Outset of the Work.
We now come in sight of that part of our Lord’s work which is the special
subject of this book. We have been shewn something of what passed in His
mind during the days in the desert; but we are not told what He intended
to accomplish or by what practical steps He would proceed. We need not
suppose that He came forth from the desert with His plan of action
completely prepared. He may not have settled where He should lay the scene
of His work or whom He should take for His helpers. All this would grow
clear to Him as time went on. But though He may have been waiting for the
guidance of inner voice and outward circumstance as to the way of
executing His charge, yet that He had God’s work to do and meant to do it
is written unmistakeably in His air.
We are shown Him in St John’s Gospel on His way to Galilee. A glimpse is
given us across His path, and we see Him pass along with the assured tread
of one whose part is taken and who knows whither His steps lead. On one
point touching the form of His work He is already clear. He is not to come
as a practical reformer or as a claimant of power; in these characters He
would need active human aid, and the Spirit of the World would enter in:
but though He is given functions beyond teaching, yet, in order to wear a
garb familiar to the people, He will be in their eyes nothing more, at
first, than “a _teacher_ come from God;”(74) His followers are to be
purely _disciples_ and not adherents of any other kind. His concern was
not with political or social forms of order,—these must be different in
different times and different lands. His province was to waken into
activity the capacity for knowing God which was practically dormant in the
mass of mankind. Before laying down any plan or organising any society, He
passes some months in _exploring_, so to say, the tempers, and minds and
capacities of the different classes of persons in Jerusalem and Galilee.
He is in search of the fittest receptacles for the word. He looks into the
hearts of the disciples of John, and of those who like Nicodemus were
“scribes instructed into the kingdom of heaven.” He turns His eye upon
Samaritans and peasants of Galilee; and finally, as we know, decides to
choose the quiet Lake shore for the cradle of the _Faith_. The peasants
and fishers whose ways He knew—unsentimental, serviceable men—were taken
as witnesses for the new revelation: they offered the new flasks wanted
for the new wine.
A man who sets about regenerating society commonly begins by remodelling
institutions; he trusts to good institutions to make men good: our Lord,
as a Teacher, begins at the other end; He goes straight to the men
themselves and tries to make _them_ better; better men would bring about
better ways of ordering their outward lives; but each generation must do
this for itself. The success of His enterprise did not rest on its
immediate acceptance; and so, He did not aim at drawing _numbers_ round
Him or at gaining influential proselytes or at consolidating a school or a
sect. Christ’s work was to go on for ever, and mankind would be redeemed
equally, whether many followers or few attended Him while on earth.
It may be asked “Did our Lord from the first see all that lay before Him?”
The conclusion from the facts of the history must be that, unless when it
were specially summoned, His divine prescience remained in abeyance, and
that He, as the Son of Man, was subject to those uncertainties as to the
future which attend ordinary human action. He could not have worked
together with men, as He did with the Apostles, if He had differed so
essentially from them as to know perfectly every day what was going to
happen on the next: he could not have experienced surprise; and surprise
our Lord certainly shews at the dulness of the disciples in catching His
meaning: “He _marvelled_” too at the unbelief of some districts. On
occasion we know that He could search men’s hearts; but they did not lie
bare to His view. Neither can we suppose that, when He charged men not to
publish their cures, He knew that He would be disobeyed; or that He chose
Judas for an Apostle knowing that he would betray Him. The general drift
of the purport of His coming, and His insight into it, grew clearer and
clearer the nearer He came to the end; but we have no warrant for
supposing that the details of all that would happen on the way lay before
Him from the first.
He draws His disciples to Him at first with a cheerful hope: but towards
the close of His career He has the air of one moving under a load; and
once He gives utterance to what lies at His heart. The words in which He
does this throw a light on the question of His purpose and His plan; they
are spoken apparently to St Peter—
“I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if it is
already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how
am I straitened till it be accomplished!”(75)
It needed one sent from God to kindle this fire, and to bring home to men
the truth that His Spirit worked within them to will and to do; but when
the kindling was once effected, the rest might be left to human effort.
Men could feed the flame and men could fan it; and so, following the law
we have traced in operation so often, to men the flame was left, for them
to feed and fan. “This being done,” our Lord might say, “this for which I
came,—why do I linger here? what more do I want?” and yet He might add “My
whole work is _not_ done: the crowning act remains. Men will never
understand my love at all unless I die for them.” Until He was baptised
with this baptism of suffering, He was like one straitened on every side
by an imperious task which claims his every thought.
Our Lord’s movements from the Temptation on to the Ministry in Galilee are
made known to us by the Gospel of St John. Jesus appears on the banks of
the Jordan, where John was still baptising his disciples; He mixes with
the throng; the Baptist points Him out to two young men, one of whom,
Andrew, brings his brother to visit Him; the other was probably the
Evangelist himself. Afterwards our Lord Himself finds Philip, and Philip
finds Nathanael, and the little party travel on foot to Cana of Galilee.
No writer, who did not confine himself to facts about which he was
certain, would have given so homely a story of the beginning of so mighty
a matter.
The Gospel of St John is manifestly written by one who is in the position
of a disciple; he sees everything from the disciple’s point of view: what
the _disciples_ thought of things that happened seems to be always
uppermost in his mind. He is not a writer composing a continuous biography
of our Lord, but a disciple drawing lessons from particular scenes of his
Master’s life; and he no more thinks of considering _why_ our Lord took
the course He did, than he would consider why the seasons change. An
historian might have looked for reasons why our Lord did not appear in
public life in Jerusalem; but John does not look on the matter with an
historian’s eye.
I will here summarise the occasions on which the disciples are mentioned,
in the period of the history embraced in this chapter. We first hear of
them in the account of the wedding at Cana. The Evangelist relates that
“He manifested forth His glory, _and His disciples believed on Him_.”(76)
Next we find the disciples spoken of, as if they stood in a kind of family
relation to Him. “He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His
brethren, and _His disciples_.”(77) When we come to the account of the
cleansing of the Temple, it is pointed out how that action struck the
disciples. They talked it over among themselves; they recalled the verse
in the Psalms, “The zeal of Thine house shall eat me up,”(78) and thought
they saw a Messianic prophecy fulfilled: we are told too that after our
Lord’s death they recalled His words about building the Temple in three
days. We hear also that they were numerous: “_many_ believed on His name,
beholding the signs which He did.”(79) Next comes a fact of great
importance; it is that, though our Lord did not baptise adherents, yet
that His disciples did so, and that finally more resorted to them than to
the Baptist.(80) A few disciples attended our Lord in the journey through
Samaria, and to them His first recorded discourse as a teacher is
addressed: there is no further mention of them during the period embraced
in this chapter. Such is the summary of the matter bearing on my subject;
I proceed to discuss points of interest that arise out of it.
The advent of our Lord differed from that of other enlighteners of mankind
in one very striking way. He had, in the Baptist, a special forerunner,
who gave out, on all occasions, that the final cause of his own preaching
was to prepare the way for one greater than himself. Events of national
history, themselves part of that wide-spreading “Preparatio Evangelica”
which, to my mind, underlies the history of the world, had raised a
ferment in the minds of the inhabitants of Palestine. To this movement the
Baptist gave a particular turn. He brought men to desire that the world
should become better, and taught them that they must begin by becoming
better themselves. Without this preparation, the germs of truth which our
Lord scattered would more largely have failed to quicken: the Baptist had
broken up the soil to receive the seed; his preaching put the people in an
attitude of expectancy, and an expectant condition is a receptive one. The
Old Testament prophecies had worked to this same end; they had made
expectancy congenial to the nation’s mind. The Israelites were like
spectators waiting to see a great king come with a procession: the sight
of a forerunner sets the crowd astir, and such a forerunner John was. I
have observed before, that in carrying out His own work our Lord is
careful to use _preparation_. The disciples are sent “to every place where
He Himself would come.” Men were not to be repelled from the new movement
by reason of its being strange to them. What this preparation did for the
villages of Galilee the Baptist did on a grander scale for all Judæa.
We get but a glimpse of the nature of the relation between John and his
disciples, and need only notice it briefly. Young men did not, like those
who sat at the feet of a Rabbi, resort to him for definite instruction:
the disciples of John did not look to be taught interpretations of the Law
or of the Prophets, but they looked for a rule of life for themselves and
a brighter future for their country or their race—they were ill-satisfied
with the present and eagerly turned to one who represented both in aspect
and in utterance the prophets of old. There was one feature in John’s
ministry, so distinctive that he drew his appellation from it.—He caused
his disciples to be baptised. The doctrines implied in the rite do not now
concern me; to some it symbolised the cleansing from sin, to others the
rising into a new life; but the practical effect of it was to make those
who received it feel that they had, in a way, pledged their allegiance to
John by receiving baptism at his hands: they had assumed a badge, and were
bound by ties of personal loyalty to their master and to one another.(81)
But John’s disciples were not separated off from the outside mass by
baptism alone. To the mind of his countrymen a religion was not a religion
at all, unless it included a _regimen_, unless it parcelled out their
days, according to hours of prayer and times of fasting. With such a
distinctive rule John provided his followers. He taught them to pray,(82)
he accustomed them to voluntary fasts;(83) and on some points of
ceremonial, such as purification, he may have had tenets of his own.(84)
We will now trace the steps by which our Lord gathers disciples round Him.
It is possible that even before our Lord left Galilee He had been the
centre of a group of young men who looked up to Him, and the Galileans
among John’s disciples might therefore have heard of Him. It falls in also
with this supposition, that our Lord seems to have been already acquainted
with Philip of Bethsaida, and to have purposely sought him out. We
read—“He _findeth_ Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.”(85) Philip
hastens to Nathanael,(86) who came from Cana in Galilee, and tells him
that the Messiah has been found in the person of “Jesus the son of Joseph,
_the man from Nazareth_.”(87) The words in italics _may_ imply “of whom we
have all heard;” for Cana was not more than six miles from Nazareth, and
Bethsaida was in the same district. The Baptist, we know, regarded Him,
when He came to be baptised, as his equal or superior in the favour of
God.
Five of the Apostles—John, Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathanael—were drawn
to our Lord in the few days spent at Bethabara on His return from the
desert; and probably all these went back with Him to Galilee. Among these
five we find traces of a lasting tie. This is worth noting, because such a
tie would naturally arise from comradeship in early years, and of this
comradeship St John’s Gospel speaks. These five had gone together from
Galilee, in the zeal of their young days, to listen to the strange
preacher in the desert of Judæa; they had lived together, faring alike,
and baring their hearts each to the other in the confidence of youth. We
can understand that this would bind men fast together, and that St John
writing his Gospel at the end of his life, with possibly St Andrew at his
side, should have been mindful of all the circumstances in which these old
friends took part, and have gladly taken occasion to mention their
names.(88)
Accordingly, we find mention made in the Gospel, without positive
occasion, of these Apostles by name. We did not need to know that it was
Andrew who said “There is a lad here who hath five barley-loaves and two
small fishes.”(89) The Synoptists(90) all relate the miracle of the
feeding of the five thousand, but Andrew is named by St John alone:
Philip, another of this little company, is close by; he is addressed by
our Lord, and Andrew interposes. We find Philip and Andrew together at a
later time. When the Greeks who came up and worshipped at the feast wished
to see Jesus they applied to Philip;(91) then we have
“Philip cometh and telleth _Andrew_: Andrew cometh, and Philip,
and they tell Jesus.”
St John here seems almost to go out of his way to speak of Andrew.
Philip also, who scarcely appears in the Synoptical Gospels, is mentioned
six times by St John; and he is found in company, now with Andrew, now
with Nathanael, as if the ties of old companionship still held. The
particulars we have of Philip are instructive. Our Lord, as we have seen,
“found him,” which I take to mean, not that He merely _lighted upon him_,
but that He sought him. He thought him, therefore, a suitable companion
for His coming journey to Jerusalem for the Passover. A point of fitness
may have been that he knew Greek: his Greek name would not by itself go
far to prove this; but, taking it along with the fact that when the Greeks
come up to worship in Jerusalem they address themselves to Philip, it
seems likely that he knew their language. Our Lord at the Passover would
meet many Israelites who talked Greek more readily than Aramaic, and a
Greek-speaking follower would be of service to Him. Again when Philip
says, “Lord, shew us the Father and it sufficeth us,”(92) our Lord
replies, Have I been _so long_ with you and you have not known me? The
words “so long” are particularly applicable to Philip, as he had been
called a year before the twelve were formed into a body, and may have
remained in constant attendance on our Lord when the other disciples
quitted Him after the return through Samaria.
With Nathanael also there is much interest connected. He, in the last
chapter of St John’s Gospel, is called Nathanael of Cana of Galilee, and
is named among others who are Apostles. He is identified, on good grounds,
with the Bartholomew of the Synoptical Gospels.(93) We mark in Nathanael
an aptitude for discerning spiritual greatness; but, with all this, he
held stoutly to old prejudices in which he had been born and bred; and
when Philip comes to him with his tidings, he breaks out with: “Can there
any good thing come out of Nazareth?” There is no reason to suppose that
Nazareth was held generally in bad estimation. Natives of Jerusalem would
look down on all villages in Galilee without distinction, but Nathanael
belonged not to Jerusalem but to Cana. Cana and Nazareth were a few miles
apart, each being the chief town in its own district; and the local
jealousy and tendency to mutual disparagement between neighbours, which is
not unknown among ourselves, and was rife in those times, will account for
Nathanael’s words.(94)
It was of no ill augury for his holding fast the Faith when he had found
it, that he clung to the old traditionary feeling of his native town. He
was not blinded by it; he is ready to “go and see.” Here our Lord
exercises His singular gift of introspection, “Behold,” says He, “an
Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.”
“Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered
and said unto him, Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under
the fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, thou art
the Son of God; thou art King of Israel.”(95)
Probably Nathanael recalled what had passed in his mind when he had been
under the fig-tree. Perhaps some mystery of existence had then weighed
upon his soul, and on coming to Christ he found “the thoughts of his heart
revealed.”(96)
In our Lord’s reply to Nathanael we find His first recorded utterance as a
Preacher of the Word; here He first speaks of Himself as the Son of Man,
and here we have the first hint of the Law, “To him who hath shall be
given,” a law which has been several times before us and will be so again
before long. Nathanael _had_ something already; he was enough in earnest
to drop his prejudices; a slight token had enabled him to see in our Lord
“the Son of God, the King of Israel:” he is told that he shall see greater
things than these. Jacob had dreamed of old(97) that there was a ladder
between earth and heaven, by which God’s angels went and came; such a
ladder Christ was, and he, the Israelite in whom there was no guile,
should see “the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of
Man.”(98)
So far I have followed the Gospel of St John. The Synoptists afford
corroborative matter to shew that the little company, which had met at
Bethabara, continued to hang together.
(1) In St Mark’s(99) list of the Apostles—the names “and Andrew, and
Philip, and Bartholomew” come together in the enumeration. If we were
asked for the names of a society of twelve men whom we knew—they would
occur by the twos and threes who were most together. St Peter, whom we may
regard here as St Mark’s informant, gives the names as they came to mind.
He recalls journeys in the hill country, when the disciples had walked in
scattered groups, three or four together. In one of these little knots
Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew may commonly have been found.
(2) From the way in which St Matthew’s(100) list is given we may infer
something of greater interest still. St Matthew gives the names of the
Apostles _in pairs_: Simon and Andrew, James and John, Philip and
Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew—and so on. Immediately after the list of
names we have the sending forth of the Apostles to the cities of Israel. I
believe that the Apostles went on this mission in the pairs which are
above-named. Why else should the names be coupled together? The Evangelist
had in his eye the party as they had stood listening to their Master’s
words, with their staves in their hands, ready to start. He recollects
their separating—two going one way, and two another,—and therefore, two by
two, he puts them down in his list.(101) It is curious that though St
Matthew _couples_ the names, yet he does not say, as St Mark and St Luke
do, that the Apostles were sent _two and two_ together. The coupling in St
Matthew is a kind of coincidence with that express direction which is
preserved by St Mark and St Luke.
Not only, then, is there probable evidence to shew that, out of the little
body of the earliest disciples, three clung together; but also that two of
them—Philip and Bartholomew—formed one of the pairs that went forth
declaring to the villages of Galilee that the Kingdom of God was at hand.
At all events the Synoptists testify to a special intimacy between two
disciples; and circumstances, which are disclosed by St John alone, shew
how this intimacy naturally arose. Thus we have, what is always worth
noting, a corroboration by the Synoptists of the narrative of the fourth
Evangelist.
To return to the history in the Gospel of St John. Our Lord sets out on
His return to Galilee, and may have been Nathanael’s guest at Cana for the
night preceding the wedding. It does not fall within my scope to say more
about the miracle than has been said already. The statement important for
my purpose is, that our Lord manifested His glory, “and _His disciples_
believed on Him.”(102) The fact that a new teacher worked wonders and drew
disciples round him made a stir in the district; and this may throw light
upon the passage which follows.
“After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his
brethren, and _his_ disciples: and there they abode not many
days.”(103)
This event leads to no consequences in the history. It would only have
been mentioned by one who, having the sequence of occurrences in his head,
detailed them all. Still, there must have been some motive for this
removal of the whole family to Capernaum. I will hazard a conjecture,
which if correct will help to explain the following text which occurs
later on:
“And after the two days he went forth from thence into Galilee.
For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his
own country. So when he came into Galilee, the Galilæans received
him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the
feast: for they also went unto the feast.”(104)
Why does the Evangelist say that our Lord was Himself an instance of the
rejection of a prophet in his own country, at the very time when he is
about to say that the Galileans _did_ receive Him because they had seen
what He did at the feast? There must have been some previous occasion on
which He had _not_ been received. I believe that the last quoted passage,
fully expressed, might run thus: “He went forth from thence into Galilee
_but not to Nazareth_, for Jesus Himself testified that a prophet hath no
honour in his own country,” and _therefore_ He passed by Nazareth and went
on to Cana, a few miles further north. Now, at what time could our Lord
have experienced this ill reception? I find no occasion on which such
disparagement of His claims can have been shewn, excepting in the short
interval between the miracle at Cana and this withdrawal of the whole
family to Capernaum. I would therefore conjecture that on leaving Cana,
after the miracle, our Lord had returned with His mother to Nazareth, and
that the inhabitants had then in some way shown ill-will.(105) He probably
brought with Him some disciples belonging to Cana—a place of which they
were jealous—hailing Him as Rabbi, and proclaiming Him their Master. The
people of Nazareth resented this assumption of superiority on the part of
a townsman whom they had known from His birth. The whole family are
involved in the unpopularity, and remove to Capernaum, to wait the time
for going up to the Passover.
Though St John makes no mention, in its proper place, of the animosity of
the people of Nazareth, yet the recollection of it remains in his mind; so
that, when he says that our Lord went _into Galilee_ on His return from
Samaria, this seems to him noticeable, as though it were strange He should
go where He had been ill received before; and he tells us why He is well
received on this occasion; namely, because some had brought back word of
His vigorous action in cleansing the Temple. Our Lord does not go to
Nazareth, but again makes His stay at Cana.
To return to this short stay at Capernaum. The point I am most concerned
with is, that it is here that the disciples are first mentioned as
attached to our Lord in His movements; they form, as it were, part of His
family. If our Lord had already met with opposition, as I have
conjectured, this would have helped to bind the little company closer
together. We hear of no preaching or working of Signs during the short
stay at Capernaum. We are not positively told that the disciples went with
our Lord to Jerusalem;(106) but I imagine that the five of whom we have
read went up to the Passover, though some may have returned to Galilee
soon after the feast.(107)
The narrative of the cleansing of the Temple shews how burning was our
Lord’s indignation at practices that degraded men’s notions of God.
Personal attacks He bore with meekness, “when He was reviled He reviled
not again, when He suffered He threatened not;”(108) but He gives free
vent to a godly wrath when He finds men driving a traffic in holy things.
A personal characteristic of our Lord, shewn again and again, comes for
the first time before us here: He carried authority in His air, an
authority that needed no assertion, but to which men bowed. The owners of
the oxen yield without resistance to the determination He shews. It is
only the Hierarchy who ask, “What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that
thou doest these things?”(109) I need not say that on demand He will work
no Sign at all: this is His invariable rule.
St John says nothing of the nature of the miracles wrought by our Lord at
this time; we only hear that they induced people “to believe in His
name.”(110) They may have been chiefly miracles of introspection, like the
recognition of Peter, the seeing of Nathanael under the fig-tree, and the
divining of His mother’s meaning when she said “they have no wine;” for St
John assiduously keeps before his hearers this insight of our Lord into
men’s minds. In particular he says, in reference to the disciples who
gathered round Him in Judæa,
“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all
men, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness
concerning man: for he himself knew what was in man.”(111)
When our Lord drove out the money-changers and those who sold doves,
people thronged to Him in Jerusalem, thinking that the leader whom they
sought had come. But these were not disciples after His own heart, not
such as should receive the kingdom of God as little children. These were
men who had both notions and a purpose of their own; men who would follow
Him as long as He went _their_ way; and who, when He did not, would “go
back and walk no more with Him.”(112) The relation of our Lord to these
early Judæan disciples was very different from that in which He stood,
either to the five who had gone with Him from Bethabara to Cana and
Capernaum, or to those who afterwards thronged to His preaching of the
Kingdom of Heaven. To these Judæan disciples our Lord as far as we know
delivers no lessons and issues no directions; we do not hear that they
were especially chosen for witnesses of the Signs in Jerusalem, or that
they formed an organised body in any way. It seems rather as if a body of
men ranged themselves round our Lord and, from their admiration for Him,
took the name of His disciples, but did not hold themselves to be under
orders, and came and went as they pleased.
Our Lord had not yet begun His real Ministry; He was probing the
capacities and natures both of individual men and of different classes in
the community, with a view to testing their fitness for taking part in His
great work.
Something inclined Him, we may suppose, to take Galilee for the cradle of
the new movement; and the circumstance that those who first adhered were
all Galilæans pointed along the same way. It would appear to be a method
of Divine guidance, to speak by a whisper within, and, at the same time,
so to order circumstances without, that one should fall in with the other:
sometimes this coincidence will be perceived and will strike the beholder
with a kind of awe, and sometimes it will operate on him without his being
aware.
There was much that made Galilee suitable: its position was at once
central and retired, and its inhabitants were, according to Josephus,
sturdy and independent, and, of course, free from the pedantry of
Rabbinical schools. Jerusalem however claimed a trial from our Lord. He
desired to know what was passing there in the minds of those who were
seeking truth. It was possible that a cradle for the infant church might
be found among the followers of the Baptist, or among Scribes like
Nicodemus. Our Lord gauges the fitness of both these bodies of men. We
know what conclusion settled itself in His mind during those early days:
He must not put new wine into old bottles. The enlightened party among
those in authority were more after the type of Erasmus than of Luther,
they lacked force: they had been trained to pick their way through
difficulties of interpretation, but not to grasp great principles, still
less to _act_; and though they divined that there was a truth dawning from
afar, yet their feeling for it was not so much a passion as a taste.
After the discourse with Nicodemus the Evangelist returns to narration,
and tells us of a visit of our Lord and His disciples to the district
where the Baptist was carrying on his work. It may have been that he meant
to represent our Lord as turning from Nicodemus to John’s disciples; as
if, when He found the former unequal to the need, He would try how the
latter might serve. The words are
“After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of
Judæa; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also
was baptizing in Ænon near to Salim, because there was much water
there: and they came, and were baptized.”(113)
It is not said that our Lord actually went to the spot where John was; but
the narrative favours the view that the two companies were not far from
one another. We are told that followers were drawn in large numbers to our
Lord and that His disciples baptised them. This adoption of the rite
which, though not unknown before, had been brought into special prominence
by the Baptist, excited jealousy in John’s disciples—
“And they came unto John, and said to him, Rabbi, he that was with
thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou hast borne witness, behold, the
same baptizeth, and all men come to him.”(114)
One reason of the anxiety of the disciples to baptise may possibly have
been this; they saw how that outward rite supplied John’s disciples with a
badge that marked them out and made one body of them; they were all bound
together to the same master by having received baptism at his hands,—bound
together not merely by holding the same opinions and honouring the same
man, but by something that had been _done_, by a work wrought upon _them_.
Some might interpret this “outward and visible sign” in one way and some
in another, but all could see the value of such a sign or symbol for
giving coherence and permanency to their new community.
In the fourth chapter we find that the Pharisees at Jerusalem,—they who
constituted the religious world of the place,—had come to the knowledge
that the resort to Jesus was greater than that to St John—
“When therefore the Lord knew how that the Pharisees had heard
that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John
(although Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples), he left
Judæa and departed again into Galilee.”(115)
I make out St John’s meaning to be, that our Lord quitted Judæa because He
found Himself thrust into apparent rivalry with John the Baptist. The
Judæan disciples wanted a sect of their own; and the Pharisees regarded
our Lord’s following as an offshoot from the movement of John, an offshoot
which was likely to out-top the parent tree.
It seems to me that our Lord was taking a survey of the different
religious sections in Judæa and examining their fitness to furnish helpers
for His work. Scholars who like Nicodemus were quick to ask “How can these
things be?” were not of the right order for setting a great movement
afoot. If men were fully possessed with the momentous nature of God’s
spiritual working in the world, the idea of this as a _fact_ would take up
all their minds leaving no room for the question of _mode_. If Nicodemus
had been capable of seeing how sublime was the future presented to him, he
would never have expected to understand _how_ it could come to pass. Next
our Lord tried the disciples of John; these may have been too full of the
spirit of partizanship, and too much taken up with questions of purifying
and the like, to be fit foster parents for the new Faith. Whatsoever were
the cause, in neither of these classes did our Lord find a cradle for the
faith. He required men plastic and receptive, capable of devoted
self-surrender and possessed of self-transforming and expanding powers.
These did not grow freely in the social climate of Judæa; our Lord’s
thoughts then, we may suppose, went back to His own people and His own
country, and He preached the Kingdom first in Galilee.
Our Lord’s leaving Judæa was precipitated by the rivalry which was
threatening between His adherents and those of John; more especially as
that rivalry was taking the form of a competition in point of numbers. For
the spirit which this would engender was to our Lord abhorrent in the
extreme. When sect strives with sect, and they would decide the contest
for superiority _by counting heads_, they are both in a way to fall down
and worship the Spirit of the world.
Our Lord was not founding or setting up a form of religion to which He
personally would convert mankind; but He and His work were part of the
subject-matter of all religion—the relations of God to man. The apostles
are never encouraged to exult in the number of their converts. Even when
they were sent through the cities, on what we might regard as a missionary
errand, they are not directed to win men over by strong entreaty—they are
not then bidden, as men afterwards were by St Paul, to “be instant in
season and out of season;”(116) they are only to proclaim the Kingdom of
God: those who have ears to hear will hear, and the rest will go their
way.
Any competition with John the Baptist was above all to be shunned. Our
Lord and the Baptist were bound together by early ties. Jesus had sought
and received Baptism at his hand, and we always see a delicate and
unswerving fidelity in His behaviour towards him. It might be that He was
to increase and John was to decrease, but it should not be by any action
of His that that change of relative position should be brought about. The
Gospel itself, then, discloses grounds for our Lord’s sudden departure
into Galilee. Thus early, among the hearers of our Lord and the Baptist,
appeared an insidious tendency to form parties, a tendency which broke out
disastrously in later times; when some said, “I am of Paul” and others “I
am of Apollos.”(117)
There is no valid reason for supposing that our Lord left Judæa from fear
of persecution. The Pharisees may have been in commotion when they heard
that Jesus baptised more disciples than John; and there may have been some
stir in sacerdotal circles at Jerusalem, but there is no appearance of
violence having been threatened. Neither do I connect our Lord’s journey
with the captivity of the Baptist. I believe that John was not thrown into
prison till three or four months after this journey through Samaria; but
supposing that the imprisonment had already taken place and it had seemed
likely that Herod’s jealousy of John would extend to Jesus, our Lord would
not have left Judæa, which was not under Herod’s jurisdiction, and have
gone into Galilee which was so.
At any rate our Lord quits Judæa and the Judæan disciples, or all but a
few of them, and travels back to Galilee with a little company who were
bound to Him, and who tended Him, it would seem, with affectionate
solicitude.(118)
It does not come into my plan to discuss the discourses of our Lord except
so far as they bear on the training of the apostles, and so I pass by the
discourse with the woman of Samaria, as I have done that with Nicodemus. I
believe that only three or four disciples attended our Lord on His
journey: if they had been numerous, they would not _all_ have left Him,
wearied and alone at the fountain. But in visiting a strange town in
Samaria, it might be unwise to enter with a smaller party than three or
four; so that if the disciples numbered no more than this, we can account
for our Lord being left by Himself.
This journey through Samaria has an important bearing on my subject. Here,
for the first time, we have a conversation of our Lord with His disciples;
and, what is more, we get a glimpse of an office in store for them, of a
work that is to give a meaning to their lives. The disciples of the
Baptist had been learners and listeners only; but our Lord’s disciples
were not to be mere passive recipients of teaching. They were to be taught
by doing as well as by hearing; they were to take part with Him in the
great work that was to be wrought in the world. They were not
servants—“for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth,”(119) but they
were friends joining in the common cause. We may wonder why no earlier
converse of our Lord with His disciples is preserved. Possibly, before
this, there were in the company some of those to whom He “did not commit
Himself.”(120) While these were present, our Lord may have maintained a
reserve, and said nothing bearing on His work which it was important for
the Evangelist to record. But, when our Lord set out through the
semi-hostile country of Samaria in the midst of the early summer heat,
those only followed who were in earnest, and on whom He could rely.
I pass on at once to that address to the disciples to which I have
alluded. Our Lord had been cheered by the Samaritan woman’s openness to
the truth. On leaving the well He comes on a scene, than which few are
more gladdening—a great expanse of corn growing luxuriantly, swaying with
the wind and glistening in the sun. We mark that He was always keenly
alive to external impression, and in all He saw espied matter that fitted
what He taught. Our Lord is struck by the sight, He sees in it something
that answers to His thoughts, and which seems to convey a promise which
rejoices His soul—not for Himself but for His disciples. The discourse is
as follows:
“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and _then_ cometh the
harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on
the fields, that they are white already unto harvest He that
reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal;
that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. For
herein is the saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent
you to reap that whereon ye have not laboured: others have
laboured, and ye are entered into their labour.”(121)
The work before the disciples is only to reap: others had ploughed and
sown. Prophets and teachers, and also rulers and judges, all who had
helped to bring the Israelites into the condition of being ripe for better
things—these past teachers of men, as well as all the impersonal workings
of the unseen hand which had smoothed the way—all these answered to the
ploughers and sowers of the crop which the apostles were now to reap. This
“Præparatio Evangelica,” so often before us, had been the combined result
of many sorts of action, and into the fruits of this labour the disciples
were now to enter. They, along with all those who had sowed and tended,
should one day rejoice together, when the grain was garnered in heaven,
and when those accounted worthy of the Resurrection to Eternal Life should
enter on their reward.
Gleams of gladness in our Lord’s career come rarely, and His joy is always
for others’ sake. It is not for Himself, not even for the cause that He
rejoices—that cause would surely triumph in its own time—but His joy is,
that He beholds a successful and glorious career opening before His
fellow-labourers, the few friends at His side. On the return of the
seventy recorded by St Luke, this same joy for His disciples’ sake is
especially spoken of.
“In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I
thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst
hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst
reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing
in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father:
and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the
Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to
reveal _him_.”(122)
It would seem that such happiness as our Lord found on earth came from
marking the affectionate fidelity of the Apostles and their growth in
favour with God. “Ye are they,” says He to them, “who have continued with
me in my temptations”(123) and He speaks of the “joy in heaven” and again
of the “joy in the presence of the angels of God,” “over one sinner that
repenteth;”(124) every one who turned to Him with a single heart brought
Him gladness. This joyousness, we may believe, spread a gleam over the
life of our Lord and of His disciples, until when near the end the shadow
came. The disciples were always slow to understand His hints of coming
sorrow; they could not conceive that the spiritual triumph was to be
emphasised by being contrasted with bodily suffering; and He had no more
the heart to break the whole sad truth to them, than He had to waken the
sleepers at Gethsemane. Circumstances would teach the apostles all the
truth in time, but even His plain words on the last journey(125) do not
seem to have been taken literally.
For reasons given in the chronological appendix I place the return of our
Lord through Samaria early in May A.D. 28.
Between the return through Samaria and the journey up to “the feast of the
Jews,”(126) some months have to be accounted for. St John relates but a
single incident, the cure of the nobleman’s son at Capernaum, as belonging
to this time; but I would also place here the preaching in the synagogues
in Galilee mentioned by St Luke. His words are—
“And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and a
fame went out concerning him through all the region round about.
And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.”(127)
This is parallel with St John’s statement, before discussed, “The
Galilæans received Him, having seen all the things that He did at
Jerusalem at the feast.”(128)
I also refer to this period the preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth.
The tone of this discourse as I have already observed (pp. 164, 165)
tallies with the notion before advanced of a previous ill reception of our
Lord at Nazareth. There is no mention of our Lord’s mother or brethren,
they had left Nazareth (John ii. 12) and we do not hear of their return.
At other places in Galilee, our Lord had been received with enthusiasm,
but at Nazareth petty jealousies prevailed. He does not, in this sermon,
speak like one returning with renown to a warm welcome in his own town. He
has an air of expecting opposition, as if He had met with it before. He
condemns the narrow localising spirit of His hearers, and goes so far as
to impugn the exclusive claim of the people of Israel to be the recipients
of the favour of God.
It is to be remarked that no mention is made of _disciples_ being in
attendance upon our Lord, from the time of His reaching Galilee by way of
Samaria to that of His presenting Himself to the four Apostles by the Lake
shore—that is, as I take it, from May to October A.D. 28.(129) The little
company that came through Samaria probably broke up on reaching Galilee.
They had their bread to earn and for the most part went back to their
callings; while our Lord during the summer of A.D. 28 was preaching in
various synagogues, and went, almost unattended, to Jerusalem. The absence
of His followers would account for the scantiness of our information as to
this period.
I suppose that the feast spoken of in St John’s Gospel (chap. v. 1), took
place early in the autumn of the same year A.D. 28. It was, I conceive,
about the close of this feast that the Baptist was thrown into prison;
upon this, our Lord returned into Galilee, and His official ministry
began.(130)
We cannot suppose Him to have been quite alone at this feast at Jerusalem,
because some one must have been there to report what took place. I do not
think that John was with our Lord at the feast, because, if he had been
so, he could only have been absent from Him a few days before our Lord
rejoined him on the Lake shore, and the incidents of this call give the
impression that the separation had been of much greater length. I incline
to think that our Lord was attended by Philip, who alone, at that time,
had received the order “Follow Me.”(131) If John drew some of his
information from Philip, this will help to account for his frequent
mention of him.(132)
It was on our Lord’s visit to this feast that He first incurred the active
enmity of the Scribes. It followed from His miracle at the pool of
Bethesda, which took place on the Sabbath day. Since the cure was wrought
by a word there was no breach of the law; but “the Jews” (by which word St
John indicates the hierarchy) were shocked that He should tell the man to
carry his bed on the Sabbath day.
“The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus which had
made him whole. And for this cause did the Jews persecute Jesus,
because he did these things on the sabbath. But Jesus answered
them, My Father worketh even until now, and I work. For this cause
therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not
only brake the sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making
himself equal with God.”(133)
The hostility of the Scribes, we see, is very deadly. The Pharisees are
often scandalised at infractions of their sabbath notions, but they do not
seek our Lord’s death as the Scribes do. The latter were probably
Sadducees, tinged with western philosophy, and they were actuated by other
motives beside zeal for the Law.
For one thing, they were in reality made uneasy by our Lord’s assertion
that a living God was working among them and close by. Ministers of state
who have possessed themselves of sovereign power are startled and
infuriated if their nominal monarch personally asserts his power: and,
something in the same way, a priesthood occupied in promulgating
ecclesiastical laws and carrying on the externals of worship were
frightened at the announcement that God, instead of leaving matters for
them to manage, had Himself come to reign and rule upon the earth.
But what was more effective than even spiritual awe was their personal
alarm. The dread which one of their body afterwards expressed—“The Romans
will come and take away both our place and our nation”(134)—was always
over their heads. They were a sacerdotal oligarchy trembling for their
existence. The people hated the Romans, and the Scribes were bound to
stand well with both: an outbreak might bring to an end whatever
ecclesiastical independence they still possessed. The priesthood saw
something in our Lord which might lead the people to take Him and make Him
a king.
The reply, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work,”(135) is characteristic
of our Lord’s way. He does not meet the charge by contesting the
interpretation of the Law. He ignores all quibbles of legality and goes to
the root of the matter. It is by the working of God that the world is
maintained. His Father worketh hitherto, on Sabbath days and all, and He,
the Son, follows in His Father’s ways. The same test of Sonship—that the
child takes after the Father—is applied in the Sermon on the mount.(136)
I must notice another verse of this discourse,
“I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another
shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”(137)
Our Lord here lays bare the reason why so few would follow Him. He touches
the very centre of the matter. To kindle enthusiasm among a mass of men,
you must have a person or a name. A cause is best embodied in an actual
claimant standing before men’s eyes; but failing this they will often
rally to a _name_ that they know. Our Lord used only His Father’s name;
this did not move their human sympathies for “The Father” had no
personality for them. It was reserved for the Apostles to draw men over to
the Faith, and they were given the advantage which Jesus was content to
forego. They could put forward a personal claimant for the loyalty of men:
they had Christ’s story to tell and Christ’s name for a watchword and they
won men for the kingdom of God by gaining their homage for the Son of Man.
The temporary separation of the Apostles from our Lord during the summer
of A.D. 28 may have answered higher ends than merely enabling them to earn
their livelihood. It gave them time to think over the events of the last
six months.
It is a feature of our Lord’s way in His course of teaching, not to suffer
one set of ideas or influences to be disturbed before they have had time
to take root. After a period of stress, or when new impressions had been
stamped on the minds of his disciples, He provides for them an interval of
calm. When the disciples return exulting from their mission through the
cities, He says, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a
while.” When crowds thronged them and courted them for access to their
Master, He carried them away, that the impressions He wanted to preserve
might not be effaced in the turmoil. It may have been in pursuance of this
treatment that, after the resurrection, they were sent for a time into
Galilee, there to wait and to watch.
All teachers know that the time of rest that follows a period in which new
matter has been taken into the mind is precious for good mental growth:
conceptions then become more clear and complete, and effect a sure
lodgement in the mind: but this, like many processes in education, helps
to widen the distance between the weak and the strong. For it is only with
the more thoughtful that this half unconscious brain-process goes on; the
active minded mature their acquirements during rest, while the unthinking
let them fade away. It argued well, in consequence, for Peter and Andrew
and John, that Christ’s influence had lost nothing through (as I believe)
weeks of separation, but that as soon as they were called they sprang to
their feet at once,—“they straightway left the nets and followed
Him.”(138)
Reverence for great men whom we have known, and the power of appreciating
them, grow during absence. We may have been living so familiarly with one
far above the common standard, that we may almost lose thought of his
greatness; the little matters of common life, which come before us
everyday, take more than their share of notice; and, as regards these,
great men and smaller ones must be much alike. But when we are away from
our guide, our recollections turn to what is distinctive of him—to the
points in which he contrasts with everyday men: what he had in common with
such disappears, and our mental portrait preserves what is characteristic,
and gives us the individual more forcibly than our nearer view had done.
We often first become aware of the true proportions of greatness, when we
look back on it from a little way off. Out of a range of mountains, all,
when seen from the valley, appearing much of a height, one is found to
vastly out-top the rest when we mount the opposite hill-side.
We may suppose that some process like this was going on in the minds of
Peter and Andrew and James and John during that summer spent in their
fishers’ work by the Sea of Galilee. Our Lord’s image would, all the more,
be kept alive in their minds because when they chanced to meet their talk
would be of Him; and their Master’s form would seem to rise before them
when they sat beside one another, with their boats drawn up on the beach.
We need not suppose that they saw into their Master’s plans, far less into
His nature; we do not know that they had heard _from Him_ about the
Kingdom of Heaven which the Baptist had told them was at hand; but the
foundation for Faith was being laid in a capacity for intense personal
devotion. First they learnt to love the Master whom they saw by their
side; next, by thinking of Him while He was away, they learned how much
they loved Him, and became aware that their affection for Him had in it
something different from the common affections they knew. Shortly, as we
shall presently see, a sense of shelter and of fostering protection
mingled with this love, and grew into a trust, first in the Master who was
with them, and afterwards in the Lord in Heaven. It is hardly too much to
say that the germ of the new quality, which was to order the world afresh,
was planted in men’s hearts by the side of the Sea of Galilee in that
summer of A.D. 28, and that then Faith—Faith as our Lord speaks of
it—dawned upon the world.