Sermons Part 4

Christ's action in this miracle is a foreshadowing of His action in the Church. The Master found woman deposed from her proper social position. The man had suffered not less than the woman by this her humiliation. Jew and Gentile had conspired together in an unconscious conspiracy to bring about this disastrous result. The Hebrew Rabbi and the Greek philosopher alike had gone astray. It is the recorded saying of a famous Jewish doctor that the words of the law were better burned than committed to woman. It is an opinion ascribed to the most famous Athenian statesman, that woman had then achieved her highest glory when her name was heard amongst men least, either for virtue or for reproach. A moral resurrection was needed for womanhood. It might seem to the looker-on like a social death, from which there was no awakening, but it was only the suspension of her proper faculties and opportunities, a long sleep from which a revival must come sooner or later. It was for Him, and Him alone, who was the Vanquisher of death, who has the keys of Hades--for Him alone to open the door of her sepulchral prison and resuscitate her dormant life and restore her to her ordinary place in society. When all hope was gone, He took her by the hand and bid her arise; and at the sound of His voice and the touch of His hand she arose and walked, and the world was astonished with a great astonishment. We ourselves are so familiar with the results, the position of woman is so fully recognised by us, it is bearing so abundant fruit every day and everywhere, that we overlook the magnitude of the change itself. Only, then, when we turn to the harem and the zenana do we learn to estimate what the Gospel has achieved, and has still to achieve, in the emanc.i.p.ation of woman, and her rest.i.tution to her lawful place in the social order. To ourselves the large place which woman occupies in the Gospel and in the early apostolic history seems only natural. To contemporaries it must have appeared in the light of a social revolution. The very opening of the Gospel is charged with Divine messages communicated to us through woman--Mary, Elizabeth, Anna; women attend our Lord everywhere during His earthly ministry. The sisters, Martha and Mary, are set before us as embodying the two contrasted types of character, the practical and the contemplative. To a woman, and to a woman alone, is given the promise of an undying hope beyond the glory of the mightiest earthly princes. Of her it is said: "Wheresoever this Gospel is preached in the whole world, there shall this which this woman has done be told as a memorial of her." To a woman were spoken those gracious words of pardon most tender and compa.s.sionate, the consolation and the stay and the hope of the penitent to all time: "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loveth much." Women are the chief attendants at the crucifixion, and the chief ministrants at the tomb. Woman is the first witness of the resurrection; and as it was in Christ's personal ministry, so it is in all the Apostolic Church. In the first gathering of the little band after the Ascension, women are found a.s.sembled with the apostles. This is a foreshadowing of the part which they are destined to play in the subsequent narrative of the history of the Church. Cast your eyes down the salutations in the Epistle to the Romans. There is Phoebe, a deaconess of the Church of Cenchrea, commended as having been the succourer of many, among others of the Apostle himself. There is Priscilla, who with her husband had laid down her neck for his life, to whom he himself not only gave thanks, but all the Churches of the Gentiles. There is Mary, who bestowed much labour upon him and others; Tryphena and Tryphosa, who laboured much in the Lord. There is Persis, to whom the same testimony is borne.

There is the mother of Rufus, who had also been like a mother to himself. There is Julia, and there is the sister of Nereus. A long catalogue to appear in the salutations of a single epistle!

Turn again from the Church of which St. Paul knew least when he wrote, to the Church of which he knew most. Witness his relation to his beloved Philippian Church. He addresses himself first to the women who resort to the places of prayer among the individual women with whom he came in contact. At Philippi we read of Lydia, his earliest hostess in this city, of the damsel from whom he cast out a spirit of divination, and then of Euodias and Syntyche, women who laboured with him in the Gospel; and indeed we know more of the women at Philippi than we know of the men.

But it was not only this desultory, unrecognised service, however frequent, however great, that women rendered to the spread of the Gospel in its earliest days. The Apostolic Church had its organised ministrations of women, its order of deaconesses, its order of widows.

Women had their definite place in the ecclesiastical system of those early times, and in our own age and country again the awakened activity of the Church is once more demanding the recognition of the female ministry. The Church feels herself maimed of one of her hands.

No longer she fails to employ, to organise, to consecrate to the service of Christ, the love, the sympathy, the tact, the self-devotion of women. Hence the revival of the female diaconate in its multiplication of sisterhoods. But these, though the most definite, are not the most extensive developments of this revival. Everywhere inst.i.tutions are springing up, manifold in form and purpose, for the organisation of women's work. There has been, and there is still, a shameful waste of this latent power, boundless in its capacities if only fostered and developed. The famous heroines of womanhood will necessarily be few. It is rarely women's part to save a city or guide a church. Only at long intervals on the stage of the history of the world appear such women as Joan of Arc; but here and there G.o.d raises up an exceptional heroine to do exceptional work, which a woman alone can do, or do so effectually, for her age and country. But generally it is in the quieter, less obtrusive, more homely, and more womanly way, that she is called to test her power, certainly not less real or less beneficent, though it may be less striking, than the power of man. She is a mother in her own household, her own kindred, her own parish, her own neighbourhood; the guide, the helper of man. Yes; a priestess and a prophetess to the young, the sick, the frail and erring, the poor and needy--needy whether of spiritual or bodily healing. It is the province of the Church, when acting by the Spirit and in the name of Christ, to develop the power of women, to take by the hand and raise from its torpor that which seemed a death, but which is only a sleep; and now, as then, revived life and beneficent work will amaze the looker-on--"they were astonished with a great astonishment."

Among the most recent developments of the work of the Church of Christ your Girls' Friendly Society has taken a foremost place. I would say in all sincerity, that when I read your last report with profound joy and thankfulness, I was impressed, no less by the completeness of your ideal, than by the variety and expansion of your work. I do not say this to commend; this is not the time or the place for commendation.

"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give the praise."

You will not be content, will you? you will not be content, if you are true to your ideals, with holding out the hand of loving sympathy in your own home and neighbourhood to a humble sister needing a sister's care and guidance? Your love will follow her about that she may never be lost sight of. It is a trite complaint that in this day the old relations between master and servant have vanished, or almost vanished away. The bond is no longer one of reciprocal loyalty, but of common convenience. Hence it is liable to severance at any moment in the feverish, ever-restless, fluctuating conditions of modern life. It was impossible that these relations should remain unchanged while all else was changing. The domestic servant or the shop girl has no longer a fixed home; she is a wanderer on the earth. It is just here that the catholicity of your plan should step in and counteract the evil. It is your part to realise this catholicity. When a girl once enrolls herself in your numbers, she is _yours_; everywhere, whithersoever she may go, the friendly eye will rest upon her; the friendly hand will be stretched out to her wheresoever she may be. She will find everywhere a home, because she will find everywhere friends. You cannot set this ideal before yourselves too definitely, or strive to realise it too earnestly.

Do you ask how your work may be truly effective? I answer you in the words of the text; "He took the damsel by the hand." There must be an intensity of human sympathy, and there must be an indwelling of the Divine power. The lesson of the miracle which I have taken for my starting-point involves both these ideals. The current of womanly sympathy must flow out deep and strong and clear. Is not this the typical meaning of Christ's action in the text? The touch of His warm hand restores the circulation and revives the life in those pale, motionless, death-like limbs. We want sympathy here, sympathy first and sympathy last--sympathy reflecting, however faintly, Christ's own boundless compa.s.sion and love. The cold, mechanical formalism of the relieving officer will not suffice; the haughty a.s.sertion of superiority, the condescending patronage of the fine lady will be worse than nothing. You must be a sister to your sisters, treading in the footsteps of your Brother, Jesus Christ. Is not this also the meaning of those words which He utters to the girl lying helpless before Him? He speaks to her not in the Greek, the conventional language of outward life, but in the Syriac, the true language of the family and the home. It pierces her, notwithstanding her death-like slumber. He speaks to her, as He speaks to us all, with the voice of a direct personal love. This is always the language of Christ's words, the language of Christ's Gospel,--"How hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born?"

And over and above all this, animating, inspiring, sanctifying your human sympathies, there must be the consciousness of the Divine presence, the sense of the Divine energy, in your work. You will apply yourself to it with a strength not your own; the power of the living Christ will thrill through you. Is not this the interpretation of the symbolic action, "He took the damsel by the hand"?--He _Himself_, and not another. "Not I, but Christ in me," will be the inspiring motive of your work, as it was in St. Paul's. _His_ hand must guide your hand; nay, His hand must replace your hand, if the touch shall raise the damsel, and restore her to a better and a happier life.

And restore her it will; this intense human sympathy inspired by this consciousness of the Divine indwelling. It never has failed yet, and it never can fail to work miracles of resurrection and healing, in her helplessness, in her temptations, in all her struggles and perplexities, her bodily wants, and her spiritual trials. It will be to her comfort and strength and hope; it will throb her with the pulse of an awakened life.

But I have spoken hitherto as if these helpless girls whom you befriend were the sole counterparts of Jairus's daughter. I have regarded them as only the patients whom Christ's awakening hands raise from their death-like slumbers. Is this an adequate representation of the case, think you? Are there not others even more needy than they of this beneficent movement? Are we not taught on the highest authority that it is more blessed to give than to receive? But, if so, have we not a truer ant.i.type of this damsel whom Christ raised in these befriended girls? Yes, Christ has taken them by the hand, and has revived them, has awakened them from the heavy, death-like slumber of a selfish, self-contained being. Christ has shown them the beauty and the power of sympathy, and it has been to them the throbbing of a new life. Surely it is not only the daughters of ancestral lineage and of Norman blood, not only a Clara Vere de Vere, who are sickening with disease, and who need Christ's healing hand; is there not in the home of the professional man many a daughter and many a sister on whose hand time hangs heavily, whose life is wasting away, fretting with feverish excitement, or sunk in self-indulgence and apathy, weary of self, and weary of others? How shall they wake up from their barren monotony and death-like existence? Sympathy, active sympathy for others; this, and this alone, can restore them. Mothers, train your daughters early to think for others, to care for others, to minister to others. Be a.s.sured this will be the most valuable part of their education. This heaven-born charity is the sovereign antidote to all the ills of womanhood. Is it some secret sorrow gnawing at the heart, some outraged feeling, or some harrowing bereavement, or some actual disappointment? Merge and absorb it in active solicitude for others.

Is it some fierce temptation which shamed you, and each fresh struggle seems to leave you weaker than before? There will be no room for this if you devote yourself to the needs of others. All sin is selfishness in some form or other. Forget sloth; this is the best safeguard against temptation.

I appeal confidently to all those who have made the trial to say whether this medicine has healed them where all other medicines have failed? And, why, why? It is Christ's own love constraining them; it is Christ's own touch thrilling through their veins; hence they mark the resurrection--"He took the damsel by the hand; and straightway she arose and walked."

PILATE.[12]

"Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth?"--JOHN xviii. 38.

St. John is especially distinguished among the four evangelists for his subtle delineation of character. We do not commonly remember--it costs us an effort to remember--how very largely we are indebted to the fourth gospel for our conceptions of the chief personages who bear a part in evangelical history, where those conceptions are most clear and distinct. If we a.n.a.lyse the sources of our information, we find again and again that while something is told us about particular persons in the other evangelists, yet it is St. John who gives those touches to the picture which make it stand out with its own individuality as a real, living, speaking man. The other evangelist will record a name, or, perhaps, an incident; St. John will add one or two sayings; and the whole person is instinct with life. The character flashes out in half-a-dozen words. "From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." So it is with Philip, with Thomas, with Mary and Martha, and with several others who might be named. This vividness of portraiture is our strongest a.s.surance, if a.s.surance were needed, that the narrative was indeed written by him whose name it bears--by the beloved disciple and eye-witness himself. For, observe, there is no effort at delineation of character; there is no delineation of character at all, properly so called. The evangelist does not describe the persons whom he introduces; they describe themselves. The incidental act, the incidental movement or gesture, the incidental saying, tells the tale. That which he had heard, that which he had looked upon and his eyes had seen, that which his hands had handled of the Word of Life--that and that only he declared.

Pilate furnishes a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of this feature in St.

John's gospel. Pilate is the chief agent in the crowning scene of evangelical history. He is necessarily a prominent figure in all the four narratives of this crisis. In the first three gospels we learn much about him. We find him there, as we find him in St. John, at cross purposes with the Jews. He is represented there, not less than by St. John, as giving an unwilling consent to the judicial murder of Jesus. His Roman sense of justice is too strong to allow him to yield without an effort. His personal courage is too weak to persevere in the struggle when the consequences threaten to become inconvenient. He is timid, politic, time-serving, as represented by all alike. He has just enough conscience to wish to shake off the responsibility, but far too little conscience to shrink from committing the sin. But in St. John's narrative we pierce far below the surface. Here he is revealed to us as the sarcastic, cynical worldling, who doubts everything, distrusts everything, despises everything. He has an intense scorn for the Jews, and yet he has a craven dread of them. He has a certain professional regard for justice, and yet he has no real belief in truth or honour. Throughout he manifests a malicious irony in his conduct at this crisis. There is a lofty scorn in his answer when he repudiates any sympathy with the accusers. "Am I a Jew?" There is a sarcastic pity in the question which he addresses to the Prisoner before him, "Art Thou the King of the Jews? Art Thou, then, a king--Thou poor, weak, helpless fanatic, whom with a single word I could doom to death?" He is half-bewildered with the incongruity of the claim; and yet there is a certain propriety that a wild enthusiast should a.s.sert his sovereignty over a nation of bigots; so he sarcastically adopts the t.i.tle. "Will you that I release unto you the King of the Jews?" Even when, at length, he is obliged to yield to the popular clamour, he will at least have his revenge by a studied contempt. "Behold your King! Shall I crucify your King?" And to the very last moment he indulges his cynical scorn. The t.i.tle on the cross was, indeed, unconsciously, a proclamation of a Divine truth; but in its immediate purpose and intent it was the mere gratification of Pilate's sarcastic humour. "Jesus of Nazareth." Could any good thing come out of Nazareth? "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." He has sacrificed his honour to them, but he will not sacrifice his contempt. "What I have written, I have written."

But it is more especially in the sentence which I have chosen for my text that the whole character of the man is revealed. The Prisoner before him had accepted the t.i.tle of a King. He based His claim to this t.i.tle on the fact that He had come to bear witness of the truth.

He declared that those who were themselves of the truth would acknowledge His claim. They were His rightful subjects; they were the enfranchised citizens of His kingdom.

Strange language this, in the ears of a cynical, worldly sceptic, to whom the most attractive hope of humanity was a judicious admixture of force and fraud. "Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this he went out." The altercation could be carried no farther. Was not human life itself one great query without an answer?

What was truth? "Truth"? This helpless Prisoner claimed to be a King, and He appealed, forsooth, to His truthfulness as the credential of His sovereign rights! Was ever any claim more contradictory of all human experience, more palpably absurd, than this? "Truth"? When had truth anything to do with founding a kingdom? The mighty engine of imperial power, the armed sceptre which ruled the world, whence came it? Certainly it owed nothing to truth. Had not Augustus established his sovereignty by an unscrupulous use of force, and maintained it by an astute use of artifice? And his successor, the present occupant of the imperial throne, was he not an arch dissembler, the darkest of all dark enigmas? The name of Tiberius was a byword for impenetrable disguise. Truth might do well enough for fools and enthusiasts; but for rulers, for diplomatists, for men of the world, it was the wildest of all wild dreams. "Truth"? What was truth? He had lived too long in the world to trust to any such hollow delusion. He had listened to the ceaseless din of philosophical disputations till he was weary of them.

The Stoics, the Epicureans, the Platonists, all had their several specifics which they vended as truth. All were equally sure, and yet no two agreed.

He had witnessed, certainly not without contempt, and yet not altogether without dismay, the rising flood of foreign superst.i.tion--Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, Chaldean--which threatened to deluge the city and empire, and destroy all the ancient landmarks. Could he believe all or any of these? In this never-ending conflict of philosophical dogmas and religious creeds, what could he do but resign himself to scepticism, to indifference, to a cold and cynical scorn of all enthusiastic convictions and all definite beliefs? "What is truth?"

And yet as he turned away, neither expecting nor desiring an answer to a question which he had asked merely to end an inconvenient controversy, some uneasy misgivings, we may well suppose, flashed across the mind of this proud, sarcastic worldling, that he was now brought face to face with truth as he had never been brought before.

There was a reality about every word and action of this Jewish Prisoner which arrested and overawed him. The calmness with which He urged His claims, the fearlessness with which He defied death, the impressive words, the still more impressive silence, the manifest innocence and rect.i.tude of the Man, if he saw nothing more--these could not be without their effect even on a Pilate, steeped as he was in the moral recklessness and the religious despair of his age. At all events, he would serve the Man if he conveniently could.

But there had been also a n.o.bler element in Pilate's education than moral scepticism and religious unbelief. He was a Roman governor, and as a Roman governor he was an administrator of Roman law. It was their appreciation of law, their respect for law, their study of law, far more than anything else, which gave its greatness to the character of the Roman people. Even in the most degraded ages of their history, and with the worst individual types of men, this is the one bright spot which relieves the gloom. It is the n.o.bler prerogative of law to set a standard clear, definite, and precise. I have no concern here with other obligations to the law which as Christians we are bound to acknowledge, though, speaking before the chief representatives of English law and justice, I cannot fail to be reminded of them this afternoon. But this exhibition of a moral standard is a gain which it is hardly possible to over-estimate. The standard will not always be the highest. From the nature of the case it cannot be so. Law deals with some departments of morality very imperfectly; with others it does not attempt to deal at all. But still, whenever it is felt, and so far as it penetrates, it creates an ideal, and begets a habit which will not be powerless even with the most indifferent and reckless of men. So it was with Pilate. Theological scepticism had eaten out his religious principles to the very core. Unscrupulous worldliness and self-seeking had shattered his moral const.i.tution; but though his principles were gone, and his character was ruined, still he was haunted by some lingering sense of professional honour; still the magnificent ideal of Roman justice and Roman law rose up before him, and would not lightly be thrust aside. He pleads repeatedly for justice against the relentless accusers. Three times he declares the Prisoner's innocence in the same explicit words--"I find no fault in Him." Once and again he strives to s.h.i.+ft the responsibility from his own shoulders to theirs. "Take ye Him and judge Him according to your law. Take ye Him and crucify Him." But his efforts are all in vain.

They will have none of this. The deed shall be done, and he shall do it.

It was not the first, and it would not be the last time that Pilate found himself in conflict with the Jews. For ten years he was governor of this turbulent, intractable people. This was an unusually long period of office under an Emperor like Tiberius, who was constantly changing his provincial governors from mere suspicion and distrust. It must have cost Pilate no little trouble to steer his course so long and so successfully, without foundering either on the suspicions of his jealous master here or on the bigotry of his stubborn subjects there. And yet he was constantly wounding the religious susceptibilities of the Jews. At one time he shocked them by bringing the military ensigns with the effigies of Caesar within the walls of Jerusalem; at another he persisted in setting up some gilt s.h.i.+elds, inscribed with a profane heathen dedication, in the palace of Herod within the holy precincts. In both cases he drove the Jews to the extreme verge of exasperation. In both cases he exhibits the same sarcastic and defiant scorn which is apparent here. In both cases their obstinate zeal or bigotry triumphs, as it triumphs here, and he is forced, in the end, to retrace his steps and to undo his deed.

So, then, this was only one brief episode in a protracted struggle between Pilate and the Jewish people. Doubtless, it seemed at the time quite insignificant compared with those other and fiercer conflicts in which he was engaged. It is pa.s.sed over in silence by contemporary Jewish writers. It concerned the life of a single person only; it was settled in a single night; and yet it involved nothing less than the eternal destiny of all mankind.

Ah, there is a terrible irony in G.o.d's retributive justice, which so blinds a man to the true proportions of things. A single moment may do a wrong which centuries cannot repair. It is a dangerous thing to defy the truth. The majesty of truth is inviolable, and he who insults it in a moment of recklessness can never forecast the consequences. Time and s.p.a.ce and notoriety are no measure of importance here. The most important criminal trial on record in the history of mankind was hurried through in two or three short hours, under cover of night and in the grey of early dawn.

This is the great lesson of Pilate's crime. He was surprised by the truth; he found himself unexpectedly confronted by the truth; and he could not recognise it. His whole life long he had tampered with truth; he had despised truth; he had despaired of truth. Truth was the last thing which he had set before him as the main aim of life. He had thought much of policy, of artifice, of fraud, of force; but for truth in any of its manifold forms he had cared just nothing at all. And his sin had worked out its own retribution. Not truth only, but the very Truth itself, Truth incarnate, stood before him in a human form, and he was blind to it; he scorned it; he played with it; he thrust it aside; he condemned, and he gibbeted it. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate," is the legend of eternal infamy with which history has branded his name.

So it is always. The Lord appears suddenly in His temple--in the shrine of the human heart and conscience; suddenly--at a time and in a form which we least expect. The truth visits us very frequently under the disguise of some common event, or some insignificant person. It surprises us, perhaps, in the accidental saying of some little child, or in the insidiousness of some mean temptation, or in the emergency of some trivial choice. It stands before us at once as our suppliant and our king. We fail to see its majesty veiled in its humble garb. We treat it as our prisoner when, in fact, it is our judge, and may become our gaoler. We flatter ourselves that we have power to condemn or to release it. We have no fault to find with it, but still we reject it; we crucify it; and before three days are gone it rises from its grave to bear eternal testimony against us. We could not see the truth, because we ourselves were not of the truth. Here in this judicial blindness is the warning of Pilate's example. Like is drawn to like: like only understands like. The truth is only for the children of truth.

We must not, however, unduly narrow the sense of truth and of truthfulness. When our Lord called Himself the truth--when He declared that the truth should make us free, He meant very much more than is commonly understood by the word. Veracity is, indeed, truth; but it is only a small part of the truth. A man may be scrupulously veracious, strictly a man of honour; he may always say what he believes; he may always perform what he promises; and yet he may not be, in the highest sense, true. He may be the slave of a thousand unrealities. A genuine child of truth is very much more than a speaker of the truth. He is a doer of the truth, and a thinker of the truth, and a liver of the truth. He is frank, open, and real in all things. Reality is the very soul of his being. He cares for nothing which is hollow, shadowy, superficial. Popularity, wealth, success, worldly ambition, and display are essentially unreal, because they are external, because they are transient. Therefore, he estimates them at their true value.

The devotion of scientific men in pursuit of scientific truth wins our highest admiration. It is not without a thrill of national pride that we have just bidden G.o.d-speed to the gallant company which has started for the Arctic seas. To face untold hards.h.i.+ps and possible death in such a cause is a worthy and n.o.ble aim, for these are realities. But obviously there are truths of far higher moment to the temporal and eternal well-being of man than the laws of electricity, or the causes of the Aurora, or the fauna of the Polar seas. Whence came I? Whither go I? What is sin? What is conscience? Is there a G.o.d in heaven? Is there a providence, a moral government, a judgment? Is there a redemption, a sanctification, a life eternal? These are the momentous, the pressing questions which a man can only shelve at his peril.

Christ is the answer to all these questions. Therefore, He is the verity of verities. Therefore, He claims for Himself the t.i.tle of the truth as His absolute and indefeasible right.

An incapacity to see the truth, when thus presented to us in its highest form, may arise from different causes. It may spring from bigoted partisans.h.i.+p, and religious pride, and obstinate formalism, as in the case of the Jews; or it may spring from cold cynicism, and worldliness, and dishonesty, as in the case of Pilate. These two conspire to crucify the truth. As we sow, so also shall we reap.

Pilate's life had been stained in untruthfulness. His government had been an alternation of violence and artifice. His aim had not been to rule uprightly, to rule generously, but to rule at any cost. He must calm the suspicions of his jealous master, and he must quell the turbulence of an unruly people. Whatever means would conduce to these ends were to him legitimate means. Uprightness, honour, frankness, generosity, truth--what were these to him? He had no belief in them, and why should he practise them? He projected his own motives into his estimate of mankind at large. He read the characters of others in the distorted mirror of his own consciousness. Human life, as he viewed it, was false from beginning to end. It was, after all, the reflection of his own falsehood which he saw. He was ever looking out for the unrealities of existence. He had no eye for its realities. Men's convictions were their foibles: men's beliefs were his playthings.

Untruthfulness, cynicism, distrust, scorn, had withered his soul. They only will find the truth who believe that the truth may be found.

Pilate had no such belief. He had gone through life asking, half in bitterness, half in jest, "What is truth?" He had asked it now again, and the question was fatal. Pilate's temper of mind is a very real danger in an age like ours. Let us beware of thus jesting with truth, lest some time, like him, we crucify the truth unawares.

THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.[13]

"Two men went up into the temple to pray."--LUKE xviii. 10.

The teaching of the gospels is, in large portions, a teaching by contrast. This is the case, to a certain extent, in the historical narrative, but it is especially so in the parables of our Lord. Thus we have the contrast of the two brothers in the parable of the Prodigal Son; the contrast of the two sons in the parable of the father's vineyard; the contrast of the rich man and the beggar in the parable of Lazarus and Dives, and the like; the right and the wrong way of acting are figured, are embodied, are personified in two living, acting men. So it is here; the right and the wrong spirit in prayer, the right and the wrong att.i.tude towards G.o.d, are set before us in portraits of imaginary men who might very well have been real men. If you had gone up to the temple any day, and watched the wors.h.i.+ppers there, you might very likely have seen the counterpart both of the one and of the other. But there is not only a contrast in the parable, there is also a paradox, a surprise; the ordinary estimate of worth is set aside; the judgment of G.o.d overrules the judgment of men; the praise is given where men would give the blame, and the blame is given where men would give the praise. The object of the parable is to correct, to cancel, to reverse human judgment.

"Two men went up into the temple to pray." The place is the same, the time is the same, the object is the same; only the characters of the two men are widely different. To which will you give the preference?

Could any pious Jew have doubted about his answer to this question?

Would you yourself have doubted if you had been a Jew and lived in that age? Let us look more narrowly at these two men as they stand praying within the sacred precincts. Here is the one, a Pharisee. The sect to which he belongs is eminently religious, eminently patriotic; the law of G.o.d is their study day and night; their daily life is regulated on the strictest principles; they are the recognised leaders of their countrymen, their religious teachers and their political guides; they are regarded as the great bulwark against foreign tyranny and heathen idolatry; they have altogether the confidence of the people. And he is an eminently favourable type of the sect. It is not enough that he avoids gross and flagrant crime; that he is upright in his dealings with his fellow-men; that he respects the sanct.i.ty of the marriage vows;--he goes very far beyond this: he fasts regularly, he pays t.i.thes scrupulously, he prays fervently after a manner, as this incident shows; not a suspicion is breathed against the truth of his statements as he thus describes himself. No doubt they were strictly true; the very point of the parable depends upon their accuracy. What more, then, would you have than this? Now, turn to the other wors.h.i.+pper, the publican. What a contrast we have here! The publicans were hated, despised, loathed by the Jews. There was only too much reason for all this hatred and contempt. The publicans were so called because they farmed the public taxes. The Roman masters let out the collection of the taxes for so much to the publicans, and the publicans made what they could by the collecting. Hence their position was unsatisfactory from first to last. Though Jews themselves, they were the representatives of the Roman masters of Judea. They thus reminded their fellow-countrymen at every turn of the galling yoke of a foreign tyranny, of a heathen tyranny, too. This made matters worse.

Religion as well as patriotism was grievously compromised by them.

This was bad enough; but this was not all. From the manner in which they contracted with the Roman government they were tempted to extortion and fraud. Their profits depended on petty acts of insolence and overreaching, and there is every reason to believe that, as a cla.s.s, they did yield to their temptation. It might be said that their hand was against every man and every man's hand was against them.

Remembering these facts, we are able the more truly to honour a Matthew or a Zaccheus, towering far above the moral standard of their cla.s.s. And the man before us--what shall we say of him? He had yielded to these temptations. Just as in the case of the Pharisee, so in the case of the publican, there is every reason to accept as strictly true his description of himself.

As I have said before, the very force of the parable depends on the truth of this statement. He, doubtless, had been extortionate; he had used his position and his power to oppress and defraud his fellow-countrymen. He was, perhaps, conscious, besides, of other grievous sins--not specially sins of his cla.s.s, but sins of himself, sins of mankind. There can be little doubt that when he beat upon his breast, when he bewailed his sinfulness, when he entreated G.o.d's mercy, he had on his conscience some heavier weight than the ordinary sins and short-comings of the ordinary respectable and religious man.

What, then, shall we say? Who will waver between these two men? Who can for a moment hesitate to rank the Pharisee higher than the publican? And yet it is our Lord's judgment--it is G.o.d's own verdict--that this man, this publican, this sullied, sin-stained, but withal penitent man, went down to his home justified rather than the highly respectable, highly respected, highly religious Pharisee. The answer is this--to know G.o.d is the beginning and the end of all wisdom; to know G.o.d is to think truly, is to act truly, is to live truly. Now, the Pharisee did not know G.o.d; he was altogether at fault in his ideas of G.o.d; he was on the wrong line, and however far he might go on that line he would be no nearer to G.o.d. On the other hand, the publican had taken the right direction; he might be still very far from a thorough knowledge of G.o.d; but his ideas of G.o.d, however imperfect, were right as far as they went. Let us look into this matter a little more closely.

There are two ways of regarding G.o.d. We may look upon Him as a taskmaster, or we may look upon Him as a righteous Father. The first way is hopelessly, irretrievably wrong; the second way alone will lead us to Him. We may look upon Him as a taskmaster. What then? He sets before us a definite piece of work to do. If we do it, well and good; we escape blame; we get our pay. It is give and take; certain things are to be done, and certain other things are to be left undone. There the matter ends. This is what is meant by justification by works. It is a mere question of bargaining. We treat with G.o.d as a workman would treat with an employer of labour; we look upon Him as one of ourselves, a little more powerful, a little more exacting, a little more stern, but still as one of ourselves--a man, magnified indeed, but a man still, with whom we can stipulate and bargain and haggle about the amount of work to be done. That is the error, the fatal error, of the man in the parable who hid his one talent in the earth.

"I feared thee, because thou art an austere man"--not, "I loved thee,"

not "I reverenced thee," not "I wors.h.i.+pped thee," but "I feared thee."

It was apprehension, it was dread--nothing else; no affectionate yearning, no childlike outpouring of the heart, no seeking after the Father's embrace. "Thou art an austere man"--a hard man; yes, a taskmaster, and a rigorous taskmaster, too. "Lo, there thou hast that is thine"--not a little more, nor a little less--"thou hast that is thine." "Nay, everything is Mine. Heaven and earth are Mine; infinite righteousness and infinite truth, and infinite purity and infinite love, are Mine. Thou canst never give Me that is Mine." And so it is with the Pharisee in our parable, though the type of character is somewhat different. Fasting is enjoined, therefore he fasts; t.i.thes are commanded, therefore he pays t.i.thes. Not a moment is deducted from the fasting, not a penny is withheld from the t.i.thes. He will be all safe; he does his work and he claims his pay. Of those boundless reaches of mercy, of truth, of love, which lie beyond all definite precepts, all specific duties, he thinks nothing and he knows nothing; of the infinity of G.o.d, he is wholly ignorant; of G.o.d's absolute righteousness, of G.o.d's limitless goodness, he has not a thought; therefore he is satisfied; therefore he despises others. If he had any, even the faintest, conception of these, he could not be so complacent, he could not compare himself advantageously with others.

To him who sees this infinity of G.o.d boasting is altogether excluded; he is fain to call himself an unprofitable servant. Ah, yes! it all springs from that one original root of falsehood, that perverse, fatal idea of the relations of man to G.o.d--so much pay for so much work--haggling between employer and employed--conflict, in an exaggerated form, between capital and labour once more.

But the true way to regard G.o.d is to look upon Him as a righteous Father, to see His righteousness first, and then to see His fatherly love. To see His righteousness, the awe, the beauty, the majesty, the holiness, the glory of His righteousness! Have we caught only a faint, transient glimpse of it? What then? What becomes of our righteousness, our merit, our self-satisfaction, our self-complacency? What miserable, besmirched, filthy tatters do the very best of them seem if only for a moment the skirts of His glistening raiment have crossed the field of our vision, the glory of Him who is clothed in righteousness. Do we thank G.o.d, can we thank G.o.d now, that we are not as bad as other men are? Nay, thank Him for His opportunity, thank Him for His mercy, thank Him for His forbearing patience, but thank Him not where thanksgiving is a mere cloak of self-complacency. No; you cannot compare yourself with another now; you see only your own sin, you can measure only your own unworthiness now, or, rather, it appears far beyond measuring to you. Your righteousness and this man's unrighteousness, your good and this man's evil--what difference is there between them in the presence of G.o.d's infinite holiness, that great leveller of all human gradations?

"For merit lives from man to man, And not, O G.o.d, from man to Thee!"