Pastor Pastorum Part 24

In finis.h.i.+ng this notice I must remark that there is one social inst.i.tution about which our Lord does not shun to speak; this is marriage.

He upholds the sanct.i.ty and inviolability of the marriage tie more stringently than did the Jewish Law. The scribe who came "making trial" of our Lord is confounded-not by being put off without an answer-as usually happens in these cases, but by the singular positiveness of the reply.

"And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery."(306)

This exception is not inconsistent with the principles governing our Lord's acts. Christ's teaching was meant for all mankind, and Christianity would have been less adapted for universal use if it had been bound up with particular inst.i.tutions. But marriage is not a particular inst.i.tution, it is declared to be as universal as the human race; it goes down deeper than all divisions, it belongs to the stock below the point where the branches sprout. Thus Christ's recognition of the sanct.i.ty of marriage does not hamper human legislation, or prevent the growth of Humanity in any manner consistent with its health.

Close by the side of this matter lies another on which I must only say a word. It is one of the Gesta Christi that He has put woman into her right place. Slowly and quietly has this come about, as a growth from seed turned up in the soil, and not a construction upreared by men,-as indeed, with the changes that are wrought by Christ is mostly the way. He says not a word about the social condition of women or their position in the eye of the Law; He puts forward no grievances, He a.s.serts no claim. To have done either one or the other in His day would have been to bring about a violent upheaval, which would have destroyed all chance of the germination of the seed. Nowhere do men cling to old usages with more tenacity than in the matter of relations between s.e.x and s.e.x. These variations of usage may rest upon solid grounds, and it would have stood in the way of the adaptability of what He left to the needs of all races and all times, if by one rigid ordinance He had enforced uniformity, even in the justest way. But though our Lord says little about the right place of women yet He treats them as though that proper place were already theirs; for parts are given them in His great world-drama consistent with those they take in the common life of family and home.(307)

One word that our Lord drops has too important a bearing on this point to be pa.s.sed by. Frequently as our Lord alludes to eternal life, it is rarely that anything as to the modes of this life can be gathered from His speech, but in the one pa.s.sage in which He does touch on this directly, He implies that distinction of s.e.x ceases with the life upon earth.

"But they that are accounted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: for neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of G.o.d, being sons of the resurrection."(308)

There is to be no marrying or giving in marriage in the Kingdom of G.o.d.

All will there be as the angels of heaven. There can be no such thing as a male or female soul. Some may be educated for eternal life in the frame of man and others in that of woman, but when out of the body all distinction comes to an end, and both one and the other, if deemed worthy of the resurrection to life, a.s.sume the nature of angels of G.o.d. When this comes home to a people and they see that the distinction of male and female is one of a day, while the angelic existence, in which no distinction shall remain, is an everlasting one, then whatever remains that seems degrading in the condition of woman will be in the way to disappear.

I will end this by stating the truth which I have had it in view to bring out.

Supposing that Christ, lest He should hamper free human growth, was unwilling to tie down posterity to particular rules touching the affairs of life, and that He also foresaw that in time men would take His behaviour as a model for their own; then the course He actually took, in refusing to sanction by His example this or that course of proceeding in matters coming within man's cognizance, was admirably suited to His end, and met perfectly the circ.u.mstances of the case.

Our Lord's action prospective.

But if our Lord's behaviour in secular matters is often hard to explain, unless we suppose Him to have had a glimpse of what has actually come to pa.s.s, much more is this the case in what concerns the building of His Church. We know from His own words that He saw His end to be near at hand.

We know how He loved the Apostles and we know how His heart was set on His great work; so that it is inexplicable that He should have left the Apostles without directions for their personal conduct, and as to the practical shape they were to give to the work in view. All is explained, if they were merely being exposed to a few hours of trial, and if our Lord meant to commission them with definite duties and give the necessary directions, when He rose again. Apart from any miraculous foreknowledge, our Lord could foresee that His end was near, and that persecution awaited those who for more than two years had formed the chief visible interest of His life. Would He have left them at Jerusalem perfectly at a loss, would He have left them in the position of a boat's crew in the open sea, whose captain has died without giving them their course? If He had not felt certain of being soon again by their side, then indeed we should, with the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o," have felt constrained to confess "that there was no historical character whose motives, objects and feelings remained so incomprehensible to us."

After the Resurrection, the forms needful for a religious community are delivered to the Apostles. They are given a rite, marking admission to the body, and sacramental words serving as a symbol and the nucleus of a creed. They are to go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Moreover they are told what they are, for the moment, to do. They are to remain at Jerusalem, till they be endowed with power from on high. Christ opens to them the Scriptures and possibly left some instruction as to the earliest form of His Church which, agreeably to His unfailing method, He does not communicate to aftertimes. He will not stereotype the outward garb which he would have adapt itself to the changing wants of men.

Christ's intimations of the future wear the appearance of being given, less to communicate fore-knowledge than that when the event came to pa.s.s the hearers might feel that Christ had "told them before:"(309) if He had thought good He would have made the lessons plainer. It may have helped to sustain the Apostles during the terrible hours when their Master lay in the grave, to turn to these words of forecast and from them to gather that all was being carried forward towards a purpose preordained of G.o.d. It is true that our Lord had told the Apostles again and again what the end was to be, but they could not believe that He would permit His enemies to prevail, and our Lord hardly seems to expect that they would take His words as literal truth. If, during the last days, they had really believed that He was about to perish on the cross, they would have been paralysed with anguish and dismay, and the last lessons would have fallen on the ears of men who were prostrated and stunned.

That our Lord's action was suited to what did actually happen, and not to what was likely to happen after the judgment of men, appears also in another way.

The Apostles, both in themselves and in virtue of their training, were exactly adapted to the part which came into their hands, but they were by no means of the sort which the leader either of a political or a religious movement would have picked out to carry it forward when He should die.

They were not men to fascinate crowds and lead them whither they would, they were not men to discover that aspect of a dogma which should commend itself to the understandings of their hearers. They had no skill in policy, no experience in government or in organising bodies of men; their strength lay not in their talent but their truth. If they had possessed brilliant capacity, and all or any of the qualities named above, the danger of disunion or of there being as many different followings as there were Apostles (see 1 Cor. i. 12) would have been thereby increased. We read in History or Philosophy of great men who have left empires or systems for their chosen successors to maintain. Did such successors keep free from dissension and disruption in the way that those did whom Jesus chose and trained? Did any such body answer its purpose as the Apostles did?

The training of the Apostles fitted them admirably, as has been said above, for witnesses who should carry credit with the world; it brought them, by the road of personal devotion to a visible Master, unto Faith in an unseen G.o.d; it endowed them with wonderful endurance, it taught them the patience whereby they might "win their souls;"(310) it educated their intuitions to discern G.o.d's ways and recognise G.o.d's whisper in the voice which spake at their hearts. But they were dest.i.tute of eloquence and of many of the gifts with which the founder of a sect would have been careful to see that those were furnished who were to take His place; and this omission only becomes intelligible when we find that the deficiencies are supplied by Christ's presence with them, and by the Spirit from on high.

What was most important of all was, that no act or word of Christ's should seem to shut out from their share in Him any section of mankind. Agreeably with this, He never proclaims Himself the Jewish Messiah. No Greek or Roman would have listened for a moment to one who declared Himself the especial prophet of the Jews. Though of the "house and family of David,"(311) He will accept no advantage on this score. He repudiates for the Redeemer of the world the t.i.tle of "Son of David,"(312) which from its nature was based on legitimacy and must rest on the veracity of genealogical rolls. The Apostles were to divine the nature of His Personality by long and close intercourse(313) with Him, more than by canva.s.sing claims or interpreting texts. When His disciples ask to be taught to pray, "as John also taught his disciples,"(314) He gives them a prayer very unlike what John would have given, for it contains not a word of that pet.i.tion for blessing upon Israel, which, in any prayer that an Israelite offered, contained, to his mind, the gist of the whole. This prayer too was offered, not to the "Lord G.o.d of Israel" or the "G.o.d of their Fathers,"-as Jewish prayers(315) were; there was not a word in it, echoing their boast that G.o.d was peculiarly their own-but every human being is emboldened by it to turn to G.o.d as his Father in Heaven. In all this, however, our Lord never loosens the bonds of Israelite life. He proceeds always in a positive and not a negative way; without removing the Kingdom of Israel from view, He lets it dissolve, as it were, into the Kingdom of G.o.d.

There is another point brought out in this later ministry; Christ does not look forward to ultimate visible success in the way of making converts. No hope is held out of the whole world being eventually won over to allegiance-of a spiritual conquest, any more than of a material one-"Howbeit," says He-and who would have said this but Christ?-"when the Son of man cometh shall he find Faith upon the earth?" No other than Christ ever dared to tell his followers, not only that their Master would be put to death, and they themselves ill used, but also that it was very doubtful whether their cause, as far as visible appearances went, would finally prevail.

With Christ indeed as with G.o.d, there is no speaking of such a thing as either failure or success at all; He moves steadily onward toward the development of the Design of the World. But this men do not easily perceive; adversaries of the Faith are apt to say "If this religion were of G.o.d, the world would have been compelled to accept it." But of what good could such acceptance have been? Christianity is not a project of G.o.d, which it gratifies Him for men to be made to fall in with. Christ views His word as a winnowing fan sorting out those who are G.o.d's, that they may be brought to that knowledge of Him in which eternal life resides. At some epochs of the world's history, the yield will be rich and at others poor; and although Christ may come at a moment when the wheat is almost lost in the abundance of the chaff; nevertheless the grain of earlier harvests will have been sifted out and garnered in heaven, and Christ's work will have accomplished its end. But besides sifting out those who could be educated to eternal life, it is by Christ's words and work that the world has been preserved such that Holiness can grow in it; without this it might have perished of evil. Wickedness might have so got the Mastery that the world could not have served its purpose as an exercise ground for man's capacity for reaching the knowledge of G.o.d.

The whole scheme of Christ's action is made complete by the promise, "I am with you always until the end of the world." Not only is it in virtue of this truth that the Church is a living organism, and not merely a body dispensing doctrines or following directions which have been received once for all, but I also see the fulfilment of this promise in the alacrity and vigour which characterised the Apostles' work. They must have felt that they were something more than a society of men held together by love for a lost Leader; and I cannot explain how the eleven held together, and subordinated every personal care to their Master's glory;-I cannot account for this personal transformation of them, _everyone_,-except by supposing them animated by the feeling that Christ was among them still.

It is far more in harmony with our Lord's ways for Him to put the Apostles, by His spiritual monitions, into the way of organising their Society for themselves, than that He should peremptorily lay down a formal plan to which they must adhere. What Christ left undone, was what it would be good for man to endeavour to do for himself: but if Christ had not been by to whisper, men might never have set themselves to the work at all. The energy and persistent determination of the Apostles could hardly have been maintained without a sense of Christ's abiding presence; and that they had eye and ear open for discerning this I count to have come, partly of G.o.d's free gift, partly of their ingrained nature, but in far greater degree to have been the outcome of the gentle and almost imperceptible Schooling of Christ.

Christ was.h.i.+ng the Apostles' feet. St John xiii. 1-14.

"Now before the feast of the pa.s.sover, Jesus knowing that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. And during supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's _son_, to betray him, _Jesus_, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came forth from G.o.d, and goeth unto G.o.d, riseth from supper, and layeth aside his garments; and he took a towel, and girded himself. Then he poureth water into the bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. So he cometh to Simon Peter. He saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt understand hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all. For he knew him that should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not all clean. So when he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and sat down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me, Master, and, Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet."(316)

More than once I have characterised certain of "the things which Jesus did"(317) as "acted parables." The cursing of the fig-tree, which is the type of the cla.s.s, shews what is meant by the term. The was.h.i.+ng of the Apostles' feet is another of these parables of action. These acted parables are usually furnished by incidents lying a little out of the main drift of the action; as though Christ, struck by some plant or berry in which virtue lay, should have stepped to the way-side to gather it and preserve it for use.

The drift of the practical lesson of which we read above, I take to be this. There are men, right in heart towards G.o.d, who are beset with infirmities which lead them astray. The more alive their conscience is, the more they are distressed by their lapses into ill. This distress may grow morbid, and lead to ruin and despair. Christ in this symbolic action, antic.i.p.atory of His Supreme Work, brings healing for such men's woes. He does not merely remit the penalty of sin, He actually "puts the sin away."(318) He is like a physician who can a.s.sure the patient that the canker he thought was malignant is only skin-deep, and can be removed at once. The parable speaks of a man who is "bathed," and whose body is therefore clean, but who by travelling along the dusty road has got his feet sullied on the way; he has only to wash them, to become "clean every whit." So a man, righteous and G.o.dfearing at bottom, may be taken off his guard and carried away by the stream, or he may contract moral and spiritual ill from a physical irritation akin to bodily ailment; these are the evils contracted on "life's common way." These kinds of spiritual ill answer to the dust on the feet, they can be wiped off; they have not seriously damaged the soul.

This was a cheering lesson, and it was made to bear on the duty of mutual restoration. They were to wash one another's feet. It is not the way of the world to do this. If, in a body aiming at holiness of life, one of the society should go wrong, it might seem the readiest way of upholding the society's good name to thrust out the offending member at once; but Christians are not to deal with one another thus. It is just when a man goes wrong that he most wants his brethren's support. Who else is there to stand by him? So if a disciple does amiss, the rest are told to wash his feet as Christ had washed theirs-not making out that he was clean-fully allowing that he was sullied, but telling him that the soil would wash off; telling him that they had not given him up as being bad to the core, and that they were sure that his Father in Heaven had not cast him off. So doing they might lift him back into self-respect.

It is in St John's Gospel only that this account is found, and it is not hard to understand why the writers of the earlier narratives should have pa.s.sed it by. They looked for historical matter that was linked on with what came before and after, or else, they took for their material pregnant sayings along with the events out of which they sprang. They may have omitted this incident, because of this was.h.i.+ng nothing seemed to come.

They did not perceive how significant our Lord's remark on it was. The writers were just coming to the account of the Lord's Supper, their minds were taken up with that, and they went straight forward to this crowning act. They probably saw in our Lord's words nothing more than an injunction to lay upon themselves the lowliest duties in serving each other. But the words, "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt understand hereafter" rested in St John's ear. They implied that behind this was.h.i.+ng of the Apostles' feet there lay something more than appeared. What could this be? He turned the matter over and over again in his mind, and a sparkle of the truth was, perhaps, struck out which served to make him careful to set the matter down precisely as it took place, for men to look into when they should have a better light.

Without entering into the controverted question as to whether the Last Supper was the Pa.s.sover or not,(319) I adopt Dr Edersheim's view that the contention for precedence arose as they were taking places at the table.

St Luke tells us, "there arose a contention among them which of them is accounted to be greatest."(320) St John omits the account of the contention and St Luke that of the feetwas.h.i.+ng, but the two fit together admirably well. Our Lord, by this action of His, gently gives the Apostles the lesson which they had shewn themselves to need. The scene evidently rises before the writer as he takes up his pen, and every movement of our Lord is followed and set down, from His quitting His seat to His wiping the Apostles' feet with the towel which He had wrapped round His waist.

The narrative goes on, "So he cometh to Simon Peter." Peter's individuality is strong and marked in its character. Not only is he demonstrative but he is quick to receive impressions and new emotion soon displaces the old. His Master's dignity was dear to him, and when he thought this infringed, every other sentiment was lost in his indignation.

He says, "Thou shalt never wash my feet." But as soon as he is told that unless his Master wash him, "he has no part with Him," he is transported to the opposite extreme, and begs our Lord to wash-not his feet only-but his hands and head as well.

Throughout the Gospel history we discern our Lord's care to keep men in a fit condition to serve G.o.d by active work. All that would impair their efficiency is to be shunned. Now, to repine and brood over some past error cuts the sinews of action; from this the Apostles therefore are always diverted, and they are to be watchful to prevent others from sinking into dejection and folding their hands in despair. A man who is hopeless has no heart for work, but when he is so far encouraged as to be able to exert himself his despondency soon disappears. Thus, by their was.h.i.+ng one another's feet, the efficiency of their Society in all ways would be notably increased.

The Apostles seem to have rightly learned the lesson which Christ here inculcates. St Mark had turned back in his first mission journey, but he is afterwards spoken of with affection and found of great service; and St Paul's words, with which I shall close this notice, are quite in the spirit of this acted parable.

"Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespa.s.s, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of meekness; looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."(321)

Use of Signs in the later Ministry.

Ever since the time when after the feeding of the five thousand, the people wanted to take Him and make Him a King, our Lord has been chary of working Signs and Wonders; and such as are wrought are no longer used for demonstration; Signs are now hardly if at all employed to attract attention and waken interest. They had already done in this way all the good they were likely to effect, and if they had been employed longer, some of those bye-effects, which potent agencies are almost sure to produce along with that which is intended, might have come into operation with injurious results.

Between the journey to the feast of Tabernacles and the week of the Pa.s.sion, three only of the leading miracles are recorded; they are the giving of sight to one born blind in Jerusalem, the raising of Lazarus, and the opening of the eyes of the blind near Jericho. This last, of which I shall first speak, occurred on that final journey of our Lord to Jerusalem during which He seems to have resumed for a moment His earliest function, that of witness of the Kingdom of G.o.d to the people at large. We seem to see, once again, the same Jesus who lived at Capernaum and taught the people by the Lake side.

Whether our Lord, on His way to this last Pa.s.sover, set out Himself from Galilee or joined on the road the great company travelling from the north is left uncertain, but we find our Lord among a throng of visitants to the feast, who are proud of having the Great Prophet of Nazareth among them; and men come to Him-some with real troubles of soul like the young ruler-and others, like the Pharisees, either curious to obtain His decision on some vexed question, or maliciously setting Him in a dilemma between the contravention of Moses' Law, and the retaining of a burden which men were loth to bear. One small event, preserved to us in the account of this journey, gives us the clearest glimpse of our Lord's air and general demeanour that we ever obtain. There was, about Him, that indefinable something which wins children's confidence at sight. The little ones, who swarmed in the hamlets of the Jordan valley, were drawn to Him by something in His look, and-after long gazing out of their dark eastern eyes, in childhood's own intent way-they made out that they would be safe with Him, and stole to His side.

The miracle of healing, worked on the way, that of the cure of the blind men in Jericho, is nearly after the old sort. As Jesus nears the end, He reverts to the ways with which His revelation began. Our Lord was touched no doubt by the affliction of these men and their urgent cry, and this was a miracle of beneficence, but He takes no pains now to withdraw the act from public view, He does not call them "aside from the mult.i.tude,"(322) and heal them in private as He had done on His way back from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon some months before. This miracle stirred the hearts of many beholders, and this emotion of theirs may have played no small part in the great drama to which this journey was the prelude; for the company that came with our Lord from Galilee formed the staple of that great concourse which shouted