Pastor Pastorum Part 25

"Blessed _is_ the kingdom that cometh, _the kingdom_ of our father David: Hosanna in the highest,"(323)

and this shout of the people not only roused in the priests that terror which "sits hard by hate," but gave them the very thing they wanted-grounds for calling upon Pilate to prove himself Caesar's friend.

It is not likely that any of our Lord's doings were without an ordered purpose, and that this cessation of Signs certainly was not so, is apparent from our Lord's words spoken probably soon after the performance of the first of those miracles mentioned above. The words are these.

"And when the mult.i.tudes were gathering together unto him, he began to say, This generation is an evil generation: it seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah."(324)

On this text as given by St Matthew I have already commented; it is only the coincidence of the time when it was spoken with the gradual withdrawal of visible Signs that I have to notice now. Our Lord looks to sowing the germs of spiritual Faith. This would not grow up either from the curiosity of those who sought for Signs, or the stupefaction of those who gazed in wonderment. Henceforth it is "the word of eternal life" which lays hold of men. The questions asked in the deepest earnest turn now upon this.(325) The revelation of it did not come by express statements or descriptions, but rather it grew up in men through their consorting with Christ. They could not believe that He would perish, and He told them that because He lived they should live also.(326) Christ, speaking just before the end, rests His expectation of bringing about the knowledge of G.o.d, not on His works but on His Personality. His reply to the words "Shew us the Father,"

is not, Have I not done mighty works before your eyes? but, "Have I been so long time with you and dost thou not know me, Philip?"

I now pa.s.s to the raising of Lazarus. It is not within my scope to discuss the nature of the miracle, I have to do with it only in its relation to that Law of the working of Signs, which is suggested in the Temptation of the Pinnacle of the Temple. No Sign is given to men whose belief is in the formative stage, in order to force it on; but to those whose belief is already a.s.sured a conclusive miracle may be shown, because it does not now constrain judgment but only confirms it. If the miracle had been at once published wherever the gospel was preached, and if it had been supported by testimony which no one could dispute, this would have been an exception to the rule so often marked in our Lord's conduct. This miracle is in its nature appalling and conclusive, and it could not be attributed to Beelzebub; but a loop-hole in point of evidence is left for those indisposed to believe, for it rests on the unsupported testimony of St John. The raising of Lazarus was not, we may conclude, recorded in the Apostolic memoir which some suppose to have been the basis of the Synoptic Gospels. I have said in the last chapter that I think it possible that the entire body of Apostles were not continuously about the person of our Lord during the six months between the Feast of Tabernacles and the last journey. When Thomas said, speaking of the proposed visit to Jerusalem at the time of Lazarus' death, "Let us also go that we may die with Him,"(327) I can hardly suppose that Peter can have been by and have held his peace. Supposing then that the writers of this memoir, among whom Peter must have held a foremost place, confined themselves as much as possible to what they knew from _personal knowledge_, they would have abstained from introducing a matter so wondrous as that of the raising of Lazarus, which they had not witnessed themselves. In whatever way this silence is to be explained, the silence itself accords with the above-noted Law.

Pa.s.sing on to the events of the Pa.s.sion week, we may be struck by the absence of all public and notable Signs at a time when, if ever, they seemed of vital importance for the cause. A signal miracle wrought before the crowd in the Temple would have rallied the people to the side of our Lord in such numbers and with such vehement support, that none of His foes would have dared to lift a hand. For even if the priesthood should have persisted in persuading themselves that our Lord's power did not come from G.o.d, yet, they would not have dared to move, if the popular feeling had been strong, lest they should provoke a riot and the Roman authorities should intervene.

But the people were themselves disappointed by our Lord's working no Sign or Wonder, during these last days of teaching in the Temple. Some looked for the restoration of Israel, and were impatient at the continued delay, while the lower part of the populace had set their hearts on seeing a prodigy, and none came. It may be true that, among the crowd who had shouted "Hosanna," the lead had been taken by the caravan of pilgrims from Galilee, but still, at the time of the triumphal entry, the feeling of the people of Jerusalem went the same way; this had cooled down to indifference when our Lord left the Temple for the last time; and disappointment had turned into contemptuous chagrin when our Lord, after yielding pa.s.sively to the Temple guard, stood before Pilate apparently as powerless as they would have been themselves.

To Christians of to-day it seems of the essence of Christ's sacrifice that He should have submitted of His own free will to indignity and torment, when, by raising a finger or uttering a word, He might have shivered the power both of the priesthood and of Rome. His behaviour in this point is therefore exactly what we expect. But this truth, inconceivable for the people, had hardly dawned as yet on the Apostles' minds. The mult.i.tude would be told and would, in general, believe that the miracles of Jesus, which all had heard of and some had seen, must have been unreal or the work of Beelzebub; while those who had leaned towards Him would conclude that, if He had ever been endowed with Divine power, it had left Him now, or He would certainly have used it for defence.

But the Apostles were not left without fresh a.s.surance, given to them alone. Although of Signs, notable and public, during this period there were none, still two Signs of a special character there were, which exactly met the requirements of the case; they created no stir, they were not observed by the people, but they served to keep alive in the Apostles'

hearts the certainty that G.o.d was with their Master still. One was the withering of the fig-tree, the other the foretelling that Peter would deny his Lord; of the first of these miracles I have spoken fully before.(328)

This latter miracle is connected with our Lord's strange faculty of seeing what was pa.s.sing in men's hearts, and of tracing what the outcome of it would be. When men felt that Christ knew their hearts, they were getting near the idea of His spiritual presence with them; so that all this leads up to the crowning point of Christ's education, the rendering the Apostles sensitive to every breath of the Spirit, capable, amid a din of inward voices calling them diverse ways, of discerning with sure ear the tones of G.o.d.

This miracle and this event contain a lesson on forgiven error, intended for all time. Here, as before observed, we have an instance of Christ's way of ensuring that what He desired to preserve should be handed down.

This event is stamped with life-like particulars which ensure its currency and its becoming familiar in the mouths of men.

The words "the c.o.c.k shall not crow twice" give to the incident a reality which vitalises the story and preserves it for ever. Contrast the tale such as we have it, with what it would have been if our Lord had only said, "You will deny me before I die."

As to the miracle itself a few words must be said. It brings out the ident.i.ty of the idiosyncrasy of St Peter, who is given up to the impulse of the moment.

The Peter who denied and then wept bitterly, is the same man, psychologically, as he who begged his Master to call him to come upon the sea, and whose faith failed. This liability to panic clung to him; years after, we find him at Antioch going along with Paul in freeing the converts from Jewish obligations; but, as soon as "certain came from James,"(329) he was alarmed at his temerity and separated himself, "fearing them that were of the circ.u.mcision." (See also pp. 423, 424.) Neither by our Lord or any of the brethren is this failing of Peter's ever touched upon again.

This is exactly a case of what was noted at page 421. Christ washes from off Peter's feet the soil contracted on the way, and he becomes clean every whit. The evil was only skin deep and had not tainted the blood. For this denial was, I am sure, not due to any base fear. Peter had drawn and struck for his Master, and was naturally bewildered at finding that his Master would neither suffer His disciples to fight nor call the legions of angels to His help. In their utter confusion of mind the Apostles fled, but Peter and John followed a little way off. This they would not have done if they had been in actual terror of being punished themselves. But there was no real ground for any such fear; no attempt is made to apprehend any follower of our Lord. To have tried to do so would have increased that danger of riot, which the rulers shunned. What Peter _did_ fear was forcible separation from Christ. He was afraid that, if proved to be a follower of Jesus, he would be turned out of the judgment hall of Caiaphas. He would have said or done almost anything to avoid that. It was, as we have seen, part of his nature to be mastered by the feeling that was uppermost. He clung to his Master's side with the instinctive fidelity of a Highland henchman to his chief. Thrice he might have gone away, but this he will on no account do. After being noticed he on each occasion moves away and returns, only shifting his position; he goes into the vestibule, and finally tries to mix with the crowd round the fire, whence, out of the half-darkness which saved him from recognition, he could still see his Master.

But "his speech bewrayeth" him; he is noticed again as he had been before, and for the third time he denies. Whereupon the c.o.c.k crows, and turning towards the arcade at the end of the court where the trial was going on, he meets our Lord's eyes fixed upon him. Then, for the first time, it strikes him that he has done wrong. It never occurred to Peter that in saying "I know not the man," he was being disloyal to the Master he loved.

He wanted to keep sight of his Master, and did not feel bound to speak the truth to a foe. No words are needed to shew him his fault. One look of our Lord settles the matter; it awakens the higher sense of truth, which had gone to sleep when the old instinct of the Oriental peasant, the habit of confronting authority with a flat denial, became dominant in Peter's breast. When the company of Apostles was scattered on their Master's apprehension, the strength they had drawn from a.s.sociation with Jesus vanished at once; and then Peter dropped from the moral level of a disciple of Christ into the Galilean fisherman he had been before. He had been used to regard officials of Herod, or any ruling power, as his natural enemies, to whom he was not bound to speak the truth, and to this, his old self, he came back now.

But though Peter's heart may have acquitted him of cowardly forsaking his Master,-though he knew that he would, if need were, have gone with him to prison and to death,-yet he felt that this denial was, in words-though only in words-a falling away from perfect loyalty; it made clear to him, as it may have been meant to do, the weakness of his character in the way of yielding to impulse, and awakened floods of self reproach. He went out and wept bitterly; but no trace appears afterwards of a loss of self respect, or of his feeling it possible that he could be in disgrace with his Master; in fact his part in his Master becomes all the greater, owing to his having needed that He should wash his feet.

These two miracles of instruction then, the prediction of Peter's denials and the withering of the fig tree, were an a.s.surance to the disciples that our Lord still retained His superhuman power, and that whether He should drink of the cup or put it away, up to the last, rested entirely with Him.

These powers of His could not be displayed to the people without hindrance to the accomplishment of that Baptism with which He "had to be baptised;"

even the working of miracles of healing might so have moved the crowd that they would have risen in His defence.(330) The Apostles, however, were to be rendered sure that these powers remained what they had ever been and that they were, for them, in operation still; so that they might never doubt but that, amid all the apparent defeat, it was with the voluntary sufferer on the Cross that the real Victory-the moral Victory lay.

CHAPTER XIII. THE LESSONS OF THE RESURRECTION.

When contemplating the Pa.s.sion and the Resurrection of Christ, we have little attention to spare for the subordinate personages in the scene. The effects of these manifestations, in working changes in the hearts and minds of the witnesses, are put out of sight by the brilliancy and intrinsic grandeur of the manifestations themselves, and by the momentous character of their direct consequences, universally affecting mankind. But the transformation in temper, in views, and in habits of mind which converted the Apostles of the Gospels into the Apostles of the Acts-a transformation to me otherwise inexplicable-was consummated and clenched by the hours of hard trial and bitter anguish of that Sabbath day, when there was nothing to be done but to mourn and to wonder; as well as by the burst of gladness when the Risen Lord appeared to the eleven. Throughout all the Post-Resurrection interval, during which the Apostles felt that He was close by and might at any time appear-indeed that any stranger accosting them might turn out to be He-the changes which had been wrought were taking lasting hold.

The data for the history of that Pa.s.sover season of A.D. 30 must have been furnished by the Apostles, yet we find in it scarcely any mention of themselves; all personal thought was driven from their minds; the narrators, like ourselves, had eyes for the Saviour alone.

From the hour of c.o.c.kcrow on the Thursday night to the time when it "began to dawn toward the first day of the week" all that we hear of the Apostles, and that comes out incidentally, is that John stood at the foot of the Cross. There is not a word to explain their flight at Gethsemane, they do not tell us, that they stood in the crowd or followed to Golgotha; neither have we, what for my purpose would be invaluable, any word of how they pa.s.sed that Sabbath day of enforced inaction, which-in accordance with our Lord's way of letting intervals of quiet alternate with times of stress and strain-followed on the violent perturbation and intense dismay of the Crucifixion.

The Apostles could not be perfected for the part that awaited them, unless they encountered some great desolation of soul. Acute suffering, which searches the innermost nature, works after the law which has become so trite to my readers, it gives to those who have. There are some who under its pangs learn that they possess a kind of strength of which they did not know, and find that when some, seemingly more robust, break down in trouble, resource and tenacity are still left in them. This kind of strength the Apostles possessed; they stood the test of being apparently forsaken and were the better for it. Each individual after the trial felt surer that he could rely on himself than he had been before, and each then knew for certain that he could rely on the rest.

They might, as soon as the Sabbath was over, have taken their northward journey, going every man to his own; and, as they did not feel safe where they were-for they had to close their doors for fear of the Jews-and must have been grievously bewildered, this is what some out of the eleven at any rate might have been expected to do. It is the steadfastness of _the whole number_ that is so surprising.

The trial to which the Apostles were subjected, during those six and thirty hours, was excessively severe. They were left as sheep without a shepherd, with no rallying point, no organised rule; and not only were they in the deepest anguish, owing to their personal affection for their Master, but the lodestar of their lives, the hope of the Restoration of the Kingdom to Israel, seemed suddenly and totally withdrawn.

The Jewish notion of a Messiah, who would inaugurate a golden age of national glory and material enjoyment, was so engrained in the Israelite nature that only facts could drive it out. Our Lord never argues against it; if He beheld, in the course of coming events, a fact approaching, which would do more to dispel error than all the arguments in the world, this would explain His silence on these points. The awakening would not be without dangers. It is a perilous moment for a man, when the one dream, the one exalted hope, that has lifted him above selfish considerations is rudely dispelled; and G.o.d, whom he had thought to serve, seems to disregard him altogether.

Then self and the world say, "We told you so; now give yourself to us? Our votaries will be found to have taken the right road after all." Of all the temptations that a.s.sailed the Apostles this was perhaps the direst; but their loyalty to their Master, born of nearly two years' daily fellowship, held fast. Even if He _were_ gone they could be true to His memory still, and that was something left.

One lesson, which the Apostles could hardly help learning, would arise, in this way, out of the discomfiture of their hopes. They might ask themselves, on what this confident expectation of theirs, of a Messianic kingdom, rested by way of grounds. They would have to own that Christ had never spoken of it, but, indeed, had often given hints of what had really come to pa.s.s-hints which they had always quickly brushed aside. They had believed in this material Kingdom because everybody around them had done so. They had not formed any notion about it of their own selves; no movement of their own minds had gone towards forming the belief. They had imbibed it and that was all. Hence finding themselves deceived by trusting to a popular belief, there may have arisen in them a healthy mistrust of positiveness about the ways of G.o.d. Again, their disappointment might put them in a better direction for finding their way. "Some hope," they might say, "a.s.suredly Christ did hold out to us," and the search after this hope might lead them to recollect that latterly they had heard little from Him of the Kingdom, and much of the future Life; He had told them that because He lived they should live also; and the conception of a Kingdom, not of this world, might arise in their minds, and take the place of that of the expected Supremacy of Israel, which was dissolving out of sight.

Another effect of their affliction was that it drew them closer together.

When a family, is orphaned by a heavy blow, what they first feel may be helplessness, but soon follows the feeling that they must cling together and be true to one another, and each in his degree supply the help that is lost. Soon the elder brothers, if there is good in them, learn what duty is, and this new responsibility draws capacity out. Now the Apostles stood in the position of elder brethren to all the family of Christ's disciples.

It is a striking feature of the change worked in the Apostles, that, after the Resurrection, all thoughts of self disappeared. The Apostles, as the History shews us, had been originally no less p.r.o.ne to wrangle as to "which should be greatest" than the average of men. We find in the Gospel the self-regard that we might naturally expect: sometimes it is of a healthy sort, as when Peter says, "We have left all and followed thee;"

and sometimes it is unhealthy, like that soreness on points of precedence, which we mark even just before the Last Supper; but in the Acts we find among the Apostles no trace of self-regard at all. The history in our hands will account for this change satisfactorily enough; for these men were called to a Work, so transcending all human interests, so absolute, that it would leave no room for any personal thought in their souls. They were to be fellow-workers with the living G.o.d. What could be the worth of the difference between this office or dignity in G.o.d's service and that, compared with being counted worthy to take a conscious part in G.o.d's service at all? Some powerful impression must have been employed to bring about such a moral change as this; and what could better account for such an impression, than to have witnessed Christ upon the Cross? How could they, the servants, cavil about social consideration or dignity, when their Master had spurned all dignity and cast away all that common men hold dear, and that too, when by speaking a word, all that earth could bestow might have been His. Lastly, the sense that Christ was present with them and knew their hearts, was made so real and effectual by the Post-Resurrection intercourse, that it afterwards dominated their lives.

This feeling would still the disposition to rivalry, if any such lingered in their hearts; for, being convinced that their Master knew what went on in them, they would know that He grieved over anything that was wrong, as He had done when He was by their side; and they would shrink from causing Him pain.

The story of the Apostles is unique in History in another way. No one of them endeavoured to draw a following about himself, or to claim succession to the Master's place. Little differences of view and little disagreements as to the course to be followed now and then there were; if, indeed, our records did not speak of such we should suspect that something was kept back. We have cases enough of causes pa.s.sed on to a company of successors from the dying leaders' hands, but in no instance, that I recollect, have these successors remained united as the Apostles did (p. 414). Monarchs have sometimes left empires in trust to their generals, whose quarrels have finally torn them to bits. Philosophers have left their systems or their discoveries to their favourite pupils, who, taking hold of them by different ends, have set up new philosophies of their own. Kingly dynasties and political parties have bequeathed causes claiming to be sanctioned by Divine right, or to embody immutable principles, and the inheritors have so fallen out over points of policy, that the broad principle, broken up into branching channels, has lost its momentum and disappeared in the sands.

I pa.s.s on to the lessons which our History of the Resurrection conveys.

The different narratives relate our Lord's appearances, with differing circ.u.mstances of persons and place. Herein I find that loophole for disbelief which may be discovered in every miraculous manifestation of our Lord. If the fact of our Lord's Resurrection had been so attested that no sane person could doubt of the fact; if He had appeared in public, and appalled Pilate on his judgment seat or Herod on his throne, then-strange as it may appear-by the very fact of the historical certainty being thus established, the moral significance of the Resurrection would be impaired, for the acceptance of it would be independent of that which I have so often said is essential to religious belief, the concurrence of the free human will.

Although, as to the occasions and circ.u.mstances of the appearances, we find in the different accounts rather more than their customary diversity; yet in the _nature_ of the appearances the agreement is so singular, and the conception involved is so unexampled, that it is impossible for different writers to have lighted at the same time on the idea, and I can find no explanation for the phenomena, except by supposing that the picture was taken from life. The appearances themselves, as we should expect from their nature, leave on the mental retina an impression indelible and distinct; but the traditions about _when_ and _how_ they occurred, undergo variation as they pa.s.s from mouth to mouth.

The character of our Lord's appearances, in all the Gospels, is alike.

Most commonly He is not recognised at first, and does not appear in His own form, when other than disciples are by; only to those, who had already mastered the words of eternal life, was it given to see Him Risen from the dead. He comes men know not how, when they are sitting with fastened doors He appears in the midst; He goes they know not where, and the disciples who beforetime were so full of curiosity, do not venture to ask whither He goes or where He abides. But, what bears most of all on my subject, is the mode in which our Lord a.s.suages that dread of a disembodied spirit, which would have paralysed the Apostles' minds. This terror, reasonable or not, certainly existed, and Christ always deals with the fact He finds.

There were lessons still to be taught and for the right learning of them it was needful that the old confidence between Master and learners should still subsist. Could the disciples have listened to the Lord, as their old Master, receiving his direction to go back to Jerusalem and tarry there till they were "endued with power;"-could they have rested gladly on the a.s.surance that He would appear and help them in any need that came, if they had regarded Him as a spectre belonging to another world?

In order to calm their instinctive terror of a spirit, and be again in some degree what He had been on the Lake sh.o.r.e of Galilee, it was necessary for our Lord to a.s.sure the Apostles that He had a body even as they. The deep doctrinal significance of this lies beyond the limited purpose of my book, but the point which is within my range-the effect on the Apostles themselves of the conviction of our Lord's existence in the body-is important and full of instruction. It was essential that confidence should be restored, and the course actually adopted did restore it in a wonderful way. Men thought that a spirit might be seen and heard but only a body could be _felt_. Our Lord therefore at once appeals to touch-He eats and drinks before them. He tells them that He has flesh and bones. He suffers them to "handle Him and see." To this corporal presence as a crowning fact St John recurs, saying "That which we beheld and our hands handled;"(331) and St Peter says

"Him G.o.d raised up the third day, and gave him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of G.o.d, _even_ to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead."(332)

Our Lord would not Himself establish a visible Church. I have amply set out, p. 236, the difficulties that would have ensued if He had so done; but it was essential that the Apostles should receive some indication-though only so much as was essential to the lines upon which they were to build; and this being a matter of human cognisance was to be given by Christ in His human guise. A phantom, or a voice from Heaven, would have seemed an agency of a different order from the intervention of the Son of Man.