CHAPTER XII. THE LATER LESSONS.

Different cases receive different treatment. St Luke ix. 57-62.

“And as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, I will

follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, The

foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven _have_ nests; but

the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And he said unto

another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and

bury my father. But he said unto him, Leave the dead to bury their

own dead; but go thou and publish abroad the kingdom of God. And

another also said, I will follow thee, Lord; but first suffer me

to bid farewell to them that are at my house. But Jesus said unto

him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back,

is fit for the kingdom of God.”

What caught attention and led to the collocation of these two (and in St

Luke three) instances was the diversity of our Lord’s treatment of cases

apparently similar. The disciples saw that our Lord repelled one who was

willing to follow him at once, and imperatively summoned two others who

asked for delay. But though they might be puzzled at this inconsistency,

they felt sure that there was a purpose and a meaning in it; so they

transcribed these contrasting cases side by side, to show that for

different conditions of soul Christ had different treatment ready. The

second and third(283) of these colloquies probably took place at a

different time from the first. They seem to have been held between our

Lord and some of the disciples who were summoned to go out on the mission

of the seventy, for St Luke inserts this document in his history just

before his account of the mission. Thus St Matthew in his narrative puts

the passage where the first incident occurs, while St Luke fixes its place

by the second and third.

This _individualising_ in our Lord’s treatment of men struck the disciples

as something new; they do not indeed point it out as a novel feature, for

they never remark upon our Lord’s ways, but the care of the Evangelists in

preserving the most striking instances of this diversity of treatment

shews that it caught their notice. To our Lord’s eye every human being had

a moral and spiritual physiognomy of his own. He saw at once, what it was

in each man which went to make him emphatically and distinctly his very

self, and He addressed Himself largely to this.

I will now consider the separate instances one by one.

St Matthew, in the passage parallel to part of this,(284) tells us that

the first speaker was a scribe, and it appears that he was, in some sort,

also a disciple of our Lord, for on coming to the next case St Matthew

speaks of “_another_ of the disciples.”

It was, I think, in Galilee, as St Matthew tells us, that this profession

of adhesion was made. At the time he speaks of, popular feeling in our

Lord’s favour was at its greatest height, and it was owing to the

thronging of the multitude to the Lake shore near Capernaum that our Lord

gave orders to depart unto the other side. The circumstances tally

perfectly with the language of the passage, for our Lord was then going

into a wild country. But where the passage stands in St Luke, our Lord is

travelling “as it were in secret” from a village in Samaria to Jerusalem.

In this journey, rapidly made, he would not have been likely to have

fallen in with the scribe at all, and, as He did not preach as He went, we

cannot account for the emotion which the scribe displays; moreover, it

could hardly be said that at Jerusalem, He would not have “where to lay

His head.”

What most particularizes the scribe is his impulsiveness. We have here

another example of that mistrust of emotional fervour which our Lord

uniformly shews. The woman who cried “Blessed is the womb that bare

thee,”(285) the scribe in the case before us, and St Peter, when he said,

“I am ready to go with thee both to prison and to death,”(286) all are

answered by our Lord in the same tone of repression.(287)

Sudden transports and ebullitions of feeling like those just named, come

mainly of temperament and of passing physical conditions which subjugate

the agent, and our Lord does not regard them as betokening a character on

which he can depend.

It speaks well for the right feeling of this scribe that he forbears to

press his suit. He divined, with the delicacy of a well bred Oriental,

that our Lord’s reply, though apparently only discouraging him from

following for his own sake, shewed that He held it best that he should

stay behind. He is satisfied that our Lord’s judgment will be right and he

yields at once. A man with less perception might have protested against

the imputation on his endurance, and have declared that he would go with

the Master though he should have to lie on the bare earth.

That, however genuine his devotion may have been, it was best for the

scribe to stay at home is easy to understand; he had been used to an

indoors life and under hardships and exposure he would have broken down;

besides, while being a burden to the rest, he could, as a jaded man, have

gained little in moral or spiritual growth. He was moreover, both as to

culture and social caste, of a different type from the rest, and his

presence would have made the party less homogeneous. Another important

consideration was this; by remaining where he was, he might do that

particular kind of good for which he was suited by temper and condition

better than by following our Lord. The course which had taken hold of his

imagination may not have been that in which he could do the best work. By

remaining in Galilee and mixing with other educated men, he, like Joseph

of Arimathea and Nicodemus, might help to spread tolerance and leaven the

mass.

The two cases which follow, no doubt, puzzled the disciples much. Our Lord

had so strenuously enforced a man’s duty to his parents, that they would

have expected these pleas for delay to be admitted without a word. They

are however very positively rejected, and the refusal is put in so

impressive a form that I cannot but infer that our Lord intended these

colloquies to be recorded.

It has commonly been taken for granted, that the father of the spokesman

in the first of these cases was lying dead when our Lord met him and bade

him follow; but Eastern usages almost preclude this view, for the Jews

buried within twenty-four hours of the death, and for a son to be seen in

public while his father was lying dead would to their minds have been

highly indecent. Some think that, the father being in extreme age, the son

asked to be allowed to stay with him till he died; what seems to me more

likely is that the completion of the ten days of strict mourning was

regarded as part of the obsequies, and that the word “buried” applies to

this. The father might have been laid in the ground, but the ten days not

having expired, the funeral solemnities were not considered over.

I think that our Lord meant in this case to leave a lesson, and that the

lesson was this. Family ties and duties, blessed though they usually are,

must not be turned into idols or suffered to hamper the “clear spirit” in

its ascent to God. There is such a thing as the tyranny of family just as

there is of social usage or public opinion, and from each and all of these

our Lord would set men free. This kind of freedom would cost a struggle as

other kinds also would, and owing to divisions caused by change of Faith

even parents might be set against children and children against parents—a

heavy price indeed, but one that vanishes compared with the opening of

eternal life to mankind. Supposing, as I do, that these disciples were

summoned by our Lord to go forth with the seventy, I find in this

inflexibility which our Lord displays something quite of a piece with the

order to “salute no man by the way,”(288) and to wipe off the dust from

their feet when not received; all this is consistent, when taken together,

and viewed as a lesson in the dignity of consecration to God and the

imperative character of the charge imposed.

It is important to observe that though these disciples make excuse, and

our Lord has usually little tolerance for excuses, yet, instead of being

dismissed, these men are despatched to preach the Kingdom of God. This

shews that the defect in them was not organic, and that it had not touched

the vital centres. Their malady was of a different order from that of the

guests invited to the great supper who said, “I pray thee have me

excused,” for these latter made light of the invitation; while, if my view

be correct, these two men were terrified and overawed by being called to

duties which their imagination painted as beyond their powers. They were

sensitive and distrustful of self, with highly strung nerves, and the

suddenness of the call to preach the Kingdom of God took away their

breath. They do not refuse, but they beg for delay. If they had obtained

such a postponement it would have been all the worse for them, because

they would have been working themselves into a fever all the while. They

are panic stricken at the idea of going into strange districts proclaiming

the Kingdom of God. They were quailing under a nerve-storm and by devising

excuses they only gave it greater force; every moment that they lingered

increased the hold of the morbid impression: a foreign will must come to

their help and take the place of that which was failing. Such a will acts

most effectively in the form of an imperative command, calling the patient

to immediate positive action. This treatment is followed here. These two

men, no doubt, followed as they were bidden. They yielded to authority and

herein they found their cure; they, like the rest, set out with only their

staves in their hands and came back exulting that the devils were subject

to them through the Lord’s name. Thus each of the three personages

receives the proper specific for his case; Christ divines the treatment

that every particular diathesis requires.

But the crowning case of all is yet to come. It belongs to a later time

than the above, and is related more at length. It was soon after our Lord

had entered on his final public journey to Jerusalem, teaching and

discoursing as He went, that a young man, “a certain ruler,” in St Luke’s

words, ran to Him and threw himself at His feet. St Mark’s account is the

most full of detail.

“And as he was going forth into the way, there ran one to him, and

kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I

may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest

thou me good? none is good save one, _even_ God. Thou knowest the

commandments, Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal,

Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour thy father and

mother. And he said unto him, Master, all these things have I

observed from my youth. And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and

said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go, sell whatsoever thou

hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in

heaven: and come, follow me. But his countenance fell at the

saying, and he went away sorrowful: for he was one that had great

possessions.”(289)

Behind the young man’s question there lay this view. He regarded eternal

life as the reward of certain good works and the punctilious observance of

what was divinely enjoined. Our Lord on the other hand represents it, not

as being granted or withheld according to the record of performances, but

rather as coming “of congruity”(290) along with the fitness for it which

has been acquired in the whole education of a life. The man’s works have

no doubt had very much to do with making him what he is, but other

influences have acted as well.

Our Lord rejects the appellation “Good Master.” In these terms, scholars

addressed the Rabbi at whose feet they sat, they accepted his dicta, and

gave up all independent judgment of their own. But our Lord, fostering

and, in some sort, respecting the individual principle in each man, would

free them from fetters of all kinds, those of the Rabbis among the rest.

Here He would say, “Why do you run to a human master” (for as such only

could the mass regard our Lord) “to tell you what it is right to do? About

this no authority can be absolute but God, and His commandments you know.”

These commandments the young ruler had kept, indeed it was hardly possible

that one in his position could have done otherwise, but an empty place was

still left in his soul. Life he felt sure must have a higher meaning and

more satisfying occupations than any he had yet found. Surely he thought

“The Master cannot mean to put me off with telling me to keep the

commandments;” and he was right. He had known of no other guide to

virtuous life than rules of conduct, and so he had come asking for a fresh

set of such rules; but a new light was breaking on his soul and what he

really wanted was for the clouds to be cleared away. This young man had a

noble soul and our Lord “looking on him loved him.” The scribe, spoken of

above, would do best by remaining where he was; but this young man would

do best by following. He was worth rescuing from the conventionalities and

littlenesses of his every day life and lifting into communion with God.

Had he the force to wrench asunder the bonds, slender singly but countless

in number, which fastened him down, and to give up, not merely soft

living—that he would abandon with joy—but the social consideration and

what went with it, personal connections and all, which he would fling away

by doing as Christ bade? This was the question.

Our Lord had not told the scribe to sell all he had and give to the poor.

He laid no such rule on His disciples, but here it was these possessions

and, more than all, the position they conferred that clogged the soul and

prevented its rise. The “giving to the poor” is not enjoined merely as

benevolence; in that virtue it was not likely that this young man would

fail, it is only a means of disposing of the weight that drags him down;

the magnitude of the sacrifice required staggered the young ruler and he

went sorrowful away; but perhaps there was more hope of him than if, at

our Lord’s word, he had impulsively surrendered all that he had. He may

have been one of those who afterwards sold their land or houses “and

brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them at the

Apostles’ feet.”(291) From this interview our Lord draws the moral, “How

hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God;” this is

not a denunciation of the rich but rather a commiseration of them, owing

to the peculiar and insidious temptations to which they are unceasingly

exposed.

The Apostles are “astonished exceedingly”(292) at our Lord’s severity,

they had perhaps been pleased at the prospect of the accession to their

community of a man who was rich and high in station and well spoken of on

all sides. As soon as they had heard him told to give up all and follow,

Peter, with a touch of almost infantine nature which stamps the narrative

as authentic, looking to his own case says, “Lo we have left all and have

followed thee.” This was no boast or our Lord would not have answered as

he does; it was rather an expression of relief at finding that this

special difficulty which beset the young ruler no longer stood in their

way. They had been called to leave settled homes and they had done so.

Peter, we know, had a wife, and James and John had a father and mother

alive. Our Lord seems to give them very positive comfort. Those who had

left home or family or lands for His sake and the Gospel’s should now, in

this time, receive the same a hundred fold(293) as well as life hereafter.

We seem to find here a direct promise of worldly benefit, which would be

strangely out of accord with the general tenour of Christ’s words; but

then comes a clause, preserved only by St Mark, which alters all the

meaning. It contains but two words “with persecutions.” This appears to

unsay all that was said before; for of what good, in the way of enjoyment,

are family and possessions “in the midst of persecution”? Our Lord, to my

thinking, in this passage has His eye on a certain time to come; the

“brethren and sisters and mothers and children” must mean the great

Christian family, and the “lands” are the possessions of that community

which, while the Church was confined to Jerusalem, had all things common,

“When the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul: and

not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his

own.”(294) In the exaltation of spirit in which that community lived,

persecution would seem only a superficial ill, without which their

happiness would have been too ecstatic for permanent spiritual health.

Their condition as we know from the Acts was replete with joy; over and

over again we are reminded of the gladness which filled the souls of the

early converts. The reward promised, when qualified by this phrase, might

rightly be set before the Apostles, for it was no reward at all except to

spiritually minded men. These two words, which are omitted by St Luke,

enable us to understand—what seems a little strange—why this promise is

not accepted with joy and with eager questions as to when this happy time

should come; it puzzled the hearers. Any rising exultation is checked by

the words, “with persecutions,” and the hearers are perhaps set wondering

why Christ often drops difficulties into His speech, just when He seems to

be going to reveal what men particularly want to know, and why, when

holding out a promise, He should dash the cup from their lips.

Parable of the unjust Steward. St Luke xv., xvi.

More and more, as our Lord’s work draws near the close, do we notice that

His eye, somewhat diverted from what is passing about Him, is directed to

a condition of things foreseen “being yet far off.” It is to provide for

this that He is ever taking thought and imparting lessons; and if no state

of things had come about in which these lessons might find a field of

exercise, we should be at a loss to understand what they meant or why they

were there. The explanation is found in the early history of the Church of

Christ. In the parables and discourses of the later ministry there is one

image to which our Lord again and again recurs. It is that of men

labouring in a Master’s service, and most commonly in that of a Master who

is away from home and may at any time come back. It may be that the Master

is a great King, in which case the labourers are his ministers, and

frequently there is mention made of diversity of office and of some who

exercised authority over “men-servants and maid-servants.” In these cases

we frequently find, either in the parable itself or in the “hard saying”

which commonly closes it, an allusion to some special danger attaching to

delegated power.

One such moral danger there is besetting those entrusted with any charge,

and above all with a spiritual charge, which is very insidious, and more

easily corrected by a lesson given in a story than by direct reproof; it

is that of the severity and rigour which comes of over-scrupulosity and

over-zeal. The trustee of a property will sometimes feel morally or

legally bound to exact the very uttermost, and to use a hardness which he

would never think of shewing in his own affairs; and by habitually

constraining himself to use hardness he may become actually hard of nature

himself. When we come to matters spiritual and ecclesiastical all this is

true in an intensified degree.

The more exalted the priest’s notion of his function and the more genuine

his appreciation of the Majesty of God, the more impossible it seems to

him to abate one iota of God’s claims. Things sacred, he has been taught

to think, differ in kind from things secular, and demand rules of

management of their own. He holds it unlawful to make composition with

offenders against God; he is the appointed upholder of the rights and

dignities of the Almighty and he dares not bate a hair. Honestly

awe-stricken at the tremendous responsibility, he flies where he can to a

written Law, and, pointing to the letter, he takes refuge in the

sacerdotal “non possumus” as an answer to every extenuating plea.

I believe that when our Lord delivered the parable of the unjust Steward,

He had in view this particular evil which is all the more dangerous

because it wears the garb of “jealousy for the Lord God.”

If the Apostles, feeling that they formed the personal staff of a King

endowed with all power from on high, had _not_ been lifted up and shewn

some touch of imperious and exclusive spirit, they must indeed have been

more or less than men. That symptoms of such a spirit had appeared and

caused our Lord concern may be gathered, not only from the positive

instances, such as, the forbidding one who followed not with them to cast

out devils in the Lord’s name; the demand to be allowed to call down fire

from heaven; and the rebuking of those who brought to Christ “their babes

that He might touch them;” but, even more certainly, from the repeated

animadversions, in the later teaching of our Lord, on personal ambition

and the over-straining of authority. Moderation, as to what may be

expected from human nature, though not enforced by positive injunctions,

is commended to us, after our Lord’s way, by a gentle influence everywhere

present, and by a current in the teaching setting steadily towards the

point in view. Our Lord had been speaking to the people in a series of

parables—the lost sheep, the lost piece of silver, the Prodigal Son,—all

set in one key, all bearing on the “joy in the presence of the angels of

God over one sinner that repenteth,”(295) and He then turned to the

disciples, with, as I believe, the same thought still uppermost in His

mind, and urges them as the “pastors and masters” of the future, not, by

insisting on the utmost, to make reformation too hard.

The parable of the unjust Steward was addressed, we are told, to the

disciples, and as the disciples had no worldly goods at all, it cannot be

the main drift of the parable, as has been sometimes maintained, to

inculcate Christian prudence in the use of these. I find in this parable a

closing comment in a very terse form; this leads me to suspect that the

key to the main purport lies therein. The verse is this, “For the sons of

this world are for their own generation wiser than the sons of the

light.”(296) The drift of the parable is, indeed, to teach a kind of

prudence, but not one in which _money_ is concerned. The administration of

property is only the vehicle in which the lesson is conveyed. What I take

to be inculcated here is true Christian wisdom as to the exercise of

authority—spiritual authority above all. The moral that I discern is this;

that the Apostles and their successors may do more good by shewing a

little indulgence—by conceding something to weak human nature, not

enforcing Jewish formalities, and not insisting too inflexibly upon every

point which they think may touch the honour or the privileges of Christ’s

Church—than by adhering to the strictest regard for observances, and

imposing rules for sanctity of thought and conduct with which only a

chosen few would be able to comply. How many have been repelled from

religion by the rigour, which Priests or Puritans fancied themselves under

compulsion to employ, and how has this fretful anxiety for discipline

sometimes soured the natures of those who had it in charge!

I proceed to a short examination of the parable, of which I will quote the

whole.

“And he said also unto the disciples, There was a certain rich

man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that

he was wasting his goods. And he called him, and said unto him,

What is this that I hear of thee? render the account of thy

stewardship; for thou canst be no longer steward. And the steward

said within himself, What shall I do, seeing that my lord taketh

away the stewardship from me? I have not strength to dig; to beg I

am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of

the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. And

calling to him each one of his lord’s debtors, he said to the

first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, A hundred

measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bond, and sit down

quickly and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much

owest thou? And he said, A hundred measures of wheat. He saith

unto him, Take thy bond, and write fourscore. And his lord

commended the unrighteous steward because he had done wisely: for

the sons of this world are for their own generation wiser than the

sons of the light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends

by means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when it shall

fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles. He that

is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: and he that

is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much. If

therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who

will commit to your trust the true _riches_? And if ye have not

been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that

which is your own?”(297)

I do not pretend to have made out for every particular in the story of the

parable a spiritual parallel after my own view, indeed I think that

interpreters sometimes look for too complete a correspondence. I can quite

understand that a detail might be introduced which should give life to the

story and so help to fix it in the hearers’ minds, which might have no

analogue in the spiritual interpretation at all. This parable is, as we

are told, addressed neither to the people nor to the scribes, but to the

disciples, and, as it must have been delivered during our Lord’s journeys

in the north of Judæa or its neighbourhood when He was but slightly

attended, it is probable that when He spoke it few beside the Apostles

were by. One peculiarity, which strengthens my impression that it was

uttered for the special benefit of the first hearers of it, is, that it

turns on a matter which only those who were conversant with the customs of

that place and time could fully understand. We know so little of the way

in which estates were managed in Palestine, that the relations between the

steward and his Lord are imperfectly conceived, and much of the difficulty

of this parable arises from this cause: in the other parables the

circumstances forming the shell of the story belong to all countries and

all times alike. If now, as I have supposed, the primary use of this

parable was for those who first listened to it; if it were specially

intended to teach the Twelve and their immediate successors not to make

too heavy demands on their converts; then it would matter less, if the

story should not be so clear for men of later times.

What I regard as the point of the story is this, that it is just as unwise

to exact the utmost that is due in moral and spiritual matters—casting off

every one who falls short in conduct or differs in religious views—as it

would be in worldly business to stand out always for the utmost penny of

your rights. The honesty or dishonesty of the steward is not the central

point on which the moral turns, it is his tact in remitting part of his

claims with a long-sighted view. I do not think that we need now trouble

ourselves with the question of who it is that answers to the “rich man

which had a steward;” but that he does not represent Providence is clear

from the eighth verse, which includes him among the “sons of this world;”

for it is his sense in commending the steward which draws forth the moral,

“The sons of this world are for their own generation wiser than the sons

of the light.” This rich man’s verdict on his steward’s conduct may be

taken to represent the view which practically minded men, versed in

affairs and regarding matters little on their ethical side, would take of

the case in hand; in fact he stands for the public opinion of his class.

Next comes the question, What was the business position of the steward? It

agrees best both with the circumstances before us and with such extraneous

information as we possess, to suppose that the functionary, called here

steward, managed absolutely his master’s property, and that he was paid by

a poundage on the net receipts, or by some similar method, so that his

interest and his master’s would, generally speaking, coincide. There is no

allegation against him of fraud or corrupt bargaining, and indeed, his

being in danger of beggary shews that he is not supposed to have made

himself a purse. He is charged with having “wasted the goods,” but this

may mean in the way of over leniency with creditors or of unproductive

outlay, not in that of personal appropriation. He was clearly not treated

as though he were liable to criminal prosecution. It is of course meant to

represent him as a _bad steward_, and the word here construed _unjust_

sometimes means little more than _bad_, as will be seen from Archbishop

Trench’s note, in the sense of being ineffective and unsatisfactory to his

employers.

Dr Edersheim observes as follows:(298)

“It must be borne in mind that he is still steward, and as such has full

power of disposing of his master’s affairs. When, therefore, he sends for

one after another of his master’s debtors, and tells each to alter the sum

in the bond, he does not suggest to them forgery or fraud, but, in

remitting part of the debt, whether it had been incurred as rent in kind

or as the price of produce purchased, he acts, although unrighteously, yet

strictly within his rights.” His master praised his astuteness, he had

kept within the law and so long as this was done the current code of

morality was satisfied. It is a point to be noted that no bargain is made

with the debtors, he trusts to their gratitude to receive him into their

houses.

A lesson prominent in the parable and which is brought out in the

application is, that as he had made friends by his leniency in

administering the substance of the master so they, Christian pastors and

masters, should make to themselves friends out of something which is

called the “mammon of unrighteousness” (about which we shall presently

enquire). These friends would, out of gratitude, receive them into “the

eternal tabernacles.” For these friends are to be in Heaven themselves,

and they must have got there—if we are to keep to the story—not only

through their pastor’s teaching and ministrations, but they must have

partly owed their salvation to the loving and merciful treatment they had

met with. An offender may be sometimes won over and completely changed for

the better by feeling that he has been treated more kindly and leniently

than he deserves. The parable implies that these might not have reached

heaven if their guides had been more hard with them, if they had exacted

every religious duty, and had been severe upon every failing. These men

having reached the eternal tabernacles welcomed into them those who by

lessening their burdens had been the means of their getting there

themselves.

We now come to the hard question, What is meant by the words “the mammon

of unrighteousness” or “unrighteous mammon”—which are identical? I think

they must mean the temporal authority in regulating things outward which

the earliest rulers of the Church necessarily possessed. The word

translated “unrighteous” does not here imply inherent badness, but that

the seeming wealth has only a value according to worldly judgment and

worldly measure, without intrinsic worth in itself. This may corrupt its

possessor as much as worldly riches. I give, in a note, Archbishop

Trench’s discussion of the Greek word.(299) Riches, _as riches_, are never

called unrighteous by our Lord. I do not think, however, that wealth in

its common sense can be intended by the word “mammon” here, for of “silver

and gold” the Apostles would have none. But though the Apostles had not

money, yet they had advantages for the use of which they must answer; they

had, in authority and position, what answered to wealth; they could

regulate the lives of the converts; they could lay hands on those chosen

for the Ministry; they could enforce or remit certain of the Laws of

Moses. This power dealt with things outward,—contributions, observances,

rules of discipline and the like,—and so, if, as the authorities quoted

seem to shew, the word here translated _unrighteous_ may mean false, in

the sense of unreal, as paste to diamond, then this possession of theirs

which gave room for the exercise of clemency—this apparel of dignity—might

be so termed in contrast with inward spiritual riches, which form part of

the condition of the individual man.

Of such real wealth we presently hear. Soon after this “the Apostles said

unto our Lord, Increase our faith,”(300) but this faith is not to be given

from without; it cannot be transferred into them as though it could be

poured from one receptacle into another. They are to fit themselves for it

and grow into it in the exercise of their work; when attained it would

move mountains, it would be a wealth that no man could take from them,

something inalienably bound up in their existence, comprising the blessing

of feeling God present in their souls. Here indeed is a treasure compared

to which not only silver and gold, but power and authority and the right

of ordering of matters in the churches, would seem trifling and unreal

like glass beside the gem.

Again what is the “little” and the “much” of verse 10? According to my

view the “little” answers to the externals of religious management, and

the “much” to the spiritual verity which passes from soul to soul: those

who are unfaithful in matters of administration which are comparatively

little, will find that this spreading laxity will overgrow their whole

nature and that they will soon become unfaithful in that which is

great.(301)

If God’s servants had not been faithful in administering their rule, if

they had not in God’s affairs used good sense and judgment, such as men

employ in their own business, if they had not controlled their tempers,

disregarded their personal interest and suppressed that temptation to lord

it over others which goes with new-born power;—if they had not, that is,

been faithful in the use of that wealth which is by comparison unreal,

then, not being faithful in the discharge of this delegated trust, “that

which is another’s,” who would give them that “clear-eyed Faith,” that

sense that God was abiding in their hearts, which would be essentially

their very “own.”

Thus we reach what I take to be the close of the parable; for the verse

about serving two masters, which occurs also in the Sermon on the Mount,

does not, I think, belong to this parable, but has only been _attracted_,

so to say, into its place by the occurrence in both passages of the rare

word “mammon,” which induced St Luke to put the two together.

I need hardly say, how far from positive I must be about the

interpretation of a parable which has caused such an infinitude of

comment.

Our Lord refusing to judge.

If we regard the Gospels in the light of memoirs of our Lord’s actual life

upon earth, it may seem strange that so few occasions are noticed in which

we are shewn our Lord dealing with the business of ordinary life. Whenever

we do find Him forced to take part in any secular proceeding, He is

uniformly careful to avoid such decisive action as would establish an

authoritative precedent in regard to things which might be left to men to

manage. Some people are now disappointed at His not having furnished a

wholly new and perfect scheme of human society. So far is He from doing

this, that He will not even put patches upon that which He found existing.

God had supplied men with faculties to frame social institutions for

themselves, and these faculties Christ would leave free to work. If He had

interposed to set the world right by absolute power, it might have been

asked, Why this had not been done before? and, Whether it was owing to

accident that the world had been let to go wrong?

Living among the people as our Lord did, He must commonly have conformed

to Jewish usages. He could hardly have performed any act without coming

into contact with their ways. If the particulars of every little

occurrence in His private life had been set down, perhaps we might have

realised, what we now hardly perceive, that in the Gospel we are reading

of Jewish life in Galilee two thousand years ago. This absence of what is

called “local colour” is partly due to the omission of small particulars.

An outline can be more general and more universal than a picture of minute

elaboration; and the portraiture of our Lord would have lost much of its

singular character of belonging to every age as its own, if the

draughtsman’s attention had been distracted from what was characteristic,

in order to present every detail with equal care.

Now arises the question, How far did our Lord Himself determine which

among His doings and sayings should be recorded and which not? If He had

Himself left a record, every word would have been regarded as inspired,

and the Christian church would have been ruled, not by an indwelling

Spirit, but by a book written once for all. It could not have been ruled

by both,—for men cannot walk after the letter and after Faith at the same

time—and that wooden fixity which characterised Rabbinical Judaism, would

have affected Christianity as well. It pleased God that it should be left

to men to tell the tale, and so other men may venture to use their

judgment about it. But as Christ passed on His course, He must Himself

have felt that this or that incident or discourse ought to be handed down.

How could He effect this without miracle of any kind? It seems to me that

He may have selected, as it were, matters for preservation thus. When He

desired an incident to be known, “Wheresoever the Gospel shall be preached

throughout the whole world,”(302) He emphasizes it, by some action or

declaration, as above, viz. by letting drop some vivid expression which

takes hold of the minds of men. Thus the story of the denials of Peter is

rendered indelible by the words, “before the cock crow twice.” The hard

saying or striking expression, sometimes because it touched the quick of

men’s understandings, and sometimes because it puzzled them to make it

out, was thought of again and again, and remained by them as part of

themselves. The incident which called the saying forth, or the colloquy in

which it occurred would have to be recorded to explain the saying itself:

a mass of the matrix would go along with the precious metal embedded in

it. What it was not thought needful to preserve, was not enriched with

these pregnant sayings and has not survived.

Hence I believe that the withdrawal from us of those “many other things

that Jesus did” was not without design. The consequences of this may be of

service to us in many ways, but the only one of which I shall speak is

this. If every detail of our Lord’s acts had been set down, many more of

those matters of daily life, on which judgment is now left open, would

have been determined for us by the recorded example of our Lord. Many

Christians would have felt bound to act as Christ had done, even in those

concerns of ordinary life which might well be left to the individual; and

many inexorable necessities—many rigid lines for which there was no

occasion—would have traversed the field of Christian action.

That our Lord should have thus placed a limit on the particulars that

should be recorded about Him falls in with the views taken in this book,

viz. that He was anxious to preserve individual freedom of action, and

that He looked forward with a general prescience to the course of events.

It is my opinion that our Lord foresaw, that, in time to come, men of

different races and under different conditions would desire to fashion

their lives after His, and that therefore He purposely freed the account

of Himself that should come into their hands from all that was immaterial,

and particularly from all that was exclusively Jewish in its garb; but

whether this were so or not, the fact remains that no particular national

institutions or social usages are consecrated by our Lord’s words or

practice. Supposing that our Lord knew that posterity would regard His

example as a sacred rule, and that He wished men not to be hampered in

this way, but to retain free play of thought and will, it is hard to

devise for Him a course more expedient for the end in view than that which

he actually took.

Several instances occur in the Gospels, of appeal being made to our Lord

about vexed matters belonging to the life of that time. Such appeals He

always meets much in the same way. He puts the matter aside, either by

positively refusing to judge or by giving the question an unexpected turn.

The cases to which I shall refer are, (1) the disputed inheritance, (2)

the woman taken in adultery, (3) the paying of the didrachma, (4) the

judgment on the tribute to Cæsar.

1. It seems to have been during the ministry in some city, either in Judæa

or Peræa, when the people were pressing on one another to get near our

Lord, that one of the multitude said to Him, “Master bid my brother divide

the inheritance with me.”(303)

This man was influenced by some notion that he had been wronged, a notion

which was very likely born of cupidity. This greed he carried always about

him, it was uppermost in his mind, and when he found the crowd listening

to the Preacher of righteousness, he thought that he might turn the

influence of this Preacher to account for his own ends. If, by an _ex

parte_ statement he could get Christ’s judgment on his side, possibly his

brother would do His bidding. The Jewish Law of inheritance was plain and

courts of Law were accessible, but perhaps his claim had been disallowed;

at any rate he thought it a cheaper plan to get the great Preacher to

interfere.

Our Lord repudiates in strong terms the notion that He is a “judge or a

divider.” Judges and dividers through many ages had been provided for

regular duty in a regular way; but Christ’s coming was an act standing by

itself in the History of the race. It had nothing to do with the internal

concerns of this people or of that. Its influence was worldwide. He was to

kindle the new fire, to set alight the spiritual passion in mankind. He

notes how, in the man who appeals to Him, every affection had been

absorbed and killed by his covetousness. He turns to the multitude and

inveighs against this insidious vice, and delivers to them the

parable(304) of the rich man who would pull down his barns and build

greater. There is no hidden meaning lying behind this parable as there is

in those in which He set the Kingdom forth, it is only an instructive

story for the hearers to carry away. Then, turning to the disciples, He

puts the matter in a higher light. His moral is ever this, that to improve

a man’s well being, whether of a material or a social kind, you must begin

by making the man himself as good as you can. Such material well being as

is needed for society will follow on the moral and spiritual improvement

of individual men. “Seek ye _first_,” says He, “the Kingdom of God and His

righteousness, _and all these things shall be added unto you_.”(305)

Let us suppose for a moment that our Lord had listened to this man and

reviewed his case and left a judgment. What would have been the result? We

should have had an isolated case of the Law of inheritance, on which an

irreversible decision had been pronounced. Every code framed for Christian

lands would have had to accept and embody this. Endless comments on this

particular case would have been written, endless guesses at the

circumstances of it would have been made, and every one who contested a

distribution would have endeavoured to shew that this decision covered his

claims. Moreover, whenever the Christian missionary came to a new country,

instead of holding a purely spiritual position he would have brought with

him a new law of inheritance as part of the new religion, and people could

not have accepted his teaching without changing usages to which they

clung.

(2) Next comes the case of the woman taken in adultery (see p. 370). In

the criminal jurisdiction of Moses the leading thought was to “put away

evil;” but men had grown less cruel, and pity for the offender and hope of

his reformation were coming into play. If the Lord had given judgment

either in one way or the other we should have been landed in endless

perplexity. The difficult questions of the distinction between a sin and a

crime, and whether it is advisable for a state to enforce morality, would

have been complicated by a Divine decision in a case of which the relation

would not, unless the account were fuller than the Gospel notices usually

are, contain all the particulars that are material.

The two cases that remain refer to polity rather than to law.

(3) The “didrachma” were levied apparently as a tax for the Temple

service, enforced by custom, if not by positive law. Those who collected

it ask Peter if our Lord does not pay this annual sum, and Peter at once

declares that He does. But our Lord will not leave the matter so. The

money shall be paid, because to refuse the payment would waken ill feeling

and give an impression altogether false; but our Lord will not sanction

such a payment with His authority, without protest and explanation. It

might have been made the ground of supporting many kinds of religious

impost if He had. He puts the question in such a light that His practice

can never be quoted in support of any such demand.

(4) Those who came asking whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar,

like those who brought the woman taken in adultery, had a hostile intent.

They asked with a view only to entangle, not with a desire to learn. Our

Lord always baffles those who address Him in this spirit. In dealing with

the question of the tribute, He avoids each horn of the dilemma and

teaches a grand lesson to the people who heard. For they were to render to

God “the things that were God’s,” that is to say, not a man’s money, but

the whole man himself, for he is made in God’s image and carries the

likeness of it in his personality, just as the coin carries on its face

the name and the impress of Cæsar. Thus, in these words, the whole man is

claimed as God’s own by Christ.

If our Lord had either enforced or forbidden these two payments, His

authority, appealed to on this side or that, would have further embittered

questions which are bitter enough of themselves. Men have often pored over

Scripture to extract an authority for what they wanted to do, and the case

of the tribute money, notwithstanding our Lord’s answer, has been pressed

into the service of the upholders of imperial power.

Dr Bryce speaking of the Mediæval Empire says:—

“From the New Testament the authority and eternity of Rome herself

was established. Every passage was seized on where submission to

the powers that be is enjoined, every instance cited where

obedience had actually been rendered to imperial officials, a

special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ Himself

had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through

Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by paying

tribute to Cæsar, by saying to Pilate, ‘Thou couldest have no

power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.’ ”

In finishing this notice I must remark that there is one social

institution about which our Lord does not shun to speak; this is marriage.

He upholds the sanctity and inviolability of the marriage tie more

stringently than did the Jewish Law. The scribe who came “making trial” of

our Lord is confounded—not by being put off without an answer—as usually

happens in these cases, but by the singular positiveness of the reply.

“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for

fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he

that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery.”(306)

This exception is not inconsistent with the principles governing our

Lord’s acts. Christ’s teaching was meant for all mankind, and Christianity

would have been less adapted for universal use if it had been bound up

with particular institutions. But marriage is not a particular

institution, it is declared to be as universal as the human race; it goes

down deeper than all divisions, it belongs to the stock below the point

where the branches sprout. Thus Christ’s recognition of the sanctity of

marriage does not hamper human legislation, or prevent the growth of

Humanity in any manner consistent with its health.

Close by the side of this matter lies another on which I must only say a

word. It is one of the Gesta Christi that He has put woman into her right

place. Slowly and quietly has this come about, as a growth from seed

turned up in the soil, and not a construction upreared by men,—as indeed,

with the changes that are wrought by Christ is mostly the way. He says not

a word about the social condition of women or their position in the eye of

the Law; He puts forward no grievances, He asserts no claim. To have done

either one or the other in His day would have been to bring about a

violent upheaval, which would have destroyed all chance of the germination

of the seed. Nowhere do men cling to old usages with more tenacity than in

the matter of relations between sex and sex. These variations of usage may

rest upon solid grounds, and it would have stood in the way of the

adaptability of what He left to the needs of all races and all times, if

by one rigid ordinance He had enforced uniformity, even in the justest

way. But though our Lord says little about the right place of women yet He

treats them as though that proper place were already theirs; for parts are

given them in His great world-drama consistent with those they take in the

common life of family and home.(307)

One word that our Lord drops has too important a bearing on this point to

be passed by. Frequently as our Lord alludes to eternal life, it is rarely

that anything as to the modes of this life can be gathered from His

speech, but in the one passage in which He does touch on this directly, He

implies that distinction of sex ceases with the life upon earth.

“But they that are accounted worthy to attain to that world, and

the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in

marriage: for neither can they die any more: for they are equal

unto the angels; and are sons of God, being sons of the

resurrection.”(308)

There is to be no marrying or giving in marriage in the Kingdom of God.

All will there be as the angels of heaven. There can be no such thing as a

male or female soul. Some may be educated for eternal life in the frame of

man and others in that of woman, but when out of the body all distinction

comes to an end, and both one and the other, if deemed worthy of the

resurrection to life, assume the nature of angels of God. When this comes

home to a people and they see that the distinction of male and female is

one of a day, while the angelic existence, in which no distinction shall

remain, is an everlasting one, then whatever remains that seems degrading

in the condition of woman will be in the way to disappear.

I will end this by stating the truth which I have had it in view to bring

out.

Supposing that Christ, lest He should hamper free human growth, was

unwilling to tie down posterity to particular rules touching the affairs

of life, and that He also foresaw that in time men would take His

behaviour as a model for their own; then the course He actually took, in

refusing to sanction by His example this or that course of proceeding in

matters coming within man’s cognizance, was admirably suited to His end,

and met perfectly the circumstances of the case.

Our Lord’s action prospective.

But if our Lord’s behaviour in secular matters is often hard to explain,

unless we suppose Him to have had a glimpse of what has actually come to

pass, much more is this the case in what concerns the building of His

Church. We know from His own words that He saw His end to be near at hand.

We know how He loved the Apostles and we know how His heart was set on His

great work; so that it is inexplicable that He should have left the

Apostles without directions for their personal conduct, and as to the

practical shape they were to give to the work in view. All is explained,

if they were merely being exposed to a few hours of trial, and if our Lord

meant to commission them with definite duties and give the necessary

directions, when He rose again. Apart from any miraculous foreknowledge,

our Lord could foresee that His end was near, and that persecution awaited

those who for more than two years had formed the chief visible interest of

His life. Would He have left them at Jerusalem perfectly at a loss, would

He have left them in the position of a boat’s crew in the open sea, whose

captain has died without giving them their course? If He had not felt

certain of being soon again by their side, then indeed we should, with the

author of “Ecce Homo,” have felt constrained to confess “that there was no

historical character whose motives, objects and feelings remained so

incomprehensible to us.”

After the Resurrection, the forms needful for a religious community are

delivered to the Apostles. They are given a rite, marking admission to the

body, and sacramental words serving as a symbol and the nucleus of a

creed. They are to go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father

and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Moreover they are told what they

are, for the moment, to do. They are to remain at Jerusalem, till they be

endowed with power from on high. Christ opens to them the Scriptures and

possibly left some instruction as to the earliest form of His Church

which, agreeably to His unfailing method, He does not communicate to

aftertimes. He will not stereotype the outward garb which he would have

adapt itself to the changing wants of men.

Christ’s intimations of the future wear the appearance of being given,

less to communicate fore-knowledge than that when the event came to pass

the hearers might feel that Christ had “told them before:”(309) if He had

thought good He would have made the lessons plainer. It may have helped to

sustain the Apostles during the terrible hours when their Master lay in

the grave, to turn to these words of forecast and from them to gather that

all was being carried forward towards a purpose preordained of God. It is

true that our Lord had told the Apostles again and again what the end was

to be, but they could not believe that He would permit His enemies to

prevail, and our Lord hardly seems to expect that they would take His

words as literal truth. If, during the last days, they had really believed

that He was about to perish on the cross, they would have been paralysed

with anguish and dismay, and the last lessons would have fallen on the

ears of men who were prostrated and stunned.

That our Lord’s action was suited to what did actually happen, and not to

what was likely to happen after the judgment of men, appears also in

another way.

The Apostles, both in themselves and in virtue of their training, were

exactly adapted to the part which came into their hands, but they were by

no means of the sort which the leader either of a political or a religious

movement would have picked out to carry it forward when He should die.

They were not men to fascinate crowds and lead them whither they would,

they were not men to discover that aspect of a dogma which should commend

itself to the understandings of their hearers. They had no skill in

policy, no experience in government or in organising bodies of men; their

strength lay not in their talent but their truth. If they had possessed

brilliant capacity, and all or any of the qualities named above, the

danger of disunion or of there being as many different followings as there

were Apostles (see 1 Cor. i. 12) would have been thereby increased. We

read in History or Philosophy of great men who have left empires or

systems for their chosen successors to maintain. Did such successors keep

free from dissension and disruption in the way that those did whom Jesus

chose and trained? Did any such body answer its purpose as the Apostles

did?

The training of the Apostles fitted them admirably, as has been said

above, for witnesses who should carry credit with the world; it brought

them, by the road of personal devotion to a visible Master, unto Faith in

an unseen God; it endowed them with wonderful endurance, it taught them

the patience whereby they might “win their souls;”(310) it educated their

intuitions to discern God’s ways and recognise God’s whisper in the voice

which spake at their hearts. But they were destitute of eloquence and of

many of the gifts with which the founder of a sect would have been careful

to see that those were furnished who were to take His place; and this

omission only becomes intelligible when we find that the deficiencies are

supplied by Christ’s presence with them, and by the Spirit from on high.

What was most important of all was, that no act or word of Christ’s should

seem to shut out from their share in Him any section of mankind. Agreeably

with this, He never proclaims Himself the Jewish Messiah. No Greek or

Roman would have listened for a moment to one who declared Himself the

especial prophet of the Jews. Though of the “house and family of

David,”(311) He will accept no advantage on this score. He repudiates for

the Redeemer of the world the title of “Son of David,”(312) which from its

nature was based on legitimacy and must rest on the veracity of

genealogical rolls. The Apostles were to divine the nature of His

Personality by long and close intercourse(313) with Him, more than by

canvassing claims or interpreting texts. When His disciples ask to be

taught to pray, “as John also taught his disciples,”(314) He gives them a

prayer very unlike what John would have given, for it contains not a word

of that petition for blessing upon Israel, which, in any prayer that an

Israelite offered, contained, to his mind, the gist of the whole. This

prayer too was offered, not to the “Lord God of Israel” or the “God of

their Fathers,”—as Jewish prayers(315) were; there was not a word in it,

echoing their boast that God was peculiarly their own—but every human

being is emboldened by it to turn to God as his Father in Heaven. In all

this, however, our Lord never loosens the bonds of Israelite life. He

proceeds always in a positive and not a negative way; without removing the

Kingdom of Israel from view, He lets it dissolve, as it were, into the

Kingdom of God.

There is another point brought out in this later ministry; Christ does not

look forward to ultimate visible success in the way of making converts. No

hope is held out of the whole world being eventually won over to

allegiance—of a spiritual conquest, any more than of a material

one—“Howbeit,” says He—and who would have said this but Christ?—“when the

Son of man cometh shall he find Faith upon the earth?” No other than

Christ ever dared to tell his followers, not only that their Master would

be put to death, and they themselves ill used, but also that it was very

doubtful whether their cause, as far as visible appearances went, would

finally prevail.

With Christ indeed as with God, there is no speaking of such a thing as

either failure or success at all; He moves steadily onward toward the

development of the Design of the World. But this men do not easily

perceive; adversaries of the Faith are apt to say “If this religion were

of God, the world would have been compelled to accept it.” But of what

good could such acceptance have been? Christianity is not a project of

God, which it gratifies Him for men to be made to fall in with. Christ

views His word as a winnowing fan sorting out those who are God’s, that

they may be brought to that knowledge of Him in which eternal life

resides. At some epochs of the world’s history, the yield will be rich and

at others poor; and although Christ may come at a moment when the wheat is

almost lost in the abundance of the chaff; nevertheless the grain of

earlier harvests will have been sifted out and garnered in heaven, and

Christ’s work will have accomplished its end. But besides sifting out

those who could be educated to eternal life, it is by Christ’s words and

work that the world has been preserved such that Holiness can grow in it;

without this it might have perished of evil. Wickedness might have so got

the Mastery that the world could not have served its purpose as an

exercise ground for man’s capacity for reaching the knowledge of God.

The whole scheme of Christ’s action is made complete by the promise, “I am

with you always until the end of the world.” Not only is it in virtue of

this truth that the Church is a living organism, and not merely a body

dispensing doctrines or following directions which have been received once

for all, but I also see the fulfilment of this promise in the alacrity and

vigour which characterised the Apostles’ work. They must have felt that

they were something more than a society of men held together by love for a

lost Leader; and I cannot explain how the eleven held together, and

subordinated every personal care to their Master’s glory;—I cannot account

for this personal transformation of them, _everyone_,—except by supposing

them animated by the feeling that Christ was among them still.

It is far more in harmony with our Lord’s ways for Him to put the

Apostles, by His spiritual monitions, into the way of organising their

Society for themselves, than that He should peremptorily lay down a formal

plan to which they must adhere. What Christ left undone, was what it would

be good for man to endeavour to do for himself: but if Christ had not been

by to whisper, men might never have set themselves to the work at all. The

energy and persistent determination of the Apostles could hardly have been

maintained without a sense of Christ’s abiding presence; and that they had

eye and ear open for discerning this I count to have come, partly of God’s

free gift, partly of their ingrained nature, but in far greater degree to

have been the outcome of the gentle and almost imperceptible Schooling of

Christ.

Christ washing the Apostles’ feet. St John xiii. 1-14.

“Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus knowing that his hour

was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father,

having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto

the end. And during supper, the devil having already put into the

heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s _son_, to betray him, _Jesus_,

knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and

that he came forth from God, and goeth unto God, riseth from

supper, and layeth aside his garments; and he took a towel, and

girded himself. Then he poureth water into the bason, and began to

wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel

wherewith he was girded. So he cometh to Simon Peter. He saith

unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said

unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt

understand hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash

my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part

with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but

also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is bathed

needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye

are clean, but not all. For he knew him that should betray him;

therefore said he, Ye are not all clean. So when he had washed

their feet, and taken his garments, and sat down again, he said

unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me, Master,

and, Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, the Lord and

the Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one

another’s feet.”(316)

More than once I have characterised certain of “the things which Jesus

did”(317) as “acted parables.” The cursing of the fig-tree, which is the

type of the class, shews what is meant by the term. The washing of the

Apostles’ feet is another of these parables of action. These acted

parables are usually furnished by incidents lying a little out of the main

drift of the action; as though Christ, struck by some plant or berry in

which virtue lay, should have stepped to the way-side to gather it and

preserve it for use.

The drift of the practical lesson of which we read above, I take to be

this. There are men, right in heart towards God, who are beset with

infirmities which lead them astray. The more alive their conscience is,

the more they are distressed by their lapses into ill. This distress may

grow morbid, and lead to ruin and despair. Christ in this symbolic action,

anticipatory of His Supreme Work, brings healing for such men’s woes. He

does not merely remit the penalty of sin, He actually “puts the sin

away.”(318) He is like a physician who can assure the patient that the

canker he thought was malignant is only skin-deep, and can be removed at

once. The parable speaks of a man who is “bathed,” and whose body is

therefore clean, but who by travelling along the dusty road has got his

feet sullied on the way; he has only to wash them, to become “clean every

whit.” So a man, righteous and godfearing at bottom, may be taken off his

guard and carried away by the stream, or he may contract moral and

spiritual ill from a physical irritation akin to bodily ailment; these are

the evils contracted on “life’s common way.” These kinds of spiritual ill

answer to the dust on the feet, they can be wiped off; they have not

seriously damaged the soul.

This was a cheering lesson, and it was made to bear on the duty of mutual

restoration. They were to wash one another’s feet. It is not the way of

the world to do this. If, in a body aiming at holiness of life, one of the

society should go wrong, it might seem the readiest way of upholding the

society’s good name to thrust out the offending member at once; but

Christians are not to deal with one another thus. It is just when a man

goes wrong that he most wants his brethren’s support. Who else is there to

stand by him? So if a disciple does amiss, the rest are told to wash his

feet as Christ had washed theirs—not making out that he was clean—fully

allowing that he was sullied, but telling him that the soil would wash

off; telling him that they had not given him up as being bad to the core,

and that they were sure that his Father in Heaven had not cast him off. So

doing they might lift him back into self-respect.

It is in St John’s Gospel only that this account is found, and it is not

hard to understand why the writers of the earlier narratives should have

passed it by. They looked for historical matter that was linked on with

what came before and after, or else, they took for their material pregnant

sayings along with the events out of which they sprang. They may have

omitted this incident, because of this washing nothing seemed to come.

They did not perceive how significant our Lord’s remark on it was. The

writers were just coming to the account of the Lord’s Supper, their minds

were taken up with that, and they went straight forward to this crowning

act. They probably saw in our Lord’s words nothing more than an injunction

to lay upon themselves the lowliest duties in serving each other. But the

words, “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt understand

hereafter” rested in St John’s ear. They implied that behind this washing

of the Apostles’ feet there lay something more than appeared. What could

this be? He turned the matter over and over again in his mind, and a

sparkle of the truth was, perhaps, struck out which served to make him

careful to set the matter down precisely as it took place, for men to look

into when they should have a better light.

Without entering into the controverted question as to whether the Last

Supper was the Passover or not,(319) I adopt Dr Edersheim’s view that the

contention for precedence arose as they were taking places at the table.

St Luke tells us, “there arose a contention among them which of them is

accounted to be greatest.”(320) St John omits the account of the

contention and St Luke that of the feetwashing, but the two fit together

admirably well. Our Lord, by this action of His, gently gives the Apostles

the lesson which they had shewn themselves to need. The scene evidently

rises before the writer as he takes up his pen, and every movement of our

Lord is followed and set down, from His quitting His seat to His wiping

the Apostles’ feet with the towel which He had wrapped round His waist.

The narrative goes on, “So he cometh to Simon Peter.” Peter’s

individuality is strong and marked in its character. Not only is he

demonstrative but he is quick to receive impressions and new emotion soon

displaces the old. His Master’s dignity was dear to him, and when he

thought this infringed, every other sentiment was lost in his indignation.

He says, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” But as soon as he is told that

unless his Master wash him, “he has no part with Him,” he is transported

to the opposite extreme, and begs our Lord to wash—not his feet only—but

his hands and head as well.

Throughout the Gospel history we discern our Lord’s care to keep men in a

fit condition to serve God by active work. All that would impair their

efficiency is to be shunned. Now, to repine and brood over some past error

cuts the sinews of action; from this the Apostles therefore are always

diverted, and they are to be watchful to prevent others from sinking into

dejection and folding their hands in despair. A man who is hopeless has no

heart for work, but when he is so far encouraged as to be able to exert

himself his despondency soon disappears. Thus, by their washing one

another’s feet, the efficiency of their Society in all ways would be

notably increased.

The Apostles seem to have rightly learned the lesson which Christ here

inculcates. St Mark had turned back in his first mission journey, but he

is afterwards spoken of with affection and found of great service; and St

Paul’s words, with which I shall close this notice, are quite in the

spirit of this acted parable.

“Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye which

are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of meekness; looking

to thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s

burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”(321)

Use of Signs in the later Ministry.

Ever since the time when after the feeding of the five thousand, the

people wanted to take Him and make Him a King, our Lord has been chary of

working Signs and Wonders; and such as are wrought are no longer used for

demonstration; Signs are now hardly if at all employed to attract

attention and waken interest. They had already done in this way all the

good they were likely to effect, and if they had been employed longer,

some of those bye-effects, which potent agencies are almost sure to

produce along with that which is intended, might have come into operation

with injurious results.

Between the journey to the feast of Tabernacles and the week of the

Passion, three only of the leading miracles are recorded; they are the

giving of sight to one born blind in Jerusalem, the raising of Lazarus,

and the opening of the eyes of the blind near Jericho. This last, of which

I shall first speak, occurred on that final journey of our Lord to

Jerusalem during which He seems to have resumed for a moment His earliest

function, that of witness of the Kingdom of God to the people at large. We

seem to see, once again, the same Jesus who lived at Capernaum and taught

the people by the Lake side.

Whether our Lord, on His way to this last Passover, set out Himself from

Galilee or joined on the road the great company travelling from the north

is left uncertain, but we find our Lord among a throng of visitants to the

feast, who are proud of having the Great Prophet of Nazareth among them;

and men come to Him—some with real troubles of soul like the young

ruler—and others, like the Pharisees, either curious to obtain His

decision on some vexed question, or maliciously setting Him in a dilemma

between the contravention of Moses’ Law, and the retaining of a burden

which men were loth to bear. One small event, preserved to us in the

account of this journey, gives us the clearest glimpse of our Lord’s air

and general demeanour that we ever obtain. There was, about Him, that

indefinable something which wins children’s confidence at sight. The

little ones, who swarmed in the hamlets of the Jordan valley, were drawn

to Him by something in His look, and—after long gazing out of their dark

eastern eyes, in childhood’s own intent way—they made out that they would

be safe with Him, and stole to His side.

The miracle of healing, worked on the way, that of the cure of the blind

men in Jericho, is nearly after the old sort. As Jesus nears the end, He

reverts to the ways with which His revelation began. Our Lord was touched

no doubt by the affliction of these men and their urgent cry, and this was

a miracle of beneficence, but He takes no pains now to withdraw the act

from public view, He does not call them “aside from the multitude,”(322)

and heal them in private as He had done on His way back from the coasts of

Tyre and Sidon some months before. This miracle stirred the hearts of many

beholders, and this emotion of theirs may have played no small part in the

great drama to which this journey was the prelude; for the company that

came with our Lord from Galilee formed the staple of that great concourse

which shouted

“Blessed _is_ the kingdom that cometh, _the kingdom_ of our father

David: Hosanna in the highest,”(323)

and this shout of the people not only roused in the priests that terror

which “sits hard by hate,” but gave them the very thing they

wanted—grounds for calling upon Pilate to prove himself Cæsar’s friend.

It is not likely that any of our Lord’s doings were without an ordered

purpose, and that this cessation of Signs certainly was not so, is

apparent from our Lord’s words spoken probably soon after the performance

of the first of those miracles mentioned above. The words are these.

“And when the multitudes were gathering together unto him, he

began to say, This generation is an evil generation: it seeketh

after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign

of Jonah.”(324)

On this text as given by St Matthew I have already commented; it is only

the coincidence of the time when it was spoken with the gradual withdrawal

of visible Signs that I have to notice now. Our Lord looks to sowing the

germs of spiritual Faith. This would not grow up either from the curiosity

of those who sought for Signs, or the stupefaction of those who gazed in

wonderment. Henceforth it is “the word of eternal life” which lays hold of

men. The questions asked in the deepest earnest turn now upon this.(325)

The revelation of it did not come by express statements or descriptions,

but rather it grew up in men through their consorting with Christ. They

could not believe that He would perish, and He told them that because He

lived they should live also.(326) Christ, speaking just before the end,

rests His expectation of bringing about the knowledge of God, not on His

works but on His Personality. His reply to the words “Shew us the Father,”

is not, Have I not done mighty works before your eyes? but, “Have I been

so long time with you and dost thou not know me, Philip?”

I now pass to the raising of Lazarus. It is not within my scope to discuss

the nature of the miracle, I have to do with it only in its relation to

that Law of the working of Signs, which is suggested in the Temptation of

the Pinnacle of the Temple. No Sign is given to men whose belief is in the

formative stage, in order to force it on; but to those whose belief is

already assured a conclusive miracle may be shown, because it does not now

constrain judgment but only confirms it. If the miracle had been at once

published wherever the gospel was preached, and if it had been supported

by testimony which no one could dispute, this would have been an exception

to the rule so often marked in our Lord’s conduct. This miracle is in its

nature appalling and conclusive, and it could not be attributed to

Beelzebub; but a loop-hole in point of evidence is left for those

indisposed to believe, for it rests on the unsupported testimony of St

John. The raising of Lazarus was not, we may conclude, recorded in the

Apostolic memoir which some suppose to have been the basis of the Synoptic

Gospels. I have said in the last chapter that I think it possible that the

entire body of Apostles were not continuously about the person of our Lord

during the six months between the Feast of Tabernacles and the last

journey. When Thomas said, speaking of the proposed visit to Jerusalem at

the time of Lazarus’ death, “Let us also go that we may die with

Him,”(327) I can hardly suppose that Peter can have been by and have held

his peace. Supposing then that the writers of this memoir, among whom

Peter must have held a foremost place, confined themselves as much as

possible to what they knew from _personal knowledge_, they would have

abstained from introducing a matter so wondrous as that of the raising of

Lazarus, which they had not witnessed themselves. In whatever way this

silence is to be explained, the silence itself accords with the

above-noted Law.

Passing on to the events of the Passion week, we may be struck by the

absence of all public and notable Signs at a time when, if ever, they

seemed of vital importance for the cause. A signal miracle wrought before

the crowd in the Temple would have rallied the people to the side of our

Lord in such numbers and with such vehement support, that none of His foes

would have dared to lift a hand. For even if the priesthood should have

persisted in persuading themselves that our Lord’s power did not come from

God, yet, they would not have dared to move, if the popular feeling had

been strong, lest they should provoke a riot and the Roman authorities

should intervene.

But the people were themselves disappointed by our Lord’s working no Sign

or Wonder, during these last days of teaching in the Temple. Some looked

for the restoration of Israel, and were impatient at the continued delay,

while the lower part of the populace had set their hearts on seeing a

prodigy, and none came. It may be true that, among the crowd who had

shouted “Hosanna,” the lead had been taken by the caravan of pilgrims from

Galilee, but still, at the time of the triumphal entry, the feeling of the

people of Jerusalem went the same way; this had cooled down to

indifference when our Lord left the Temple for the last time; and

disappointment had turned into contemptuous chagrin when our Lord, after

yielding passively to the Temple guard, stood before Pilate apparently as

powerless as they would have been themselves.

To Christians of to-day it seems of the essence of Christ’s sacrifice that

He should have submitted of His own free will to indignity and torment,

when, by raising a finger or uttering a word, He might have shivered the

power both of the priesthood and of Rome. His behaviour in this point is

therefore exactly what we expect. But this truth, inconceivable for the

people, had hardly dawned as yet on the Apostles’ minds. The multitude

would be told and would, in general, believe that the miracles of Jesus,

which all had heard of and some had seen, must have been unreal or the

work of Beelzebub; while those who had leaned towards Him would conclude

that, if He had ever been endowed with Divine power, it had left Him now,

or He would certainly have used it for defence.

But the Apostles were not left without fresh assurance, given to them

alone. Although of Signs, notable and public, during this period there

were none, still two Signs of a special character there were, which

exactly met the requirements of the case; they created no stir, they were

not observed by the people, but they served to keep alive in the Apostles’

hearts the certainty that God was with their Master still. One was the

withering of the fig-tree, the other the foretelling that Peter would deny

his Lord; of the first of these miracles I have spoken fully before.(328)

This latter miracle is connected with our Lord’s strange faculty of seeing

what was passing in men’s hearts, and of tracing what the outcome of it

would be. When men felt that Christ knew their hearts, they were getting

near the idea of His spiritual presence with them; so that all this leads

up to the crowning point of Christ’s education, the rendering the Apostles

sensitive to every breath of the Spirit, capable, amid a din of inward

voices calling them diverse ways, of discerning with sure ear the tones of

God.

This miracle and this event contain a lesson on forgiven error, intended

for all time. Here, as before observed, we have an instance of Christ’s

way of ensuring that what He desired to preserve should be handed down.

This event is stamped with life-like particulars which ensure its currency

and its becoming familiar in the mouths of men.

The words “the cock shall not crow twice” give to the incident a reality

which vitalises the story and preserves it for ever. Contrast the tale

such as we have it, with what it would have been if our Lord had only

said, “You will deny me before I die.”

As to the miracle itself a few words must be said. It brings out the

identity of the idiosyncrasy of St Peter, who is given up to the impulse

of the moment.

The Peter who denied and then wept bitterly, is the same man,

psychologically, as he who begged his Master to call him to come upon the

sea, and whose faith failed. This liability to panic clung to him; years

after, we find him at Antioch going along with Paul in freeing the

converts from Jewish obligations; but, as soon as “certain came from

James,”(329) he was alarmed at his temerity and separated himself,

“fearing them that were of the circumcision.” (See also pp. 423, 424.)

Neither by our Lord or any of the brethren is this failing of Peter’s ever

touched upon again.

This is exactly a case of what was noted at page 421. Christ washes from

off Peter’s feet the soil contracted on the way, and he becomes clean

every whit. The evil was only skin deep and had not tainted the blood. For

this denial was, I am sure, not due to any base fear. Peter had drawn and

struck for his Master, and was naturally bewildered at finding that his

Master would neither suffer His disciples to fight nor call the legions of

angels to His help. In their utter confusion of mind the Apostles fled,

but Peter and John followed a little way off. This they would not have

done if they had been in actual terror of being punished themselves. But

there was no real ground for any such fear; no attempt is made to

apprehend any follower of our Lord. To have tried to do so would have

increased that danger of riot, which the rulers shunned. What Peter _did_

fear was forcible separation from Christ. He was afraid that, if proved to

be a follower of Jesus, he would be turned out of the judgment hall of

Caiaphas. He would have said or done almost anything to avoid that. It

was, as we have seen, part of his nature to be mastered by the feeling

that was uppermost. He clung to his Master’s side with the instinctive

fidelity of a Highland henchman to his chief. Thrice he might have gone

away, but this he will on no account do. After being noticed he on each

occasion moves away and returns, only shifting his position; he goes into

the vestibule, and finally tries to mix with the crowd round the fire,

whence, out of the half-darkness which saved him from recognition, he

could still see his Master.

But “his speech bewrayeth” him; he is noticed again as he had been before,

and for the third time he denies. Whereupon the cock crows, and turning

towards the arcade at the end of the court where the trial was going on,

he meets our Lord’s eyes fixed upon him. Then, for the first time, it

strikes him that he has done wrong. It never occurred to Peter that in

saying “I know not the man,” he was being disloyal to the Master he loved.

He wanted to keep sight of his Master, and did not feel bound to speak the

truth to a foe. No words are needed to shew him his fault. One look of our

Lord settles the matter; it awakens the higher sense of truth, which had

gone to sleep when the old instinct of the Oriental peasant, the habit of

confronting authority with a flat denial, became dominant in Peter’s

breast. When the company of Apostles was scattered on their Master’s

apprehension, the strength they had drawn from association with Jesus

vanished at once; and then Peter dropped from the moral level of a

disciple of Christ into the Galilean fisherman he had been before. He had

been used to regard officials of Herod, or any ruling power, as his

natural enemies, to whom he was not bound to speak the truth, and to this,

his old self, he came back now.

But though Peter’s heart may have acquitted him of cowardly forsaking his

Master,—though he knew that he would, if need were, have gone with him to

prison and to death,—yet he felt that this denial was, in words—though

only in words—a falling away from perfect loyalty; it made clear to him,

as it may have been meant to do, the weakness of his character in the way

of yielding to impulse, and awakened floods of self reproach. He went out

and wept bitterly; but no trace appears afterwards of a loss of self

respect, or of his feeling it possible that he could be in disgrace with

his Master; in fact his part in his Master becomes all the greater, owing

to his having needed that He should wash his feet.

These two miracles of instruction then, the prediction of Peter’s denials

and the withering of the fig tree, were an assurance to the disciples that

our Lord still retained His superhuman power, and that whether He should

drink of the cup or put it away, up to the last, rested entirely with Him.

These powers of His could not be displayed to the people without hindrance

to the accomplishment of that Baptism with which He “had to be baptised;”

even the working of miracles of healing might so have moved the crowd that

they would have risen in His defence.(330) The Apostles, however, were to

be rendered sure that these powers remained what they had ever been and

that they were, for them, in operation still; so that they might never

doubt but that, amid all the apparent defeat, it was with the voluntary

sufferer on the Cross that the real Victory—the moral Victory lay.