Pastor Pastorum Part 9

"In the next temptation Jesus stands on the watch-post which the white-robed priest has just quitted. In the Priests' Court below Him the morning sacrifice has been offered.... Now let Him descend, Heaven-borne, into the midst of priests and people. What shouts of acclamation would greet His appearance! What homage of worship would be His!"(69)

This pinnacle, supposing my view to be correct, would offer a fitting scene for the story of this trial, not only as being a giddy height, but because also the spot was a public one, and a crowd of spectators would witness the display. If our Lord had only been tempted to a.s.sure Himself of His power by a miracle of adventurous rashness, any precipice would have served as well. The essential force of the temptation lay in the suggestion to prostrate men's minds, and to subjugate their wills, by performing before their eyes an appalling act, the superhuman nature of which could not possibly be gainsaid.

When we leave the external imagery, and come to the gist of the lesson, we find in it the truth which we have had before us over and over again.(70) A man's belief is not _his_ belief and will not be effective for moulding his life unless his mind and his will have some part in the acceptance of it; and if his own endeavours were to be on a sudden superseded by Divine action, this would be inconsistent with that studious culture of man's distinctive freedom which runs through the conduct of the world. If will and reason are to be dumbfounded by the interference of absolute power, why should men possess them or care to put them to use? As a fact, G.o.d _suggests_ but does not _compel_, and our Lord's signs agree herewith.

They emphasise His lessons, and witness for G.o.d to those who have eyes for Him-but men can reject the lesson, signs and all if they please.

Let us imagine the form the Tempter's arguments might take in the mouth of one like Milton's Satan: "You wish," he might suggest, "men to believe that your power comes from on high. Leave them no room for doubt. People about you look for a Sign from Heaven, such as Joshua worked in Ajalon, and Isaiah displayed in the days of Hezekiah. Beelzebub, they think, may work Signs on earth, but Heaven, they own, is G.o.d's domain, and what is written in the skies carries G.o.d's hand and seal. Shew men these Signs for which they ask, and display your wonders so as to strike men the most.

Cures and works of mercy, witnessed by a few score people, create but little stir. Shew something that all Judea, or at least Jerusalem, can behold _at once_;-great emotions take strongest hold among men in a ma.s.s: display a comet or darken the sun; or, to begin with, stand on the pinnacle of the Temple-there is a tradition that there the Messiah should appear(71)-and in the presence of all the crowd hurl yourself into the Priests' Court below."

To meet these thoughts suggested by the Tempter, there would rise in our Lord's mind a crowd of arguments: some of these I have already ventured to imagine. If our Lord had displayed a Sign of overwhelming effect, and bidden men deny it if they could, He would have paralysed intellectual growth in mankind. Men had been gifted with faculties fitting them to explore and to judge of spiritual things: if these were curtailed of room for exercise, they would languish like limbs disused. Should He bar investigation in one-half of reason's realm? Should He so appal mankind, as to enforce an involuntary acceptance of His claims? Would not this be putting fresh fetters on those whom He was come on earth to set free?

Some miracles of a stupendous character are worked by our Lord, no doubt: such are the Transfiguration and the raising of Jairus' daughter. But, marvellous as these two manifestations were, they were not worked for the mere wonder's sake; men were not brought together to see them. The wondrousness is an inevitable accompaniment of the declaration of G.o.d's Kingdom and the disclosing of His ways, but it is not the prime motive of the act. There is no display, no appearance of effort. Expectation is not awakened or the imagination aroused by the announcement of a coming prodigy. Neither were these great works wrought to win proselytes: the few who witness them are already convinced of their Master's Divine power; it is not so much a fuller a.s.surance that they derive from them, as a deeper insight into the ways of G.o.d. To the three apostles who already best discerned G.o.d's ways, G.o.d's power is in these manifestations more fully displayed; no others behold it. Here as everywhere, it is to those who have that more is given.

This same Law governs the appearances of the risen Lord. He does not stand forth in triumph and confound disbelief. He had only to shew Himself in the temple and His enemies would have lain at His feet. But men were not to be convinced against their will: all our accounts agree that it was to His apostles only that our Lord appeared. St Peter says to Cornelius and his friends:

"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."(72)

This limitation is very carefully maintained. Our Lord never appears _in His own form_, when there is any chance of His being beheld by others than disciples. In the garden, at the tomb, and on the way to Emmaus, He shews Himself to disciples in a strange shape and is only made known to them for a moment: He was not to be seen and recognised by any ordinary pa.s.ser by.

His resurrection was not to be a subject of popular rumour or one for the wonderment of the crowd. Some might say, with the man in the parable, "Nay, but if one go to them from the dead,(73) they will repent," but our Lord is averse to sensational impressions: men had had the option of believing or not, and they had made their choice. When however the apostles are together in their upper chamber and the doors are shut, He appears in His accustomed form, with the print of the nails upon His hands and feet, for there was no need then for disguise.

The principle that room is to be left for man's will to act in determining his creed is observed not only in all the New Testament but throughout the spiritual history of mankind. Towards the close of the third chapter I have remarked on the a.n.a.logy between an overwhelming manifestation, such as a Sign from Heaven, and a rigorous demonstration that Christ's revelation is of G.o.d. Men have at times cried out both for one and the other; but if what they demand had been given them, the higher knowledge would have been discontinuous, with uncertainty on one side of a line and absolute certainty on the other. There would have been rigid d.y.k.es, as of granite, crossing the field of spiritual thought, which would have baulked our progress.

The Laws which I have stated concerning Signs are steadily observed throughout the canonical Scriptures, although the writers of the books knew nothing of any such Laws. The Apocryphal Gospels on the other hand violate these Laws at every turn. This opens out almost a new line of argument on internal evidence. Is not the coincidence strange, supposing that the writers allowed play to their fancies, that all the four Evangelists should have uniformly refrained from introducing any miracle worked merely for miracles' sake; or anyone which served to minister to the bodily wants of the worker; or which was employed either to enforce submission or to punish hostility? Is it not also strange that neither in the Gospels nor the Acts have we any instance of any public display of power such as should awe the crowds into belief against their wills?

In this chapter I have considered the series of Temptations, with reference to their bearing on the miracles. I have tried to shew that they supply insight into our Lord's way of solving the problem of introducing the infinite element without causing the finite to disappear. But this is only a student view; and the lesson which the church has always drawn from them is of infinitely greater practical worth. The heads of this lesson are: that the great prizes of life presented themselves to Jesus as they do to us; that they glittered in His eyes as they do in ours; that they offered themselves to His grasp as they sometimes do to ours, and were deliberately renounced by Him as hollow, compared with the blessing of knowing and doing the will of G.o.d. Without this record, could we have conceived our Lord as being "Man of the substance of His mother born in the world"? Might we not have looked on Jesus Christ as only a manifestation of Deity, clad in outer human guise, but without human affections; visible indeed to men's eyes, but dest.i.tute of a pulse which beats in unison with theirs? This error would have lodged Christianity in mens' heads instead of in their hearts and would have destroyed its universality and force; and this error, the narrative of the Temptation-whether we regard it as apologue or fact-is alike effectual to dispel.

CHAPTER VI. FROM THE TEMPTATION TO THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE.

Outset of the Work.

We now come in sight of that part of our Lord's work which is the special subject of this book. We have been shewn something of what pa.s.sed in His mind during the days in the desert; but we are not told what He intended to accomplish or by what practical steps He would proceed. We need not suppose that He came forth from the desert with His plan of action completely prepared. He may not have settled where He should lay the scene of His work or whom He should take for His helpers. All this would grow clear to Him as time went on. But though He may have been waiting for the guidance of inner voice and outward circ.u.mstance as to the way of executing His charge, yet that He had G.o.d's work to do and meant to do it is written unmistakeably in His air.

We are shown Him in St John's Gospel on His way to Galilee. A glimpse is given us across His path, and we see Him pa.s.s along with the a.s.sured tread of one whose part is taken and who knows whither His steps lead. On one point touching the form of His work He is already clear. He is not to come as a practical reformer or as a claimant of power; in these characters He would need active human aid, and the Spirit of the World would enter in: but though He is given functions beyond teaching, yet, in order to wear a garb familiar to the people, He will be in their eyes nothing more, at first, than "a _teacher_ come from G.o.d;"(74) His followers are to be purely _disciples_ and not adherents of any other kind. His concern was not with political or social forms of order,-these must be different in different times and different lands. His province was to waken into activity the capacity for knowing G.o.d which was practically dormant in the ma.s.s of mankind. Before laying down any plan or organising any society, He pa.s.ses some months in _exploring_, so to say, the tempers, and minds and capacities of the different cla.s.ses of persons in Jerusalem and Galilee.

He is in search of the fittest receptacles for the word. He looks into the hearts of the disciples of John, and of those who like Nicodemus were "scribes instructed into the kingdom of heaven." He turns His eye upon Samaritans and peasants of Galilee; and finally, as we know, decides to choose the quiet Lake sh.o.r.e for the cradle of the _Faith_. The peasants and fishers whose ways He knew-unsentimental, serviceable men-were taken as witnesses for the new revelation: they offered the new flasks wanted for the new wine.

A man who sets about regenerating society commonly begins by remodelling inst.i.tutions; he trusts to good inst.i.tutions to make men good: our Lord, as a Teacher, begins at the other end; He goes straight to the men themselves and tries to make _them_ better; better men would bring about better ways of ordering their outward lives; but each generation must do this for itself. The success of His enterprise did not rest on its immediate acceptance; and so, He did not aim at drawing _numbers_ round Him or at gaining influential proselytes or at consolidating a school or a sect. Christ's work was to go on for ever, and mankind would be redeemed equally, whether many followers or few attended Him while on earth.

It may be asked "Did our Lord from the first see all that lay before Him?"

The conclusion from the facts of the history must be that, unless when it were specially summoned, His divine prescience remained in abeyance, and that He, as the Son of Man, was subject to those uncertainties as to the future which attend ordinary human action. He could not have worked together with men, as He did with the Apostles, if He had differed so essentially from them as to know perfectly every day what was going to happen on the next: he could not have experienced surprise; and surprise our Lord certainly shews at the dulness of the disciples in catching His meaning: "He _marvelled_" too at the unbelief of some districts. On occasion we know that He could search men's hearts; but they did not lie bare to His view. Neither can we suppose that, when He charged men not to publish their cures, He knew that He would be disobeyed; or that He chose Judas for an Apostle knowing that he would betray Him. The general drift of the purport of His coming, and His insight into it, grew clearer and clearer the nearer He came to the end; but we have no warrant for supposing that the details of all that would happen on the way lay before Him from the first.

He draws His disciples to Him at first with a cheerful hope: but towards the close of His career He has the air of one moving under a load; and once He gives utterance to what lies at His heart. The words in which He does this throw a light on the question of His purpose and His plan; they are spoken apparently to St Peter-

"I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if it is already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"(75)

It needed one sent from G.o.d to kindle this fire, and to bring home to men the truth that His Spirit worked within them to will and to do; but when the kindling was once effected, the rest might be left to human effort.

Men could feed the flame and men could fan it; and so, following the law we have traced in operation so often, to men the flame was left, for them to feed and fan. "This being done," our Lord might say, "this for which I came,-why do I linger here? what more do I want?" and yet He might add "My whole work is _not_ done: the crowning act remains. Men will never understand my love at all unless I die for them." Until He was baptised with this baptism of suffering, He was like one straitened on every side by an imperious task which claims his every thought.

Our Lord's movements from the Temptation on to the Ministry in Galilee are made known to us by the Gospel of St John. Jesus appears on the banks of the Jordan, where John was still baptising his disciples; He mixes with the throng; the Baptist points Him out to two young men, one of whom, Andrew, brings his brother to visit Him; the other was probably the Evangelist himself. Afterwards our Lord Himself finds Philip, and Philip finds Nathanael, and the little party travel on foot to Cana of Galilee.

No writer, who did not confine himself to facts about which he was certain, would have given so homely a story of the beginning of so mighty a matter.

The Gospel of St John is manifestly written by one who is in the position of a disciple; he sees everything from the disciple's point of view: what the _disciples_ thought of things that happened seems to be always uppermost in his mind. He is not a writer composing a continuous biography of our Lord, but a disciple drawing lessons from particular scenes of his Master's life; and he no more thinks of considering _why_ our Lord took the course He did, than he would consider why the seasons change. An historian might have looked for reasons why our Lord did not appear in public life in Jerusalem; but John does not look on the matter with an historian's eye.

I will here summarise the occasions on which the disciples are mentioned, in the period of the history embraced in this chapter. We first hear of them in the account of the wedding at Cana. The Evangelist relates that "He manifested forth His glory, _and His disciples believed on Him_."(76) Next we find the disciples spoken of, as if they stood in a kind of family relation to Him. "He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and _His disciples_."(77) When we come to the account of the cleansing of the Temple, it is pointed out how that action struck the disciples. They talked it over among themselves; they recalled the verse in the Psalms, "The zeal of Thine house shall eat me up,"(78) and thought they saw a Messianic prophecy fulfilled: we are told too that after our Lord's death they recalled His words about building the Temple in three days. We hear also that they were numerous: "_many_ believed on His name, beholding the signs which He did."(79) Next comes a fact of great importance; it is that, though our Lord did not baptise adherents, yet that His disciples did so, and that finally more resorted to them than to the Baptist.(80) A few disciples attended our Lord in the journey through Samaria, and to them His first recorded discourse as a teacher is addressed: there is no further mention of them during the period embraced in this chapter. Such is the summary of the matter bearing on my subject; I proceed to discuss points of interest that arise out of it.

The advent of our Lord differed from that of other enlighteners of mankind in one very striking way. He had, in the Baptist, a special forerunner, who gave out, on all occasions, that the final cause of his own preaching was to prepare the way for one greater than himself. Events of national history, themselves part of that wide-spreading "Preparatio Evangelica"

which, to my mind, underlies the history of the world, had raised a ferment in the minds of the inhabitants of Palestine. To this movement the Baptist gave a particular turn. He brought men to desire that the world should become better, and taught them that they must begin by becoming better themselves. Without this preparation, the germs of truth which our Lord scattered would more largely have failed to quicken: the Baptist had broken up the soil to receive the seed; his preaching put the people in an att.i.tude of expectancy, and an expectant condition is a receptive one. The Old Testament prophecies had worked to this same end; they had made expectancy congenial to the nation's mind. The Israelites were like spectators waiting to see a great king come with a procession: the sight of a forerunner sets the crowd astir, and such a forerunner John was. I have observed before, that in carrying out His own work our Lord is careful to use _preparation_. The disciples are sent "to every place where He Himself would come." Men were not to be repelled from the new movement by reason of its being strange to them. What this preparation did for the villages of Galilee the Baptist did on a grander scale for all Judaea.

We get but a glimpse of the nature of the relation between John and his disciples, and need only notice it briefly. Young men did not, like those who sat at the feet of a Rabbi, resort to him for definite instruction: the disciples of John did not look to be taught interpretations of the Law or of the Prophets, but they looked for a rule of life for themselves and a brighter future for their country or their race-they were ill-satisfied with the present and eagerly turned to one who represented both in aspect and in utterance the prophets of old. There was one feature in John's ministry, so distinctive that he drew his appellation from it.-He caused his disciples to be baptised. The doctrines implied in the rite do not now concern me; to some it symbolised the cleansing from sin, to others the rising into a new life; but the practical effect of it was to make those who received it feel that they had, in a way, pledged their allegiance to John by receiving baptism at his hands: they had a.s.sumed a badge, and were bound by ties of personal loyalty to their master and to one another.(81)

But John's disciples were not separated off from the outside ma.s.s by baptism alone. To the mind of his countrymen a religion was not a religion at all, unless it included a _regimen_, unless it parcelled out their days, according to hours of prayer and times of fasting. With such a distinctive rule John provided his followers. He taught them to pray,(82) he accustomed them to voluntary fasts;(83) and on some points of ceremonial, such as purification, he may have had tenets of his own.(84)

We will now trace the steps by which our Lord gathers disciples round Him.

It is possible that even before our Lord left Galilee He had been the centre of a group of young men who looked up to Him, and the Galileans among John's disciples might therefore have heard of Him. It falls in also with this supposition, that our Lord seems to have been already acquainted with Philip of Bethsaida, and to have purposely sought him out. We read-"He _findeth_ Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me."(85) Philip hastens to Nathanael,(86) who came from Cana in Galilee, and tells him that the Messiah has been found in the person of "Jesus the son of Joseph, _the man from Nazareth_."(87) The words in italics _may_ imply "of whom we have all heard;" for Cana was not more than six miles from Nazareth, and Bethsaida was in the same district. The Baptist, we know, regarded Him, when He came to be baptised, as his equal or superior in the favour of G.o.d.

Five of the Apostles-John, Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathanael-were drawn to our Lord in the few days spent at Bethabara on His return from the desert; and probably all these went back with Him to Galilee. Among these five we find traces of a lasting tie. This is worth noting, because such a tie would naturally arise from comradeship in early years, and of this comradeship St John's Gospel speaks. These five had gone together from Galilee, in the zeal of their young days, to listen to the strange preacher in the desert of Judaea; they had lived together, faring alike, and baring their hearts each to the other in the confidence of youth. We can understand that this would bind men fast together, and that St John writing his Gospel at the end of his life, with possibly St Andrew at his side, should have been mindful of all the circ.u.mstances in which these old friends took part, and have gladly taken occasion to mention their names.(88)

Accordingly, we find mention made in the Gospel, without positive occasion, of these Apostles by name. We did not need to know that it was Andrew who said "There is a lad here who hath five barley-loaves and two small fishes."(89) The Synoptists(90) all relate the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, but Andrew is named by St John alone: Philip, another of this little company, is close by; he is addressed by our Lord, and Andrew interposes. We find Philip and Andrew together at a later time. When the Greeks who came up and worshipped at the feast wished to see Jesus they applied to Philip;(91) then we have

"Philip cometh and telleth _Andrew_: Andrew cometh, and Philip, and they tell Jesus."

St John here seems almost to go out of his way to speak of Andrew.

Philip also, who scarcely appears in the Synoptical Gospels, is mentioned six times by St John; and he is found in company, now with Andrew, now with Nathanael, as if the ties of old companionship still held. The particulars we have of Philip are instructive. Our Lord, as we have seen, "found him," which I take to mean, not that He merely _lighted upon him_, but that He sought him. He thought him, therefore, a suitable companion for His coming journey to Jerusalem for the Pa.s.sover. A point of fitness may have been that he knew Greek: his Greek name would not by itself go far to prove this; but, taking it along with the fact that when the Greeks come up to worship in Jerusalem they address themselves to Philip, it seems likely that he knew their language. Our Lord at the Pa.s.sover would meet many Israelites who talked Greek more readily than Aramaic, and a Greek-speaking follower would be of service to Him. Again when Philip says, "Lord, shew us the Father and it sufficeth us,"(92) our Lord replies, Have I been _so long_ with you and you have not known me? The words "so long" are particularly applicable to Philip, as he had been called a year before the twelve were formed into a body, and may have remained in constant attendance on our Lord when the other disciples quitted Him after the return through Samaria.

With Nathanael also there is much interest connected. He, in the last chapter of St John's Gospel, is called Nathanael of Cana of Galilee, and is named among others who are Apostles. He is identified, on good grounds, with the Bartholomew of the Synoptical Gospels.(93) We mark in Nathanael an apt.i.tude for discerning spiritual greatness; but, with all this, he held stoutly to old prejudices in which he had been born and bred; and when Philip comes to him with his tidings, he breaks out with: "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" There is no reason to suppose that Nazareth was held generally in bad estimation. Natives of Jerusalem would look down on all villages in Galilee without distinction, but Nathanael belonged not to Jerusalem but to Cana. Cana and Nazareth were a few miles apart, each being the chief town in its own district; and the local jealousy and tendency to mutual disparagement between neighbours, which is not unknown among ourselves, and was rife in those times, will account for Nathanael's words.(94)

It was of no ill augury for his holding fast the Faith when he had found it, that he clung to the old traditionary feeling of his native town. He was not blinded by it; he is ready to "go and see." Here our Lord exercises His singular gift of introspection, "Behold," says He, "an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile."

"Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of G.o.d; thou art King of Israel."(95)

Probably Nathanael recalled what had pa.s.sed in his mind when he had been under the fig-tree. Perhaps some mystery of existence had then weighed upon his soul, and on coming to Christ he found "the thoughts of his heart revealed."(96)