'Then Herod questioned with Him in many words; but He
answered him nothing.'--LUKE xxiii. 9.
Four Herods play their parts in the New Testament story. The first
of them is the grim old tiger who slew the infants at Bethlehem, and
soon after died. This Herod is the second--a cub of the litter, with
his father's ferocity and lust, but without his force. The third is
the Herod of the earlier part of the Acts of the Apostles, a
grandson of the old man, who dipped his hands in the blood of one
Apostle, and would fain have slain another. And the last is Herod
Agrippa, a son of the third, who is only remembered because he
once came across Paul's path, and thought it such a good jest that
anything should be supposed capable of making a Christian out of
_him_.
There is a singular family likeness in the whole of them, and a very
ugly likeness it is. This one was sensual, cruel, cunning, infirm of
purpose, capricious like a child or a savage. Roman policy amused
him with letting him play at being a ruler, but kept him well in
hand. And I suppose he was made a worse man by the difficulties of
his position as a subject-prince.
Now I wish to put together the various incidents in this man's life
recorded in the Gospels, and try to gather some lessons from them
for you.
I. First, I take him as an example of half-and-half convictions, and
of the inner discord that comes from these.
I do not need to remind you of the shameful story of his repudiation
of his own wife, and of his disgusting alliance with the wife of his
half-brother, who was herself his niece. She was the stronger
spirit, a Biblical Lady Macbeth, the Jezebel to this Ahab; and, to
complete the parallel, Elijah was not far away. John the Baptist's
outspoken remonstrances of course made an implacable enemy of
Herodias, who did all she could to compass his death, but was unable
to manage that, though she secured his imprisonment. The reason for
her inability is given by the Evangelist Mark, in words which are
very inadequately rendered by our Authorised Version, but may be
found more correctly translated in the Revised Version. It is there
said that King 'Herod feared John'--the gaoler afraid of his
prisoner!--'knowing that he was a just man and a holy'--goodness is
awful. The worst men know it, and it extorts respect. 'And kept him
safe'--from Herodias, that is. 'And when he heard him he was
perplexed'--drawn this way and that way by these two magnets,
alternately veering to lust and to purity, hesitating between the
kisses of the beautiful temptress at his side and the words of the
prophet. And yet, with strange inconsistency, in all his
vacillations 'he heard him gladly'; for his better part approved the
nobler voice. And so he staggered on, having religion enough to
spoil some of his sinful delights, but not enough to shake them off.
That is a picture for which in its essence many a man and woman
among us might have sat. For I suppose that there is nothing more
common than these half-and-half convictions which, like inefficient
bullets, get part way through the armoured shell of a ship, and
there stick harmless. Many of us have the clearest convictions in
our understandings, which have never penetrated to that innermost
chamber of all, where the will sits sovereign. It is so about little
things, it is so about great ones. Nothing is more common than that
a man shall know perfectly well that some possibly trivial habit
stands in the way of something that it is his interest or his duty
to pursue; but the knowledge lies inoperative in the outermost part
of him. It is so in regard to graver things. The majority of the
slaves of any vice whatsoever know perfectly well that they ought to
give it up, and yet nothing comes of the conviction.
'He was much perplexed.' What a picture that is of the state of
unrest and conflict into which such half-and-half impressions of
duty cast a man. Such a one is like a vessel with its head now East,
now West, because there is some weak or ignorant steersman at the
helm. I know nothing more sure to produce inward unrest and
disturbance and desolation than that a man's knowledge of duty
should be clear, and his obedience to that knowledge partial. If we
have John down in the dungeon, if conscience is not allowed to be
master, there may be feasting and revelry going on above, but the
stern voice will come up through the grating now and then, and that
will spoil all the laughter. 'When he heard him, he was much
perplexed.'
The reason for these imperfect convictions is generally found, as
Herod shows us, in the unwillingness to get rid of something which
has fastened its claws around us, and which we love too well,
although we know it is a serpent, to shake off. If Herod had once
been man enough to screw himself up, and say to Herodias, 'Now you
pack, and go about your business!' everything else would have come
right in time. But he could not make up his mind to sacrifice the
honeyed poison, and so everything went wrong in time. My friend, how
many of us are prevented from following out our clearest convictions
because they demand a sacrifice? 'If thine eye cause thee to
stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. It is better for
thee.'
And then, further, note that these irresolute convictions and
shirking of plain duty are not atoned for by, though they are often
accompanied with, a strange acquiescence in, and approval of, God's
truth. Herod fancied, inconsistently enough, that he was making
some kind of compensation for disobedience to the message, by liking
to listen to the messenger. And there are a great many of us, all
whose Christianity consists in giving ear to the words which we
never think of obeying. I wonder how many of you there are who fancy
that you have no more concern with this sermon of mine than
approving or disapproving of it, as the case may be; and how many of
us there are who, all our lives long, have substituted criticism of
the Gospel as ministered by us poor preachers--be it approving or
disapproving criticism--for obedience to the Christ and acceptance
of His salvation.
II. We see in Herod an example of the utter powerlessness of such
partial convictions and reformation.
I am not going to tell over again the ghastly story of John's death,
which no other words than the Evangelist's can tell half so
powerfully. I need only remind you of the degradation of the poor
child Salome to the position of a dancing girl, the half-tipsy
generosity of the excited monarch, the grim request from lips so
young and still reddened by the excitement of the dance, Herod's
unavailing sorrow, his fantastic sense of honour which scrupled to
break a wicked promise, but did not scruple to kill a righteous man,
and the ghastly picture of the girl carrying a bleeding head--such a
gift!--to her mother.
But out of that jumble of lust and blood I desire to gather one
lesson. There you have--in an extreme form, it is true--a tremendous
illustration of what half-and-half convictions may come to. Whether
or no we ever get anything like as far on the road as this man did
matters very little. The process which brought him there is the
thing that I seek to point to. It was because he had so long
tampered with the voice of his conscience that it was lulled into
silence at that last critical moment. And this is always the case,
that if a man is false to the feeblest conviction that he has in
regard to the smallest duty, he is a worse man all over ever after.
We cannot neglect any conviction of what we ought to do, without
lowering the whole tone of our characters and laying ourselves open
to assaults of evil from which we would once have turned shuddering
and disgusted. A partial thaw is generally followed by intenser
frost. An abortive insurrection is sure to issue in a more grinding
tyranny. A soul half melted and then cooled off is less easy to melt
than it was before. And so, dear brethren, remember this, that if
you do not swiftly and fully carry out in life and conduct
whatsoever you know you ought to be or do, you cannot set a limit to
what, some time or other, if a strong and sudden temptation is
sprung upon you, you may become. 'Is thy servant a dog that he
should do this thing?' Yes! But he did it. No mortal reaches the
extreme of evil all at once, says the wise old proverb; and the path
by which a man is let down into depths that he never thought it was
possible that he should traverse is by the continual neglect of the
small admonitions of conscience. Neglected convictions mean, sooner
or later, an outburst of evil.
John's murder may illustrate another thing too--viz. how simple,
facile weakness of character may be the parent of all enormities.
Herod did not want to kill John. He very much wanted to keep him
alive. But he was not man enough to put his foot down, and say,
'There! I have said it; and there is to be no more talk about
slaying this prophet of God.' So the continual drop, drop, drop, of
Herodias' suggestions and wishes wore a hole, in the loose-textured
stone at last; and he did the thing that he hated to do and had long
fought against. Why? Because he was a poor weak creature.
The lesson from this is one that I would urge upon all you young
people especially, that in a world like this, where there are so
many more voices soliciting us to evil than inviting us to good, to
be weak is, in the long run, to be wicked. So do you cultivate the
wholesome habit of saying 'No,' and do not be afraid of anything but
of hurting your conscience and sinning against God.
III. Once more, we have in Herod an example of the awakening of
conscience.
When Jesus began to be talked about beyond the narrow limits of the
shores of the Sea of Galilee, and especially when He began to
organise the Apostolate, and His name was spread abroad, some
rumours reached even the court, and there were divergent opinions
about Him. One man said, It is Elias; and another said, It is a
prophet, 'and Herod said, It is John, whom I beheaded. He has risen
from the dead, and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves
in him.'
Ah, brethren! when a man has, away back in the chambers of his
memory, some wrong thing, be it great or be it little, he is at the
mercy of any chance or accident to have it revived in all its
vividness. It is an awful thing to walk this world with a whole
magazine of combustibles in our memories, on which any spark may
fall and light lurid and sulphurous flames. A chance thing may do
it, a scent, a look upon a face, a sound, or any trifle may bring
all at once before the wrongdoer that ancient evil. And no lapse of
time makes it less dreadful when it is unveiled. The chance thrust
of a boat-hook that gets tangled in the grey hairs of a corpse,
brings it up grim to the surface. Press a button, by accident, upon
a wall in some old castle, and a door flies open that leads away
down into black depths. You and I have depths of that sort in our
hearts. Then there are no more illusions about whose fault the deed
was. When Herod killed John, he said, 'Oh! It is not I! It is
Herodias. It is Salome. It is my oath. It is the respect I bear to
the people who heard me swear. I must do it, but I am not
responsible.' But when, in 'the sessions of silent thought,' the
deed came back to him, Salome and Herodias, the oath, and the
company were all out of sight, and he said, 'I! _I_ did it.'
That is what we all shall have to do some day, in this world
possibly, in the next certainly. Men sophisticate themselves with
talk about palliations, and excuses, and temptations, and companions
and the like. And philosophers sophisticate themselves nowadays
with a great many learned explanations, which tend to show that a
man is not to blame for the wrong things he does. But all that
rubbish gets burned up when conscience wakes, and the doer says,
'Whom _I_ beheaded.'
Brethren, unless we take refuge in the great sacrifice for the sins
of the world which Jesus Christ has made, we shall, possibly in this
life, and certainly hereafter, be surrounded by a company of our own
evil deeds risen from the dead, and every one of them will shake its
gory locks at us, and say, '_Thou_ didst it.'
IV. The last lesson that I gather from this man's life is the final
insensibility which these half-and-half convictions tend to produce.
Jesus Christ was sent by Pilate to Herod as a kind of peace-offering.
The two had been squabbling about some question of jurisdiction; and
so, partly to escape from the embarrassment of having to deal with
this enigmatical Prisoner, and partly out of a piece of politic
politeness, Pilate sends Jesus to Herod, because He was in his
jurisdiction. Think of the Lord of men and angels being handed about
from one to the other of these two scoundrels, as a piece of politeness!
When Christ stands before Herod, note that all its former
convictions, partial or entire, and all its terrors superficial or
deep, have faded clean away from this frivolous soul. All that he
feels now is a childish delight in having this well-known Man before
him, and a hope that, for his delectation, Jesus will work a
miracle; much as he might expect a conjurer to do one of his tricks!
That is what killing John came to--an incapacity to see anything in
Jesus.
'And he asked Him many questions, and Jesus answered him nothing.'
He locked His lips. Why? He was doing what He Himself enjoined:
'Give not that which is holy to the dogs. Cast not your pearls
before swine.' He said nothing, because He knew it was useless to
say anything. So the Incarnate Word, whose very nature and property
it is to speak, was silent before the frivolous curiosity of the man
that had been false to his deepest convictions.
It is a parable, brother, of what is being repeated over and over
again amongst us. I dare not say that Jesus Christ is ever
absolutely dumb to any man on this side of the grave; but I dare not
refrain from saying that this condition of insensibility to His
words is one that we may indefinitely approach, and that the surest
way to approach it and to reach it is to fight down, or to neglect,
the convictions that lead up to Him. John was the forerunner of
Christ, and if Herod had listened to John, to him John would have
said: 'Behold the Lamb of God!' To you I say it, and beseech you to
take that Lamb of God as the Sacrifice for your sins, for the Healer
and Cleanser of your memories and your consciences, for the Helper
who will enable you joyfully to make all sacrifices to duty, and to
carry into effect every conviction which His own merciful hand
writes upon your hearts. And oh, dear friends, many of you strangers
to me, to whom my voice seldom comes, let me plead with you not to
be content with 'hearing' any of us 'gladly,' but to do what our
words point to, and to follow Christ the Saviour. If you hear the
Gospel, however imperfectly, as you are hearing it proclaimed now,
and if you neglect it as--must I say?--you are doing now, you will
bring another film over your eyes which may grow thick enough to
shut out all the light; you will wind another fold about your hearts
which may prove impenetrable to the sword of the Spirit; you will
put another plug in your ears which may make them deaf to the music
of Christ's voice. Do what you know you ought to do, yield
yourselves to Jesus Christ. And do it now, whilst impressions are
being made, lest, if you let them sleep, they may never return.
Felix trembled when Paul reasoned; but he waved away the messenger
and the message, and though he sent for Paul often, and communed
with him, he never trembled any more.
'There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood,'
would lead us into the haven of rest in Christ; and, if allowed to
pass, may leave us, stranded and shipwrecked, among the rocks.