Pastor Pastorum Part 13

True human freedom was with Him a sacred thing; what man was made for was that he might be a free spiritual being; and a man is not free when he is fascinated by fervid oratory and becomes the blind tool of another, or when he is intoxicated by religious fanaticism and is no longer master of his own mind. Any agencies, therefore, which would impair the health and freedom of a man's will Christ refused to employ. They belonged to that Spirit of the World whose alliance He had refused. One cause of this sobriety of the great movement may be found in the elevation and tone of authority which has just been spoken of as characterizing our Lord. He seemed to move in a plane parallel indeed to that of men, but a little above it. For a speaker to kindle men's pa.s.sions he must be possessed by the notions and feelings of the time: he and his hearers must have common objects of desire, or a common jealousy of those who possess what they themselves want, they must therefore wear the stamp of a pa.s.sing and particular phase of mankind. Now it was the distinctive peculiarity of our Lord's Personality that it belongs not more to one time or cla.s.s than to another. The Son of Man represents Humanity in the abstract, and no party has ever been able to claim Him as their own.

In the course of the winter of A.D. 28-29, Levi, in the vernacular of Galilee called also Matthew, a toll-taker on the borders of the lake, is summoned to follow our Lord. He justified our Lord's choice in a signal manner, for "he forsook all, and rose up and followed Him."

There must have been in this man "a soul of goodness" of rare efficacy in resisting influences to ill. His position must have offered temptation to exaction. This was corrupting, but the steady and persistent effect of feeling himself despised must have been more so even than this. He was hated not only as the tax-gatherer, but also as having accepted the service of the foreign oppressors of the land. However justly the publican might have striven to act, it would be taken for granted that he was endeavouring to fleece those who came into his hands; and a man soon becomes what people about him will have it that he is.

Now and then, however, in all positions, we come across natures which run counter to the influences around them, or which by a happy chemistry decompose the evil and turn its elements to good. Everything in the publican's calling fostered the love of gain; and to be able to save enough to give it up and live down ill report was his only hope. But Matthew breaks with his means of subsistence totally and at once. At one word of our Lord he throws all away without a moment's thought, and joins the little band of followers which was being drawn into closer attendance on our Lord. This man surely had "salt in himself."

St Matthew has left us his Gospel. We learn from this which way his thoughts lean, and we see that he was not of that type of mind most commonly a.s.sociated with the idea of the Apostle of a new creed. He was probably not very young and his views were formed and fixed: his national sympathy was intense. G.o.d was to him, first of all, the G.o.d of Israel, and he regarded our Lord as the Messiah, after the type which Jewish hopes and fancies had fashioned for themselves. In all that occurred he saw the reproduction of what was narrated in the old books; and the burden "Now this was done that the Scripture might be fulfilled" runs through all his writings.

Here then, some might say, we have a man chosen as a witness and promulgator of a faith which is to be universal, yet this man's sympathies flow only along one narrow channel, and he is wedded to old ways of reading the mind of G.o.d. He was however a guileless, G.o.d-fearing, high-hearted man; and it could not but strengthen the cause to have among the Apostles one who could enter into the minds of those who looked for the consolation of Israel in the old Hebrew way. The first function of the Apostles,-one on which I shall soon speak pretty fully-was that they were to bear _witness_ of Christ. This was set forth in that which, so to say, was their charter of incorporation. "Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judaea and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth."(149) Now the more varied the characters of the witnesses the stronger would be the case when they agreed.

Our Lord, then, will have, among His immediate followers, minds of every sort. He does not pick out those only who are most after His own heart, nor does he mould men into one fashion, so that they should think on all points alike. We cannot have freedom among human beings without diversity.

St Matthew, we perhaps say, had old world views; but it may have been just because of these, that he was the most fit Apostle for the Eastern world.

There would be crowds of men whom he would understand and who would understand him, but whose minds would have been closed to the utterances of Paul. The vineyard to which Christ called his labourers was the whole world; it contained vines of every stock growing on every soil. It was well then, that there should be labourers bred in various schools of husbandry, and that each should work in the fashion in which he felt he could do it best.

Another point to be noted about the call of St Matthew is this: The choice of a publican was a practical proof to the other disciples, as it is to the Church for ever, that Christ is in no way a respecter of persons. The two pairs of brethren who followed our Lord may have been startled at the call of Matthew, for they no doubt looked on publicans as their countrymen did; and this act of our Lord's taught them, more forcibly than any words could have done, that with Him outward circ.u.mstance went for nothing and the inward man was all in all. In this call of Matthew the spirit of universality which belongs to the Christian Church is folded up like the embryo in the seed. Our Lord makes no comment on this call; nor do we hear of any murmurs from the disciples, who had by this time learned that our Lord was wiser than they, as Peter had found when he let down the net.

Shortly before the call of St Matthew a miracle occurred, the cure of the sick of the palsy, when our Lord's renown was at its height-a miracle at the performance of which "there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every village of Galilee and Judaea and Jerusalem."(150) The presence of these strangers bears on what follows.

Hitherto we have read of no contest or conflict in Capernaum; but these Pharisees conceived misgivings about the movement they had come to see.

This hostility was very different from that of the Sadducees in Jerusalem, who, regarding the movement as an insane delusion likely to bring things about their ears, set themselves remorselessly to root it out. But the Pharisees do not seem at first to have borne our Lord any personal hatred, but only to have been uneasy about the new teaching which went too far for them, and did not follow the course which they had expected.

The Pharisees, nevertheless, were now on the watch for occasion to find fault. This is not an occupation which brings out the amiable side of men's natures; and they became still more soured by finding nothing on which to hang a charge; so that at last they even leagued with the Herodians, their natural opponents, against our Lord. The most popular of all accusations, and one for which it was easy to find ground, was a breach of the traditionary rules for keeping the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was an inestimable Law. It was maintained by Divine sanction at a time when a Law could not be upheld by any other means: it debarred men from "doing what they would with their own" on one day out of seven, so far as regarded the labour of themselves or of their children, their servants, their ox or their a.s.s. It secured for the race this portion of time against the greed of gain: but all this was done _for men_, although the Jews had come to look on it as something done _by men for G.o.d_, and in so doing they made G.o.d a taskmaster like the G.o.ds of the pagans. Moreover the Sabbath kept alive in each Israelite his self-respect as one of G.o.d's people; however sordid his calling, he put away every seventh day his squalor and his toil and resumed the dignity of Abraham's son. The Sabbath question was the chosen battle-ground of those who reduced all virtues to that literal unquestioning obedience to authoritative records, which was so damaging to moral and spiritual life. Men thought that G.o.d's favour was won or His wrath incurred in virtue of acts-such as the keeping within or the overstepping the limit of the journey allowed on the Sabbath-day-which in themselves had no moral significance at all.

Here again we see how our Lord deals with views falling short of the truth. The moral creed of His countrymen was imperfect; it unduly exalted and obtruded formal duties, but it was all that they had; their whole life and that of their nation was moulded by it; instincts fostered by it had become hereditary, and to break it ruthlessly down would have been to lay waste men's souls.

In the instance before us our Lord introduces a freer practice; and trusts to this to give birth in time to more intelligent notions about the Sabbath day.

One pa.s.sage in the history I purposely pa.s.sed by. I thought that I might have to write of it at such a length as to break the continuity of the narrative, and I therefore kept it for the close of the chapter. The pa.s.sage in question, which I subjoin, immediately follows the account of the entertainment of our Lord in Matthew's house.

"Then come to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the sons of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then will they fast.

And no man putteth a piece of undressed cloth upon an old garment; for that which should fill it up taketh from the garment, and a worse rent is made. Neither do _men_ put new wine into old wine-skins: else the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins perish: but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins, and both are preserved."(151)

The Pharisees practised fasting on the second and fifth days of the week: the same practice was probably followed by the disciples of John; and if we suppose that Matthew made this feast on one of the fasting days, this would bring the contrast between the ways of John and of Jesus more sharply out.

Before examining the charge and the reply, a word must be said on the absence of all distinctive religious observances in the practice of our Lord and His disciples.

The Baptist, we know, enjoined stated fasts and taught his people to pray, and above all enforced the initiatory rite from which he drew his name. At a later period our Lord's disciples beg to be taught to pray, "as John also taught his disciples."(152)

In those days people looked to a religion to order the externals of a man's life; hours of prayer portioned out his day; and so, even the disciples appear to have felt that with them there was something lacking, and that they were at a disadvantage compared with John's disciples because they were not, through conformity to a special rule, formed into a body and marked with a badge.

It is easy to find reasons why our Lord should have avoided doing what John did. If He had enjoined any system of religious observance, this would have limited the spread of His Kingdom, and have laid on observances in general more stress than He desired. One Law or one ritual would not suit all nations, or all times; for forms must vary with men's modes of life, and if our Lord had introduced a form of worship He would have _particularised_ that which, of its very essence, was meant to be universal. John came as a prophet and forerunner, and he set on foot a sect, which was held together and long kept alive by usages of its own; but the very observances which gave it vitality as a sect prevented its ever becoming anything more than a sect. Our Lord is not founding a sect at all; He is not a missionary making converts. He comes on earth to proclaim that G.o.d loves men, and to open a way by which men should "come to the Father." He leaves behind Him men suited to direct a religious movement, but He organises none himself. Whether He drew many round Him or few, His great work for the world would equally be completed on the Cross.

He never baptised, never inst.i.tuted rites, laws or fasts, or stated services of prayer; it is not till He leaves the earth that He enjoins the sacraments of His Church. It was to be left to men to put all into shape, for _the outer form belongs to man_; and, if He had Himself adopted any particular practice in any of the matters above named, men might imagine that this was binding for evermore and had a virtue in itself.

We come now to our Lord's plain and practical answer to the particular questions of the Pharisees which have led to these remarks. Fasting comes by nature when a man is sad, and it is in consequence the natural token of sadness: when a man is very sad, for the loss of relations or the like, he loses all inclination for food. But every outward sign that can be displayed at will is liable to abuse, and so men sometimes fasted when they were not really sad, but when it was decorous to appear so. Moreover a kind of merit came to be attached to fasting as betokening sorrow for transgressions; and at last it came to be regarded as a sort of self-punishment which it was thought the Almighty would accept in lieu of inflicting punishment Himself. Our Lord does not decry stated fasts or any other Jewish practices, they had their uses and they would last their times; only He points men to the underlying truth which was at the bottom of the ordinance.

When our Lord spoke, the children of the bridechamber the companions of the bridegroom's youth, were still with Him, but He and they would soon have to part. Sorrow must needs come upon them for the following reason, if for no other, that man's education cannot be perfect without it. Then indeed would they fast, not because it was enjoined, not of any stated precept, but because they were bereaved of their Lord.

Our Lord now turns to a metaphor, it was a familiar one. The lesson it seems to carry is this: our Lord will not meddle with the old form of things, He will not patch up the old tenement in order that the new spirit may make shift to dwell in it. Change with Him is never mechanical, always organic; it comes, not by alteration in construction, but always purely of growth. He is propagating spiritual truth in the souls of men; the time is not yet ripe for rites and ordinances and hours of worship. But the days would come when the truth would need a garb-it would have to struggle amongst human inst.i.tutions, and it must then have outer expression just as other inst.i.tutions have. This expression men must give, and Christ was careful that, when the time came for this to be done, the right men should be in their place to do it.

He takes a second metaphor to set forth the second part of His work: He will have new flasks for the new wine. This new doctrine was not committed either to the disciples of John or even to scribes enlightened about the kingdom of heaven, but to those who, having no preconceptions, received it as children do their parents' words. This new wine would go on working and would want room to expand. Peter we know expanded with it; but men whose minds had stiffened into shape under existing systems were like old flasks of skin, so harsh and dry that they would sooner crack than stretch; they were neither plastic nor elastic, and our Lord wanted vessels that should be both the one and the other. These new flasks were now soon to be chosen; and when this was done the work would enter on a new phase.

Up to the time of the call of the Apostles, our Lord's most conspicuous concern is for the mult.i.tudes. After that call, the Apostles occupy the foreground, and the whole manner of teaching is rather suddenly changed.

It is no longer adapted to a congregation of peasants; parables take the place of plain speech, and instead of everything being done _for_ the learner as before, much is left to be done _by_ him for himself. We mark another change also in the manner. Hitherto there has been no _haste_, all has proceeded in the most leisurely way; but soon danger will begin to threaten and time to press, and act to follow act in close succession.

Following the subject of my book, I have been careful to mark how our Lord from the very first had an eye for characters of the sort He wanted and how He shaped them, with an unseen hand; but I must not have it supposed, because we see little lasting outcome from the preaching to the mult.i.tude, that therefore it was unimportant compared with the training of the Apostles. We must not suppose that Christ taught and healed chiefly that the Apostles might listen and learn.

We can discern two kinds of good wrought by our Lord. In preaching to the mult.i.tude he was, then and there, bringing G.o.d's light into the souls of men. In choosing and fashioning the disciples, He was providing for the future of His Church. The work which the Apostles should set on foot would spread over the earth and affect all future times, while our Lord could Himself touch but a single generation in a single spot. Those, however, who heard Him, carried to their homes a memory to last their lives; among them His Personality survived. If, afterwards, troubled questions arose about Him they would put them by, feeling that they had drunk at the source before the stream had got sullied on its way.

When our Lord came into villages where He was known, people crowded to him from all sides, and the new delight of communion with G.o.d-the a.s.surance that the whisper which told them that G.o.d cared for them was a true voice-beamed from the hearers' faces and gladdened the Master's soul.

It was during this active ministry of our Lord, that the choice of the Apostles was made and the foundations of their education were laid. The differences in their minds and characters would be brought into prominence by the greater intensity of the lives they afterwards led; new capacities would peep out among those who, beholding the intense earnestness of our Lord, learned to be in earnest themselves. No defined line was as yet drawn between the mult.i.tude and the disciples. Those who were of the mult.i.tude one day, and chose to follow, might count as disciples on the morrow. Our Lord never wholly loses sight either of the mult.i.tude or of the disciples; but, while the former were His first care in the period embraced in this chapter, the disciples, and especially the apostles, will be so in that which will come before us in the next.(153)

CHAPTER VIII. THE CHOOSING OF THE APOSTLES.

In treating of the calling of the Apostles, we encounter the questions, "What led our Lord to surround Himself with a const.i.tuted body of this kind?" and, "In virtue of what qualities were its members chosen?" I am led to conclude that our Lord presaged that which actually came about, and provided for future needs which he foresaw; so precisely do the measures he takes meet what subsequent occasions required. The choice of the agents, moreover, is singularly happy with respect to the extraordinary part which was put into their hands; and it must be noted that this part was one which Jesus alone, and, if He had only been what some of His biographers represent, not even He could have contemplated: while for the parts, which, from the obvious prospects of the case it was likely they would have to play, they were not calculated at all. The apostles were not suited to advance a social or a political cause or to spread doctrinal views; but they were specially fitted, as I shall shew, to gain credence for facts which they could declare had pa.s.sed before their eyes.

Before choosing the Apostles our Lord spent the night alone on the mountain in prayer; on one other occasion only did He do the same.(154) If we regard only the duties expressly laid upon the Twelve at their call,(155) and the immediate services expected from them, our Lord's concern about them may seem more intense than the circ.u.mstances explain.

But if we regard them as the heirs of His work, as those by whom the fire kindled by Him on earth was to be kept alive and spread, then our Lord's keen anxiety about them is accounted for. He looked to an early death, and when this death came it would depend on their constancy to carry the cause through the moment of dismay; and it would depend on the trust they commanded among men, whether it should be believed or not, that He had risen in triumph from the dead.

If we should find that the Apostles were, as a body, specially qualified to fulfil particular functions, and that these very functions it fell afterwards to them to discharge; then, surely, it is not unreasonable to suppose that our Lord, in choosing the Twelve, was guided by His foreknowledge of the situation in which they would be placed, and of the particular kind of work which they would be wanted to perform.

It will be shewn that the Apostles were qualified to be trustworthy witnesses of fact. If the course of events had been such that there had been no fact to witness, this capacity of theirs would have found no sphere; it would have been provided and never employed; but, as it was, the transcendent Fact that Christ died and rose again took place before their eyes.

The knowledge of this Fact was to be the most precious possession of the human race. How then was it to be preserved and transmitted? A fact only subsists for a future time in the relation of witnesses. So the greatest care is taken to provide for this Fact witnesses who would command belief.

Some hearers will soonest trust one kind of witness and some another; witnesses therefore of different kinds are provided, that every man might be likely to find one in whom he could confide: but all these witnesses have this in common-they are all convinced of the reality of what they relate, and are not men to be easily carried away by their fancy or their feelings. If the religion had depended on the promulgating of theological doctrines which needed subtle expositors, then the Apostles would not have been the right men for the work; but being founded as it was upon the facts of Christ's life and death, what was wanted was, that credible witnesses should be present when these facts occurred and should remain to tell the tale. This want was supplied with a completeness which to my mind testifies of design.

To proceed with the history. During this winter of A.D. 28-29, our Lord, keeping Capernaum for his place of abode, made excursions to the neighbouring towns, preaching as he went, and shewing by His miraculous cures that the Divine power was working through His hands.

After the call of the fishermen on the Lakeside, He was constantly accompanied by His disciples, and from that time forth the education of His followers was always in His mind. This education went on like the quiet processes of nature; the subjects of it never felt that they were being educated at all, but those who were of the right natures slowly changed in the direction of what He would have them be. He did not make them all copies after one pattern. That which was native to the man, and which marked him off from all other men, was lovingly preserved. He intensified in each man his proper life, which grew with all the greater vigour through being let to follow its own bent. As yet we hear of no lessons given to the disciples _by themselves_, they only shared what was said to the crowd: this may have been as much as they could then receive, and possibly their greatest profit came from what was not given in the way of lessons at all, from words dropt in daily intercourse and from watching their master's doings in the thousand little occurrences of their wayfaring daily life.

It is worth noting that during all this time of their earliest spiritual education all was prosperity. From the autumn, in which, as I believe, our Lord called the fisher brethren, to the springtime which we have now reached in the narrative, His renown had steadily grown. Wherever He went, men were grateful for His coming, and drew close to hear; all seemed eager to press into the kingdom of Heaven, and to clutch at it as at treasure trove.(156) First from the neighbouring towns, then from Judaea and Samaria, and, at the time when this chapter opens, even from Idumea and Tyre and Sidon, men came to listen to one who was said to have the words of Eternal life.

Those who took their early impressions of Christ's service from those days, would retain a glowing recollection of it all their lives long.

Their minds would be strung to hopeful confidence. When persecution came they would regard it as something permitted by their Master for reasons into which they did not inquire: the allegiance of mankind belonged, they would say, to their Master of right; He might for a moment waive his claim, but He could always resume it when He chose.

Our Lord sets a high value on the personal trust and devotion of his disciples, both for its own sake and because it was the bud which was to blossom into the new and transforming quality of Faith: this was forwarded in its early growth by the sunshine of success. The general who would win the young soldier's heart must lead him to glory in his first campaign; he will cling to him through all disasters after his heart is won.

I take up the narrative at the beginning of the third chapter of St Mark's Gospel.