Pastor Pastorum Part 11

"In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal _him_."(122)

It would seem that such happiness as our Lord found on earth came from marking the affectionate fidelity of the Apostles and their growth in favour with G.o.d. "Ye are they," says He to them, "who have continued with me in my temptations"(123) and He speaks of the "joy in heaven" and again of the "joy in the presence of the angels of G.o.d," "over one sinner that repenteth;"(124) every one who turned to Him with a single heart brought Him gladness. This joyousness, we may believe, spread a gleam over the life of our Lord and of His disciples, until when near the end the shadow came. The disciples were always slow to understand His hints of coming sorrow; they could not conceive that the spiritual triumph was to be emphasised by being contrasted with bodily suffering; and He had no more the heart to break the whole sad truth to them, than He had to waken the sleepers at Gethsemane. Circ.u.mstances would teach the apostles all the truth in time, but even His plain words on the last journey(125) do not seem to have been taken literally.

For reasons given in the chronological appendix I place the return of our Lord through Samaria early in May A.D. 28.

Between the return through Samaria and the journey up to "the feast of the Jews,"(126) some months have to be accounted for. St John relates but a single incident, the cure of the n.o.bleman's son at Capernaum, as belonging to this time; but I would also place here the preaching in the synagogues in Galilee mentioned by St Luke. His words are-

"And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round about.

And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all."(127)

This is parallel with St John's statement, before discussed, "The Galilaeans received Him, having seen all the things that He did at Jerusalem at the feast."(128)

I also refer to this period the preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth.

The tone of this discourse as I have already observed (pp. 164, 165) tallies with the notion before advanced of a previous ill reception of our Lord at Nazareth. There is no mention of our Lord's mother or brethren, they had left Nazareth (John ii. 12) and we do not hear of their return.

At other places in Galilee, our Lord had been received with enthusiasm, but at Nazareth petty jealousies prevailed. He does not, in this sermon, speak like one returning with renown to a warm welcome in his own town. He has an air of expecting opposition, as if He had met with it before. He condemns the narrow localising spirit of His hearers, and goes so far as to impugn the exclusive claim of the people of Israel to be the recipients of the favour of G.o.d.

It is to be remarked that no mention is made of _disciples_ being in attendance upon our Lord, from the time of His reaching Galilee by way of Samaria to that of His presenting Himself to the four Apostles by the Lake sh.o.r.e-that is, as I take it, from May to October A.D. 28.(129) The little company that came through Samaria probably broke up on reaching Galilee.

They had their bread to earn and for the most part went back to their callings; while our Lord during the summer of A.D. 28 was preaching in various synagogues, and went, almost unattended, to Jerusalem. The absence of His followers would account for the scantiness of our information as to this period.

I suppose that the feast spoken of in St John's Gospel (chap. v. 1), took place early in the autumn of the same year A.D. 28. It was, I conceive, about the close of this feast that the Baptist was thrown into prison; upon this, our Lord returned into Galilee, and His official ministry began.(130)

We cannot suppose Him to have been quite alone at this feast at Jerusalem, because some one must have been there to report what took place. I do not think that John was with our Lord at the feast, because, if he had been so, he could only have been absent from Him a few days before our Lord rejoined him on the Lake sh.o.r.e, and the incidents of this call give the impression that the separation had been of much greater length. I incline to think that our Lord was attended by Philip, who alone, at that time, had received the order "Follow Me."(131) If John drew some of his information from Philip, this will help to account for his frequent mention of him.(132)

It was on our Lord's visit to this feast that He first incurred the active enmity of the Scribes. It followed from His miracle at the pool of Bethesda, which took place on the Sabbath day. Since the cure was wrought by a word there was no breach of the law; but "the Jews" (by which word St John indicates the hierarchy) were shocked that He should tell the man to carry his bed on the Sabbath day.

"The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole. And for this cause did the Jews persecute Jesus, because he did these things on the sabbath. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh even until now, and I work. For this cause therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only brake the sabbath, but also called G.o.d his own Father, making himself equal with G.o.d."(133)

The hostility of the Scribes, we see, is very deadly. The Pharisees are often scandalised at infractions of their sabbath notions, but they do not seek our Lord's death as the Scribes do. The latter were probably Sadducees, tinged with western philosophy, and they were actuated by other motives beside zeal for the Law.

For one thing, they were in reality made uneasy by our Lord's a.s.sertion that a living G.o.d was working among them and close by. Ministers of state who have possessed themselves of sovereign power are startled and infuriated if their nominal monarch personally a.s.serts his power: and, something in the same way, a priesthood occupied in promulgating ecclesiastical laws and carrying on the externals of worship were frightened at the announcement that G.o.d, instead of leaving matters for them to manage, had Himself come to reign and rule upon the earth.

But what was more effective than even spiritual awe was their personal alarm. The dread which one of their body afterwards expressed-"The Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation"(134)-was always over their heads. They were a sacerdotal oligarchy trembling for their existence. The people hated the Romans, and the Scribes were bound to stand well with both: an outbreak might bring to an end whatever ecclesiastical independence they still possessed. The priesthood saw something in our Lord which might lead the people to take Him and make Him a king.

The reply, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work,"(135) is characteristic of our Lord's way. He does not meet the charge by contesting the interpretation of the Law. He ignores all quibbles of legality and goes to the root of the matter. It is by the working of G.o.d that the world is maintained. His Father worketh hitherto, on Sabbath days and all, and He, the Son, follows in His Father's ways. The same test of Sonship-that the child takes after the Father-is applied in the Sermon on the mount.(136)

I must notice another verse of this discourse,

"I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive."(137)

Our Lord here lays bare the reason why so few would follow Him. He touches the very centre of the matter. To kindle enthusiasm among a ma.s.s of men, you must have a person or a name. A cause is best embodied in an actual claimant standing before men's eyes; but failing this they will often rally to a _name_ that they know. Our Lord used only His Father's name; this did not move their human sympathies for "The Father" had no personality for them. It was reserved for the Apostles to draw men over to the Faith, and they were given the advantage which Jesus was content to forego. They could put forward a personal claimant for the loyalty of men: they had Christ's story to tell and Christ's name for a watchword and they won men for the kingdom of G.o.d by gaining their homage for the Son of Man.

The temporary separation of the Apostles from our Lord during the summer of A.D. 28 may have answered higher ends than merely enabling them to earn their livelihood. It gave them time to think over the events of the last six months.

It is a feature of our Lord's way in His course of teaching, not to suffer one set of ideas or influences to be disturbed before they have had time to take root. After a period of stress, or when new impressions had been stamped on the minds of his disciples, He provides for them an interval of calm. When the disciples return exulting from their mission through the cities, He says, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." When crowds thronged them and courted them for access to their Master, He carried them away, that the impressions He wanted to preserve might not be effaced in the turmoil. It may have been in pursuance of this treatment that, after the resurrection, they were sent for a time into Galilee, there to wait and to watch.

All teachers know that the time of rest that follows a period in which new matter has been taken into the mind is precious for good mental growth: conceptions then become more clear and complete, and effect a sure lodgement in the mind: but this, like many processes in education, helps to widen the distance between the weak and the strong. For it is only with the more thoughtful that this half unconscious brain-process goes on; the active minded mature their acquirements during rest, while the unthinking let them fade away. It argued well, in consequence, for Peter and Andrew and John, that Christ's influence had lost nothing through (as I believe) weeks of separation, but that as soon as they were called they sprang to their feet at once,-"they straightway left the nets and followed Him."(138)

Reverence for great men whom we have known, and the power of appreciating them, grow during absence. We may have been living so familiarly with one far above the common standard, that we may almost lose thought of his greatness; the little matters of common life, which come before us everyday, take more than their share of notice; and, as regards these, great men and smaller ones must be much alike. But when we are away from our guide, our recollections turn to what is distinctive of him-to the points in which he contrasts with everyday men: what he had in common with such disappears, and our mental portrait preserves what is characteristic, and gives us the individual more forcibly than our nearer view had done.

We often first become aware of the true proportions of greatness, when we look back on it from a little way off. Out of a range of mountains, all, when seen from the valley, appearing much of a height, one is found to vastly out-top the rest when we mount the opposite hill-side.

We may suppose that some process like this was going on in the minds of Peter and Andrew and James and John during that summer spent in their fishers' work by the Sea of Galilee. Our Lord's image would, all the more, be kept alive in their minds because when they chanced to meet their talk would be of Him; and their Master's form would seem to rise before them when they sat beside one another, with their boats drawn up on the beach.

We need not suppose that they saw into their Master's plans, far less into His nature; we do not know that they had heard _from Him_ about the Kingdom of Heaven which the Baptist had told them was at hand; but the foundation for Faith was being laid in a capacity for intense personal devotion. First they learnt to love the Master whom they saw by their side; next, by thinking of Him while He was away, they learned how much they loved Him, and became aware that their affection for Him had in it something different from the common affections they knew. Shortly, as we shall presently see, a sense of shelter and of fostering protection mingled with this love, and grew into a trust, first in the Master who was with them, and afterwards in the Lord in Heaven. It is hardly too much to say that the germ of the new quality, which was to order the world afresh, was planted in men's hearts by the side of the Sea of Galilee in that summer of A.D. 28, and that then Faith-Faith as our Lord speaks of it-dawned upon the world.

CHAPTER VII. THE PREACHING TO THE MULt.i.tUDES.

It was, as I believe, soon after that "feast of the Jews" lately mentioned (pp. 180 and 181 note), that the news of the apprehension of the Baptist by Herod reached our Lord at Jerusalem. At once He enters on His own Great Work(139) and goes straight into Galilee, preaching on the way that the Kingdom of G.o.d is come. The reasons for His holding back, came to an end together with the liberty of John. We lose now the guidance of St John, and we pa.s.s to the more continuous transcript of events which the Synoptists give.

Up to this time of His advent into Galilee our Lord was in part, as I have said, exploring the condition and the tempers of the people in quest of the fittest cradle for the Faith. It may possibly have been that our Lord in His visit to Jerusalem was giving the Holy City a last trial; but I see no ground to suppose that our Lord ever seriously contemplated any course different from that which He actually took. In any case, this outbreak of hostility on the part of the scribes settled the matter: for the kind of mental growth which our Lord wished to bring about in the disciples could not go on in the midst of party warfare.

Young men on the watch for attack are not in a state for fertilizing "seed thoughts" or for turning over hard matters in their minds, and care for the state of the recipient characterizes the teaching of Christ. Men are to take heed _how_ they hear, as well as what they hear, and are to reach full growth and shape, not from outward moulding but by living process from within. Our Lord's eye is never off His pupils, and yet visible direction hardly ever appears; He sways them by an insensible touch. A great truth is brought to light by an incident of wonder, a pregnant word is let drop, a hard parable is delivered now and then; but between whiles the disciples are left to dwell on their own thoughts, as their fishing boat sails along, or as they follow their Master among the northern hills.

Our Lord is ever bent on making men thoughtful and on calling out in each the inner life which is proper to the man, and for this, tranquillity, or at least frequent opportunity for quiet communing with their own thoughts, was absolutely required.

The antagonism at Jerusalem might have stopped short of violence and yet the wrangling spirit of the place might have had a very evil effect on the disciples. It was above all essential that they should have a single hearted love of truth; and this can hardly grow up when party is ranged against party and each tries to set the views and statements of the other in the most damaging light, and to dispose his own propositions in polemical order with a strategic view. As soon therefore as the hostility of the scribes was displayed, it became clear, that the schooling of the Apostles must be brought about elsewhere than in Judaea. But apart from this, Jerusalem was, for other reasons easy to perceive, ill-suited for the purpose. It was too Academical; the place was full of Rabbis, round whose feet a circle of pupils sat. Each school adopted its master's _dicta_ with the undiscriminating loyalty of youth; and the scholars of other teachers, by steadily taking it for granted that Jesus of Nazareth was a teacher like the Rabbis they knew, would have half persuaded His followers that there was something in common between Him and the Doctors who expounded the Law.

The Rabbis gave their scholars something to show for their lessons-expositions of the Law and systematic doctrine-and their pupils would have said to the disciples, "Our master gives us this or that; what does your master give you?" This would have set them looking for what was intentionally withheld. Our Lord did not fill them with opinions or directions to be remembered, but He made them what He wanted them to be.

To understand how wisely things were ordered, we must give a glance to what would have been the result of the most obvious and apparently "the most natural" course. Our Lord's brethren recommended that He should go and show Himself and teach at Jerusalem. I have shown the ill effects this would have had on the training of the disciples; I will now say a word on the way in which it would have affected the Church. If Jerusalem had been the seat of teaching, the disciples there, instead of numbering "a hundred and twenty," would have been a large body. Possibly they might have offered armed resistance to the apprehension of our Lord; and the whole moral of the action would have been lost if they had. But pa.s.sing this by, if a large body of disciples dwelling at Jerusalem had claimed our Lord as peculiarly their own, the universality of His work would have been obscured. The Church at Jerusalem might have dwelt more on His being their particular Founder and Bishop than on His being the Redeemer of the World.

Again, How would it have been with the authority of the Twelve? Those who had sat at His feet and listened, just as the Apostles had done, might have hesitated when He was gone to acknowledge the Twelve as the _founders_ of the Church; for the Church, they would have said, began with themselves. More than this, practical evils would have come about; for these original disciples, regarding themselves as the depositaries of tradition, would have recalled every practice of their Lord,-for instance the way in which He had given thanks at meat, or ordered service in prayer, as well as His practice as to the Sabbath and fasting,-these would have been pa.s.sed down as Divinely sanctioned, and the externals of religion would have been stereotyped as thoroughly as though they had been a new Ceremonial Law, like that from which He desired to release mankind.

Moreover the body of believers who had personally known our Lord, would have const.i.tuted a kind of ecclesiastical aristocracy; and distinctions-respect of persons-would have been introduced from the first.

What actually happened was far more consistent with the general tenour of Christ's plan so far as we can make it out. The few original disciples at Jerusalem were lost in the crowd who were added to the Church after the day of Pentecost, and the Apostles ruled with unquestioned authority from the first.

Galilee we have seen, as a retired spot with an honest-hearted people, was admirably fitted for the scene of the ministry; but yet it could not be "that a prophet should perish out of Jerusalem," and it was imperative that there the end should come. The Holy City was also fitted, in a very peculiar manner, to be the centre from which the new movement was to radiate forth. The Lord's death, the Supreme Event in the history of mankind, was not to take place in a corner. The circ.u.mstances of it could not be too notorious or too widely vouched. It was to be made known in East and West to the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman and to all mankind. Now Jerusalem, both geographically, and as the point to which the Jews of the dispersion bent watchful eyes from many lands, was wondrously adapted to be a centre of diffusion. It was in a very remarkable way a "city set upon a hill." It stood accessible to three continents, at the centre of gravity of the known world, and it was on the watershed of two civilizations: the Aryan and Semitic races and languages and the different modes of thinking which go along with the languages were brought together there.

Moreover, owing to the dispersion of the Jews and their custom of visiting Jerusalem at the great feasts when they possibly could, "devout men from every nation under Heaven" were drawn together there from time to time, and a common interest in what concerned "Israel" was spread over the globe. The agency of these festivals connected Jerusalem, as by electric threads, with every great city in the inhabited world, and the Israelites who were settled in every large town of the empire afterwards provided nests for the new Faith.

The Apostles, as was natural, after the Resurrection went back to Galilee.

It can only have been owing to directions they must have received, that they _all_ returned to Jerusalem for the Ascension. Our Lord then enjoined them to remain and from thence to propagate the Faith. This injunction explains their abandonment of their homes and callings, which is hard to account for otherwise.

I now proceed with the history. During this chapter I shall for the most part follow St Mark, who relates the events nearly in the order in which I believe they happened. After a brief notice of John and of the temptation he proceeds thus:

"Now after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of G.o.d, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of G.o.d is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel."(140)

The Evangelist does not say that our Lord came from Judaea, but He could have come from nowhere else. It would seem that our Lord on arriving in Galilee went at once to the Lake sh.o.r.e and called the two pair of fisher brethren to His side.