It was, as I believe, soon after that “feast of the Jews” lately mentioned
(pp. 180 and 181 note), that the news of the apprehension of the Baptist
by Herod reached our Lord at Jerusalem. At once He enters on His own Great
Work(139) and goes straight into Galilee, preaching on the way that the
Kingdom of God is come. The reasons for His holding back, came to an end
together with the liberty of John. We lose now the guidance of St John,
and we pass to the more continuous transcript of events which the
Synoptists give.
Up to this time of His advent into Galilee our Lord was in part, as I have
said, exploring the condition and the tempers of the people in quest of
the fittest cradle for the Faith. It may possibly have been that our Lord
in His visit to Jerusalem was giving the Holy City a last trial; but I see
no ground to suppose that our Lord ever seriously contemplated any course
different from that which He actually took. In any case, this outbreak of
hostility on the part of the scribes settled the matter: for the kind of
mental growth which our Lord wished to bring about in the disciples could
not go on in the midst of party warfare.
Young men on the watch for attack are not in a state for fertilizing "seed
thoughts" or for turning over hard matters in their minds, and care for
the state of the recipient characterizes the teaching of Christ. Men are
to take heed _how_ they hear, as well as what they hear, and are to reach
full growth and shape, not from outward moulding but by living process
from within. Our Lord’s eye is never off His pupils, and yet visible
direction hardly ever appears; He sways them by an insensible touch. A
great truth is brought to light by an incident of wonder, a pregnant word
is let drop, a hard parable is delivered now and then; but between whiles
the disciples are left to dwell on their own thoughts, as their fishing
boat sails along, or as they follow their Master among the northern hills.
Our Lord is ever bent on making men thoughtful and on calling out in each
the inner life which is proper to the man, and for this, tranquillity, or
at least frequent opportunity for quiet communing with their own thoughts,
was absolutely required.
The antagonism at Jerusalem might have stopped short of violence and yet
the wrangling spirit of the place might have had a very evil effect on the
disciples. It was above all essential that they should have a single
hearted love of truth; and this can hardly grow up when party is ranged
against party and each tries to set the views and statements of the other
in the most damaging light, and to dispose his own propositions in
polemical order with a strategic view. As soon therefore as the hostility
of the scribes was displayed, it became clear, that the schooling of the
Apostles must be brought about elsewhere than in Judæa. But apart from
this, Jerusalem was, for other reasons easy to perceive, ill-suited for
the purpose. It was too Academical; the place was full of Rabbis, round
whose feet a circle of pupils sat. Each school adopted its master’s
_dicta_ with the undiscriminating loyalty of youth; and the scholars of
other teachers, by steadily taking it for granted that Jesus of Nazareth
was a teacher like the Rabbis they knew, would have half persuaded His
followers that there was something in common between Him and the Doctors
who expounded the Law.
The Rabbis gave their scholars something to show for their
lessons—expositions of the Law and systematic doctrine—and their pupils
would have said to the disciples, “Our master gives us this or that; what
does your master give you?” This would have set them looking for what was
intentionally withheld. Our Lord did not fill them with opinions or
directions to be remembered, but He made them what He wanted them to be.
To understand how wisely things were ordered, we must give a glance to
what would have been the result of the most obvious and apparently “the
most natural” course. Our Lord’s brethren recommended that He should go
and show Himself and teach at Jerusalem. I have shown the ill effects this
would have had on the training of the disciples; I will now say a word on
the way in which it would have affected the Church. If Jerusalem had been
the seat of teaching, the disciples there, instead of numbering “a hundred
and twenty,” would have been a large body. Possibly they might have
offered armed resistance to the apprehension of our Lord; and the whole
moral of the action would have been lost if they had. But passing this by,
if a large body of disciples dwelling at Jerusalem had claimed our Lord as
peculiarly their own, the universality of His work would have been
obscured. The Church at Jerusalem might have dwelt more on His being their
particular Founder and Bishop than on His being the Redeemer of the World.
Again, How would it have been with the authority of the Twelve? Those who
had sat at His feet and listened, just as the Apostles had done, might
have hesitated when He was gone to acknowledge the Twelve as the
_founders_ of the Church; for the Church, they would have said, began with
themselves. More than this, practical evils would have come about; for
these original disciples, regarding themselves as the depositaries of
tradition, would have recalled every practice of their Lord,—for instance
the way in which He had given thanks at meat, or ordered service in
prayer, as well as His practice as to the Sabbath and fasting,—these would
have been passed down as Divinely sanctioned, and the externals of
religion would have been stereotyped as thoroughly as though they had been
a new Ceremonial Law, like that from which He desired to release mankind.
Moreover the body of believers who had personally known our Lord, would
have constituted a kind of ecclesiastical aristocracy; and
distinctions—respect of persons—would have been introduced from the first.
What actually happened was far more consistent with the general tenour of
Christ’s plan so far as we can make it out. The few original disciples at
Jerusalem were lost in the crowd who were added to the Church after the
day of Pentecost, and the Apostles ruled with unquestioned authority from
the first.
Galilee we have seen, as a retired spot with an honest-hearted people, was
admirably fitted for the scene of the ministry; but yet it could not be
“that a prophet should perish out of Jerusalem,” and it was imperative
that there the end should come. The Holy City was also fitted, in a very
peculiar manner, to be the centre from which the new movement was to
radiate forth. The Lord’s death, the Supreme Event in the history of
mankind, was not to take place in a corner. The circumstances of it could
not be too notorious or too widely vouched. It was to be made known in
East and West to the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman and to all mankind. Now
Jerusalem, both geographically, and as the point to which the Jews of the
dispersion bent watchful eyes from many lands, was wondrously adapted to
be a centre of diffusion. It was in a very remarkable way a “city set upon
a hill.” It stood accessible to three continents, at the centre of gravity
of the known world, and it was on the watershed of two civilizations: the
Aryan and Semitic races and languages and the different modes of thinking
which go along with the languages were brought together there.
Moreover, owing to the dispersion of the Jews and their custom of visiting
Jerusalem at the great feasts when they possibly could, “devout men from
every nation under Heaven” were drawn together there from time to time,
and a common interest in what concerned “Israel” was spread over the
globe. The agency of these festivals connected Jerusalem, as by electric
threads, with every great city in the inhabited world, and the Israelites
who were settled in every large town of the empire afterwards provided
nests for the new Faith.
The Apostles, as was natural, after the Resurrection went back to Galilee.
It can only have been owing to directions they must have received, that
they _all_ returned to Jerusalem for the Ascension. Our Lord then enjoined
them to remain and from thence to propagate the Faith. This injunction
explains their abandonment of their homes and callings, which is hard to
account for otherwise.
I now proceed with the history. During this chapter I shall for the most
part follow St Mark, who relates the events nearly in the order in which I
believe they happened. After a brief notice of John and of the temptation
he proceeds thus:
“Now after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee,
preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the
gospel.”(140)
The Evangelist does not say that our Lord came from Judæa, but He could
have come from nowhere else. It would seem that our Lord on arriving in
Galilee went at once to the Lake shore and called the two pair of fisher
brethren to His side.
“And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew
brother of Simon casting a net in the sea: for they were fishers.
And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to
become fishers of men. And straightway they left the nets, and
followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the
_son_ of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the boat
mending the nets. And straightway he called them: and they left
their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went
after him.”(141)
This passage would offer an opening for criticism, if it were not for the
light thrown on it by St John’s Gospel, by help of which an apparent
difficulty is turned into a coincidence.
If we did not possess the Gospel of St John, the story of the call of the
Apostles would stand thus: It would appear that our Lord came down to the
Sea of Galilee, and said to two fishermen—whom, for all we should know to
the contrary, He had never seen before,—“Come ye after me, and I will make
you to become fishers of men.” These would seem startling words to hear
from a stranger, but the brothers, without asking further, and without one
consulting the other, at once left their work and followed our Lord.
This would be unlikely, but not passing belief; men are mastered in a
moment, by personal influence, now and then; but still the preponderance
of probabilities is against the truth of the story. The Evangelist however
goes on to relate that our Lord passes on along the Lake side, and within
a few hundred yards comes upon another pair of brothers, also fishermen;
he addresses them nearly in the same terms and they also leave their nets
and follow Him. Now this repetition, the critic would say, savours in
itself of the Eastern legend. But, what is far more than this, the
combination of the two improbabilities produces an improbability of a far
higher order.(142)
The information gained from the Gospel of St John clears the difficulty
away. We may learn from this, how a word or two of fresh information
might, in like manner, clear away other discrepancies which are
stumbling-blocks to learners now.
There we find, that these fisher brethren were old disciples of our Lord.
It is consistent with the Gospel to suppose that during the summer they
had been at their work, nursing the memory of their Master all the time.
They now hear that He has come preaching the Kingdom of God in their own
land. They are waiting for Him and expecting His call. The two pair of
brethren stood in the same relation to Him, consequently they were treated
in the same way, and the result was naturally the same. This unhesitating
compliance on the part of the brethren, which seems so strange, points to
a previous acquaintance with our Lord; of this acquaintance St John’s
Gospel speaks, and so St Mark strengthens St John just as St John does St
Mark.
In the Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark, which we suppose to be both
based on a primitive document, the story is told without the slightest
idea of obviating objection or mistrust. The writers never appear to
contemplate readers to whom the fact that Simon and the rest had, before
this, been associated with our Lord should be unknown. They took it for
granted that this was too notorious to call for mention.
But we have another Evangelist, St Luke, a more practised writer, whose
design was to present his account in a coherent form. He did not possess
the Gospel of St John and possibly did not know the particulars of the
earlier call of Simon and Andrew and John. It may well have been that he
was himself somewhat startled at the abruptness of our Lord’s call to the
Apostles, and at their unhesitating compliance with it, as related in the
primitive document, and felt that it required to be accounted for:
consequently, having the account of the miraculous draught of fishes among
the materials he speaks of—an account not contained in the Gospels of St
Matthew and St Mark—he finds in this Sign an explanation of the prompt
adherence of the pairs of brethren, and he combines the two events.
We should gather from him that the Apostles were struck by the miraculous
draught of fishes, and that the Lord thereupon invited them to follow and
become “fishers of men,” but I think it most likely that the call took
place as St Matthew and St Mark relate. The circumstantial minuteness of
the details in these two Gospels, and the naturalness of the picture—two
brothers are engaged in casting, and the other pair in mending their
nets—convinces me that this relation comes originally from one who saw for
himself. This draught of fishes may have taken place some days after the
call of the brethren. For we need not suppose, that, before the Twelve
were chosen, those who were called abandoned the craft by which they
lived, although they probably resorted to their Master day by day.
The early miracles were mostly wrought in the sight of the multitude; they
seem meant to show that the Kingdom of God was come; but this miracle of
the draught of fishes was performed when few but disciples were by. It was
a miracle of instruction, it lent great impressiveness to great lessons;
it emphasized in a way never to be forgotten the call to become “fishers
of men,” and it gave good augury of success. The thought of this draught
must have come back to Peter at many a juncture in his life, a notable one
being the morrow of the Feast of Pentecost, when “there were added unto
them in that day about 3000 souls.”(143)
The Apostles may have learned another lesson from this miracle. All night
they had toiled and taken nothing, yet they had not given up in despair
but had worked on hard; the morning brought success beyond all hope. Men,
waiting long for the yield of their labour, have found encouragement in
calling this to mind. Simon, though thinking there is little hope of
taking fish, nevertheless obeys at once. He frankly tells his Master his
view of a matter about which he might be supposed to know best, and leaves
Him to judge, but he does immediately as his Master bids. Our Lord does
not _promise_ him success; He only tells him to try once more; and
thereupon without a word, wearied and out of heart as he may be supposed
to have been by a night of bootless labour, he does what he is told. It is
enough for Simon to know that his Master wishes him to “Put out into the
deep and let down his nets for a draught.”(144) His cheerful compliance
shews a happy disposition and a loyal nature; for if there had been a
grain of peevishness or selfishness in him, it would have been likely to
be uppermost then.
In the last chapter, we saw our Lord exploring the characters of classes
of men. His eye is now turned on individuals; He is peering down into His
disciples’ hearts, taking them unawares, when their every day selves lie
uppermost, putting them, by chance as it were, through some little
exercise which shall reveal some tendency or some hidden quality; and to
our Lord this incident brought the secret heart of Simon into the light of
day.
It shewed that he was altogether free from that kind of stubbornness which
is born of self-regard, and that he did not attach a sanctity to an
opinion or a resolve, merely because it was his. He learnt from this
miracle that it was best to trust to Christ. He might say to himself, “I
never felt more convinced that we should take nothing by letting down the
nets, than I did on that morning on the lake, but I let them down and
found I was wrong.” A memorable act is not done with, educationally, when
it is over. The recollection of it is an attendant monitor always pointing
the same way; and so this miracle may have done much towards accustoming
Peter to look to the Lord’s prompting, and to be ready at His word to give
up that about which he felt most sure. It may well have helped him to that
openness of mind, which stood the Church in good stead, years after at
Joppa, when the envoys of Cornelius were knocking at Peter’s door.
This miracle has been called a miracle of coincidence, meaning that the
marvel lay in the passing of the shoal at the moment when the net was
cast; it might not be a miracle at all, because the chances against its
being a natural phenomenon, though enormous, are not absolutely infinite.
It is not one which would appal ordinary beholders: the boatmen, we may
suppose, thought chiefly of securing the fish. Our Lord is now testing the
capacity of men for discerning God, and He therefore performs miracles of
a less striking order first; these impress those only who have their eyes
open for the manifestation of what is spiritual; and those who are found
to possess this “vision and faculty Divine” are afterwards shewn “greater
things than these.”
Simon had no doubt seen our Lord work cures, but this mastery of our Lord
over the creation comes more home to him than His power over disease, and
his feelings break forth. It is characteristic of him, that what is in him
_must come out_ at once; whether it be an objection that occurs to him, or
a motion of indignation or of elation, or of the panic to which Orientals
are subject—out it must come; this is the point in which the identity of
his character is most visibly preserved in all our narratives. Here he is
mastered by the emotions of the moment and must give them outward show;
and along with his gush of feeling comes the sense of his unworthiness,
the impression of his being wholly unequal to the duty and position thrust
upon him; an impression not uncommon with men in such junctures; though
biographies abundantly show that those who feel it most very often acquit
themselves admirably when the trial comes. Touched by this, Simon throws
himself at his Master’s feet and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful
man, O Lord.”(145)
We go back now to the course of the narrative in St Mark’s Gospel, and
there we find that the first thing which struck the hearers of our Lord
was the _authority_ with which He spoke.
“And they were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as
having authority, and not as the scribes.”(146)
We saw in the last chapter, that men bowed to the authority in the air of
our Lord when He purged the Temple of Jerusalem: this authority now passed
into His words, and it swayed the hearts of men. It is the special
instinct of a crowd that it quickly discerns those whom it must hear, and
this multitude saw that our Lord had something to tell them and that, not
of tradition, but out of His own very self. Here was a genuine authority
coming of nature or of God, by the side of which the stated legal
authority of the officiating scribes paled away out of sight.
In what ways was it, we may ask, that this authority of Christ shone out
now, and took such hold of men? First of all, I would answer, He brought
to the birth, within men, thoughts which were lying in embryo in their own
hearts. This, which was also Socrates’ way, I have spoken of in the
Introductory Chapter and once or twice since. Our Lord wakened within men
the perception of truths which they seemed to have once known and
forgotten; especially that God was the Father, not only of Israel as a
nation, but of every particular man in it. The common people had been told
by the learned that they were not worth God’s notice, and when Christ
asserted the dignity of each individual soul they said to themselves “we
always thought it must be so; and so it is.” The beatitudes in like manner
commended themselves to men’s hearts; they felt that if there was a God in
the world, it ought to be as our Lord said it was.
Secondly, our Lord not only _told_ men that they were the children of God,
that they should strive after their Father’s likeness, and that they might
approach nearer and nearer to being perfect as He is perfect: but, what
was more than this, in every word He spake,—whether of teaching, or
reproof, or expostulation, or in His passing words to those who received
His mercies—He _treated_ them as God’s children. Man, as man, has in His
eyes a right to respect. Anger we find with our Lord often, as also
surprise at slowness of heart, indignation at hypocrisy and at the
Rabbinical evasions of the Law; but never in our Lord’s words or looks do
we find personal disdain. Towards no human being does He shew contempt.
The scribe would have trodden the rabble out of existence; but there is no
such thing as rabble in our Lord’s eyes. The master, in the parable, asks
concerning the tree, which is unproductively exhausting the soil, why
cumbers it the ground; but it is not to be rooted up, till all has been
tried. There it stands, and mere existence gives it claims, for all that
exists is the Father’s. This notion, that every thing belonged to God, and
was therefore to be reverently regarded, lay very deep in the hearts of
the children of Israel, even the poorest in Galilee; and when the Lord
brought it to light, men listened to Him with breathless respect.
Thirdly. If a scribe spoke to the people, he bethought himself of topics
within their comprehension: he had a double self; one he showed to them
and one he kept for his equals: he was afraid of talking over his hearers’
heads, so he took them on the side of what he supposed they might
understand, of their interests, for example, and spoke of the advantages
of good repute, or, at the highest, of the blessings which God brought on
His servants in this life and hereafter, and of the ill fate which awaited
offenders. All this implied, “We who speak to you, of course, have for
ourselves higher principles and purer motives than those we have named,
but these are quite good enough for you.” Now there is nothing that men,
young or old, so surely detect, as whether a man serves them with the same
thoughts that he gives to himself and his friends.
The people, moreover, are always grateful for being supposed capable of
higher sentiments than mere hope of gain and fear of loss, and for the
appreciation shewn in taking them on higher ground; they seldom fail the
speaker who boldly addresses their consciences; they are eager to justify
his trust in them: “He has treated us as men,” they say, “and men he shall
find we are.” Above all they feel the compliment of being not flattered,
but supposed reasonable enough to hear the truth about themselves and
shewn their failings; and we feel sure that men went away from the Sermon
on the Mount confident of Christ’s respect and regard for them, without
His telling them of it in so many words. He talks to them quite naturally
of _their_ Father who is also _His_ Father, just as men speak of any
common tie: and this took hold of their hearts.
Fourthly. We find in the earlier portions of the Sermon on the Mount,
which best represent this preaching to the multitude,(147) that our Lord
assumes a certain positive authority, by putting His own commands in
contrast with the written Law.
It had probably been given out by our Lord’s opponents that He had come to
destroy the Law, and our Lord in this Sermon declares that He is not come
to destroy but to fulfil.
We shall see the point most clearly, if we understand the word “fulfil,”
to mean, “carry out into its full completeness.” For our Lord does not
_destroy_ the Law but he _supersedes_ it by bringing God’s ways to light,
and merging in this light the previous partial revelations, of which the
Mosaic Law was one. A mathematician supersedes the practical rules which
the pupil at first employs for solving particular cases of a problem, by
giving a complete and general solution of the whole subject. This may
illustrate the way in which our Lord merges the particular case of human
conduct in a wider rule embracing human dispositions, and which regards,
not only what men _do_, but also what they _are_, and what they will
_become_.
To take another point. Slavery to the letter of a written Law hampered
moral and spiritual growth; it led men to regard authority as the sole
test of truth; it tended to prevent their thinking for themselves as our
Lord desired them to do. No word of our Lord countenances the idea of
verbal inspiration. He treats the provisions of the Levitical Law as
subject to criticism, He never attributes them to God, but either to Moses
or those of old time, and after quoting them in His sermon and elsewhere
He commonly adds, “But _I_ say unto you” and then delivers His own
precept—embracing that of Moses no doubt—but so widely overstepping it,
that it would seem to the people to amount to a repeal. A teaching which
claimed authority coordinate with that of Moses might well startle the
multitude by its contrast with that of the scribes.
It may be asked—“Why, if our Lord desired to free men’s minds, did He not
declare how far and in what sense their sacred books contained the word of
God.” We answer, “He would have caused utter bewilderment if He had
entered on such a matter at all.” The truth may be gathered by observing
His practice. He never states abstract principles, but He acts as He deems
fit and leaves us to infer His views by marking what He does. He never
contests the rules about the Sabbath, but He observes them only in His own
way. He does not tell the Jews that their Law is not traced by the finger
of God, but He amends and criticizes its provisions as though they were of
man.
Let us suppose, for a moment—not of course that He had cried down the Law
like one who exulted in finding a flaw—but that He had attempted to put
into men’s heads views about it which their minds had not yet shaped
themselves to receive; that He had told them, for instance, that laws must
be fitted to human needs, and that as these needs vary, laws must vary
too, and cannot be the subject of an ordinance unchanging and Divine.
Could He, by such explanations, have given His auditors any true view of
Divine rule? Would not the Galileans have cried out, “That if the tables
of the Law were not graven by God’s finger they were nothing at all?”
Nothing, in our Lord’s wisdom, strikes me more than His moderation with
regard to error. What seems false to one man’s mind may be true to that of
another. When men, as soon as they spy out an error, cry, “Root it up,”
our Lord seems to answer, “Along with the tares some wheat needs must go.”
Men are complex beings; and much that is best in them is so intertwined
with habits and association that we cannot sweep away long-standing
notions and outward symbols and ceremonies without destroying also what is
of the essence. Take away from an Italian woman her belief in the Virgin,
or from a Scotch peasant that in the sacred obligation of the Sabbath, and
a great deal of what is best in them will go too.
Our Lord’s way of proceeding is always positive, never merely negative. He
leaves the Law, but He sows seed which will grow up and displace the
spirit of blind subservience to it: just as some particular species in the
herbage of a land is often ousted when a more robust one is brought in.
The Apostles had, up to the end, many wrong notions, and we may wonder why
our Lord did not set them right; but it would have shaken the whole fabric
of their belief if He had so done; and the sure teaching of circumstances
would, as He knew, dissipate the errors in time.
So far we have dealt chiefly with the _matter_ of our Lord’s teaching of
the multitudes, but something must be said about its _form_. One striking
point in our Lord’s practice in contrast with that of the scribes, is
this. He cites no authorities, all comes from Himself; there is hardly a
text of Scripture in the fifth chapter of St Matthew, except those which
are quoted in order to be extended or gainsaid. The scribes depended on
their learning, they overwhelmed men with quotations, they laid text by
text, and built up their conclusions upon an array of authorities. Now a
preacher, or a teacher of any kind, is sure to lose hold of his audience
when he goes away from himself and gives other people’s opinions instead
of his own. They look to him for guidance; and when he says, “This is one
man’s view and that is another’s,” and not, “This is _mine_,” then they
turn from the trumpet of uncertain sound. The multitude suppose that in
all questions there is a right and a wrong—just as there is a right and a
wrong answer to a sum—and they do not want to know what one authority says
or the other, but what they are to accept.
Again, rightly to apprehend the form of this discourse, we must bear in
mind that it is not a written collection of precepts,—though St Matthew
may have appended some delivered at a later time—and that still less is it
a Code of Laws. It is an oral address to a crowd of villagers gathered on
the top of the fell. We mark in it the natural rhetoric of earnest speech:
the first necessity is always to win men to listen, and thus the speaker
at the opening strikes His most impressive chords.
Words of blessing fell on the ears of those who were used only to hear of
their shortcomings and to be treated as outcasts; and when their attention
was caught by the unusual sound and they listened to hear who it was who
were blessed, they found it was not the strong and the wealthy and the
high spirited—those whom they regarded as having the good things of
existence while they themselves had the bad—but the blessed are the poor
in spirit, and this Kingdom of Heaven, newly proclaimed, belonged to them.
The attention caught by the opening is kept alive by the unexpected nature
of the matter.
Again, our Lord is at pains so to put what He says that it may not be
taken for a fresh body of injunctions added to the Law; for the people
were already, as He said, overburdened with such injunctions. He puts
therefore what He has to say into such strong forms, and, by way of
example, takes such extreme cases, that it is plain that He is
illustrating a principle and not laying down a literal rule.
We have
“Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but
whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy
coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee
to go one mile, go with him twain.”(148)
He Himself, before the High Priest, does not submit to wrong, without
asking in remonstrance “Why smitest thou me?” and the most literal minded
of our Lord’s hearers would not have felt bound to offer his cloke to one
who had stolen his coat. The language shews by its very strength that it
is figurative.
Indeed, a code of Law can hardly be delivered in an address to a
multitude. If it is to meet all cases it must be complex, and to the
hearer wearisome. If our Lord had delivered a treatise telling men what
they were to do in the ordinary occasions of life, the precepts must have
been so encumbered by qualifications that all impressiveness would have
been lost. If to the saying “Give to him that asketh of thee” our Lord had
appended all the obvious exceptions—such as the cases in which what is
asked for would be hurtful—the whole force of the passage would have been
frittered away. As long as a preacher delivers broad truths, put forcibly,
his audience are ready to hear; but as soon as he begins to qualify his
statements and to make exceptions, his hold over his hearers is gone, and
they think he is unsaying what he said.
Our Lord wished to leave _seed thoughts_ lying in men’s minds. He knew
that His words would have to be carried in men’s memories for a long while
before being written down. They must therefore be clad in the form in
which they would last longest and be easiest to carry. He therefore
embodied what He wished to have remembered in terse sayings, illustrated
by cases which are familiar but extreme. The hearer could carry these
sentences away, and would ponder on them all the more, because in their
literal sense they are startling and impracticable as rules of conduct. I
can conceive no style better fitted for the purpose which I believe to
have been dominant with our Lord, than that employed in the Sermon on the
Mount.
It seems to me to be part of the strange adaptation of circumstances to
the needs of the Faith, that what was most vital and most universal was
uttered in the Hebrew tongue. This was the language of the comparative
infancy of the world; and there is in the genius of it much—especially its
ready lending itself to the form of balanced sentences—which takes hold of
the hearts of untutored men. Such men store their wisdom in saws and
proverbs; and in like manner the wisdom of the Hebrew is dropped in
separate pearls, which can easily be treasured up. When the time came for
touching cultured minds, and connected argument was required, Greek forms
of thought and speech were needed. Saul was then converted; and Greek
became the language of the Word.
Nothing in our Lord’s ministry impresses me more than the extraordinary
sobriety of the whole movement. We hear nothing of religious transport or
ecstatic devotion. People listen in awe to our Lord’s preaching as to a
communication made from above. They never dare to applaud. He is too much
above them for that. Many have since come crying “Lord, Lord,” in
different accents, at different times; we have heard of “revivals” among
great multitudes, carried headlong by wild excitement, and of religious
delirium reaching to the borders of mania. All this is in the strongest
contrast with the ways of teaching of our Lord.
True human freedom was with Him a sacred thing; what man was made for was
that he might be a free spiritual being; and a man is not free when he is
fascinated by fervid oratory and becomes the blind tool of another, or
when he is intoxicated by religious fanaticism and is no longer master of
his own mind. Any agencies, therefore, which would impair the health and
freedom of a man’s will Christ refused to employ. They belonged to that
Spirit of the World whose alliance He had refused. One cause of this
sobriety of the great movement may be found in the elevation and tone of
authority which has just been spoken of as characterizing our Lord. He
seemed to move in a plane parallel indeed to that of men, but a little
above it. For a speaker to kindle men’s passions he must be possessed by
the notions and feelings of the time: he and his hearers must have common
objects of desire, or a common jealousy of those who possess what they
themselves want, they must therefore wear the stamp of a passing and
particular phase of mankind. Now it was the distinctive peculiarity of our
Lord’s Personality that it belongs not more to one time or class than to
another. The Son of Man represents Humanity in the abstract, and no party
has ever been able to claim Him as their own.
In the course of the winter of A.D. 28-29, Levi, in the vernacular of
Galilee called also Matthew, a toll-taker on the borders of the lake, is
summoned to follow our Lord. He justified our Lord’s choice in a signal
manner, for “he forsook all, and rose up and followed Him.”
There must have been in this man “a soul of goodness” of rare efficacy in
resisting influences to ill. His position must have offered temptation to
exaction. This was corrupting, but the steady and persistent effect of
feeling himself despised must have been more so even than this. He was
hated not only as the tax-gatherer, but also as having accepted the
service of the foreign oppressors of the land. However justly the publican
might have striven to act, it would be taken for granted that he was
endeavouring to fleece those who came into his hands; and a man soon
becomes what people about him will have it that he is.
Now and then, however, in all positions, we come across natures which run
counter to the influences around them, or which by a happy chemistry
decompose the evil and turn its elements to good. Everything in the
publican’s calling fostered the love of gain; and to be able to save
enough to give it up and live down ill report was his only hope. But
Matthew breaks with his means of subsistence totally and at once. At one
word of our Lord he throws all away without a moment’s thought, and joins
the little band of followers which was being drawn into closer attendance
on our Lord. This man surely had “salt in himself.”
St Matthew has left us his Gospel. We learn from this which way his
thoughts lean, and we see that he was not of that type of mind most
commonly associated with the idea of the Apostle of a new creed. He was
probably not very young and his views were formed and fixed: his national
sympathy was intense. God was to him, first of all, the God of Israel, and
he regarded our Lord as the Messiah, after the type which Jewish hopes and
fancies had fashioned for themselves. In all that occurred he saw the
reproduction of what was narrated in the old books; and the burden “Now
this was done that the Scripture might be fulfilled” runs through all his
writings.
Here then, some might say, we have a man chosen as a witness and
promulgator of a faith which is to be universal, yet this man’s sympathies
flow only along one narrow channel, and he is wedded to old ways of
reading the mind of God. He was however a guileless, God-fearing,
high-hearted man; and it could not but strengthen the cause to have among
the Apostles one who could enter into the minds of those who looked for
the consolation of Israel in the old Hebrew way. The first function of the
Apostles,—one on which I shall soon speak pretty fully—was that they were
to bear _witness_ of Christ. This was set forth in that which, so to say,
was their charter of incorporation. “Ye shall be my witnesses both in
Jerusalem and in all Judæa and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the
earth.”(149) Now the more varied the characters of the witnesses the
stronger would be the case when they agreed.
Our Lord, then, will have, among His immediate followers, minds of every
sort. He does not pick out those only who are most after His own heart,
nor does he mould men into one fashion, so that they should think on all
points alike. We cannot have freedom among human beings without diversity.
St Matthew, we perhaps say, had old world views; but it may have been just
because of these, that he was the most fit Apostle for the Eastern world.
There would be crowds of men whom he would understand and who would
understand him, but whose minds would have been closed to the utterances
of Paul. The vineyard to which Christ called his labourers was the whole
world; it contained vines of every stock growing on every soil. It was
well then, that there should be labourers bred in various schools of
husbandry, and that each should work in the fashion in which he felt he
could do it best.
Another point to be noted about the call of St Matthew is this: The choice
of a publican was a practical proof to the other disciples, as it is to
the Church for ever, that Christ is in no way a respecter of persons. The
two pairs of brethren who followed our Lord may have been startled at the
call of Matthew, for they no doubt looked on publicans as their countrymen
did; and this act of our Lord’s taught them, more forcibly than any words
could have done, that with Him outward circumstance went for nothing and
the inward man was all in all. In this call of Matthew the spirit of
universality which belongs to the Christian Church is folded up like the
embryo in the seed. Our Lord makes no comment on this call; nor do we hear
of any murmurs from the disciples, who had by this time learned that our
Lord was wiser than they, as Peter had found when he let down the net.
Shortly before the call of St Matthew a miracle occurred, the cure of the
sick of the palsy, when our Lord’s renown was at its height—a miracle at
the performance of which “there were Pharisees and doctors of the law
sitting by, which were come out of every village of Galilee and Judæa and
Jerusalem.”(150) The presence of these strangers bears on what follows.
Hitherto we have read of no contest or conflict in Capernaum; but these
Pharisees conceived misgivings about the movement they had come to see.
This hostility was very different from that of the Sadducees in Jerusalem,
who, regarding the movement as an insane delusion likely to bring things
about their ears, set themselves remorselessly to root it out. But the
Pharisees do not seem at first to have borne our Lord any personal hatred,
but only to have been uneasy about the new teaching which went too far for
them, and did not follow the course which they had expected.
The Pharisees, nevertheless, were now on the watch for occasion to find
fault. This is not an occupation which brings out the amiable side of
men’s natures; and they became still more soured by finding nothing on
which to hang a charge; so that at last they even leagued with the
Herodians, their natural opponents, against our Lord. The most popular of
all accusations, and one for which it was easy to find ground, was a
breach of the traditionary rules for keeping the Sabbath.
The Sabbath was an inestimable Law. It was maintained by Divine sanction
at a time when a Law could not be upheld by any other means: it debarred
men from “doing what they would with their own” on one day out of seven,
so far as regarded the labour of themselves or of their children, their
servants, their ox or their ass. It secured for the race this portion of
time against the greed of gain: but all this was done _for men_, although
the Jews had come to look on it as something done _by men for God_, and in
so doing they made God a taskmaster like the gods of the pagans. Moreover
the Sabbath kept alive in each Israelite his self-respect as one of God’s
people; however sordid his calling, he put away every seventh day his
squalor and his toil and resumed the dignity of Abraham’s son. The Sabbath
question was the chosen battle-ground of those who reduced all virtues to
that literal unquestioning obedience to authoritative records, which was
so damaging to moral and spiritual life. Men thought that God’s favour was
won or His wrath incurred in virtue of acts—such as the keeping within or
the overstepping the limit of the journey allowed on the Sabbath-day—which
in themselves had no moral significance at all.
Here again we see how our Lord deals with views falling short of the
truth. The moral creed of His countrymen was imperfect; it unduly exalted
and obtruded formal duties, but it was all that they had; their whole life
and that of their nation was moulded by it; instincts fostered by it had
become hereditary, and to break it ruthlessly down would have been to lay
waste men’s souls.
In the instance before us our Lord introduces a freer practice; and trusts
to this to give birth in time to more intelligent notions about the
Sabbath day.
One passage in the history I purposely passed by. I thought that I might
have to write of it at such a length as to break the continuity of the
narrative, and I therefore kept it for the close of the chapter. The
passage in question, which I subjoin, immediately follows the account of
the entertainment of our Lord in Matthew’s house.
“Then come to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the
Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said
unto them, Can the sons of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the
bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the
bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then will they fast.
And no man putteth a piece of undressed cloth upon an old garment;
for that which should fill it up taketh from the garment, and a
worse rent is made. Neither do _men_ put new wine into old
wine-skins: else the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the
skins perish: but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins, and
both are preserved.”(151)
The Pharisees practised fasting on the second and fifth days of the week:
the same practice was probably followed by the disciples of John; and if
we suppose that Matthew made this feast on one of the fasting days, this
would bring the contrast between the ways of John and of Jesus more
sharply out.
Before examining the charge and the reply, a word must be said on the
absence of all distinctive religious observances in the practice of our
Lord and His disciples.
The Baptist, we know, enjoined stated fasts and taught his people to pray,
and above all enforced the initiatory rite from which he drew his name. At
a later period our Lord’s disciples beg to be taught to pray, “as John
also taught his disciples.”(152)
In those days people looked to a religion to order the externals of a
man’s life; hours of prayer portioned out his day; and so, even the
disciples appear to have felt that with them there was something lacking,
and that they were at a disadvantage compared with John’s disciples
because they were not, through conformity to a special rule, formed into a
body and marked with a badge.
It is easy to find reasons why our Lord should have avoided doing what
John did. If He had enjoined any system of religious observance, this
would have limited the spread of His Kingdom, and have laid on observances
in general more stress than He desired. One Law or one ritual would not
suit all nations, or all times; for forms must vary with men’s modes of
life, and if our Lord had introduced a form of worship He would have
_particularised_ that which, of its very essence, was meant to be
universal. John came as a prophet and forerunner, and he set on foot a
sect, which was held together and long kept alive by usages of its own;
but the very observances which gave it vitality as a sect prevented its
ever becoming anything more than a sect. Our Lord is not founding a sect
at all; He is not a missionary making converts. He comes on earth to
proclaim that God loves men, and to open a way by which men should “come
to the Father.” He leaves behind Him men suited to direct a religious
movement, but He organises none himself. Whether He drew many round Him or
few, His great work for the world would equally be completed on the Cross.
He never baptised, never instituted rites, laws or fasts, or stated
services of prayer; it is not till He leaves the earth that He enjoins the
sacraments of His Church. It was to be left to men to put all into shape,
for _the outer form belongs to man_; and, if He had Himself adopted any
particular practice in any of the matters above named, men might imagine
that this was binding for evermore and had a virtue in itself.
We come now to our Lord’s plain and practical answer to the particular
questions of the Pharisees which have led to these remarks. Fasting comes
by nature when a man is sad, and it is in consequence the natural token of
sadness: when a man is very sad, for the loss of relations or the like, he
loses all inclination for food. But every outward sign that can be
displayed at will is liable to abuse, and so men sometimes fasted when
they were not really sad, but when it was decorous to appear so. Moreover
a kind of merit came to be attached to fasting as betokening sorrow for
transgressions; and at last it came to be regarded as a sort of
self-punishment which it was thought the Almighty would accept in lieu of
inflicting punishment Himself. Our Lord does not decry stated fasts or any
other Jewish practices, they had their uses and they would last their
times; only He points men to the underlying truth which was at the bottom
of the ordinance.
When our Lord spoke, the children of the bridechamber the companions of
the bridegroom’s youth, were still with Him, but He and they would soon
have to part. Sorrow must needs come upon them for the following reason,
if for no other, that man’s education cannot be perfect without it. Then
indeed would they fast, not because it was enjoined, not of any stated
precept, but because they were bereaved of their Lord.
Our Lord now turns to a metaphor, it was a familiar one. The lesson it
seems to carry is this: our Lord will not meddle with the old form of
things, He will not patch up the old tenement in order that the new spirit
may make shift to dwell in it. Change with Him is never mechanical, always
organic; it comes, not by alteration in construction, but always purely of
growth. He is propagating spiritual truth in the souls of men; the time is
not yet ripe for rites and ordinances and hours of worship. But the days
would come when the truth would need a garb—it would have to struggle
amongst human institutions, and it must then have outer expression just as
other institutions have. This expression men must give, and Christ was
careful that, when the time came for this to be done, the right men should
be in their place to do it.
He takes a second metaphor to set forth the second part of His work: He
will have new flasks for the new wine. This new doctrine was not committed
either to the disciples of John or even to scribes enlightened about the
kingdom of heaven, but to those who, having no preconceptions, received it
as children do their parents’ words. This new wine would go on working and
would want room to expand. Peter we know expanded with it; but men whose
minds had stiffened into shape under existing systems were like old flasks
of skin, so harsh and dry that they would sooner crack than stretch; they
were neither plastic nor elastic, and our Lord wanted vessels that should
be both the one and the other. These new flasks were now soon to be
chosen; and when this was done the work would enter on a new phase.
Up to the time of the call of the Apostles, our Lord’s most conspicuous
concern is for the multitudes. After that call, the Apostles occupy the
foreground, and the whole manner of teaching is rather suddenly changed.
It is no longer adapted to a congregation of peasants; parables take the
place of plain speech, and instead of everything being done _for_ the
learner as before, much is left to be done _by_ him for himself. We mark
another change also in the manner. Hitherto there has been no _haste_, all
has proceeded in the most leisurely way; but soon danger will begin to
threaten and time to press, and act to follow act in close succession.
Following the subject of my book, I have been careful to mark how our Lord
from the very first had an eye for characters of the sort He wanted and
how He shaped them, with an unseen hand; but I must not have it supposed,
because we see little lasting outcome from the preaching to the multitude,
that therefore it was unimportant compared with the training of the
Apostles. We must not suppose that Christ taught and healed chiefly that
the Apostles might listen and learn.
We can discern two kinds of good wrought by our Lord. In preaching to the
multitude he was, then and there, bringing God’s light into the souls of
men. In choosing and fashioning the disciples, He was providing for the
future of His Church. The work which the Apostles should set on foot would
spread over the earth and affect all future times, while our Lord could
Himself touch but a single generation in a single spot. Those, however,
who heard Him, carried to their homes a memory to last their lives; among
them His Personality survived. If, afterwards, troubled questions arose
about Him they would put them by, feeling that they had drunk at the
source before the stream had got sullied on its way.
When our Lord came into villages where He was known, people crowded to him
from all sides, and the new delight of communion with God—the assurance
that the whisper which told them that God cared for them was a true
voice—beamed from the hearers’ faces and gladdened the Master’s soul.
It was during this active ministry of our Lord, that the choice of the
Apostles was made and the foundations of their education were laid. The
differences in their minds and characters would be brought into prominence
by the greater intensity of the lives they afterwards led; new capacities
would peep out among those who, beholding the intense earnestness of our
Lord, learned to be in earnest themselves. No defined line was as yet
drawn between the multitude and the disciples. Those who were of the
multitude one day, and chose to follow, might count as disciples on the
morrow. Our Lord never wholly loses sight either of the multitude or of
the disciples; but, while the former were His first care in the period
embraced in this chapter, the disciples, and especially the apostles, will
be so in that which will come before us in the next.(153)