The Gospel of St. John Part 7

I spoke to you last week upon these words,--'_Therefore the Jews sought to kill Jesus, because He not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that G.o.d was His Father, making Himself equal with G.o.d_.' I tried to ascertain what connexion there was in their minds between these two offences; I tried also to show you how their feelings respecting the Sabbath-day were involved in their general feelings respecting the Law and respecting the dominion of angels. If there was a Son who was higher than angels, who could express the very mind of G.o.d--if that Son was actually in the nature of man--all their thoughts of G.o.d and of man must be changed; they must regard Him whom they worshipped as something else than a mere lawgiver, removed to an immeasurable distance from His creatures, only holding occasional intercourse with them through beings of a different order from their own. They must look upon human beings,--that is to say, not only upon themselves, but upon publicans and heathens, upon those whom they regarded as utterly cut off from G.o.d,--as standing in a very near and close relation with Him. This, therefore, was the most horrible of all conceptions to them, one which struck at the root of their pride, of that which they called their faith. They might suspect Jesus before, they might despise Him; but the moment He called G.o.d His Father, suspicion and contempt gave way to hatred. It was clear enough why He was setting inst.i.tutions at nought; it was clear enough why He claimed to heal sick men, whom the ministrations of angels could not heal. By His words and His acts He was bringing G.o.d and man into the most dangerous proximity. He, '_being a man, was making Himself equal with G.o.d_.'

This last charge I did not dwell upon; I reserved it for our consideration to-day. The discourse of our Lord which follows in this chapter has reference to it. No words throw more light upon it than those which I have taken as my text from one of the latest verses. The answer to the charge begins in the nineteenth verse. '_Then answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise._' You will feel at once that this sentence is the expansion of that plea which Jesus put forth for the cure which He had wrought on the day of rest,--'_My Father worketh hitherto, and I work_.' But, I think, you will feel also how wonderfully it meets the other more awful accusation, that He was raising Himself to a level with G.o.d. If it had been true, it would not have been a new charge. '_Ye shall be as G.o.ds_,' was the first temptation presented to human beings,--the temptation to which they yielded. The ambition had never ceased in any age or in any man.

Jesus would have been but the Person who exhibited it in its highest power, who expressed it with the greatest boldness. But if the doctrine which St. John a.s.serts at the beginning of his Gospel, which he has been working out in every pa.s.sage of it since, is a sound one; if there is a Word who was with G.o.d and was G.o.d; if that Word was made flesh, and the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father shone forth in Him; then Jesus was the one Person in the world to whom this charge did not apply; the one Person in whom there was no ambition of making Himself equal with G.o.d. And this is what He declares here: 'You think I am exalting myself; on the contrary, this proclamation which I am making of a Father, this claim which I am putting forth to be His Son, is the abdication of all independent greatness, the denial that I am anything in myself. I can do _nothing of myself but what I see the Father do_.'

Here is the new revelation, the discovery of the real ground upon which all things stand,--the will of a Father commanding, the will of a Son submitting. Here is that idea of G.o.dhead which men had been seeking for,--if haply they might feel after it and find it,--in which they had been living and moving and having their being, yet which they had always been rebelling against and contradicting, and which every thought and act of self-will and pride had been putting at a distance from them. The lowliest of all, He who was called the '_carpenter's son_,' was able to speak it out, to translate it into language, as His whole life translated it into act. And this union of wills, this inward substantial Unity, He declares to have its basis in love, the underground of Deity,--'_For the Father_ LOVETH _the Son, and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth_.'

We must not forget that all this bears reference to the primary subject of the discourse. He had been working on the Sabbath-day. That work He justifies as His Father's work, because it was a work of love, done to fulfil that mind of the Father which He knew, with which He was in sympathy. Now He goes on, '_And He will shew Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel_.' The work of healing was His Father's work. In quickening the sick man beside the Pool of Bethesda, He had manifested a part of His will and power towards His creatures. There would be a more august display of that will and power; '_For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will_.' Since the whole pa.s.sage refers to one of the signs which Jesus did, it is surely most natural to take this also as referring to another of those signs. Jesus would not only cure a sick man, He would raise a dead man. As the cure of the sick man was an exhibition in a single instance of all the restoring, health-giving, life-giving influences which were at work through the universe; as its intent was to lead men to trace all these, not to chance, not to a dead law, not to their own merits, but to a Father who directs the operations which look most accidental, from whose mind law has issued, who alone enables men to work in harmony with His law; so, by raising a man from the dead, He would show what was continually going on in the unseen world; what the Father was doing there with those who were lost to the sight of their fellows, and who seemed to perish. '_The Son would quicken whom He would._' He would take an instance here and there to ill.u.s.trate the general course of His Father's government. He would break the bonds of the grave for the widow's son, or the brother of Martha and Mary, that man might understand how little these chains could bind the whole universe of human beings, if the Father pleased to set them free.

But the thought of resurrection was a.s.sociated in the Jewish mind, as it was in the heathen mind and as it is in ours, with the thought of Judgment. How could He speak of raising the dead, without speaking of a judgment through which the dead would have to pa.s.s? He antic.i.p.ates the objection, and does much more than answer it. '_For the Father_,'

He says, '_judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son; that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him._' These words have been much used in theological argumentation. I am far from saying that they have not been used fairly. But I have warned you already, that if we wish to understand St. John, we must follow his course of thought, not eagerly s.n.a.t.c.h at sentences which may serve a temporary purpose. On this ground I refused to take the first words of his Gospel as a dogmatical a.s.sertion of the divinity of Jesus. I said we must begin, as he began, at the beginning. We must wait till he spoke to us of Jesus of Nazareth, and declared His nature to us. Then we should learn much more of His divinity than if we were in haste to get proofs of it. For are we not learners, who want to be told what divinity is and what humanity is? Have we not need to sit at the Apostle's feet, that he may instruct us in those things which it is most needful for us to know? Is there not a danger of our fancying that we know all already--of our taking his divine words merely to confirm propositions of ours, into the sense and power of which we have never entered?

I would apply this rule in the present case. St. John has told us that in the Word who was with G.o.d was life, and that His life was the light of men. We have found him ill.u.s.trating this language in various ways,--beginning from John the Baptist, as the witness of the light, afterwards telling us how Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of this being the condemnation, '_that light was come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil_.' In both these pa.s.sages, in the last especially, and in those which I have not recalled to your memory, the Word or Son of G.o.d is described as a Judge; as One who discovers the thoughts and intents of the heart; as One whom the man confesses to be His Lord and King, whether he shrinks back from His clear light, or asks that he may be penetrated by it. In strict consistency with this teaching, our Lord here declares the office of a Judge to be implied in the relation of the divine Son to men. In doing so, He clears away confusions that have darkened the conscience and disturbed the practice of all men. We think of the judgment of G.o.d. It is sometimes a terrible thought; it is more commonly a vague, misty thought. It never has been an effectual one in making men inwardly or even outwardly better, till they could connect it with some human judgment,--till they could attribute to some being of their own race, even though he were a frail being liable to error, the function of p.r.o.nouncing upon their deeds and upon their characters. Why has it been so? Because '_the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son_.' Because by an eternal, irreversible law, involved in the very nature of G.o.d and the nature of man, we cannot bring ourselves face to face with the absolute Being.

Our consciences tremble at His name; they do not, they cannot, bring their secrets directly into His light. Until they acknowledge One close to themselves, One who knows what is going on within them; until they acknowledge a Word, a Christ, who is nigh to them and not afar off; there is no distinction in their minds. Good thoughts and evil thoughts lie huddled together. Good deeds and bad deeds are only known, apart from each other, by some results which they may happen to produce. It is when the man has started like a guilty thing surprised, at the presence of One who brings back to him past pa.s.sages of his existence; who tells him all that ever he did; who shows him that his acts, his petty words, are not lost in the sum of all the acts that have been done and the words that have been spoken since the creation-day, but have all been recorded; it is when the man understands that He who keeps the record is the dearest Friend he has, the One who has been guiding him, watching over him, restraining him from evil, urging him to good from his birth onward; it is when he understands that the Reprover can give him remission of his sins, can endue him with a new life;--it is then that he can believe, and rejoice in the belief, that there is a judgment of G.o.d--a judgment for the whole universe. For it is then that he honours the Son even as he honours the Father. It is then that he confesses these testimonies in his own heart to be the echoes of the Voice which gave commandment to the sea, and fixed its bounds that it should not pa.s.s, and ordained laws for all the generations of men. It is then that the Will which governs him is felt to be the Will of a Father. He honours it, and bows to it, and delights in it, because he honours and bows to and delights in the will of the Son whom He hath sent.

In the words which follow, our translators have exhibited an instance of the timidity which I have had occasion sometimes to notice before.

'_Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is pa.s.sed from death unto life._' There can be no good reason why the word ???s?? should be rendered _judgment_ in the 22d verse, and _condemnation_ in the 24th. But from a fear, I suppose, lest the one should seem to contradict the other,--lest the Son should be thought not to execute the judgment that had been committed to Him,--they were unfaithful to the letter, perhaps even more unfaithful to the spirit, of the pa.s.sage. To make the language fit their notion of the sense, they were forced to change the tense of '_come_,'--to make it '_shall not come_,' instead of '_doth not come_.' Those who cannot venture these outrages upon the text, must be content to accept the statement of it simply; that there is an eternal life in the Son of G.o.d,--that eternal life which was spoken of in the dialogue with the woman of Sychar; that those who hear His voice speaking to them in their hearts, and receive Him as the Witness and Manifestation of the eternal G.o.d, enter into that life; that they _do_ not come into judgment. The light does not scare them, but invites them. They fly to it as a deliverance, not from it lest it should consume them.

Then the next pa.s.sage becomes far more intelligible. It is not a mere repet.i.tion of what has gone before; it enlarges and expands the doctrine we have heard, and applies it to the future as well as to the present. '_Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of G.o.d: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; and hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man.

Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment._' There can be no doubt that when the Jews spoke either of resurrection or of judgment, they meant merely a resurrection and a judgment after death. Jesus teaches us that we can know nothing of a resurrection or a judgment after death, unless we connect it with the Son of G.o.d, in whom men may believe and rise to newness of life here,--with the Son of G.o.d who speaks to us and judges us here. When we acknowledge Him as the Word in whom is life,--when we confess that His life is our light,--then we shall go on to acknowledge how both His life-giving power and His judging power extend over the whole universe, over the dead as well as the quick; then we shall understand that those who are in their graves are as little beyond the reach of His voice, as little without the sphere of His light, as those who are walking upon the earth. So much is involved in the very idea of a Son who is one with the Father. If we believe that the Father hath life in Himself, we must believe that there is a life in the Son which corresponds with that. If we believe that all thoughts, and acts, past and present, are open to the Father, we must believe that they are open to the Son. And, as I said before, the scrutiny of our own hearts and spirits must be in the Son of Man.

We can know nothing of G.o.d's scrutiny, except through Him who is in contact with us, and knows all the throbs and pulses of our spirits.

How dark are all our thoughts of the tomb, till we believe this! How horrible its abysses seem, when we think of them as out of the circle of all the laws and relations which exist among us upon earth! What a sunlight there is upon it--what flowers spring from the sods about it--when we believe that the Son of G.o.d and the Son of Man rules there as here; that those who have tried to catch the sound of His voice here, recognise it more clearly and fully in the unseen world; that those who have done evil, because they have refused to listen to it, have still Him, and no other than Him, for their Judge!

It is perilling the sense of the whole chapter, to separate this pa.s.sage concerning life and judgment from that concerning the Father and the Son, which introduced it. Our Lord points out, still more clearly than He has yet done, the relation between the two subjects, in the next verse. '_I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father who hath sent me._' They had said, '_He called G.o.d His Father, making Himself equal unto G.o.d._' He answers, 'When I speak of a Father, I signify that I can of mine own self _do nothing_.

I do not raise myself to the rank of King or Judge over men; I give up all independent power of judgment. I claim to obey a Will, to be governed by it. And because that Will is the righteous and perfect Will, my judgment is right. The moment I boasted that I could judge according to the hearing of my ears, that moment my judgment would be wrong. I should be denying my Sonship; I should become false.' And as He could not judge others except by hearing His Father's judgment, by following His Will, so neither could He judge Himself. '_If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true._' The Jews had asked Him already--asked Him more emphatically afterwards--to tell them if He was the Christ. Why could He not give the answer? Because it would not have been an answer. It would not have shown Him to be a Son; it would have led them to think of Him as another person altogether than that which He was. He therefore refers to the words which had been spoken by the preacher in the wilderness. '_There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he beareth of me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness of the truth._' John had borne witness of a Word who was with G.o.d, of a Son of G.o.d, of a Lamb of G.o.d. John had borne witness of a light shining in the darkness, which the darkness did not comprehend. This was the true witness of Christ; to this He could appeal, because it was a witness not to the ear, but to the heart,--because it was the witness of one who did not claim honour for himself,--and therefore was the fit herald of a Christ who should come in the name of His Father, not in His own name.

John's testimony being of this character was not the testimony of man, though it came through a man. Jesus, therefore, does not contradict his former words when He adds, '_I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining lamp_;' (our translators have lost the distinction between the vessel containing the light, and the light itself,--a distinction which St. John has carefully preserved;) '_and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. But I have a greater witness than that of John; for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me._' John's lamp was one which G.o.d had kindled and filled with his light, that they might be saved from their darkness; for a while it had played about them, and they had felt a kind of joy in the thought that G.o.d had not forgotten them. But Christ's works,--that latest work, especially, which He had done on the Sabbath-day, to show how and for what end His Father worked on that day,--these contained witnesses of a filial power, a filial obedience, a filial communion,--a witness to the hearts of suffering men,--which the words of the Baptist, quick and penetrating as they were, did not contain.

He goes on: '_And the Father Himself which hath sent me, He beareth witness of me. Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape._' 'In these acts of mine--these wonderful acts--as well as in my ordinary discourse, in my daily deeds and works, a Father is speaking to you, a Father is testifying of Himself to you. He is an invisible Being. It is not by visible appearances, by sounds and by shapes, that He communicates with you; it is by His Word.' Could it be necessary to say this to a people who were called out of all nations to know the unseen G.o.d, to protest against idols; to a people who had the law and the Prophets; to a people who were proud of their calling, proud of their law; who detested idols; who wrote out the Scriptures continually, reverenced them, declared them to be the very words of G.o.d?

Yes, brethren! it was necessary for this people. Jesus declares why it was necessary. '_And ye have not His Word abiding in you: for whom He hath sent, Him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

And ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life._' I think that the late learned Bishop of Limerick and others, who have maintained that the verb ??e???te, in the 39th verse, would better be translated by the present tense of the indicative than by the imperative, have produced sound arguments for their opinion, and that the context is all in favour of it. But if the previous verse and those which follow be heeded, I am quite willing to adopt our version; the sense will be radically the same; and any who think that they cannot enforce the duty of studying the Bible, if they are deprived of this precept, may retain it as a motto for their sermons. What the Word of G.o.d is in St.

John's Gospel, we have not now to learn; he has been teaching us from the first verse of it onwards. How that Word must abide in men, if they are to have any light; how the rejection of it is the choice of darkness, he has also been telling us, not once, but continually.

Those who will not have the Word of G.o.d abiding in them, must shut out the invisible world, must become the slaves of the visible world. They may not have idols of wood and stone; but they must have idols.

Besides the grosser idolatry of money,--to which, as a nation, they will be driven by the want of any spiritual object,--their religious men will fall into the worship of _letters_. The letters of the book which testify of a living G.o.d, will receive the homage which the only G.o.d claims in this book for Himself. This was the condition of the Jewish people,--especially of the Jewish teachers,--when our Lord came among them in the flesh. '_They searched the Scriptures; for in them they thought they had life._' And those Scriptures they made the excuses for rejecting Him in whom life dwelt,--the living Word of G.o.d.

This charge our Lord brings against them here and elsewhere. That he wished them to search the Scriptures which testified of Him, no one, I suppose, doubts. That He commanded them to do so in this place, I am not at all anxious to dispute. And oh! how rejoiced should I be if we English Christians, heirs of Jewish privileges, felt that command as indeed addressed to ourselves! if we were ready to obey it! if, instead of talking about the Bible as the only religion of Protestants, writing its name upon banners, declaring that we are ready to die for it, we would indeed search into its treasures, because it testifies of Him in whom alone we can have life!

I do, indeed, desire that we should take the lesson contained in these awful sentences home to ourselves. For I do feel that the danger of the Jews in this case, as in that of which I spoke to you last Sunday, is precisely our danger; that we are likely not to search the Scriptures, because they bear witness of the Word of G.o.d, but to turn them into idols, because we have not the Word of G.o.d abiding in us.

And I feel as if our Lord had laid bare the inmost root of our disease, as He does of the Jewish disease, in the verses which follow: '_I receive not honour from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of G.o.d in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from G.o.d only?_'

He begins with a.s.serting this as His distinction, that He seeks His glory from the only G.o.d (pa?? t?? ???? Te??), not from man. He concludes with asking how they can believe Him, when they seek honour from each other, not from this only G.o.d. And who is this only G.o.d of whom He sought glory? He has told us before,--the G.o.d who loved the world, and gave His Son, that through Him it might be saved. That love He reflected; of that love, in His words and deeds, He testified.

No such love was in them. They did not feel their want of it; they did not seek it where it was to be found. They flattered each other; they lived upon each other's praises. And the consequence was, that they did not believe in One who denied Himself, who abjured all praises, who said that He could do nothing but what He saw His Father do. Such a Being was incomprehensible to them. They _could_ not believe in Him.

They must take Him to be a blasphemer and a devil. Let us remember it and tremble. When religious men open 'a benefit club of mutual flattery,' and live upon the allowances that are doled out from it, they must deny the Father and the Son.

There are still some sentences left in this chapter which must not be pa.s.sed over. '_Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?_'

However little of the _love_ of G.o.d there might be in the men to whom Jesus spoke, there was a conscience which responded to what He said.

Their conscience said there must be a Father,--we _ought_ to be His children. If so, and if this man were not a blasphemer, but the Son of G.o.d, might He not charge them before His Father for their denial of Him? The thought was a natural one. How eagerly a teacher who came in his own name would have profited by the terror it excited! How continually the ministers of Jesus Christ _have_ said to unbelievers, 'What! dare you question His mission? If He should be what we say He is, how certainly He will accuse you to the Father for your rejection of Him.' Jesus Himself declares that this is not His office--that He is not, and never can be, the accuser. The law in which they gloried, in which they trusted, that was accusing them,--that was telling them how they had resisted the G.o.d of love,--that was telling them that they needed a Person to unite them to G.o.d; an elder Brother, in whom they might meet and behold their Father. Moses the lawgiver was writing of this Advocate and Brother. But if those letters of his were boasted of and worshipped, not believed, how could they believe the quickening, life-giving words, which are written not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart, by the Son of Man?

DISCOURSE XIII.

THE BREAD FROM HEAVEN.

[Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday after Easter, April 27, 1856.]

ST. JOHN VI. 35.

_And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst._

In general, the signs or miracles of Christ which St. John records are not the same with those which the other Evangelists have recorded. The exceptions are found in this chapter. Here, as in St. Matthew, St.

Mark, and St. Luke, we have a narrative of the feeding of the five thousand; here, as in St. Matthew and St. Mark, we have the narrative of Jesus walking on the sea. There is no doubt that the events described in all the Gospels are the same. In time, place, numbers, and in most of the circ.u.mstances, they exactly correspond. The variations in St. John, however, are very instructive as to his own design. We may learn from them why he repeats his predecessors, as well as why he so commonly introduces topics which they have not touched.

'_After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a great mult.i.tude followed Him, because they saw His miracles which He did on them that were diseased. And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. And the Pa.s.sover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh._' The addition to the story is in the last verse. It has puzzled the harmonists. It does occasion serious difficulties in the chronology of this Gospel. Yet I hesitate to call it an interpolation. The Jerusalem feasts are continually present to the mind of St. John. Even when he leads us into Samaria and Galilee, we are never allowed to forget them. I own, however, that this notice of the Pa.s.sover does not prepare us for a visit to the city; and that it is quite unnecessary as an introduction to the following discourse, which, as we all know, was suggested by an event which took place near Capernaum.

'_When Jesus then lifted up His eyes, and saw a great crowd come to Him, He saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this He said to prove him: for He Himself knew what He would do. Philip answered Him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto Him, There is a lad here which hath five barley-loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?_' The force of the sign is often, as I said before, to be discerned in these incidents, quite as much as in what we call the miraculous part of it. We see how our Lord uses events as an education of His disciples; how part of an event serves to bring out the character of one man, part of another. And what was true then, according to the doctrine that goes through the book, is true always. As the Teacher does not change--as, in essentials, the learner of the West is not different from the learner of the East--the same method of discipline belongs to both. We may understand, from the specimens of it which St. John gives us, how our thoughts are awakened--how we are made conscious of doubts, that they may be satisfied.

St. John follows strictly the former Evangelists till the 14th verse.

There the effect of the sign upon the mult.i.tude is given in words which we have not elsewhere. '_Then those men, when they had seen the miracle which Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that Prophet which should come into the world. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force to make him a king, He departed again into a mountain Himself alone._' Two names are brought together which are quite distinct, but which have mingled with each other in all the world's history. 'He is a _Prophet_; G.o.d has sent Him.' That is the natural feeling of a crowd which has been conscious of a wonderful power exerted on its own behalf. Then comes another:--'How shall _we_ exalt this Prophet? How shall we show our sense of His might, and our grat.i.tude for His benefits? Let us make Him our _King_. None is so worthy to reign over us. He may not be willing to put Himself at our head; why should not we take the matter into our own hands?' It was no new thing. Many a champion had arisen before in Galilee to rid the people of their oppressors. Each had come in the name of G.o.d. The desert was the ordinary scene of their exploits. Was it not the very place for an insurrection in favour of this Galilaean Prophet to begin?

If some compulsion were used, the mysterious power which had fed them would, of course, be ready to support His own claims.

Unless we remember this wild excitement among men who had been hungry and who had eaten, and the voice of command with which He sent them away to their houses--the kingly might coming forth in His resolution that _they_ should not make Him a king--we can scarcely enter into the stillness and awfulness of that night-scene which is brought before us in the following verses:--'_And when even was now come, the disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them.

And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five-and-twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid. But He saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid. Then they willingly received Him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went._'

I believe the conscience of men has received the right impression from this story. It has come to them in dark oppressive hours as the witness of a Presence that had been with them, though they knew it not,--of a calm power in which they might trust. This might not be their notion of a miracle. If they had been asked to define its nature and its purpose, they would carefully limit it to the time in which Jesus dwelt on earth; they would say it was a departure from the laws of nature to attest His divine mission. They would explain away the faith they had expressed unawares; they would say they had only been making a moral or personal improvement of the incident. No, brethren, it is not so. They discovered the true meaning of the sign at first.

The other is the cold intellectual _mis_interpretation of it. They feel in their hearts that it is _not_ a violation of the laws of nature, for the Son of Man to prove that the elements are not man's masters. They feel that when He raised up His disciples' hearts to trust in Him, He was teaching poor, weak, ignorant men the true law of _their_ being, and thereby teaching them to reverence and not to despise the laws which He had imposed on the winds and on the waves.

They feel that the whole beautiful narrative is not an argumentative a.s.sertion of a divine mission which can confute disputants, but the practical manifestation of a divine kinghood to meet the cravings and necessities of human beings. What does a debater care for '_It is I; be not afraid_?' What else does a man tossed about in a tempest care for? The words were not spoken to Scribes and Pharisees, and were not heard by them. They were spoken to fishermen out in a boat at night; and by such they have been heard ever since.

St. John tells us this in the next paragraph. If we attach the modern notion to miracles, we shall, of course, conclude that so singular a witness of the Messiahship of Jesus must at once have been declared to those who were hesitating about it, and half ready to believe it. The occasion for announcing it was given. '_The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto His disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone; (howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks): when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither His disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. And when they had found Him on the other side of the sea, they said unto Him_, _Rabbi, when camest Thou hither?_' Here were the excitement and astonishment all ready. These people had said the day before,--'_This is of a truth that prophet which should come into the world_.' What strength would that conviction gain, if they heard that He did not cross the lake as other men crossed it! He says nothing of this. '_Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me not because ye saw signs, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled._'

They did seek Him because they had seen _miracles_ or _wonders_; for it was a wonder that they had eaten and been filled; it was one which might be repeated. But they did not seek Him because they saw _signs_.

The signs had not told them who He was; they had not come because they wanted Him, but because they wanted something which He could give them. He did not then announce any other sign of His power; it could have done them no good. But He proceeded to draw out the signification of the first sign; to show them what there was in it beyond the satisfaction of their immediate hunger.

Here, even more than in the case of the woman at the well, we may wonder at the deep mysteries which He revealed to what we should call ignorant sensual people. That they were a crowd of such people, St.

John tells us plainly. And yet to what Jerusalem doctors had He spoken of a Bread of Life--of a bread of which a man might eat and not die?

But let us begin where He begins. Each sentence, each clause, even each word, that He addressed to this rabble at Capernaum, is meant for the ears and hearts of the wisest among us. '_Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you: for Him hath G.o.d the Father sealed._'

To the woman of Sychar He spoke of water, for she had come to draw water. To these Galilaeans He spoke of bread, for they had been eating of the loaves. Neither to one nor the other would He speak of the spiritual gift without speaking of the sensible gift,--without making them feel that that also was from G.o.d. He addresses the people of Capernaum as men working for their food ordinarily, though for once they had received it without working for it: and He bids them believe that there is another n.o.bler work which is appointed for them,--a work, however, which does not prevent the fruit of it from being a gift. They were earning, by the sweat of their brow, a food which sustained their lives from day to day,--G.o.d endowing them with both the power to toil and the reward of toil. They might toil for a bread that would sustain another different kind of life in them,--a life not of hours and instants, but eternal. This bread, He says, the Son of Man will give. After what I said last Sunday of His use of this t.i.tle,--of His a.s.sertion that the Son of Man must be the judge of men, must be the life-giver to men,--I have no need to dwell upon it here.

I would only lead you to notice how exactly this application of it accords with that in the dialogue at Jerusalem, and yet how suitable it is to the Galilaeans whom He is teaching. In both cases we find men brought directly into contact with One who knows them, who reads their hearts, who is the source and the standard of all that is human in them. In both, this Son of Man leads them to a Father from whom He has proceeded, from whose life His is derived, who has given Him His authority, whose will He has come to do. The words, we saw, were most provoking to the Pharisees of the holy city. Their inhumanity made it impossible for them to enter into the revelation of a Son of Man; their sense of distance from G.o.d, and their conception of Him as a mere Lawgiver, made the name of Father monstrous and incredible. With these ignorant labourers it was otherwise. A Son of Man,--a King who was yet a Brother,--they secretly longed for; half their wild acts were done in the struggle to find such a one. The thought of G.o.d was more terrible;--oftentimes they would have wished to hide themselves from Him under any hills and mountains; oftentimes they might have been glad to be told that there was no such Being. But there was that in them which owned Him as the Giver of all that they had; as worthy of the trust which their fathers put in Him; as a.s.sociated with the graves of their parents and the faces of their children. To hear Him called a Father,--however little they might understand in what sense He could be a Father,--to hear that there was One whom He had sealed as a giver of Life to men,--this answered to some of the dreams which they had dreamed in their happiest hours: to some of the necessities which had been awakened within them in their saddest hours.

But these were vague, half-realized thoughts. The word 'labour,' or 'work,' was familiar to them. Jesus meant, they thought, that G.o.d would not give them anything which they did not earn. '_What shall we do_,' said one, who was the spokesman of the rest, '_that we may work the works of G.o.d_?' As often happens, the language was accurate beyond the conscious intention of the person who used it. He desired to know what work they should work _for_ G.o.d, whereas it was really a work _of_ G.o.d that was demanded. '_Jesus answered, This is the work of G.o.d, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent._' G.o.d was working upon them; He was calling them to trust their King and their Friend; to give up their hearts to the Lord of their hearts--to Him who could alone quicken them to any good and fruitful work.

Of course, they understood by the expression, '_Him whom He hath sent_,' that Jesus was claiming to be Messiah,--the sent from Heaven.

'_They said therefore unto Him, What sign shewest Thou then, that we may see, and believe Thee? What dost Thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat._'

Jesus had fed them in the desert when they were fainting. That was a strange and great act, no doubt, worthy of a Prophet, perhaps of a King. But the manna had actually dropped from heaven out of the clouds. If He came from Heaven, would He have merely taken the bread in His hands and blessed it? Would there not have been a sign like that which showed Moses to be indeed the messenger of G.o.d? Would there be no appearance in the sky? It was the question of people whose minds were perplexed about Heaven, and who, happily, had not found out seemly phrases in which to veil their perplexity. A material heaven--a heaven of sky and clouds--was what they saw and confessed. They had a dim vision of something beyond this. Their hearts yearned for a Heaven as calm as that upon which their eyes gazed; as full of light, as productive of life, but yet altogether different from that. What it was, where it was, they could not tell. Do you think we should have helped them if we had talked to them about an intellectual Heaven or a subjective Heaven? Do you think such nonsense can be of much help to ourselves?