The facts as to the use of that name are very plain, and as instructive
as they are plain. It is a standing designation in the Gospels, both in
the mouths of friends and of outsiders; it is sometimes, though very
sparingly, employed by Jesus Christ Himself. It persists on through the
book of the Acts of the Apostles, and then it stops dead, and we never
hear it again.
Now its existence at first, and its entire abandonment afterwards, both
seem to me to carry very valuable lessons. Let me try to work them out.
Of course, 'disciple' or 'scholar' has for its correlative--as the
logicians call it--'teacher.' And so we find that as the original
adherents of Jesus called themselves 'disciples,' they addressed Him as
'Master,' which is the equivalent of 'Rabbi.' That at once suggests the
thought that to themselves, and to the people who saw the origination of
the little Christian community, the Lord and His handful of followers
seemed just to be like John and his disciples, the Pharisees and their
disciples, and many another Rabbi and his knot of admiring adherents.
Therefore whilst the name was in one view fitting, it was conspicuously
inadequate, and as time went on, and the Church became more conscious of
the uniqueness of the bond that knit it to Jesus Christ, it
instinctively dropped the name 'disciple,' and substituted others more
intimate and worthy.
But yet it remains permanently true, that Christ's followers are
Christ's scholars, and that He is their Rabbi and Teacher. Only the
peculiarity, the absolute uniqueness, of His attitude and action as a
Teacher lies in two things: one, that His main subject was Himself, as
He said, 'I am the Truth,' and consequently His characteristic demand
from His scholars was not, as with other teachers, 'Accept this, that,
or the other doctrine which I propound,' but 'Believe in Me'; and the
other, that He seldom if ever argues, or draws conclusions from previous
premises, that He never speaks as if He Himself had learnt and fought
His way to what He is saying, or betrays uncertainty, limitation, or
growth in His opinions, and that for all confirmation of His
declarations, He appeals only to the light within and to His own
authority: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you.' No wonder that the common
people were astonished at His teaching, and felt that here was an
authority in which the wearisome citations of what Rabbi So-and-So had
said, altogether lacked.
That teaching abides still, and, as I believe, opens out into, and is
our source of, all that we know--in distinction and contrast from,
'imagine,' 'hope,' 'fear'--of God, and of ourselves, and of the future.
It casts the clearest light on morals for the individual and on politics
for the community. Whatever men may say about Christianity being effete,
it will not be effete till the world has learnt and absorbed the
teaching of Jesus Christ; and we are a good long way from that yet!
If He is thus the Teacher, the perpetual Teacher, and the only Teacher,
of mankind in regard to all these high things about God and man and the
relation between them, about life and death and the world, and about the
practice and conduct of the individual and of the community, then we, if
we are His disciples, build houses on the rock, in the degree in which
we not only hear but do the things that He commands. For this Teacher is
no theoretical handler of abstract propositions, but the authoritative
imposer of the law of life, and all His words have a direct bearing upon
conduct. Therefore it is vain for us to say: 'Lord, Lord, Thou hast
taught in our streets and we have accepted Thy teaching.' He looks down
upon us from the Throne, as He looked upon the disciples in that upper
room, and He says to each of us: 'If ye know these things, happy are ye
if ye do them.'
But the complete disappearance of the name as the development of the
Church advanced, brings with it another lesson, and that is, that
precious and great as are the gifts which Jesus Christ bestows as a
Teacher, and unique as His act and attitude in that respect are, the
name either of teacher or of disciple fails altogether to penetrate to
the essence of the relation which knits us together. It is not enough
for our needs that we shall be taught. The worst man in the world knows
a far nobler morality than the best man practises. And if it were true,
as some people superficially say is the case, that evil-doing is the
result of ignorance, there would be far less evil-doing in the world
than, alas! there is. It is not for the want of knowing, that we go
wrong, as our consciences tell us; but it is for want of something that
can conquer the evil tendencies within, and lift off the burden of a
sinful past which weighs on us. As in the carboniferous strata what was
pliant vegetation has become heavy mineral, our evil deeds lie heavy on
our souls. What we need is not to be told what we ought to be, but to be
enabled to be it. Electricity can light the road, and it can drive the
car along it; and that is what we want, a dynamic as well as an
illuminant, something that will make us able to do and to be what
conscience has told us we ought to be and do.
Teacher? Yes. But if _only_ teacher, then He is nothing more than one of
a multitude who in all generations have vainly witnessed to sinful men
of the better path. There is no reformation for the individual, and
little hope for humanity, in a Christ whom you degrade to the level of a
Rabbi, or in a Church which has not pressed nearer to Him than to feel
itself His disciples.
There was a man who came to Jesus by night, and was in the dark about
the Jesus to whom he came, and he said, 'We know that Thou art a Teacher
come from God.' But Jesus did not accept the witness, though a young
teacher fighting for recognition might have been glad to get it from an
authoritative member of the Sanhedrim. But He answered, 'Except a man be
born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' If we need to be born
again before we see it, it is not teachers of it that will serve our
turn, but One who takes us by the hand, and translates us out of the
tyranny of the darkness into the Kingdom of the Son of God's love. So
much, then, for the first of these names and lessons.