as possible, the same advantages as that with which He
lived upon the earth. This is effected by His being presented to them in
the Gospels, not as a writer is in his works, not as a lawgiver is in his
codes, but as the man Christ Jesus, mixing with men, sharing their feasts,
helping their troubles, going journeys with them, and in all these
occasions turning their thoughts, gently, with a touch that is scarcely
observed, towards that knowledge of God which He came to bring.
Which is it that sways us most? Is it the teacher who tells us,—This is
the way you are to think, this is what you are to believe and what you are
to do? Or is it the friend who blends his life and heart and mind with
ours, with whom we argue and differ, but take something each from the
other, which assimilates with what is most our own? Surely we yield more
freely to the one who helps to foster our particular personality than to
him who would thrust it aside, and replace it by his own.
Now Christ, as portrayed in the Gospels, is such a friend. He trusts to
men’s believing that the Father is in Him, not because He has declared it
in set dogmas, but because He has been “so long with them.” He is a friend
who lifts us out of our common selves, and helps each one of us to find
his own truest self: we catch fire from the new light which he kindles in
us, and we become conscious of a new force, a spiritual one. When the
narrative brings us to the sacrifice on the Cross, we see what the
spectators saw, and something more, for we see this new inward force
transcending all outward violence. When we turn to the Sufferer on the
Cross, we say “after all, the Victory is there.”
But not only is our Lord’s Personality presented to us in the literary
form in which it can best be put forth, that of the informal memoir, but
we are given _four_ such memoirs, each regarding its subject from a
different point. We have then four different projections of what we want
to construct. The help of this is obvious; and it is worth mentioning that
hereby there is more scope for man’s mental action than if we had only one
Gospel. By diligently comparing and fitting in each with the other, we
cultivate our mind’s eye to catch the lineaments of Christ’s figure. A
painter, who has to produce a portrait from four photographs, has a less
simple task than if only a single photograph existed; but his work will be
more intellectual; it will do him more good, and the result will be more
of a conception and less of a copy.
I believe that the education of man to a knowledge of God is part of the
Divine purpose running through God’s ways, and I detect in the narrative
form in which our knowledge of Christ has been delivered to us, a wise
tenderness for the spiritual freedom of man and a help to keep his
faculties alive.
I spoke just now of Laws of Christ’s conduct. The more we look at Christ’s
life and teaching as a whole, the more we discern in it the observance of
certain Laws, which give it unity and order. When we stand near some large
painting, or masterpiece of Art, we are taken up with the portion of it
just under our eye; we scan this or that group and admire its finish and
its truth. But when we go a little way off, and again look, and give our
minds to it, we become aware of a different order of perfections in it,
namely those perfections which belong to it as a whole, as the completed
conception of a gifted mind.
So it is with the Gospel History. While we read chapter by chapter we see
what answers to one group in the great picture; but when we have the whole
in our mind, we see a consistent purpose holding it all together: we find
that our Lord always acts along certain lines, and carries out certain
principles. One of these, which lies at the root of His ways of dealing
with men, is His carefulness to keep alive in each man the sense of his
personal responsibility, and of the dignity of such responsibility. He
would seem to say to each man, “It is no small thing to have been
entrusted by God with the care of a soul which you may educate for fitness
for eternal life.” We find in our Lord, indignation, once, at least, even
anger,(2) towards men and their ways, but never contempt or scorn. A man
is, merely as a man, entitled to be treated with respect. The enforcing of
this on the world is, among all the “Gesta Christi,” perhaps the most
noticeable now.
The simple fact of His dealing directly with men _themselves_, shews that
He owned their free agency more or less. If men had been merely puppets
moved by strings, Christ could only have benefited them by swaying the
powers who held these strings, and there would have been no meaning in His
addressing Himself to the puppets themselves and giving His life for them.
Now, if men are free they must be at liberty to go in a direction
different from that which is best for them—that is to go wrong; and so it
must needs be that “occasions of stumbling” come, and cause suffering. I
mention these principles now, because they are the bases of the Laws of
which I am going to speak. They will come before us again further on.
The marking of uniformities in Christ’s conduct, and in His modes of
conveying instruction, is serviceable in this way. We perceive the Laws
(defined as in p. 2) by regarding Christ’s career as a whole; and in
return, the Laws, when perceived, help us to grasp its unity and
completeness in a more thorough way; and, besides this, we strengthen our
critical faculty, and arm it with a new criterion which may become an
effective weapon in arguing on questions of internal evidence. For if we
find in any newly-discovered fragment, or even in the Gospels themselves,
that which runs counter to what we think we have established as a Law,
then we have to ask ourselves whether it is likely that the passage is
spurious or imperfect or put out of its right place; or, on the other
hand, whether our Law has been framed too narrowly, and ought to be
restated or enlarged.
Again, when we find a Law constantly observed, and are sure that the
narrative cannot have been written up to the Law, because the narrators
knew nothing of such a Law; then we come on a new variety of internal
evidence. If, in matters which only a student would observe, our Lord is
found to adhere to certain ways, this favours the view that the materials
for the portrait came from life; for an artist drawing from description or
following an idea of his own must have missed these delicate details now
and then. This consistency uniformly observed forms a sort of undesigned
coincidence ramifying through the mass, and holding it all together. The
notion of Laws underlying our Lord’s action, and shewing their traces on
the surface from time to time, will be best illustrated by an example. I
shall take the rules which our Lord observes in the working of Signs and
Wonders; and so I must here anticipate something of that, which I shall
make the subject of a whole chapter further on.
Our Lord is set apart from all other teachers by His use of Signs and
Wonders. We shall enquire, how He regarded them? What use He designed to
make of them? And, what more especially concerns us now, what Laws He
observes when He employs them? These Laws we shall find—wrapped up as it
were—in our Lord’s answers to the Tempter in the wilderness. The narrative
of the Temptation, which seems, at first sight, to be a fragment
unconnected with the course of the action of the Gospel History, becomes,
when the Laws are noted, the key to the interpretation of much. Isolated
phenomena fall into system. I will relate the Temptations in the order
given by St Luke, and briefly state the Laws indicated in the Tempter’s
suggestions together with our Lord’s replies.
I. Christ will not turn stones into loaves to appease His hunger in the
wilderness. This refusal contains two principles to which our Lord will be
found to adhere.
(1) He will not use His special powers to provide for His personal wants
or for those of His immediate followers.
When our Lord provided food for the five thousand, the loaves and fishes
the Apostles had with them were enough for their own party.(3)
(2) Christ will not provide by miracle what could be provided by human
endeavour or human foresight.
Our Lord will not even make men better by action on them from without; He
will not change their being by any spiritual action without their
cooperation. When the Apostles said “Increase our Faith,” He worked no
sudden change in them, but He pointed out to them the efficacy of Faith,
in order that by longing for it, they might attain to it.
II. Christ will not purchase the visible “kingdoms of the world and the
glory of them” by worshipping Satan—that is to say, He will not do homage
to the Spirit of the world to win the world’s support. He will not ally
Himself with worldly policy. He will not fight the world with its own
weapons, and become its master by giving in to its views and its ways. In
addressing the people He runs counter to the notions they cherished the
most. He would not proclaim Himself as the Messiah, or allow Himself to be
made a King though thousands, who were looking for a national deliverer,
would have rallied round Him if He had done so.(4) He would not conciliate
the favour of the great. He would not display His powers, for a matter of
wonderment, to satisfy the curiosity of Herod, nor would He use them to
repel violence by open force. He would not hearken to the temptation which
said, “Use your miraculous powers to establish a visible kingdom upon
earth; and when this is done you can frame a perfect form of society by
positive Law.”
III. Christ will not throw Himself from the pinnacle of the Temple. The
Temptation must have been to do this in the sight of the people. Else, why
is this pinnacle chosen rather than any other height? The refusal points
to the following important Laws.
(1) No miracle is to be worked merely for miracles’ sake, apart from an
end of benevolence or instruction.
What appear to be exceptions to this rule cease to be so when fully
considered.
The walking on the waters, as we shall see further on, was a step in
training the Apostles to realize His nearness to them, when He was not
before their eyes. The withering of the fig-tree, which had leaves before
its time, but no fruit, was an acted parable bearing on the Jewish people.
These are miracles of instruction. We shall find others of the same kind.
(2) No miracle is to be worked which should be so overwhelming in point of
awfulness, as to terrify men into acceptance, or which should be
unanswerably certain, leaving no loop-hole for unbelief.
As, in the second Temptation, our Lord refused to allow physical force to
be used to bring men to adopt His cause, so here _He refuses to employ
moral compulsion_. The miracles only convinced the willing, men might
always disbelieve if they would. They might allow the fact of the
prodigies, and yet set them down to magic or witchcraft: it was with many
an open question whether to ascribe them to God or to Beelzebub, for the
latter had, it was supposed, a share of power upon the earth. But one
popular criterion there was of the power being God’s: in heaven, said the
Jews, God reigned supreme and alone. A Sign worked there would carry with
it the autograph of God. When Joshua would convince their fathers, he had
wrought a Sign in heaven; he had made the sun and moon stand still. Let
Christ do this and they would believe. No such Sign will Christ work. If
the world was to be converted _nolens volens_ it might as well have been
peopled from the first by beings incapable of error.
If the end of His coming had been to gain adherents, His purpose would
have been furthered by granting a Sign which would have struck the
imagination of the masses; but to raise a large immediate following was
_not_ our Lord’s design. He wanted only a few fit spirits as depositories
of His word.
He came to educate men to know God. In this knowledge lay the assurance of
immortality. The knowledge reached through this education could not be
imparted by any mere telling or express communication, but had to be
unfolded from within the learner’s self. Belief was to grow and not to be
imposed. It had two elements, a perception of a Divine agency at work in
the world, and a personal trust in Christ who manifested God,—a trust
based on something like the devotion of a soldier to his chief. That the
probability that His mission did really come from God, should be made to
exceed by a little the probability that it did not, and that this balance
of arguments should lead people to acknowledge Him, was not what Christ
had in view. He sought only the homage of free, loving, human hearts.
The Laws above mentioned will be found to regulate the course of our
Lord’s actions as regards the performance of Signs and Wonders. They are
frequently violated in the Apocryphal Gospels, never, I think, in the
Canonical ones. There are other Laws which I shall have to trace; one,
which is very important, is stated on at least two occasions; I have
referred to it as being paradoxical in form, and the more fitted to force
itself on men’s minds on that account. It is the text, “For whosoever hath
to him shall be given, but whosoever hath not from him shall be taken away
even that which he hath.” This looks as if it would fall in strangely with
the Law of Natural Selection and the Survival of the Fittest, in the
organic world. What I believe our Lord to have meant by it will be
discussed in its proper place.
I shall have also to speak of the _prospective_ bearing of much that our
Lord says and does, and to shew how this gives us a greater assurance of
our Lord’s being “with us always to the end of the world.” Christ seems to
me to look over the heads of the generation about Him far into the future;
His eye is fixed on the distance, but it does not look out vaguely into
space; it is turned in a direction that is precisely determined. He walks
with the assured step of one who marches to a goal. But what that goal is
He never tells men, and when He designedly keeps men’s curiosity
unsatisfied, we may conjecture that no answer could be given without
touching on conditions of spiritual existence beyond our ken. There may be
such conditions which we could no more conceive than we could imagine
space with another dimension, beside length and breadth and height.
The history of the Church and of the workings of men’s minds may disclose
the existence of Laws, lying under the events of ages and operating
through them, analogous to those laid down by our Lord for his own
conduct; and we may look along the direction in which these Laws point.
Some have thought they descried, at the end, a time, in which peace and
righteousness should reign over the whole world. But Christ Himself
doubted whether He should find faith upon the earth when He came.(5)
However, if He should not, still He will not have failed, we can be sure
of this. What He meant to effect, whatever it was, will have come about.
Righteous souls may be garnered elsewhere, and this earth may be only a
school of life, a training ground for the education and selection (for
these two go together) of beings who shall be fitted to enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven.
CHAPTER II. HUMAN FREEDOM.
I have spoken in the foregoing chapter of certain characteristics of our
Lord’s ways of dealing with men. In considering these ways we find
ourselves, at almost every turn, face to face with the great enigmas of
life which underlie all Theology. Questions about Divine government and
human freedom will, I see, force themselves upon us.
It would keep this book more close to its purpose, if I could proceed at
once with the examination of what our Lord says and does, and leave all
these difficulties on one side, taking it for granted that all my readers
had arrived at their own views about them; or if I were to refer them to
works in which they are formally discussed.
But I trust my readers will forgive me, if I suppose that it may be with
them as with those I have been used to teach—that is to say, that they
will be attracted by these perplexities, and that they will be impatient
at being told that just what they want to ask lies outside my province.
Many too, I know, would never turn to any of the learned works on these
matters, of which I might give them the names.
I have resolved, therefore, to deal with these matters once for all, in as
familiar a way as I can. I cannot, of course, give my readers solutions of
these questions; I can only tell them how I manage to do without a
solution myself, and put before them the view of these matters which I
hold till I can get a better, so that they may more readily enter into my
views of Christ’s Laws of action, and understand what I write.
The characteristics of our Lord’s ways which particularly bring us in
contact with these mysteries, and which therefore concern us most now, are
(1) His care to keep alive in His hearers their sense of being free and
responsible agents; (2) His tolerance of the existence of evil in the
world.
These questions of free will and the existence of evil have been for ages
the battle-ground of divines, and they come before us every day. “Why did
not God make every one good?” is a question which occurs to every
intelligent child. He runs to his first teachers with it, and finding
himself put off with an answer that is no answer—for a child is quick in
detecting this—he gets his first notion that there are matters which even
grown-up people know nothing about.
So, that I may not serve my readers in this way, I give them all I have
myself. I can no more tell them “How” or “Why” God brought about the
present state of things, than I can solve the great mystery which is at
the bottom of all mysteries: “How, or Why, God and the world ever existed
at all?” But I think I can shew that free agency in men, and the existence
of evil, and also a reserve in the revelation of God’s ways—a question I
shall have to deal with next—are consistent with our situation in this
world; supposing that the mental and spiritual development of God’s
creatures is the proximate end and aim of the Spiritual Order. Some
hypothesis we must make as to a purpose in the world, if we regard it as
the work of a _mind_; and this is the purpose which most seems to fall in
with what I observe.
Our Lord speaks of Divine action as “The mystery of the kingdom of
God.”(6) He directs the thoughts of His disciples to these ways by telling
them, not what they are, but to what they are _like_. We shall never,
while on earth, perfectly know these ways, but Christ thinks it well for
His disciples to strive after this knowledge, and to look for lessons in
all they see to help them towards it.
Not only does Christ give us what I have called _seed-thoughts_ on these
matters, but He puts us in possession of a unique method for leading men
towards the truth about them. He takes an incident of familiar life, and
uses it to set forth spiritual verities. So when we must discourse of
these hard matters our safest course is to follow our Lord’s way. No
doubt, He meant to shew us _how_ to teach, as well as to tell us _what_ to
teach; so if we begin with a sort of allegory or parable, we cannot be far
wrong in point of _form_, however feeble and faulty the execution may be.
I believe that the relation of a parent to his household affords likeness
enough to that of the Father to His world, to be used as the ground of a
parable on God’s Will and Human Freedom.
Let us suppose that the father of a family, a man of strong will, and
steadfastly abhorring evil, should conceive the project of forcibly
shutting it out from his home. We will suppose the household planted in a
spot remote from human intercourse, in some self-supplying island or dale
among the hills; and, as I do not mean to touch on physical evil, let us
suppose that no external calamity comes nigh the dwelling. Here, let us
suppose, the children grow up, uncontaminated by ill, knowing no
temptation, reared in love and kindness, treated wisely and with such even
justice that envy and jealousy find no room to enter.
The parent proposes to himself to do away with all temptation, all chance
of individual aberration, and to cast his children’s character in a
perfect mould. He would have them merge themselves in him as much as
possible, repeating his thoughts and accepting his views without
questioning them, or supposing they could be questioned. All society, all
books, but what he approves, are banished from that house, so that no
whisper of evil, no pernicious notions can possibly intrude. Evil is by
him regarded as a pestilent weed, which only exists, owing to some
oversight in the making of the world, for which he is at a loss to
account. It is at once to be eradicated whenever it is espied.
Let us suppose that all goes well in our imagined household—that the
children love their father and believe implicitly in him; that they are so
happy in their home and home pursuits that they do not look beyond; and
that the healthy labour, which their common wants necessitate, gives room
for all their energies. Hence, there is no repining at their narrow
sphere, no longing for more strenuous activity or more varied life. Each
does his daily work, and returns to pleasant rest and a happy home, and no
more asks himself whether he is happy than he asks whether the valves of
his heart are opening and closing as they should. The father, then, looks
around him, and sees his ideal accomplished. He has a family of which no
member does anything but what he approves, or has a thought but what he
shares with him: not one of them sets up an opinion different from what he
holds. It never occurs to them to doubt the wisdom of any injunction. Life
presents to them no moral difficulties, because, as soon as any question
occurs to them, they run with it to their father, and on receiving his
reply put aside the matter, as being decided and disposed of for good and
all.
We might suppose the parent would look around with unalloyed satisfaction.
But a moment comes when he finds something wanting. He is not so
thoroughly satisfied as he had expected to be with the ideal which he has
worked out. Some misgiving obtrudes itself. He asks himself—Is this
condition, this merging of my children’s wills in mine, what is best for
them or what is best for me? Is not this goodness of theirs too negative?
Is it not rather the absence of evil than the presence of good?
Further he asks, am not _I_ substantially _alone_? Is not mine the only
independent mind in the place, of which all the rest are mere reflections?
Am I not intensifying my loneliness and all the moral disadvantages that
attach to it, by thus rendering all who surround me merely portions of
myself? For my children are not separate persons, but bits of _me_. Are
not whole provinces of moral activity shut out from me, by the very fact
of my having everything my own way? Are there not virtues which require
opposition to call them out? Is it not good to have to ask ourselves
whether we are dealing fairly with opponents? Is it not good to forgive
wrongs? Is it not good to reach out a helping hand, and lift one who has
stumbled, back into his self-respect? I engage in no struggles. In my
world there are no misdoings to forgive and no misdoers to restore. Have I
not closed against myself whole worlds of moral action and of moral life?
Then, as to my children, “Have I not been wrong in supposing that they
must _be_ good because they have never _done_ wrong? They have been so
kept from the suggestion of evil that they could hardly help going right.
But could they resist temptation if it came? They have never been braced
by a struggle with it, nor marked the ill fruits of evil. They take it on
trust from me that evil brings sorrow; but it usually comes in disguise
and declares itself harmless, and how should they recognise it if it
came?” So, question after question suggests itself, all destructive of his
satisfaction. “Can it be,” he says at last, “that I have brought up these
children so as to be fit for no world but that which I have carefully
constructed for them? I used to delight in their goodness; but since I
have suspected it to be mainly instinctive—an innocence that is the
outcome of ignorance—my satisfaction in it is half gone.”
At length, he is harassed with the idea that he may have given up his life
to a mistake, that what he has done has cramped his own mental and moral
expansion, and that the excellence of his blameless family is only
fair-weather goodness after all. He casts about to think why it is that
they have “neither savour nor salt,” and concludes “What they want is
_personality_—and how should they have got it, living in a household where
I have taken care to be all in all?”
Then his thoughts run upon _evil_, which he has been at such pains to shut
out, closing against it every cranny and chink. “God,” he may say, “has
let evil into His world—was I right in keeping it forcibly out of mine?
May not the resisting and assuaging of evil give occasion for good to grow
up, and feel its own strength? Are there not many kinds of goodness,
brought out in this way, which we could no more have without evil than we
could have light in a picture without shade? If there is no room for my
children to go wrong, what moral significance,” he asks, “is there in
saying that they go right?”
So he is disheartened with his project, and gives it up. He abandons his
isolated way of life, and gives his children freedom. He encourages them
to act and judge for themselves. Henceforth they can choose their own
books, their own friends their own pursuits, and go forth into life,
outside their charmed circle.
Of course this involves the giving up of his absolute power; this is
inherent in the nature of things. A man cannot be an autocrat and have
free people about him. If he would have intercourse with free
intelligences, in order to get the advantages to his own cultivation and
expansion of character which spring from such intercourse; this must be
purchased by abdicating some of his powers, or putting them in abeyance.
So the parent forbears using his power, in order that his children may
learn to be free, and that he may hold communion with free, loving hearts,
and engage in discussion with unfettered minds.
Soon, he finds that he has to encounter opposition. The children are free
to go wrong, and wrong some of them will go: evil appears in that
household where it was not known. The father sorrows over this, but when
he reviews his condition he finds that he has a countervailing comfort;
the good that is left about him is now real good. It is the good of
persons who have known and resisted evil. Besides this, there is more life
and greater vigour of character in his family, than there was before. They
no longer sit with folded hands always waiting for direction; they have
the air of persons who see a purpose before them; and they move along
their way “with the certain step of man.” So he concludes that it is
better that all should engage in the struggle with evil, even though some
should fail, than that they should move along paths ready shaped out for
them, shewing a merely mechanical goodness.
A great change has come over his life in another respect, he is now no
longer _alone_. Other wills come into contact, sometimes into collision,
with his will; a host of qualities, which had been folded up and laid by
for years, come again into use. He is no longer among echoes of himself,
but there are real voices in his new world. His views may still prevail,
but it must be, not merely because they are _his_, but because they stand
on solid ground. He may still lead in action; but it must be because he
has the leader’s strength, because he will venture when others waver, and
decide when others doubt.
Here we must leave him, and say a word or two before making the obvious
application of the parable: We must not press the application too closely
or draw conclusions from the mere machinery of the parable: it must not,
of course, be supposed that I conceive God to have dealt with man as the
father does with his children; that is to say, to have kept him at first
in tutelage, and then found it desirable to enfranchise him. The sole
object of the story is to familiarise the reader with the need of freedom
in moral growth. It shews that for education to be carried out, the _will_
must be free to act. When we have brought this home to his mind, we shall
be the better able “to justify the ways of God to man” in some important
particulars.
The parable is designed to apply to the condition of men on earth on the
supposition, that their education—in the largest sense of the word—is the
main work held in view: all depends on the hypothesis that man is placed
on earth to develop his powers. The need of freedom for members of the
imagined family depends on their being in a state of growth. The parable
would not apply to spiritual beings, if we could conceive such, whose
qualities and character were unalterable. _Perfected_ beings have done
with growth and struggle, and have attained to the highest condition, viz.
existence in unison with God. But for _imperfect_ beings, struggling on to
their goal, freedom is required and the opposition of evil is
indispensable, in order that the moral thews and sinews may harden.
Whenever we come upon an objection to the ways of God’s ordering of the
world, which is put in the form of a question, such as “Why was not the
world made in this way or that?” we shall find it a good plan, to follow
out the line indicated in the complaint, and see what would have come
about, supposing that God _had_ made the world in the way which is
suggested.
From the imaginary case here put, we see to what the common child’s
question leads us—the question “Why did not God make all people good and
keep them so?”—If people had been “made good and kept good,” that is to
say if they had been constructed by God so as always to act as His will
prompted, then they would not in the proper sense of the word have been
people at all; they would have been mechanisms worked by God, and so they
could not have been “good” in the sense in which we use the word of a man,
but only in that in which we apply it to a watch. There could be no moral
life without freedom; there could be no growth of character without
temptations and difficulties to overcome; no heroism, no self-denial, no
sympathising tenderness, no forgiving love, without suffering or
wrongdoing to call them forth.
Moreover if not only people on earth, but all created intelligences had,
in like manner, been constrained to respond to every motion of the Divine
will, God would have been the one spiritual being in the world and would
therefore have been absolutely _alone_.
Let us now suppose, and the supposition falls in with what our conscience
and the Bible tell us, that in God all goodness dwells. This goodness
cannot lie stored away as in a treasure-house, so as to be merely an
object of contemplation, it must be active and in operation. This is
essential to our idea of goodness, and it agrees with the view of God
which Christ presents to us, which is that of a being ever _operating_.
“My Father worketh hitherto,” says our Lord, “and I work.” For good to
unfold, and advance toward perfection in its manifold ways, an arena is
wanted. The world we know of affords the arena required; in this, God has
been working from the first One kind of His work we can conceive to be the
suggesting thoughts to men; but if it be so, He leaves the will free
either to entertain or to reject the suggestions, as we might those of a
friend.
That we may not lose ourselves in the immensity of God and eternity, we
will withdraw our gaze from the rest of the Universe, and fix it on this
planet of ours, when organic life first began to appear upon it. The
spiritual and material world might, before this, have been going on, each
apart, through countless ages; but a moment came when the spiritual and
the material were wondrously blended, and life began upon the earth.
Different orders of being succeeded each other, and fresh forces came into
play. We may suppose that God sympathised with all His creation, and that
the qualities that appeared in it reflected something in Himself. God may
have rejoiced in seeing the animal creation happy. The animals were in a
degree free, but they were not self-conscious; they did not know that they
were happy, or that they were loved, and God may have required for the
full unfolding of His infinite capacity for sympathy and love, to be in
relation with beings who could know Him and love Him, and know that they
loved Him.
Mr Erskine of Linlathen, in his excellent book on the Spiritual Order,
says “Is there not a comfort in the doctrine of the eternal Sonship, as a
deliverance from the thought of a God, whose very nature is Love, dwelling
in absolute solitude from all eternity without an object of love?” We may
extend this observation to other qualities besides love, from the exercise
of which, a being who is alone in the world is necessarily debarred. Is it
not likely that a God of mercy, truth and justice would frame a world of
beings, in His dealing with whom all these qualities should find scope and
exercise? Without self-conscious beings having free wills, how could this
be done?
Close by the side of this question of free will, lies that of the
existence of moral evil, in a world made by a being who, by the
hypothesis, is perfectly good. When we supposed the world to be formed for
the evolution of moral goodness, we, perhaps without knowing it,
introduced the idea of moral evil, implied in that of goodness; for actual
good is evolved in resisting evil and repairing the mischief it has done;
indeed many forms of it can no more exist without evil as an antagonist,
than a wheel can turn without the friction of the road.
Now, as I have said, if men be left free, they must have liberty to go
wrong. For if they had been originally made so perfect that they _could_
not go wrong, this would only mean that they were like watches very
excellently fabricated; they could only move in one particular way, viz.
the way in which they had been designed to move by God. Inasmuch as such
beings would not be persons, we could not feel gratitude or anger towards
them, nor influence them in any way. If men were like this, there could be
little or no growth, little or no action of man on man. If, to take
another supposition, man had been so made that it would be possible for
him to go wrong, but that he had been sedulously kept out of temptation
and placed in an abode where innocence reigned undisturbed; then we come
to a case very like that sketched in the foregoing parable.
There is a third case possible. God might make men capable of going wrong,
but might watch over them and protect them, whether they craved His help
or not, whenever temptation approached. This constant supernatural
interference would soon have destroyed all self-helpfulness; men would
never have formed habits of avoiding or resisting temptation. “God,” the
man would say, “will not let me sin—I may go as near to danger as I like,
and need take no care of myself, because I am sure of God’s protection.”
We know that a child does not learn to take care of himself, so long as he
feels that it is the nurse’s business to see that no harm happens to him.
We come then to this result. God requires free self-conscious beings, for
the full exercise of the moral goodness in Himself and for its development
and manifestation in the world.
But He cannot give others freedom, and at the same time provide that they
should act only in the way that He approves: because this in itself would
be a contradiction, and a contradiction not even Divine power can effect.
Hence these free, intelligent beings must be at liberty to go wrong, and
God must, in exchange for having free wills about him, forego part of His
absolute prerogative: and so He must allow evil a place in the world
because this is involved in the “liberty to go wrong” just spoken of.
This brings us to the mystery of the “origin of evil.” I shall not lay
myself open to the charge made against divines, “That they no sooner
declare a subject to be a mystery than they set to work to explain it.” I
can see that if man is to be left free, evil must needs come, and that
without evil in the world none of the more masculine virtues can be
brought to the birth—that is to say, I see that evil, being in the world,
serves to discharge a function—but I do not pretend to say how it came. I
do not maintain that it came, solely, from man’s misuse of his freedom.
From what we see in the world arises a fancy that every thing must have
its opposite, that light presupposes darkness, and pleasure pain, and so
good may presuppose evil; but this fancy is not substantial enough to
build upon. Our Lord’s words on the occasions when He deals with evil,
are, to my judgment, most easily reconciled with one another, and with the
circumstances which call them forth, by supposing Him to recognise a
personal spiritual influence, presenting evil thoughts to the minds of
men; the man remaining free to choose whether he will entertain these
suggestions or not.
I return to my immediate subject—the function that evil performs in the
existing moral world. We read in the Book of Genesis that the earth was to
bring forth “thorns and thistles,” and that man was “to eat bread in the
sweat of his brow.”(7) This is the result of a change worked, we are told,
“for man’s sake.” It was indeed for man’s _sake_—though in a different
sense—that this was so. He would have remained a very poor creature if the
earth had produced just what he wanted, without any labour of his. This
illustrates the function of evil in the ordering of the world. Man’s
qualities, moral and physical, are developed by it. It subserves the
progress of the human race.
We should have less heroism, without cruelty and oppression from without;
and could have no self-restraint, without temptation from within. Piety
and love indeed, when they had once come into being, might exist without
evil; we may believe that they satisfy the souls of the saints in heaven;
but among men they commonly owe their birth to a feeling of shelter
against evil, and to a sense of pardoned wrong.
Another office which evil performs is this. The contention with it helps
to bring out the difference between man and man. If any members of the
family of my parable had possessed the germs of a strong character, they
could hardly have brought fruit to perfection: the conditions of their
innocent life tended to uniformity. But as soon as temptations came,
latent differences would forthwith appear; the strong would grow stronger
and the bad worse. Now there is need of strong men for human progress.
They form the steps in the stairway by which the race mounts. If life were
smooth and easy, men would, as it were, advance in line, and the stronger
men would not so surely come in front of the rest. It is in times of
trouble that men are most apt to recognise worth and capacity, and make
much of them. So that the trials and difficulties of human life which come
of evil, have this good effect among others, they help to pick out the men
who are fitted to be the leaders of human movements and of human thought.
It may have struck us as strange that Christ does not deal directly with
these perplexing questions which trouble so many minds. We shall see,
later on, that His not doing so is quite consistent with the uniform
“tenour of His way.” But though our Lord does not lay down dogmas on these
points, yet His own actions and expressions would, of course, accord with
what He knew: if, then, when we hit upon some view of this “riddle of the
painful earth,” which commends itself to our minds, we find that it
clashes with what our Lord does or says, then we may throw it aside at
once: and, on the other hand, if we arrive at a way of looking at the
matter which seems to harmonise with what falls from Him; then, we may
hope, not indeed that we have found a solution of the riddle, but that our
hypothesis will not mislead us, so long as we own it to be an hypothesis,
and nothing more.
We may be supposed then to have arrived at this position. We assume the
existence of a mighty Divine being, in whom all goodness dwells. We
suppose that this world is an arena in which a struggle is to be carried
on between good and evil by the agency of free intelligent beings; that by
means of this struggle the better natures will be strengthened and
developed, and come more and more into action; we suppose also that God
whispers counsel and comfort on the side of good. Further than this we
need not now go.
As regards the presence of evil in the world, there are several sayings of
our Lord which might be noted. I must confine myself to one or two of the
most important.
First let us consider the following passage from St John’s Gospel:(8)
“And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples
asked him, saying, Rabbi, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he
should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his
parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”
Here the disciples take it for granted, that the blindness was a
punishment for sin, either on the part of the man or his parents. It is
our Lord’s practice—and a practice so uniform that we may call it a Law of
proceeding—not to enter into controversy about wide-spread mistaken views
on merely _speculative_ subjects: He usually gives a hint, and leaves it
to work in the hearer’s mind.
Our Lord’s answer in this case means, _not_, of course, that the man and
his parents had never committed sin, but that the blindness was not the
result of that sin; and He passes rapidly on to state His view of one
purpose answered by this infliction.
In His few words of answer our Lord lets fall one of those hints, _seed
thoughts_, as I have called them, which lie so thickly in the Gospels.
Our Lord tells us, that the works of God were to be made manifest by this
man’s infirmity. A light is thrown by these words on one of the “uses of
adversity.” Suffering gives room for moral goodness to come into play. The
world is full of instances easy enough to note. Does not a sick child in a
family educate all around it to tenderness and self-denial? What more
touching lesson in patience can be given than the sight of the little
sufferer, grieved at nothing so much as the trouble it causes, making the
most of every alleviation, grateful beyond measure for every look or word
of love. Rough brothers learn forbearance and gentleness; and to all the
household it becomes natural to think of something else before, or at
least beside, themselves. Wordsworth tells us of a half-witted boy whose
helplessness and simplicity fostered a spirit of kindliness in all the
poor of the village, and taught them to respect affliction.
Again in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we are taught how there is “a
soul of goodness in things evil.” The wickedness of the prodigal is made a
means of revealing to him and to all the bystanders the Divine beauty and
efficacy of forgiving love.
We will now(9) turn to the history of the cure of the Dæmoniac in the
country of the Gadarenes. I take the history in what seems to me the plain
literal sense, and I must suppose that our Lord recognised some real evil
existence, which had possessed itself of the man, and which, by its
presence in him, had unhinged his whole mental or nervous organisation.
This existence is separable from him, but it requires, it would seem, some
body to inhabit and to work upon. The dæmon begs not to be suppressed or
annihilated, and our Lord grants his petition and lets him go among the
swine. He saves the _man_—what other evils this dæmon may work in the
world, so that he lets men go, is no concern of His. The Son of Man is
concerned only with lives and souls—not with property in any way.
The point for us to note is this: Our Lord does not _annihilate_ evil. He
does not regard it as an outlawed intruder who had eluded God’s notice,
and who, as soon as he is discovered, is to be expelled from the universe
at once. His Father has suffered evil to be, and He, Christ, follows in
His Father’s ways: evil may still do its work, only not on men. This evil
influence, we must observe, is something external to the man; it would
seem to belong to an order of existences, engaged in working ill as their
congenial business; whispering bad counsel, something in the way that
God’s Spirit whispers good, only, of course, not in such deep
authoritative tones; and, in these cases of possession, it masters the
whole being of the sufferer. _Why_ this was allowed to be, is of course a
mystery, but yet it is hardly a greater mystery than why evil in its other
forms should be allowed to exist, and without evil in some shape, as we
have seen, this earth would be a very imperfect exercise-ground for
mankind.
To represent this case to our minds, let us imagine some malignant “germ”
that has caused a plague amongst men, and which in time takes a slightly
different form, so that it is no longer adapted to human beings, but finds
its prey in cattle instead. Then the plague among men is exchanged for a
murrain among cattle, which, as a matter of fact, has been known to
happen: this answers to the allowing the dæmon to go to the swine. Evil is
not forcibly exterminated, but it is transferred from man to the lower
animals.
So our Lord is gentle even with the powers of evil. They had their
function, or they would not have been there, and they were not to be
crushed out of existence before the time.
If it be, as I have argued, that evil had a function in the world, then we
can see why it could not be removed by a _universal_ decree. But a
_single_ act of relief might be admissible in order to testify to the
presence of an exceptional power; this would not engender in people the
habit of helplessly throwing themselves upon God. For instance, Christ
cures the son of the centurion merely by speaking the word, but if He had
abolished all fevers by one decree, this would have been to disorganise
the existing order in the universe. A King going on a royal progress
relieves the misery that comes in his way; his own kindliness, his royal
dignity, and the need of impressing on the people that their King delights
in doing good, and can do it, require him so to do. But a regal donation
for the relief of all distress in the kingdom would turn it into a nation
of paupers. So our Lord bestows His bounty on those who fall in His way.
He who asks, Why did not Christ suppress evil? may naturally ask also, Why
did not Christ sweep away all human error as to the relations of God with
man? And why did He not so vouch for the authenticity of His communication
that any doubt about it should be impossible? Now we believe, that God has
revealed Himself to man, and yet has left men in some degree free as to
what they will think about Him, and as fully at liberty to examine the
credentials of those who have claimed to be His messengers, and to judge
of their authenticity, as they would be in a purely human matter.
We find, as a matter of fact, that men who have accepted Christ’s
revelation are not fettered in mind by it; but are most often
enterprising, energetic and bold searchers after truth. I believe that it
would have been unfavourable to the preservation of this vigour of mind
and to the temper which should “try all things and hold fast those which
are good,” if the full and absolute revelation which some demand had been
delivered to mankind, and all the problems which beset human life had
thereby been settled once for all. To the questions “Why we are told what
we are told?” “Why we are not told more?” and “Why doubt and ambiguities
are not all cleared away?”—we cannot hope to give _answers_, but we may
find ways of looking at them which shall help in some degree
“To justify the ways of God to man.”
It will be best to discuss this subject in a separate Chapter.