Pastor Pastorum Part 26

Here I will stop for a moment, to consider these narratives of the Resurrection under a purely literary point of view. These accounts present us with the same general aspect of the risen Lord, and they remain true to the primary conception in unnoticeable points of detail such as no one would have introduced out of purposed imitation. Inasmuch as we cannot suppose that the same wondrous creation of fancy presented itself to different writers at the same time, we are driven to suppose, either that the accounts relate actual facts, as Christians generally believe; or else that they were imagined by one person who disseminated the story. But who this writer can have been is not only a mystery but a mystery embodying almost a miracle, for here we have a genius compared with whom-in point of dealing naturally with the supernatural-Shakespeare is thrown into the shade; and further this genius, we must suppose, never invented or wrote anything else in that particular line in which he so wondrously surpa.s.sed the rest of mankind. The Orientals delighted in tales. Did they suffer the greatest imaginative genius of the world to live and die unknown?

There was nothing in Literature to furnish a hint for the portraiture of the risen Lord; the idea of the Resurrection body must have been due to one man's imagination and have been presented with extraordinary literary skill at a time when imaginative narration was wholly unknown. The writers of the age in which the Gospels appeared could set down events and record colloquies, and depict living personalities with truth and force; but they were no more capable of conceiving a character, of making him act, and putting into his mouth words which should seem to be his own; or of imagining a new supernatural phenomenon, and keeping their account always true to itself; than they were of conceiving the vibrations of an elastic medium. That this phenomenon also, exactly met the requirements of a most singular condition of things adds greatly to the wonder, but in another way.

If the Christian records had been thrown aside and forgotten, while the world, pa.s.sing on its way, reached a mental culture such as we now possess; and then, in some exploration, the Gospels had been brought to light: would they not have been regarded by the critics of that day as wholly anomalous, and as refusing to fit in with any theory of the growth and progress of the literary faculty in mankind? The surprise caused by the discovery would have been like that of excavators at Mycenae, if they had found a watch in the treasury of Agamemnon. This aspect of the matter belongs to the realm of critical literature rather than to mine, and I only note it for a hint. The literary aspect of the History of the Resurrection has yet to be written; it would be curious to see it treated from the point of view of one, who, shut out from a knowledge of the religious history of mankind, lighted on it as a mere literary treasure.

There is one point on which I cannot forbear to touch. Our Lord never mentions His persecutors, He never touches on the past. The apparition of a legend usually either reveals a burning secret, or embodies resentment for the past; frequently it personifies hatred or foretells destruction, and its fateful whispers make the blood of enemies run cold. But in all the utterances of the Risen Lord not a word is said of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, not a syllable is breathed of the treason of Judas, or of the persistent malice of the scribes. There is an ineffable grandeur-so unconscious that we may fail to mark it-in the utter oblivion that is pa.s.sed on the foes who had beset the path of the Son of Man. He no more resents the ills that men had wrought Him on His way through life, than the traveller, who has reached his home, resents the insect plague of the desert or the tempests he has met with at sea. The past is lost to sight, and our Lord displays but one thought and one interest, and that is for the disciples and their work. He has now done with the rest of the world and He belongs wholly to them. He is lifted above all human contention into that serene atmosphere, which we feel ourselves to be breathing, when, reading the story, we seem to find ourselves in the presence of the Risen Lord.

I will now quote St Paul's account of the chief occasions when our Lord appeared; but I can only discuss one or two points of the History.

"And that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep; then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also."(333)

I take the view, that within a few days of the Resurrection, the Apostles, by our Lord's command, returned to Galilee. If the Resurrection had been immediately followed by a time of agitation-one of persecution for instance-so that the Apostles could not have let their minds dwell on what had happened, the lessons of that period would have been soon effaced; but our Lord, as we have seen, is ever careful to provide seasonable opportunity for reflection, and it was not likely that He would suffer it to be wanting now.

The Apostles in Galilee, engaging again in their old callings, would have leisure to review, not only the last few days, but the whole of the two eventful years since they had been called from their work to follow Christ. It was probably here in Galilee that the Apostles received a command to return to Jerusalem; for we cannot account for the presence there of all the eleven, at the time of the Ascension, together with the mother and brethren of our Lord, except by special direction of our Lord.

They would not, without some injunction, have remained at Jerusalem after the Resurrection,(334) neither would they have gone up thither for Pentecost, having been so lately at the Pa.s.sover. Whether the appearance to the "five hundred brethren at once"(335) be, as I think it was, identical with that on the mountain in Galilee recorded in St Matthew's Gospel, c. xxviii., v. 16, is a matter of discussion.

But where else, except in Galilee could five hundred disciples have been got together? It could not have been at Jerusalem, at the Ascension, because the brethren there only numbered one hundred and twenty souls.(336) St Matthew, it is true, only speaks of the eleven disciples as going "into Galilee unto the mountain," but others must have been present because we are told that "some doubted," and the eleven would not have doubted. This admission shews that when the writer drew up his account, he felt no eagerness to strengthen the evidence for the Resurrection; and that He had no fear of its being disbelieved by those for whom he wrote.

The eagerness that St Matthew does shew is to find instances of the fulfilment of Scripture, not to support his statements of fact. It seems to me likely, that, in Galilee, among His earliest followers, our Lord should have appeared more publicly than He did elsewhere; here only could He find a _body_ of believers who should serve as witnesses, and, inasmuch as among these five hundred, there must have been men in different states of belief, it falls in with our Lord's way, so often noted, that He should appear in a form, not indisputably recognisable at once and by all, but with His aspect so changed, by some glorification perhaps, that those who were half-hearted in their belief might remain in doubt or disbelief if they chose; while the faithful and loving would be in no uncertainty about their Master's lineaments and voice.

The appearance "to James" which is related by St Paul alone, is important, and calls for special notice.

There are three persons called "James" in the sacred books, and there may be a question which of these it is of whom St Paul speaks. I am of opinion that it is James the brother of our Lord. The Corinthians, to whom St Paul is writing, would hardly know of any other; he was the head of the church at Jerusalem and when Paul speaks of "James" simply, as in Galatians ii.

9, 12, he means always the brother of the Lord. "James, the son of Zebedee," Acts xii. 2, is designated "the brother of John" for distinction's sake, and of James the son of Alphaeus we never hear. Every disciple however in the Church at Corinth had heard of James, the "pillar"

of the Church at Jerusalem.(337)

Nothing is heard of our Lord's brethren during the week of the Pa.s.sion; possibly, they were not in Jerusalem, but, from the Acts, as has been just said, we find that they were present there at the time of the Ascension.

"These all with one accord continued steadfastly in prayer, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."

Acts i. 14.

This adhesion of the brethren falls in with the supposition that our Lord appeared to His brother James after the Resurrection in Galilee. It was natural that James and the younger brethren should have found difficulty in comprehending that their elder brother, who had played among them as a child was of a nature essentially different from their own; and that this exceptional hindrance to belief should be counterpoised by an exceptional, but not absolutely decisive, revelation is what we might expect. It is not inconsistent with our Lord's treatment of doubt; for the difficulty arose out of circ.u.mstances and not from adverse will. Of James, our Lord may have felt sure; and Joses and Jude and Simon,(338) no one of whom could have been much over thirty years of age, while one or two of them must have been quite young men, may have been brought to full discipleship by what they heard from James.

From what St Paul says, "Am I not an Apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?"(339) it seems likely that to have beheld the Risen Lord was held to be a condition of the status of an Apostle. St Paul must have meant "seen the _Risen_ Jesus," for to have cast eyes on the bodily presence of Jesus, as He journeyed and taught, would have been a distinction shared with thousands.

Without some recognition of James by our Lord, such as is related by St Paul, it is hard to account for his being placed at the head of the Church. We hear of no election or form of appointment, but we find him in this position about ten years after this time. It would have been at variance with our Lord's repeated injunctions to the Apostles not to seek authority one over the other, if the primacy had been made a matter of contest.(340)

Organisation and graduation of authority grew up in the Church, not after any plan settled and declared, but as the need of it arose. It agreed in this respect with the history of those human inst.i.tutions that have proved the most enduring. In this, as in all matters, our Lord, wherever it was possible, left His followers free; not but what, when these same followers turned to their Master and prayed for guidance, as in the election of Matthias, they found in their hearts an answer positive and plain.

St Peter, in the earliest days of the Church, stands forth as the foremost personage; but this influence rests on personal qualities and not on any formal appointment. He, as I have said (pp. 248, 344), was the man of action, the person who in every juncture addressed himself at once to the question, "What is to be done?" It was Peter, who took immediate steps to fill up the vacancy which the apostacy of Judas had left. He was the speaker on the day of Pentecost, and he it was who in the case of Ananias sternly repressed falsehood unto G.o.d. But the impetuosity of Peter, and his disposition to give himself up completely to the impression of the moment, though it served well to carry forward a great movement at its outset, may have made him ill adapted for the ruler of an infant Church, in which discordant elements had to be welded into one; while the well-poised judgment of James the Just(341) and his practical sense fitted him particularly for this kind of rule. That this admirable selection, this putting of each in his right place, should have come about without dispute; and that those who had "borne the burden and heat of the day"

should have admitted to equality-or something more-in outward dignity, one who was "of the eleventh hour," bears out what I have said of the phenomenal subordination of self displayed by the Apostles. It shews that outward dignity and authority-that which I have taken to be the "false mammon" of the parable-was as nothing in their eyes compared to the true riches, the priceless feeling that their work great or small, as men might count it, was all done for G.o.d and all accepted by G.o.d.

The Ascension.

What was said of the Resurrection we may say of the Ascension too. The changes it brought about in the position and characters of those few "men of Galilee" who stood "gazing up into heaven," seem small matters compared with the immensity of its import for the Human Race. But, that our Lord did not leave out of sight the effect on the Apostles of the change in their condition which His departure would cause, is clear from words spoken to the Twelve, which are preserved to us by St John, and on which there is something to say.

"Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you."(342)

This saying the Apostles may have found hard to comprehend; for it must have seemed to them impossible that it could ever be for their good for their Master to leave them; and, why the Comforter should not come, while they all continued together, would by no means be clear to their minds.

Neither here nor elsewhere does our Lord explain to the Apostles either the reason of His regimen or the way in which it was to work. He tells them simply the fact, without a word as to _how_ or _why_. He never leads them to examine into the _modus operandi_ of His treatment, He would have awakened-what He carefully avoids-self-consciousness, if He had so done.

That they could not learn, at the same time, from Him in the body and also from the Comforter in their own souls, arose, not from any "determinate counsel of G.o.d," but because the mind cannot perform two operations at once. It rested on the positive psychological fact that we cannot walk by Sight and by Faith at the same time; that we cannot turn one ear to an earthly monitor, and keep the other open to the whispers of a spiritual guide. The posture of our minds when we are hanging on the lips of a living Master, is different from that in which we set ourselves to listen for the Comforting Voice from within. The Apostles would not have learned to hearken to the promptings of the Spirit so long as they could turn to Christ by their side; and it was therefore "expedient for them" that Christ should go away. They would not otherwise have reached full communion with the Spirit on high.

Instances in the Acts shew us in what way the Spirit acted in the hearts of believers. Sometimes, when human judgment and inclination seemed to agree, an unaccountable inward reluctance to follow their dictates was nevertheless felt-a repugnance, not resting on a new argument, but simply saying "No." When men experienced such feelings, some might overbear them by will; but Paul and Silas recognised in them the voice of the Spirit.

For we hear that they "went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia; and when they were come over against Mysia, they a.s.sayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not."(343)

Again Christ's Church was to be everlasting and universal, and this it could only become by changing outward and visible for inward spiritual rule. So long as the Lord was in bodily presence among them, the disciples naturally looked only to Him. Where He was, there and there only to their minds was His Kingdom and His Church. For His sway to become universal it was essential that He should go away, for it is only Spiritual influence that can be everywhere at once. The fire had to be set alight at a particular spot and at a particular time, but it was then to be left to spread over the earth and to go on burning, seemingly all of itself.

All through the Gospel we mark how men cling to the Letter, and how Christ, with tender hand extricates the Spirit from it and tells His hearers, that it is this which gives the Letter its worth. A law such as that of Moses has its place in the Schooling of a race at a certain epoch of national life; but a code or a creed that cannot be expanded must at last be outgrown. If however a Divine and living Spirit be enshrined in a Church, it may direct its development, and transform the outward tenement as inward need requires.

Christ came to set men spiritually free; but, strange to say, men are slow to take this freedom up. Among some African races, a man set free from a master at once goes and sells himself to another, he cannot be troubled with managing for himself. This is like the way in which men liberated from one absolute and infallible authority have so often handed themselves over to another. They must have something or somebody to take their beliefs and consciences in charge. Fancying that they are to be saved by holding proper opinions-for by belief they often mean no more than taking up and maintaining opinion-they come, asking, "What are we to believe?"

just as the Scribe asked, "What am I to do?" Christ's answer to him practically was, that he possessed already grounds enough to frame for himself a rule of conduct such as he required. Might He not answer the others nearly in the same strain?

Belief, in Christ's sense of the word, is not the acceptance of a theory, it is something that will actuate the man's whole being, and which requires the concurrence of an emanc.i.p.ated will. Now this emanc.i.p.ation brings with it a responsibility-a call to mental effort-which a large proportion of mankind steadfastly abhor.

Thus the Israelitish party in St Paul's time and after, hugged the chains of the Jewish Law; then, after turbulent ages of fierce doctrinal dissension, when combative spirits found in polemics the strife which their temperaments required, the Churches of Greece and of Rome took charge of the consciences of men. A revolt at length took place against the external authority of the Church, but there was no more religious freedom under the new regimes than under the old. Confessions of Faith came into vogue, and men tried to tie down after ages to the ways in which the controversialists of the sixteenth century had, with much giving and taking, agreed to regard the insoluble problems of existence. The Bible was now often held up, not to reveal G.o.d's will and ways, but to yield texts for weapons in disputes. Christ's care to guard against a bondage unto written matter is apparent in the whole form of His teaching; and especially in His leaving no writings of His own, and no directly accredited record of His life; but the craving of men after an unerring touchstone of truth has wrapped them again in bonds like those from which Christ would have set them free; and the Canonical books have been invested with a character of literal inspiration, not unlike what would have attached to writings of our Lord Himself.

The verses of John, Chap. xvi. 9, 10 which follow that of which I have been speaking, while leading us to the profoundest Theology, bear on the change from a visible teacher to a spiritual one, and so far they come within my scope. I have only to do with them so far as they ill.u.s.trate this change. The reason given for the intervention of the Spirit is, that Christ, in the body, will no longer bring home to the world the sense of sin and of righteousness and of judgement.

"And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgement, because the prince of this world has been judged." John xvi. 8-11.

I should place the emphasis on the p.r.o.nouns-He and I. The Spirit is to take the place of the departed Lord. So long as Christ was in the world He Himself brought home to the men who believed on Him the sense of sin; He presented the ideal of righteousness, and He enforced the conviction that moral evil brought doom and destruction upon men. Henceforth the witness to all this would no longer be Christ in the body, whose contact with the world was necessarily limited to one point, but the Holy Spirit, which could speak to the hearts of all mankind at once. It would lead me too far from my province if I enlarged on the topic of _Judgment_; and I turn to another matter.

It may be asked, Why did this Post-Resurrection state last as long as it did and not longer? G.o.d's _reasons_ we leave aside, but this we can say, Christ never hurries forward processes in the Apostles' mind, and these processes, in this case, needed all the time allowed; also, since a state of watchfulness involves a nerve-strain, it agrees with Christ's carefulness for the body that this condition should not last too long. The _durations_ of the different stages of our Lord's teaching-that while He was in the flesh, and that while He wore the body of the Resurrection-seem to me just as wisely ordered for the end in view, as are the other circ.u.mstances of the case.

Christ's way of teaching is the very opposite of that which would make the learner a mere reflection of his Master. In the Mission to the cities and in the ministrations of their every-day life, Christ had left the Apostles to act very much for themselves, He had kept their self-helpfulness alive in various ways; we find them bold to question, and not slow to murmur, and both questions and murmurs are readily tolerated by our Lord. But, even with all these precautions, if they had remained too long in attendance on Him, we can imagine that they would have got confirmed in the habit of looking constantly to their Master and of, at once, carrying to Him every difficulty without considering it themselves, and they would thus have lost capacity both to think and to act. They might also have fallen into habits of mind which, serviceable so long as they were subordinates, would stand in their way when they had to take the lead.

They might have become faithful to execute, but helpless to plan. When subordinates, or young people, are too long deprived of opportunity for judging and acting for themselves, their minds are apt to become pa.s.sive and purely receptive; they become slow to start a notion or suggest an expedient; ideas of theirs, they fancy, are not wanted, and so they soon cease to have ideas at all.

Our Lord guarded against this by restricting the period of the Apostles'

pupilage. As soon as the ground plan of their characters was marked out, He left them to rear the superstructure for themselves. He was so tender in preserving every line of individuality that He would not shackle freedom of growth in His disciples, even by prolonging His own companionship and instruction beyond the proper time.

But, if the period of our Lord's stay on earth in the body, served its educational purpose all the better from being no longer than it was; so did that also of the forty days after the Resurrection (supposing that we accept the traditional chronology) for the opposite reason, from its being extended so long. Four days would have served as well as forty for the manifestation of the Risen Lord, for the conclusive witness to His Divine nature, and for ratifying the hope of immortality in the bosoms of mankind; within this time He could have given His final charge to the infant Church, and have set it on its way. A higher work however remained which could not be perfected all at once. The Apostles were now to receive the crowning lesson of the course. They were about to pa.s.s out of the training ground into the real arena of danger and of toil. They were to be gradually fitted to exercise authority, and to feel trust in the presence with them of a Spiritual Guide.

It took time for their faculties to grow into shape and adapt themselves to the change. Christ always brings His scholars on by gradual progress; He moulds them as nature moulds organic forms; there are with Him no sharp or sudden turns, no jerks in the movements, but all proceeds along one even curve. If the forty days of this transitional condition had not intervened, but the Apostles had been suddenly transformed from disciples into the rulers of a community; if, more than this, they had found themselves all at once exalted into the accredited ministers of the Almighty in the most express and patent of His dispensations, what human beings could have stood the strain? Gradually, during those forty days, they got used to possessing authority. It was not formally conferred; but the other disciples took it for granted that they were to look to them for direction or advice. In this season also, the Apostles acquired a habit of watchfulness over themselves, knowing that Christ was looking into their hearts, and might at any moment appear by their side.

The framing of a society in which Christ's word should be the outer Law and Christ's spiritual presence be the sustaining life, was to be the work of men, because it was to be adapted to human needs. It does not derogate from man's free agency, that he should own and follow the promptings of G.o.d, for to do this is part of his proper nature; these promptings are not an alien influence, but belong to his own self as he was intended to be.

With the descent of the Holy Spirit at the end of the forty days, the outward visible training of the Apostles, which it has been my business to trace, was brought to an end; and the guidance of G.o.d's Spirit, working in men to will and to do of His good pleasure, came in its place.(344)