In treating of the calling of the Apostles, we encounter the questions,
“What led our Lord to surround Himself with a constituted body of this
kind?” and, “In virtue of what qualities were its members chosen?” I am
led to conclude that our Lord presaged that which actually came about, and
provided for future needs which he foresaw; so precisely do the measures
he takes meet what subsequent occasions required. The choice of the
agents, moreover, is singularly happy with respect to the extraordinary
part which was put into their hands; and it must be noted that this part
was one which Jesus alone, and, if He had only been what some of His
biographers represent, not even He could have contemplated: while for the
parts, which, from the obvious prospects of the case it was likely they
would have to play, they were not calculated at all. The apostles were not
suited to advance a social or a political cause or to spread doctrinal
views; but they were specially fitted, as I shall shew, to gain credence
for facts which they could declare had passed before their eyes.
Before choosing the Apostles our Lord spent the night alone on the
mountain in prayer; on one other occasion only did He do the same.(154) If
we regard only the duties expressly laid upon the Twelve at their
call,(155) and the immediate services expected from them, our Lord’s
concern about them may seem more intense than the circumstances explain.
But if we regard them as the heirs of His work, as those by whom the fire
kindled by Him on earth was to be kept alive and spread, then our Lord’s
keen anxiety about them is accounted for. He looked to an early death, and
when this death came it would depend on their constancy to carry the cause
through the moment of dismay; and it would depend on the trust they
commanded among men, whether it should be believed or not, that He had
risen in triumph from the dead.
If we should find that the Apostles were, as a body, specially qualified
to fulfil particular functions, and that these very functions it fell
afterwards to them to discharge; then, surely, it is not unreasonable to
suppose that our Lord, in choosing the Twelve, was guided by His
foreknowledge of the situation in which they would be placed, and of the
particular kind of work which they would be wanted to perform.
It will be shewn that the Apostles were qualified to be trustworthy
witnesses of fact. If the course of events had been such that there had
been no fact to witness, this capacity of theirs would have found no
sphere; it would have been provided and never employed; but, as it was,
the transcendent Fact that Christ died and rose again took place before
their eyes.
The knowledge of this Fact was to be the most precious possession of the
human race. How then was it to be preserved and transmitted? A fact only
subsists for a future time in the relation of witnesses. So the greatest
care is taken to provide for this Fact witnesses who would command belief.
Some hearers will soonest trust one kind of witness and some another;
witnesses therefore of different kinds are provided, that every man might
be likely to find one in whom he could confide: but all these witnesses
have this in common—they are all convinced of the reality of what they
relate, and are not men to be easily carried away by their fancy or their
feelings. If the religion had depended on the promulgating of theological
doctrines which needed subtle expositors, then the Apostles would not have
been the right men for the work; but being founded as it was upon the
facts of Christ’s life and death, what was wanted was, that credible
witnesses should be present when these facts occurred and should remain to
tell the tale. This want was supplied with a completeness which to my mind
testifies of design.
To proceed with the history. During this winter of A.D. 28-29, our Lord,
keeping Capernaum for his place of abode, made excursions to the
neighbouring towns, preaching as he went, and shewing by His miraculous
cures that the Divine power was working through His hands.
After the call of the fishermen on the Lakeside, He was constantly
accompanied by His disciples, and from that time forth the education of
His followers was always in His mind. This education went on like the
quiet processes of nature; the subjects of it never felt that they were
being educated at all, but those who were of the right natures slowly
changed in the direction of what He would have them be. He did not make
them all copies after one pattern. That which was native to the man, and
which marked him off from all other men, was lovingly preserved. He
intensified in each man his proper life, which grew with all the greater
vigour through being let to follow its own bent. As yet we hear of no
lessons given to the disciples _by themselves_, they only shared what was
said to the crowd: this may have been as much as they could then receive,
and possibly their greatest profit came from what was not given in the way
of lessons at all, from words dropt in daily intercourse and from watching
their master’s doings in the thousand little occurrences of their
wayfaring daily life.
It is worth noting that during all this time of their earliest spiritual
education all was prosperity. From the autumn, in which, as I believe, our
Lord called the fisher brethren, to the springtime which we have now
reached in the narrative, His renown had steadily grown. Wherever He went,
men were grateful for His coming, and drew close to hear; all seemed eager
to press into the kingdom of Heaven, and to clutch at it as at treasure
trove.(156) First from the neighbouring towns, then from Judæa and
Samaria, and, at the time when this chapter opens, even from Idumea and
Tyre and Sidon, men came to listen to one who was said to have the words
of Eternal life.
Those who took their early impressions of Christ’s service from those
days, would retain a glowing recollection of it all their lives long.
Their minds would be strung to hopeful confidence. When persecution came
they would regard it as something permitted by their Master for reasons
into which they did not inquire: the allegiance of mankind belonged, they
would say, to their Master of right; He might for a moment waive his
claim, but He could always resume it when He chose.
Our Lord sets a high value on the personal trust and devotion of his
disciples, both for its own sake and because it was the bud which was to
blossom into the new and transforming quality of Faith: this was forwarded
in its early growth by the sunshine of success. The general who would win
the young soldier’s heart must lead him to glory in his first campaign; he
will cling to him through all disasters after his heart is won.
I take up the narrative at the beginning of the third chapter of St Mark’s
Gospel.
“And the Pharisees went out, and straightway with the Herodians
took counsel against him, how they might destroy him. And Jesus
with his disciples withdrew to the sea: and a great multitude from
Galilee followed: and from Judæa.”(157)
The Evangelists seldom speak of our Lord’s motives, but here the
collocation indicates that it was this confederacy of Pharisees and
Herodians which caused our Lord to leave Capernaum. The Herodians were
more formidable than the Pharisees. The latter would only set the law in
motion, but the former did not scruple to employ violence; and the
Macedonian guards of the Tetrarch were at Tiberias within call. Our Lord
never, until His time was come, exposed Himself unnecessarily to danger;
and at this particular moment His freedom and safety were of vital
importance. All that He had done would, humanly speaking, be lost or have
to be done over again if He were cast into prison or slain: the pressure
of this danger may have hastened the appointment of the Twelve. The body
of disciples following our Lord had as yet no corporate life of its own;
it was only held together by gravitation to Him and would fall to pieces
if He were taken away; at this juncture then, there was no time to be lost
in giving the body organic life. As soon as the Twelve received their
commission this body became possessed of a vital centre, and the
continuous existence of the Church was secured, even though its Master
should be removed from earth.
This plot of the Pharisees was probably known but to few—people when they
take counsel together do not publish their design on the house-tops—and
the absence of excitement among the crowd favours the view that the danger
of the prophet of Nazareth was not suspected by them. Whatever may have
been His motive, our Lord left Capernaum, together with His followers, and
took, it seems, the road along the sea shore towards the north.
Some words of our Lord, belonging probably to this place, are recorded by
St Matthew.
“But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for
them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not
having a shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest
truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore
the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his
harvest.”(158)
St Matthew probably found in this need of labourers a sufficient reason
for the call of the Apostles. More hands were wanted for ministering to
the multitude, and it was desirable that some should be set apart for the
work. But our Lord’s great earnestness in the matter points, as I have
just said,(159) to something more than this, as though this calling of the
Twelve was of vital concern for the great work that was being done for the
world.
It would only have bewildered the disciples if our Lord had explained to
them the meaning and motive of the commissioning of the Twelve. They could
not be told that Christ’s Kingdom on earth was being vested in the Twelve
as an undying body in order that it might not be shattered by His death.
They could not yet be told of the coming Resurrection, or that they were
being trained to bear witness of Christ’s spiritual presence with His own.
Our Lord’s talk with His disciples was primarily suited to their wants and
to their minds, and not to those of the people of after times: we must not
therefore expect to find in it answers to the questions we want to put.
But we have one advantage which the disciples had not; they, as actors in
the drama, were taken up with their parts for the moment, while we
contemplate it as spectators from beginning to end; and even if we cannot
quite follow the action, yet we can make out enough of sequence to see
that this action forms a whole: we mark the drift of the earlier incidents
when we see the goal for which all was making, and our Lord’s purposes are
sometimes made more apparent by the course of His acts than by His words.
Without pretending to enter into our Lord’s mind, we cannot help imagining
the considerations which the situation must have inspired. The danger to
the cause from allowing it to hang upon a single life was becoming more
pressing day by day. Though our Lord in passing through the country, had
kindled men’s hearts as He went along, yet He had left no working agency
behind. There was no rallying point, no minister, no constituted body in
any district or town. It may be asked, “Why did not our Lord do as St Paul
did?” Why did He not “ordain elders in every city,” and establish His
religion territorially step by step, just as an advancing army occupies
the ground it has won? This is part of the wider question, “Why did not
our Lord found a Church Himself?” to which an answer has been given
before. His business was to “kindle the fire” and only to kindle it. What
has been said of ritual (p. 222) applies to Church government as well.
Church polities, like forms of secular government, were to be formed by
men of each age for themselves; and to lay down a system, for which a
Divine authority would inevitably be claimed, would bar all human
intervention in matters ecclesiastical, and hamper men’s minds in ways
that I have glanced at before. If a system of Christian communities had
been spread over Galilee by our Lord as it was spread over Asia Minor by
St Paul, the forms of ecclesiastical government so sanctioned, and all
that related to outer worship would have been regarded as a part of
revealed truth. A visible Church framed by our Lord would have afforded a
model, from any line in the construction of which it would have been a
heresy to swerve. Men would not only have consecrated the principles of
its polity but they would have seized on the visible constitution and
points of practice and have battled for these to the death. We should have
had an institution, Divinely authorised, and which therefore could not in
the smallest particular be changed, imposed on races inheriting different
temperaments, and one ecclesiastical rule would have been fixed for all
time.
In all matters of procedure the one question asked would have been, “What
was the practice of the Lord?” Church polity would have depended wholly on
conclusions drawn from antiquarian study and, what would have been worse
than all, people having outgrown the institutions regarded as Divine would
have lulled their consciences by being studiously regardful of the form
after the meaning had disappeared, and they would have stretched the
formulæ to make them fit the times. In doing this they would have played
fast and loose with their honesty of mind. Moreover it seems to me an
incongruity that the Redeemer of the World should also be the founder of a
local Church; the disproportion is so vast between the two terms.
A way was perfected in that night of prayer upon the hills, whereby an
organic life was imparted to the little community without setting up a
Church, from the pattern of which no deviation could be allowed. The
Twelve formed a centre round which the disciples might cluster, and this
rudiment of organisation was enough for the time. Christ gave only such a
germ of external polity as the immediate need required. The commissioning
of the Twelve imposed no particular form of rule; but it taught the lesson
that organisation and order and the distribution of duty were essential in
things spiritual as well as in things temporal, and that it was well for
the children of light to be as “wise in their generation” as the children
of the world.
When a danger or perplexity offers itself to men, they seek counsel one of
another, but our Lord takes counsel of the Father alone, there is with Him
no hesitancy, no balancing of this course against that. In this case, when
the morning comes His resolve is distinct, and it is forthwith carried
out. The constitution and proper functions of the body that He should
create, as well as the persons who were to be the first members, all were
determined on.
We read:
“He went out into the mountain to pray; and he continued all night
in prayer to God;”(160)
again, we have
“He goeth up into the mountain, and calleth unto him whom he
himself would: and they went unto him. And he appointed twelve,
that they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to
preach, and to have authority to cast out devils.”(161)
This is all we are told of the planting of that germ, of which the
upgrowth is the Church of Christ. The organisation thus introduced was
just enough to make of the disciples one body. Henceforth they could speak
of themselves as “we;” but as yet, they were only pupils, chosen to be
about their master’s person, intrusted with special powers for the good of
those among whom they ministered, but with no authority over the rest of
the disciples.
The hour to which our Lord had looked forward, the time “when the
bridegroom should be taken away,” arrived at last, and our Lord’s timely
measures in finding the right men and training them in the right way
proved of signal service then. When the critical moment came the men
proper for the work were found upon the spot. When our Lord at Gethsemane,
declining all superhuman aid, resigned Himself into His captors’ hands,
consternation and bewilderment for a moment overcame the Twelve—“they all
left Him, and fled.”(162) The recollection of this moment’s failure may
have been of service to them in after days; it may have made them more
lenient to the lapses of others, and, like the “thorn in the flesh” given
to St Paul, might prevent their being “exalted overmuch.” The situation in
which the Apostles found themselves called out the qualities desired. As
soon as their Master had suffered there came upon them the sense of
responsibility, and they rose to the circumstances as men with depth of
character do. The cause did not die down even for a moment, it was kept
alive in that upper chamber where the eleven met. To them, from the first,
the other disciples looked for direction, and to them they brought their
news. The women never doubted about where they were to go with the news
that the sepulchre was empty, and late in the Resurrection Day the
disciples from Emmaus proceeded straight to the upper chamber, knowing
that the eleven would be there.
Hardly had the two who returned from Emmaus told their tale, when
“He himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace
_be_ unto you.”(163)
The eleven had taken the helm quietly, as a matter of course, when the
ship seemed to be disabled. They had been faithful in a little and
straightway they are called unto much, they are chosen for witnesses of
the Supreme Event in the history of Man, of the Resurrection of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ.
It is this character of witnesses which distinguishes the Apostles from
all other depositaries of a Master’s cause. This was the charge that
governed the disposition of their lives. Other men might organise churches
and set forth the teaching of the Lord, but in the character of appointed
witnesses of the Resurrection they stood alone. Before the Resurrection
they are told
“And ye also bear witness, because ye have been with me from the
beginning,”(164)
and afterwards it is as witnesses that they are singled out by our Lord,
“And ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judæa and
Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”(165) In this
distinctive light too they regard themselves. When a successor to Judas
has to be appointed, St Peter says, “of these must one become a witness
with us of his resurrection”(166) and Peter and all the Apostles say,
before the Sanhedrin, “We are witnesses of these things.” Peter again,
speaking to the brethren from Joppa calls the Apostles “witnesses chosen
before of God.”(167)
I find in the Twelve a special fitness for the particular work which it
fell to them to perform. They brought to the attestation of the
Resurrection the concurring evidence of eleven eyewitnesses, simple,
truthloving, matter-of-fact men, of different types of mind.
The unanimity of the eleven, both as to their testimony and as to their
adoption of a particular course of conduct has been less dwelt on by
Apologists than I should have expected. If one or two could have been
gained over by the Scribes to dissent from the account of the rest, the
moral force of the evidence would have been lost. The chances against the
agreement of the entire body in an illusion or a misrepresentation are
enormous. But an event so transcendent as to wipe out of the minds of the
witnesses everything else—“all trivial, fond records” would efface small
subjective differences by the overwhelming force of the objective
impression; and the occurrence of such an event would account for that
perfect agreement in action among men who had not uniformly agreed before,
which is among the many striking phenomena which the book of the Acts of
the Apostles discloses to our own view.
The chosen witnesses have exactly the qualities which a judge would point
out to a jury, as grounds for giving particular weight to their evidence
on questions of fact coming within their view. I must say something more
on this point.
Nothing carries more weight with a jury than the impression that the
witness has an intense belief in the truth of what he says. Such an
impression the Apostles conveyed; the possibility that they should
themselves doubt in the slightest about any fact to which they speak never
occurs to their mind; all through the Acts and the Epistles the atmosphere
is one of certainty, settled and serene. The Apostles had not been always
so assured; we find them in the Gospels impatient for clearer statements
and more decisive signs: “Now speakest thou plainly and speakest no
parable” they regard as high praise. But after the Resurrection all this
is changed, they are then quite certain of the fact that Christ is Divine,
and they have given up trying to understand the ways and forms in which
the Divine power might show itself. They had probably, once thought, like
Naaman, that it must operate something after the fashion which absolute
power uses upon earth. They have got past this when we meet with them in
the Acts.
I have spoken of the difference of character among the Apostles for this
reason. That eleven men, and a _particular_ eleven, should all have agreed
in an account of what they said they had seen, when by so doing they
gained none of the objects of human desire, is hard to explain unless we
suppose that they were convinced of the truth of their report. If,
however, these men had but one mind among them, either because one or two
master spirits controlled the rest, or because they had been so carefully
drilled into uniformity that they could not help judging alike, then the
value of this unanimity would disappear, for the eleven would become,
virtually, only one or two. Now that the Apostles were men of independent
minds is clear from what we hear of their disputings by the way, and from
the offence taken at James and John when they ask for seats on the right
and left at their Master’s side; and, indeed, the Gospel portraiture of
all the Apostles leaves on us the impression that they were of different
types of character and had personalities that were strongly marked.
Certainly St Peter had a turn of mind which was specially his own. He
arrived at steadfast conviction not by reasoning from step to step—this
was a mental process rarely practised by Galilean fishers—but by inward
intuition, after his own strong Hebrew sort. When an impulse seized on him
it must have its way, and when his heart was full of a matter he must pour
it out.
Of Matthew what I said (p. 215) may stand in place of a notice here. His
Gospel shews us from what side he looked on the work then being set afoot.
James and John the “Sons of Thunder” may be set down as representing
energy and vehemence. They were not likely to follow a lead, or to fall in
with a fantasy started by anyone else. Our notices of Thomas and Philip
and Bartholomew, remind us of sketches, in which a few spirited
pen-strokes present a figure which we can fancy we have seen. Though
Thomas so loved our Lord that he was the first to propose to go with Him
to Jerusalem that “they might die with Him,”(168) yet he will not take it
on hearsay that Christ is risen. He knew how dearly the disciples longed
to have their Master back, and he mistrusted their report because he
feared that their impression might come of their strong desire. His doubts
however like those of Nathanael, are those of an investigator, not of an
assailant; like him he is “without guile” and is glad to accept the offer
“Come and see.” Of Philip I have often spoken. His words, “Shew us the
Father and it sufficeth us” lay his mind bare before us.
These three men last named were all inclined to be incredulous, they were
matter of fact persons, looking without rather than within, and such are
the most trustworthy witnesses to external fact. Of one Apostle, Simon, it
is true we learn that he had been a “zealot,” that is, that he had once
belonged to a band of men fired with fanatical devotion. But, when we hear
of him, he had caught sight of a different kind of Divine Kingdom from any
that he had thought of bringing about, and he was by degrees learning that
“the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”(169) Not one of
these men had sufficient imagination—sufficient creative faculty—to embody
his longings, even if he had such, in a vision so unexampled as that we
have. That some of the eleven should have had one illusive fancy and some
another would not have been improbable, but that all should have had the
same would have been inordinately so. As a matter of fact the portraiture
of the risen Lord given in our different memoirs is a conception
singularly consistent, and one which the writers could not have drawn
except from concurring traditions or personal knowledge of the facts.
There was one Apostle who did not witness the resurrection—Judas Iscariot.
With all that has been written about him, the problems of his call and of
the purpose of his treason remain unsolved. If, as many suppose, Judas
came from some place in Judæa, Kerioth by name, he was, among the
Apostles, the only one who was not a Galilæan. It is possible that he may
have been one of those who attached themselves to our Lord at Jerusalem
before His active ministry began. Our Lord did not “trust Himself”(170)
with these as a body but one or two may have gone with Him through Samaria
into Galilee. Judas may have been of a mind less simply receptive than the
rest of the twelve. Perhaps he had aims for Israel, perhaps also for
himself, the patriotic element may sometimes have been uppermost and
sometimes the selfish one, and perhaps he wanted to hasten the Divine
scheme and help it forward in His own way.
His presence among the disciples shews that our Lord did not confine his
choice to those who were of one type, and that a man who had in him great
possibilities, attracted his sympathy, although these possibilities might
be turned to evil, and the things meant for his good might become an
occasion of falling.
But while each individual of the Apostolic body had a specific character
of his own, yet beneath this lay a generic condition common to them all.
They all belonged to the lower middle class, living by labour but above
want; they were able to read and write and some could probably talk Greek
with the neighbouring Hellenists in the country to the north. The Apostles
were plain and homely in their minds and in their talk. In what they heard
they saw little beyond the meaning that lay on the surface of the words.
This literal mindedness does not belong to one Apostle or two, but
characterizes them all, and it appears in St John’s Gospel as frequently
as in the other three. The Evangelists relate these displays of simplicity
without ever dreaming that they throw thereby any disparagement on the
Apostles: such they expected them to be, and such they note that they
were.
When men have the wants of the day full in view every morning of their
lives, and must supply these wants by the labour of their hands, their
thoughts naturally take a practical turn. Now this we note as a signal
trait in the behaviour of the Apostles and it is exactly what would
characterize men brought up as they had been. They always look first to
what under the circumstances has to be _done_; like seafaring men, they
are prompt in resource. When the five thousand stay till nightfall on the
mountain side far from any place where food could be got, the thought of
the Apostles is, “How are they to be fed?” They take it on them to advise
that the crowd be sent away while there was still daylight enough for them
to reach the villages. In the little daily business of common life they
act as if matters of service fell within their own sphere and on them they
had a right to speak. I have already spoken of their pressing our Lord to
take food on the journey through Samaria. Again, when the three Apostles
are with our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter evidently
supposes that they have entered a new and heavenly country where they are
to stay, and his first thought is to be of service. People, he supposes,
will want abiding places in the new country as well as in the old land
they had left, so he proposes to build huts as if they had been camping in
the hills. An Alpine guide would have spoken much in the same way. These
little distinctive characteristics are carefully preserved, and the
instinctive thought of the attendant Apostles for their Master in their
little acts of personal service is true to nature in a rare and delicate
way.
Such men are good witnesses for they have eyes for everything. I contend
then, first that the Apostles were singularly adapted for affording the
testimony required, and next, that, if men were especially picked out on
account of their qualifications as witnesses, then our Lord must have had
in view some great event for which witnesses were required. In the
selection of these plain men to found the church we light upon the first
hint of the distinctive feature of the Christian revelation mentioned
above, viz. that it was to be centred, not in _notions_ but in a
stupendous Fact (p. 230).
When the gospel had to be preached to Greeks who sought after a methodical
system, and the need came for doctrine, the work was given to St Paul. But
twelve St Pauls as witnesses to fact would not have carried as much weight
as the Apostles did; for though the most truthful of men, yet the world of
his own thoughts was nearly as present to him as the world without, and it
was not always perfectly clear when he was speaking of one and when of the
other. The minds of the Apostles, on the other hand, were quite limpid;
they received all “as little children,” registering truly what came from
without, and declaring it just as their five senses set it before them.
I have said (_l.c._) that the Apostles were not the men whom the Founder
of a policy or a school would have chosen to win men over to his views.
Our Lord does not choose his successors for their power of attracting
crowds. He does not teach them to argue or to preach. They prevailed by
what they were and what they did, more than by what they said. They had
not the art of kindling enthusiasm and leading captive the minds of men.
They do not possess the magic which masters the will. Their success comes
of what they had to say, not of the way in which they said it. They were
indeed to be the promulgators of the religion which was to grow up around
the person of Christ, they were to “teach all nations,”(171) but they are
not to dominate men and bear them down by impetuous oratory. This is too
near akin to delusion and tyranny for teachers of the freemen whom “the
truth makes free.” Nor were they to rate their success by the multitude of
those they baptized. The truths revealed in Christ’s life and death were
given to the world to be part of its possessions through all time, and
whether they were generally accepted a little sooner or a little later was
of small account.
It may be remarked here what a small part in the Divine economy, the gift
of eloquence plays. Moses had no utterance, the speech of Paul was
contemptible, and the Apostles can, indeed, say what needs saying, but
have not the gift, so infinitely valued by the Greek, of leading men
captive by persuasive words.
But though to have been witnesses of the Resurrection was the great glory
of the Apostles, yet they were something more than witnesses; they were
also the first guardians and propagators of the Faith that transformed the
world. They were the depositories of the leaven which gradually set up its
working through the minds of men.
For this other function of their office they were also singularly
qualified in various external ways.
The social position of the Apostles was advantageous for the promulgating
of a Faith which was to become universal. They belonged to the stratum in
which the Centre of Gravity of Humanity lay. The small land owners and
handicraftsmen in Galilee were in contact with people in different
stations of life; they could talk with the rich and they could feel with
the poor; they were on the border land between the learned and the
ignorant, and had just enough knowledge to be able to get more when they
wanted it. There was one truth, essential and vital to a Faith which was
to exalt and dignify all mankind, which in the class from which the
Apostles came was found growing with especial vigour as on its native
soil. This truth was the surpassing value of a man as man,—the sanctity
which clothes a human being who is made in the image of God. The sense of
this truth is much keener among the poor than among the rich; it is the
poor who are most scandalised if a human being is treated like a brute.
The rich have wealth, dignities and the like, on which their thoughts rest
with satisfaction. But when the poor man takes account of his condition he
finds but one item on the credit side, and he makes the most of it: it is
that “He too is a Man.” The upper class in Palestine had little mind for
anything wider than a philosophical or political sect, and they treated
the poor as if they had no souls. Christianity therefore could not have
made its cradle with them, and the lowest class had little intelligence
and no power of combination and would have been at once trodden under
foot. Unless the Church had taken root in the lower middle class, it could
hardly have spread as it did. That its earliest promulgators belonged to
this class I will not suppose to have been a matter of mere chance.
To proceed with the course of events. Our Lord having called to Him “whom
He Himself would” and chosen the twelve, assigns to them their name. They
are “Apostles,” men sent forth to preach. But it was not till the risen
Christ appeared to the eleven in that upper chamber and said, “Peace be
unto you; as my Father hath sent me even so send I you,” that they saw all
that was meant by this name; viz. that Christ was the Apostle of His
Father and that they were the Apostles of Christ.
Our Lord on coming down with the Twelve from the mountain found a great
gathering of people waiting for Him on a spot of level ground.
St Luke’s account is this.
“And he came down with them, and stood on a level place, and a
great multitude of his disciples, and a great number of the people
from all Judæa and Jerusalem, and the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon,
which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; and
they that were troubled with unclean spirits were healed. And all
the multitude sought to touch him: for power came forth from him,
and healed them all.”(172)
The address to the newly chosen Apostles which follows this passage in St
Luke’s gospel has been incorporated by St Matthew with the Sermon on the
Mount. The portions belonging to it may there be recognised by the absence
both of allusions to the Law and of the opposed phrases, “It was said to
those of old time” and “But I say unto you,” phrases which point the
contrast which forms the main theme of the earlier address.
The multitudes who awaited our Lord “in the level place” were made up of
Apostles, disciples, and people “who came to hear him and be healed.” In
some passages of this discourse our Lord had the disciples, and in others
the rest of the people, particularly in view.
It was to the disciples that He turned when He began to speak.
“And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed are
ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.”(173)
The four beatitudes are, to my mind, expressly addressed to those who are
about to take service on Christ’s side. It was only to a disciple that our
Lord could say that He would be hated, and cut off and vilified “for the
son of man’s sake,” and it was only disciples, and disciples too who were
active in spreading the word, who could be brought into comparison with
prophets either true or false. The interpretation also of these beatitudes
depends on the fact that our Lord is speaking to the disciples. Blessing
did not belong to the poor as an appanage of their poverty but because
they were His disciples and theirs was the Kingdom of God; it was easier
for the poor than the rich to enter this Kingdom, and then their earthly
poverty brought out by contrast the greatness of their spiritual wealth.
There is this difference between the lessons taught here and those
delivered in the Sermon on the Mount; here all is personal while there it
is general. Here, our Lord is speaking to His disciples and says, “for
_yours_ is the Kingdom of Heaven,” and “_ye_ shall be filled.” In the
Sermon on the Mount the corresponding pronouns are _theirs_ and _they_.
A special lesson is conveyed to the Twelve is the last of these
beatitudes.
“Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall
separate you from their company, and reproach you, and cast out
your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice in that day,
and leap for joy: for behold, your reward is great in heaven: for
in the same manner did their fathers unto the prophets.”(174)
Although the enthusiastic reception of their Master must have cheered the
Apostles and set them forward in good heart, yet they were not to think
that they were called to share in a triumph that was already won. They
were not to be over-elated by this passing favour of men. The danger was,
lest they should be too sanguine and be carried away by the fascination of
popular goodwill. Well might they be lifted up. Their Master had just
entrusted them with superhuman powers, and multitudes had come from miles
around and had waited for them all night at the foot of the hills. So, in
the midst of the flush of success, our Lord tells them that the criterion
of their being true soldiers of God is their winning, not the world’s
praise but its hate. There is in the world an enmity to God as God. There
are many who will readily enough acknowledge a Deity so long as He is not
real and actual and is not brought too near; they find in the abstract
idea a serviceable support for their social institutions; but from the
notion of a living God close by them they shrink in dismay, and along with
their terror goes hate.
Parallel with these beatitudes run the denunciations of woe.
“But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your
consolation. Woe unto you, ye that are full now! for ye shall
hunger. Woe unto you, ye that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and
weep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for in
the same manner did their fathers to the false prophets.”(175)
These denunciations are not found in the Sermon on the Mount. That
discourse was addressed to people mostly of the same class and in the same
posture of mind. When our Lord first spoke to the crowds on the hillside
people had not begun to take sides; but, at the period of the history now
before us, they had already clustered into parties; some had declared for
the word and some against it, while many remained indifferent or in doubt,
and to these several parties our Lord speaks in turn.
I think that when our Lord began to utter “Woe,” he turned to the men of
station and substance in whom curiosity was mixed with considerations of
prudence. They are not denounced for being rich any more than the poor are
blessed for being poor; but their calamity is this, that in riches they
find enough consolation to prevent their striving heartily after anything
better. They do not “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” they do not
“seek a country;” they do not steadily seek anything; but, if they feel
for a moment uneasy, they clutch their possessions and say, “At any rate I
have thus much comfort secure here.” This it was which made it next to
impossible for them to enter the kingdom of God, and our Lord cries unto
them, “Woe.”
In the last denunciation our Lord comes back to the disciples again. The
ills that men’s hatred brought with it were patent enough, but men’s
favour was an insidious snare; for it might lead them unawares to love
“the praise of men more than the praise of God.” The more kindly the young
preacher is received, the more distressing it is to him to incur dislike;
and consequently the greater is the temptation to soften down Christ’s
sternness and to meet the world halfway. Our Lord warns his new helpers by
the example of those who in old times had prophesied smooth things, and
had gone the way of the world while the world had made believe it was
going theirs.
The beatitudes and warnings of woe form the prelude, and when this was
over our Lord may be supposed to have lifted up his eyes from those who
stood nearest—probably the Apostles and most notable persons—and to have
addressed the whole multitude; for, His words, “But I say unto you which
hear,”(176) I take to imply, “_all_ you which hear.” The twelve verses
which follow form a sermon of general application of which “Love your
enemies” is taken as the text.
On this sermon being ended we read
“And he spake also a parable unto them, Can the blind guide the
blind? shall they not both fall into a pit? The disciple is not
above his master: but every one when he is perfected shall be as
his master.”(177)
This parable is addressed to the newly appointed Twelve. It bears on the
temptations of young teachers. They are in danger of being elated at
finding themselves teachers when they had so lately been learners; they
might lean to correction, and might incline to be over busy in giving
directions and in finding fault; they might persuade themselves too that
they thought only of the learners’ good, when in reality there was, mixed
with this, a good spice of the love of exercising superiority. They are
told that if they are to act as guides they must see their own way first;
the light within them must not be darkness.
The last verse of the last quotation, refers, not to Christ and _His_
disciples—there is no suggestion that these should reach _His_
perfection—but to the disciples and _their_ scholars. The especial point
of the verse is the responsibility laid upon the teacher, by the pupils
taking him as their ideal. The pupils of the disciples would copy the
disciples themselves, and they could not excel their pattern. The learner
could not be above his master, what is cast in a mould cannot be better
shaped than the mould itself; but the perfected work that is turned out
exactly represents the mould. The disciples therefore must watch against
every defect, for their pupils would copy them faults and all.
The text has another application besides this, the pupil when perfected
would stand on a level with His master; the latter had no indefeasible
superiority. When they had lighted the lamps of others the light of the
rest would be as bright as their own. If they were to glory it should be,
not in their superiority to their pupils, but in their pupils having
become as good as themselves. They were not to be like those teachers who
keep back from their prentices some special secret of their art.
Next comes the verse, “For there is no good tree that bringeth forth
corrupt fruit.”(178) This applies both to those who teach and to those who
learn. If the master’s scholars mostly turn out ill it may be inferred
that he is a bad master; and if the master be self-seeking at bottom,
whatever disguise he may put on, the evil will come to light: selfishness
always generates counter-selfishness, and false pretension detected in one
case may lead a young man into general mistrust.
In another view of the verse, the behaviour of the man is the fruit and
his nature is the tree. This fruit is not without value in itself, but is
of more value still as an evidence of the condition of the tree. This
falls in with the constant burden of Christ’s teaching, “God looks to what
you _are_ as well as to what you _do_, and part of the importance of what
you do comes from its shewing what you are, or from its helping by way of
practice to confirm you in your ways whether good or bad.”
In the last four verses of the address our Lord again speaks to the whole
company of hearers. He takes one of His familiar topics, viz., that good
is not only to be admired, it must also be done. This is expressed by the
illustration of the house on the rock and that on the earth. Many who
followed Him counted themselves His disciples because they carried away
his commands in their heads and talked about them. He tells them that they
can only get firm hold of them by putting them into practice. There were
many hearers who would put our Lord’s precepts away somewhere in their
memory, and be satisfied with possessing right and beautiful thoughts
without carrying them into practice, keeping them like curios in a drawer.
These were like men building on the earth, who do only just what the
moment requires. But the habit formed by steady obedience effects a
structural change in the man’s own mind. This is a lasting possession—it
has taken time and pains to acquire, but it is storm proof like the house
upon the rock.
When speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, I touched on the form in which
our Lord delivers what He says. The remarks there made apply to the
discourse before us and, in addition, it may be said, that this address is
admirably adapted to be carried away by the hearers as a whole. It is
strongly marked by its characteristic style, so that an addition or
alteration by another hand would strike even an unpractised ear, as not
having the true ring. There are four beatitudes and four denunciations,
corresponding each to each; this numerical symmetry assists recollection.
Then comes the sermon, made up of sayings so short and terse that the most
unlettered may carry the whole away; and finally all ends with a parable,
which is so well suited to the popular mind that it is now perhaps the
best known of all pieces of Bible imagery. Those who like may trace in
this a certain prevision, a designed fashioning of the garb of the word to
suit it for that oral transmission on which, at one period, its
preservation would depend.
When our Lord had finished His discourse He returned to Capernaum.
“And he cometh into a house. And the multitude cometh together
again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his
friends heard it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said,
He is beside himself.”(179)
There were occasions in our Lord’s life in which the Divine nature seemed
to glow through the human receptacle. It was so when He came down from the
Mount of Transfiguration, so too, when he went forward, apart from the
rest, at the outset of His final journey to Jerusalem; and so I believe it
was when He came back to Capernaum bringing with Him the Twelve whom He
had chosen to form the nucleus of His everlasting Church. Something in His
air seems to have amazed His friends, “they said he is beside himself.”
The Scribes, marking the temper of the crowd, thought it wise to drop
their schemes of violence, but they set afoot the notion that He was
possessed by the Prince of the Devils and ruled the spirits of evil in his
name. Our Lord made no long stay at Capernaum, but took the Twelve with
Him on a journey to the cities in Galilee that they might see how He
preached and taught, and, what was more, that they might learn to put
complete trust in His wise guidance and sheltering love. This was the
first practical lesson they collectively received.
It was in the interval between the calling of the Twelve and the
despatching of them, two and two, on their missions, or possibly while
they were gone, that the messengers sent by the Baptist came up with our
Lord and His party.
As the next chapter will be taken up with the lessons belonging to this
mission of the Twelve, I shall deal with this incident in this chapter,
although, chronologically, it might fall in the next. It is related by St
Matthew as follows:
“Now when John heard in the prison the works of the Christ, he
sent by his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that cometh,
or look we for another? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Go
your way and tell John the things which ye do hear and see: the
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the
poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he,
whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me.”(180)
The question asked by the Baptist shews us his condition of mind. A voice
in his heart had told the Baptist that he was born to be the forerunner of
one mightier than himself, and the sign at the Baptism had shewn him who
that Person was. He had recognised in Him “the Lamb of God who was to take
away the sins of the world,” the Son in whom the Father was well pleased.
This conveys the impression that John regarded our Lord as the Jewish
Messiah, but the Baptist’s notions about the Messiah may have been vague,
like those which the people and even the Scribes entertained; although he
was a prophet and more than a prophet, he would not know more than other
people, except on matters directly revealed to him. The Divine light is
indeed a “lantern to a man’s path,” but it is a lantern that throws its
light only in the direction in which he who carries it has to go. I
believe that John sent to our Lord because he was bewildered by what he
heard. That the Messiah should preach and heal was agreeable to what he
had expected: but, “Was this to be all?” Was He going to restore the
kingdom Himself, or was another to come and take up that portion of the
work?
Our Lord, it would appear, wished to give John as nearly as might be the
same advantages as His disciples had. The emissaries are accordingly made
witnesses of the Signs. They are told to relate what they saw and He adds
the significant words, “And blessed is he whosoever shall find none
occasion of stumbling in me.”(181) Our Lord could not say that He was the
Messiah without letting loose all the divers erroneous imaginations which
hovered round the name. Our Lord, after His fashion, gives the Baptist a
suggestive hint, leaving it to him whether He should follow out the clue
rightly or not. As soon as John’s messengers, who for a while had
witnessed the works that He did, had turned back home, our Lord addressed
himself to the company who were with him, people, disciples and all, and
spoke to them of John. This discourse contained lessons of tolerance which
helped to widen the disciples’ minds, and I shall therefore discuss it at
some length. It has a bearing extending beyond those to whom it was
addressed.
I shall take St Luke’s version of this discourse because in that of St
Matthew it is, I think, mixed with matter spoken on other occasions.
It is our Lord’s way to point the drift of a whole discourse by a pregnant
sentence at the end, in which the expositor finds the key to the whole.
Such a saying we have here, in the closing words,
“And wisdom is(182) justified of all her children.”(183)
The meaning of the passage turns on the sense given to the word
“justified.” It is employed, near the beginning of the discourse, in the
same sense which it has here at the end, and this helps us to understand
its particular meaning in this place. I refer to the passage:
“And all the people when they heard, and the publicans,
_justified_ God, being baptized with the baptism of John. But the
Pharisees and the lawyers rejected for themselves the counsel of
God, being not baptized of him.”(184)
The word “justified” is used in this passage in the sense it has when we
say “my son has justified all my outlay,” or “the event justified all my
precautions.”
The publicans by accepting the baptism of John shewed that God’s good
offices in their behalf were not thrown away, that they had not been
regarded with excessive hopefulness or a too indulgent eye; but the
Scribes and Pharisees frustrated God’s good purpose in their behalf. So
far as they were concerned his measures were of no effect. They would have
none of them. The fact was, that, though they talked about God, they were
in fact God-blind, and when asked to follow His teachers they found
special reasons for declining in each particular case. John renewed an
ideal which had passed out of sight; he appeared in the ascetic garb of
the prophets of old; his strict life and his outspoken words disturbed
their consciences and they put him aside by the readiest of expedients,
they declared that he was mad. Then came our Lord declaring Himself the
Son of Man, living as other men did, and consecrating thereby the ordinary
course and usages of human life. In His case also the Scribes had an
objection to make. A messenger from God, they thought, would come upon the
earth in a different way from other men, and all his doings would be of an
exceptional kind: whereas Christ lived to all appearance just as they did
themselves. In the same way that courtiers surround a prince by a wall of
etiquette in order to elevate him and hold him apart from the people, so
would the Scribes have encompassed God’s messenger with hallowed
observances. They were not likely to understand that the closer Jesus kept
to the ordinary and universal ways of men which were of natural growth,
the more He was at home in the Kingdom of His Father who had made the
world and ordered the ways of men.
Christ goes to the root of both these objections. He takes an image drawn
from what was always under their eyes. He supposes a crowd of children
playing in the market place, while others are sitting somewhat sullenly
by. They play at a wedding, and they pretend to pipe and dance, but those
who sit by will not stir; and then they change to a funeral, and imitate
the wailing of the relatives and of the train of hired mourners, but those
whom they wish to gain for playmates will not have this either; _they do
not want to play at all_. The people would learn from this image as much
as was within their comprehension. They could see that when the Pharisees
objected on opposite grounds to two courses, their aversion was really not
to either course but to that to which both courses tended. But the last
verse, “wisdom is justified of _all_ her children,” goes beyond what the
people would see at the time; and, indeed, as St Matthew in his version
omits the important word _all_, it looks as if he had himself missed the
full sense.
The text conveys a lesson of ample tolerance which even in these days, all
minds are not stretched wide enough to receive. The point is this. God has
children of more types than one, and all these, in their own different
ways, justify God’s thought for them by taking advantage of His help. The
ways of Jesus and the ways of John differ widely, but men may reach God
coming round by either way. Some may gain access to the Kingdom through
John and others by Jesus; but all who _are_ God’s will get there by some
way or other. If the Scribes and Pharisees were winnowed away by this
trial it was because the germs of a Divine nature within them had been
suffered to perish. They were God’s children no longer, and God’s ways for
His children would not succeed with them.
That wisdom is justified of all her children, is a truth carrying to
different generations the precise lesson of tolerance it needs. It was not
long before the Apostles themselves had occasion to call this very lesson
to mind. An exclusive spirit, and the desire to have their privileges all
to themselves led them to forbid a man who followed not with them to cast
out devils in their Master’s name. They are very gently set right. Our
Lord is never hard upon errors arising from mistaken notions; he gently
checks them at the time and takes early occasion, by a parable, or some
lesson of circumstance, to suggest the proper counter view.
But though the Apostles might profit by this apophthegm, yet it was aimed
directly at the Scribes who held that in all questions there must be one
right view, all others being wrong; so that toleration of anything that
deviated from the accepted view, implied indifference to truth. But it is
only “truth absolute” which is _one and exclusive_ and this, in spiritual
matters, can only be attained by an unmistakeable _dictum_ of revelation.
In a geometrical investigation, we have an infallible logic dealing with
definite notions; we therefore get one precise result, and all that differ
from this are worthless. But in matters spiritual an element of infinity
must be present; notions enter which cannot be defined; men may use the
same words in stating their views, but whether these words convey the same
conceptions to them all, no one can possibly say. In things spiritual,
therefore, no one answer completely excludes all other answers because we
never get a perfect solution at all; we only get approximations. In like
manner there are insoluble problems in Mathematical Physics to which we
can only get answers approximately correct. These being points in a circle
round the unattainable centre may be infinite in number.
These hard sayings shew that Christ, when he spoke, looked beyond his
hearers into infinite space and saw there “other sheep who were not of
this fold.”(185) He must also have felt sure that these words of His would
be preserved for after times; for certainly, it was not merely for
Galilean hearers that our Lord uttered pregnant words like those I have
just discussed.(186) The candle was not lighted to be put in a cupboard.
The hard sayings of our Lord as well as many of His passing words, which
called forth no notice at the time, are to me part of the witness,
everywhere peeping out, of our Lord’s prospective view in what He said and
did. He must have had in view persons or bodies of men, who would find,
some in one of these utterances and some in another, what answered to a
want or a question rising in their hearts; and, as a fact, men have in
every age lighted on words of our Lord which seemed to be a revelation
directed to their own case, the key to the special riddle which vexed
their souls. There are herbs and simples growing on the earth, which men
for ages have passed carelessly by, but some new form of malady has one
day appeared, and in the disregarded plant has the needful help been
found.