Pastor Pastorum Part 27

The fire which Christ had come into man's world to kindle, was now alight, and the special need for Christ's presence on earth did not longer exist.

What was it, we may ask, that He left behind? The chief visible outcome of His work was the little band of Apostles; but the mightiest of His influences were imponderable and unseen. Our Lord's sojourn on earth had changed the world in which He had dwelt, so that all subsequent History reads differently from that which goes before. By what means was this change wrought? Christ left no new code of regulations for men to live by.

He introduced no changes into Human Society or into any of the forms of Government which He found upon earth. If men might not be left to frame such things for themselves, what had freedom and faculties been given to them for? What Christ did leave, was infinitely more than a reorganisation of Society or a scheme for the reformation of men. On that day of Pentecost a new faculty-that of communing with G.o.d's Spirit-came to the birth. And a new force-that of living religion-sprang into existence as a fresh agent in the affairs of the world-a force which Emperors and sacerdotal castes and schools of philosophers had soon to reckon with.

This fire has now and then burned low, but at such times some "circ.u.mstance" has often come about, which, answering to some expression of our Lord-perhaps one which seemed till then obscure-has opened out a vista in the minds of men. People say, "Now we see what that hard saying meant," or "Christ must have had this in view when He spoke." Or else-what has sometimes happened-an idea has sprung up in men's hearts, seemingly everywhere at once, and Christ's words have caught a fuller meaning, read by the light of this.

So far we have traced the steps by which the Apostles were taught Faith in the unseen. First by confidence in a Master at their side, next by the a.s.surance that, though unseen, He was close by, and could, if needed, appear and help as of old; and now, lastly, when seeing Him no more, there comes in their hearts an a.s.surance that He is with them to the end of the world.

When I say that the Apostles were _taught_ Faith, I use the word _taught_ in a different sense from that which it has when applied to the subjects of knowledge. I mean that through wise moral treatment, a quality existing only as a rudiment was so developed as to fit the disciples for communion with G.o.d; and not only did they in this sense learn Faith, but-what also need learning, more than we suppose-Love and Hope as well.

I spoke casually just now of the joy which, as appears by the Book of Acts, illumined the Apostles' lives. This came greatly of Love; not merely from the affection of the brethren for each other, but from a general Lovingness, a capacity for Love, which, on coming into action, made them look differently on all they saw. This, like their Faith, had grown up from their being in their Master's company. They felt how He loved them; and if ever one among them was disposed to think lightly or unkindly of a brother disciple, he might recollect how dear that brother-faults and all-was to Christ; and then he could hardly help feeling that if his Master bore with him he might do so too. They marked also Christ's beneficence, His eagerness to render kindness, His readiness to use His wondrous power for the good of those who had no claim upon Him, His gentleness in rebuke, His never recurring to a bygone fault. And this sense of being beloved, this living in an atmosphere of affection, generated in them the capacity for Loving, just as the Home Love that is round a child, not only awakens in it affection to those who shew affection towards it, but teaches it what Love is; and engenders in it a great outcome of Lovingness which it strews broadcast, and bestows, not on persons only, but on animals, and even on inanimate things.

We have had sight of the Apostles at a time when this Love was only half fledged among them, and did not understand itself. It was yet in this state in St Peter when he asked: How often he must forgive the brother who sinned against him.(345) Love with him was then only unfolding in his mind, it was still a thing of bounds and measures; later on he learnt-and his Master's sacrifice crowned the lesson-that it is in essence infinite.

By the time when the Apostles had to stand alone and labour for their charge, they had learnt what Love was. From that came the unity and harmony of which I have spoken above. A common interest or even common devotion to a cause would not have gone deep enough down to have quenched all rivalries. Even if paramount interests had put self out of sight for a while, it would still have been there, ready to reappear when opportunity came. Impatience would have come out now and then. It is Love only which brings others as close to a man as his own self. This lesson of Love was perfected, for the Apostles, by their witnessing Christ's death upon the cross-a death not for friends, not for those under His protection, but for men "while they were yet sinners."(346) They saw, too, that when He rose from the dead in absolute might Divine, He breathed not a word shewing that He remembered His wrongs, but quietly put the past away. All this filled the Apostles' hearts with Lovingness; they could not have gone on with their work, with so little return to shew, unless they had loved the brethren and the converts. The joy which we note in the Apostles, resting like a halo upon them, comes of their feeling sure that G.o.d loves them, and of their loving all G.o.d's creatures in return. It was this Love that fascinated their hearers; when the words of Paul, notwithstanding that his speech-so they said-was contemptible, went to the hearts of Greeks and Barbarians, as we know they did, what he touched them by was this magic of Love.

A word about the nature of that Hope which nestled in the Apostles' hearts must end my book. If their Master doubted, whether, when He should come at the last, "He should find Faith upon the earth;" what, it may be asked, could this Hope of the Apostles have been? Now, that these words of Christ were not spoken in despondency is clear enough for many reasons, but this one reason, that they caused no despondency to the hearers would, to my mind, be sufficient of itself.

What this saying tells us is, that we are not to look for Christ's Kingdom in the shape of a perfected community existing at the last upon the earth.

Science and observation seem to point in the same way. Men are never so selfish and so regardless of others as when they are pushing for place in a crowd. Now this globe can only yield food for a time, it must be exhausted of its stores, and even, it would seem, of its reproductive powers, at last; and a half-regenerated humanity would be apt to degenerate back again when they were struggling for standing room and for bread.

To take another point; though science has not settled the future of this planet of ours, yet opinion leans greatly towards our system's having an end. But, if we accept Christ's teaching, Man need not come to an end together with the fabric of the world. The earth is only the spot upon which he is reared and put to proof. Those who come out of the trial we believe to be removed, perhaps after an interval, to another kind of life elsewhere; so that, though this outer fabric of the world may perish, Man, we may believe, will survive, not in a material but in "a spiritual body"(347) whose nature of course we cannot know. Thus the Human episode in the great Epic of Existence, may, as far as life upon this planet goes, come to an end, but the Humanity for which the Christian labours and for which Christ died, will exist for ever; for the Spirits of just men made perfect will have been garnered from age to age into abodes prepared for them from the first. And though Christ, in His wisdom, be sparing of utterances about that which is winnowed away, yet there are not wanting a.n.a.logies justifying hope.

The education of human souls to fitness for everlasting spiritual life, is of all G.o.d's purposes the one which we can most continuously discern. No reign of peace and bliss upon this earth could be of indefinite continuance; a perfected Humanity could only endure for a time.

Consequently, if we limit our Love to a Humanity visibly existing on the earth, we give up our hearts to something which must necessarily come to an end: if we make a Deity of this we shall serve but a temporary G.o.d.

But-although the earth should be calcined to powder, or fly off into regions of s.p.a.ce where the temperature is fatal to life-still that Humanity which has the Son of Man for its central and presiding figure may abide with Him for ever, in some of the many mansions of His Father's House.

CHRONOLOGICAL APPENDIX.

It will be of service to readers to have a summary of the actions and movements of our Lord, in the order in which they are treated of in the Text. Few of the dates can be fixed with any cert.i.tude and it remains a matter of opinion in what order many of the events occurred. The only dates which can be historically determined are those of the death of Herod, and of the beginning (A.D. 25) and end (A.D. 36) of the Governorship of Pilate; with these latter I am not now concerned. When St Luke names the fifteenth year of Tiberius (A.D. 28, A.U.C. 781 beginning on August 19), it is not quite certain whether he means to fix the time when John began to preach, or when Jesus was baptised, or when John was cast into prison. The grounds for fixing the dates of our Lord's birth, His appearance in public, and the duration of His Ministry are given in Tischendorf's "Synopsis Evangelica." I a.s.sume, as sufficiently admitted for my working hypothesis, (1) that our Lord was born early in the year B.C. 4, A.U.C. 750, In which, shortly before the pa.s.sover, as we learn from Josephus, Herod the Great died; and also (2) that the Baptism of our Lord took place in the very beginning of A.D. 28.

I propose to exhibit the order of events, taken month by month, as I suppose them to have occurred. In the greater number of cases I am supported by the authority of Dr Edersheim in his work on the "Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," and also frequently by Bishop Ellicott, from the Notes to whose Historical Lectures on the Life of our Lord, delivered 1860, I have obtained much help in forming this Appendix.

A.D. 28. _January._ A.U.C. 781.

I place the Baptism of our Lord near the close of the month. This was immediately followed by His withdrawal into the wilderness.

A.D. 28. _February._

The whole of this month I suppose to have been pa.s.sed by our Lord in the wilderness.

A.D. 28. _March._

About the 10th or 12th of March our Lord appears "in Bethany (or Bethabarah) beyond Jordan where John was baptizing." John i. 28.

On the next day, John, Simon and Andrew come to our Lord, and on that which follows our Lord "findeth Philip," and "Philip findeth Nathanael."

John i. 43, 45.

Indications in the Gospels of the season of the year in which the events happened are so rare that we catch even at slight matters-one such occurs here-Nathanael is seen "sitting under the fig tree," John i. 48; and as he would hardly have done so if the tree had been bare, it is probable that at this time the fig tree was already in leaf. It might have been so by March 10th; for the climate of the Jordan valley, in the deep cleft of the limestone rocks, far beneath the level of the Mediterranean and three thousand feet lower than the hills of Judaea, was almost tropical; and fig trees, which on the high ground about Jerusalem were not in leaf till April, would be at least a month earlier at this "Peraean Bethany," as the place is called by Bishop Ellicott

I suppose our Lord to have left "the place where John was baptizing" not later than March 10th and to have been present at the marriage at Cana on or near the 14th. The Pa.s.sover in this year fell on the 30th of March, and, a.s.suming that our Lord reached Jerusalem on the 28th March, a fortnight has to be accounted for. I have explained, p. 165, what I suppose to have happened in the meanwhile, viz. that our Lord returned with His family to Nazareth, which was 4 miles from Cana, and that, owing to the displeasure shewn by the inhabitants, either at His pretensions or at His having performed His first miracle at another place, He and His mother, His brethren and His disciples removed to Capernaum-"there they abode not many days," John ii. 12. Our Lord then went to Jerusalem, and His family, though not mentioned, may have gone there also. Whether they ever settled again at Nazareth is uncertain. They were at Capernaum in March, A.D. 29, Mark iii. 21, 32. Observe that the sisters of our Lord are not named: they remained at Nazareth, where they were probably married. We read, "Are not His sisters here with us?" (implying that the brothers were not so), Mark vi. 3.

A.D. 28. _April._

Our Lord during this month was with His disciples at Jerusalem; the events are related in St John, Chap. ii. 13 to Chap. iii. 21.

A.D. 28. _May._

Henceforth the Chronology depends greatly on the time at which we suppose our Lord's journey through Samaria to have taken place. I place it in May A.D. 28, but many authorities put it in the December of that year. We read,

"After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized."-John iii. 22, 23.

This choice of aenon on account of there being "much water there" points to water having already become somewhat scarce elsewhere. There are in the North-eastern part of Judaea only a few springs which never fail. These are much valued, and one such spring at least was found at aenon; its site is doubtful (see Bishop Westcott, "St John's Gospel"). If, as some have supposed, it was late in the Autumn when our Lord made this journey, water would be abundant enough in many places, as the streams become full in November. I speak of this because it bears out my view that our Lord's journey through Samaria took place in the May and not in the December of A.D. 28.

In the latter half of the former month, I suppose that our Lord left Judaea and pa.s.sed, with only a few disciples, through Samaria into Galilee (see pp. 171, 174, 176, 179).

The verse-

"Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest," John iv.

35,

is important in determining the dates.

Some regard the above saying as having been spoken soon after seed time; and think that the first sentence refers to the state of the corn at that moment, when it would have been just coming up, it being then four months from harvest: this would agree with the view that the journey was taken at the end of December,(348) and that the "whiteness to harvest" referred metaphorically to the harvest of conversions the Apostles were to reap.

Others, among whom is Dr Edersheim, regard the country as being _at the time of speaking_ white (that is _bright_) with harvest, and consider the words to have been spoken in May and to bear a literal sense. This latter view seems to me to agree best with the incidents of the journey, many of which-our Lord's weariness, His resting at the fountain(349) and His asking for drink-wear, to my mind, an aspect of summer; moreover, the words "Say ye not" apply better to a maxim of husbandry lying in the minds of the people, than to such an indisputable fact as the time of year when they were spoken. It would have seemed more natural to say "Are we not four months now from harvest?" It was a fact which was in every husbandman's mouth, that the interval between seed time (December), and barley harvest (April) was four months, and our Lord's meaning is, "The husbandman has to wait four months for his harvest, you begin at once to reap; law-givers and prophets and agencies unseen have sown for you."

A.D. 28. _June._

Our Lord arrives at Cana in Galilee. A "certain n.o.bleman" comes to Him from Capernaum; our Lord heals his son, John iv. 46. The words "whatsoever we have heard done at Capernaum," Luke iv. 23, refer I think to this, if so, they help to fix the date of the Preaching at Nazareth related in St Luke's Gospel, chap. iv. 16-30. For additional reasons for placing the Sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth at this time instead of after John's imprisonment, see above, pp. 164, 165, 179, and also Dr Edersheim, "Life and Times of Jesus," vol. 1. p. 430.

It should be noted that we hear nothing of our Lord's mother and brethren.

If they had been in Nazareth, they would probably have interposed as they subsequently did at Capernaum where we find them living, Mark iii. 31.

The few disciples who came with our Lord through Samaria probably went to their homes when He reached Galilee, for St John does not speak of them afterwards.

This account of the Preaching at Nazareth is peculiar to St Luke, I conceive it to have come into his hands as an isolated piece of information, which he fits into the history to the best of his judgment.

The events at Capernaum, which in the Gospel of St Luke (iv. 31-44) are related immediately after this sermon, took place after our Lord had come preaching the Kingdom (see Mark i. 21-39). In the Sermon at Nazareth there is no mention of the "Kingdom of G.o.d," nor do the disciples seem to have been in attendance. This favours the view that the public Ministry in Galilee had not yet begun.

A.D. 28. _July, August._

I believe our Lord to have spent this summer preaching in the synagogues, not only of Galilee but also of Judaea. With regard to the verse (Luke iv.

44), "and he was preaching in the synagogues of Galilee," we have in the margin of the Revised Version "very many ancient authorities read _Judaea_." We can understand Judaea being altered into Galilee, to suit the mention of Capernaum, but it is not easy to comprehend a change from Galilee into Judaea (see also Acts x. 37). It agrees with my view of our Lord's course that He should at this time have been exploring the tempers of the people both in Judaea and in Galilee; and I believe the summer of A.D. 28 to have been pa.s.sed in this work. The Lord may have gone about unattended or nearly so, He had as yet bidden no one to follow except Philip (John i. 43). The 15th year of Tiberius began in this August, but possibly St Luke might speak of the whole year, from Jan. 1st, by this name.