IF we regard the miracles of our Lord as an epitome of the works of his
Father, there must be room for what we call destruction.
In the grand process of existence, destruction is one of the phases of
creation; for the inferior must ever be giving way for the growth of the
superior: the husk must crumble and decay, that the seed may germinate
and appear. As the whole creation passes on towards the sonship, death
must ever be doing its sacred work about the lower regions, that life
may ever arise triumphant, in its ascent towards the will of the Father.
I cannot therefore see good reason why the almost solitary act of
destruction recorded in the story should seem unlike the Master. True
this kind is unlike the other class in this, that it has only an all but
solitary instance: he did not come for the manifestation of such power.
But why, when occasion appeared, should it not have its place? Why might
not the Lord, consistently with his help and his healing, do that in one
instance which his Father is doing every day? I refer now, of course, to
the withering of the fig-tree. In the midst of the freshest greenery of
summer, you may see the wan branches of the lightning-struck tree. As
a poet drawing his pen through syllable or word that mars his clear
utterance or musical comment, such is the destruction of the Maker. It
is the indrawn sigh of the creating Breath.
Our Lord had already spoken the parable of the fig-tree that bore no
fruit. This miracle was but the acted parable. Here he puts into visible
form that which before he had embodied in words. All shapes of argument
must be employed to arouse the slumbering will of men. Even the
obedience that comes of the lowest fear is a first step towards an
infinitely higher condition than that of the most perfect nature created
incapable of sin.
The right interpretation of the external circumstances, however, is of
course necessary to the truth of the miracle. It seems to me to be the
following. I do not know to whom I am primarily indebted for it.
The time of the gathering of figs was near, but had not yet arrived:
upon any fruitful tree one might hope to find a few ripe figs, and more
that were eatable. The Lord was hungry as he went to Jerusalem from
Bethany, and saw on the way a tree with all the promise that a perfect
foliage could give. He went up to it, "if haply he might find anything
thereon." The leaves were all; fruit there was none in any stage; the
tree was a pretence; it fulfilled not that for which it was sent. Here
was an opportunity in their very path of enforcing, by a visible sign
proceeding from himself, one of the most important truths he had striven
to teach them. What he had been saying was in him a living truth: he
condemned the tree to become in appearance that which it was in fact--a
useless thing: when they passed the following morning, it had withered
away, was dried up from the roots. He did not urge in words the lesson
of the miracle-parable; he left that to work when the fate of fruitless
Jerusalem should also have become fact.
For the present the marvel of it possessed them too
much for the reading of its lesson; therefore, perhaps,
our Lord makes little of the marvel and much of the
power of faith; assuring them of answers to their prayers,
but adding, according to St Mark, that forgiveness of
others is the indispensable condition of their own acceptance
--fit lesson surely to hang on that withered tree.
After all, the thing destroyed was only a tree. In respect of humanity
there is but one distant, and how distant approach to anything similar!
In the pseudo-evangels there are several tales of vengeance--not one in
these books. The fact to which I refer is recorded by St John alone. It
is, that when the "band of men and officers from the chief priests and
Pharisees" came to take him, and "Jesus went forth and said unto them,
Whom seek ye?" and in reply to theirs, had said "I am he, they went
backward and fell to the ground."
There are one or two facts in connection with the record of this
incident, which although not belonging quite immediately to my present
design, I would yet note, with the questions they suggest.
The synoptical Gospels record the Judas-kiss: St John does not.
St John alone records the going backward and falling to the
ground--prefacing the fact with the words, "And Judas also, which
betrayed him, stood with them."
Had not the presence of Judas, then--perhaps his kiss--something to
do with the discomfiture of these men? If so--and it seems to me
probable--how comes it that St John alone omits the kiss--St John alone
records the recoil? I repeat--if the kiss had to do with the recoil--as
would seem from mystical considerations most probable, from artistic
most suitable--why are they divided? I think just because those who
saw, saw each a part, and record only what they saw or had testimony
concerning. Had St John seen the kiss, he who was so capable of
understanding the mystical fitness of the connection of such a kiss with
such a recoil, could hardly have omitted it, especially seeing he makes
such a point of the presence of Judas. Had he been an inventor--here is
just such a thing as he would have invented; and just here his record is
barer than that of the rest--bare of the one incident which would
have best helped out his own idea of the story. The consideration is
suggestive.
But why this exercise of at least repellent, which is half-destructive
force, reminding us of Milton's words--
Yet half his strength he put not forth,
But checked His thunder in mid volley?
It may have had to do with the repentance of Judas which followed.
It may have had to do with the future history of the Jewish men who
composed that band. But I suspect the more immediate object of our
Lord was the safety of his disciples. As soon as the men who had gone
backward and fallen to the ground, had risen and again advanced, he
repeated the question--"Whom seek ye?" "Jesus of Nazareth," they
replied. "I am he," said the Lord again, but added, now that they had
felt his power--"If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way." St
John's reference in respect of these words to a former saying of the
Lord, strengthens this conclusion. And there was no attempt even to lay
hands on them. He had astonished and terrified his captors to gain of
them his sole request--that his friends should go unhurt. There was work
for them to do in the world; and he knew besides that they were not
yet capable of enduring for his sake. At all events it was neither
for vengeance nor for self-preservation that this gentlest form of
destruction was manifested. I suspect it was but another shape of the
virtue that went forth to heal. A few men fell to the ground that his
disciples might have time to grow apostles, and redeem the world with
the news of him and his Father. For the sake of humanity the fig-tree
withered; for the resurrection of the world, his captors fell: small
hurt and mighty healing.
Daring to interpret the work of the Father from the work of the Son, I
would humbly believe that all destruction is for creation--that, even
for this, death alone is absolutely destroyed--that, namely, which
stands in the way of the outgoing of the Father's will, then only
completing its creation when men are made holy.
God does destroy; but not life. Its outer forms yield that it may grow,
and growing pass into higher embodiments, in which it can grow yet
more. That alone will be destroyed which has the law of death in
itself--namely, sin. Sin is death, and death must be swallowed up of
hell. Life, that is God, is the heart of things, and destruction must be
destroyed. For this victory endless _forms_ of life must yield;--even
the _form_ of the life of the Son of God himself must yield upon the
cross, that the life might arise a life-giving spirit; that his own
words might be fulfilled--"For if I depart not, the Comforter will not
come unto you." All spirit must rise victorious over form; and the form
must die lest it harden to stone around the growing life. No form is
or can be great enough to contain the truth which is its soul; for all
truth is infinite being a thought of God. It is only in virtue of the
flowing away of the form, that is death, and the ever gathering of new
form behind, that is birth or embodiment, that any true revelation is
possible. On what other terms shall the infinite embrace the finite but
the terms of an endless change, an enduring growth, a recognition of
the divine as for ever above and beyond, a forgetting of that which is
behind, a reaching unto that which is before? Therefore destruction
itself is holy. It is as if the Eternal said, "I will show myself; but
think not to hold me in any form in which I come. The form is not I."
The still small voice is ever reminding us that the Lord is neither in
the earthquake nor the wind nor the fire; but in the lowly heart that
finds him everywhere. The material can cope with the eternal only in
virtue of everlasting evanescence.