The Gospel of St. John Part 18

[Lincoln's Inn, 10th Sunday after Trinity (Afternoon), July 27, 1856.]

ST. JOHN XVII. 1.

_These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee._

The more we enter into our Lord's teaching, the more profound is our apprehension of the dignity, the awfulness, the divinity of words; the more we confess their insufficiency. If He who was in the beginning with G.o.d is the Word, if words have been the expression of His mind, they awaken those thoughts in our minds which they are intended to clothe. But if the Word has spoken of Himself as a Son; if He has said that He has come from a Father; if He has promised a Comforter, He has taken us out of the region of words into the heart of the realities which they represent. It is the Son Himself who reveals the Father: what could words effect without His Person? The Father Himself, He has said, draws us to the Son: words would be spoken in vain if there were not that wonderful and loving attraction upon the hearts of the creatures whom He has formed in the image of the Son. The Spirit's work is to produce that inward conviction which words cannot produce, to act upon the man himself, to bind those into fellowship whom the diversities of speech and custom have made unintelligible to each other, to testify to men of the Father and the Son, as the ground of all speech, thought, and being. But here, as throughout this Gospel, the deepest revelation is the commonest and simplest. As we enter into the region of the divine relations, of divine communion, all must tremble; none are forbidden to approach. Intellectual differences disappear; here every spirit may find its home.

We sometimes ask ourselves, as we read the prayer in this chapter--and it is good that we should ask ourselves--'Is this the model of our prayer? Is Christ giving us an example here that we should follow in His steps? Or does it stand awfully alone, separated from every other that ever has been or can be offered; one which we are to wonder at the more, because so vast a chasm separates it from all our acts and efforts of devotion?' I believe that if we have _not_ understood the acts and discourses on the Paschal night, there can be but one answer to this question. 'The Son of G.o.d praying to His Father the night before His Pa.s.sion,--how entirely isolated,' we should say, 'must such intercourse be from all that ever has been, from all that can be conceived of! What blasphemy to connect it, even in thought, with the pet.i.tions of those who have little to do but to confess their sins, and supplicate forgiveness!' But if we have studied these chapters; if we have learnt that when the disciples saw Christ they saw the Father; if we have understood that He is the Vine, and they the branches; if we have known what He meant when He told them that they were to ask in His name, that their joy might be full; if we have observed how He distinguishes the disciples from the world, and yet how He teaches them that everything they do is to be done for the world, and as a witness of G.o.d's love to the world; then, I think, we shall feel that it is the greatest of all contradictions to suppose that this prayer does not contain in itself the essence and meaning of all prayer, that it is not the one which best expresses the wants and longings of every man, that it is not the prayer of all the children of G.o.d, in all places and in all ages, because it is the prayer of the only-begotten Son of G.o.d.

'_These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come._' He had spoken to His disciples of an hour of travail, which was to terminate in a new birth for them and for the world. The world knew nothing of this hour; no one of its works or pleasures was interrupted; that night was like every other night. The disciples had a dull sense of present oppression, a vague presentiment of approaching calamity. But they, as little as the world, felt what the sorrow was, still less what joy they had to expect when it was over. He knew it all. He knew inwardly that that was the hour to fulfil the purpose for which He was come into the world. The life and death of the world were gathered up into it. The feeling would have been intolerable if it had been a solitary, separate one; but the foresight of it had been given Him by His Father; the sense that the hour was come was imparted by Him; His prayer was the acknowledgment of that which had been revealed to Him, His filial acceptance of that which had been prepared for Him. And surely, brethren, all prayer must be this. It is the acknowledging of that, be it sad or joyful, which has been given to us; it is the casting our experience upon Him who has brought us into it, and who understands it, because without Him we cannot go through it, or in the least understand it ourselves.

And this is the pet.i.tion which is grounded upon that confession, '_Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee_.' Every prayer that had been presented since the creation-day had been a prophecy of this. When the Psalmist cried out of the depths, '_Lord, hear my voice_;' when he said, '_Let not any be offended or confounded because of me_;' when he confessed his sin, that G.o.d might be justified, and _might be clear when He was judged_, he _seemed_ to say, 'Glorify _me_, that I may glorify thee;' he _seemed_ to pray, 'Let _me_, David, be brought out of my ignorance and darkness and sin, that thy name may be honoured and not blasphemed.' He did _really_ pray, '_Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee_!' He prayed that not he, but that the Son of Man, might be raised and delivered and exalted, in order that G.o.d's own image might be exalted, and might shine forth upon men. When the Son of Man actually in His own person prayed this prayer, He was expressing that which was latent and could not be expressed in those earlier pet.i.tions; He was bringing them forth into their full clearness and power; He was actually presenting them in His own name to Him who had known and inspired the suppliant.

'_As thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given Him._' I do not think that when we are occupied with the words of our Lord Himself, spoken in prayer the night before His crucifixion, we have a right to alter them in the slightest degree, for the sake of extracting from them what may seem to us a more natural and obvious signification. I am quite aware that our translators would have appeared to themselves and to many of their readers to be using an uncouth and strange form of speech if they had rendered the words literally, '_That all that which thou hast given to Him, He may give to them life eternal_.' But I think they were bound to encounter any apparent difficulty of construction, rather than to incur the risk of contracting or perverting this sense.

It was not a time to ask themselves whether their understandings could fully measure or take in the words. If they had faith in Him who spoke them, they should have given them exactly, and left Him to interpret them in His own time to those who had need of them. Christ says that His Father has given Him power over all flesh. He speaks, again, of all (_everything_) which His Father had given to Him. And then, leaving the neuter, p??, He uses the masculine plural, _them_, a?t???, surely that He may denote the universality of the gift, as well as the personality of those on whom it is bestowed. It seems to me that we cannot afford to lose either of the truths which He thus declares, because it requires a violation of the technicalities of grammar, not of its essential laws, to utter them both. I suppose it was only in prayer that even He could have united them; and possibly it is only in prayer that we can apprehend them, so that they should not clash with each other.

'_And this is the eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true G.o.d, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent._' If these words came upon us for the first time, without any preparation, we should perhaps think them very wonderful, but should either pa.s.s them over, or try to reduce them under some notions or formulas of ours. But in this Gospel we have been most carefully educated into an apprehension of their force; they do not burst upon us suddenly, though they may be both more full and more distinct than any with which we can compare them.

In the night dialogue with Nicodemus, by the well with the woman of Samaria, in the synagogue at Capernaum after the feast of the five loaves, in Jerusalem on the great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, we have been hearing of a life which the Son of Man gives, a life of the Spirit, a life which is not of yesterday or to-day, a life of communion, a life of G.o.d. If what was said there was true, this must be true; or rather, this is the truth which throws back a light upon the words concerning the new life, and the '_water of life_,' and the '_bread of life_.' This explains the a.s.surance in man that he is born to know that which is above himself, and his equally strong a.s.surance that he must be known before he can know. The only true G.o.d knows the creature in all his wanderings and ignorance and falsehood, knows him in that Son in whom He has created him. When he turns to that G.o.d of truth, when he confesses Him and the Son, who is His image and the Light of man, then comes the true life, the eternal life, which Christ, who has power over all flesh, alone confers upon it.

'_I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the worlds were._' It is impossible to say anything which will not weaken the force of these words. All I desire is to show you how they fulfil the idea, which St. John has been presenting to us from the beginning of his Gospel, of a Word who was with G.o.d and was G.o.d, of a Son who had come forth from the Father to reveal His grace and truth to men, of a Son who was returning to that Father as to His proper home. All is consistent from first to last; all has been divine, and all human. No clashing of the one with the other; but the human showing forth the divine as the perfect light from which it has been derived; the human leading on to the divine as that in which it is satisfied.

Hitherto this prayer has had no special reference to the disciples. He has spoken of His power over all flesh, of eternal life, of the work which He had accomplished. Now it turns to them: '_I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word_.' We have traced the use of this language through the later discourses of this Gospel, and have seen how entirely they are in harmony with the commencement of it. The disciples are taken out of the narrow exclusive sect-world by which they are surrounded, to be a family of witnesses for the Father and the Son; witnesses of that love which the world--and no part of it so much as the religious world in Jerusalem--was by its acts, its words, its principles, repudiating. To those Jesus had manifested the name of His Father. He had shown them what He was, and that they belonged to Him. Amidst all their confusions and errors, they had kept firm hold of this word. They had yielded to Christ's guidance; believing, when they understood Him least, that there was none else to whom they could go; that He had the words of eternal life. And they had now learnt a deeper lore. They had referred His calling and guidance to the Father. '_Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me._' This had been the design of all His discipline. It had been working gradually upon them and in them. But there had been still a clinging to Him as _their_ Master; the vision of a Father had only just dawned upon them. Now in these last discourses they had learnt the mystery of His relation and their relation to the invisible world. Their belief might not be strong enough to be proof against all storms, but it had taken root. Their position was that of friends, not servants; they were waiting for the Comforter to tell them fully of the Father; already they had the sense of not being born of flesh, or of blood, or of the will of men, but of G.o.d.

'_I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine._' It is not because I wish in the least to evade the force of these words as they stand in our version, that I plead for a more exact rendering: '_I am asking concerning them; not concerning the world do I ask, but concerning those whom thou hast given me_.' I believe the impression left on many minds by our use of the preposition _for_, is that Christ is indifferent to the world, and only solicitous on behalf of a certain select circle. I do not say that any one will quite put that thought into words. When he sees it stated, he will shrink from it. Still it lurks in men's minds, and it is very desirable to remove any prop, however feeble and unimportant in itself, which may sustain it there. If any one says, 'But the force of the words lies not in this _for_, but in the expression, "_whom thou hast given me_,"' I say at once that, so far from wishing to make _that_ expression less strong, I would insist upon it vehemently, as marking the distinction between a family which stands in its calling by G.o.d, and a world which attempts to a.s.sociate on another ground than that calling, which chooses for itself. Christ is here praying concerning those who are to be the lights of this dark world, the salt of this corrupting earth; those who are to teach the world, in Whom it is const.i.tuted, the earth, by Whom it has been created and is kept alive.

'_They are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are._'

All that has been said in the Paschal discourses, concerning the unity of the disciples with Him and His unity with the Father, concerning the essential and eternal dependence of the human unity upon the divine, is here translated into prayer. And yet, _translated_ is an unsatisfactory word. It rather finds its only root and ground in prayer. For what is prayer but that intercourse of the Father with the Son, of the family with its Head, which this unity makes possible? And what is the object and result of all prayer but this, that what is true in the mind of G.o.d may be true in the actual condition of men; all the hindrances which self-will has opposed to the divine Will being finally and for ever taken away?

'_While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled._' Here, no doubt, is an unfathomable abyss; we cannot see down into it; to attempt it, is to hazard the loss of our footing. One of those whom the Father has given to Christ (so the pa.s.sage seems to say, and we cannot alter the terms of it to fit our fancies or wishes) perishes in his own selfishness and sin. Jesus says so. He says that that which had been written of old had come to pa.s.s; curses had come upon the man who loved cursing; he who had chosen death had been left to die. It is terrible to think of. But how infinitely more terrible would this fact, and all the facts that are daily occurring in the world's history, be, if they were not a.s.sociated with the gift of eternal life, with the cry of the Son to the Holy Father on behalf of all whom He has given Him! What the heights and depths of that prayer are, none of us can know. It is enough to know who spoke and who heard, what love is above all and beneath all, how that love has been manifested and accomplished on this earth of ours. To dwell in it must be eternal life; to be separated from it must be eternal death.

'_And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world._' The idea of men living as children of G.o.d, members of Christ's body, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, with a world and a flesh and an evil spirit striving against them which they can renounce and can overcome, is not one which is strange to any of us. It is only too familiar. We know the sounds so well, and we have repeated them so often and so idly, that the words have lost their significance; we think they are words of art, or words of course. Here we have the beginning and ground of them. Throughout, St. John has been speaking of a race born, not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of men, but of G.o.d. Christ here declares that He has founded such a race upon the earth. He prays His Father to keep it in the world, not to take it out of the world; to keep it by His word, His quickening, uniting word, which a world that is divided and is seeking death must hate; to keep it in the confession of Him who is not of the world, but is the Son of G.o.d; to keep it from that evil spirit who would make it selfish, divided, hating, and therefore the worst portion of the world against which it is to bear witness.

'_Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth._' Surely, brethren, there are no words that we need to meditate on more than these: for it cannot be denied that sanct.i.ty and truth have become strangely separated among those who call themselves by Christ's name. Oftentimes it would seem as if holiness were pursued to the utter denial and dereliction of truth; nay, as if it courted an alliance with falsehood. Oftentimes, again, it would seem as if men who desired truth and pursued it, regarded it as a dead and abstract thing, which has no affinity with the life of man, which has no effect in making him purer or better. Nevertheless, the voice has ascended on high, 'Make them holy by truth,' for truth only can make holy. Whatever is contrary to it or mixed with falsehood, must defile and make base. And the prayer has been heard, and will be answered completely at last; for the Son of G.o.d, who is the way, and the truth, and the life, took our flesh upon Him, and met falsehood in all the forms in which it presents itself in this world, and sanctified Himself, and kept Himself from all contact with it, only by the might and energy of truth, only by submitting in all things to His Father, who is the G.o.d of truth. And these temptations He underwent, and this battle He fought, for the sake of His disciples, that they also might be sanctified by truth and truth only, that it might be an armour to them on the right hand and on the left, that they might live for it, and die for it.

In this second part of the prayer, all has had direct reference to the disciples who surrounded Him, whatever ultimate reference it might have to the remotest corner of the universe. But in the third part of it, He says expressly: '_Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me._' Here is a prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here on earth from age to age; a prayer offered by the Head of that Church to His Father, offered on the night before His sacrifice was to be perfected; a prayer grounded not upon some wish or high aspiration hard to be realized, but, as He has just said, upon truth, upon the eternal truth that the Father is in Him and He in the Father, and that He is the Head of all men and that all live by Him. This glory, He says, He has given not to those eleven who were sitting about Him then, but to all everywhere who should believe in Him through their words. He has put this glory upon them; He has given them the name of Himself, and of His Father, and of the Holy Spirit the Comforter, to be _their_ name, that they might dwell in it and abide in it. And He prays for them, that they may not choose to be divided when He has made them one, that they may not make themselves the curses of the world by sharing in all its envies and hatreds, and by pleading G.o.d's name as the excuse for them, when He has sent them into the world to be the witnesses that His own Son has declared His love to it, and has gone forth from Him to bring it into the circle of His love.

He began by saying, that eternal life was to know the only true G.o.d and His Son Jesus Christ; He ends with saying, that this is the glory which all are created to seek after, and which He has taken flesh that they may attain and possess with Him. '_Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee_' (has not known thy righteousness, but has supposed thee to be altogether unrighteous like itself; has not known thee by that name of Father, but has taken thee to be hard-hearted and grudging like itself): '_but I have known thee_,' (known thee as the image of thy righteousness, known thee as thy Son,) '_and these have known that thou hast sent me_.' These have seen thy light shining forth through me. These have beheld my glory as the glory of an only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth. '_And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it_' (to the end of all things): '_that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them_.'

DISCOURSE XXVII.

THE Pa.s.sION.

[Lincoln's Inn, 11th Sunday after Trinity (Morning), August 3, 1856.]

ST. JOHN XIX. 37.

_And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they have pierced._

In our services for the earlier days of Pa.s.sion Week we read carefully and at length the narratives of the first three Evangelists. The narrative of St. John is reserved for Good Friday.

There is great wisdom, I think, as well as courage in this course. The diversities in these narratives, instead of being concealed from us, are forced upon our notice; we are taught that we shall gain insight into the whole purpose of the writers of the Gospels, of G.o.d Himself, by considering them. We are taught, at the same time, that it is here we are to look for the unity of the Gospels; that all the lines in them have been tending to this point; that we must learn what they signify at the Cross itself. The special honour which is given to St.

John may have been suggested by the name of 'beloved disciple.' But it has, I think, a higher justification. St. John's Gospel takes us into the very heart of the Good Friday mystery. The pa.s.sages in his narrative of the Pa.s.sion, which do not occur in the other Gospels, throw back a light upon them, while they explain the special end for which he wrote. But they do much more. They show us why the death of Christ has been, and must be, the centre of the Gospel concerning Him; why all His discourses, nay, even that prayer I was trying to speak of last Sunday, would be worthless and unmeaning without it. How we should tremble to overlay the record of it with our words! How careful the Evangelists are that we should not be hindered from seeing the facts, and the Person, even by listening to their words! I shall attempt little more this morning than to seize those points of the narrative contained in the 18th and 19th chapters of St. John, which are different from the narratives in St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St.

Luke. But, that we may feel the force of these differences, it is necessary to say a word respecting their essential agreement.

This agreement is negative as well as positive. In contemplating the pa.s.sion of our Lord, one cla.s.s of devout persons have encouraged a sentimental habit of mind. They have dwelt upon the seven wounds, upon the crown of thorns, upon the circ.u.mstances either of mental or bodily anguish which seem to separate this Divine death from every other. A second cla.s.s has meditated less upon the suffering and upon the Person of the Sufferer; much more upon the effects which the suffering would produce either upon men or upon G.o.d I do not condemn these courses; none can tell what good for life or for death may have been extracted from either. I only say, that the method in the four Gospels is equally different from both; and seeing that those who have chosen the one or the other acknowledge the authority of Scripture as paramount and divine, I cannot offend them if I add that the Gospel method is simpler, deeper, and more reverent than theirs, and that probably any blessing which they have divided between them will be ultimately possessed in fulness by those who follow it.

In trying to discover what this method is, the reader is likely to be struck with the importance which all the Evangelists attach to the arraignment of Christ before Caiaphas and before Pontius Pilate.

Perhaps, if they were honest with themselves, they would confess that they have been surprised at finding so much said upon this part of the subject, so little comparatively of the crucifixion itself. But the more we reflect, the more clearly we shall perceive that in this, which seems to them the legal portion of the history, the ground is laid for that part of it which is most transcendent and divine, and also which is nearest to the sympathies of all human beings. The charge before the Sanhedrim was, that Jesus claimed to be the Son of G.o.d; the charge before the Roman governor was, that Jesus claimed to be a king. To set Him forth in that double character, as the Witness of the Father whom Jewish rulers were denying, as the true human King whose power the absolute emperor was counterfeiting and usurping,--this was the business of the Evangelists in their records of all Christ's discourses and acts. And it was this which gave the significance to His death. It was _the_ divine death and _the_ human death, the death which manifested the mind and will of the Father; it was the death in which all men were to see their own. In this respect St. John does not in the least differ from his predecessors. It was certainly not _less_ his purpose than theirs to exhibit the Son of G.o.d and the Son of Man. What was spoken against Jesus, and what He spoke before Caiaphas and before Pilate, could not therefore be pa.s.sed over or dwelt upon with less emphasis in the fourth Gospel than in the other three. It must be dwelt on with more emphasis. He can tell us nothing of Calvary till he has made us understand Who was brought there, and why He was brought.

And as in this main characteristic of the other Evangelists St. John resembles them, so also he follows them in all the chief incidents which they record. The night scene when He is apprehended by Judas and the band of officers from the chief priests; St. Peter's attempt to defend Him by cutting off the ear of Malchus; St. Peter's denial; the cry of the mult.i.tude for Barabbas; the purple robe and the crown of thorns; Pilate's efforts to release Him; the inscription on the cross; and the burial in the tomb of Joseph; are told as carefully in St.

John as if no previous narratives of them had been known in the Church.

Yet under each of these heads points are brought out by St. John to which there is nothing corresponding in the earlier Evangelists, and which one feels instinctively would have been out of place in them.

The first is this in the story of the apprehension: '_Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon Him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am He. And Judas also, which betrayed Him, stood with them. As soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ground. Then asked He them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way: that the saying might be fulfilled, which He spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none._'

The last quotation is taken from the prayer which St. John alone has given us. But I think the words, '_I am_' which made the officers stagger as they drew near with their torches in the dark night to the Nazarene prophet, have also their interpretation in previous words which belong exclusively to this Gospel. We are told in the 8th chapter that the Jews in the Temple took up stones to cast at Jesus, because He appeared to them to be claiming the words spoken in the bush as if they were spoken of Him. Was there not a recollection of those words as He stood before them now? Did not the clear light of righteousness and truth in His face carry them home to the conscience of the officers, and make them feel for a moment that One was using them who had a right to use them, One to whom they owed homage?

The struggle was soon over; they had been sent to do a work, and they went through it. Then came that other sentence, '_Let these go their way_,' which fulfilled, St. John says, the words, '_Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none_.' What! we say to ourselves, Were not those words spoken for all time? Did not they refer to a deliverance from ultimate perdition? Could they be accomplished in the deliverance of the eleven Apostles from the immediate peril of being apprehended with their Lord? I answer, the more we become acquainted with the letter and with the spirit of St. John's narrative, the more we understand that he regards every act done by our Lord, to effect ever so temporary a redemption, for ever so small a body, or so insignificant an individual, as a sign of what He is, of the work in which He is always engaged, of the blessing which He has wrought out and designs for the universe. If we do not like to take this as a sign that the words of that prayer were uttered on earth and accomplished in heaven, we may form what sublime notions we will about Christ's redemption, but they will be notions only; they will not belong to reality; at best they will point to some good which we expect for ourselves; they will not glorify Him from whom all good comes.

The incident of Peter smiting the high-priest's servant follows immediately upon this sentence. The sequence is, I think, significant.

The Apostle begins to defend his Master; he does not know that his Master is defending him. Of His disciples He loses none; but '_the cup which His Father has given Him, He must drink_.' Then the vigorous champion is chilled. He must warm himself at the fire, for it is cold, while his Master is in the hall before the high-priest; the faces of maid-servants terrify him; he forgets that he was in the garden with Christ; he forgets his own violence; and the c.o.c.k crows. The story is told with peculiar vividness by St. John, but it is the same in substance with that which the Hebrew Matthew told of the Apostle of the Hebrews; which Mark told of his own kinsman and master, writing perhaps from his dictation.

But the answer of Jesus to the high-priest is found only in St. John.

'_I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort, and in secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? Ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said._' I do not quote these words only or chiefly because they show that He who when He was reviled reviled not again, could answer in a way which the bystanders thought offensive to the dignity of the high-priest; so justifying words that have been p.r.o.nounced unseemly in many of his followers, when they have been brought before priests and rulers; nor because they show how easily affected reverence for an administrator of the law may be joined with an outrage upon the law itself. I quote them much more because they occur in that Evangelist, who has been suspected of revealing a secret lore which Christ had kept back from those who heard Him in the synagogue and in the Temple. That inference has been grounded upon those Paschal discourses which I have been considering lately; discourses especially designed to prepare the disciples for delivering a message to the world; discourses of which the main characteristic is, that they contain the promise of a Comforter who should deliver them from their narrowness, and who should convince the world. But here is a testimony, coming after those discourses, from the lips of Christ himself, that He had no esoteric lore, that His doctrine may be learnt from that which He spoke openly, and that His disciples are teaching another doctrine than His, if theirs is not one which can be proclaimed as good news to the universe.

It is St. John who tells us that the Jews did not '_go into the judgment-hall lest they should be defiled, that they might eat the pa.s.sover_.' This most characteristic trait of a religious and G.o.dless nation ever put upon record, should be thought of by each of us in silence and awe, since every age has brought some terrible repet.i.tions of it. What cautions have not inquisitors taken lest they should be defiled! what care have they not used to prepare themselves for feasts, at which their hands were to be dipped deep in blood for the honour of their G.o.d! They never fancied that they were copying the Pharisees of Jerusalem. We wrap ourselves in our Protestantism, and think we are quite secure that we shall not follow them. Alas! there is our peril! to dream that there is one evil tendency in Jews or in Romanists which is not in us, that there is one crime of theirs which we may not commit!

It is from St. John that we learn that Pilate would have wished the people to take Jesus, and judge Him according to their own law; and that they, acting in the spirit of the advice of Caiaphas, waived the privilege which perhaps they might have a.s.serted, that He might die the Roman death of the cross, and perish as a traitor against the Caesar. And it is St. John who gives us that dialogue in Pilate's hall, of which we are only beginning, after eighteen hundred years, to spell out the sense, though during all those eighteen hundred years the sense has been declaring itself in wonderful ways. '_Then Pilate entered into the judgment-hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art thou the King of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all._'

The other Evangelists have spoken to us of a kingdom of heaven, a kingdom the nature of which might be explained by parables of nature, the powers of which were manifested in acts of healing and blessing to men. It was a kingdom in the strictest sense, a kingdom set up on earth to rule over the earth. But it was not of this world. Its capacity of blessing men arose from its not being created by them, or dependent upon them. It was G.o.d's kingdom, therefore it was as unlike as possible to the tyrannies by which the world had tormented itself.

St. John had gone in his Gospel to the root of this doctrine. He had spoken of a Word by whom the world is created, who is the Source of its life, though it knows Him not. He had spoken of this Word as the Light of men. He had shown how the Word, being made flesh, proved Himself by all His acts and discourses to be the same who had taught the hearts and consciences of men in all ages. He had spoken of this Word as setting forth the Father from whom He came. He had said that in manifesting Him, he manifested the truth which would make men free.

In this dialogue all these lessons are gathered up. Jesus will not tell Pilate that He is _not_ a king, for that would be to contradict all His preaching and all His acts; He will not tell him that He _is_ a king, for how could a poor official and slave of Roman absolutism understand Him? But He says: '_For this cause was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I might bear witness_ (to Jews, to Romans, to thee) of the truth. And I know that those who seek truth and love truth will hear my voice.' This was that 'good confession'

which he witnessed before Pontius Pilate, the ground and pattern of all confessions that were to be borne afterwards in the world; all these deriving their virtue from this, all being witnesses of a kingdom which is not of the world, but overcomes the world; all being true because He is the truth.

I have said already that Jesus is represented in all the Gospels as wearing the purple robe and the crown of thorns. But the words of Pilate, when he brought Him forth with these signs of royalty, '_Behold the Man!_' occur only in St. John. The answer of the chief priests and of the officers was, '_Crucify Him, crucify Him._' Pilate said, '_Take ye Him, and crucify Him: for I find no fault in Him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of G.o.d_.' These words, like so many of which he speaks in his Gospel, may have fallen lightly upon St. John's ears at first; but after that '_Jesus was risen from the dead, then would he have remembered what things were spoken of Him, and what things were done unto Him_.' Then will the sentence, '_Behold the Man_,' have seemed to him the most wonderful inspiration which an evil ruler, who spoke not of himself, was ever visited with. Then the cry, '_Crucify Him_,' will indeed have meant, 'Crucify _the_ Man, the Son of Man, the Representative of Humanity.' Then the attempt of the chief priests to sustain their charge of treason against Rome when that was failing, with the charge which Pilate could not understand, and which therefore made him the more afraid, of treason against G.o.d, will have appeared to him a startling testimony that they could not crucify the Son of Man without crucifying the Son of G.o.d.

What follows belongs only to St. John. '_Pilate went again into the judgment-hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer._' Pilate may have had a misgiving that he and the prisoner were not in their right relations to each other. There was something in the criminal which judged Him. He shook off the feeling, as most would have done, by boasting of his superiority. '_Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?_' No doubt he watched the countenance of Jesus, to see if such words did not make Him quail. The calm answer came: '_Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin_.' He did not dispute the authority of the governor or of the empire. It was G.o.d-given authority. They believed it was their own. He told them whence it was derived. The heavier sin lay with those who boasted that they were chosen by the righteous G.o.d, and who sought the aid of the rulers of the world to put down Right. Pilate was convinced that Jesus was not a rebel, whatever his words about a kingdom might mean. '_From thenceforth he sought to release Him: but the Jews cried out, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend. He that maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar._' The governor had too much Roman sense not to see through this petty sacerdotal artifice, this affected reverence for a ruler whom, as Jews, they hated. '_When he heard that saying_,' probably to indulge his scorn of men who were driving him into an act that he disliked; perhaps--though I think there is over-refinement in attributing that motive to him--because he fancied he should have the people on his side against the priests--'_He brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment-seat, in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the Pa.s.sover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!

But they cried out. Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!

Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar._'

If Pilate had had a deliberate scheme of policy to extract from a turbulent province a solemn recantation of the faith which had kept alive its national existence from age to age, he could not have effected his purpose more perfectly than he did by this proceeding.

For an unusual crowd must have been a.s.sembled; it was the feast which celebrated the deliverance of the land from a foreign tyrant, and its allegiance to an invisible king. There and then the rulers of the land severed all ties except those which bound them as servants to the emperors. If Pilate had been (as indeed he was) a prophet of G.o.d, he could not have proclaimed more solemnly and awfully that the Jewish people were thenceforth ineffectual for any moral purpose, as witnesses against human tyranny or human idolatry, and that there is no real alternative for any people between the acknowledgment of _the_ Man as King and the worship of a military tyrant or Man-G.o.d. This, therefore, is the crisis in the history of that day and of the world.