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Title: Expositions of Holy Scriptures

Author: Alexander Maclaren

Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8070]
[Most recently updated: September 23, 2020]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***




Produced by Charles Franks, David King and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




Expositions of Holy Scriptures

by Alexander Maclaren, D. D., Litt. D.

ST. JOHN

Vols. I and II


Contents

 THE WORD IN ETERNITY, IN THE WORLD, AND IN THE FLESH (John i. 1-14)
 THE LIGHT AND THE LAMPS (John i. 8; v. 35)
 'THREE TABERNACLES' (John i. 14; Rev. vii. 15; xxi. 3)
 THE FULNESS OF CHRIST (John i. 16)
 GRACE AND TRUTH (John i. 17)
 THE WORLD'S SIN-BEARER (John i. 29)
 THE FIRST DISCIPLES: I. JOHN AND ANDREW (John i. 37-39)
 THE FIRST DISCIPLES: II. SIMON PETER (John i. 40-42)
 THE FIRST DISCIPLES: III. PHILIP (John i. 43)
 THE FIRST DISCIPLES: IV. NATHANAEL (John i. 45-49)
 THE FIRST DISCIPLES: V. BELIEVING AND SEEING (John i. 50, 51)
 JESUS THE JOY-BRINGER (John ii. 1-11)
 THE FIRST MIRACLE IN CANA—THE WATER MADE WINE (John ii. 11)
 CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE (John ii. 16)
 THE DESTROYERS AND THE RESTORER (John ii. 19)
 TEACHER OR SAVIOUR? (John iii. 2)
 WIND AND SPIRIT (John iii. 8)
 THE BRAZEN SERPENT (John iii. 14)
 CHRIST'S MUSTS (John iii. 14)
 THE LAKE AND THE RIVER (John iii. 16)
 THE WEARIED CHRIST (John iv. 6, 32)
 'GIVE ME TO DRINK' (John iv. 7, 26)
 THE GIFT AND THE GIVER (John iv. 10)
 THE SPRINGING FOUNTAIN (John iv. 14)
 THE SECOND MIRACLE (John iv. 54)
 THE THIRD MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL (John v, 8)
 THE LIFE-GIVER AND JUDGE (John v. 17-27)
 THE FOURTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL (John vi. 11)
 'FRAGMENTS' OR 'BROKEN PIECES' (John vi. 12)
 THE FIFTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL (John vi. 19, 20)
 HOW TO WORK THE WORK OF GOD (John vi. 28, 29)
 THE MANNA (John vi. 48-50)
 ONE SAYING WITH TWO MEANINGS (John vii. 33, 34; xiii. 33)
 THE ROCK AND THE WATER (John vii. 37, 38)
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD (John viii. 12)
 THREE ASPECTS OF FAITH (John viii. 30, 31)
 'NEVER IN BONDAGE' (John viii. 33)
 ONE METAPHOR AND TWO MEANINGS (John ix. 4; Romans xiii. 12)
 THE SIXTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL—THE BLIND MADE TO
SEE, AND THE SEEING MADE BLIND (John ix. 6,7)
 THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK (John x. 9)
 THE GOOD SHEPHERD (John x. 14, 15)
 'OTHER SHEEP' (John x. 16 R.V.)
 THE DELAYS OF LOVE (John xi. 5, 6)
 CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH (John xi. 26, 27)
 THE OPEN GRAVE AT BETHANY (John xi. 30-45)
 THE SEVENTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL—THE RAISING OF LAZARUS (John xi. 43, 44)
 CAIAPHAS (John xi. 49, 50)
 LOVE'S PRODIGALITY CENSURED AND VINDICATED (John xii. 1-1l)
 A NEW KIND OF KING (John xii. 12-26)
 AFTER CHRIST: WITH CHRIST (John xii. 26)
 THE UNIVERSAL MAGNET (John xii. 32)
 THE SON OF MAN (John xii. 34)
 A PARTING WARNING (John xii. 35, 36 R V.)
 THE LOVE OF THE DEPARTING CHRIST (John xiii. 1)
 THE SERVANT-MASTER (John xiii. 3-5)
 THE DISMISSAL OF JUDAS (John xiii. 27)
 THE GLORY OF THE CROSS (John xiii. 31, 32)
 CANNOT AND CAN (John xiii. 33)
 SEEKING JESUS (John xiii. 33)
 'AS I HAVE LOVED' (John xiii. 34, 35)
 'QUO VADIS?' (John xiii. 37, 38)
 A RASH VOW (John xiii. 38)
 FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST (John xiv. 1)
 'MANY MANSIONS' (John xiv. 2)
 THE FORERUNNER (John xiv. 2, 3)
 THE WAY (John xiv. 4-7)
 THE TRUE VISION OF GOD (John xiv. 8-11)
 CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS (John xiv. 12-14)
 LOVE AND OBEDIENCE (John xiv. 15)
 THE COMFORTER GIVEN (John xiv. 16, 17)
 THE ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST (John xiv. 18, 19)
 THE GIFTS OF THE PRESENT CHRIST (John xiv. 20, 21)
 WHO BRING CHRIST (John xiv. 22-24)
 THE TEACHER SPIRIT (John xiv. 25, 26)
 CHRIST'S PEACE (John xiv. 27)
 JOY AND FAITH, THE FRUITS OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE (John xiv. 28, 29)
 CHRIST FORESEEING HIS PASSION (John xiv. 30, 31)




THE WORD IN ETERNITY, IN THE WORLD, AND IN THE FLESH


'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. 2. The same was in the beginning with God. 3. All things were
made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. 4.
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5. And the light
shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. 6. There was
a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7. The same came for a
witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might
believe. 8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that
Light. 9. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world. 10. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him,
and the world knew Him not. 11. He came unto His own, and His own
received Him not. 12. But as many as received Him, to them gave He
power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name:
13. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God. 14. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten
of the Father,) full of grace and truth.'—JOHN i. 1-14.

The other Gospels begin with Bethlehem; John begins with 'the bosom of
the Father.' Luke dates his narrative by Roman emperors and Jewish
high-priests; John dates his 'in the beginning.' To attempt adequate
exposition of these verses in our narrow limits is absurd; we can only
note the salient points of this, the profoundest page in the New
Testament.

The threefold utterance in verse 1 carries us into the depths of
eternity, before time or creatures were. Genesis and John both start
from 'the beginning,' but, while Genesis works downwards from that
point and tells what followed, John works upwards and tells what
preceded—if we may use that term in speaking of what lies beyond time.
Time and creatures came into being, and, when they began, the Word
'was.' Surely no form of speech could more emphatically declare
absolute, uncreated being, outside the limits of time. Clearly, too, no
interpretation of these words fathoms their depth, or makes worthy
sense, which does not recognise that the Word is a person. The second
clause of verse 1 asserts the eternal communion of the Word with God.
The preposition employed means accurately 'towards,' and expresses the
thought that in the Word there was motion or tendency towards, and not
merely association with, God. It points to reciprocal, conscious
communion, and the active going out of love in the direction of God.
The last clause asserts the community of essence, which is not
inconsistent with distinction of persons, and makes the communion of
active Love possible; for none could, in the depths of eternity, dwell
with and perfectly love and be loved by God, except one who Himself was
God.

Verse 1 stands apart as revealing the pretemporal and essential nature
of the Word. In it the deep ocean of the divine nature is partially
disclosed, though no created eye can either plunge to discern its
depths or travel beyond our horizon to its boundless, shoreless extent.
The remainder of the passage deals with the majestic march of the
self-revealing Word through creation, and illumination of humanity, up
to the climax in the Incarnation.

John repeats the substance of verse 1 in verse 2, apparently in order
to identify the Agent of creation with the august person whom he has
disclosed as filling eternity. By Him creation was effected, and,
because He was what verse 1 has declared Him to be, therefore was it
effected by Him. Observe the three steps marked in three consecutive
verses. 'All things were made by Him'; literally 'became,' where the
emergence into existence of created things is strongly contrasted with
the divine 'was' of verse 1. 'Through Him' declares that the Word is
the agent of creation; 'without Him' (literally, 'apart from Him')
declares that created things continue in existence because He
communicates it to them. Man is the highest of these 'all things,' and
verse 4 sets forth the relation of the Word to Him, declaring that
'life,' in all the width and height of its possible meanings, inheres
in Him, and is communicated by Him, with its distinguishing
accompaniment, in human nature, of light, whether of reason or of
conscience.

So far, John has been speaking as from the upper or divine side, but in
verse 5 he speaks from the under or human, and shows us how the
self-revelation of the Word has, by some mysterious necessity, been
conflict. The 'darkness' was not made by Him, but it is there, and the
beams of the light have to contend with it. Something alien must have
come in, some catastrophe have happened, that the light should have to
stream into a region of darkness.

John takes 'the Fall' for granted, and in verse 5 describes the whole
condition of things, both within and beyond the region of special
revelation. The shining of the light is continuous, but the darkness is
obstinate. It is the tragedy and crime of the world that the darkness
will not have the light. It is the long-suffering mercy of God that the
light repelled is not extinguished, but shines meekly on.

Verses 6-13 deal with the historical appearance of the Word. The
Forerunner is introduced, as in the other Gospels; and, significantly
enough, this Evangelist calls him only 'John,'—omitting 'the Baptist,'
as was very natural to him, the other John, who would feel less need
for distinguishing the two than others did. The subordinate office of a
witness to the light is declared positively and negatively, and the
dignity of such a function is implied. To witness to the light, and to
be the means of leading men to believe, was honour for any man.

The limited office of the Forerunner serves as contrast to the
transcendent lustre of the true Light. The meaning of verse 9 may be
doubtful, but verses 10 and 11 clearly refer to the historical
manifestation of the Word, and probably verse 9 does so too. Possibly,
however, it rather points to the inner revelation by the Word, which is
the 'light of men.' In that case the phrase 'that cometh into the
world' would refer to 'every man,' whereas it is more natural in this
context to refer it to 'the light,' and to see in the verse a reference
to the illumination of humanity consequent on the appearance of Jesus
Christ. The use of 'world' and 'came' in verses 10 and 11 points in
that direction. Verse 9 represents the Word as 'coming'; verse 10
regards Him as come—'He was in the world.'

Note the three clauses, so like, and yet so unlike the august three in
verse 1. Note the sad issue of the coming—'The world knew Him not.' In
that 'world' there was one place where He might have looked for
recognition, one set of people who might have been expected to hail
Him; but not only the wide world was blind ('knew not'), but the
narrower circle of 'His own' fought against what they knew to be light
('received not').

But the rejection was not universal, and John proceeds to develop the
blessed consequences of receiving the light. For the first time he
speaks the great word 'believe.' The act of faith is the condition or
means of 'receiving.' It is the opening of the mental eye for the light
to pour in. We possess Jesus in the measure of our faith. The object of
faith is 'His name,' which means, not this or that collocation of
letters by which He is designated, but His whole self-revelation. The
result of such faith is 'the right to become children of God,' for
through faith in the only-begotten Son we receive the communication of
a divine life which makes us, too, sons. That new life, with its
consequence of sonship, does not belong to human nature as received
from parents, but is a gift of God mediated through faith in the Light
who is the Word.

Verse 14 is not mere repetition of the preceding, but advances beyond
it in that it declares the wonder of the way by which that divine Word
did enter into the world. John here, as it were, draws back the
curtain, and shows us the transcendent miracle of divine love, for
which he has been preparing in all the preceding. Note that he has not
named 'the Word' since verse 1, but here he again uses the majestic
expression to bring out strongly the contrast between the ante-temporal
glory and the historical lowliness. These four words, 'The Word became
flesh,' are the foundation of all our knowledge of God, of man, of the
relations between them, the foundation of all our hopes, the guarantee
of all our peace, the pledge of all blessedness. 'He tabernacled among
us.' As the divine glory of old dwelt between the cherubim, so Jesus is
among men the true Temple, wherein we see a truer glory than that
radiant light which filled the closed chamber of the holy of holies.
Rapturous remembrances rose before the Apostle as he wrote, 'We beheld
His glory'; and he has told us what he has beheld and seen with his
eyes, that we also may have fellowship with him in beholding. The glory
that shone from the Incarnate Word was no menacing or dazzling light.
He and it were 'full of grace and truth,' perfect Love bending to
inferiors and sinners, with hands full of gifts and a heart full of
tenderness and the revelation of reality, both as regards God and man.
His grace bestows all that our lowness needs, His truth teaches all
that our ignorance requires. All our gifts and all our knowledge come
from the Incarnate Word, in whom believing we are the children of God.




THE LIGHT AND THE LAMPS


'He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that
Light.'—JOHN i. 8.

'He was a burning and a shining light; and ye were willing for a season
to rejoice in His light.'—JOHN v. 35.

My two texts both refer to John the Baptist. One of them is the
Evangelist's account of him, the other is our Lord's eulogium upon him.
The latter of my texts, as the Revised Version shows, would be more
properly rendered, 'He was a lamp' rather than 'He was a light,' and
the contrast between the two words, the 'light' and 'the lamps,' is my
theme. I gather all that I would desire to say into three points: 'that
Light' and its witnesses; the underived Light and the kindled lamps;
the undying Light and the lamps that go out.

I. First of all, then, the contrast suggested to us is between 'that
Light' and its witnesses.

John, in that profound prologue which is the deepest part of Scripture,
and lays firm and broad in the depths the foundation-stones of a
reasonable faith, draws the contrast between 'that Light' and them
whose business it was to bear witness to it. As for the former, I
cannot here venture to dilate upon the great, and to me absolutely
satisfying and fundamental, thoughts that lie in these eighteen first
verses of this Gospel. 'The Word was with God,' and that Word was the
Agent of Creation, the Fountain of Life, the Source of the Light which
is inseparable from all human life. John goes back, with the simplicity
of a child's speech, which yet is deeper than all philosophies, to a
Beginning, far anterior to 'the Beginning' of which Genesis speaks, and
declares that before creation that Light shone; and he looks out over
the whole world, and declares, that before and beyond the limits of the
historical manifestation of the Word in the flesh, its beams spread
over the whole race of man. But they are all focussed, if I may so
speak, and gathered to a point which burns as well as illuminates, in
the historical manifestation of Jesus Christ in the flesh. 'That was
the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'

Next, he turns to the highest honour and the most imperative duty laid,
not only upon mighty men and officials, but upon all on whose happy
eyeballs this Light has shone, and into whose darkened hearts the joy
and peace and purity of it have flowed, and he says, 'He was sent'—and
they are sent—'to bear witness of that Light.' It is the noblest
function that a man can discharge. It is a function that is discharged
by the very existence through the ages of a community which, generation
after generation, subsists, and generation after generation manifests
in varying degrees of brightness, and with various modifications of
tint, the same light. There is the family character in all true
Christians, with whatever diversities of idiosyncrasies, and national
life or ecclesiastical distinctions. Whether it be Francis of Assisi or
John Wesley, whether it be Thomas a Kempis or George Fox, the light is
one that shines through these many-coloured panes of glass, and the
living Church is the witness of a living Lord, not only before it, and
behind it, and above it, but living in it. They are 'light' because
they are irradiated by Him. They are 'light' because they are 'in the
Lord.' But not only by the fact of the existence of such a community is
the witness-bearing effected, but it comes as a personal obligation,
with immense weight of pressure and immense possibilities of joy in the
discharge of it, to every Christian man and woman.

What, then, is the witness that we all are bound to bear, and shall
bear if we are true to our obligations and to our Lord? Mainly, dear
brethren, the witness of experience. That a Christian man shall be able
to stand up and say, 'I know this because I live it, and I testify to
Jesus Christ because I for myself have found Him to be the life of my
life, the Light of all my seeing, the joy of my heart, my home, and my
anchorage'—that is the witness that is impregnable. And there is no
better sign of the trend of Christian thought to-day than the fact that
the testimony of experience is more and more coming to be recognised by
thoughtful men and writers as being the sovereign attestation of the
reality of the Light. 'I see'; that is the proof that light has touched
my eyeballs. And when a man can contrast, as some of us can, our
present vision with our erstwhile darkness, then the evidence, like
that of the sturdy blind man in the Gospels, who had nothing to say in
reply to the subtleties and Rabbinical traps and puzzles but only 'I
was blind; now I see'—his experience is likely to have the effect that
it had in another miracle of healing: 'Beholding the man which was
healed standing amongst them, they could say nothing against it.' I
should think they could not.

But there is one thing that will always characterise the true witnesses
to that Light, and that is self-suppression. Remember the beautiful,
immovable humility of the Baptist about whom these texts were spoken:
'What sayest thou of thyself?' 'I am a Voice,' that is all. 'Art thou
that Prophet?' 'No!' 'Art thou the Christ?' 'No! I am nothing but a
Voice.' And remember how, when John's disciples tried to light the
infernal fires of jealousy in his quiet heart by saying, 'He whom thou
didst baptise, and to whom thou didst give witness'—He whom thou didst
start on His career—'is baptising,' poaching upon thy preserves, 'and
all men come unto Him,' the only answer that he gave was, 'The friend
of the Bridegroom'—who stands by in a quiet, dark corner—'rejoices
greatly because of the Bridegroom's voice.' Keep yourself out of sight,
Christian teachers and preachers; put Christ in the front, and hide
behind Him.

II. Now let me ask you to look at the other contrast that is suggested
by our other text. The underived light and the kindled lamps.

It is possible to read the words of that second text thus—'He was a
lamp kindled and (therefore) shining.' But whether that be the meaning,
or whether the usual rendering is correct, the emblem itself carries
the same thought, for a lamp must be lit by contact with a light, and
must be fed with oil, if its flame is to be sustained. And so the very
metaphor-whatever the force of the ambiguous word—in its eloquent
contrast between the Light and the lamp, suggests this thought, that
the one is underived, self-fed, and therefore undying, and that the
other owes all its flame to the touch of that uncreated Light, and
burns brightly only on condition of its keeping up the contact with
Him, and being fed continually from His stores of radiance.

I need not say more than a word with regard to the former member of
that contrast suggested here. That unlit Light derives its brilliancy,
according to the Scriptural teaching, from nothing but its divine union
with the Father. So that long before there were eyes to see, there was
the eradiation and outshining of the Father's glory. I do not enter
into these depths, but this I would say, that what is called the
'originality' of Jesus is only explained when we reverently see in that
unique life the shining through a pure humanity, as through a sheet of
alabaster, of that underived, divine Light. Jesus is an insoluble
problem to men who will not see in Him the Eternal Light which 'in the
beginning was with God.' You find in Him no trace of gradual
acquisition of knowledge, or of arguing or feeling His way to His
beliefs. You find in Him no trace of consciousness of a great horizon
of darkness encompassing the region where He sees light. You find in
Him no trace of a recognition of other sources from which He has drawn
any portion of His light. You find in Him the distinct declaration that
His relation to truth is not the relation of men who learn, and grow,
and acquire, and know in part; for, says He, 'I am the Truth.' He
stands apart from us all, and above us all, in that He owes His
radiance to none, and can dispense it to every man. The question which
the puzzled Jews asked about Him, 'How knoweth this Man letters, having
never learned?' may be widened out to all the characteristics of His
human life. To me the only answer is: 'Thou art the King of glory, O
Christ! Thou art the Everlasting Son of the Father.'

Dependent on Him are the little lights which He has lit, and in the
midst of which He walks. Union with Jesus Christ—'that Light'—is the
condition of all human light. That is true over all regions, as I
believe. 'The inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding.' The
candle of the Lord shines in every man, and 'that true Light lighteth
every man that cometh into the world.' Thinker, student, scientist,
poet, author, practical man—all of them are lit from the uncreated
Source, and all of them, if they understand their own nature, would
say, 'In Thy light do we see Light.'

But especially is this great thought true and exemplified within the
limits of the Christian life. For the Christian to be touched with
Christ's Promethean finger is to flame into light. And the condition of
continuing to shine is to continue the contact which first illuminated.
A break in the contact, of a finger's breadth, is as effectual as one
of a mile. Let Christian men and women, if they would shine, remember,
'Ye are light in the Lord'; and if we stray, and get without the circle
of the Light, we pass into darkness, and ourselves cease to shine.

Brethren, it is threadbare truth, that the condition of Christian
vitality and radiance is close and unbroken contact with Jesus Christ,
the Source of all light. Threadbare; but if we lived as if we believed
it, the Church would be revolutionised and the world illuminated; and
many a smoking wick would flash up into a blazing torch. Let Christian
people remember that the words of my text define no special privilege
or duty of any official or man of special endowments, but that to all
of us has been said, 'Ye are My witnesses,' and to all of us is offered
the possibility of being 'burning and shining lights' if we keep
ourselves close to that Light.

III. Lastly, the second of my texts suggests—the contrast between the
Undying Light and the lamps that go out.

'For a season ye were willing to rejoice in His light.' There is
nothing in the present condition of the civilised and educated world
more remarkable and more difficult for some people to explain than the
contrast between the relation which Jesus Christ bears to the present
age, and the relation which all other great names in the
past—philosophers, poets, guides of men—bear to it. There is nothing in
the world the least like the vividness, the freshness, the closeness,
of the personal relation which thousands and thousands of people, with
common sense in their heads, bear to that Man who died nineteen hundred
years ago. All others pass, sooner or later, into the darkness.
Thickening mists of oblivion, fold by fold, gather round the brightest
names. But here is Jesus Christ, whom all classes of thinkers and
social reformers have to reckon with to-day, who is a living power
amongst the trivialities of the passing moment, and in whose words and
in the teaching of whose life serious men feel that there lie
undeveloped yet, and certainly not yet put into practice, principles
which are destined to revolutionise society and change the world. And
how does that come?

I am not going to enter upon that question; I only ask you to think of
the contrast between His position, in this generation, to communities
and individuals, and the position of all other great names which lie in
the past. Why, it does not take more than a lifetime such as mine, for
instance, to remember how the great lights that shone seventy years ago
in English thinking and in English literature, have for the most part
gone out, and what we young men thought to be bright particular stars,
this new generation pooh-poohs as mere exhalations from the marsh or
twinkling and uncertain tapers, and you will find their books in the
twopenny-box at the bookseller's door. A cynical diplomatist, in one of
our modern dramas, sums it up, after seeing the death of a
revolutionary, 'I have known eight leaders of revolts.' And some of us
could say, 'We have known about as many guides of men who have been
forgotten and passed away.' 'His Name shall endure for ever. His name
shall continue as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in Him; all
generations shall call Him blessed.' Even Shelley had the prophecy
forced from him—

  'The moon of Mahomet
  Arose and it shall set,
  While blazoned as on heaven's eternal noon,
  The Cross leads generations on.'

We may sum up the contrast between the undying Light and the lamps that
go out in the old words: 'They truly were many, because they were not
suffered to continue by reason of death, but this Man, because He
continueth ever… is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto
God through Him.'

So, brethren, when lamps are quenched, let us look to the Light. When
our own lives are darkened because our household light is taken from
its candlestick, let us lift up our hearts and hopes to Him that
abideth for ever. Do not let us fall into the folly, and commit the
sin, of putting our heart's affections, our spirit's trust, upon any
that can pass and that must change. We need a Person whom we can clasp,
and who never will glide from our hold. We need a Light uncreated,
self-fed, eternal. 'Whilst ye have the Light, believe in the Light,
that ye may be the children of light.'




'THREE TABERNACLES'


'The Word … dwelt among us.'—JOHN i. 14.

'… He that sitteth on the Throne shall dwell among them.'—REV. vii. 15.

'… Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with
them.'—REV. xxi. 3.

The word rendered 'dwelt' in these three passages, is a peculiar one.
It is only found in the New Testament—in this Gospel and in the Book of
Revelation. That fact constitutes one of the many subtle threads of
connection between these two books, which at first sight seem so
extremely unlike each other; and it is a morsel of evidence in favour
of the common authorship of the Gospel and of the Apocalypse, which has
often, and very vehemently in these latter days of criticism, been
denied.

The force of the word, however, is the matter to which I desire
especially to draw attention. It literally means 'to dwell in a tent,'
or, if we may use such a word, 'to tabernacle,' and there is no doubt a
reference to the Tabernacle in which the divine Presence abode in the
wilderness and in the land of Israel before the erection. In all three
passages, then, we may see allusion to that early symbolical dwelling
of God with man. 'The Word tabernacled among us'; so is the truth for
earth and time. 'He that sitteth upon the throne shall spread His
tabernacle upon' the multitude which no man can number, who have made
their robes white in the blood of the Lamb; that is the truth for the
spirits of just men made perfect, the waiting Church, which expects the
redemption of the body. 'God shall tabernacle with them'; that is the
truth for the highest condition of humanity, when the Tabernacle of God
shall be with redeemed men in the new earth. 'Let us build three
tabernacles,' one for the Incarnate Christ, one for the interspace
between earth and heaven, and one for the culmination of all things.
And it is to these three aspects of the one thought, set forth in rude
symbol by the movable tent in the wilderness, that I ask you to turn
now.

I. First, then, we have to think of that Tabernacle for earth. 'The
Word was made flesh, and dwelt, as in a tent, amongst us.'

The human nature, the visible, material body of Jesus Christ, in which
there enshrined itself the everlasting Word, which from the beginning
was the Agent of all divine revelation, that is the true Temple of God.
When we begin to speak about the special presence of Omnipresence in
any one place, we soon lose ourselves, and get into deep waters of
glory, where there is no standing. And I do not care to deal here with
theological definitions or thorny questions, but simply to set forth,
as the language of my text sets before us, that one transcendent,
wonderful, all-blessed thought that this poor human nature is capable
of, and has really once in the history of the world received into
itself, the real, actual presence of the whole fulness of the Divinity.
What must be the kindred and likeness between Godhood and manhood when
into the frail vehicle of our humanity that wondrous treasure can be
poured; when the fire of God can burn in the bush of our human nature,
and that nature not be consumed? So it has been. 'In Him dwelleth all
the fulness of the Godhead bodily.'

And when we come with our questions, How? In what manner? How can the
lesser contain the greater? we have to be content with the recognition
that the manner is beyond our fathoming, and to accept the fact,
pressed upon our faith, that our hearts may grasp it and be at peace.
God hath dwelt in humanity. The everlasting Word, who is the
forthcoming of all the fulness of Deity into the realm of finite
creatures, was made flesh and dwelt among us.

But the Tabernacle was not only the dwelling-place of God, it was also
and, therefore, the place of Revelation of God. So in our text there
follows, 'we beheld His glory.' As in the tent in the wilderness there
hovered between the outstretched wings of the silent cherubim, above
the Mercy-seat, the brightness of the symbolical cloud which was
expressly named 'the glory of God,' and was the visible manifestation
of His real presence; so John would have us think that in that lowly
humanity, with its curtains and its coverings of flesh, there lay
shrined in the inmost place the brightness of the light of the manifest
glory of God. 'We beheld His glory.' The rapturous adoration of the
remembrance overcomes him, and he breaks his sentence, reckless of
grammatical connection, as the fulness of the blessed memory floods
into his soul. 'That glory was as of the Only Begotten of the Father.'
The manifestation of God in Christ is unique, as becomes Him who
partakes of the nature of that God of whom He is the Representative and
the Revealer.

And how did that glory make itself known to us? By miracle? Yes! As we
read in the story of the first that Christ wrought, 'He manifested
forth His glory and His disciples believed upon Him.' By miracle? Yes!
As we read His own promise at the grave of Lazarus: 'Said I not unto
thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of
God?' But, blessed be His name, miracle is not the highest
manifestation of Christ's glory and of God's. The uniqueness of the
revelation of Christ's glory in God does not depend upon the deeds
which He wrought. For, as the context goes on to tell, the Word which
tabernacled among us was 'full of grace and truth,' and therein is the
glory most gloriously revealed.

The lambent light of stooping love that shone forth warning and
attracting in His gentle life, and the clear white beam of unmingled
truth that streamed from the radiant purity of Christ's life, revealed
God to hearts that pine for love and spirits that hunger for truth, as
no others of God's self-revealing works have done. And that revelation
of the glory of God in the fulness of grace and truth is the highest
possible revelation. For the divinest thing in God is love, and the
true 'glory of God' is neither some symbolical flashing light nor the
pomp of mere power and majesty; nor even those inconceivable and
incommunicable attributes which we christen with names like Omnipotence
and Omnipresence and Infinitude, and the like. These are all at the
fringes of the brightness. The true central heart and lustrous light of
the glory of God lie In His love, and of that glory Christ is the
unique Representative and Revealer, because He is the only Begotten
Son, and 'full of grace and truth.'

Thus the Word tabernacled amongst us. And though the Tabernacle to
outward seeming was covered by curtains and skins that hid all the
glowing splendour within; yet in that lowly life that was lived in the
body of His humiliation, and knew our limitations and our weaknesses,
'the glory of the Lord was revealed; and all flesh hath seen it
together' and acknowledged the divine Presence there.

Still further the Tabernacle was the place of sacrifice. So in the
tabernacle of His flesh Jesus offered up the one sacrifice for sins for
ever. In the offering up of His human life in continuous obedience, and
in the offering up of His body and blood in the bitter Passion of the
Cross, He brought men nigh unto God.

Therefore, because of all these things, because the Tabernacle is the
dwelling-place of God, the place of revelation, and the place of
sacrifice, therefore, finally is it the meeting-place betwixt God and
man. In the Old Testament it is always called by the name which our
Revised Version has accurately substituted for 'tabernacle of the
congregation,' namely 'tent of meeting.' The correctness of that
rendering and the meaning of the name are established by several
passages in the Old Testament, as for instance, 'There I will meet with
you, to speak there unto thee, and there I will meet with the children
of Israel.' So in Christ, who by His Incarnation lays His hand upon
both, God touches man and man touches God. We who are afar off are made
nigh, and in that 'true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man'
we meet God and are glad.

  'And so the word was flesh, and wrought
  With human hands the creed of creeds,
  In loveliness of perfect deeds.'

The temple for earth is 'the temple of His body.'

II. We have the Tabernacle for the Heavens.

In the context of our second passage we have a vision of the great
multitude redeemed out of all nations and kindreds, 'standing before
the Throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes, and palms in
their hands.' The palms in their hands give important help towards
understanding the vision. As has been often remarked, there are no
heathen emblems in the Book of the Apocalypse. All its metaphors move
within the circle of Jewish experiences and facts. So that we are not
to think of the Roman palm of victory, but of the Jewish palm which was
borne at the Feast of Tabernacles. What was the Feast of Tabernacles? A
festival established on purpose to recall to the minds and to the
gratitude of the Jews settled in their own land the days of their
wandering in the wilderness. Part of the ritual of it was that during
its celebration they builded for themselves booths or tabernacles of
leaves and boughs of trees, under which they dwelt, thus reminding
themselves of their nomad condition.

Now what beauty and power it gives to the word of my text, if we take
in this allusion to the Jewish festival! The great multitude bearing
the palms are keeping the feast, memorial of past wilderness
wanderings; and 'He that sitteth on the throne shall spread His
tabernacle above them,' as the word might be here rendered. That is to
say, He Himself shall build and be the tent in which they dwell; He
Himself shall dwell with them in it. He Himself, in closer union than
can be conceived of here, shall keep them company during that feast.

What a thought of that condition—the condition as I believe represented
in this vision—of the spirits of the just made perfect, 'who wait for
the adoption, to wit, the resurrection of the body,' is given us if we
take this point of view to interpret the whole lovely symbolism. It is
all a time of glad, grateful remembrance of the wilderness march. It is
all a time in which festal joys shall be theirs, and the memory of the
trials and the weariness and the sorrow and the solitude that are past
shall deepen to a more exquisite poignancy of delight, the rest and the
fellowship and the felicity of that calm Presence, and God Himself
shall spread His tent above them, lodge with them, and they with Him.

And so, dear brethren, rest in that assurance, that though we know so
little of that state, we know this: 'Absent from the body, present with
the Lord,' and that the happy company who bear the palms shall dwell in
God, and God in them.

III. And now, lastly, look at that final vision which we have in these
texts, which we may call the Tabernacle for the renewed earth.

I do not pretend to interpret the scenery and the setting of these
Apocalyptic visions with dogmatic confidence, but it seems to me as if
the emblems of this final vision coincide with dim hints in many other
portions of Scripture; to the effect that some cosmical change having
passed upon this material world in which we dwell, it, in some
regenerated form, shall be the final abode of a regenerated and
redeemed humanity. That, I think, is the natural interpretation of a
great deal of Scriptural teaching.

For that highest condition there is set forth this as the all-sufficing
light upon it. 'Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men, and He will
tabernacle with them.' The climax and the goal of all the divine
working, and the long processes of God's love for, and discipline of,
the world, are to be this, that He and men shall abide together in
unity and concord. That is God's wish from the beginning. We read in
one of the profound utterances of the Book of Proverbs how from of old
the 'delights' of the Incarnate Wisdom which foreshadowed the Incarnate
Word 'were with the sons of men.' And, at the close of all things, when
the vision of this final chapter shall be fulfilled, God will say,
settling Himself in the midst of a redeemed humanity, 'Lo! here will I
dwell, for I have desired it. This is My rest for ever.' He will
tabernacle with men, and men with Him.

We know not, and never shall know until experience strips the bandages
from our eyes, what new methods of participation of the divine nature,
and new possibilities of intimacy and intercourse with Him may be ours
when the veils of flesh and sense and time have all dropped away. New
windows may be opened in our spirits, from which we shall perceive new
aspects of the divine character. New doors may be opened in our souls,
from out of which we may pass to touch parts of His nature, all
impalpable and inconceivable to us now. And when all the veils of a
discordant moral nature are taken away, and we are pure, then we shall
see, then we shall draw nigh to God. The thing that chiefly separates
man from God is man's sin. When that is removed, the centrifugal force
which kept our tiny orb apart from the great central sun being
withdrawn, we shall, as it were, fall into the brightness and be one,
not losing our sense of individuality, which would be to lose all the
blessedness, but united with Him in a union far more intimate than
earth can parallel. 'The Tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He
will tabernacle with them.'

Do not let us forget that this highest and ultimate hope that is held
forth here, of the union and communion, perfect and perpetual, of
humanity with God, does not sweep aside Jesus Christ. For through all
eternity the Everlasting Word, the Christ who bears our nature in its
glorified form, or, rather, whose nature in its glorified form we shall
bear, is the Medium of Revelation, and the Medium of communication
between man and God.

'I saw no Temple therein,' says this final vision of the Apocalypse,
but 'God Almighty and the Lamb,' and these are the Temples thereof.
Therefore through eternity God shall tabernacle with men, as He does
tabernacle with us now through Him, in whom dwelleth as in its
perennial habitation, 'all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.'

So we have the three tabernacles, for earth, for heaven, for the
renewed earth; and these three, if I may say so, are like the triple
division of that ancient Tabernacle in the wilderness: the Outer Court;
the Holy Place; the Holiest of all. Let us enter into that outer court,
and abide and commune with that God who comes near to us, revealing,
forgiving, in the person of His Son, and then we shall pass from court
to court, 'and go from strength to strength, until every one of us in
Zion appear before God'; and enter into the Holiest of all, where
'within the veil' we shall receive splendours of revelation undreamed
of here, and enjoy depths of communion to which the selectest moments
of fellowship with God on earth are shallow and poor.




THE FULNESS OF CHRIST


'And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.'—JOHN
1.16.

What a remarkable claim that is which the Apostle here makes for his
Master! On the one side he sets His solitary figure as the universal
Giver; on the other side are gathered the whole race of men, recipients
from Him. As in the wilderness the children of Israel clustered round
the rock from which poured out streams, copious enough for all the
thirsty camp, John, echoing his Master's words, 'If any man thirst, let
him come unto Me and drink,' here declares 'Of _His_ fulness have _all
we_ received.'

I. Notice, then, the one ever full Source.

The words of my text refer back to those of the fourteenth verse: 'The
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.' 'And
of His fulness have all we received.' The 'fulness' here seems to mean
that of which the Incarnate Word was full, the 'grace and truth' which
dwelt without measure in Him; the unlimited and absolute completeness
and abundance of divine powers and glories which 'tabernacled' in Him.
And so the language of my text, both verbally and really, is
substantially equivalent to that of the Apostle Paul. 'In Him dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and ye are complete in Him.' The
whole infinite Majesty, and inexhaustible resources of the divine
nature, were incorporated and insphered in that Incarnate Word from
whom all men may draw.

There are involved in that thought two ideas. One is the unmistakable
assertion of the whole fulness of the divine nature as being in the
Incarnate Word, and the other is that the whole fulness of the divine
nature dwells in the Incarnate Word in order that men may get at it.

The words of my text go back, as I said, to the previous verse; but
notice what an advance upon that previous verse they present to us.
There we read, 'We beheld His glory.' To _behold_ is much, but to
_possess_ is more. It is much to say that Christ comes to manifest God,
but that is a poor, starved account of the purpose of His coming, if
that is all you have to say. He comes to manifest Him. Yes! but He
comes to communicate Him, not merely to dazzle us with a vision, not
merely to show us Him as from afar, not merely to make Him known to
understanding or to heart; but to bestow—in no mere metaphor, but in
simple, literal fact—the absolute possession of the divine nature. 'We
beheld His glory' is a reminiscence that thrills the Evangelist, though
half a century has passed since the vision gleamed upon his eyes; but
'of His fulness have all we received' is infinitely and unspeakably
more. And the manifestation was granted that the possession might be
sure, for this is the very centre and heart of Christianity, that in
Him who is Christianity God is not merely made known, but given; not
merely beheld, but possessed.

In order that that divine fulness might belong to us there was needed
that the Word should be made flesh; and there was further needed that
incarnation should be crowned by sacrifice, and that life should be
perfected in death. The alabaster box had to be broken before the house
could be filled with the odour of the ointment. If I may so say, the
sack, the coarse-spun sack of Christ's humanity, had to be cut asunder
in order that the wealth that was stored in it might be poured into our
hands. God came near us in the life, but God became ours in the death,
of His dear Son. Incarnation was needed for that great privilege—'we
beheld His glory'; but the Crucifixion was needed in order to make
possible the more wondrous prerogative: 'Of His fulness have all we
received.' God gives Himself to men in the Christ whose life revealed
and whose death imparted Him to the world.

And so He is the sole Source. All men, in a very real sense, draw from
His fulness. 'In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.' The
life of the body and the life of the spirit willing, knowing, loving,
all which makes life into light, all comes to us through that
everlasting Word of God. And when that Word has 'become flesh and dwelt
among us,' His gifts are not only the gifts of light and life, which
all men draw from Him, but the gifts of grace and truth which all those
who love Him receive at His hands. His gifts, like the water from some
fountain, may flow underground into many of the pastures of the
wilderness; and many a man is blessed by them who knows not from whence
they come. It is He from whom all the truth, all the grace which
illuminates and blesses humanity, flow into all lands in all ages.

II. Consider, then, again, the many receivers from the one Source. 'Of
His fulness have all we received.'

Observe, we are not told definitely what it is that we receive. If we
refer back to words in a previous verse, they may put us on the right
track for answering the question, What is it that we get? 'He came unto
His own,' says verse 11, 'and His own received Him not; but as many as
received Him, to them gave He power,' etc. That answers the question,
What do we receive? Christ is more than all His gifts. All His gifts
are treasured up in Him and inseparable from Him. We get Jesus Christ
Himself.

The blessings that we receive may be stated in many different ways. You
may say we get pardon, purity, hope, joy, the prospect of Heaven, power
for service; all these and a hundred more designations by which we
might describe the one gift. All these are but the consequences of our
having got the Christ within our hearts. He does not give pardon and
the rest, as a king might give pardon and honours, a thousand miles
off, bestowing it by a mere word, upon some criminal, but He gives all
that He gives because He gives Himself. The real possession that we
receive is neither more nor less than a loving Saviour, to enter our
spirits and abide there, and be the spirit of our spirits, and the life
of our lives.

Then, notice the universality of this possession. John has said, in the
previous words, '_We_ beheld His glory.' He refers there, of course, to
the comparatively small circle of the eye-witnesses of our Master's
life; who, at the time when he wrote, must have been very, very few in
number. They had had the prerogative of seeing with their eyes and
handling with their hands the Word of life that 'was manifested unto
us'; and with that prerogative the duty of bearing witness of Him to
the rest of men. But in the 'receiving,' John associates with himself,
and with the other eyewitnesses, all those who had listened to their
word, and had received the truth in the love of it. '_We beheld_'
refers to the narrower circle; 'we _all_ received' to the wider sweep
of the whole Church. There is no exclusive class, no special
prerogative. Every Christian man, the weakest, the lowliest, the most
uncultured, rude, ignorant, foolish, the most besotted in the past, who
has wandered furthest away from the Master; whose spirit has been most
destitute of all sparks of goodness and of God—receives from out of His
fulness. 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.'
And every one of us, if we will, may have dwelling in our hearts, in
the greatness of His strength, in the sweetness of His love, in the
clearness of His illuminating wisdom, the Incarnate Word, the
Comforter, the All-in-all whom 'we all receive.'

And, as I said, that word 'all' might have even a wider extension
without going beyond the limits of the truth. For on the one side there
stands Christ, the universal Giver; and grouped before Him, in all
attitudes of weakness and of want, is gathered the whole race of
mankind. And from Him there pours out a stream copious enough to supply
all the necessities of every human soul that lives to-day, of every
human soul that has lived in the past, of every one that shall live in
the future. There is no limit to the universality except only the limit
of the human will: 'Whosoever will, let him take the water of life
freely.'

Think of that solitary figure of the Christ reared up, as it were,
before the whole race of man, as able to replenish all their emptiness
with His fulness, and to satisfy all their thirst with His sufficiency.
Dear brother! you have a great gaping void in your heart—an aching
emptiness there, which you know better than I can tell you. Look to Him
who can fill it and it shall be filled. He can supply all your wants as
He can supply all the wants of every soul of man. And after generations
have drawn from Him, the water will not have sunk one hairsbreadth in
the great fountain, but there will be enough for all coming eternities
as there has been enough for all past times. He is like His own
miracle—the thousands are gathered on the grass, they do 'all eat and
are filled.' As their necessities required the bread was multiplied,
and at the last there was more left than there had seemed to be at the
beginning. So 'of His fulness have all we received'; and after a
universe has drawn from it, for an Eternity, the fulness is not turned
into scantiness or emptiness.

III. And so, lastly, notice the continuous flow from the inexhaustible
Source. 'Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.'

The word 'for' is a little singular. Of course it means _instead of, in
exchange for_; and the Evangelist's idea seems to be that as one supply
of grace is given and used, it is, as it were, given back to the
Bestower, who substitutes for it a fresh and unused vessel, filled with
new grace. He might have said, grace _upon_ grace; one supply being
piled upon the other. But his notion is, rather, one supply given in
substitution for the other, 'new lamps for old ones.'

Just as a careful gardener will stand over a plant that needs water,
and will pour the water on the surface until the earth has drunk it up,
and then add a little more; so He gives step by step, grace for grace,
an uninterrupted bestowal, yet regulated according to the absorbing
power of the heart that receives it. Underlying that great thought are
two things: the continuous communication of grace, and the progressive
communication of grace. We have here the continuous communication of
grace. God is always pouring Himself out upon us in Christ. There is a
perpetual out flow from Him to us: if there is not a perpetual inflow
into us from Him it is our fault, and not His. He is always giving, and
His intention is that our lives shall be a continual reception. Are
they? How many Christian men there are whose Christian lives at the
best are like some of those Australian or Siberian rivers; in the dry
season, a pond here, a stretch of sand, waterless and barren there,
then another place with a drop of muddy water in some hollow, and then
another stretch of sand, and so on. Why should not the ponds be linked
together by a flashing stream? God is always pouring Himself out; why
do we not always take Him in?

There is but one answer, and the answer is, that we do not fulfil the
condition, which condition is simple faith. 'As many as received Him,
to them gave He power to become the sons of God; even to them that
believed on His name.' Faith is the condition of receiving, and
wherever there is a continuous trust there will be an unbroken grace;
and wherever there are interrupted gifts it is because there has been
an intermitted trust in Him. Do not let your lives be like some dimly
lighted road, with a lamp here, and a stretch of darkness, and then
another twinkling light; let the light run all along the side of your
path, because at every moment your heart is turning to Christ with
trust. Make your faith continuous, and God will make His grace
incessant, and out of His fulness you will draw continual supplies of
needed strength.

But not only have we here the notion of continuous, but also, as it
seems to me, of progressive gifts. Each measure of Christ received, if
we use it aright, makes us capable of possessing more of Christ. And
the measure of our capacity is the measure of His gift, and the more we
can hold the more we shall get. The walls of our hearts are elastic,
the vessel expands by being filled out; it throbs itself wider by
desire and faith. The wider we open our mouths the larger will be the
gift that God puts into them. Each measure and stage of grace utilised
and honestly employed will make us capable and desirous, and,
therefore, possessors, of more and more of the grace that He gives. So
the ideal of the Christian life, and God's intention concerning us, is
not only that we should have an uninterrupted, but a growing
possession, of Christ and of His grace.

Is that the case with you, my friend? Can you hold more of God than you
could twenty years ago? Is there any more capacity in your soul for
more of Christ than there was long, long ago? If there is you have more
of Him; if you have not more of Him it is because you cannot contain
more; and you cannot contain more because you have not desired more,
and because you have been so wretchedly unfaithful in your use of what
you had. The ideal is, 'they go from strength to strength,' and the end
of that is, 'every one of them appeareth before God.'

So, dear brother, as the dash of the waves will hollow out some little
indentation on the coast, and make it larger and larger until there is
a great bay, with its headlands miles apart, and its deep bosom
stretching far into the interior, and all the expanse full of flashing
waters and leaping waves, so the giving Christ works a place for
Himself in a man's heart, and makes the spirit which receives and
faithfully uses the gifts which He brings, capable of more of Himself,
and fills the widened space with larger gifts and new grace.

Only remember the condition of having Him is trusting to His name and
longing for His presence. 'If any man open the door I will come in.' We
have Him if we trust Him. That trust is no mere passive reception, such
as is the case with some empty jar which lies open-mouthed on the shore
and lets the sea wash into it and out of it, as may happen. But the
'receive' of our text might be as truly rendered 'take.' Faith is an
active taking, not a passive receiving. We must 'lay hold on eternal
life.' Faith is the hand that grasps the offered gift, the mouth that
feeds upon the bread of God, the voice that says to Christ, 'Come in,
Thou blessed of the Lord; why standest Thou without?' Such a faith
alone brings us into vital connection with Jesus. Without it, you will
be none the richer for all His fulness, and may perish of famine in the
midst of plenty, like a man dying of hunger outside the door of a
granary. They who believe take the Saviour who is given, and they who
take receive, and they who receive obtain day by day growing grace from
the fulness of Christ, and so come ever nearer to the realisation of
the ultimate purpose of the Father, that they should be 'filled with
all the fulness of God.'




GRACE AND TRUTH


'The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ.'—JOHN 1. 17.

There are scarcely any traces, in the writings of the Apostle John, of
that great controversy as to the relation of the Law and the Gospel
which occupied and embittered so much of the work of the Apostle Paul.
We have floated into an entirely different region in John's writings.
The old controversies are dead—settled, I suppose, mainly by Paul's own
words, and also to a large extent by the logic of events. This verse is
almost the only one in which John touches upon that extinct
controversy, and here the Law is introduced simply as a foil to set off
the brightness of the Gospel. All artists know the value of contrast in
giving prominence. A dark background flashes up brighter colours into
brilliancy. White is never so white as when it is relieved against
black. And so here the special preciousness and distinctive
peculiarities of what we receive in Christ are made more vivid and more
distinct by contrast with what in old days 'was given by Moses.'

Every word in this verse is significant. 'Law' is set against 'grace
and truth.' It was 'given'; they 'came.' Moses is contrasted with
Christ. So we have a threefold antithesis as between Law and Gospel: in
reference to their respective contents; in reference to the manner of
their communication; and in reference to the person of their Founders.
And I think, if we look at these three points, we shall get some clear
apprehension of the glories of that Gospel which the Apostle would
thereby commend to our affection and to our faith.

I. First of all, then, we have here the special glory of the contents
of the Gospel heightened by the contrast with Law.

Law has no tenderness, no pity, no feeling. Tables of stone and a pen
of iron are its fitting vehicles. Flashing lightnings and rolling
thunders symbolise the fierce light which it casts upon men's duty and
the terrors of its retribution. Inflexible, and with no compassion for
human weakness, it tells us what we ought to be, but it does not help
us to be it. It 'binds heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne,' upon
men's consciences, but puts not forth 'the tip of a finger' to enable
men to bear them. And this is true about law in all forms, whether it
be the Mosaic Law, or whether it be the law of our own country, or
whether it be the laws written upon men's consciences. These all
partake of the one characteristic, that they help nothing to the
fulfilment of their own behests, and that they are barbed with
threatenings of retribution. Like some avenging goddess, law comes down
amongst men, terrible in her purity, awful in her beauty, with a hard
light in her clear grey eyes—in the one hand the tables of stone,
bearing the commandments which we have broken, and in the other a sharp
two-edged sword.

And this is the opposite of all that comes to us in the Gospel. The
contrast divides into two portions. The 'Law' is set against 'grace and
truth.' Let us look at these two in order.

What we have in Christ is not law, but grace. Law, as I said, has no
heart; the meaning of the Gospel is the unveiling of the heart of God.
Law commands and demands; it says: 'This shalt thou do, or else—'; and
it has nothing more that it can say. What is the use of standing beside
a lame man, and pointing to a shining summit, and saying to him, 'Get
up there, and you will breathe a purer atmosphere'? He is lying lame at
the foot of it. There is no help for any soul in law. Men are not
perishing because they do not know what they ought to do. Men are not
bad because they doubt as to what their duty is. The worst man in the
world knows a great deal more of what he ought to do than the best man
in the world practises. So it is not for want of precepts that so many
of us are going to destruction, but it is for want of power to fulfil
the precepts.

Grace is love giving. Law demands, grace bestows. Law comes saying 'Do
this,' and our consciences respond to the imperativeness of the
obligation. But grace comes and says, 'I will help thee to do it.' Law
is God requiring; grace is God bestowing. 'Give what Thou commandest,
and then command what Thou wilt.'

Oh, brethren! we have all of us written upon the fleshly tablets of our
hearts solemn commandments which we know are binding upon us; and which
we sometimes would fain keep, but cannot. Is this not a message of hope
and blessedness that comes to us? Grace has drawn near in Jesus Christ,
and a giving God, who bestows upon us a life that will unfold itself in
accordance with the highest law, holds out the fulness of His gift in
that Incarnate Word. Law has no heart; the Gospel is the unveiling of
the heart of God. Law commands; grace is God bestowing Himself.

And still further, law condemns. Grace is love that bends down to an
evildoer, and deals not on the footing of strict retribution with the
infirmities and the sins of us poor weaklings. And so, seeing that no
man that lives but hears in his heart an accusing voice, and that every
one of us knows what it is to gaze upon lofty duties that we have
shrunk from, upon plain obligations from the yoke of which we have
selfishly and cowardly withdrawn our necks; seeing that every man,
woman, and child listening to me now has, lurking in some corner of
their hearts, a memory that only needs to be quickened to be a torture,
and deeds that only need to have the veil drawn away from them to
terrify and shame them—oh! surely it ought to be a word of gladness for
every one of us that, in front of any law that condemns us, stands
forth the gentle, gracious form of the Christ that brings pardon, and
'the grace of God that bringeth salvation unto all men.' Thank God! law
needed to be 'given,' but it was only the foundation on which was to be
reared a better thing. 'The law was given By Moses'—'a schoolmaster,'
as conscience is to-day, 'to bring us to Christ' by whom comes the
grace that loves, that stoops, that gives, and that pardons.

Still further, there is another antithesis here. The Gospel which comes
by Christ is not law, but truth. The object of law is to regulate
conduct, and only subordinately to inform the mind or to enlighten the
understanding. The Mosaic Law had for its foundation, of course, a
revelation of God. But that revelation of God was less prominent,
proportionately, than the prescription for man's conduct. The Gospel is
the opposite of this. It has for its object the regulation of conduct;
but that object is less prominent, proportionately, than the other, the
manifestation and the revelation of God. The Old Testament says 'Thou
shalt'; the New Testament says 'God is.' The Old was Law; the New is
Truth.

And so we may draw the inference, on which I do not need to dwell, how
miserably inadequate and shallow a conception of Christianity that is
which sets it forth as being mainly a means of regulating conduct, and
how false and foolish that loose talk is that we hear many a
time.—'Never mind about theological subtleties; conduct is the main
thing.' Not so. The Gospel is not law; the Gospel is truth. It is a
revelation of God to the understanding and to the heart, in order that
thereby the will may be subdued, and that then the conduct may be
shaped and moulded. But let us begin where it begins, and let us
remember that the morality of the New Testament has never long been
held up high and pure, where the theology of the New Testament has been
neglected and despised. 'The law came by Moses; truth came by Jesus
Christ.'

But, still further, let me remind you that, in the revelation of a God
who is gracious, giving to our emptiness and forgiving our sins—that is
to say, in the revelation of grace—we have a far deeper, nobler, more
blessed conception of the divine nature than in law. It is great to
think of a righteous God, it is great and ennobling to think of One
whose pure eyes cannot look upon sin, and who wills that men should
live pure and noble and Godlike lives. But it is far more and more
blessed, transcending all the old teaching, when we sit at the feet of
the Christ who gives, and who pardons, and look up into His deep eyes,
with the tears of compassion shining in them, and say: 'Lo! This is our
God! We have waited for Him and He will save us.' That is a better
truth, a deeper truth than prophets and righteous men of old possessed;
and to us there has come, borne on the wings of the mighty angel of His
grace, the precious revelation of the Father-God whose heart is love.
'The law was given by Moses,' but brighter than the gleam of the
presence between the Cherubim is the lambent light of gentle tenderness
that shines from the face of Jesus Christ. Grace, and therefore truth,
a deeper truth, came by Him.

And, still further, let me remind you of how this contrast is borne out
by the fact that all that previous system was an adumbration, a shadow
and a premonition of the perfect revelation that was to come. Temple,
priest, sacrifice, law, the whole body of the Mosaic constitution of
things was, as it were, a shadow thrown along the road in advance by
the swiftly coming King. The shadow fell before Him, but when He came
the shadow disappeared. The former was a system of types, symbols,
pictures. Here is the reality that antiquates and fulfils and
transcends them all. 'The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came
by Jesus Christ.'

II. Now, secondly, look at the other contrast that is here, between
giving and coming.

I do not know that I have quite succeeded in making clear to my own
mind the precise force of this antithesis. Certainly there is a
profound meaning if one can fathom it; perhaps one might put it best in
something like the following fashion.

The word rendered 'came' might be more correctly translated 'became,'
or 'came into being.' The law was _given_; grace and truth _came to
be_.

Now, what do we mean when we talk about a law being given? We simply
mean, I suppose, that it is promulgated, either in oral or in written
words. It is, after all, no more than so many words. It is given when
it is spoken or published. It is a verbal communication at the best.
'But grace and truth came to be.' They are realities; they are not
words. They are not communicated by sentences, they are actual
existences; and they spring into being as far as man's historical
possession and experience of them are concerned—they spring into being
in Jesus Christ, and through Him they belong to us all. Not that there
was no grace, no manifest lore of God, in the world, nor any true
knowledge of Him before the Incarnation, but the earlier portions of
this chapter remind us that all of grace, however restrained and
partial, that all of truth, however imperfect and shadowy it may have
been, which were in the world before Christ came, were owing to the
operation of that Eternal Word 'Who became flesh and dwelt among us,'
and that these, in comparison with the affluence and the fulness and
the nearness of grace and truth after Christ's coming, were so small
and remote that it is not an exaggeration to say that, as far as man's
possession and experience of them are concerned, the giving love of God
and the clear and true knowledge of His deep heart of tenderness and
grace, sprang into being with the historical manifestation of Jesus
Christ the Lord.

He comes to reveal by no words. His gift is not like the gift that
Moses brought down from the mountain, merely a writing upon tables; His
gift is not the letter of an outward commandment, nor the letter of an
outward revelation. It is the thing itself which He reveals by being
it. He does not speak about grace, He brings it; He does not show us
God by His words, He shows us God by His acts. He does not preach about
Him, but He lives Him, He manifests Him. His gentleness, His
compassion, His miracles, His wisdom, His patience, His tears, His
promises; all these are the very Deity in action before our eyes; and
instead of a mere verbal revelation, which is so imperfect and so
worthless, grace and truth, the living realities, are flashed upon a
darkened world in the face of Jesus Christ. How cold, how hard, how
superficial, in comparison with that fleshly table of the heart of
Christ on which grace and truth were written, are the stony tables of
law, which bore after all, for all their majesty, only words which are
breath and nothing besides.

III. And so, lastly, look at the contrast that is drawn here between
the persons of the Founders.

I do not suppose that we are to take into consideration the difference
between the limitations of the one and the completeness of the other. I
do not suppose that the Apostle was thinking about the difference
between the reluctant service of the Lawgiver and the glad obedience of
the Son; or between the passion and the pride that sometimes marred
Moses' work, and the continual calmness and patient meekness that
perfected the sacrifice of Jesus. Nor do I suppose that there flashed
before his memory the difference between that strange tomb where God
buried the prophet, unknown of men, in the stern solitude of the
desert, true symbol of the solemn mystery and awful solitude with which
the law which we have broken invests death, to our trembling
consciences, and the grave in the garden with the spring flowers
bursting round it, and visited by white-robed angels, who spoke comfort
to weeping friends, true picture of what His death makes the grave for
all His followers.

But I suppose he was mainly thinking of the contrast between the
relation of Moses to his law, and of Christ to His Gospel. Moses was
but a medium. His personality had nothing to do with his message. You
may take away Moses, and the law stands all the same. But Christ is so
interwoven with Christ's message that you cannot rend the two apart;
you cannot have the figure of Christ melt away, and the gift that
Christ brought remain. If you extinguish the sun you cannot keep the
sunlight; if you put away Christ in the fulness of His manhood and of
His divinity, in the power of His Incarnation and the omnipotence of
His cross—if you put away Christ from Christianity, it collapses into
dust and nothingness.

So, dear brethren, do not let any of us try that perilous experiment.
You cannot melt away Jesus and keep grace and truth. You cannot tamper
with His character, with His nature, with the mystery of His passion,
with the atoning power of His cross, and preserve the blessings that He
has brought to the world. If you want the grace which is the unveiling
of the heart of God, the gift of a giving God and the pardon of a
forgiving Judge; or if you want the truth, the reality of the knowledge
of Him, you can only get them by accepting Christ. 'I _am_ the Truth,
and the Way, and the Life.' There _is_ a 'law given which gives life,'
and 'righteousness _is_ by that law.' There is a Person who is the
Truth, and our knowledge of the truth is through that Person, and
through Him alone. By humble faith receive Him into your hearts, and He
will come bringing to you the fulness of grace and truth.




THE WORLD'S SIN-BEARER


'The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.'—JOHN i. 29.

Our Lord, on returning from His temptation in the wilderness, came
straight to John the Baptist. He was welcomed with these wonderful and
rapturous words, familiarity with which has deadened our sense of their
greatness. How audacious they would sound to some of their first
hearers! Think of these two, one of them a young Galilean carpenter, to
whom His companion witnesses and declares that He is of worldwide and
infinite significance. It was the first public designation of Jesus
Christ, and it throws into exclusive prominence one aspect of His work.

John the Baptist summing up the whole of former revelation which
concentrated in Him, pointed a designating finger to Jesus and said,
'That is He!' My text is the sum of all Christian teaching ever since.
My task, and that of all preachers, if we understand it aright, is but
to repeat the same message, and to concentrate attention on the same
fact—'The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.' It is
the one thing needful for you, dear friend, to believe. It is the truth
that we all need most of all. There is no reason for our being gathered
together now, except that I may beseech you to behold for yourselves
the Lamb of God which takes away the world's sin.

I. Now let me ask you to note, first, that Jesus Christ is the world's
sin-bearer.

The significance of the first clause of my text, 'the Lamb of God,' is
deplorably weakened if it is taken to mean only, or mainly, that Jesus
Christ, in the sweetness of His human nature, is gentle and meek and
patient and innocent and pure. It _does_ mean all that, thank God! But
it was no mere description of Christ's disposition which John the
Baptist conceived himself to be uttering, as is clear by the words that
follow in the next clause. His reason for selecting (under divine
guidance, as I believe) that image of 'the Lamb of God,' went a great
deal deeper than anything in the temper of the Person of whom he was
speaking. Many streams of ancient prophecy and ritual converge upon
this emblem, and if we want to understand what is meant by the
designation 'the Lamb of God,' we must not content ourselves with the
sentimentalisms which some superficial teachers have supposed to
exhaust the significance of the expression; but we must submit to be
led back by John, who was the summing up of all the ancient Revelation,
to the sources in that Revelation from which he drew this metaphor.

First and chiefest of these, as I take it, are the words which no Jew
ever doubted referred to the Messiah, until after He had come, and the
Rabbis would not believe in Him, and so were bound to hunt up another
interpretation—I mean the great words in the prophecy which, I suppose,
is familiar to most of us, where there are found two representations,
one, 'He was led as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'; and the other, still
more germane to the purpose of my text, 'the Lord hath laid on Him the
iniquity of us all…. By His knowledge shall He justify many, for He
shall bear their iniquities.' John the Baptist, looking back through
the ages to that ancient prophetic utterance, points to the young Man
standing by his side, and says, 'There it is fulfilled.'

But the prophetic symbol of the Lamb, and the thought that He bore the
iniquity of the many, had their roots in the past, and pointed back to
the sacrificial lamb, the lamb of the daily sacrifice, and especially
to the lamb slain at the Passover, which was an emblem and sacrament of
deliverance from bondage. Thus the conceptions of vicarious suffering,
and of a death which is a deliverance, and of blood which, sprinkled on
the doorposts, guards the house from the destroying angel, are all
gathered into these words.

Nor do these exhaust the sources of this figure, as it comes from the
venerable and sacred past. For when we read 'the Lamb _of God_,' who is
there that does not recognise, unless his eyes are blinded by obstinate
prejudice, a glance backward to that sweet and pathetic story when the
father went up with his son to the top of Mount Moriah, and to the
boy's question, 'Where is the lamb?' answered, 'My son, God Himself
will provide the lamb!' John says, 'Behold the Lamb that God _has_
provided, the Sacrifice, on whom is laid a world's sins, and who bears
them away.'

Note, too, the universality of the power of Christ's sacrificial work.
John does not say 'the _sins_,' as the Litany, following an imperfect
translation, makes him say. But he says, 'the _sin_ of the world,' as
if the whole mass of human transgression was bound together, in one
black and awful bundle, and laid upon the unshrinking shoulders of this
better Atlas who can bear it all, and bear it all away. Your sin, and
mine, and every man's, they were all laid upon Jesus Christ.

Now remember, dear brethren, that in this wondrous representation there
lie, plain and distinct, two things which to me, and I pray they may be
to you, are the very foundation of the Gospel to which we have to
trust. One is that on Christ Jesus, in His life and in His death, were
laid the guilt and the consequences of a world's sin. I do not profess
to be ready with an explanation of how that is possible. That it is a
fact I believe, on the authority of Christ Himself and of Scripture;
that it is inconsistent with the laws of human nature may be asserted,
but never can be proved. Theories manifold have been invented in order
to make it plain. I do not know that any of them have gone to the
bottom of the bottomless. But Christ in His perfect manhood, wedded, as
I believe it is, to true divinity, is capable of entering into—not
merely by sympathy, though that has much to do with it—such closeness
of relation with human kind, and with every man, as that on Him can be
laid the iniquity of us all.

Oh, brethren! what was the meaning of 'I have a baptism to be baptized
with,' unless the cold waters of the flood into which He unshrinkingly
stepped, and allowed to flow over Him, were made by the gathered
accumulation of the sins of the whole world? What was the meaning of
the agony in Gethsemane? What was the meaning of that most awful word
ever spoken by human lips, in which the consciousness of union with,
and of separation from, God, were so marvellously blended, 'My God! my
God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?' unless the Guiltless was then loaded
with the sins of the world, which rose between Him and God?

Dear friends, it seems to me that unless this transcendent element be
fairly recognised as existing in the passion and death of Jesus Christ,
His demeanour when He came to die was far less heroic and noble and
worthy of imitation than have been the deaths of hundreds of people who
drew all their strength to die from Him. I do not venture to bring a
theory, but I press upon you the fact, He bears the sins of the world,
and in that awful load are yours and mine.

There is the other truth here, as clearly, and perhaps more directly,
meant by the selection of the expression in my text, that the
Sin-bearer not only carries, but carries _away_, the burden that is
laid upon Him. Perhaps there may be a reference—in addition to the
other sources of the figure which I have indicated as existing in
ritual, and prophecy, and history—there may be a reference in the words
to yet another of the eloquent symbols of that ancient system which
enshrined truths that were not peculiar to any people, but were the
property of humanity. You remember, no doubt, the singular ceremonial
connected with the scapegoat, and many of you will recall the wonderful
embodiment of it given by the Christian genius of a modern painter. The
sins of the nation were symbolically laid upon its head, and it was
carried out to the edge of the wilderness and driven forth to wander
alone, bearing away upon itself into the darkness and solitude—far from
man and far from God—the whole burden of the nation's sins. Jesus
Christ takes away the sin which He bears, and there is, as I believe,
only one way by which individuals, or society, or the world at large,
can thoroughly get rid of the guilt and penal consequences and of the
dominion of sin, and that is, by beholding the Lamb of God that takes
upon Himself, that He may carry away out of sight, the sin of the
world. So much, then, for the first thought that I wish to suggest to
you.

II. Now let me ask you to look with me at a second thought, that such a
world's Sin-bearer is the world's deepest need.

The sacrifices of every land witness to the fact that humanity all over
the world, and through all the ages, and under all varieties of
culture, has been dimly conscious that its deepest need was that the
fact of sin should be dealt with. I know that there are plenty of
modern ingenious ways of explaining the universal prevalence of an
altar and a sacrifice, and the slaying of innocent creatures, on other
grounds, some of which I think it is not uncharitable to suppose are in
favour mainly because they weaken this branch of the evidence for the
conformity of Christian truth with human necessities. But
notwithstanding these, I venture to affirm, with all proper submission
to wiser men, that you cannot legitimately explain the universal
prevalence of sacrifice, unless you take into account as one—I should
say the main—element in it, this universally diffused sense that things
are wrong between man and the higher Power, and need to be set right
even by such a method.

But I do not need to appeal only to this world-wide fact as being a
declaration of what man's deepest need is. I would appeal to every
man's own consciousness—hard though it be to get at it; buried as it
is, with some of us, under mountains of indifference and neglect; and
callous as it is with many of us by reason of indulgence in habits of
evil. I believe that in every one of us, if we will be honest, and give
heed to the inward voice, there does echo a response and an amen to the
Scripture declaration, 'God hath shut up all under sin.' I ask you
about yourselves, is it not so? Do you not know that, however you may
gloss over the thing, or forget it amidst a whirl of engagements and
occupations, or try to divert your thoughts into more or less noble or
ignoble channels of pleasures and pursuits, there does lie, in each of
our hearts, the sense, dormant often, but sometimes like a snake in its
hybernation, waking up enough to move, and sometimes enough to
sting—there does lie, in each of us, the consciousness that we are
wrong with God, and need something to put us right?

And, brethren, let modern philanthropists of all sorts take this
lesson: The thing that the world wants is to have sin dealt with—dealt
with in the way of conscious forgiveness; dealt with in the way of
drying up its source, and delivering men from the power of it. Unless
you do that, I do not say you do nothing, but you pour a bottle full of
cold water into Vesuvius, and try to put the fire out with that. You
may educate, you may cultivate, you may refine; you may set political
and economical arrangements right in accordance with the newest notions
of the century, and what then? Why! the old thing will just begin over
again, and the old miseries will appear again, because the old
grandmother of them all is there, the sin that has led to them.

Now do not misunderstand me, as if I were warring against good and
noble men who are trying to remedy the world's evils by less thorough
methods than Christ's Gospel. They will do a great deal. But you may
have high education, beautiful refinement of culture and manners; you
may divide out political power in accordance with the most democratic
notions; you may give everybody 'a living wage,' however extravagant
his notions of a living wage may be. You may carry out all these
panaceas and the world will groan still, because you have not dealt
with the tap-root of all the mischief. You cannot cure an internal
cancer with a plaster upon the little finger, and you will never stanch
the world's wounds until you go to the Physician that has balm and
bandage, even Jesus Christ, that takes away the sins of the world. I
profoundly distrust all these remedies for the world's misery as in
themselves inadequate, even whilst I would help them all, and regard
them all as then blessed and powerful, when they are consequences and
secondary results of the Gospel, the first task of which is to deal by
forgiveness and by cleansing with individual transgression.

And if I might venture to go a step further, I would like to say that
this aspect of our Lord's work on which John the Baptist concentrated
all our attention is the only one which gives Him power to sway men,
and which makes the Gospel—the record of His work—the kingly power in
the world that it is meant to be. Depend upon it, that in the measure
in which Christian teachers fail to give supreme importance to that
aspect of Christ's work they fail altogether. There are many other
aspects which, as I have just said, follow in my conception from this
first one; but if, as is obviously the tendency in many quarters
to-day, Christianity be thought of as being mainly a means of social
improvement, or if its principles of action be applied to life without
that basis of them all, in the Cross which takes away the world's
iniquity, then it needs no prophet to foretell that such a Christianity
will only have superficial effects, and that, in losing sight of this
central thought, it will have cast away all its power.

I beseech you, dear brethren, remember that Jesus Christ is something
more than a social reformer, though He is the first of them, and the
only one whose work will last. Jesus Christ is something more than a
lovely pattern of human conduct, though He is that. Jesus Christ is
something more than a great religious genius who set forth the
Fatherhood of God as it had never been set forth before. The Gospel of
Jesus Christ is the record not only of what He said but of what He did,
not only that He lived but that He died; and all His other powers, and
all His other benefits and blessings to society, come as results of His
dealing with the individual soul when He takes away its guilt and
reconciles it to God.

III. And so, lastly, let me ask you to notice that this Sin-bearer of
the world is our Sin-bearer if we 'behold' Him.

John was simply summoning ignorant eyes to look, and telling of what
they would see. But his call is susceptible, without violence, of a far
deeper meaning. This is really the one truth that I want to press upon
you, dear friends—'Behold the Lamb of God!'

What is that beholding? Surely it is nothing else than our recognising
in Him the great and blessed work which I have been trying to describe,
and then resting ourselves upon that great Lord and sufficient
Sacrifice. And such an exercise of simple trust is well named
beholding, because they who believe do see, with a deeper and a truer
vision than sense can give. You and I can see Christ more really than
these men who stood round Him, and to whom His flesh was 'a veil'—as
the Epistle to the Hebrews calls it—hiding His true divinity and work.
They who thus behold by faith lack nothing either of the directness or
of the certitude that belong to vision. 'Seeing is believing,' says the
cynical proverb. The Christian version inverts its terms, 'Believing is
seeing.' 'Whom having not seen ye love, in whom though now ye see Him
not, yet believing ye rejoice.'

And your simple act of 'beholding,' by the recognition of His work and
the resting of yourself upon it, makes the world's Sin-bearer your
Sin-bearer. You appropriate the general blessing, like a man taking in
a little piece of a boundless prairie for his very own. Your possession
does not make my possession of Him less, for every eye gets its own
beam, and however many eyes wait upon Him, they all receive the light
on to their happy eyeballs. You can make Christ your own, and have all
that He has done for the world as your possession, and can experience
in your own hearts the sense of your own forgiveness and deliverance
from the power and guilt of your own sin, on the simple condition of
looking unto Jesus. The serpent is lifted on the pole, the dying camp
cannot go to it, but the filming eyes of the man in his last gasp may
turn to the gleaming image hanging on high; and as he looks the health
begins to tingle back into his veins, and he is healed.

And so, dear brethren, behold Him; for unless you do, though He has
borne the world's sin, your sin will not be there, but will remain on
your back to crush you down. 'O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins
of the world, have mercy upon _me_!'




THE FIRST DISCIPLES: I. JOHN AND ANDREW


'And the two disciples heard Him speak, and they followed Jesus. 38.
Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What
seek ye? They said unto Him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being
interpreted, Master,) where dwellest Thou? 39. He saith unto them, Come
and see. They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day:
for it was about the tenth hour.'—JOHN i. 37-39.

In these verses we see the head waters of a great river, for we have
before us nothing less than the beginnings of the Christian Church. So
simply were the first disciples made. The great society of believers
was born like its Master, unostentatiously and in a corner.

Jesus has come back from His conflict in the wilderness after His
baptism, and has presented Himself before John the Baptist for his
final attestation. It was a great historical moment when the last of
the Prophets stood face to face with the Fulfilment of all prophecy. In
his words, 'Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the
world!' Jewish prophecy sang its swan-song, uttered its last rejoicing,
'Eureka! I have found Him!' and died as it spoke.

We do not sufficiently estimate the magnificent self-suppression and
unselfishness of the Baptist, in that he, with his own lips, here
repeats his testimony in order to point his disciples away from
himself, and to attach them to Jesus. If he could have been touched by
envy he would not so gladly have recognised it as his lot to decrease
while Jesus increased. Bare magnanimity that in a teacher! The two who
hear John's words are Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, and an anonymous
man. The latter is probably the Evangelist. For it is remarkable that
we never find the names of James and John in this Gospel (though from
the other Gospels we know how closely they were associated with our
Lord), and that we only find them referred to as 'the sons of Zebedee,'
once near the close of the book. That fact points, I think, in the
direction of John's authorship of this Gospel.

These two, then, follow behind Jesus, fancying themselves unobserved,
not desiring to speak to Him, and probably with some notion of tracking
Him to His home, in order that they may seek an interview at a later
period. But He who notices the first beginnings of return to Him, and
always comes to meet men, and is better to them than their wishes, will
not let them steal behind Him uncheered, nor leave them to struggle
with diffidence and delay. So He turns to them, and the events ensue
which I have read in the verses that follow as my text.

We have, I think, three things especially to notice here. First, the
Master's question to the whole world, 'What seek ye?' Second, the
Master's invitation to the whole world, 'Come and see!' Lastly, the
personal communion which brings men's hearts to Him, 'They came and saw
where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day.'

I. So, then, first look at this question of Christ to the whole world,
'What seek ye?'

As it stands, on its surface, and in its primary application, it is the
most natural of questions. Our Lord hears footsteps behind Him, and, as
any one would do, turns about, with the question which any one would
ask, 'What is it that you want?' That question would derive all its
meaning from the look with which it was accompanied, and the tone in
which it was spoken. It might mean either annoyance and rude repulsion
of a request, even before it was presented, or it might mean a glad
wish to draw out the petition, and more than half a pledge to bestow
it. All depends on the smile with which it was asked and the intonation
of voice which carried it to their ears. And if we had been there we
should have felt, as these two evidently felt, that though in form a
question, it was in reality a promise, and that it drew out their shy
wishes, made them conscious to themselves of what they desired, and
gave them confidence that their desire would be granted. Clearly it had
sunk very deep into the Evangelist's mind; and now, at the end of his
life, when his course is nearly run, the never-to-be-forgotten voice
sounds still in his memory, and he sees again, in sunny clearness, all
the scene that had transpired on that day by the fords of the Jordan.
The first words and the last words of those whom we have learned to
love are cut deep on our hearts.

It was not an accident that the first words which the Master spoke in
His Messianic office were this profoundly significant question, 'What
seek ye?' He asks it of us all, He asks it of us to-day. Well for them
who can answer, 'Rabbi! where dwellest _Thou_?' 'It is Thou whom we
seek!' So, venturing to take the words in that somewhat wider
application, let me just suggest to you two or three directions in
which they seem to point.

First, the question suggests to us this: the need of having a clear
consciousness of what is our object in life. The most of men have never
answered that question. They live from hand to mouth, driven by
circumstances, guided by accidents, impelled by unreflecting passions
and desires, knowing what they want for the moment, but never having
tried to shape the course of their lives into a consistent whole, so as
to stand up before God in Christ when He puts the question to them,
'What seek ye?' and to answer the question.

These incoherent, instinctive, unreflective lives that so many of you
are living are a shame to your manhood, to say nothing more. God has
made us for something else than that we should thus be the sport of
circumstances. It is a disgrace to any of us that our lives should be
like some little fishing-boat, with an unskilful or feeble hand at the
tiller, yawing from one point of the compass to another, and not
keeping a straight and direct course. I pray you, dear brethren, to
front this question: 'After all, and at bottom, what is it I am living
for? Can I formulate the aims and purposes of my life in any
intelligible statement of which I should not be ashamed?' Some of you
are not ashamed to do what you would be very much ashamed to say, and
you practically answer the question, 'What are you seeking?' by
pursuits that you durst not call by their own ugly names.

There may be many of us who are living for our lusts, for our passions,
for our ambitions, for avarice, who are living in all uncleanness and
godlessness. I do not know. There are plenty of shabby, low aims in all
of us which do not bear being dragged out into the light of day. I
beseech you to try and get hold of the ugly things and bring them up to
the surface, however much they may seek to hide in the congenial
obscurity and twist their slimy coils round something in the dark. If
you dare not put your life's object into words, bethink yourselves
whether it ought to be your life's object at all.

Ah, brethren! if we would ask ourselves this question, and answer it
with any thoroughness, we should not make so many mistakes as to the
places where we look for the things for which we are seeking. If we
knew what we were really seeking, we should know where to go to look
for it. Let me tell you what you are seeking, whether you know it or
not. You are seeking for rest for your heart, a home for your spirits;
you are seeking for perfect truth for your understandings, perfect
beauty for your affections, perfect goodness for your conscience. You
are seeking for all these three, gathered into one white beam of light,
and you are seeking for it all in a Person. Many of you do not know
this, and so you go hunting in all manner of impossible places for that
which you can only find in one. To the question, 'What seek ye?' the
deepest of all answers, the only real answer, is, 'My soul thirsteth
for God, for the living God.' If you know that, you know where to look
for what you need! 'Do men gather grapes of thorns?' If these are
really the things that you are seeking after, in all your mistaken
search—oh! how mistaken is the search! Do men look for pearls in
cockle-shells, or for gold in coal-pits; and why should you look for
rest of heart, mind, conscience, spirit, anywhere and in anything short
of God? 'What seek ye?'—the only answer is, 'We seek _Thee_!'

And then, still further, let me remind you how these words are not only
a question, but are really a veiled and implied promise. The question,
'What do you want of Me?' may either strike an intending suppliant like
a blow, and drive him away with his prayer sticking in his throat
unspoken, or it may sound like a merciful invitation, 'What is thy
petition, and what is thy request, and it shall be granted unto thee?'
We know which of the two it was here. Christ asks all such questions as
this (and there are many of them in the New Testament), not for His
information, but for our strengthening. He asks people, not because He
does not know before they answer, but that, on the one hand, their own
minds may be clear as to their wishes, and so they may wish the more
earnestly because of the clearness; and that, on the other hand, their
desires being expressed, they may be the more able to receive the gift
which He is willing to bestow. So He here turns to these men, whose
purpose He knew well enough, and says to them, 'What seek ye?' Herein
He is doing the very same thing on a lower level, and in an outer
sphere, as is done when He appoints that we shall pray for the
blessings which He is yearning to bestow, but which He makes
conditional on our supplications, only because by these supplications
our hearts are opened to a capacity for receiving them.

We have, then, in the words before us, thus understood, our Lord's
gracious promise to give what is desired on the simple condition that
the suppliant is conscious of his own wants, and turns to Him for the
supply of them. 'What seek ye?' It is a blank cheque that He puts into
their hands to fill up. It is the key of His treasure-house which He
offers to us all, with the assured confidence that if we open it we
shall find all that we need.

Who is He that thus stands up before a whole world of seeking, restless
spirits, and fronts them with the question which is a pledge, conscious
of His capacity to give to each of them what each of them requires? Who
is this that professes to be able to give all these men and women and
children bread here in the wilderness? There is only one answer—the
Christ of God.

And He has done what He promises. No man or woman ever went to Him, and
answered this question, and presented their petition for any real good,
and was refused. No man can ask from Christ what Christ cannot bestow.
No man can ask from Christ what Christ will not bestow. In the loftiest
region, the region of inward and spiritual gifts, which are the best
gifts, we can get everything that we want, and our only limit is, not
His boundless omnipotence and willingness, but our own poor, narrow,
and shrivelled desires. 'Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall
find.'

Christ stands before us, if I may so say, like some of those fountains
erected at some great national festival, out of which pour for all the
multitude every variety of draught which they desire, and each man that
goes with his empty cup gets it filled, and gets it filled with that
which he wishes. 'What seek ye?' Wisdom? You students, you thinkers,
you young men that are fighting with intellectual difficulties and
perplexities, 'What seek ye?' Truth? He gives us that. You others,
'What seek ye?' Love, peace, victory, self-control, hope, anodyne for
sorrow? Whatever you desire, you will find in Jesus Christ. The first
words with which He broke the silence when He spake to men as the
Messias, were at once a searching question, probing their aims and
purposes, and a gracious promise pledging Him to a task not beyond His
power, however far beyond that of all others, even the task of giving
to each man his heart's desire. 'What seek ye?' 'Seek, and ye shall
find.'

II. Then, still further, notice how, in a similar fashion, we may
regard here the second words which our Lord speaks as being His
merciful invitation to the world. 'Come and see.'

The disciples' answer was simple and timid. They did not venture to
say, 'May we talk to you?' 'Will you take us to be your disciples?' All
they can muster courage to ask now is, 'Where dwellest Thou?' At
another time, perhaps, we will go to this Rabbi and speak with Him. His
answer is, 'Come, come now; come, and by intercourse with Me learn to
know Me.' His temporary home was probably nothing more than some
selected place on the river's bank, for 'He had not where to lay His
head'; but such as it was, He welcomes them to it. 'Come and see!'

Take a plain, simple truth out of that. Christ is always glad when
people resort to Him. When He was here in the world, no hour was
inconvenient or inopportune; no moment was too much occupied; no
physical wants of hunger, or thirst, or slumber were ever permitted to
come between Him and seeking hearts. He was never impatient. He was
never wearied of speaking, though He was often wearied in speaking. He
never denied Himself to any one or said, 'I have something else to do
than to attend to you.' And just as in literal fact, whilst He was here
upon earth, nothing was ever permitted to hinder His drawing near to
any man who wanted to draw near to Him, so nothing now hinders it; and
He is glad when any of us resort to Him and ask Him to let us speak to
Him and be with Him. His weariness or occupation never shut men out
from Him then. His glory does not shut them out now.

Then there is another thought here. This invitation of the Master is
also a very distinct call to a firsthand knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Andrew and John had heard from the Baptist about Him, and now what He
bids them to do is to come and hear Himself. That is what He calls you,
dear brethren, to do. Do not listen to us, let the Master Himself speak
to you. Many who reject Christianity reject it through not having
listened to Jesus Himself teaching them, but only to theologians and
other human representations of the truth. Go and ask Christ to speak to
you with His own lips of truth, and take Him as the Expositor of His
own system. Do not be contented with traditional talk and second-hand
information. Go to Christ, and hear what He Himself has to say to you.

Then, still further, in this 'Come and see' there is a distinct call to
the personal act of faith. Both of these words, '_come_' and '_see_,'
are used in the New Testament as standing emblems of faith. Coming to
Christ is trusting Him; trusting Him is seeing Him, looking unto Him.
'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest,' 'Look unto Me, and be ye
saved, all ye ends of the earth.' There are two metaphors, both of them
pointing to one thing, and that one thing is the invitation from the
dear lips of the loving Lord to every man, woman, and child in this
congregation. 'Come and see!' 'Put your trust in Me, draw near to Me by
desire and penitence, draw near to Me in the fixed thought of your
mind, in the devotion of your will, in the trust of your whole being.
Come to Me, and see Me by faith; and then—and then—your hearts will
have found what they seek, and your weary quest will be over, and, like
the dove, you will fold your wings and nestle at the foot of the Cross,
and rest for evermore. Come! "Come and see!"'

III. So, lastly, we have in these words a parable of the blessed
experience which binds men's hearts to Jesus for ever. 'They came and
saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day, for it was about the
tenth hour.'

'Dwelt' and 'abode' are the same words in the original. It is one of
John's favourite words, and in its deepest meaning expresses the close,
still communion which the soul may have with Jesus Christ, which
communion, on that never-to-be-forgotten day, when he and Andrew sat
with Him in the quiet, confidential fellowship that disclosed Christ's
glory 'full of grace and truth' to their hearts, made them His for
ever.

If the reckoning of time here is made according to the Hebrew fashion,
the 'tenth hour' will be ten o'clock in the morning. So, one long day
of talk! If it be according to the Roman legal fashion, the hour will
be four o'clock in the afternoon, which would only give time for a
brief conversation before the night fell. But, in any case, sacred
reserve is observed as to what passed in that interview. A lesson for a
great deal of blatant talk, in this present day, about conversion and
the details thereof!

  'Not easily forgiven
  Are those, who setting wide the doors, that bar
  The secret bridal chambers of the heart.
  Let in the day.'

John had nothing to say to the world about what the Master said to him
and his brother in that long day of communion.

One plain conclusion from this last part of our narrative is that the
impression of Christ's own personality is the strongest force to make
disciples. The character of Jesus Christ is, after all, the central and
standing evidence and the mightiest credential of Christianity. It
bears upon its face the proof of its own truthfulness. If such a
character was not lived, how did it ever come to be described, and
described by such people? And if it was lived, how did it come to be
so? The historical veracity of the character of Jesus Christ is
guaranteed by its very uniqueness. And the divine origin of Jesus
Christ is forced upon us as the only adequate explanation of His
historical character. 'Truly this man was the Son of God.'

I believe that to lift Him up is the work of all Christian preachers
and teachers; as far as they can to hide themselves behind Jesus
Christ, or at the most to let themselves appear, just as the old
painters used to let their own likenesses appear in their great
altar-pieces—a little kneeling figure there, away in a dark corner of
the background. Present Christ, and He will vindicate His own
character; He will vindicate His own nature; He will vindicate His own
gospel. 'They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him,' and the
end of it was that they abode with Him for evermore. And so it will
always be.

Once more, personal experience of the grace and sweetness of this
Saviour binds men to Him as nothing else will:

  'He must be loved ere that to you
  He will seem worthy of your love.'

The deepest and sweetest and most precious part of His character and of
His gifts can only be known on condition of possessing Him and them,
and they can be possessed only on condition of holding fellowship with
Him. I do not say to any man: 'Try trust in order to be sure that Jesus
Christ is worthy to be trusted,' for by its very nature faith cannot be
an experiment or provisional. I do not say that my experience is
evidence to you, but at the same time I do say that it is worth any
man's while to reflect upon this, that none who ever trusted in Him
have been put to shame. No man has looked to Jesus and has said: 'Ah! I
have found Him out! His help is vain, His promises empty.' Many men
have fallen away from Him, I know, but not because they have proved Him
untruthful, but because they have become unfaithful.

And so, dear brethren, I come to you with the old message, 'Oh! taste,'
and thus you will 'see that the Lord is good.' There must be the faith
first, and then there will be the experience, which will make anything
seem to you more credible than that He whom you have loved and trusted,
and who has answered your love and your trust, should be anything else
than the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind. Come to Him and you will
see. The impregnable argument will be put into your mouth—'Whether this
man be a sinner or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was
blind, now I see.' Look to Him, listen to Him, and when He asks you,
'What seek ye?' answer, 'Rabbi, where dwellest Thou? It is Thou whom I
seek.' He will welcome you to close blessed intercourse with Him, which
will knit you to Him with cords that cannot be broken, and with His
loving voice making music in memory and heart, you will be able
triumphantly to confess—'Now we believe, not because of any man's
saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed
the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'




THE FIRST DISCIPLES: II. SIMON PETER


'One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew,
Simon Peter's brother. 41. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and
saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted,
the Christ. 42. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him,
He said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas,
which is, by interpretation, a stone.'—JOHN i. 40-42.

There are many ways by which souls are brought to their Saviour.
Sometimes, like the merchantman seeking goodly pearls, men seek Him
earnestly and find Him. Sometimes, by the intervention of another, the
knowledge of Him is kindled in dark hearts. Sometimes He Himself takes
the initiative, and finds those that seek Him not. We have
illustrations of all these various ways in these simple records of the
gathering in of the first disciples. Andrew and his friend, with whom
we were occupied in our last sermon, looked for Christ and found Him.
Peter, with whom we have to do now, was brought to Christ by his
brother; and the third of the group, consisting of Philip, was sought
by Christ while he was not thinking of Him, and found an unsought
treasure; and then Philip again, like Andrew, finds a friend, and
brings him to Christ.

Each of the incidents has its own lesson, and each of them adds
something to the elucidation of John's two great subjects: the
revelation of Jesus as the Son of God, and the development of that
faith in Him which gives us life. It may be profitable to consider each
group in succession, and mark the various aspects of these two subjects
presented by each.

In this incident, then, we have two things mainly to consider: first,
the witness of the disciple; second, the self-revelation of the Master.

I. The witness of the disciple.

We have seen that the unknown companion of Andrew was probably the
Evangelist himself, who, in accordance with his uniform habit,
suppresses his own name, and that that omission points to John's
authorship of this Gospel. Another morsel of evidence as to the date
and purpose of the Gospel lies in the mention here of Andrew as 'Simon
Peter's brother.' We have not yet heard anything about Simon Peter. The
Evangelist has never mentioned his name, and yet he takes it for
granted that his hearers knew all about Peter, and knew him better than
they did Andrew. That presupposes a considerable familiarity with the
incidents of the Gospel story, and is in harmony with the theory that
this fourth Gospel is the latest of the four, and was written for the
purpose of supplementing, not of repeating, their narrative. Hence a
number of the phenomena of the Gospel, which have troubled critics, are
simply and sufficiently explained.

But that by the way. Passing that, notice first the illustration that
we get here of how instinctive and natural the impulse is, when a man
has found Jesus Christ, to tell some one else about Him. Nobody said to
Andrew, 'Go and look for your brother,' and yet, as soon as he had
fairly realised the fact that this Man standing before him was the
Messiah, though the evening seems to have come, he hurries away to find
his brother, and share with him the glad conviction.

Now, that is always the case. If a man has any real depth of
conviction, he cannot rest till he tries to share it with somebody
else. Why, even a dog that has had its leg mended, will bring other
limping dogs to the man that was kind to it. Whoever really believes
anything becomes a propagandist.

Look round about us to-day! and hearken to the Babel, the wholesale
Babel of noises, where every sort of opinion is trying to make itself
heard. It sounds like a country fair where every huckster is shouting
his loudest. That shows that the men believe the things that they
profess. Thank God that there is so much earnestness in the world! And
now are Christians to be dumb whilst all this vociferous crowd is
calling its wares, and quacks are standing on their platforms shouting
out their specifics, which are mostly delusions? Have you not a
medicine that will cure everything, a real heal-all, a veritable
pain-killer? If you believe that you have, certainly you will never
rest till you share your boon with your brethren.

If the natural effect of all earnest conviction, viz. a yearning and an
absolute necessity to speak it out, is no part of your Christian
experience, very grave inferences ought to be drawn from that. This
man, before he was four-and-twenty hours a disciple, had made another.
Some of you have been disciples for as many years, and have never even
tried to make one. Whence comes that silence which is, alas, so common
among us?

It is very plain that, making all allowance for changed manners, for
social difficulties, for timidity, for the embarrassment that besets
people when they talk to other people about religion, which is 'such an
awkward subject to introduce into mixed company,' and the like,—making
all allowance for these, there is a deplorable number of Christian
people who ought to be, in their own circles, evangelists and
missionaries, who are, if I may venture to quote very rude words which
the Bible uses, 'Dumb dogs lying down, and loving to slumber.' 'He
first findeth his own brother, Simon!'

Now, take another lesson out of this witness of the disciple, as to the
channel in which such effort naturally runs. 'He _first_ findeth _his
own brother_'; does not that imply a second finding by the other of the
two? The language of the text suggests that the Evangelist's tendency
to the suppression of himself, of which I have spoken, hides away, if I
may so say, in this singular expression, the fact that he too went to
look for a brother, but that Andrew found his brother before John found
his. If so, each of the original pair of disciples went to look for one
who was knit to him by close ties of kindred and affection, and found
him and brought him to Christ; and before the day was over the
Christian Church was doubled, because each member of it, by God's
grace, had added another. Home, then, and those who are nearest to us,
present the natural channels for Christian work. Many a very earnest
and busy preacher, or Sunday-school teacher, or missionary, has
brothers and sisters, husband or wife, children or parents at home to
whom he has never said a word about Christ. There is an old proverb,
'The shoemaker's wife is always the worst shod.' The families of many
very busy Christian teachers suffer wofully for want of remembering 'he
first findeth his own brother.' It is a poor affair if all your
philanthropy and Christian energy go off noisily in Sunday-schools and
mission-stations, and if your own vineyard is neglected, and the people
at your own fireside never hear anything from you about the Master whom
you say you love. Some of you want that hint; will you take it?

But then, the principle is one that might be fairly expanded beyond the
home circle. The natural relationships into which we are brought by
neighbourhood and by ordinary associations prescribe the direction of
our efforts. What, for instance, are we set down in this swarming
population of Lancashire for? For business and personal ends? Yes,
partly. But is that all? Surely, if we believe that 'there is a
divinity that shapes our ends' and determines the bounds of our
habitation, we must believe that other purposes affecting other people
are also meant by God to be accomplished through us, and that where a
man who knows and loves Christ Jesus is brought into neighbourly
contact with thousands who do not, he is thereby constituted his
brethren's keeper, and is as plainly called to tell them of Christ as
if a voice from Heaven had bid him do it. What is to be said of the
depth and vital energy of the Christianity that neither hears the call
nor feels the impulse to share its blessing with the famishing Lazarus
at its gate? What will be the fate of such a church? Why, if you live
in luxury in your own well drained and ventilated house, and take no
heed to the typhoid fever or cholera in the slums at its back, the
chances are that seeds of the disease will find their way to you, and
kill your wife, or child, or yourself. And if you Christian people,
living in the midst of godless people, do not try to heal them, they
will infect you. If you do not seek to impress your conviction that
Christ is the Messiah upon an unbelieving generation, the unbelieving
generation will impress upon you its doubts whether He is; and your
lips will falter, and a pallor will come over the complexion of your
love, and your faith will become congealed and turn into ice.

Notice again the simple word which is the most powerful means of
influencing most men.

Andrew did not begin to argue with his brother. Some of us can do that
and some of us cannot. Some of us are influenced by argument and some
of us are not. You may pound a man's mistaken creed to atoms with
sledge-hammers of reasoning, and he is not much the nearer being a
Christian than he was before; just as you may pound ice to pieces and
it is pounded ice after all. The mightiest argument that we can use,
and the argument that we can all use, if we have got any religion in us
at all, is that of Andrew, 'We have found the Messias.'

I recently read a story in some newspaper or other about a minister who
preached a very elaborate course of lectures in refutation of some form
of infidelity, for the special benefit of a man that attended his place
of worship. Soon after, the man came and declared himself a Christian.
The minister said to him, 'Which of my discourses was it that removed
your doubts?' The reply was, 'Oh! it was not any of your sermons that
influenced me. The thing that set me thinking was that a poor woman
came out of the chapel beside me, and stumbled on the steps, and I
stretched out my hand to help her, and she said "Thank you!" Then she
looked at me and said, "Do you love Jesus Christ, my blessed Saviour?"
And I did not, and I went home and thought about it; and now I can say
_I_ love Jesus.' The poor woman's word, and her frank confession of her
experience, were all the transforming power.

If you have found Christ, you can say that you have. Never mind about
the how! Any how! Only say it! A boy that is sent on an errand by his
father has only one duty to perform, and that is to repeat what he was
told. Whether we have any eloquence or not, whether we have any logic
or not, whether we can speak persuasively and gracefully or not, if we
have laid hold of Christ at all we can say that we have; and it is at
our peril that we do not. We can say it to somebody. There is surely
some one who will listen to you more readily than to any one else.
Surely you have not lived all your life and bound nobody to you by
kindness and love, so that they will gladly attend to what you say.
Well, then, _use_ the power that is given to you.

Remember the beginnings of the Christian Church—two men, each of whom
found his brother. Two and two make four; and if every one of us would
go, according to the old law of warfare, and each of us slay our man,
or rather each of us give life by God's grace to some one, or try to do
it, our congregations and our churches would grow as fast as, according
to the old problem, the money grew that was paid down for the nails in
the horse's shoes. Two snowflakes on the top of a mountain gather an
avalanche by the time they reach the valley. 'He first findeth his
brother, Simon.'

II. And now I turn to the second part of this text, the self-revelation
of the Master.

The bond which knit these men to Christ at first was by no means the
perfect Christian faith which they afterwards attained. They recognised
Him as the Messiah, they were personally attached to Him, they were
ready to accept His teaching and to obey His commandments. That was
about as far as they had gone. But they were scholars. They had entered
the school. The rest would come. It would be absurd to expect that
Christ would begin by preaching to them faith in His divinity and
atoning work. He binds them to _Himself_. That is lesson enough for a
beginner for one day.

It was the impression which Christ Himself made on Simon which
completed the work begun by his brother. What, then, was the
impression? He comes all full of wonder and awe, and he is met by a
look and a sentence. The look, which is described by an unusual word,
was a penetrating gaze which regarded Peter with fixed attention. It
must have been remarkable, to have lived in John's memory for all these
years. Evidently, as I think, a more than natural insight is implied.
So, also, the saying with which our Lord received Peter seems to me to
be meant to show more than natural knowledge: 'Thou art Simon, the son
of Jonas.' Christ may, no doubt, have learned the Apostle's name and
lineage from his brother, or in some other ordinary way. But if you
observe the similar incident which follows in the conversation with
Nicodemus, and the emphatic declaration of the next chapter that Jesus
knew both 'all men,' and 'what was in man'—both human nature as a
whole, and each individual—it is more natural to see here superhuman
knowledge.

So then, the first point in our Lord's self-revelation here is that He
shows Himself possessed of supernatural and thorough knowledge. One
remembers the many instances where our Lord read men's hearts, and the
prayer addressed to Him probably, by Peter, 'Thou, Lord, which knowest
the hearts of all men,' and the vision which John saw of 'eyes like a
flame of fire,' and the sevenfold 'I know thy works.'

It may be a very awful thought, 'Thou, God, seest me.' It is a very
unwelcome thought to a great many men, and it will be so to us unless
we can give it the modification which it receives from the belief in
the divinity of Jesus Christ, and feel sure that the eyes which are
blazing with divine omniscience are dewy with divine and human love.

Do you believe it? Do you feel that Christ is looking at you, and
searching you altogether? Do you rejoice in it? Do you carry it about
with you as a consolation and a strength in moments of weakness and in
times of temptation? Is it as blessed to you to feel 'Thou Christ
beholdest me now,' as it is for a child to feel that, when it is
playing in the garden, its mother is sitting up at the window watching
it, and that no harm can come? There have been men driven mad in
prisons because they knew that somewhere in the wall there was a little
pinhole, through which a gaoler's eye was always, or might be always,
glaring down at them. And the thought of an absolute Omniscience up
there, searching me to the depths of my nature, may become one from
which I recoil shudderingly, and will not be altogether a blessed one
unless it comes to me in this shape:—'My Christ knows me altogether and
loves me better than He knows. And so I will spread myself out before
Him, and though I feel that there is much in me which I dare not tell
to men, I will rejoice that there is nothing which I need to tell to
Him. He knows me through and through. He knew me when He died for me.
He knew me when He forgave me. He knew me when He undertook to cleanse
me. Like this very Peter I will say, "Lord, Thou knowest all things,"
and, like him, I will cling the closer to His feet, because I know, and
He knows, my weakness and my sin.'

Another revelation of our Lord's relation to His disciples is given in
the fact that He changes Simon's name. Jehovah, in the Old Testament,
changes the names of Abraham and of Jacob. Babylonian kings in the Old
Testament change the names of their vassal princes. Masters impose
names on their slaves; and I suppose that even the marriage custom of
the wife's assuming the name of the husband rests originally upon the
same idea of absolute authority. That idea is conveyed in the fact that
our Lord changes Peter's name, and so takes absolute possession of him,
and asserts His mastery over him. We belong to Him altogether, because
He has given Himself altogether for us. His absolute authority is the
correlative of His utter self-surrender. He who can come to me and say,
'I have spared not my life for thee,' and He only, has the right to
come to me and say, 'yield yourself wholly to Me.' So, Christian
friends, your Master wants all your service; do you give yourselves up
to Him out and out, not by half and half.

Lastly, that change of name implies Christ's power and promise to
bestow a new character and new functions and honours. Peter was by no
means a 'Peter' then. The name no doubt mainly implies official
function, but that official function was prepared for by personal
character; and in so far as the name refers to character, it means
firmness. At that epoch Peter was rash, impulsive, headstrong,
self-confident, vain, and therefore, necessarily changeable. Like the
granite, all fluid and hot, and fluid because it was hot, he needed to
cool in order to solidify into rock. And not until his self-confidence
had been knocked out of him, and he had learned humility by falling;
not until he had been beaten from all his presumption, and tamed down,
and sobered and steadied by years of difficulty and responsibilities,
did he become the rock that Christ meant him to be. All _that_ lay
concealed in the future, but in the change of his name, while he stood
on the very threshold of his Christian career, there was preached to
him, and there is preached to us, this great truth, that if you will go
to Jesus Christ He will make a new man of you. No man's character is so
obstinately rooted in evil but that Christ can change its set and
direction. No man's natural dispositions are so faulty and low but that
Christ can develop counterbalancing virtues, and out of the evil and
weakness make strength. He will not make a Peter into a John, or a John
into a Paul, but He will deliver Peter from the 'defects of his
qualities,' and lead them up into a higher and a nobler region. There
are no outcasts in the view of the transforming Christ. He dismisses no
people out of His hospital as incurable, because anybody, everybody,
the blackest, the most rooted in evil, those who have longest indulged
in any given form of transgression, may all come to Him; with the
certainty that if they will cleave to Him, He will read all their
character and all its weaknesses, and then with a glad smile of welcome
and assured confidence on His face, will ensure to them a new nature
and new dignities. 'Thou art Simon—thou shalt be Peter.'

The process will be long. It will be painful. There will be a great
deal pared off. The sculptor makes the marble image by chipping away
the superfluous marble. Ah! and when you have to chip away superfluous
flesh and blood it is bitter work, and the chisel is often deeply dyed
in gore, and the mallet seems to be very cruel. Simon did not know all
that had to be done to make a Peter of him. We have to thank God's
providence that we do not know all the sorrows and trials of the
process of making us what He wills us to be. But we may be sure of
this, that if only we keep near our Master, and let Him have His way
with us, and work His will upon us, and if only we will not wince from
the blows of the Great Artist's chisel, then out of the roughest block
He will carve the fairest statue; and He will fulfil for us at last His
great promise: 'I will give unto him a white stone, and in the stone a
new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it.'




THE FIRST DISCIPLES: III. PHILIP


'The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth
Philip, and saith unto him, Follow Me.'—JOHN i. 43.

'The day following'—we have a diary in this chapter and the next,
extending from the day when John the Baptist gives his official
testimony to Jesus, up till our Lord's first journey to Jerusalem. The
order of events is this. The deputation from the Sanhedrim to John
occupied the first day. On the second Jesus comes back to John after
His temptation, and receives his solemn attestation. On the third day,
John repeats his testimony, and three disciples, probably four, make
the nucleus of the Church. These are the two pairs of brothers, James
and John, Andrew and Peter, who stand first in every catalogue of the
Apostles, and were evidently nearest to Christ.

'The day following' of our text is the fourth day. On it our Lord
determines to return to Galilee. His objects in His visit to John were
accomplished—to receive his public attestation, and to gather the first
little knot of His followers. Thus launched upon His course, He desired
to return to His native district.

These events had occurred where John was baptising, in a place called
in the English version Bethabara, which means 'The house of crossing,'
or as we might say, Ferry-house. The traditional site for John's
baptism is near Jericho, but the next chapter (verse i.) shows that it
was only a day's journey from Cana of Galilee, and must therefore have
been much further north than Jericho. A ford, still bearing the name
Abarah, a few miles south of the lake of Gennesaret, has lately been
discovered. Our Lord, then, and His disciples had a day's walking to
take them back to Galilee. But apparently before they set out on that
morning, Philip and Nathanael were added to the little band. So these
two days saw six disciples gathered round Jesus.

Andrew and John sought Christ and found Him. To them He revealed
Himself as very willing to be approached, and glad to welcome any to
His side. Peter, who comes next, was brought to Christ by his brother,
and to him Christ revealed Himself as reading his heart, and promising
and giving him higher functions and a more noble character.

Now we come to the third case, 'Jesus findeth Philip,' who was not
seeking Jesus, and who was brought by no one. To him Christ reveals
Himself as drawing near to many a heart that has not thought of Him,
and laying a masterful hand of gracious authority on the springs of
life and character in that autocratic word 'Follow Me.' So we have a
gradually heightening revelation of the Master's graciousness to all
souls, to them that seek and to them that seek Him not. It is only to
the working out of these simple thoughts that I ask your attention now.

I. First, then, let us deal with the revelation that is given us here
of the seeking Christ.

Every one who reads this chapter with even the slightest attention must
observe how 'seeking' and 'finding' are repeated over and over again.
Christ turns to Andrew and John with the question, 'What _seek_ ye?'
Andrew, as the narrative says, '_findeth_ his own brother, Simon, and
saith unto him, "We have _found_ the Messias!"' Then again, Jesus
_finds_ Philip; and again, Philip, as soon as he has been won to Jesus,
goes off to _find_ Nathanael; and his glad word to him is, once more,
'We have _found_ the Messias.' It is a reciprocal play of finding and
seeking all through these verses.

There are two kinds of finding. There is a casual stumbling upon a
thing that you were not looking for, and there is a finding as the
result of seeking. It is the latter which is here. Christ did not
casually stumble upon Philip, upon that morning, before they departed
from the fords of the Jordan on their short journey to Cana of Galilee.
He went to look for this other Galilean, one who was connected with
Andrew and Peter, a native of the same little village. He went and
found him; and whilst Philip was all unexpectant and undesirous, the
Master came to him and laid His hand upon him, and drew him to Himself.

Now that is what Christ often does. There are men like the merchantman
who went all over the world seeking goodly pearls, who with some eager
longing to possess light, or truth, or goodness, or rest, search up and
down and find it nowhere, because they are looking for it in a hundred
different places. They are expecting to find a little here and a little
there, and to piece all together to make of the fragments one
all-sufficing restfulness. Then when they are most eager in their
search, or when, perhaps, it has all died down into despair and apathy,
the veil seems to be withdrawn, and they see Him whom they have been
seeking all the time and knew not that He was there beside them. All,
and more than all, that they sought for in the many pearls is stored
for them in the one Pearl of great price. The ancient covenant stands
firm to-day as for ever. 'Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be
opened unto you.'

But then there are others, like Paul on the road to Damascus or like
Matthew the publican, sitting at the receipt of custom, on whom there
is laid a sudden hand, to whom there comes a sudden conviction, on
whose eyes, not looking to the East, there dawns the light of Christ's
presence. Such cases occur all through the ages, for He is not to be
confined, bless His name! within the narrow limits of answering seeking
souls, or of showing Himself to people that are brought to Him by human
instrumentality; but far beyond these bounds He goes, and many a time
discloses His beauty and His sweetness to hearts that wist not of Him,
and who can only say, 'Lo! God was in this place, and I knew it not.'
'Thou wast found of them that sought Thee not.'

As it was in His miracles upon earth, so it has been in the sweet and
gracious works of His grace ever since. Sometimes He healed in response
to the yearning desire that looked out of sick eyes, or that spoke from
parched lips, and no man that ever came to Him and said 'Heal me!' was
sent away beggared of His blessing. Sometimes He healed in response to
the beseeching of those who, with loving hearts, carried their dear
ones and laid them at His feet. But sometimes, to magnify the
spontaneity and the completeness of His own love, and to show us that
He is bound and limited by no human co-operation, and that He is His
own motive, He reached out the blessing to a hand that was not extended
to grasp it; and by His question, 'Wilt thou be made whole?' kindled
desires that else had lain dormant for ever.

And so in this story before us; He will welcome and over-answer Andrew
and John when they come seeking; He will turn round to them with a
smile on His face, that converts the question, 'What seek ye?' into an
invitation, 'Come and see.' And when Andrew brings his brother to Him,
He will go more than halfway to meet him. But when these are won, there
still remains another way by which He will have disciples brought into
His Kingdom, and that is by Himself going out and laying His hand on
the man and drawing him to His heart by the revelation of His love. But
further, and in a deeper sense, He really seeks us all, and, unasked,
bestows His love upon us.

Whether we seek Him or no, there is no heart upon earth which Christ
does not desire; and no man or woman within the sound of His gospel
whom He is not in a very real sense seeking that He may draw them to
Himself. His own word is a wonderful one: 'The Father _seeketh_ such to
worship Him'; as if God went all up and down the world looking for
hearts to love Him and to turn to Him with reverent thankfulness. And
as the Father, so the Son—who is for us the revelation of the Father:
'The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.' No
one on earth wanted Him, or dreamed of His coming. When He bowed the
heavens and gathered Himself into the narrow space of the manger in
Bethlehem, and took upon Him the limitations and the burdens and the
weaknesses of manhood, it was not in response to any petition, it was
in reply to no seeking; but He came spontaneously, unmoved, obeying but
the impulse of His own heart, and because He would have mercy. He who
is the Beginning, and will be First in all things, was first in this,
that before they called He answered, and came upon earth unbesought and
unexpected, because His own infinite love brought Him hither. Christ's
mercy to a world does not come like water in a well that has to be
pumped up, by our petitions, by our search, but like water in some
fountain, rising sparkling into the sunlight by its own inward impulse.
He is His own motive; and came to a forgetful and careless world, like
a shepherd who goes after his flock in the wilderness, not because they
bleat for him, while they crop the herbage which tempts them ever
further from the fold and remember him and it no more, but because he
cannot have them lost. Men are not conscious of needing Christ till He
comes. The supply creates the demand. He is like the 'dew which
tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.'

But not only does Christ seek us all, inasmuch as the whole conception
and execution of His great work are independent of man's desires, but
He seeks us each in a thousand ways. He longs to have each of us for
His disciples. He seeks each of us for His disciples, by the motion of
His Spirit on our spirits, by stirring conviction in our consciences,
by pricking us often with a sense of our own evil, by all our
restlessness and dissatisfaction, by the disappointments and the
losses, as by the brightnesses and the goodness of earthly providences,
and often through such agencies as my lips and the lips of other men.
The Master Himself, who seeks all mankind, has sought and is seeking
you at this moment. Oh! yield to His search. The shepherd goes out on
the mountain side, for all the storm and the snow, and wades knee-deep
through the drifts until he finds the sheep. And your Shepherd, who is
also your Brother, has come looking for you, and at this moment is
putting out His hand and laying hold of some of you through my poor
words, and saying to you, as He said to Philip, 'Follow Me!'

II. And now let us next consider that word of authority which, spoken
to the one man in our text, is really spoken to us all.

'Jesus findeth Philip, and saith unto him, "Follow Me!"' No doubt a
great deal more passed, but no doubt what more passed was less
significant and less important for the development of faith in this man
than what is recorded. The word of authority, the invitation which was
a demand, the demand which was an invitation, and the personal
impression which He produced upon Philip's heart, were the things that
bound him to Jesus Christ for ever. 'Follow Me,' spoken at the
beginning of the journey of Christ and His disciples back to Galilee,
might have meant merely, on the surface, 'Come back with us.' But the
words have, of course, a much deeper meaning. They mean—be My disciple.
Think what is implied in them, and ask yourself whether the demand that
Christ makes in these words is an unreasonable one, and then ask
yourselves whether you have yielded to it or not.

We lose the force of the image by much repetition. Sheep follow a
shepherd. Travellers follow a guide. Here is a man upon some dangerous
cornice of the Alps, with a ledge of limestone as broad as the palm of
your hand, and perhaps a couple of feet of snow above that, for him to
walk upon, a precipice on either side; and his guide says, as he ropes
himself to him, 'Now, tread where I tread!' Travellers follow their
guides. Soldiers follow their commanders. There is the hell of the
battlefield; here a line of wavering, timid, raw recruits. Their
commander rushes to the front and throws himself upon the advancing
enemy with the one word, 'Follow' and the coward becomes a hero.
Soldiers follow their captains. Your Shepherd comes to you and calls,
'Follow Me.' Your Captain and Commander comes to you and calls, 'Follow
Me.' In all the dreary wilderness, in all the difficult contingencies
and conjunctions, in all the conflicts of life, this Man strides in
front of us and proposes Himself to us as Guide, Example, Consoler,
Friend, Companion, everything; and gathers up all duty, all
blessedness, in the majestic and simple words, 'Follow Me.'

It is a call at the least to accept Him as a Teacher, but the whole
gist of the context here is to show us that from the beginning Christ's
disciples did not look upon Him as a Rabbi's disciples did, as being
simply a teacher, but recognised Him as the Messias, the Son of God,
the King of Israel. So that they were called upon by this command to
accept His teaching in a very special way, not merely as Hillel or
Gamaliel asked their disciples to accept theirs. Do you do that? Do you
take Him as your illumination about all matters of theoretical truth,
and of practical wisdom? Is His declaration of God your theology? Is
His declaration of His own Person your creed? Do you think about His
Cross as He did when He elected to be remembered in all the world by
the broken body and the shed blood, which were the symbols of His
reconciling death? Is His teaching, that the Son of Man comes to 'give
His life a ransom for many,' the ground of your hope? Do you follow Him
in your belief, and following Him in your belief, do you accept Him as,
by His death and passion, the Saviour of your soul? That is the first
step—to follow Him, to trust Him wholly for what He is, the Incarnate
Son of God, the Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and
therefore for your sins and mine. This is a call to faith.

It is also a call to obedience. 'Follow Me' certainly means 'Do as I
bid you,' but softens all the harshness of that command. Sedulously
plant your tremulous feet in His firm footsteps. Where you see His
track going across the bog be not afraid to walk after Him, though it
may seem to lead you into the deepest and the blackest of it. 'Follow
Him' and you will be right. 'Follow Him' and you will be blessed. Do as
Christ did, or as according to the best of your judgment it seems to
you that Christ would have done if He had been in your circumstances;
and you will not go far wrong. 'The Imitation of Christ,' which Thomas
a Kempis wrote his book about, is the sum of all practical
Christianity. 'Follow Me!' makes discipleship to be something more than
intellectual acceptance of His teaching, something more than even
reliance for my salvation upon His work. It makes
discipleship—springing out of these two—the acceptance of His teaching
and the consequent reliance, by faith, upon His word—to be a practical
reproduction of His character and conduct in mine.

It is a call to communion. If a man follows Christ he will walk close
behind Him, and near enough to Him to hear Him speak, and to be 'guided
by His eye.' He will be separated from other people, and from other
paths. In these four things, then—Faith, Obedience, Imitation,
Communion—lies the essence of discipleship. No man is a Christian who
has not in some measure all four. Have you got them?

What right has Jesus Christ to ask me to follow Him? Why should I? Who
is He that He should set Himself up as being the perfect Example and
the Guide for all the world? What has He done to bind me to Him, that I
should take Him for my Master, and yield myself to Him in a subjection
that I refuse to the mightiest names in literature, and thought, and
practical benevolence? Who is this that assumes thus to dominate over
us all? Ah! brethren, there is only one answer. 'This is none other
than the Son of God who has given Himself a ransom for me, and
therefore has the right, and only therefore has the right, to say to
me, "Follow Me."'

III. And now one last word. Think for a moment about this silently and
swiftly obedient disciple.

Philip says nothing. Of course the narrative is mere sketchy outline.
He is silent, but he yields. Ah, brethren, how quickly a soul may be
won or lost! That moment, when Philip's decision was trembling in the
balance, was but a moment. It might have gone the other way, for Christ
has no pressed men in His army; they are all volunteers. It might have
gone the other way. A moment may settle for you whether you will be His
disciple or not. People tell us that the belief in instantaneous
conversions is unphilosophical. It seems to me that the objections to
them are unphilosophical. All decisions are matters of an instant.
Hesitation may be long, weighing and balancing may be a protracted
process, but the decision is always a moment's work, a knife-edge. And
there is no reason whatever why any one listening to me may not now, if
he or she will, do as this man Philip did on the spot, and when Christ
says 'Follow Me,' turn to Him and answer, 'I will follow Thee
whithersoever Thou goest.'

There is an old church tradition which says that the disciple who at a
subsequent period answered Christ, 'Lord! suffer me first to go and
bury my father,' was this same Apostle. I do not think that at all
likely, but the tradition suggests to us one last thought about the
reasons why people are kept back from yielding this obedience to
Christ's invitation. Many of you are kept back, as that procrastinating
follower was, because there are some other duties which you feel, or
make to be, more important. 'I will think about Christianity and
turning religious when this, that, or the other thing has been got
over. I have my position in life to make. I have a great many things to
do that must be done at once, and really, I have not time to think
about it.'

Then there are some of you that are kept from following Christ because
you have never yet found out that you need a guide at all. Then there
are some of you that are kept back because you like very much better to
go your own way, and to follow your own inclination, and dislike the
idea of following the will of another. There are a host of other
reasons that I do not need to deal with now; but oh! brethren, none of
them is worth pleading. They are excuses, they are not reasons. 'They
all with one consent began to make excuse'—excuses, not reasons; and
manufactured excuses, in order to cover a decision which has been taken
before, and on other grounds altogether, which it is not convenient to
bring up to the surface. I am not going to deal with these in detail,
but I beseech you, do not let what I venture to call Christ's seeking
of you once more, even by my poor words now, be in vain.

Follow Him. Trust, obey, imitate, hold fellowship with Him. You will
always have a Companion, you will always have a Protector. 'He that
followeth Me,' saith He, 'shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life.' And if you will listen to the Shepherd's voice and
follow Him, that sweet old promise will be true, in its divinest and
sweetest sense, about your life, in time; and about your life in the
moment of death, the isthmus between two worlds, and about your life in
eternity—'They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the sun nor
heat smite them; for He that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even
by the springs of water shall He guide them.' 'Follow thou Me.'




THE FIRST DISCIPLES: IV. NATHANAEL


'Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found Him, of
whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth,
the son of Joseph. 46. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good
thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. 47.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith of him, Behold an
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! 48. Nathanael saith unto Him,
Whence knowest Thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that
Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. 49.
Nathanael answered and saith unto Him, Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God;
Thou art the King of Israel.'—JOHN i. 45-49.

The words are often the least part of a conversation. The Evangelist
can tell us what Nathanael said to Jesus, and what Jesus said to
Nathanael, but no Evangelist can reproduce the look, the tone, the
magnetic influence which streamed out from Christ, and, we may believe,
more than anything He said, riveted these men to Him.

It looks as if Nathanael and his companions were very easily convinced,
as if their adhesion to such tremendous claims as those of Jesus Christ
was much too facile a thing to be a very deep one. But what can be put
down in black and white goes a very short way to solve the secret of
the power which drew them to Himself.

The incident which is before us now runs substantially on the same
lines as the previous bringing of Peter to Jesus Christ. In both cases
the man is brought by a friend, in both cases the friend's weapon is
simply the expression of his own personal experience, 'We have found
the Messias,' although Philip has a little more to say about Christ's
correspondence with the prophetic word. In both cases the work is
finished by our Lord Himself manifesting His own supernatural knowledge
to the inquiring spirit, though in the case of Nathanael that process
is a little more lengthened out than in the case of Peter, because
there was a little ice of hesitation and of doubt to be melted away.
And Nathanael, starting from a lower point than Peter, having questions
and hesitations which the other had not, rises to a higher point of
faith and certitude, and from his lips first of all comes the full
articulate confession, beyond which the Apostles never went as long as
our Lord was upon earth: 'Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the
King of Israel.' So that both in regard to the revelation that is given
of the character of our Lord, and in regard to the teaching that is
given of the development and process of faith in a soul, this last
narrative fitly crowns the whole series. In looking at it with you now,
I think I shall best bring out its force by asking you to take it as
falling into these three portions: first, the preparation—a soul
brought to Christ by a brother; then the conversation—a soul fastened
to Christ by Himself; and then the rapturous confession—'Rabbi, Thou
art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.'

I. Look, then, first of all, at the preparation—a soul brought to
Christ by a brother.

'Philip findeth Nathanael.' Nathanael, in all probability, as
commentators will tell you, is the Apostle Bartholomew; and in the
catalogues of the Apostles in the Gospels, Philip and he are always
associated together. So that the two men, friends before, had their
friendship riveted and made more close by this sacredest of all bonds,
that the one had been to the other the means of bringing him to Jesus
Christ. There is nothing that ties men to each other like that. If you
want to know the full sweetness of association with friends, and of
human love, get some heart knit to yours by this sacred and eternal
bond that it owes to you its first knowledge of the Saviour. So all
human ties will be sweetened, ennobled, elevated, and made perpetual.

'We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did
write: Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph.' Philip knows nothing
about Christ's supernatural birth, nor about its having been in
Bethlehem; to him He is the son of a Nazarene peasant. But,
notwithstanding that, He is the great, significant, mysterious Person
for whom the whole sacred literature of Israel had been one long
yearning for centuries; and he has come to believe that this Man
standing beside him is the Person on whom all previous divine
communications for a millennium past focussed and centred.

I need not dwell upon these words, because to do so would be to repeat
substantially what I said in a former sermon on these first disciples,
about the value of personal conviction as a means of producing
conviction in the minds of others, and about the necessity and the
possibility of all who have found Christ for themselves saying so to
others, and thereby becoming His missionaries and evangelists.

I do not need to repeat what I said on that occasion; therefore I pass
on to the very natural hesitation and question of Nathanael: 'Can there
any good thing come out of Nazareth?' A prejudice, no doubt, but a very
harmless one; a very thin ice which melted as soon as Christ's smile
beamed upon him. And a most natural prejudice. Nathanael came from Cana
of Galilee, a little hill village, three or four miles from Nazareth.
We all know the bitter feuds and jealousies of neighbouring villages,
and how nothing is so pleasant to the inhabitants of one as a gibe
about the inhabitants of another. And in Nathanael's words there simply
speaks the rustic jealousy of Cana against Nazareth.

It is easy to blame him, but do you think that you or I, if we had been
in his place, would have been likely to have said anything very
different? Suppose you were told that a peasant out of Ross-shire was a
man on whom the whole history of this nation hung. Do you think you
would be likely to believe it without first saying, 'That is a strange
place for such a person to be born in'? Galilee was the despised part
of Palestine, and Nazareth obviously was a proverbially despised
village of Galilee; and this Jesus was a carpenter's son that nobody
had ever heard of. It seemed to be a strange head on which the divine
dove should flutter down, passing by all the Pharisees and the Scribes,
all the great people and wise people. Nathanael's prejudice was but the
giving voice to a fault that is as wide as humanity, and which we have
every day of our lives to fight with; not only in regard to religious
matters but in regard to all others—namely, the habit of estimating
people, and their work, and their wisdom, and their power to teach us,
by the class to which they are supposed to belong, or even by the place
from which they come.

'Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?' 'Can a German teach an
Englishman anything that he does not know?' 'Is a Protestant to owe
anything of spiritual illumination to a Roman Catholic?' 'Are we
Dissenters to receive any wisdom or example from Churchmen?' 'Will a
Conservative be able to give any lessons in politics to a Liberal?' 'Is
there any other bit of England that can teach Lancashire?' Take care
that whilst you are holding up your hands in horror against the
prejudices of our Lord's contemporaries, who stumbled at His origin,
you are not doing the same thing in regard to all manner of subjects
twenty times a day.

That is one very plain lesson, and not at all too secular for a sermon.
Take another. This three-parts innocent prejudice of Nathanael brings
into clear relief for us what a very real obstacle to the recognition
of our Lord's Messianic authority His apparent lowly origin was. We
have got over it, and it is no difficulty to us; but it was so then.
When Jesus Christ came into this world Judaea was ruled by the most
heartless of aristocracies, an aristocracy of cultured pedants.
Wherever you get such a class you get people who think that there can
be nobody worth looking at, or worth attending to, outside the little
limits of their own supercilious superiority. Why did Jesus Christ come
from 'the men of the earth,' as the Rabbis called all who had not
learned to cover every plain precept with spiders' webs of casuistry?
Why, for one thing, in accordance with the general law that the great
reformers and innovators always come from outside these classes, that
the Spirit of the Lord shall come on a herdsman like Amos, and
fishermen and peasants spread the Gospel through the world; and that in
politics, in literature, in science, as well as in religion, it is
always true that 'not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty,
not many noble are called.' To the cultivated classes you have to look
for a great deal that is precious and good, but for fresh impulse, in
unbroken fields, you have to look outside them. And so the highest of
all lives is conformed to the general law.

More than that, 'Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph,' came thus
because He was the poor man's Christ, because He was the ignorant man's
Christ, because His word was not for any class, but as broad as the
world. He came poor, obscure, unlettered, that all who, like Him, were
poor and untouched by the finger of earthly culture, might in Him find
their Brother, their Helper, and their Friend.

'Philip saith unto him, Come and see.' He is not going to argue the
question. He gives the only possible answer to it—'You ask Me, can any
good thing come out of Nazareth?' 'Come and see whether it is a good
thing or no; and if it is, and if it came out of Nazareth, well then,
the question has answered itself.' The quality of a thing cannot be
settled by the origin of the thing.

As it so happened, this Man did not come out of Nazareth at all, though
neither Philip nor Nathanael knew it; but if He had, it would have been
all the same. The right answer was 'Come and see.'

Now although, of course, there is no kind of correspondence between the
mere prejudice of this man Nathanael and the rooted intellectual doubts
of other generations, yet 'Come and see' carries in it the essence of
all Christian apologetics. By far the wisest thing that any man who has
to plead the cause of Christianity can do is to put Christ well
forward, and let people look at Him, and trust Him to produce His own
impression. We may argue round, and round, and round about Him for
evermore, and we shall never convince as surely as by simply holding
Him forth. 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' Yet we
are so busy proving Christianity that we sometimes have no time to
preach it; so busy demonstrating that Jesus Christ is this, that, and
the other thing, or contradicting the notion that He is not this, that,
and the other thing, that we forget simply to present Him for men to
look at. Depend upon it, whilst argument has its function, and there
are men that must be approached thereby; on the whole, and for the
general, the best way of propagating Christianity is to proclaim it,
and the second best way is to prove it. Our arguments do fare very
often very much as did that elaborate discourse that a bishop once
preached to prove the existence of a God, at the end of which a simple
old woman who had not followed his reasoning very intelligently,
exclaimed, 'Well, for all he says, I can't help thinking there is a God
after all.' The errors that are quoted to be confuted often remain more
clear in the hearers' minds than the attempted confutations. Hold forth
Christ—cry aloud to men, 'Come and see!' and some eyes will turn and
some hearts cleave to Him.

And on the other side, dear brethren, you have not done fairly by
Christianity until you have complied with this invitation, and
submitted your mind and heart honestly to the influence and the
impression that Christ Himself would make upon it.

II. We come now to the second stage—the conversation between Christ and
Nathanael, where we see a soul fastened to Christ by Himself.

In general terms, as I remarked, the method by which our Lord manifests
His Messiahship to this single soul is a revelation of His supernatural
knowledge of him. But a word or two may be said about the details. Mark
the emphasis with which the Evangelist shows us that our Lord speaks
this discriminating characterisation of Nathanael before Nathanael had
come to Him: 'He saw him coming.' So it was not with a swift,
penetrating glance of intuition that He read his character in his face.
It was not that He generalised rapidly from one action which He had
seen him do. It was not from any previous personal knowledge of him,
for, obviously, from the words of Philip to Nathanael, the latter had
never seen Jesus Christ. As Nathanael was drawing near Him, before he
had done anything to show himself, our Lord speaks the words which show
that He had read his very heart: 'Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom
is no guile.'

That is to say, here is a man who truly represents that which was the
ideal of the whole nation. The reference is, no doubt, to the old story
of the occasion on which Jacob's name was changed to Israel. And we
shall see a further reference to the same story in the subsequent
verses. Jacob had wrestled with God in that mysterious scene by the
brook Jabbok, and had overcome, and had received instead of the name
Jacob, 'a supplanter,' the name of Israel, 'for as a Prince hast thou
power with God and hast prevailed.' And, says Christ: 'This man also is
a son of Israel, one of God's warriors, who has prevailed with Him by
prayer.' 'In whom is no guile'—Jacob in his early life had been marked
and marred by selfish craft. Subtlety and guile had been the very
keynote of his character. To drive that out of him, years of discipline
and pain and sorrow had been needed. And not until it had been driven
out of him could his name be altered, and he become Israel. This man
has had the guile driven out of him. By what process? The words are a
verbal quotation from Psalm xxxii.: 'Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the
Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.'
Clear, candid openness of spirit, and the freedom of soul from all that
corruption which the Psalmist calls 'guile,' is the property of him
only who has received it, by confession, by pardon, and by cleansing,
from God. Thus Nathanael, in his wrestling, had won the great gift. His
transgression had been forgiven; his iniquity had been covered; to him
God had not imputed his sin; and in his spirit, therefore, there was no
guile. Ah, brother! if that black drop is to be cleansed out of your
heart, it must be by the same means—confession to God and pardon from
God. And then you too will be a prince with Him, and your spirit will
be frank and free, and open and candid.

Nathanael, with astonishment, says, 'Lord, whence knowest Thou me?' Not
that he appropriates the description to himself, or recognises the
truthfulness of it, but he is surprised that Christ should have means
of forming any judgment with reference to him, and so he asks Him, half
expecting an answer which will show the natural origin of our Lord's
knowledge: 'Whence knowest Thou me?' Then comes the answer, which, to
supernatural insight into Nathanael's character, adds supernatural
knowledge of Nathanael's secret actions: 'Before that Philip called
thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. And it is because
I saw thee under the fig-tree that I knew thee to be "an Israelite
indeed, in whom there is no guile."' So then, under the fig-tree,
Nathanael must have been wrestling in prayer; under the fig-tree must
have been confessing his sins; under the fig-tree must have been
longing and looking for the Deliverer who was to 'turn away ungodliness
from Jacob.' So solitary had been that vigil, and so little would any
human eye that had looked upon it have known what had been passing in
his mind, that Christ's knowledge of it and of its significance at once
lights up in Nathanael's heart the fire of the glad conviction, 'Thou
art the Son of God.' If we had seen Nathanael, we should only have seen
a man sitting, sunk in thought, under a fig-tree; but Jesus had seen
the spiritual struggle which had no outward marks, and to have known
which He must have exercised the divine prerogative of reading the
heart.

I ask you to consider whether Nathanael's conclusion was not right, and
whether that woman of Samaria was not right when she hurried back to
the city, leaving her water-pot, and said, 'Come and see a man that
told me _all_ that ever I did.' That 'all' was a little stretch of
facts, but still it was true in spirit. And her inference was
absolutely true: 'Is not this the Christ, the Son of God?' This is the
first miracle that Jesus Christ wrought. His supernatural knowledge,
which cannot be struck out from the New Testament representations of
His character, is as much a mark of divinity as any of the other of His
earthly manifestations. It is not the highest; it does not appeal to
our sympathies as some of the others do, but it is irrefragable. Here
is a man to whom all men with whom He came in contact were like those
clocks with a crystal face which shows us all the works. How does He
come to have this perfect and absolute knowledge?

That omniscience, as manifested here, shows us how glad Christ is when
He sees anything good, anything that He can praise in any of us.
'Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.' Not a word
about Nathanael's prejudice, not a word about any of his faults (though
no doubt he had plenty of them), but the cordial praise that he was an
honest, a sincere man, following after God and after truth. There is
nothing which so gladdens Christ as to see in us any faint traces of
longing for, and love towards, and likeness to, His own self. His
omniscience is never so pleased as when beneath heaps and mountains of
vanity and sin it discerns in a man's heart some poor germ of goodness
and longing for His grace.

And then again, notice how we have here our Lord's omniscience set
forth as cognisant of all our inward crises and struggles, 'When thou
wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.' I suppose all of us could look
back to some place or other, under some hawthorn hedge, or some boulder
by the seashore, or some mountain-top, or perhaps in some back-parlour,
or in some crowded street, where some never-to-be-forgotten epoch in
our soul's history passed, unseen by all eyes, and which would have
shown no trace to any onlooker, except perhaps a tightly compressed
lip. Let us rejoice to feel that Christ sees all these moments which no
other eye can see. In our hours of crisis, and in our monotonous,
uneventful moments, in the rush of the furious waters, when the stream
of our lives is caught among rocks, and in the long, languid reaches of
its smoothest flow, when we are fighting with our fears or yearning for
His light, or even when sitting dumb and stolid, like snow men,
apathetic and frozen in our indifference, He sees us, and pities, and
will help the need which He beholds.

  'Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
  And thy Saviour is not by;
  Think not thou canst weep a tear,
  And thy Saviour is not near.'

'When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.'

III. One word more about this rapturous confession, which crowns the
whole: 'Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.'

Where had Nathanael learned these great names? He was a disciple of
John the Baptist, and he had no doubt heard John's testimony as
recorded in this same chapter, when he told us how the voice from
Heaven had bid him recognise the Messiah by the token of the descending
Dove, and how he 'saw and bare record that this is the Son of God.'
John's testimony was echoed in Nathanael's confession. Undoubtedly he
attached but vague ideas to the name, far less articulate and doctrinal
than we have the privilege of doing. To him 'Son of God' could not have
meant all that it ought to mean to us, but it meant something that he
saw clearly, and a great deal beyond that he saw but dimly. It meant
that God had sent, and was in some special sense the Father of, this
Jesus of Nazareth.

'Thou art the King of Israel,' John had been preaching, 'The Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand.' The Messiah was to be the theocratic King, the
King, not of 'Judah' nor of 'the Jews,' but of 'Israel,' the nation
that had entered into covenant with God. So the substance of the
confession was the Messiahship of Jesus, as resting upon His special
divine relationship and leading to His Kingly sway.

Notice also the enthusiasm of the confession; one's ear hears clearly a
tone of rapture in it. The joy-bells of the man's heart are all
a-ringing. It is no mere intellectual acknowledgment of Christ as
Messiah. The difference between mere head-belief and heart-faith lies
precisely in the presence of these elements of confidence, of
enthusiastic loyalty, and absolute submission.

So the great question for each of us is, not, Do I believe as a piece
of my intellectual creed that Christ is 'the Messiah, the Son of God,
the King of Israel'? I suppose almost all my hearers here now do that.
That will not make you a Christian, my friend. That will neither save
your soul nor quiet your heart, nor bring you peace and strength in
life, nor open the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven to you. A man may be
miserable, wholly sunk in all manner of wickedness and evil, die the
death of a dog, and go to punishment hereafter, though he believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the King of Israel. You want
something more than that. You want just this element of rapturous
acknowledgment, of loyal submission, absolute obedience, of unfaltering
trust.

Look at these first disciples, six brave men that had all that loyalty
and love to Him; though there was not a soul in the world but
themselves to share their convictions. Do they not shame you? When He
comes to you, as He does come, with this question, 'Whom do ye say that
I am?' may God give you grace to answer, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God,' and not only to answer it with your lips, but to
trust Him wholly with your hearts, and with enthusiastic devotion to
bow your whole being in adoring wonder and glad submission at His feet.
If we are 'Israelites indeed,' our hearts will crown Him as the 'King
of Israel.'




THE FIRST DISCIPLES: V. BELIEVING AND SEEING


'Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee
under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than
these. 51. And He saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of Man.'—JOHN i. 50, 51.

Here we have the end of the narrative of the gathering together of the
first disciples, which has occupied several sermons. We have had
occasion to point out how each incident in the series has thrown some
fresh light upon two main subjects, namely, upon some phase or other of
the character and work of Jesus Christ, or upon the various ways by
which faith, which is the condition of discipleship, is kindled in
men's souls. These closing words may be taken as the crowning thoughts
on both these matters.

Our Lord recognises and accepts the faith of Nathanael and his fellows,
but, like a wise Teacher, lets His pupils at the very beginning get a
glimpse of how much lies ahead for them to learn; and in the act of
accepting the faith gives just one hint of the great tract of yet
uncomprehended knowledge of Him which lies before them; 'Because I said
unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt
see greater things than these.' He accepts Nathanael's confession and
the confession of his fellows. Human lips have given Him many great and
wonderful titles in this chapter. John called Him 'the Lamb of God';
the first disciples hailed Him as the 'Messias, which is the Christ';
Nathanael fell before Him with the rapturous exclamation, 'Thou art the
Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel!' All these crowns had been put
on His head by human hands, but here He crowns Himself. He makes a
mightier claim than any that they had dreamed of, and proclaims Himself
to be the medium of all communication and intercourse between heaven
and earth: 'Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'

So, then, there are two great principles that lie in these verses, and
are contained in, first, our Lord's mighty promise to His new
disciples, and second, in our Lord's witness to Himself. Let me say a
word or two about each of these.

I. Our Lord's promise to His new disciples.

Christ's words here may be translated either as a question or as an
affirmation. It makes comparatively little difference to the
substantial meaning whether we read 'believest thou?' or 'thou
believest.' In the former case there will be a little more vivid
expression of surprise and admiration at the swiftness of Nathanael's
faith, but in neither case are we to find anything of the nature of
blame or of doubt as to the reality of his belief. The question, if it
be a question, is no question as to whether Nathanael's faith was a
genuine thing or not. There is no hint that he has been too quick with
his confession, and has climbed too rapidly to the point that he has
attained. But in either case, whether the word be a question or an
affirmation, we are to see in it the solemn and glad recognition of the
reality of Nathanael's confession and belief.

Here is the first time that that word 'belief' came from Christ's lips;
and when we remember all the importance that has been attached to it in
the subsequent history of the Church, and the revolution in human
thought which followed upon our Lord's demand of our faith, there is an
interest in noticing the first appearance of the word. It was an epoch
in the history of the world when Christ first claimed and accepted a
man's faith.

Of course the second part of this verse, 'Thou shalt see greater things
than these,' has its proper fulfilment in the gradual manifestation of
His person and character, which followed through the events recorded in
the Gospels. His life of service, His words of wisdom, His deeds of
power and of pity, His death of shame and of glory, His Resurrection
and His Ascension, these are the 'greater things' which Nathanael is
promised. They all lay unrevealed yet, and what our Lord means is
simply this: 'If you will continue to trust in Me, as you have trusted
Me, and stand beside Me, you will see unrolled before your eyes and
comprehended by your faith the great facts which will make the
manifestation of God to the world.' But though that be the original
application of the words, yet I think we may fairly draw from them some
lessons that are of importance to ourselves; and I ask you to look at
the hint that they give us about three things,—faith and discipleship,
faith and sight, faith and progress. 'Believest thou? thou shalt see
greater things than these.'

First, here is light thrown upon the relation between faith and
discipleship. It is clear that our Lord here uses the word for the
first time in the full Christian sense, that He regards the exercise of
faith as being practically synonymous with being a disciple, that from
the very first, believers were disciples, and disciples were believers.

Then, notice still further that our Lord here employs the word 'belief'
without any definition of what or whom it is that they were to believe.
He Himself, and not certain thoughts about Him, is the true object of a
man's faith. We may believe a proposition, but faith must grasp a
person. Even when the person is made known to us by a proposition which
we have to believe before we can trust the person, still the essence of
faith is not the intellectual process of laying hold upon a certain
thought, and acquiescing in it, but the moral process of casting myself
in full confidence upon the Being that is revealed to me by the
thought,—of laying my hand, and leaning my weight, on the Man about
whom it tells me. And so faith, which is discipleship, has in it for
its very essence the personal element of trust in Jesus Christ.

Then, further, notice how widely different from our creed was
Nathanael's creed, and yet how identical with our faith, if we are
Christians, was Nathanael's faith. He knew nothing about the very heart
of Christ's work, His atoning death. He knew nothing about the highest
glory of Christ's person, His divine Sonship, in its unique and lofty
sense. These lay unrevealed, and were amongst the greater things which
he was yet to see; but though thus his knowledge was imperfect, and his
creed incomplete as compared with ours, his faith was the very same. He
laid hold upon Christ, he clave to Him with all his heart, he was ready
to accept His teaching, he was willing to do His will, and as for the
rest—'Thou shalt see greater things than these.' So, dear brethren,
from these words of my text here, from the unhesitating attribution of
the lofty notion of faith to this man, from the way in which our Lord
uses the word, are gathered these three points that I beseech you to
ponder: there is no discipleship without faith; faith is the personal
grasp of Christ Himself; the contents of creeds may differ whilst the
element of faith remains the same. I beseech you let Christ come to you
with the question of my text, and as He looks you in the eyes, hear Him
say to you, 'Believest _thou_?'

Secondly, notice how in this great promise to the new disciples there
is light thrown upon another subject, viz. the connection between faith
and sight. There is a great deal about seeing in this context. Christ
said to the first two that followed Him, 'Come and see.' Philip met
Nathanael's thin film of prejudice with the same words, 'Come and see.'
Christ greeted the approaching Nathanael with 'When thou wast under the
fig tree I saw thee.' And now His promise is cast into the same
metaphor: 'Thou shalt see greater things than these.'

There is a double antithesis here. 'I saw thee,' 'Thou shalt see Me.'
'Thou wast convinced because thou didst feel that thou wert the passive
object of My vision. Thou shalt be still more convinced when
illuminated by Me. Thou shalt see even as thou art seen. I saw thee,
and that bound thee to Me; thou shalt see Me, and that will confirm the
bond.'

There is another antithesis, namely—between believing and seeing. 'Thou
believest—that is thy present; thou shalt see, that is thy hope for the
future.' Now I have already explained that, in the proper primary
meaning and application of the words, the sight which is here promised
is simply the observance with the outward eye of the historical facts
of our Lord's life which were yet to be learned. But still we may
gather a truth from this antithesis which will be of use to us. 'Thou
believest—thou shalt see'; that is to say, in the loftiest region of
spiritual experience you must believe first, in order that you may see.

I do not mean, as is sometimes meant, by that statement that a man has
to try to force his understanding into the attitude of accepting
religious truth, in order that he may have an experience which will
convince him that it is true. I mean a very much simpler thing than
that, and a very much truer one, viz. this, that unless we trust to
Christ and take our illumination from Him, we shall never behold a
whole set of truths which, when once we trust Him, are all plain and
clear to us. It is no mysticism to say that. What do you _know_ about
God?—I put emphasis upon the word 'know'—What do you know about Him,
however much you may argue and speculate and think probable, and fear,
and hope, and question, about Him? What do you know about Him apart
from Jesus Christ? What do you know about human duty, apart from Him?
What do you know of all that dim region that lies beyond the grave,
apart from Him? If you trust Him, if you fall at His feet and say
'Rabbi! Thou art my Teacher and mine illumination,' then you will see.
You will see God, man, yourselves, duty; you will see light upon a
thousand complications and perplexities; and you will have a brightness
above that of the noonday sun, streaming into the thickest darkness of
death and the grave and the awful hereafter. Christ is the Light. In
that 'Light shall we see light.' And just as it needs the sun to rise
in order that my eye may behold the outer world, so it needs that I
shall have Christ shining in my heaven to illuminate the whole
universe, in order that I may see clearly. 'Believe and thou shalt
see.' For only when we trust Him do the mightiest truths that affect
humanity stand plain and clear before us.

And besides that, if we trust Christ, we get a living experience of a
multitude of facts and principles which are all mist and darkness to
men except through their faith; an experience which is so vivid and
brings such certitude as that it may well be called vision. The world
says, 'Seeing is believing.' So it is about the coarse things that you
can handle, but about everything that is higher than these invert the
proverb, and you get the truth. 'Seeing is believing.' Yes, in regard
to outward things. Believing is seeing in regard to God and spiritual
truth. 'Believest thou? thou shalt see.'

Then, thirdly, there is light here about another matter, the connection
between faith and progress. 'Thou shalt see greater things than these.'
A wise teacher stimulates his scholars from the beginning, by giving
them glimpses of how much there is ahead to be learnt. That does not
drive them to despair; it braces all their powers. And so Christ, as
His first lesson to these men, substantially says, 'You have learnt
nothing yet, you are only beginning.' That is true about us all. Faith
at first, both in regard to its contents and its quality, is very
rudimentary and infantile. A man when he is first converted—perhaps
suddenly—knows after a fashion that he himself is a very sinful,
wretched, poor creature, and he knows that Jesus Christ has died for
him, and is his Saviour, and his heart goes out to Him, in confidence
and love and obedience. But he is only standing at the door and peeping
in as yet. He has only mastered the alphabet. He is but on the frontier
of the promised land. His faith has brought him into contact with
infinite power, and what will be the end of that? He will indefinitely
grow. His faith has started him on a course to which there is no
natural end. As long as it keeps alive he will be growing and growing,
and getting nearer and nearer to the great centre of all.

So here is a grand possibility opened out in these simple words, a
possibility which alone meets what you need, and what you are craving
for, whether you know it or not, namely, something that will give you
ever new powers and acquirements; something which will ensure your
closer and ever closer approach to an absolute object of joy and truth;
something that will ensure you against stagnation and guarantee
unceasing progress. Everything else gets worn out, sooner or later; if
not in this world, then in another. There is one course on which a man
can enter with the certainty that there is no end to it, that it will
open out, and out, and out as he advances—with the certainty that, come
life, come death, it is all the same.

When the plant grows too tall for the greenhouse they lift the roof,
and it grows higher still. Whether you have your growth in this lower
world, or whether you have your top up in the brightness and the blue
of heaven, the growth is in one direction. There is a way that secures
endless progress, and here lies the secret of it: 'Thou believest! thou
shalt see greater things than these.'

Now, brethren, that is a grand possibility, and it is a solemn lesson
for some of you. You professing Christian people, are you any taller
than you were when you were born? Have you grown at all? Are you
growing now? Have you seen any further into the depths of Jesus Christ
than you did on that first day when you fell at His feet and said,
'Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel'? His promise to
you then was, 'Thou believest, thou shalt see greater things.' If you
have not seen greater things it is because your faith has broken down,
if it has not expired.

II. Now let me turn to the second thought which lies in these great
words.

We have here, as I said, our Lord crowning Himself by His own witness
to His own dignity. 'Hereafter ye shall see the heavens opened.' Mark
how, with superbly autocratic lips, He bases this great utterance upon
nothing else but His own word. Prophets ever said, 'Thus saith the
Lord.' Christ ever said: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you.' 'Because He
could swear by no greater, He sware by Himself.' He puts His own
assurance instead of all argument and of all support to His words.

'Hereafter.' A word which is possibly not genuine, and is omitted, as
you will observe, in the Revised Version. If it is to be retained it
must be translated, not 'hereafter,' as if it were pointing to some
indefinite period in the future, but 'from henceforth,' as if asserting
that the opening heavens and the descending angels began to be
manifested from that first hour of His official work. 'Ye shall see
heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending.' That is
an allusion from the story of Jacob at Bethel. We have found reference
to Jacob's history already in the conversation with Nathanael, 'An
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.' And here is an unmistakable
reference to that story, when the fugitive, with his head on the stony
pillow, and the violet Syrian sky, with all its stars, rounding itself
above him, beheld the ladder on which the angels of God ascended and
descended. 'So,' says Christ, 'you shall see, in no vision of the
night, in no transitory appearance, but in a practical waking reality,
that ladder come down again, and the angels of God moving upon it in
their errands of mercy.'

And who, or what, is this ladder? Christ. Do not read these words as
meaning that the angels of God were to come down on Him to help, and to
honour, and to succour Him as they did once or twice in His life, but
as meaning that they are to ascend and descend by Him for the help and
blessing of the whole world.

That is to say, to put it into plain words, Christ is the sole medium
of communication between heaven and earth, the ladder with its foot
upon the earth in His humanity, and its top in the heavens. 'No man
hath ascended up into heaven save He which came down from heaven, even
the Son of Man which is in heaven.'

My time will not allow me to expand these thoughts as I would have
done; let me put them in the briefest outline. Christ is the medium of
all communication between heaven and earth, inasmuch as He is the
medium of all revelation. I have spoken incidentally about that in the
former part of this sermon, so I do not dwell on it now. Christ is the
ladder between heaven and earth, inasmuch as in Him the sense of
separation, and the reality of separation, are swept away. Sin has shut
heaven; there comes down from it many a blessing upon unthankful heads,
but between it in its purity and the earth in its muddy foulness 'there
is a great gulf fixed.' It is not because God is great and I am small,
or because He is Infinite and I am a mere pin-point as against a great
continent, it is not because He lives for ever, and my life is but a
hand-breadth, it is not because of the difference between His
Omniscience and my ignorance, His strength and my weakness, that I am
parted from Him. 'Your sins have separated between you and your God,'
and no man, build he Babels ever so high, can reach thither. There is
one means by which the separation is at an end, and by which all
objective hindrances to union, and all subjective hindrances, are alike
swept away. Christ has come, and in Him the heavens have bended down to
touch, and touching to bless, this low earth, and man and God are at
one once more.

He is the ladder, or sole medium of communication, inasmuch as by Him
all divine blessings, grace, helps, and favours, come down angel-like,
into our weak and needy hearts. Every strength, every mercy, every
spiritual power, consolation in every sorrow, fitness for duty,
illumination in darkness, all gifts that any of us can need, come to us
down on that one shining way, the mediation and the work of the
Divine-Human Christ, the Lord.

He is the ladder, the sole medium of communication between heaven and
earth, inasmuch as by Him my poor desires and prayers and
intercessions, my wishes, my sighs, my confessions rise to God. 'No man
cometh to the Father but by Me.' He is the ladder, the means of all
communication between heaven and earth, inasmuch as at the last, if
ever we enter there at all, we shall enter through Him and through Him
alone, who is 'the Way, the Truth, and the Life.'

Ah, dear brethren! men are telling us now that there is no connection
between earth and heaven except such as telescopes and spectroscopes
can make out. We are told that there is no ladder, that there are no
angels, that possibly there is no God, or if that there be, we have
nothing to do with Him nor He with us; that our prayers cannot get to
His ears, if He have ears, nor His hand be stretched out to help us, if
He have a hand. I do not know how this cultivated generation is to be
brought back again to faith in God and delivered from that ghastly
doubt which empties heaven and saddens earth to its victims, but by
giving heed to the word which Christ spoke to the whole race while He
addressed Nathanael, 'Ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.' If He be the Son of God,
then all these heavenly messengers reach the earth by Him. If He be the
Son of Man, then every man may share in the gifts which through Him are
brought into the world, and His Manhood, which evermore dwelt in
heaven, even while on earth, and was ever girt about by angel
presences, is at once the measure of what each of us may become, and
the power by which we may become it.

One thing is needful for this wonderful consummation, even our faith.
And oh! how blessed it will be if in waste solitudes we can see the
open heaven, and in the blackest night the blaze of the glory of a
present Christ, and hear the soft rustle of angels' wings filling the
air, and find in every place 'a house of God and a gate of heaven,'
because He is there. All that may be yours on one condition: 'Believest
thou? Thou shalt see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of Man.'




JESUS THE JOY-BRINGER


'And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the
mother of Jesus was there: 2. And both Jesus was called, and His
disciples, to the marriage. 3. And when they wanted wine, the mother of
Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine. 4. Jesus saith unto her,
Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. 5. His
mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it. 6.
And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of
the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. 7.
Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled
them up to the brim. 8. And He saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear
unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. 9. When the ruler of
the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence
it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of
the feast called the bridegroom, 10. And saith unto him, Every man at
the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk,
then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
11. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him.'—JOHN
ii. 1-11.

The exact dating of this first miracle indicates an eye-witness. As
Nazareth was some thirty miles distant from the place where John was
baptizing, and Cana about four miles from Nazareth, the 'third day' is
probably reckoned from the day of the calling of Philip. Jesus and His
disciples seem to have been invited to the marriage feast later than
the other guests, as Mary was already there. She appears to have been
closely connected with the family celebrating the feast, as appears
from her knowledge of the deficiency in the wine, and her direction to
the servants.

The first point, which John makes all but as emphatic as the miracle
itself, is the new relation between Mary and Jesus, the lesson she had
to learn, and her sweet triumphant trust. Now that she sees her Son
surrounded by His disciples, the secret hope which she had nourished
silently for so long bursts into flame, and she turns to Him with
beautiful faith in His power to help, even in the small present need.
What an example her first word to Him sets us all! Like the two sad
sisters at Bethany, she is sure that to tell Him of trouble is enough,
for that His own heart will impel Him to share, and perchance to
relieve it. Let us tell Jesus our wants and leave Him to deal with them
as He knows how.

Of course, His addressing her as 'Woman' has not the meaning which it
would have with us, for the term is one of respect and courtesy, but
there is a plain intimation of a new distance in it, which is
strengthened by the question, 'What is there in common between us?'
What in common between a mother and her son! Yes, but she has to learn
that the assumption of the position of Messiah in which her mother's
pride so rejoiced, carried necessarily a consequence, the first of the
swords which were to pierce that mother's heart of hers. That her Son
should no more call her 'mother,' but 'woman,' told her that the old
days of being subject to her were past for ever, and that the old
relation was merged in the new one of Messiah and disciple—a bitter
thought, which many a parent has to taste the bitterness of still, when
wider outlooks and new sense of a vocation come to their children. Few
mothers are able to accept the inevitable as Mary did, Jesus' 'hour' is
not to be prescribed to Him, but His own consciousness of the fit time
must determine His action. What gave Him the signal that the hour was
struck is not told us, nor how soon after that moment it came. But the
saying gently but decisively declares His freedom, His infallible
accuracy, and certain intervention at the right time. We may think that
He delays, but He always helps, 'and that right early.'

Mary's sweet humility and strong trust come out wonderfully in her
direction to the servants, which is the exact opposite of what might
have been expected after the cold douche administered to her eagerness
to prompt Jesus. Her faith had laid hold of the little spark of promise
in that 'not yet,' and had fanned it into a flame. 'Then He will
intervene, and I can leave Him to settle when.' How firm, though
ignorant, must have been the faith which did not falter even at the
bitter lesson and the apparent repulse, and how it puts to shame our
feebler confidence in our better known Lord, if ever He delays our
requests! Mary left all to Jesus; His commands were to be implicitly
obeyed. Do we submit to Him in that absolute fashion both as to the
time and the manner of His responses to our petitions?

The next point is the actual miracle. It is told with remarkable
vividness and equally remarkable reserve. We do not even learn in what
precisely it consisted. Was all the water in the vessels turned into
wine? Did the change affect only what was drawn out? No answer is
possible to these questions. Jesus spoke no word of power, nor put
forth His hand. His will silently effected the change on matter. So He
manifested forth His glory as Creator and Sustainer, as wielding the
divine prerogative of affecting material things by His bare volition.

The reality of the miracle is certified by the jovial remark of the
'ruler of the feast.' As Bengel says: 'The ignorance of the ruler
proves the goodness of the wine; the knowledge of the servants, the
reality of the miracle.' His palate, at any rate, was not so dulled as
to be unable to tell a good 'brand' when he tasted it, nor is there any
reason to suppose that Jesus was supplying more wine to a company that
had already had more than enough.

The ruler's words are not meant to apply to the guests at that feast,
but are quite general. But this Evangelist is fond of quoting words
which have deeper meanings than the speakers dreamed, and with his
mystically contemplative eye he sees hints and symbols of the spiritual
in very common things. So we are not forcing higher meanings into the
ruler's jest, but catching one intention of John's quotation of it,
when we see in it an unconscious utterance of the great truth that
Jesus keeps His best wine till the last. How many poor deluded souls
are ever finding that the world does the very opposite, luring men on
to be its slaves and victims by brilliant promises and shortlived
delights, which sooner or later lose their deceitful lustre and become
stale, and often positively bitter! 'The end of that mirth is
heaviness.' The dreariest thing in all the world is a godless old age,
and one of the most beautiful things in all the world is the calm
sunset which so often glorifies a godly life that has been full of
effort for Jesus, and of sorrows patiently borne as being sent by Him.

  'Full often clad in radiant vest
  Deceitfully goes forth the morn,'

but Christ more than keeps His morning's promises, and Christian
experience is steadily progressive, if Christians cling close to Him,
and Heaven will supply the transcendent confirmation of the blessed
truth that was spoken unawares by the 'ruler' at that humble feast.

What effect the miracle produced on others is not told; probably the
guests shared the ruler's ignorance, but its effect on the disciples is
that they 'believed on Him.' They had 'believed' already, or they would
not have been disciples (John i. 50), but their faith was deepened as
well as called forth afresh. Our faith ought to be continuously and
increasingly responsive to His continuous manifestations of Himself
which we can all find in our own experience.

Jesus 'manifested His glory' in this first sign. What were the rays of
that mild radiance? Surely the chief of them, in addition to the
revelation of His sovereignty over matter, to which we have already
referred, is that therein He hallowed the sweet sacred joys of marriage
and family life, that therein He revealed Himself as looking with
sympathetic eye on the ties that bind us together, and on the gladness
of our common humanity, that therein He reveals Himself as able and
glad to sanctify and elevate our joys and infuse into them a strange
new fragrance and power. The 'water' of our ordinary lives is changed
into 'wine.' Jesus became 'acquainted with grief' in order that He
might impart to every believing and willing soul His own joy, and that
by its remaining in us, our joy might be full.




THE FIRST MIRACLE IN CANA—THE WATER MADE WINE


'This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested forth His glory.'—JOHN ii. 11.

The keynote of this Gospel was struck in the earlier verses of the
first chapter in the great words, 'The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us, and we beheld His glory, full of grace and truth.' To these
words there is an evident reference in this language. The Evangelist
regards Christ's first miracle as the first ray of that forth-flashing
glory of the Incarnate Word. To this Evangelist all miracles are
especially important as being _signs_, which is the word he generally
employs to designate them. They are not mere portents, but significant
revelations as well as wonders. It is not, I think, accidental that
there are just seven miracles of our Lord's, before His crucifixion,
recorded by John, and one of the Risen Lord.

These signs are all set forth by the Evangelist as manifestations of
various aspects of that one white light, of uncreated glory which rays
from Christ. They are, if I may so say, the sevenfold colours into
which the one beam is analysed. Each of them might be looked at in turn
as presenting some fresh thought of what the 'glory…full of grace and
truth' is.

I begin with the first of the series. What, then, is the 'glory of the
only Begotten Son' which flashes forth upon us from the miracle? My
object is simply to try to answer that question for you.

I. First, then, we see here the revelation of His creative power.

It is very noteworthy that the miraculous fact is veiled entirely in
the narrative. Not a word is said of the method of operation, it is not
even said that the miracle was wrought; we are only told what preceded
it, and what followed it. Itself is shrouded in deep silence. The
servants fill the water-pots.—'Draw out now,' and they draw, 'and bear
it to the governor of the feast.' Where the miraculous act comes in we
do not know; what was its nature we cannot tell. How far it extended is
left obscure. Was all the large quantity of water in these six great
vessels of stone transformed into wine, or was the change effected in
the moment when the portion that was wanted was drawn from them and on
that portion only? We cannot answer the question. Probably, I think,
the latter; but at all events a veil is dropped over the fact.

Only this, we see that in this miracle, even more conspicuously than in
any other of our Lord's, there are no means at all employed. Sometimes
He used material vehicles, anointing a man's eyes with clay, or
moistening the ear with the spittle; sometimes sending a man to bathe
in the Pool of Siloam; sometimes laying His hand on the sick; sometimes
healing from a distance by the mere utterance of His word. But here
there is not even a word; no means of any kind employed, but the silent
forth-putting of His will, which, without token, without visible
audible indication of any sort, passes with sovereign power into the
midst of material things and there works according to His own purpose.
Is not this the signature of divinity, that without means the mere
forth-putting of the will is all that is wanted to mould matter as
plastic to His command? It is not even, 'He spake and it was done,' but
silently He willed, and 'the conscious water knew its Lord, and
blushed.' This is the glory of the Incarnate Word.

Now that was no interruption of the order of things established in the
Creation. There was no suspension of natural laws here. What happened
was only this, that the power which generally works through mediating
links came into immediate connection with the effect. What does it
matter whether your engine transmits its powers through half a dozen
cranks, or two or three less? What does it matter whether the chain be
longer or shorter? Some parenthetical links are dropped here, that is
all that is unusual. For in all ordinary natural operations, as we call
them, the profound prologue of this Gospel teaches us to believe that
Christ, the Eternal Word, works according to His will. He was the Agent
of creation. He is the Agent of that preservation which is only a
continual creation. In Him is life, and all living things live because
of the continual presence and operation upon them of His divine power.
And again I say, what is phenomenal and unusual in this miracle is but
the suppression of two or three of the connecting links between the
continual cause of all creatural existences, and its effect. So let us
learn that whether through a long chain of so-called causes, or whether
close up against the effect, without the intervention of these
parenthetical and transmitting media, the divine power works. The power
is one, and the reason for the effect is one, that Christ ever works in
the world, and is that Eternal Word, 'without whom was not anything
made that was made.' 'This beginning of miracles did Christ… and
manifested His glory.'

II. Then, again, we see here, I think, the revelation of one great
purpose of our Lord's coming, to hallow all common, and especially all
family, life.

What a strange contrast there is between the simple gladness of the
rustic village wedding and the tremendous scene of the Temptation in
the wilderness, which preceded it only by a few days! What a strange
contrast there is between the sublime heights of the first chapter and
the homely incident which opens the ministry! What a contrast between
the rigid asceticism of the Forerunner, 'who came neither eating nor
drinking,' and the Son of Man, who enters thus freely and cheerfully
into the common joys and relationships of human nature! How unlike the
scene at the marriage-feast must have been to the anticipations of the
half-dozen disciples that had gathered round Him, all a-tingling with
expectation as to what would be the first manifestation of His
Messianic power! The last thing they would have dreamed of would have
been to find Him in the humble home in Cana of Galilee. Some people say
'this miracle is unworthy of Him, for it was wrought upon such a
trivial occasion.' And was it a trivial occasion that prompted Him thus
to commence His career, not by some high and strained and remote
exhibition of more than human saintliness or power, but by entering
like a Brother into the midst of common, homespun, earthly joys, and
showing how His presence ennobled and sanctified these? Surely the
world has gained from Him, among the many gifts that He has given to
it, few that have been the fountain of more sacred sweetness and
blessedness than is opened in that fact that the first manifestation of
His glory had for its result the hallowing of the marriage tie.

And is it not in accordance with the whole meaning and spirit of His
works that 'forasmuch as the brethren were partakers of' anything, 'He
Himself likewise should take part of the same,' and sanctify every
incident of life by His sharing of it? So He protests against that
faithless and wicked division of life into sacred and secular, which
has wrought such harm both in the sacred and in the secular regions. So
He protests against the notion that religion has to do with another
world rather than with this. So He protests against the narrowing
conception of His work which would remove from its influence anything
that interests humanity. So He says, as it were, at the very beginning
of His career, 'I am a Man, and nothing that is human do I reckon
foreign to Myself.'

Brethren! let us learn the lesson that all life is the region of His
Kingdom; that the sphere of His rule is everything which a man can do
or feel or think. Let us learn that where His footsteps have trod is
hallowed ground. If a prince shares for a few moments in the
festivities of his gathered people on some great occasion, how ennobled
the feast seems! If he joins in their sports or in their occupations
for a while as an act of condescension, how they return to them with
renewed vigour! And so we. We have had our King in the midst of all our
family life, in the midst of all our common duties; therefore are they
consecrated. Let us learn that all things done with the consciousness
of His presence are sacred. He has hallowed every corner of human life
by His presence; and the consecration, like some pungent and perennial
perfume, lingers for us yet in the else scentless air of daily life, if
we follow His footsteps.

Sanctity is not singularity. There is no need to withdraw from any
region of human activity and human interest in order to develop the
whitest saintliness, the most Christlike purity. The saint is to be in
the world, but not of it; like the Master, who went straight from the
wilderness and its temptations to the homely gladness of the rustic
marriage.

III. Still further, we have here a symbol of Christ's glory as the
ennobler and heightener of all earthly joys.

That may be taken with perhaps a permissible play of fancy as one
meaning, at any rate, of the transformation of water into wine; the
less savoury and fragrant and powerful liquid into the more so. Wine,
in the Old Testament especially, is the symbol of gladness, and though
it received a deeper and a sacreder meaning in the New Testament as
being the emblem of His blood shed for us, it is the Old Testament
point of view that prevails here. And therefore, I say, we may read in
the incident the symbol of His transforming power. He comes, the Man of
Sorrows, with the gift of joy in His hand. It is not an unworthy
object—not unworthy, I mean, of a divine sacrifice—to make men glad. It
is worth His while to come from Heaven to agonise and to die, in order
that He may sprinkle some drops of incorruptible and everlasting joy
over the weary and sorrowful hearts of earth. We do not always give its
true importance to gladness in the economy of our lives, because we are
so accustomed to draw our joys from ignoble sources that in most of our
joys there is something not altogether creditable or lofty. But Christ
came to bring gladness, and to transform its earthly sources into
heavenly fountains; and so to change all the less sweet, satisfying,
and potent draughts which we take from earth's cisterns into the wine
of the Kingdom; the new wine, strong and invigorating, 'making glad the
heart of man.'

Our commonest blessings, our commonest joys, if only they be not foul
and filthy, are capable of this transformation. Link them with Christ;
be glad in Him. Bring Him into your mirth, and it will change its
character. Like a taper plunged into a jar of oxygen, it will blaze up
more brightly. Earth, at its best and highest, without Him is like some
fair landscape lying in the shadow; and when He comes to it, it is like
the same scene when the sun blazes out upon it, flashes from every bend
of the rippling river, brings beauty into many a shady corner, opens
all the flowering petals and sets all the birds singing in the sky. The
whole scene changes when a beam of light from Him falls upon earthly
joys. He will transform them and ennoble them and make them perpetual.
Do not meddle with mirth over which you cannot make the sign of the
Cross and ask Him to bless it; and do not keep Him out of your
gladness, or it will leave bitterness on your lips, howsoever sweet it
tastes at first.

Ay! and not only can this Master transform the water at the marriage
feast into the wine of gladness, but the cups that we all carry, into
which our tears have dropped—upon these too He can lay His hand and
change them into cups of blessing and of salvation.

'Blessed are they… who, passing through the valley of weeping, gather
their tears into a well; the rain also covereth it with blessings.' So
the old Psalm put the thought that sorrow may be turned into a solemn
joy, and may lie at the foundation of our most flowery fruitfulness.
And the same lesson we may learn from this symbol. The Christ who
transforms the water of earthly gladness into the wine of heavenly
blessedness, can do the same thing for the bitter waters of sorrow, and
can make them the occasions of solemn joy. When the leaves drop we see
through the bare branches. Shivering and cold they may look, but we see
the stars beyond, and that is better. 'This beginning of miracles' will
Jesus repeat in every sad heart that trusts itself to Him.

IV. And last of all, we have here a token of His glory as supplying the
deficiencies of earthly sources.

'His mother saith unto Him, "They have no wine."' The world's banquet
runs out, Christ supplies an infinite gift. These great water-pots that
stood there, if the whole contents of them were changed, as is
possible, contained far more than sufficient for the modest wants of
the little company. The water that flowed from each of them, in
obedience to the touch of the servant's hand, if the change were
effected then, as is possible, would flow on so long as any thirsted or
any asked. And Christ gives to each of us, if we choose, a fountain
that will spring unto life eternal. And when the world's platters are
empty, and the world's cups are all drained dry, He will feed and
satisfy the immortal hunger and the blessed thirst of every spirit that
longs for Him.

The rude speech of the governor of the feast may lend itself to another
aspect of this same thought. He said, in jesting surprise, 'Thou hast
kept the good wine until now,' whereas the world gives its best first,
and when the palate is dulled and the appetite diminished, then 'that
which is worse.' How true that is; how tragically true in some of our
lives! In the individual the early days of hope and vigour, when all
things were fresh and wondrous, when everything was apparelled in the
glory of a dream, contrast miserably with the bitter experiences of
life that most of us have made. Habit comes, and takes the edge off
everything. We drag remembrance, like a lengthening chain, through all
our life; and with remembrance come remorse and regret. 'The vision
splendid' no more attends men, as they plod on their way through the
weariness of middle life, or pass down into the deepening shadows of
advancing and solitary old age. The best comes first, for the men who
have no good but this world's. And some of you have got nothing in your
cups but dregs that you scarcely care to drink.

But Jesus Christ keeps the best till the last. His gifts become sweeter
every day. No time can cloy them. Advancing years make them more
precious and more necessary. The end is better in this course than the
beginning. And when life is over, and we pass into the heavens, the
word will come to our lips, with surprise and with thankfulness, as we
find how much better it all is than we had ever dreamed it should be:
'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.'

Oh, my brother! do not touch that cup that is offered to you by the
harlot world, spiced and fragrant and foaming; 'at the last it biteth
like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.' But take the pure joys
which the Christ, loved, trusted, obeyed, summoned to your feast and
welcomed in your heart, will bring to you; and these shall grow and
greaten until the perfection of the Heavens.




CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE


'Take these things hence; make not My Father's house an house of
merchandise.'—JOHN ii. 16.

The other Evangelists do not record this cleansing of the Temple at the
beginning of Christ's ministry, but, as we all know, tell of a similar
act at its very close. John, on the other hand, has no notice of the
latter incident. The question, then, naturally arises, are these
diverse narratives accounts of the same event? The answer seems to me
to be in the negative, because John's Gospel is evidently intended to
supplement the other three, and to record incidents either unknown to,
or unnoticed by, them, and, as a matter of fact, the whole of this
initial visit of our Lord to Jerusalem is omitted by the three
Evangelists. Then the two incidents are distinctly different in tone,
in setting, and in the words with which our Lord accompanies them. They
are both appropriate in the place in which they stand, the one as the
initial and the other as all but the final act of His Messiahship. So
we may learn from the repetition of this cleansing the solemn lesson:
that outward reformation of religious corruptions is of small and
transient worth. For in three years—perhaps in as many weeks—the abuse
that He corrected returned in full force.

Now, this narrative has many points of interest, but I think I shall
best bring out its meaning if I remind you, by way of introduction,
that the Temple of Jerusalem was succeeded by the Temple of the
Christian Church, and that each individual Christian man is a temple.
So there are three things that I want to set before you: what Christ
did in the Temple; what He does in the Church; what He will do to each
of us if we will let Him.

I. First, then, what Christ did in the Temple.

Now, the scene in our narrative is not unlike that which may be
witnessed in any Roman Catholic country in the cathedral place or
outside the church on the saint's day, where there are long rows of
stalls, fitted up with rosaries, and images of the saint, and candles,
and other apparatus for worship.

The abuse had many practical grounds on which it could be defended. It
was very convenient to buy sacrifices on the spot, instead of having to
drag them from a distance. It was no less convenient to be able to
exchange foreign money, possibly bearing upon it the head of an
emperor, for the statutory half-shekel. It was profitable to the
sellers, and no doubt to the priests, who were probably sleeping
partners in the concern, or drew rent for the ground on which the
stalls stood. And so, being convenient for all and profitable to many,
the thing became a recognised institution.

Being familiar it became legitimate, and no one thought of any
incongruity in it until this young Nazarene felt a flash of zeal for
the sanctity of His Father's house consuming Him. Catching up some of
the reeds which served as bedding for the cattle, He twisted them into
the semblance of a scourge, which could hurt neither man nor beast. He
did not use it. It was a symbol, not an instrument. According to the
reading adopted in the Revised Version, it was the sheep and cattle,
not their owners, whom He 'drove out.' And then, dropping the scourge,
He turned to the money-changers, and, with the same hand, overthrew
their tables. And then came the turn of the sellers of doves. He would
not hurt the birds, nor rob their owners. And so He neither overthrew
nor opened the cages, but bade them 'Take these things hence'; and then
came the illuminating words, 'Make not My Father's house a house of
merchandise.'

Now this incident is very unlike our Lord's usual method, even if we do
not exaggerate the violence which He employed. It is unlike in two
respects: in the use of compulsion, and in aiming at mere outward
reformation. And both of these points are intimately connected with its
place in His career.

It was the first public appearance of Jesus before His nation as
Messiah. He inaugurates His work by a claim—by an act of authority—to
be the King of Israel and the Lord of the Temple. If we remember the
words from the last prophet, in which Malachi says that 'the Messenger
of the Covenant…shall suddenly come to His Temple, and purify the sons
of Levi,' we get the significance of this incident. We have to mark in
it our Lord's deliberate assumption of the role of Messiah; His shaping
His conduct so as to recall to all susceptible hearts that last
utterance of prophecy, and to recognise the fact that at the beginning
of His career He was fully conscious of His Son-ship, and inaugurated
His work by the solemn appeal to the nation to recognise Him as their
Lord.

And this is the reason, as I take it, why the anomalous incident is in
its place at the beginning of His career no less than the repetition of
it was at the close. And this is the explanation of the anomaly of the
incident. It is His solemn, authoritative claiming to be God's
Messenger, the Messiah long foretold.

Then, further, this incident is a singular manifestation of Christ's
unique power. How did it come that all these sordid hucksters had not a
word to say, and did not lift a finger in opposition, or that the
Temple Guard offered no resistance, and did not try to quell the
unseemly disturbance, or that the very officials, when they came to
reckon with Him, had nothing harsher to say than, 'What sign showest
Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things'? No miracle is
needed to explain that singular acquiescence. We see in lower forms
many instances of a similar thing. A man ablaze with holy indignation,
and having a secret ally in the hearts of those whom He rebukes, will
awe a crowd even if he does not infect them. But that is not the full
explanation. I see here an incident analogous to that strange event at
the close of Christ's ministry, when, coming out from beneath the
shadows of the olives in the garden, He said to the soldiers 'Whom seek
ye?' and they fell backwards and wallowed on the ground. An
overwhelming impression of His personal majesty, and perhaps some
forth-putting of that hidden glory which did swim up to the surface on
the mountain of Transfiguration, bowed all these men before Him, like
reeds before the wind. And though there was no recognition of His
claim, there was something in the Claimant that forbade resistance and
silenced remonstrance.

Further, this incident is a revelation of Christ's capacity for
righteous indignation. No two scenes can be more different than the two
recorded in this chapter: the one that took place in the rural
seclusion of Cana, nestling among the Galilean hills, the other that
was done in the courts of the Temple swarming with excited
festival-keepers; the one hallowing the common joys of daily life, the
other rebuking the profanation of what assumed to be a great deal more
sacred than a wedding festival; the one manifesting the love and
sympathy of Jesus, His power to ennoble all human relationships, and
His delight in ministering to need and bringing gladness, and the other
setting forth the sterner aspect of His character as consumed with holy
zeal for the sanctity of God's name and house. Taken together, one may
say that they cover the whole ground of His character, and in some very
real sense are a summary of all His work. The programme contains the
whole of what is to follow hereafter.

We may well take the lesson, which no generation ever needed more than
the present, both by reason of its excellences and of its defects, that
there were no love worthy of a perfect spirit in which there did not
lie dormant a dark capacity of wrath, and that Christ Himself would not
have been the Joy-bringer, the sympathising Gladdener which He
manifested Himself as being in the 'beginning of miracles in Cana of
Galilee' unless, side by side, there had lain in Him the power of holy
indignation and, if need be, of stern rebuke. Brethren, we must retain
our conception of His anger if we are not to maim our conception of His
love. There is no wrath like the wrath of the Lamb. The Temple court,
with the strange figure of the Christ with a scourge in His hand, is a
revelation which this generation, with its exaggerated sentimentalism,
with its shrinking, by reason of its good and of its evil, from the
very notion of a divine retribution based upon the eternal antagonism
between good and evil, most sorely needs.

II. Now, secondly, notice what Christ does in His Church.

I need not remind you how God's method of restoration is always to
restore with a difference and a progress. The ruined Temple on Zion was
not to be followed by another house of stone and lime, but by 'a
spiritual house,' builded together for 'a habitation of God in the
Spirit.' The Christian Church takes the place of that material
sanctuary, and is the dwelling-place of God.

That being so, let us take the lesson that that house, too, may be
desecrated. There may be, as there were in the original Temple, the
externals of worship, and yet, eating out the reality of these, there
may be an inward mercenary spirit.

Note how insensibly such corruption creeps in to a community. You
cannot embody an idea in a form or in an external association without
immediately dragging it down, and running the risk of degradation. It
is just like a drop of quicksilver which you cannot expose to the air
but instantaneously its brightness is dimmed by the scum that forms on
its surface. A church as an outward institution is exposed to all the
dangers to which other institutions are exposed. And these creep on
insensibly, as this abuse had crept on. So it is not enough that we
should be at ease in our consciences in regard to our practices as
Christian communities. We become familiar with any abuse, and as we
become familiar we lose the power of rightly judging of it. Therefore
conscience needs to be guided and enlightened quite as much as to be
obeyed.

How long has it taken the Christian Church to learn the wickedness of
slavery? Has the Christian Church yet learned the unchristianity of
War? Are there no abuses amongst us, which subsequent generations will
see to be so glaring that they will talk about us as we talk about our
ancestors, and wonder whether we were Christians at all when we could
tolerate such things? They creep on gradually, and they need continual
watchfulness if they are not to assume the mastery.

The special type of corruption which we find in this incident is one
that besets the Church always. Of course, if I were preaching to
ministers, I should have a great deal to say about that. For men that
are necessarily paid for preaching have a sore temptation to preach for
pay. But it is not only we professionals who have need to lay to heart
this incident. It is all Christian communities, established and
non-established churches, Roman Catholic and Protestant. The same
danger besets them all. There must be money to work the outward
business of the house of God. But what about people that 'run' churches
as they run mills? What about people whose test of the prosperity of a
Christian community is its balance-sheet? What about the people that
hang on to religious communities and services for the sake of what they
can make out of them? We have heard a great deal lately about what
would happen 'if Christ came to Chicago.' If Christ came to any
community of professing Christians in this land, do you not think He
would need to have the scourge in His hand, and to say 'Make not My
Father's house a house of merchandise'? He will come; He does come; He
is always coming if we would listen to Him. And at long intervals He
comes in some tremendous and manifest fashion, and overthrows the
money-changers' tables.

Ah, brethren! if Jesus Christ had not thus come, over and over again,
to His Church, Christian men would have killed Christianity long ago.
Did you ever think that Christianity is the only religion that has
shown recuperative power and that has been able to fling off its
peccant humours? They used to say—I do not know whether it is true or
not—that Thames water was good to put on board ship because of its
property of corrupting and then clearing itself, and becoming fit to
drink. We and our brethren, all through the ages, have been corrupting
the Water of Life. And how does it come to be sweet and powerful still?
This tree has substance in it when it casts its leaves. That unique
characteristic of Christianity, its power of reformation, is not
self-reformation, but it is a coming of the Lord to His temple to
'purify the sons of Levi, that their offering may be pleasant as in
days of yore.'

So one looks upon the spectacle of churches labouring under all manner
of corruptions; and one need not lose heart. The shortest day is the
day before the year turns; and when the need is sorest the help is
nearest. And so I, for my part, believe that very much of the
organisations of all existing churches will have to be swept away. But
I believe too, with all my heart—and I hope that you do—that, though
the precious wheat is riddled in the sieve, and the chaff falls to the
ground, not one grain will go through the meshes. Whatever becomes of
churches, the Church of Christ shall never have its strength so sapped
by abuses that it must perish, or its lustre so dimmed that the Lord of
the Temple must depart from His sanctuary.

III. Lastly, note what Christ will do for each of us if we will let
Him.

It is not a community only which is the temple of God. For the Apostles
in many places suggest, and in some distinctly say, 'ye are the
temples' individually, as well as the Temple collectively, of the Most
High. And so every Christian soul—by virtue of that which is the
deepest truth of Christianity, the indwelling of Christ in men's hearts
by faith—is a temple of God; and every human soul is meant to be and
may become such. That temple can be profaned. There are many ways in
which professing Christians make it a house of merchandise. There are
forms of religion which are little better than chaffering with God, to
give Him so much service if He will repay us with so much Heaven. There
are too many temptations, to which we yield, to bring secular thoughts
into our holiest things. Some of us, by reason not of wishing wealth
but of dreading penury, find it hard to shut worldly cares out of our
hearts. We all need to be on our guard lest the atmosphere in which we
live in this great city shall penetrate even into our moments of
devotion, and the noise of the market within earshot of the Holy of
Holies shall disturb the chant of the worshippers. It is Manchester's
temptation, and it is one that most of us need to be guarded against.

So engrossed, and, as we should say, necessarily engrossed—or, at all
events, legitimately engrossed—are we in the pursuits of our daily
commerce, that we have scarcely time enough or leisure of heart and
mind enough to come into 'the secret place of the Most High.' The
worshippers stop outside trading for beasts and doves, and they have no
time to go into the Temple and present their offerings.

It is our besetting danger. Forewarned is forearmed, to some extent.
Would that we could all hear, as we go about our ordinary avocations,
that solemn voice, 'Make not My Father's house a house of merchandise,'
and could keep the inner sanctuary still from the noises, and remote
from the pollutions, of the market hard by!

We cannot cast out these or any other desecrating thoughts and desires
by ourselves, except to a very small degree. And if we do, then there
happens what our Lord warned us against in profound words. The house
may be emptied of the evil tenant in some measure by our own resolution
and self-reformation. But if it is not occupied by Him, it remains
'empty,' though it is 'swept and garnished.' Nature abhors a vacuum,
and into the empty house there come the old tenant and seven brethren
blacker than himself. The only way to keep the world out of my heart is
to have Christ filling it. If we will ask Him He will come to us. And
if He has the scourge in His hand, let Him be none the less welcome a
guest for that. He will come, and when He enters, it will be like the
rising of the sun, when all the beasts of the forest slink away and lay
them down in their dens. It will be like the carrying of the Ark of the
Covenant of the Lord of the whole earth into the temple of Dagon, when
the fish-like image fell prone and mutilated on the threshold. If we
say to Him, 'Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the Ark of Thy
strength,' He will enter in, and by His entrance will 'make the place
of His feet glorious' and pure.




THE DESTROYERS AND THE RESTORER


'Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this Temple, and in three
days I will raise it up.'—JOHN ii. 19.

This is our Lord's answer to the Jewish request for a sign which should
warrant His action in cleansing the Temple. There are two such
cleansings recorded in the Gospels; this one His first public act, and
another, omitted by John, but recorded in the other Gospels, which was
almost His last public act.

It has been suggested that these are but two versions of one incident;
and although there is no objection in principle to admitting the
possibility of that explanation, yet in fact it appears to me
insufficient and unnecessary. For each event is appropriate in its own
place. In each there is a distinct difference in tone. The incident
recorded in the present chapter has our Lord's commentary, 'Make not My
Father's house a house of merchandise'; in that recorded in the
Synoptic Gospels the profanation is declared as greater, and the rebuke
is more severe. The 'house of merchandise' has become, by their refusal
to render to Him what was His, 'a den of thieves.' In the later
incident there is a reference in our Lord's quotation from the Old
Testament to the entrance of the Gentiles into the Kingdom. There is no
such reference here. In the other Gospels there is no record of this
question which the Jews asked, nor of our Lord's significant answer,
whilst yet a caricatured and mistaken version of that answer was known
to the other Evangelists, and is put by them into the mouths of the
false witnesses at our Lord's trial. They thus attest the accuracy of
our narrative even while they seem not to have known of the incident.

All these things being taken into account, I think that we have to do
with a double, of which there are several instances in the Gospels, the
same event recurring under somewhat varied circumstances, and
reflecting varied aspects of truth. But it is to our Lord's words in
vindication of His right to cleanse the Temple rather than to the
incident on which they are based that I wish to turn your attention
now: 'Destroy this Temple,' said our Lord, as His sufficient and only
answer to the demand for a sign, 'and in three days I will raise it
up.'

Now these words, enigmatical as they are, seem to me to be very
profound and significant; and I wish, on this Easter Sunday, to look at
them as throwing a light upon the gladness of this day. They suggest to
me three things: I find in them, first, an enigmatical forecast of our
Lord's own history; second, a prophetic warning of Israel's; and last,
a symbolical foreshadowing of His world-wide work as the Restorer of
man's destructions. 'Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will
raise it up.'

I. First then, I think, we see here an enigmatical forecast of our
Lord's own history.

Notice, first, that marvellous and unique consciousness of our Lord's
as to His own dignity and nature. 'He spake of the temple of His body.'
Think that here is a man, apparently one of ourselves, walking amongst
us, living the common life of humanity, who declares that in Him, in an
altogether solitary and peculiar fashion, there abides the fulness of
Deity. Think that there has been a Man who said, 'In this place is One
greater than the Temple.' And people have believed Him, and do believe
Him, and have found that the tremendous audacity of the words is simple
verity, and that Christ is, in inmost reality, all which the Temple was
but in the poorest symbol. In it there had dwelt, though there dwelt no
longer at the time when He was speaking, a material and symbolical
brightness, the expression of something which, for want of a better
name, we call the 'presence of God.' But what was that flashing fire
between the cherubim that brooded over the Mercy-seat, with a light
that was lambent and lustrous as the light of love and of life—what was
that to the glory, moulded in meekness and garbed in gentleness, the
glory that shone, merciful and hospitable and inviting—a tempered flame
on which the poorest, diseased, blind eyes could look, and not
wince—from the face and from the character of Jesus Christ the Lord? He
is greater than the Temple, for in Him, in no symbol but in reality,
abode and abides the fulness of that unnameable Being whom we name
Father and God. And not only does the fulness abide, but in Him that
awful Remoteness becomes for us a merciful Presence; the infinite abyss
and closed sea of the divine nature hath an outlet, and becomes a
'river of water of life.' And as the ancient name of that Temple was
the 'Tent of Meeting,' the place where Israel and God, in symbolical
and ceremonial form, met together, so, in inmost reality in Christ's
nature, Manhood and Divinity cohere and unite, and in Him all of us,
the weak, the sinful, the alien, the rebellious, may meet our Father.
'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' 'In this place is One
greater than the Temple.'

And so this Jewish Peasant, at the very beginning of His earthly
career, stands up there, in the presence of the ancestral sanctities
and immemorial ceremonials which had been consecrated by all these ages
and commanded by God Himself, and with autocratic hand sweeps them all
on one side, as one that should draw a curtain that the statue might be
seen, and remains poised Himself in the vacant place, that all eyes may
look upon Him, and on Him alone. 'Destroy this Temple…. He spake of the
temple of His body.'

Still further, notice how here we have, at the very beginning of our
Lord's career, His distinct prevision of how it was all going to end.
People that are willing to honour Jesus Christ, and are not willing to
recognise His death as the great purpose for which He came, tell us
that, like as with other reformers and heroes and martyrs, His death
was the result of the failure of His purpose. And some of them talk to
us very glibly, in their so-called 'Lives of Jesus Christ' about the
alteration in Christ's plan which came when He saw that His message was
not going to be received. I do not enter upon all the reasons why such
a construction of Christ's work cannot hold water, but here is one—for
any one who believes this story before us—that at the very beginning,
before He had gone half a dozen steps in His public career, when the
issues of the experiment, if it was a man that was making the
experiment, were all untried; when, if it were merely a
martyr-enthusiast that was beginning his struggle, some flickering
light of hope that He would be received of His brethren must have
shone, or He would never have ventured upon the path—that then, with no
mistake, with no illusion, with no expectation of a welcome and a
Hosanna, but with the clearest certitude of what lay before Him, our
Lord _beheld_ and accepted His Cross. Its shadow fell upon His path
from the beginning, because the Cross was the purpose for which He
came. 'To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world,' said He—when the reality of it was almost within arm's length
of Him—'to bear witness to the Truth,' and His bearing witness to the
truth was perfected and accomplished on the Cross. Here, at the very
commencement of His career, we have it distinctly set forth, 'the Son
of Man came to give His life a ransom for many.'

And, brethren, that fact is important, not only because it helps us to
understand that His death is the centre of His work, but also because
it helps us to a loving and tender thought of Him, how all His life
long, with that issue distinctly before Him, He journeyed towards it of
His own loving will; how every step that He took on earth's flinty
roads, taken with bleeding and pure feet, He took knowing whither He
was going. This Isaac climbs the mountain to the place of sacrifice,
with no illusions as to what He is going up the mountain for. He knows
that He goes up to be the lamb of the offering, and knowing it, He
goes. Therefore let us love Him with love as persistent as was His own,
who discerning the end from the beginning, willed to be born and to
live because He had resolved to die, for you and me and every man.

And then, further, we have here our Lord's claim to be Himself the
Agent of His own resurrection. '_I_ will raise it up in three days.' Of
course, in Scripture, we more frequently find the Resurrection treated
as being the result of the power of God the Father. We more ordinarily
read that Christ was raised; but sometimes we read, as here, that
Christ rises, and we have solemn words of His own, 'I have power to lay
it down, and I have power to take it again.' Think of a man saying, 'I
am going to bring My own body from the dust of death,' and think of the
man who said that _doing_ it. If that is true, if this prediction was
uttered, and being uttered was fulfilled—what then? I do not need to
answer the question. My brother, this day declares that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God. 'Destroy this Temple'—there is a challenge—'and in
three days I will raise it up'; and He did it. And He is the Lord of
the Temple as well as the Temple. Down on your knees before Him, with
all your hearts and with all your confidence, and worship, and trust,
and love for evermore 'the Second Man,' who 'is the Lord from Heaven!'

II. Now let us turn to the other aspects of these words. I think we see
here, in the next place, a prophetic warning of the history of the men
to whom He was speaking.

There must be a connection between the interpretation of the words
which our Evangelist assures us is the correct one, and the
interpretation which would naturally have occurred to a listener, that
by 'this Temple' our Lord really meant simply the literal building in
which He spoke. There is such a connection, and though our Lord did not
only mean the Temple, He _did_ mean the Temple. To say so is not
forcing double meanings in any fast and loose fashion upon Scripture,
nor playing with ambiguities, nor indulging in any of the vices to
which spiritualising interpretation of Scripture leads, but it is
simply grasping the central idea of the words of my text. Rightly
understood they lead us to this: 'The death of Christ was the
destruction of the Jewish Temple and polity, and the raising again of
Christ from the dead on the third day was the raising again of that
destroyed Theocracy and Temple in a new and nobler fashion.' Let us
then look for a moment, and it shall only be for a moment, at these two
thoughts.

If any one had said to any of that howling mob that stood round Christ
at the judgment-seat of the High Priest, and fancied themselves
condemning Him to death, because He had blasphemed the Temple: 'You, at
this moment, are pulling down the holy and beautiful house in which
your fathers praised; and what you are doing now is the destruction of
your national worship and of yourselves,' the words would have been
received with incredulity; and yet they were simple truth. Christ's
death destroyed that outward Temple. The veil was 'rent in twain from
the top to the bottom' at the moment He died; which was the declaration
indeed that henceforward the Holiest of All was patent to the foot of
every man, but was also the declaration that there was no more sanctity
now within those courts, and that Temple, and priesthood, and
sacrifice, and altar, and ceremonial and all, were antiquated. That
'which was perfect having come,' Christ's death having realised all
which Temple-worship symbolised, that which was the shadow was put away
when the substance appeared.

And in another fashion, it is also true that the death of our Lord
Jesus Christ, inflicted by Jewish hands, was the destruction of the
Jewish worship, in the way of natural sequence and of divine
chastisement. When the husbandmen rejected the Son who was sent 'last
of all,' there was nothing more for it but that they should be 'cast
out of the vineyard,' and the firebrand which the Roman soldier, forty
years afterwards, tossed into the Holiest of All, and which burned the
holy and beautiful house with fire, was lit on the day when Israel
cried 'Crucify Him! Crucify Him!'

Oh, brethren! What a lesson it is to us all of how blind even so-called
religious zeal may be; how often it is true that men in their madness
and their ignorance destroy the very institutions which they are trying
to conserve! How it warns us to beware lest we, unknowing what we are
about, and thinking that we are fighting for the honour of God, may
really all the while be but serving ourselves and rejecting His message
and His Messenger!

And then let me remind you that another thing is also true, that just
as the Jewish rejection of Christ was their own rejection as the people
of God, and their attempted destruction of Christ the destruction of
the Jewish Temple, so the other side of the truth is also here, viz.
that His rising again is the restoration of the destroyed Temple in
nobler and fairer form. Of course the one real Temple is the body of
Jesus Christ, as we have said, where sacrifice is offered, where God
dwells, where men meet with God. But in a secondary and derivative
sense, in the place of the Jewish Temple has come the Christian Church,
which is, in a far deeper and more inward fashion, what that ancient
system aspired to be.

Christ has builded up the Church on His Resurrection. On His
Resurrection, I say, for there is nothing else on which it could rest.
If men ask me what is the great evidence of Christ's Resurrection, my
answer is—the existence in the world of a Church. Where did it come
from? How is it possible to conceive that without the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ such a structure as the Christian society should have been
built upon a dead man's grave? It would have gone to pieces, as all
similar associations would have gone. What had happened after that
moment of depression which scattered them every man to his own, and led
some of them to say, with pathetic use of the past tense to describe
their vanished expectations, 'We _trusted_ that it had been He which
should have redeemed Israel'? What was the force that instead of
driving them asunder drew them together? What was the power that,
instead of quenching their almost dead hopes, caused them to flame up
with renewed vigour heaven-high? How came it that that band of
cowardly, dispirited Jewish peasants, who scattered in selfish fear and
heart-sick disappointment, were in a few days found bearding all
antagonism, and convinced that their hopes had only erred by being too
faint and dim? The only answer is in their own message, which explained
it all: 'Him hath God raised from the dead, whereof we are all
witnesses.'

The destroyed Temple disappears, and out of the dust and smoke of the
vanishing ruins there rises, beautiful and serene, though incomplete
and fragmentary and defaced with many a stain, the fairer reality, the
Church of the living Christ. 'Destroy this Temple, and in three days I
will raise it up.'

III. Lastly, we have here a foreshadowing of our Lord's world-wide work
as the Restorer of man's destructions.

Man's folly, godlessness, worldliness, lust, sin, are ever working to
the destruction of all that is sacred in humanity and in life, and to
the desecrating of every shrine. We ourselves, in regard to our own
hearts, which are made to be the temples of the 'living God,' are ever,
by our sins, shortcomings, and selfishness, bringing pollution into the
holiest of all; 'breaking down the carved work thereof with axes and
hammers,' and setting up the abomination of desolation in the holy
places of our hearts. We pollute them all—conscience, imagination,
memory, will, intellect. How many a man listening to me now has his
nature like the facade of some of our cathedrals, with the empty niches
and broken statues proclaiming that wanton desecration and destruction
have been busy there?

My brother! what have you done with your heart? 'Destroy this temple.'
Christ spoke to men who did not know what they were doing; and He
speaks to you. It is the inmost meaning of the life of many of you.
Hour by hour, day by day, action by action, you are devastating and
profaning the sanctities of your nature, and the sacred places there
where God ought to live.

Listen to His confident promise. He knows that in me He is able to
restore to more than pristine beauty all which I, by my sin, have
destroyed; to reconsecrate all which I, by my profanity, have polluted;
to cast out the evil deities that desecrate and deform the shrine; and
to make my poor heart, if only I will let Him come in to the ruined
chamber, a fairer temple and dwelling-place of God.

'In three days,' does He do it? In one sense—Yes! Thank God! the power
that hallows and restores the desecrated and cast-down temple in a
man's heart, was lodged in the world in those three days of death and
resurrection. The fact that He 'died for our sins,' the fact that He
was 'raised again for our justification,' are the plastic and
architectonic powers which will build up any character into a temple of
God.

And yet more than 'forty and six years' will that temple have to be 'in
building.' It is a lifelong task till the top-stone be brought forth.
Only let us remember this: Christ, who is Architect and Builder,
Foundation and Top-stone; ay! and Deity indwelling in the temple, and
building it by His indwelling—this Christ is not one of those who
'begin to build and are not able to finish.' He realises all His plans.
There are no ruined edifices in 'the City'; nor any half-finished fanes
of worship within the walls of that great Jerusalem whose builder and
maker is Christ.

If you will put yourselves in His hands, and trust yourselves to Him,
He will take away all your incompleteness, and will make you body,
soul, and spirit, temples of the Lord God; as far above the loftiest
beauty and whitest sanctity of any Christian character here on earth as
is the building of God, 'the house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens,' above 'the earthly house of this tabernacle.'

He will perfect this restoring work at the last, when His Word to His
servant Death, as He points him to us, shall be 'Destroy this temple,
and I will raise it up.'




TEACHER OR SAVIOUR?


'The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto Him, Rabbi, we know
that Thou art a Teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles
that Thou doest, except God be with him.'—JOHN iii. 2.

The connection in which the Evangelist introduces the story of
Nicodemus throws great light on the aspect under which we are to regard
it. He has just been saying that upon our Lord's first visit to
Jerusalem at the Passover there was a considerable amount of interest
excited, and a kind of imperfect faith in Him drawn out, based solely
on His miracles. He adds that this faith was regarded by Christ as
unreliable; and he goes on to explain that our Lord exercised great
reserve in His dealings with the persons who professed it, for the
reason that 'He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of
man, for He knew what was in man.'

Now, if you note that reiteration of the word 'man,' you will
understand the description which is given of the person who is next
introduced. 'He knew what was in man. There was a _man_ of the
Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.' It would have been
enough to have said, 'There was a Pharisee.' When John says 'a _man_ of
the Pharisees,' he is not merely carried away by the echo in his ears
of his own last words, but it is as if he had said, 'Now, here is one
illustration of the sort of thing that I have been speaking about; one
specimen of an imperfect faith built upon miracles; and one
illustration of the way in which Jesus Christ dealt with it.'

Nicodemus was 'a Pharisee.' That tells us the school to which he
belonged, and the general drift of his thought. He was 'a ruler of the
Jews.' That tells us that he held an official position in the supreme
court of the nation, to which the Romans had left some considerable
shadow of power in ecclesiastical matters. And this man comes to Christ
and acknowledges Him. Christ deals with him in a very suggestive
fashion. His confession, and the way in which our Lord received it, are
what I desire to consider briefly in this sermon.

I. Note then, first, this imperfect confession.

Everything about it, pretty nearly, is wrong. 'He came to Jesus by
night,' half-ashamed and wholly afraid of speaking out the conviction
that was working in him. He was a man in position. He could not
compromise himself in the eyes of his co-Sanhedrists. 'It would be a
grave thing for a man like me to be found in converse with this new
Rabbi and apparent Prophet. I must go cautiously, and have regard to my
reputation and my standing in the world; and shall steal to Him by
night.' There is something wrong with any convictions about Jesus
Christ which let themselves be huddled up in secret. The true
apprehension of Him is like a fire in a man's bones, that makes him
'weary of forbearing' when he locks his lips, and forces him to speak.
If Christians can be dumb, there is something dreadfully wrong with
their Christianity. If they do not regard Jesus Christ in such an
aspect as to oblige them to stand out in the world and say, 'Whatever
anybody says or thinks about it, I am Christ's man,' then be sure that
they do not yet know Him as they ought to do.

Nicodemus 'came to Jesus by night,' and therein condemned himself. He
said, 'Rabbi, we know.' There is more than a _soupcon_ of patronage in
that. He is giving Jesus Christ a certificate, duly signed and sealed
by Rabbinical authority. He evidently thinks that it is no small matter
that he and some of his fellows should have been disposed to look with
favour upon this new Teacher. And so he comes, if not patronising the
young man, at all events extremely conscious of his own condescension
in recognising Him with his 'We know.'

Had he the right to speak for any of his colleagues? If so, then at
that very early stage of our Lord's ministry there was a conviction
beginning to work in that body of ecclesiastics which casts a very
lurid light on their subsequent proceedings. It was a good long while
after, when Jesus Christ's attitude towards them had been a little more
clearly made out than it was at the beginning, that they said
officially, 'As for this fellow, we know not whence He is.' They 'knew'
when He did not seem to be trenching on their prerogatives, or driving
His Ithuriel-spear through their traditional professions of orthodoxy
and punctilious casuistries. But when He trod on their toes, when He
ripped up their pretensions, when He began to show His antagonism to
their formalism and traditionalism, _then_ they did not know where He
came from. And there are many of us who are very polite to Jesus Christ
as long as He does not interfere with us, and who begin to doubt His
authority when He begins to rebuke our sins.

The man that said 'We know,' and then proceeded to tell Christ the
grounds upon which He was accepted by him, was not in the position
which becomes sinful men drawing near to their Saviour. 'We know that
Thou art a Teacher'—contrast that, with its ring of complacency, and,
if not superior, at least co-ordinate, authority, with 'Jesus! Master!
have mercy on me,' or with 'Lord! save or I perish,' and you get the
difference between the way in which a formalist, conceited of his
knowledge, and a poor, perishing sinner, conscious of his ignorance and
need, go to the Saviour.

Further, this imperfect confession was of secondary value, because it
was built altogether upon miraculous evidence. Now, there has been a
great deal of exaggeration about the value of the evidence of miracle.
The undue elevation to which it was lifted in the apologetic literature
of the eighteenth century, when it was almost made out as if there was
no other proof that Jesus came from God than that He wrought miracles,
has naturally led, in this generation and in the last one, to an
equally exaggerated undervaluing of its worth. Jesus Christ did appeal
to signs; He did also most distinctly place faith that rested merely
upon miracle as second best; when He said, for instance, 'If ye believe
not Me, yet believe the works.' Nicodemus says, 'We know that Thou art
a Teacher sent from God, because no man can do these miracles except
God be with him.' Ah! Nicodemus! did not the substance of the teaching
reveal the source of the teaching even more completely than the
miracles that accompanied it? Surely, if I may use an old illustration,
the bell that rings in to the sermon (which is the miracles) is less
conclusive as to the divine source of the teaching than is the sermon
itself. Christ Himself is His own best evidence, and His words shine in
their own light, and need no signs in order to authenticate their
source. The signs are there, and are precious in my eyes less as
credentials of His authority than as revelations of His character and
His work. They are wonders; that is much. They are proofs; as I
believe. But, high above both of these characteristics, they are signs
of the spiritual work that He does, and manifestations of His redeeming
power. And so a faith that had no ears for the ring of the divine voice
in the words, and no eyes for the beauty and perfection of the
character, was vulgar and low and unreliable, inasmuch as it could give
no better reason for itself than that Jesus had wrought miracles,

I need not remind you of how noticeable it is that at this very early
stage in our Lord's ministry there were a sufficient number of miracles
done to be qualified by the Evangelist as 'many,' and to have been a
very powerful factor in bringing about this real, though imperfect,
faith. John has only told us of one miracle prior to this; and the
other Evangelists do not touch upon these early days of our Lord's
ministry at all. So that we are to think of a whole series of works of
power and supernatural grace which have found no record in these short
narratives. How much more Jesus Christ was, and did, and said, than any
book can ever tell! These are but parts of His ways; a whisper of His
power. The fulness of it remains unrevealed after all revelation.

But the central deficiency of this confession lies in the altogether
inadequate conception of Jesus Christ and His work which it embodies.
'We know that Thou art a Teacher, a miracle-worker, a man sent from
God, and in communion with Him.' These are large recognitions, far too
large to be spoken of any but a select few of the sons of men. But they
fall miserably beneath the grandeur, and do not even approach within
sight of the central characteristic, of Christ and of His work.
Nicodemus is the type of large numbers of men nowadays. All the people
that have a kind of loose, superficial connection with Christianity
re-echo substantially his words. They compliment Jesus Christ out of
His divinity and out of His redeeming work, and seem to think that they
are rather conferring an honour upon Christianity when they condescend
to say, 'We, the learned pundits of literature; we, the arbiters of
taste; we, the guides of opinion; we, the writers in newspapers and
magazines and periodicals; we, the leaders in social and philanthropic
movements—we recognise that Thou art a Teacher.' Yes, brethren, and the
recognition is utterly inadequate to the facts of the case, and is
insult, and not recognition.

II. Let me ask you to look now, in the next place, at the way in which
Jesus Christ deals with this imperfect confession.

It was a great thing for a young Rabbi from Nazareth, who had no
certificate from the authorities, to find an opening thus into the very
centre of the Sanhedrim. There is nothing in life, to an ardent young
soul, at the beginning of his career—especially if he feels that he has
a burden laid upon him to deliver to his fellows—half so sweet as the
early recognition by some man of wisdom and weight and influence, that
he too is a messenger from God. In later years praise and
acknowledgment cloy. And one might have expected some passing word from
the Master that would have expressed such a feeling as that, if He had
been only a young Teacher seeking for recognition. I remember that in
that strange medley of beauty and absurdity, the Koran, somewhere or
other, there is an outpouring of Mahomet's heart about the blessedness
of his first finding a soul that would believe in him. And it is
strange that Jesus Christ had no more welcome for this man than the
story tells that He had. For He meets him without a word of
encouragement; without a word that seemed to recognise even a growing
and a groping confidence, and yet He would not 'quench the smoking
flax.' Yes! sometimes the kindest way to deal with an imperfect
conception is to show unsparingly why it is imperfect; and sometimes
the apparent repelling of a partial faith is truly the drawing to
Himself by the Christ of the man, though his faith be not approved.

So, notice how our Lord meets the imperfections of this acknowledgment.
He begins by pointing out what is the deepest and universal need of
men. Nicodemus had said, 'Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher come
from God.' And Christ says, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must be
born again.' What has that to do with Nicodemus's acknowledgment?
Apparently nothing; really everything. For, if you will think for a
moment, you will see how it meets it precisely, and forces the Rabbi to
deepen his conception of the Lord. The first thing that you and I want,
for our participation in the Kingdom of God, is a radical out-and-out
change in our whole character and nature. 'Ye must be born again'; now,
whatever more that means, it means, at all events, this—a
thorough-going renovation and metamorphosis of a man's nature, as the
sorest need that the world and all the individuals that make up the
world have.

The deepest ground of that necessity lies in the fact of sin. Brother,
we can only verify our Lord's assertion by honestly searching the
depths of our own hearts, and looking at ourselves in the light of God.
Think what is meant when we say, 'He is Light, and in Him is no
darkness at all.' Think of that absolute purity, that, to us, awful
aversion from all that is evil, from all that is sinful. Think of what
sort of men they must be who can see the Lord. And then look at
yourself. Are we fit to pass that threshold? Are we fit to gaze into
that Face? Is it possible that we should have fellowship with Him? Oh,
brethren, if we rightly meditate upon two facts, the holiness of God
and our own characters, I think we shall feel that Jesus Christ has
truly stated the case when He says, 'Ye must be born again.' Unless you
and I can get ourselves radically changed, there is no Heaven for us;
there is no fellowship with God for us. We must stand before Him, and
feel that a great gulf is fixed between us and Him.

And so when a man comes with his poor little 'Thou art a Teacher,' no
words are wanted in order to set in glaring light the utter inadequacy
of such a conception as that. What the world wants is not a Teacher, it
is a Life-giver. What men want is not to be told the truth; they know
it already. What they want is not to be told their duty; they know that
too. What they want is some power that shall turn them clean round. And
what each of us wants before we can see the Lord is that, if it may be,
something shall lay hold of us, and utterly change our natures, and
express from our hearts the black drop that lies there tainting
everything.

Now, this necessity is met in Jesus Christ. For there were two 'musts'
in His talk with Nicodemus, and both of them bore directly on the one
purpose of deepening Nicodemus's inadequate conception of what He was
and what He did. He said, 'Ye must be born again,' in order that his
hearer, and we, might lay to heart this, that we need something more
than a Teacher, even a Life-giver; and He said, 'The Son of Man must be
lifted up,' in order that we might all know that in Him the necessity
is met, and that the Son of Man, who came down from Heaven, and is in
Heaven, even whilst He is on earth, is the sole ladder by which men can
ascend into Heaven and gaze upon God.

Thus it is Christ's work as Redeemer, Christ's sacrifice on the Cross,
Christ's power as bringing to the world a new and holy life, and
breathing it into all that trust in Him, which make the very centre of
His work. Set by the side of that this other, 'Thou art a Teacher sent
from God.' Ah, brethren, that will not do; it will not do for you and
me! We want something a great deal deeper than that. The secret of
Jesus is not disclosed until we have passed into the inner shrine,
where we learn that He is the Sacrifice for the world, and the Source
and Fountain of a new life. I beseech you, take Christ's way of dealing
with this certificate of His character given by the Rabbi who did not
know his own necessities, and ponder it.

Mark the underlying principle which is here—viz. if you want to
understand Christ you must understand sin; and whoever thinks lightly
of it will think meanly of Him. An underestimate of the reality, the
universality, the gravity of the fact of sin lands men in the
superficial and wholly impotent conception, 'Rabbi! Thou art a Teacher
sent from God.' A true knowledge of myself as a sinful man, of my need
of pardon, of my need of cleansing, of my need of a new nature, which
must be given from above, and cannot be evolved from within, leads me,
and I pray it may lead you, to cast yourself down before Him, with no
complaisant words of intellectual recognition upon your lips, but with
the old cry, 'Lord! be merciful to me a sinner.'

III. And now, dear friends, one last word. Notice when and where this
imperfect disciple was transformed into a courageous confessor.

We do not know what came immediately of this conversation. We only know
that some considerable time after, Nicodemus had not screwed himself up
to the point of acknowledging out and out, like a brave man, that he
was Christ's follower; but that he timidly ventured in the Sanhedrim to
slip in a remonstrance ingeniously devised to conceal his own opinions,
and yet to do some benefit to Christ, when he said, 'Does our law judge
any man before it hear him?' And, of course, the timid remonstrance was
swept aside, as it deserved to be, by the ferocious antagonism of his
co-Sanhedrists.

But when the Cross came, and it had become more dangerous to avow
discipleship, he plucked up courage, or rather courage flowed into him
from that Cross, and he went boldly and 'craved the body of Jesus,' and
got it, and buried it. No doubt when he looked at Jesus hanging on the
Cross, he remembered that night in Jerusalem when the Lord had said,
'The Son of Man must be lifted up,' and he remembered how He had spoken
about the serpent lifted in the wilderness, and a great light blazed in
upon him, which for ever ended all hesitation and timidity for him. And
so he was ready to be a martyr, or anything else, for the sake of Him
whom he now found to be far more than a 'Teacher,' even the Sacrifice
by whose stripes he was healed.

Dear brethren, I bring that Cross to you now, and pray you to see there
Christ's real work for us, and for the world. He has taught us, but He
has done more. He has not only spoken, He has died. He has not only
shown us the path on which to walk, He has made it possible for us to
walk in it. He is not merely one amongst the noble band that have
guided and inspired and instructed humanity, but He stands alone—not
_a_ Teacher, but _the_ Redeemer, 'the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sins of the world.'

If He is a Teacher, take His teachings, and what are they? These, that
He is the Son of God; that 'He came from God'; that He 'went to God';
that He 'gives His life a ransom for many'; that He is to be the Judge
of mankind; that if we trust in Him, our sins are forgiven and our
nature is renewed. Do not go picking and choosing amongst His
teachings, for these which I have named are as surely His as
'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,'
or any other of the moral teachings which the world professes to
admire. Take the whole teachings of the whole Christ, and you will
confess Him to be the Redeemer of your souls, and the Life-giver by
whom, and by whom alone, we enter the Kingdom of God.




WIND AND SPIRIT


'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and them hearest the sound thereof,
but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every
one that is born of the Spirit.'—JOHN iii. 8.

Perhaps a gust of night wind swept round the chamber where Nicodemus
sat listening to Jesus, and gave occasion for this condensed parable.
But there is occasion sufficient for it in the word 'Spirit,' which,
both in the language in which our Lord addressed the ruler of the
Sanhedrim, and in that which John employed in recording the
conversation, as in our own English, means both 'spirit' and 'breath.'
This double signification of the word gives rise to the analogies in
our text, and it also raises the question as to the precise meaning of
the text. There are two alternatives, one adopted by our Authorised and
Revised Version, and one which you will find relegated to the margin of
the latter. We may either read 'the wind bloweth' or 'the Spirit
breathes.' I must not be tempted here to enter into a discussion of the
grounds upon which the one or the other of these two renderings may be
preferred. Suffice it to say that I adhere to the rendering which lies
before us, and find here a comparison between the salient
characteristics of the physical fact and the operations of the Divine
Spirit upon men's spirits.

But then, there is another step to be taken. Our Lord has just been
laying down the principle that like begets like, that flesh produces
flesh, and spirit, spirit. And so, applying that principle, He says
here, not as might be expected, 'So is the work of the Divine Spirit in
begetting new life in men,' but 'So is he that is born of the Spirit.'
There are three things brought into relation with one another: the
physical fact; the operations of the Spirit of God, of which that
physical fact in its various characteristics may be taken as a symbol;
and the result of its operations in the new man who is made 'after the
image of Him that created him.'

It is to the last of these that I wish to turn. Here you have the ideal
of the Christian life, considered as the product of the free Spirit of
God, the picture of what all Christian people have the capacity of
being, the obligation to be, and are, just in the measure in which that
new life, which the Spirit of God bestows, is dominant in them and
moulding their character. So I take these characteristics just as they
arise.

I. Here you have the freedom of the new life.

'The wind bloweth where it listeth.' Of course, in these days of
weather forecasts and hoisting cones, we know that the wind is subject
to as rigid physical laws as any other phenomena. But Jesus Christ
speaks here, as the Bible always speaks about Nature, from two points
of view—one the popular, regarding the thing as it looks on the
surface, and the other what I may call the poetico-devout—finding
'sermons in stones, books in the running brooks,' and hints of the
spiritual world in all the phenomena of the natural. So, just as in
spite of meteorological science, there has passed into common speech
the proverbial simile 'as free as the wind,' so Jesus Christ says here,
'The wind bloweth where it listeth, … so is every one that is born of
the Spirit.' He passes by the intermediate link, the Spirit that is the
parent of the life, and deals with the resulting life and declares that
it is self-impelled and self-directed. Is that a characteristic to be
desired or admired? Is doing as we list precisely the description of
the noblest life? It is the description of the purely animal one. It is
the description of an entirely ignoble and base one. It may become the
description of an atrociously criminal one. But we do not generally
think that a man that says 'Thus I will; thus I command; let the fact
that I will it stand in the place of all reason,' is speaking from a
lofty point of view.

But there are two sorts of 'listing.' There is the listing which is the
yielding to the mob of ignoble passions and clamant desires of the
animal nature within us, and there is the 'listing' which is obeying
the impulses of a higher will, that has been blended with ours. And
there you come to the secret of true freedom, which does not consist in
doing as I like, but in liking to do as God wishes me to do. When our
Lord says 'where it listeth,' He implies that a change has passed over
a man, when that new life is born within him, whereby the law, the
known will of God, is written upon his heart, and, inscribed on these
fleshly tables, becomes no longer an iron force external to him, but a
vital impulse within him. That is freedom, to have my better will
absolutely conterminous and coincident with the will of God, so far as
I know it. Just as a man is not imprisoned by limits beyond which he
has no desire to go, so freedom, and elevation, and nobility come by
obeying, not the commands of an external authority, but the impulse of
an inward life.

'Ye have not received the spirit of bondage,' because God hath given us
the Spirit of power, and of love, and of self-control, which keeps down
that base and inferior 'listing,' and elevates the higher and the
nobler one, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,'
because duty has become delight, and there is no desire in the new and
higher nature for anything except that which God enjoins. The true
freedom is when, by the direction of our will, we change 'must' into 'I
delight to do Thy will.' So we are set free from the bondage and burden
of a law that is external, and is not loved, and are brought into the
liberty of, for dear love's sake, doing the will of the beloved.

  'Myself shall to my darling be
   Both law and impulse,'

says one of the poets about a far inferior matter. It is true in
reference to the Christian life, and the 'liberty wherewith Christ hath
made us free,'

But, then, in order freely to understand the sweep and the greatness of
this perfect law of liberty, we must remember that the new life is
implanted in us precisely in order that we may suppress, and, if need
be, cast out and exorcise, that lower 'listing,' of which I have said
that it is always ignoble and sometimes animal. For this freedom will
bring with it the necessity for continual warfare against all that
would limit and restrain it—namely, the passions and desires and
inclinations of our baser or nobler, but godless, self. These are, as
it were, deposed by the entrance of the new life. But it is a dangerous
thing to keep dethroned and discrowned tyrants alive, and the best
thing is to behead them, as well as to cast them from their throne. 'If
ye, through the Spirit, do put to death the deeds' and inclinations and
wills 'of the flesh, ye shall live'; and if you do not, they will live
and will kill you. So the freedom of the new life is a militant
freedom, and we have to fight to maintain it. As Burke said about the
political realm, 'the price of liberty is eternal vigilance,' so we say
about the new life of the Christian man—he is free only on condition
that he keeps well under hatches the old tyrants, who are ever plotting
and struggling to have dominion once again.

Still further, whilst this new life makes us free from the harshness of
a law that can only proclaim duty, and also makes us free from our own
baser selves, it makes us free from all human authority. The true
foundation of the Christian democracy is that each individual soul has
direct and immediate access to, and direct and real possession of, God,
in his spirit and life. Therefore, in the measure in which we draw into
ourselves the new life and the Spirit of God shall we be independent of
men round us, and be able to say, 'With me it is a very small matter to
be judged of you or of man's judgment.' That new life ought to make men
_original_, in the deep and true sense of the word, as drawing their
conceptions of duty and their methods of life, not at second hand from
other men, but straight from God Himself. If the Christian Church was
fuller of that divine life than it is, it would be fuller of all
varieties of Christian beauty and excellence, and all these would be
the work of 'that one and the selfsame Spirit dividing to every man
severally as He will.' If this congregation were indeed filled with the
new life, there would be an exuberance of power, and a harmonious
diversity of characteristics about it, and a burning up of the
conventionalities of Christian profession such as we do not dream of
to-day. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth.'

II. Here we have this new life in its manifestation.

'Thou hearest the sound,' or, as the Word might literally be rendered,
the 'voice thereof,' from the little whisper among the young soft
leaves of the opening beeches in our woods to-day, up to the typhoon
that spreads devastation over leagues of tropical ocean. That voice,
now a murmur, now a roar, is the only manifestation of the unseen force
that sweeps around us. And if you are a Christian man or woman your new
life should be thus perceptible to others, in a variety of ways, no
doubt, and in many degrees of force. You cannot show its roots; you are
bound to show its fruits. You cannot lay bare your spirits, and say to
the world, 'Look! there is the presence of a divine germ in me,' but
you can go about amongst men, and witness to the possession of it by
the life that you live. There are a great many Christian people from
whom, if you were to listen ever so intently, you would not hear a
sough or a ripple. There is a dead calm; the 'rushing mighty wind' has
died down; and there is nothing but a greasy swell upon the windless
ocean. 'The wind bloweth,' and the 'sound' is heard. The wind ceases,
and there is a hideous silence. And that is the condition of many a man
and woman that has a name to live and is dead. Does anybody hear the
whisper of that breath in your life, Christian man? It is not for me to
answer the question; it is for you to ask it and answer it for
yourselves.

And Christians should be in the world, as the very breath of life
amidst stagnation. When the Christian Church first sprung into being it
did come into that corrupt, pestilential march of ancient heathenism
with healing on its wings, and like fresh air from the pure hills into
some fever-stricken district. Wherever there has been a new outburst,
in the experience of individuals and of churches, of that divine life,
there has come, and the world has felt that there has come, a new force
that breathes over the dry bones, and they live. Alas, alas! that so
frequently the professing Christian Church has ceased to discharge its
plain function, to breathe on the slain that they may live.

They are curing, or say they are curing, consumption nowadays, by
taking the patient and keeping him in the open air, and letting the
wind of heaven blow freely about him. That, and not shutting people in
warm chambers, and coddling them with the prescriptions of social and
political reformation, that is the cure for the world's diseases.
Wherever the new life is vigorous in men, men will hear the sound
thereof, and recognise that it comes from heaven.

III. Lastly, here we have the new life in its double secret.

I have been saying that it has a means of manifestation which all
Christian people are bound to exemplify. But our Lord draws a broad
distinction between that which can be manifested and that which cannot.
As I said, you can show the leaves and the fruits; the roots are
covered. 'Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
cometh, nor whither it goeth.'

The origin of that new life is 'hid with Christ in God.' And so, since
we are not dependent upon external things for the communication of the
life, we should not be dependent upon them for its continuation and its
nourishment, and we should realise that, if we are Christians, we are
living in two regions, and, though as regards the surface life we
belong to the things of time, as regards the deepest life, we belong to
eternity. All the surface springs may run dry. What then? As long as
there is a deep-seated fountain that comes welling up, the fields will
be green, and we may laugh at famine and drought. If it be true that
'our lives are hid with Christ in God,' then it ought to be true that
the nourishments, as well as the direction and impulse of them, are
drawn from Him, and that we seek not so much for the abundance of the
things that minister to the external as for the fulness of those that
sustain the inward, the true life, the life of Christ in the soul.

The world does not know where that Christian life comes from. If you
are a Christian, you ought to bear in your character a certain
indefinable something that will suggest to the people round you that
the secret power of your life is other than the power which moulds
theirs. You may be naturalised, and you may speak fairly well the
language of the country in which you are a sojourner, but there ought
to be something in your accent which tells where you come from, and
betrays the foreigner. We ought to move amongst men, having about us
that which cannot be explained by what is enough to explain their
lives. A Christian life should be the manifestation to the world of the
supernatural.

They 'know not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth.' No; that new
life in its feeblest infancy, and before it speaks, if I may so say,
is, by its very existence, a prophet, and declares that there must be,
beyond this 'bank and shoal of time,' a region to which it is native,
and in which it may grow to maturity. You will find in your greenhouses
exotics that stand there, after all your pains and coals, stunted, and
seeming to sigh for the tropical heat which is their home. The earnest
of our inheritance, the first-fruits of the Spirit, the Christian life
which originated in, and is sustained by, the flowing of the divine
life into us, demands that, somehow or other, the stunted plant should
be lifted and removed into that 'higher house where these are
planted'—and what shall be the spread of its branches, and the lustre
of its leaves, and what the gorgeousness of its blossoms, and what the
perennial sweetness of its fruits then and there, 'it doth not yet
appear.'

They 'know not whither it goeth.' And even those who themselves possess
it know not, nor shall know, through the ages of a progressive
approximation to the ever-approached and never-attained perfection.
'This spake He of the Holy Ghost, which they that believe on Him should
receive.' Trust Christ, and 'the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ
Jesus shall make you free from the law of sin and death.'




THE BRAZEN SERPENT


'Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.'—JOHN iii. 14.

This is the second of the instances in this Gospel in which our Lord
lays His hand upon an institution or incident of the Old Testament, as
shadowing forth some aspect of His work. In the first of these
instances, under the image of the ladder that Jacob saw, our Lord
presented Himself as the sole medium of communication between heaven
and earth; here He goes a step further into the heart of His work, and
under the image, very eloquent to the Pharisee to whom He was speaking,
of the brazen serpent lifted up on the pole in the desert, proclaims
Himself as the medium of healing and of life to a poisoned world.

Now, Nicodemus has a great many followers to-day. He took up a position
which many take up. He recognised Christ as a Teacher, and was willing
to accord to the almost unknown young man from Galilee the coveted
title of 'Rabbi.' He came to Him with a little touch of condescension,
and evidently thought that for him, a ruler of the Jews, a member of
the upper and educated classes, to be willing to speak of Jesus as a
Teacher, was an endorsement that the young aspirant might be gratified
to receive. 'Rabbi, _we_ know that Thou art a Teacher sent from
God'—but he stopped there. He is not the only one who compliments Jesus
Christ, while he degrades Him from His unique position. Now, to this
inadequate conception of our Lord's Person and work, Christ opposed the
solemn insistence on the incapacity of human nature as it is, to enter
into communion with, and submission to, God. And then He passes on to
speak—in precise parallelism with the position that He took up when He
likened Himself to the Ladder of Jacob's vision—of Himself as being the
Son of Man that came down from Heaven, and therefore is able to reveal
heavenly things. In my text He further unveils in symbol the mystery
and dignity of His Person and of His work, whilst He speaks of a
mysterious lifting up of this Son of Man who came down from heaven.
These are the truths that the conception of Christ as a great Teacher
needs for its completion; the contrariety of human nature with the
divine will, the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Crucifixion of the
Incarnate Son. And so we have here three points, to which I desire to
turn, as setting forth the conception of His own work which Jesus
Christ presented as completing the conception of it, to which Nicodemus
had attained.

I. There is, first, the lifting up of the Son of Man.

Now, of course, the sole purpose of setting that brazen serpent on the
pole was to render it conspicuous, and all that Nicodemus could _then_
understand by the symbol was that, in some unknown way, this
heaven-descended Son of Man should be set forth before Israel and the
world as being the Healer of all their diseases. But we are wiser,
after the event, than the ruler of the Jews could be at the threshold
of Christ's ministry. We have also to remember that this is not the
only occasion, though it is the first, on which our Lord used this very
significant expression. For twice over in this Gospel we find it upon
His lips—once when, addressing the unbelieving multitude, He says 'When
ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He'; and
once when in soliloquy, close on Calvary, He says, as the vision of a
world flocking to Him rises before Him on occasion of the wish of a few
Greek proselytes to see Him, 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men
unto Me.' We do not need, though we have, the Evangelist's commentary,
'this He spake signifying what death He should die.'

So, if we accept the historical veracity of this Gospel, we here
perceive Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of His career, and before
the dispositions of the nation towards Him had developed themselves in
action, discerning its end, and seeing, gaunt and grim before Him, the
Cross that was lifted up on Calvary. Enthusiasts and philanthropists
and apostles of all sorts, in the regions of science and beneficence
and morals and religion, begin their career with trusting that their
'brethren should have understood' that God was speaking through them.
But no illusion of that sort, according to these Evangelists, drew
Jesus Christ out of His seclusion at Nazareth and impelled Him on His
career. From the beginning He knew that the Cross was to be the end.
That Cross was not to Him a necessity, accepted as the price of
faithfulness in doing His work, so that His attitude was, 'I will speak
what is in Me, though I die for it,' but it was to Him the very heart
of the work which He came to do. Therefore, after He had said to the
ruler of the Jews that the Son of Man, as descended from Heaven, was
able to _speak_ of heavenly things, He added the deeper necessity, He
'must be lifted up.' Where lay the 'must'? In the requirement of the
work which He had set Himself to do. Beneath this great saying there
lies a pathetic, stern, true conception of the condition of human
nature. That desert encampment, with the poisoned men dying on every
hand, is the emblem under which Jesus Christ, the gentlest and the
sweetest soul that ever lived, looked out upon humanity. And it was
because the facts of human nature called for something far more than a
teacher that He said 'the Son of Man must be lifted up.' For what they
needed, and what He had set Himself to bring, could only be brought by
One who yielded Himself up for the sins of the whole world.

But that 'must,' which thus arose from the requirements of the task
that He had set before Him, had its source in His own heart; it was no
necessity imposed upon Him from without. True, it was a necessity laid
on Him by filial obedience, but also true, it was the necessity
accepted by Him in pursuance of the impulse of His own heart. He must
die because He must save, and He must save because He loved. So He was
not nailed to the Cross by the nails and hammers of the Roman soldiers,
and the taunt that was flung at Him as He hung there had a deeper
meaning, as scoffs thrown at Him and His cause ordinarily have, than
the scoffers understood: 'He saved others,' and therefore 'Himself He
cannot save.'

So here we have Christ accepting, as well as discerning, the Cross. And
we have more than that. We have Christ looking at the Cross as being,
not humiliation, but exaltation. 'The Son of Man must be lifted up.'
And what does that mean? It means the same thing that He said when,
near the end, He declared, 'The hour is come that the Son of Man should
be glorified.' We are accustomed to speak—and we speak rightly—of His
death as being the lowest point of the humiliation which was inherent
in the very fact of His humanity. He condescended to be born; He
stooped yet more to die. But whilst that is true, the other side is
also true—that in the Cross Christ is lifted up, and that it is His
Throne. For what see we there? The highest exhibition, the tenderest
revelation, of His perfect love. And what see we there besides? The
supreme manifestation of the highest power.

  ''Twas great to speak a world from nought,
   'Tis greater to redeem.'

To save humanity, to make it possible that men should receive that
second birth, and should enter into the Kingdom of God—that was a
greater work, because a work not only of creation, but of restoration,
than it was to send forth the stars on their courses and to 'preserve'
the ancient heavens 'from wrong.' There is a revelation of divine might
when we 'lift up our eyes on high,' and see how, 'because He is great
in power, not one faileth.' But there is a mightier revelation of
divine power when we see how, from amidst the ruins of humanity, He can
restore the divine image, and piece together, as it were, without sign
of flaw or crack or one fragment wanting, the fair image that was
shattered into fragments by the blow of Sin's heavy mace. Power in its
highest operation, power in its tenderest efficacy, power in its widest
sweep, are set forth on the Cross of Christ, and that weak Man hanging
there, dying in the dark, is 'the power of God' as well as 'the wisdom
of God.' The Cross is Christ's Throne, but it is His sovereign
manifestation of love and power only if it is what, as I believe He
told us it was, and what His servants from His lips caught the
interpretation of it as being, the death for the sins of the
sin-stricken world. Unless we can believe that, when He died, He died
for us, I know not why Christ's death should appeal to our love. But if
we recognise—as I pray that we all may recognise—that our deep need for
something far more than Teacher or Pattern has been met in that great
'one Sacrifice for sins for ever,' then the magnetism of the Cross
begins to tell, and we understand what He meant when He said, 'I, if I
be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' Brethren, the Cross is His
Throne, from which He rules the world, and if you strike His sacrifice
for sins out of your conception of His work, you have robbed Him of
sovereignty, and taken out of His hand the sceptre by which He governs
the hearts and wills of rebellious and restored men.

II. Notice, again, how we have here the look at the uplifted Son of
Man.

I do not need to paint for you what your own imaginations can
sufficiently paint for yourselves—the scene in the wilderness where the
dying men from the very outskirts of the camp could turn a filmy eye to
the brazen serpent hanging in their midst. That look is the symbol of
what we need, in order that the life-giving power of Christ should
enter into our death. There is no better description of the act of
Christian faith than that picture of the dying Israelite turning his
languid eye to the symbol of healing and life. That trust which Jesus
emphasises here in 'whosoever _believeth_ on Him,' He opposes very
emphatically to Nicodemus's confession, 'We know that Thou art a
Teacher.' We know—you have to go a step further, Nicodemus! 'We know';
well and good, but are you included in 'whosoever believeth'? Faith is
an advance on credence. There is an intellectual side to it, but its
essence is what is the essence of trust always, the act of the will
throwing itself on that which is discerned to be trustworthy. You know
that a given man is reliable—that is not relying on him. You have to go
a step further. And so, dear brethren, you may believe thirty-nine or
thirty-nine thousand Articles with an unfaltering credence, and you may
be as far away from faith as if you did not believe one of them. There
may be a perfect belief and an absolute want of faith. And on the other
hand, blessed be God! there may be a real and an operative trust with a
very imperfect or mistaken creed. The wild flowers on the rock bloom
fair and bright, though they have scarcely any soil in which to strike
their roots, and the plants in the most fertile garden may fail to
produce flowers and seed. So trust and credence are not always of the
same magnitude.

This trust is no arbitrary condition. The Israelite was bid to turn to
the brazen serpent. There was no connection between his look and his
healing, except in so far as the symbol was a help to, and looking at
it was a test of, his faith in the healing power of God. But it is no
arbitrary appointment, as many people often think it is, which connects
inseparably together the look of faith and the eternal life that Christ
gives. For seeing that salvation is no mere external gift of shutting
up some outward Hell and opening the door to some outward Heaven, but
is a state of heart and mind, of relation to God, the only way by which
that salvation can come into a man's heart is that he, knowing his need
of it, shall trust Christ, and through Him the new life will flow into
his heart. Faith is trust, and trust is the stretching out of the hand
to take the precious gift, the opening of the heart for the influx of
the grace, the eating of the bread, the drinking of the water, of life.

It is the only possible condition. God forbid that I should even seem
to depreciate other forms of healing men's evils and redressing men's
wrongs, and diminishing the sorrows of humanity! We welcome them all;
but education, art, culture, refinement, improved environment, bettered
social and political conditions, whilst they do a great deal, do not go
down to the bottom of the necessity. And after you have built your
colleges and art museums and stately pleasure-houses, and set every man
in an environment that is suited to develop him, you will find out what
surely the world might have found out already, that, as in some stately
palace built in the Campagna, the malaria is in the air, and steals in
at the windows, and infects all the inhabitants. Thank God for all
these other things! but you cannot heal a man who has poison in his
veins by administering cosmetics, and you cannot put out Vesuvius with
a jugful of water. If the camp is to be healed, the Christ must be
lifted up.

III. And now, lastly, here we have the life that comes with a look at
the lifted-up Son of Man.

Those of you who are using the Revised Version will see that there is a
little change made here, partly by the exclusion of a clause and partly
by changing the order of the words. The alteration is not only nearer
the original text, but brings out a striking thought. It reads that
'whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life.' Now, it is far too
late a period of my discourse to enlarge upon all that these great
words would suggest to us, but let me just, in a sentence or two, mark
the salient points.

'Eternal life'; do not bring that down to the narrow and inadequate
conception of unending existence. It involves that, but it means a
great deal more. It means a life of such a sort as is worth calling
life, which is a life in union with God, and therefore full of
blessedness, full of purity, full of satisfaction, full of desire and
aspiration, and all these with the stamp of unendingness deeply
impressed upon them. And that is what comes to us through the look. Not
only is the process of dying arrested, but there is substituted for it
a new process of growing possession of a new life. You 'must be born
again,' Christ had been saying to Nicodemus. The change that passes
upon a man when once he has anchored his trust on Jesus Christ, the
uplifted Son of Man, is so profound that it is nothing else than a new
birth, and a new life comes into his veins untainted by the poison, and
with no proclivity to death.

'May have eternal life'—now, here, on the instant. That eternal life is
no future gift to be bestowed upon mortal men when they have passed
through the agony of death, but it is a gift which comes to us here,
and may come to any man on the instant of his looking to Jesus Christ.

'May in Him have eternal life'—union with Christ by faith, that
profound incorporation—if I may use the word—into Him, which the New
Testament sets forth in all sorts of aspects as the very foundation of
the blessings of Christianity; that union is the condition of eternal
life. So, dear brethren, we all need that the poison shall be cast out
of our veins. We all need that the tendency downwards to a condition
which can only be described as death may be arrested, and the motion
reversed. We all need that our knowledge shall be vitalised into faith.
We all need that the past shall be forgiven, and the power of sin upon
us in the present shall be cancelled. 'The blood of Jesus Christ
cleanseth from all sin,' because it was shed for the remission of the
sins of the many, and is transfused, an untainted principle of life,
into our veins. What Jesus said to Nicodemus by night in that quiet
chamber in Jerusalem, what He said in effect and act upon the Cross,
when uplifted there, is what He says to each of us from the Throne
where He is now lifted up: 'Whosoever believeth shall in Me have
eternal life.' Take Him at His word, and you will find that it is true.




CHRIST'S MUSTS


'… Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.'—JOHN iii. 14.

I have chosen this text for the sake of one word in it, that solemn
'must' which was so often on our Lord's lips. I have no purpose of
dealing with the remainder of this clause, nor indeed with it at all,
except as one instance of His use of the expression. But I have felt it
might be interesting, and might set old truths in a brighter light, if
we gather together the instances in which Christ speaks of the great
necessity which dominated His life, and shaped even small acts.

The expression is most frequently used in reference to the Passion and
Resurrection. There are many instances in the Gospels, in which He
speaks of that _must_. The first of these is that of my text. Then
there is another class, of which His word to His mother when a
twelve-year-old child may be taken as a type: 'Wist ye not that I
_must_ be about My Father's business?' where the mysterious
consciousness of a special relation to God in the child's heart drew
Him to the Temple and to His Father's work. Other similar instances are
those in which He responded to the multitude when they wanted to keep
Him to themselves: 'I _must_ preach in other cities also'; or as when
He said, 'I _must_ work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day.'

Yet another aspect of the same necessity is presented when, looking far
beyond the earthly work and suffering, He discerned the future triumph
which was to be the issue of these, and said, 'Other sheep I have… them
also I _must_ bring.'

And yet another is in reference to a very small matter: His selection
of a place for a few hours' rest on His last fateful journey to
Jerusalem, when He said, 'Zaccheus,… to-day I _must_ abide at thy
house.'

Now, if we put these instances together, we shall get some precious
glimpses into our Lord's heart, and His view of life.

I. Here we see Christ recognising and accepting the necessity for His
death.

My text, if we accept John's Gospel, contributes an altogether new
element to our conception of our Lord as announcing His death. For the
other three Gospels lay emphasis on it as being part of His teaching,
especially during the later stage of His ministry. But it does not
follow that He began to think about it or to see it, when He began to
speak about it. There are reasons for the earlier comparative
reticence, and there is no ground for the conclusion that then first
began to dawn upon a disappointed enthusiast the grim reality that His
work was not going to prosper, and that martyrdom was necessary. That
is a notion that has been frequently upheld of late years, but to me it
seems altogether incongruous with the facts of the case. And, if John's
Gospel is a true record, that theory is shivered against this text,
which represents Him at the very beginning of His career—the time when,
according to that other theory, He was full of the usual buoyant and
baseless anticipations of a reformer commencing His course—as telling
Nicodemus, 'Even so _must_ the Son of Man be lifted up.' In like
manner, in the previous chapter of this same Gospel, we have the
significant though enigmatical utterance: 'Destroy this Temple, and in
three days I will raise it up'; with the Evangelist's authoritative
comment: 'He spake of the Temple of His body.' So, from the beginning
of His career, the end was clear before Him.

And why _must_ He go to the Cross? Not merely, as the other Evangelists
put it, in order that 'it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the
prophets.' It was not that Jesus must die because the prophets had said
that Messiah should, but that the prophets had said that Messiah should
because Jesus must. There was a far deeper necessity than the
fulfilment of any prophetic utterance, even the necessity which shaped
that utterance. The work of Jesus Christ could not be done unless He
died. He could not be the Saviour of the world unless He was the
sacrifice for the sins of the world.

We cannot see all the grounds of that solemn imperative, but this we
can see, that it was because of the requirements of the divine
righteousness, and because of the necessities of sinful men. And so
Christ's was no martyr's death, who had to die as the penalty of the
faithful discharge of His duty. It was not the penalty that He paid for
doing His work, but it was the work itself. Not that gracious life, nor
'the loveliness of perfect deeds,' nor His words of sweet wisdom, nor
His acts of transcendent power, equalled only by the pity that moved
the power, completed His task, but He 'came to give His life a ransom
for many.'

'Must' is a hard word. It may express an unwelcome necessity. Was this
necessity unwelcome? When He said, 'The Son of Man must be lifted up,'
was He shrinking, or reluctantly submitting? Ah, no! He _must_ die
because He _would_ save, and He _would_ save because He _did_ love. His
filial obedience to God coincided with His pity for men: and not merely
in obedience to the requirements of the divine righteousness, but in
compassion for the necessities of sinners, necessity was laid upon Him.

Oh, brethren! nothing held Christ to the Cross but His own desire to
save us. Neither priests nor Romans carried Him thither. What fastened
Him to it was not the nails driven by rude hands. And the reason why He
did not, as the taunters bade Him do, come down from it, was neither a
physical nor a moral necessity unwelcome to Himself, but the yielding
of His own will to do all which was needed for man's salvation.

This sacrifice was bound to the altar by the cords of love. We have
heard of martyrs who have refused to be tied to the stake, and have
kept themselves motionless in the centre of the fierce flames by the
force of their wills. Jesus Christ fastened Himself to the Cross and
died because He would.

And, oh! if we think of that sweet, serene life as having clear before
it from the very first steps that grim end, how infinitely it gains in
pathetic beauty and in heart-touchingness! What wonderful
self-abnegation! How he was at leisure from Himself, with a heart of
pity for every sorrow, and loins girt for all service, though during
all His life the Cross closed the vista! Think that human shrinking was
felt by Him, think that it was so held back that His purpose never
faltered, think that each of us may say, 'He _must_ die because He
_would_ save me'; and then ask, 'What shall I render to the Lord for
all His benefits toward me?'

II. In a second class of these utterances, we see Christ impelled by
filial obedience and the consciousness of His mission.

'Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?' That was a
strange utterance for a boy of twelve. It seems to negative the
supposition that what is called the 'Messianic consciousness' dawned
upon Jesus Christ first after His baptism and the descent of the
Spirit. But however that may be, it and the similar passages to which I
have already referred, bearing upon His discharge of His work prior to
His death, teach that the necessity was an inward necessity springing
from His consciousness of Sonship, and His recognition of the work that
He had to do. And so He is our great Example of spontaneous obedience,
which does violence to itself if it does not obey. It was instinct that
sent the boy into the Temple. Where should a Son be but in His Father's
house? How could He not be doing His Father's business?

Thus He stands before us, the pattern for the only obedience that is
worth calling so, the obedience which would be pained and ill at ease
unless it were doing the work of God. Religion is meant to make it a
second nature, or, as I have ventured to call it, an instinct—a
spontaneous, uncalculating, irrepressible desire—to be in fellowship
with God, and to be doing His will. That is the meaning of our
Christianity. There is no obedience in reluctant obedience; forced
service is slavery, not service. Christianity is given for the specific
purpose that it may bring us so into touch with Jesus Christ as that
the mind which was in Him may be in us; and that we too may be able to
say, with a kind of wonder that people should have expected to find us
in any other place, or doing anything else, 'Wist ye not that because I
am a Son, _I_ must be about my Father's business?' As certainly as the
sunflower follows the sun, so certainly will a man animated by the mind
that was in Jesus Christ, like Him find his very life's breath in doing
the Father's will.

So then, brethren, what about our grudging service? What about our
reluctant obedience? What about the widespread mistake that religion
prohibits wished-for things and enforces unwelcome duties? If my
Christianity does not make me recoil from what it forbids, and spring
eagerly to what it commends, my Christianity is of very little use. If
when in the Temple we are like idle boys in school, always casting
glances at the clock and the door, and wishing ourselves outside, we
may just as well be out as in. Glad obedience is true obedience. Only
he who can say, 'Thy law is within my heart, and I do Thy will because
I love Thee, and cannot but do as Thou desirest,' has found the joy
possible to a Christian life. It is not 'harsh and crabbed,' as those
that look upon it from the outside may 'suppose,' but musical and full
of sweetness. There is nothing more blessed than when 'I choose' covers
exactly the same ground as 'I ought.' And when duty is delight, delight
will never become disgust, nor joy pass away.

III. We see, in yet another use of this great 'must,' Christ
anticipating His future triumph.

'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring,
and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd.' Striking as these words
are in themselves, they are still more striking when we notice their
connection; for they follow immediately upon His utterance about laying
down His life for the sheep. So, then, this was a work beyond the
Cross, and whatever it was, it was to be done after He had died.

I need not point out to you how far afield Christ's vision goes out
into the dim, waste places, where on the dark mountains the straying
sheep are torn and frightened and starving. I need not dwell upon how
far ahead in the future His glance travels, or how magnificent and how
rebuking to our petty narrowness this great word is. 'There shall be
one _flock_' (not fold); and they shall be one, not because they are
within the bounds of any visible 'fold,' but because they are gathered
round the one Shepherd, and in their common relation to Him are knit
together in unity.

But what sort of a Man is this who considers that His widest work is to
be done by Him after He is dead? 'Them also I _must_ bring.' Thou? how?
when? Surely such words as these, side by side with a clear prevision
of the death that was so soon to come, are either meaningless or the
utterance of an arrogance bordering on insanity, or they anticipate
what an Evangelist declares did take place—that the Lord was 'taken up
into heaven and sat at the right hand of God,' whilst His servants
'went everywhere preaching the Word, the Lord also working with them
and confirming the Word' with the signs He wrought.

'Them also I must bring.' That is not merely a necessity rooted in the
nature of God and the wants of men. It is not merely a necessity
springing from Christ's filial obedience and sense of a mission; but it
is a 'must' of destiny, a 'must' which recognises the sure results of
His passion; a 'must' which implies the power of the Cross to be the
reconciliation of the world. And so for all pessimistic thoughts
to-day, or at any time, and when Christian men's hearts may be
trembling for the Ark of God—although, perhaps, there may be little
reason for the tremor—and in the face of all blatant antagonisms and of
proud Goliaths despising the 'foolishness of preaching,' we fall back
upon Christ's great 'must.' It is written in the councils of Heaven
more unchangeably than the heavens; it is guaranteed by the power of
the Cross; it is certain, by the eternal life of the crucified Saviour,
that He will one day be the King of humanity, and _must_ bring His
wandering sheep to couch in peace, one flock round one Shepherd.

IV. Lastly, we have Christ applying the greatest principle to the
smallest duty.

'Zaccheus! make haste and come down; to-day I _must_ abide in thy
house.' Why must He? Because Zaccheus was to be saved, and was worth
saving. What was the 'must'? To stop for an hour or two on His road to
the Cross. So He teaches us that in a life penetrated by the thought of
the divine will, which we gladly obey, there are no things too great,
and none too trivial, to be brought under the dominion of that law, and
to be regulated by that divine necessity. Obedience is obedience,
whether in large things or in small. There is no scale of magnitude
applicable to the distinction between God's will and that which is not
God's will. Gravitation rules the motes that dance in the sunshine as
well as the mass of Jupiter. A triangle with its apex in the sun, and
its base beyond the solar system, has the same properties and comes
under the same laws as one that a schoolboy scrawls upon his slate.
God's truth is not too great to rule the smallest duties. The star in
the East was a guide to the humble house at Bethlehem, and there are
starry truths high in the heavens that avail for our guidance in the
smallest acts of life.

So, brethren, bring your doings under that all-embracing law of
duty—duty, which is the heathen expression for the will of God. There
are great regions of life in which lower necessities have play.
Circumstances, our past, bias and temper, relationship, friendship,
civic duty, and the like—all these bring their necessities; but let us
think of them all as being, what indeed they are, manifestations to us
of the will of our Father. There are great tracts of life in which
either of two courses may be right, and we are left to the decision of
choice rather than of duty; but high above all these, let us see
towering that divine necessity. It is a daily struggle to bring 'I
will' to coincide with 'I ought'; and there is only one adequate and
always powerful way of securing that coincidence, and that is to keep
close to Jesus Christ and to drink in His spirit. Then, when duty and
delight are conterminous, 'the rough places will be plain, and the
crooked things straight, and every mountain shall be brought low, and
every valley shall be exalted,' and life will be blessed, and service
will be freedom. Joy and liberty and power and peace will fill our
hearts when this is the law of our being; 'All that the Lord hath
spoken, that _must_ I do.'




THE LAKE AND THE RIVER


'God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.'—JOHN iii. 16.

I venture to say that my text shows us a lake, a river, a pitcher, and
a draught. 'God so loved the world'—that is the lake. A lake makes a
river for itself—'God so loved the world that He _gave_ His… Son.' But
the river does not quench any one's thirst unless he has something to
lift the water with: 'God so loved the world that He gave His… Son,
that whosoever _believeth_ on Him.' Last comes the draught: 'shall not
perish, but have _everlasting life._'

I. The great lake, God's love.

Before Jesus Christ came into this world no one ever dreamt of saying
'God _loves_.' Some of the Old Testament psalmists had glimpses of that
truth and came pretty near expressing it. But among all the 'gods many
and lords many,' there were lustful gods and beautiful gods, and idle
gods, and fighting gods and peaceful gods: but not one of whom
worshippers said, 'He loves.' Once it was a new and almost incredible
message, but we have grown accustomed to it, and it is not strange any
more to us. But if we would try to think of what it means, the whole
truth would flash up into fresh newness, and all the miseries and
sorrows and perplexities of our lives would drift away down the wind,
and we should be no more troubled with them. 'God loves' is the
greatest thing that can be said by lips.

'God … loved the world.' Now when we speak of loving a number of
individuals—the broader the stream, the shallower it is, is it not? The
most intense patriot in England does not love her one ten-thousandth
part as well as he loves his own little girl. When we think or feel
anything about a great multitude of people, it is like looking at a
forest. We do not see the trees, we see the whole wood. But that is not
how God loves the world. Suppose I said that I loved the people in
India, I should not mean by that that I had any feeling about any
individual soul of all those dusky millions, but only that I massed
them all together; or made what people call a generalisation of them.
But that is not the way in which God loves. He loves all because He
loves each. And when we say, 'God so loved the world,' we have to break
up the mass into its atoms, and to think of each atom as being an
object of His love. We all stand out in God's love just as we should do
to one another's eyes, if we were on the top of a mountain-ridge with a
clear sunset sky behind us. Each little black dot of the long
procession would be separately visible. And we all stand out like that,
every man of us isolated, and getting as much of the love of God as if
there was not another creature in the whole universe but God and
ourselves. Have you ever realised that when we say, 'He loved the
world,' that really means, as far as each of us is concerned, He loves
_me_? And just as the whole beams of the sun come pouring down into
every eye of the crowd that is looking up to it, so the whole love of
God pours down, not upon a multitude, an abstraction, a community, but
upon every single soul that makes up that community. He loves us all
because He loves us each. We shall never get all the good of that
thought until we translate it, and lay it upon our hearts. It is all
very well to say, 'Ah yes! God is love,' and it is all very well to say
He loves 'the world.' But I will tell you what is a great deal
better—to say—what Paul said—'Who loved _me_ and gave Himself for
_me_.'

Now, there is one other suggestion that I would make to you before I go
on, and that is that all through the New Testament, but especially in
John's Gospel, 'the world' does not only mean men, but _sinful_ men,
men separated from God. And the great and blessed truth taught here is
that, however I may drag myself away from God, I cannot drive Him away
from me, and that however little I may care for Him, or love Him, or
think about Him, it does not make one hairs-breadth of difference as to
the fact that He loves me. I know, of course, that if a man does not
love Him back again, God's love has to take shapes that it would not
otherwise take, which may be extremely inconvenient for the man. But
though the shape may alter, _must_ alter, the fact remains; and every
sinful soul on the earth, including Judas Iscariot—who is said to head
the list of crimes—has God's love resting upon him.

II. The river.

Now, to go back to my metaphor, the lake makes a river. 'God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son.'

So then, it was not Christ's death that turned God from hating and
being angry, but it was God's love that appointed Christ's death. If
you will only remember that, a great many of the shallow and popular
objections to the great doctrine of the Atonement disappear at once.
'God so loved … that He gave.' But some people say that when we preach
that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that God's wrath might not fall
upon men, our teaching is immoral, because it means 'Christ came, and
so God loved.' It is the other way about, friend. 'God so loved … that
He gave.'

But now let me carry you back to the Old Testament. Do you remember the
story of the father taking his boy who carried the bundle of wood and
the fire, and tramping over the mountains till they reached the place
where the sacrifice was to be offered? Do you remember the boy's
question that brings tears quickly to the reader's eyes: 'Here is the
wood, and here is the fire, where is the lamb'? Do you not think it
would be hard for the father to steady his voice and say, 'My son, God
will provide the lamb'? And do you remember the end of that story? 'The
Angel of the Lord said unto Abraham, Because thou hast done this thing,
and hast not _withheld_ thy son, _thine only son_, from Me, therefore
blessing I will bless thee,' etc. Remember that one of the Apostles
said, using the very same word that is used in Genesis as to Abraham's
giving up his son to God, 'He _spared not_ His own Son, but delivered
Him up to the death for us all.' Does not that point to a mysterious
parallel? Somehow or other—we have no right to attempt to say
how—somehow or other, God not only _sent_ His Son, as it is said in the
next verse to my text, but far more tenderly, wonderfully,
pathetically, God _gave_—gave up His Son, and the sacrifice was
enhanced, because it was His only begotten Son.

Ah! dear brethren, do not let us be afraid of following out all that is
included in that great word, 'God … _loved_ the world.' For there is no
love which does not delight in giving, and there is no love that does
not delight in depriving itself, in some fashion, of what it gives. And
I, for my part, believe that Paul's words are to be taken in all their
blessed depth and wonderfulness of meaning when he says, 'He gave
up'—as well as gave—'Him to the death for us all.'

And now, do you not think that we are able in some measure to estimate
the greatness of that little word 'so'? 'God _so_ loved'—_so_ deeply,
so holily, _so_ perfectly—that He 'gave His only begotten Son'; and the
gift of that Son is, as it were, the river by which the love of God
comes to every soul in the world.

Now there are a great many people who would like to put the middle part
of this great text of ours into a parenthesis. They say that we should
bring the first words and the last words of this text together, and
never mind all that lies between. People who do not like the doctrine
of the Cross would say, 'God so loved the world that He gave…
everlasting life'; and there an end. 'If there is a God, and if He
loves the world, why cannot He save the world without more ado? There
is no need for these interposed clauses. God so loved the world that
everybody will go to heaven'—that is the gospel of a great many of you;
and it is the gospel of a great many wise and learned people. But it is
not John's Gospel, and it is not Christ's Gospel. The beginning and the
end of the text cannot be buckled up together in that rough-and-ready
fashion. They have to be linked by a chain; and there are two links in
the chain: God forges the one, and we have to forge the other. 'God so
loved the world that He gave'—then He has done His work. 'That
whosoever believeth'—that is your work. And it is in vain that God
forges _His_ link, unless you will forge _yours_ and link it up to His.
'God so loved the world,' that is step number one in the process; 'that
He gave,' that is step number two; and then there comes another
'that'—'that whosoever believeth,' that is step number three; and they
are all needed before you come to number four, which is the
landing-place and not a step—'should not perish, but have everlasting
life.'

III. The pitcher.

I come to what I called the pitcher, with which we draw the water for
our own use—'that whosoever believeth.' You perhaps say, 'Yes, I
believe. I accept every word of the Gospel, I quite believe that Jesus
Christ died, as a matter of history; and I quite believe that He died
for men's sins.' And what then? Is that what Jesus Christ meant by
believing? To believe _about_ Him is not to believe _on_ Him; and
unless you believe on Him you will get no good out of Him. There is the
lake, and the river must flow past the shanties in the clearing in the
forest, if the men there are to drink. But it may flow past their
doors, as broad as the Mississippi, and as deep as the ocean; but they
will perish with thirst, unless they dip in their hands, like Gideon's
men, and carry the water to their own lips. Dear friend, what you have
to do—and your soul's salvation, and your peace and joy and nobleness
in this life and in the next depend absolutely upon it—is simply to
trust in Jesus Christ and His death for your sins.

I sometimes wish we had never heard that word 'faith.' For as soon as
we begin to talk about 'faith,' people begin to think that we are away
up in some theological region far above everyday life. Suppose we try
to bring it down a little nearer to our businesses and bosoms, and
instead of using a word that is kept sacred for employment in religious
matters, and saying 'faith,' we say 'trust.' That is what you give to
your wives and husbands, is it not? And that is exactly what you have
to give to Jesus Christ, simply to lay hold of Him as a man lays hold
of the heart that loves him, and leans his whole weight upon it. Lean
hard on Him, hang on Him, or, to take the other metaphor that is one of
the Old Testament words for trust, 'flee for refuge' to Him. Fancy a
man with the avenger of blood at his back, and the point of the
pursuer's spear almost pricking his spine—don't you think he would make
for the City of Refuge with some speed? That is what you have to do. He
that believeth, and by trust lays hold of the Hand that holds him up,
will never fall; and he that does not lay hold of that Hand will never
stand, to say nothing of rising. And so by these two links God's love
of the world is connected with the salvation of the world.

IV. The draught.

Finally, we have here the draught of living water. Did you ever think
why our text puts 'should not perish' first? Is it not because, unless
we put our trust in Him, we shall certainly perish, and because,
therefore, that certainty of perishing must be averted before we can
have 'everlasting life'?

Now I am not going to enlarge on these two solemn expressions,
'perishing' and 'everlasting life.' I only say this: men do not need to
wait until they die before they 'perish.' There are men and women here
now who are dead—dead while they live, and when they come to die, the
perishing, which is condemnation and ruin, will only be the making
visible, in another condition of life, of what is the fact to-day. Dear
brethren, you do not need to die in order to perish in your sins, and,
blessed be God, you can have everlasting life before you die. You can
have it now, and there is only one way to have it, and that is to lay
hold of Him who is the Life. And when you have Jesus Christ in your
heart, whom you will be sure to have if you trust Him, then you will
have life—life eternal, here and now, and death will only make manifest
the eternal life which you had while you were alive here, and will
perfect it in fashions that we do not yet know anything about.

Only remember, as I have been trying to show you, the order that runs
through this text. Remember the order of these last words, and that we
must first of all be delivered from eternal and utter death, before we
can be invested with the eternal and absolute life.

Now, dear brethren, I dare say I have never spoken to the great
majority of you before; it is quite possible I may never speak to any
of you again. I have asked God to help me to speak so as that souls
should be drawn to the Saviour. And I beseech you now, as my last word,
that you would listen, not to me, but to Him. For it is He that says to
us, 'God so loved the world, that He gave His Son, that
whosoever'—'whosoever,' a blank cheque, like the M. or N. of the
Prayer-book, or the A. B. of a schedule; you can put your own name in
it—'that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish, but have'—here,
now—'everlasting life.'




THE WEARIED CHRIST


'Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the
well…. He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.'—JOHN
iv. 6,32.

Two pictures result from these two verses, each striking in itself, and
gaining additional emphasis by the contrast. It was during a long hot
day's march that the tired band of pedestrians turned into the fertile
valley. There, whilst the disciples went into the little hill-village
to purchase, if they could, some food from the despised inhabitants,
Jesus, apparently too exhausted to accompany them, 'sat _thus_ on the
well.' That little word _thus_ seems to have a force difficult to
reproduce in English. It is apparently intended to enhance the idea of
utter weariness, either because the word 'wearied' is in thought to be
supplied, 'sat, being thus wearied, on the well'; or because it conveys
the notion which might be expressed by our 'just as He was'; as a tired
man flings Himself down anywhere and anyhow, without any kind of
preparation beforehand, and not much caring where it is that he rests.

Thus, utterly worn out, Jesus Christ sits on the well, whilst the
western sun lengthens out the shadows on the plain. The disciples come
back, and what a change they find. Hunger gone, exhaustion ended, fresh
vigour in their wearied Master. What had made the difference? The
woman's repentance and joy. And He unveils the secret of His
reinvigoration when He says, 'I have meat to eat that ye know not
of'—the hidden manna. 'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me,
and to finish His work.'

Now, I think if we take just three points of view, we shall gain the
lessons of this remarkable contrast. Note, then, the wearied Christ;
the devoted Christ; the reinvigorated Christ.

I. The wearied Christ.

How precious it is to us that this Gospel, which has the loftiest
things to say about the manifest divinity of our Lord, and the glory
that dwelt in Him, is always careful to emphasise also the manifest
limitations and weaknesses of the Manhood. John never forgets either
term of his great sentence in which all the gospel is condensed, 'the
Word became flesh.' Ever he shows us 'the Word'; ever 'the flesh.' Thus
it is he only who records the saying on the Cross, 'I thirst.' It is he
who tells us how Jesus Christ, not merely for the sake of getting a
convenient opening of a conversation, or to conciliate prejudices, but
because He needed what He asked, said to the woman of Samaria, 'Give Me
to drink.' So the weariness of the Master stands forth for us as
pathetic proof that it was no shadowy investiture with an apparent
Manhood to which He stooped, but a real participation in our
limitations and weaknesses, so that work to Him was fatigue, even
though in Him dwelt the manifest glory of that divine nature which
'fainteth not, neither is weary.'

Not only does this pathetic incident teach us for our firmer faith, and
more sympathetic and closer apprehension, the reality of the Manhood of
Jesus Christ, but it supplies likewise some imperfect measure of His
love, and reveals to us one condition of His power. Ah! if He had not
Himself known weariness He never could have said, 'Come unto Me, all ye
that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' It was
because Himself 'took our infirmities,' and amongst these the weakness
of tired muscles and exhausted frame, that 'He giveth power to the
faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.' The
Creator must have no share in the infirmities of the creature. It must
be His unwearied power that calls them all by their names; and because
He is great in might 'not one' of the creatures of His hand can 'fail.'
But the Redeemer must participate in that from which He redeems; and
the condition of His strength being 'made perfect in our weakness' is
that our weakness shall have cast a shadow upon the glory of His
strength. The measure of His love is seen in that, long before Calvary,
He entered into the humiliation and sufferings and sorrows of humanity;
a condition of His power is seen in that, forasmuch as the 'children
were partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part
of the same,' not only that 'through death He might deliver' from
death, but that in life He might redeem from the ills and sorrows of
life.

Nor does that exhausted Figure, reclining on Jacob's Well, preach to us
only what _He_ was. It proclaims to us likewise what _we_ should be.
For if His work was carried on to the edge of His capacity, and if He
shrank not from service because it involved toil, what about the
professing followers of Jesus Christ, who think that they are exempted
from any form of service because they can plead that it will weary
them? What about those who say that they tread in His footsteps, and
have never known what it was to yield up one comfort, one moment of
leisure, one thrill of enjoyment, or to encounter one sacrifice, one
act of self-denial, one aching of weariness for the sake of the Lord
who bore all for them? The wearied Christ proclaims His manhood,
proclaims His divinity and His love, and rebukes us who consent to
'walk in the way of His commandments' only on condition that it can be
done without dust or heat; and who are ready to run the race that is
set before us, only if we can come to the goal without perspiration or
turning a hair. 'Jesus, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the
well.'

II. Still further, notice here the devoted Christ.

It is not often that He lets us have a glimpse into the innermost
chambers of His heart, in so far as the impelling motives of His course
are concerned. But here He lays them bare. 'My meat is to do the will
of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.'

Now, it is no mere piece of grammatical pedantry when I ask you to
notice that the language of the original is so constructed as to give
prominence to the idea that the aim of Christ's life was the doing of
the Father's will; and that it is the aim rather than the actual
performance and realisation of the aim which is pointed at by our Lord.
The words would be literally rendered 'My meat is _that I may do_ the
will of Him that sent Me and finish His work'—that is to say, the very
nourishment and refreshment of Christ was found in making the
accomplishment of the Father's commandment His ever-impelling motive,
His ever-pursued goal. The expression carries us into the inmost heart
of Jesus, dealing, as it does, with the one all-pervading motive rather
than with the resulting actions, fair and holy as these were.

Brethren, the secret of our lives, if they are at all to be worthy and
noble, must be the same—the recognition, not only as they say now, that
we have a mission, but that there _is_ a Sender; which is a wholly
different view of our position, and that He who sends is the loving
Father, who has spoken to us in that dear Son, who Himself made it His
aim thus to obey, in order that it might be possible for us to re-echo
His voice, and to repeat His aim. The recognition of the Sender, the
absolute submission of our wills to His, must run through all the life.
You may do your daily work, whatever it be, with this for its motto,
'the will of the Lord be done'; and they who thus can look at their
trade, or profession, and see the trivialities and monotonies of their
daily occupations, in the transfiguring light of that great thought,
will never need to complain that life is small, ignoble, wearisome,
insignificant. As with pebbles in some clear brook with the sunshine on
it, the water in which they are sunk glorifies and magnifies them. If
you lift them out, they are but bits of dull stone; lying beneath the
sunlit ripples they are jewels. Plunge the prose of your life, and all
its trivialities, into that great stream, and it will magnify and
glorify the smallest and the homeliest. Absolute submission to the
divine will, and the ever-present thrilling consciousness of doing it,
were the secret of Christ's life, and ought to be the secret of ours.

Note the distinction between doing the will and perfecting the work.
That implies that Jesus Christ, like us, reached forward, in each
successive act of obedience to the successive manifestations of the
Father's will, to something still undone. The work will never be
perfected or finished except on condition of continual fulfilment,
moment by moment, of the separate behests of that divine will. For the
Lord, as for His servants, this was the manner of obedience, that He
'pressed towards the mark,' and by individual acts of conformity
secured that at last the whole 'work' should have been so completely
accomplished that He might be able to say upon the Cross, 'It is
finished.' If we have any right to call ourselves His, we too have thus
to live.

III. Lastly, notice the reinvigorated Christ.

I have already pointed out the lovely contrast between the two
pictures, the beginning and the end of this incident; so I need not
dwell upon that. The disciples wondered when they found that Christ
desired and needed none of the homely sustenance that they had brought
to Him. And when He answered their sympathy rather than their
curiosity—for they did not ask Him any questions, but they said to Him,
'Master, eat'—with 'I have meat to eat that ye know not of,' they, in
their blind, blundering fashion, could only imagine that some one had
brought Him something. So they gave occasion for the great words upon
which we have been touching.

Notice, however, that Christ here sets forth the lofty aim at
conformity to the divine will and fulfilment of the divine Work as
being the meat of the soul. It is the true food for us all. The spirit
which feeds upon such food will grow and be nourished. And the soul
which feeds upon its own will and fancies, and not upon the plain brown
bread of obedience, which is wholesome, though it be often bitter, will
feed upon ashes, which will grate upon the teeth and hurt the palate.
Such a soul will be like those wretched infants that are discovered
sometimes at 'baby-farms,' starved and stunted, and not grown to half
their right size. If you would have your spirits strong, robust, well
nourished, live by obedience, and let the will of God be the food of
your souls, and all will be well.

Souls thus fed can do without a good deal that others need. Why,
enthusiasm for anything lifts a man above physical necessities and
lower desires, even in its poorest forms. A regiment of soldiers making
a forced march, or an athlete trying to break the record, will tramp,
tramp on, not needing food, or rest, or sleep, until they have achieved
their purpose, poor and ignoble though it may be. In all regions of
life, enthusiasm and lofty aims make the soul lord of the body and of
the world.

And in the Christian life we shall be thus lords, exactly in proportion
to the depth and earnestness of our desires to do the will of God. They
who thus are fed can afford 'to scorn delights and live laborious
days.' They who thus are fed can afford to do with plain living, if
there be high impulses as well as high thinking. And sure I am that
nothing is more certain to stamp out the enthusiasm of obedience which
ought to mark the Christian life than the luxurious fashion of living
which is getting so common to-day amongst professing Christians.

It is not in vain that we read the old story about the Jewish boys
whose faces were radiant and whose flesh was firmer when they were fed
on pulse and water than on all the wine and dainties of the Babylonish
court. 'Set a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite,'
and let us remember that the less we use, and the less we feel that we
need, of outward goods, the nearer do we approach to the condition in
which holy desires and lofty aims will visit our spirits.

I commend to you, brethren, the story of our text, in its most literal
application, as well as in the loftier spiritual lessons that may be
drawn from it. To be near Christ, and to desire to live for Him,
delivers us from dependence upon earthly things; and in those who thus
do live the old word shall be fulfilled, 'Better is a little that a
righteous man hath, than the abundance of many wicked.'




'GIVE ME TO DRINK'


'… Jesus saith unto her, Give Me to drink…. Jesus saith unto her,
I that speak unto thee am He.'—JOHN iv. 7, 26.

This Evangelist very significantly sets side by side our Lord's
conversations with Nicodemus and with the woman of Samaria. The persons
are very different: the one a learned Rabbi of reputation, influence,
and large theological knowledge of the then fashionable kind; the other
an alien woman, poor—for she had to do this menial task of
water-drawing in the heat of the day—and of questionable character.

The diversity of persons necessitates great differences in the form of
our Lord's address to each; but the resemblances are as striking as the
divergencies. In both we have His method of gradually unveiling the
truth to a susceptible soul, beginning with symbol and a hint,
gradually enlarging the hint and translating the symbol; and finally
unveiling Himself as the Giver and the Gift. There is another
resemblance; in both the characteristic gift is that of the Spirit of
Life, and, perhaps, in both the symbol is the same. For we read in one
of 'water and the Spirit'; and in the other of the fountain within,
springing into everlasting life. However that may be, the process of
teaching is all but identical in substance in both cases, though in
form so various.

The words of our Lord which I have taken for our text now are His first
and last utterance in this conversation. What a gulf lies between! They
are linked together by the intervening sayings, and constitute with
these a great ladder, of which the foot is fast on earth, and the top
fixed in heaven. On the one hand, He owns the lowest necessities; on
the other, He makes the highest claims. Let us ponder on this
remarkable juxtaposition, and try to gather the lessons that are plain
in it.

I. First, then, I think we see here the mystery of the dependent
Christ.

'Give Me to drink': 'I am He.' Try to see the thing for a moment with
the woman's eyes. She comes down from her little village, up amongst
the cliffs on the hillside, across the narrow, hot valley, beneath the
sweltering sunshine reflected from the bounding mountains, and she
finds, in the midst of the lush vegetation round the ancient well, a
solitary, weary Jew, travel-worn, evidently exhausted—for His disciples
had gone away to buy food, and He was too wearied to go with
them—looking into the well, but having no dipper or vessel by which to
get any of its cool treasure. We lose a great deal of the meaning of
Christ's request if we suppose that it was merely a way of getting into
conversation with the woman, a 'breaking of the ice.' It was a great
deal more than that. It was the utterance of a felt and painful
necessity, which He Himself could not supply without a breach of what
He conceived to be His filial dependence. He could have brought water
out of the well. He did not need to depend upon the pitcher that the
disciples had perhaps unthinkingly carried away with them when they
went to buy bread. He did not need to ask the woman to give, but He
chose to do so. We lose much if we do not see in this incident far more
than the woman saw, but we lose still more if we do not see what she
did see. And the words which the Master spoke to her are no mere way of
introducing a conversation on religious themes; but He asked for a
draught which He needed, and which He had no other way of getting.

So, then, here stands, pathetically set forth before us, our Lord's
true participation in two of the distinguishing characteristics of our
weak humanity—subjection to physical necessities and dependence on
kindly help. We find Him weary, hungry, thirsty, sometimes slumbering.
And all these instances are documents and proofs for us that He was a
true man like ourselves, and that, like ourselves, He depended on 'the
woman that ministered to Him' for the supply of His necessities, and so
knew the limitations of our social and else helpless humanity.

But then a wearied and thirsty man is nothing of much importance. But
here is a Man who _humbled Himself_ to be weary and to thirst. The
keynote of this Gospel, the one thought which unlocks all its
treasures, and to the elucidation of which, in all its aspects, the
whole book is devoted, is, 'The Word was made flesh.' Only when you let
in the light of the last utterance of our text, 'I that speak unto thee
am He,' do we understand the pathos, the sublimity, the depth and
blessedness of meaning which lie in the first one, 'Give Me to drink.'
When we see that He bowed Himself, and willingly stretched out His
hands for the fetters, we come to understand the significance of these
traces of His manhood. The woman says, with wonder, 'How is it that
Thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me?' and that was wonderful. But, as
He hints to her, if she had known more clearly who this Person was,
that seemed to be a Jew, a deeper wonder would have crept over her
spirit. The wonder is that the Eternal Word should need the water of
the well, and should ask it of a poor human creature.

And why this humiliation? He could, as I have said, have wrought a
miracle. He that fed five thousand, He that had turned water into wine
at the rustic marriage-feast, would have had no difficulty in quenching
His thirst if he had chosen to use His miraculous power therefore. But
He here shows us that the true filial spirit will rather die than cast
off its dependence on the Father, and the same motive which led Him to
reject the temptation in the wilderness, and to answer with sublime
confidence, 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word from
the mouth of God,' forbids Him here to use other means of securing the
draught that He so needed than the appeal to the sympathy of an alien,
and the swift compassion of a woman's heart.

And then, let us remember that the motive of this willing acceptance of
the limitations and weaknesses of humanity is, in the deepest analysis,
simply His love to us; as the mediaeval hymn has it, 'Seeking me, Thou
satest weary.'

In that lonely Traveller, worn, exhausted, thirsty, craving for a
draught of water from a stranger's hand, is set forth 'the glory of the
Father, full of grace and truth.' A strange manifestation of divine
glory this! But if we understand that the glory of God is the lustrous
light of His self-revealing love, perhaps we shall understand how, from
that faint, craving voice, 'Give Me to drink,' that glory sounds forth
more than in the thunders that rolled about the rocky peak of Sinai.
Strange to think, brethren, that the voice from those lips dry with
thirst, which was low and weak, was the voice that spoke to the sea,
'Peace! be still,' and there was a calm; that said to demons, 'Come out
of him!' and they evacuated their fortress; that cast its command into
the grave of Lazarus, and he came forth; and which one day all that are
in the grave shall hear, and hearing shall obey. 'Give Me to drink.' 'I
that speak unto thee am He.'

II. Secondly, we may note here the self-revealing Christ.

The process by which Jesus gradually unveils His full character to this
woman, so unspiritual and unsusceptible as she appeared at first sight
to be, is interesting and instructive. It would occupy too much of your
time for me to do more than set it before you in the barest outline.
Noting the singular divergence between the two sayings which I have
taken as our text, it is interesting to notice how the one gradually
merges into the other. First of all, Jesus Christ, as it were, opens a
finger of His hand to let the woman have a glimpse of the gift lying
there, that that may kindle desire, and hints at some occult depth in
His person and nature all undreamed of by her yet, and which would be
the occasion of greater wonder, and of a reversal of their parts, if
she knew it. Then, in answer to her, half understanding that He meant
more than met the ear, and yet opposing the plain physical difficulties
that were in the way, in that He had 'nothing to draw with, and the
well is deep,' and asking whether He were greater than our father
Jacob, who also had given, and given not only a draught, but the well,
our Lord enlarges her vision of the blessedness of the gift, though He
says but little more of its nature, except in so far as that may be
gathered from the fact that the water that He will give will be a
permanent source of satisfaction, forbidding the pangs of unquenched
desire ever again to be felt as pangs; and from the other fact that it
will be an inward possession, leaping up with a fountain's energy, and
a life within itself, towards, and into everlasting life. Next, he
strongly assails conscience and demands repentance, and reveals Himself
as the reader of the secrets of the heart. Then He discloses the great
truths of spiritual worship. And, finally, as a prince in disguise
might do, He flings aside the mantle of which He had let a fold or two
be blown back in the previous conversation, and stands confessed. 'I
that speak unto thee am He.' That is to say, the kindling of desire,
the proffer of the all-satisfying gift, the quickening of conscience,
the revelation of a Father to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and
the final full disclosure of His person and office as the Giver of the
gift which shall slake all the thirsts of men—these are the stages of
His self-revelation.

Then note, not only the process, but the substance of the revelation of
Himself. The woman had a far more spiritual and lofty conception of the
office of Messiah than the Jews had. It is not the first time that
heretics have reached a loftier ideal of some parts of the truth than
the orthodox attain. To the Jew the Messiah was a conquering king, who
would help them to ride on the necks of their enemies, and pay back
their persecutions and oppressions. To this Samaritan woman—speaking, I
suppose, the conceptions of her race—the Messiah was One who was to
'_tell_ us all things.'

Jesus Christ accepts the position, endorses her anticipations, and in
effect presents Himself before her and before us as the Fountain of all
certitude and knowledge in regard to spiritual matters. For all that we
can know, or need to know, with regard to God and man and their mutual
relations; for all that we can or need know in regard to manhood, its
ideal, its obligations, its possibilities, its destinies; for all that
we need to know of men in their relation to one another, we have to
turn to Jesus Christ, the Messiah, who 'will tell us all things.' He is
the Fountain of light; He is the Foundation of certitude; and they who
seek, not hypotheses and possibilities and conjectures and dreams, but
the solid substance of a reliable knowledge, must grasp Him, and esteem
the words of His mouth and the deeds of His life more than their
necessary food.

He meets this woman's conceptions as He had met those of Nicodemus. To
him He had unveiled Himself as the Son of God, and the Son of Man who
came down from heaven, and is in heaven, and ascends to heaven. To the
woman He reveals Himself as the Messiah, who will tell us all truth,
and to both as the Giver of the gift which shall communicate and
sustain and refresh the better life. But I cannot help dwelling for a
moment upon the remarkable, beautiful, and significant designation
which our Lord employs here. 'I that speak unto thee.' The word in the
original, translated by our version 'speak,' is even more sweet,
because more familiar, and conveys the idea of unrestrained frank
intercourse. Perhaps we might render 'I who am talking with Thee!' and
that our Lord desired to emphasise to the woman's heart the notion of
His familiar intercourse with her, Messiah though He were, seems to me
confirmed by the fact that He uses the same expression, with additional
grace and tenderness about it, when He says, with such depth of
meaning, to the blind man whom He had healed, 'Thou hast both seen
Him,' with the eyes to which He gave sight and object of sight, 'and it
is He that _talketh_ with thee.' The familiar Christ who will come and
speak to us face to face and heart to heart, 'as a man speaketh with
his friend,' is the Christ who will tell us all things, and whom we may
wholly trust.

Note too how this revelation has for its condition the docile
acceptance of the earlier and imperfect teachings. If the woman had not
yielded herself to our Lord's earlier words, and, though with very dim
insight, yet with a heart that sought to be taught, followed Him as He
stepped from round to round of the ascending ladder, she had never
stood on the top and seen this great vision. If you see nothing more in
Jesus Christ than a man like yourself, compassed with our infirmities,
and yet sweet and gracious and good and pure, be true to what you know,
and put it into practice, and be ready to accept all the light that
dawns. They that begin down at the bottom with hearing 'Give me to
drink,' may stand at the top, and hear Him speak to them His unveiled
truth and His full glory. 'To him that hath shall be given.' 'If any
man wills to do His will he shall know of the teaching.'

III. Lastly, we have here the universal Christ.

The woman wondered that, being a Jew, He spoke to her. As I have said,
our Lord's first utterance is simply the expression of a real physical
necessity. But it is none the less what the woman felt it to be, a
strange overleaping of barriers that towered very high. A Samaritan, a
woman, a sinner, is the recipient of the first clear confession from
Jesus Christ of His Messiahship and dignity. She was right in her
instinct that something lay behind His sweeping aside of the barriers
and coming so close to her with His request. These two, the prejudices
of race and the contempt for woman, two of the crying evils of the old
world, were overpassed by our Lord as if He never saw them. They were
too high for men's puny limbs; they made no obstacle to the march of
His divine compassion. And therein lies a symbol, if you like, but none
the less a prophecy that will be fulfilled, of the universal adaptation
and destination of the Gospel, and its independence of all distinctions
of race and sex, condition, moral character. In Jesus Christ 'there is
neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, neither bond nor free'; ye 'are
all one in Christ.' If He had been but a Jew, it was wonderful that He
should talk to a Samaritan. But there is nothing in the character and
life of Christ, as recorded in Scripture, more remarkable and more
plain than the entire absence of any racial peculiarities, or of
characteristics owing to His position in space or time. So unlike His
nation was He that the very _elite_ of His nation snarled at Him and
said, 'Thou art a Samaritan!' So unlike them was He that one feels that
a character so palpitatingly human to its core, and so impossible to
explain from its surroundings, is inexplicable, but on the New
Testament theory that He is not a Jew, or man only, but the Son of Man,
the divine embodiment of the ideal of humanity, whose dwelling was on
earth, but His origin and home in the bosom of God. Therefore Jesus
Christ is the world's Christ, your Christ, my Christ, every man's
Christ, the Tree of Life that stands in the midst of the garden, that
all men may draw near to it and gather of its fruit.

Brother, answer His proffer of the gift as this woman did: 'Sir, give
me this water, that I thirst not; neither go all the way to the world's
broken cisterns to draw'; and He will put into your hearts that
indwelling fountain of life, so that you may say like this woman's
townspeople: 'Now I have heard Him myself, and know that this is indeed
the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'




THE GIFT AND THE GIVER


'Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and
who it is that saith unto thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have
asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.'—JOHN iv. 10.

This Gospel has two characteristics seldom found together: deep thought
and vivid character-drawing. Nothing can be more clear-cut and dramatic
than the scene in the chapter before us. There is not a word of
description of this Samaritan woman. She paints herself, and it is not
a beautiful picture. She is apparently of the peasant class, from a
little village nestling on the hill above the plain, come down in the
broiling sunshine to Jacob's well. She is of mature age, and has had a
not altogether reputable past. She is frivolous, ready to talk with
strangers, with a tongue quick to turn grave things into jests; and yet
she possesses, hidden beneath masses of unclean vanities, a conscience
and a yearning for something better than she has, which Christ's words
awoke, and which was finally so enkindled as to make her fit to receive
the full declaration of His Messiahship, which Pharisees and priests
could not be trusted with.

I need scarcely do more than remind you of the way in which the
conversation between this strangely assorted pair began. The solitary
Jew, sitting spent with travel on the well, asks for a draught of
water; not in order to get an opening for preaching, but because He
needs it. She replies with an exclamation of light wonder, half a jest
and half a sarcasm, and challenging a response in the same tone.

But Christ lifts her to a higher level by the words of my text, which
awed levity, and prepared for a fuller revelation. 'Thou dost wonder
that I, being a Jew, ask drink of thee, a Samaritan. If thou knewest
who I am, thy wonder at My asking would be more. If thou knewest what I
have to give, we should change places, and thou wouldest ask, and I
should bestow.'

So then, we have here gift, Giver, way of getting, and ignorance that
hinders asking. Let us look at these.

I. First, the gift of God. Now it is quite clear that our Lord means
the same thing, whatever it may be, by the two expressions, the 'gift
of God' and the 'living water.' For, unless He does, the whole sequence
of my text falls to pieces. 'Living water' was suggested, no doubt, by
the circumstances of the moment. There, in the well, was an
ever-springing source, and, says He, a like supply, ever welling up for
thirsty lips and foul hands, ever sweet and ever sufficient, God is
ready to give.

We may remember how, all through Scripture, we hear the tinkle of these
waters as they run. The force of the expression is to be gathered
largely from the Old Testament and the uses of the metaphor there. It
has been supposed that by the 'living water' which God gives is here
meant some one specific gift, such as that of the Holy Spirit, which
sometimes is expressed by the metaphor. Rather I should be disposed to
say the 'living water' is eternal life. 'With Thee is the fountain of
life.' And so, in the last resort, the gift of God is God Himself.
Nothing else will suffice for us, brethren. We need Him, and we need
none but Him.

Our Lord, in the subsequent part of this conversation, again touches
upon this great metaphor, and suggests one or two characteristics,
blessings, and excellences of it. 'It shall be _in_ him,' it is
something that we may carry about with us in our hearts, inseparable
from our being, free from all possibility of being filched away by
violence, being rent from us by sorrows, or even being parted from us
by death. What a man has outside of him he only seems to have. Our only
real possessions are those which have passed into the substance of our
souls. All else we shall leave behind. The only good is inward good;
and this water of life slakes our thirst because it flows into the
deepest place of our being, and abides there for ever.

Oh! you that are seeking your satisfaction from fountains that remain
outside of you after all your efforts, learn that all of them, by
reason of their externality, will sooner or later be 'broken cisterns
that can hold no water.' And I beseech you, if you want rest for your
souls and stilling for their yearnings, look for it there, where only
it can be found, in Him, who not only dwells in the heavens to rule and
to shower down blessings, but enters into the waiting heart and abides
there, the inward, and therefore the only real, possession and riches.
'It shall be in him a fountain of water.'

It is 'springing up'—with an immortal energy, with ever fresh fulness,
by its own inherent power, needing no pumps nor machinery, but ever
welling forth its refreshment, an emblem of the joyous energy and
continual freshness of vitality, which is granted to those who carry
God in their hearts, and therefore can never be depressed beyond
measure, nor ever feel that the burden of life is too heavy to bear, or
its sorrows too sharp to endure.

It springs up 'into eternal life,' for water must seek its source, and
rise to the level of its origin, and this fountain within a man, that
reaches up ever towards the eternal life from which it came, and which
it gives to its possessor, will bear him up, as some strong spring will
lift the clods that choked its mouth, will bear him up towards the
eternal life which is native to it, and therefore native to him.

Brethren, no man is so poor, so low, so narrow in capacity, so limited
in heart and head, but that he needs a whole God to make him restful.
Nothing else will. To seek for satisfaction elsewhere is like sailors
who in their desperation, when the water-tanks are empty, slake their
thirst with the treacherous blue that washes cruelly along the battered
sides of their ship. A moment's alleviation is followed by the
recurrence, in tenfold intensity, of the pangs of thirst, and by
madness, and death. Do not drink the salt water that flashes and rolls
by your side when you can have recourse to the fountain of life that is
with God.

'Oh!' you say, 'commonplace, threadbare pulpit rhetoric.' Yes! Do you
live as if it were true? It will never be too threadbare to be dinned
into your head until it has passed into your lives and regulated them.

II. Now, in the next place, notice the Giver.

Jesus Christ blends in one sentence, startling in its boldness, the
gift of God, and Himself as the Bestower. This Man, exhausted for want
of a draught of water, speaks with parched lips a claim most singularly
in contrast with the request which He had just made: 'I will give thee
the living water.' No wonder that the woman was bewildered, and could
only say, 'The well is deep, and Thou hast nothing to draw with.' She
might have said, 'Why then dost Thou ask me?' The words were meant to
create astonishment, in order that the astonishment might awaken
interest, which would lead to the capacity for further illumination.
Suppose you had been there, had seen the Man whom she saw, had heard
the two things that she heard, and knew no more about Him than she
knew, what would _you_ have thought of Him and His words? Perhaps you
would have been more contemptuous than she was. See to it that, since
you know so much that explains and warrants them, you do not treat them
worse than she did.

Jesus Christ claims to give God's gifts. He is able to give to that
poor, frivolous, impure-hearted and impure-lifed woman, at her request,
the eternal life which shall still all the thirst of her soul, that had
often in the past been satiated and disgusted, but had never been
satisfied by any of its draughts.

And He claims that in this giving He is something more than a channel,
because, says He, 'If thou hadst asked of Me I would give thee.' We
sometimes think of the relation between God and Christ as being
typified by that of some land-locked sea amidst remote mountains, and
the affluent that brings its sparkling treasures to the thirsting
valley. But Jesus Christ is no mere vehicle for the conveyance of a
divine gift, but His own heart, His own power, His own love are in it;
and it is His gift just as much as it is God's.

Now I do not do more than pause for one moment to ask you to think of
what inference is necessarily involved in such a claim as this. If we
know anything about Jesus Christ at all, we know that He spoke in this
tone, not occasionally, but habitually. It will not do to pick out
other bits of His character or actions and admire these and ignore the
characteristic of His teachings—His claims for Himself. And I have only
this one word to say, if Jesus Christ ever said anything the least like
the words of my text, and if they were not true, what was He but a
fanatic who had lost His head in the fancy of His inspiration? And if
He said these words and they _were_ true, what is He then? What but
that which this Gospel insists from its beginning to its end that He
was—the Eternal Word of God, by whom all divine revelation from the
beginning has been made, and who at last 'became flesh' that we might
'receive of His fulness,' and therein 'be filled with all the fulness
of God.' Other alternative I, for my part, see none.

But I would have you notice, too, the connection between these human
needs of the Saviour and His power to give the divine gift. Why did He
not simply say to this woman, 'If thou knewest who I am?' Why did He
use this periphrasis of my text, 'Who it is that saith unto thee, "Give
Me to drink"'? Why but because He wanted to fix her attention on the
startling contradiction between His appearance and His claims—on the
one hand asserting divine prerogative, on the other forcing into
prominence human weakness and necessity, because these two things, the
human weakness and the divine prerogative, are inseparably braided
together and intertwined. Some of you will remember the great scene in
Shakespeare where the weakness of Caesar is urged as a reason for
rejecting his imperial authority:—

  'Ay! and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans
  Mark him, and write his speeches in their books,
  Alas! it cried, "Give me some drink, …
  Like a sick girl."'

And the inference that is drawn is, how can he be fit to be a ruler of
men? But we listen to our Caesar and Emperor, when He asks this woman
for water, and when He says on the Cross, 'I thirst,' and we feel that
these are not the least of His titles to be crowned with many crowns.
They bring Him nearer to us, and they are the means by which His love
reaches its end, of bestowing upon us all, if we will have it, the cup
of salvation. Unless He had said the one of these two things, He never
could have said the other. Unless the dry lips had petitioned, 'Give Me
to drink,' the gracious lips could never have said, 'I will give thee
living water.' Unless, like Jacob of old, this Shepherd could say, 'In
the day the drought consumed Me,' it would have been impossible that
the flock 'shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst any more, …
for the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to
living fountains of water.'

III. Again, notice how to get the gift.

Christ puts together, as if they were all but contemporaneous, 'thou
wouldst have asked of Me,' and 'I would have given thee.' The hand on
the telegraph transmits the message, and back, swift as the lightning,
flashes the response. The condition, the only condition, and the
indispensable condition, of possessing that water of life—the summary
expression for all the gifts of God in Jesus Christ, which at the last
are essentially God Himself—is the desire to possess it turned to Jesus
Christ. Is it not strange that men should not desire; is it not strange
and sad that such foolish creatures are we that we do not want what we
need; that our wishes and needs are often diametrically opposite? All
men desire happiness, but some of us have so vitiated our tastes and
our palates by fiery intoxicants that the water of life seems
dreadfully tasteless and unstimulating, and so we will rather go back
again to the delusive, poisoned drinks than glue our lips to the river
of God's pleasures.

But it is not enough that there should be the desire. It must be turned
to Him. In fact the asking of my text, so far as you and I are
concerned, is but another way of speaking the great keyword of personal
religion, faith in Jesus Christ. For they who ask, know their
necessity, are convinced of the power of Him to whom they appeal to
grant their requests, and rely upon His love to do so. And these three
things, the sense of need, the conviction of Christ's ability to save
and to satisfy, and of His infinite love that desires to make us
blessed—these three things fused together make the faith which receives
the gift of God.

Remember, brethren, that another of the scriptural expressions for the
act of trusting in Him, is _taking_, not asking. You do not need to
ask, as if for something that is not provided. What we all need to do
is to open our eyes to see what is there. If we like to put out our
hands and take it. Why should we be saying, 'Give me to drink,' when a
pierced hand reaches out to us the cup of salvation, and says, 'Drink
ye all of it'? 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come … and drink …
without money and without price.'

There is no other condition but desire turned to Christ, and that is
the necessary condition. God cannot give men salvation, as veterinary
surgeons drench unwilling horses—forcing the medicine down their
throats through clenched teeth. There must be the opened mouth, and
wherever there is, there will be the full supply. 'Ask, and ye shall
receive'; take, and ye shall possess.

IV. Lastly, mark the ignorance that prevents asking.

Jesus Christ looked at this poor woman and discerned in her, though, as
I said, it was hidden beneath mountains of folly and sin, a thirsty
soul that was dimly longing for something better. And He believed that,
if once the mystery of His being and the mercy of God's gifts were
displayed before her, she would melt into a yearning of desire that is
certain to be fulfilled. In some measure the same thing is true of us
all. For surely, surely, if only you saw realities, and things as they
are, some of you would not be content to continue as you are—without
this water of life. Blind, blind, blind, are the men who grope at
noon-day as in the dark and turn away from Jesus. If you knew, not with
the head only, but with the whole nature, if you knew the thirst of
your soul, the sweetness of the water, the readiness of the Giver, and
the dry and parched land to which you condemn yourselves by your
refusal, surely you would bethink yourself and fall at His feet and
ask, and get, the water of life.

But, brethren, there is a worse case than ignorance; there is the case
of people that know and refuse, not by reason of imperfect knowledge,
but by reason of averted will. And I beseech you to ponder whether that
may not be your condition. 'Whosoever _will_, let him come.' 'Ye _will_
not come unto Me that ye might have life.' I do not think I venture
much when I say that I am sure there are people hearing me now, not
Christians, who are as certain, deep down in their hearts, that the
only rest of the soul is in God, and the only way to get it is through
Christ, as any saint of God's ever was. But the knowledge does not
touch their will because they like the poison and they do not want the
life.

Oh! dear friends, the instantaneousness of Christ's answer, and the
certainty of it, are as true for each of us as they were for this
woman. The offer is made to us all, just as it was to her. We can
gather round that Rock like the Israelites in the wilderness, and slake
every thirst of our souls from its outgushing streams. Jesus Christ
says to each of us, as He did to her, tenderly, warningly, invitingly,
and yet rebukingly, 'If thou knewest … thou wouldst ask, … and I would
give.'

Take care lest, by continual neglect, you force Him at last to change
His words, and to lament over you, as He did over the city that He
loved so well, and yet destroyed. 'If thou _hadst_ known in thy day the
things that belong to thy peace. But now they are hid from thine eyes.'




THE SPRINGING FOUNTAIN


'The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water,
springing up into everlasting life.'—JOHN iv. 14.

There are two kinds of wells, one a simple reservoir, another
containing the waters of a spring. It is the latter kind which is
spoken about here, as is clear not only from the meaning of the word in
the Greek, but also from the description of it as 'springing up.' That
suggests at once the activity of a fountain. A fountain is the emblem
of motion, not of rest. Its motion is derived from itself, not imparted
to it from without. Its 'silvery column' rises ever heavenward, though
gravitation is too strong for it, and drags it back again.

So Christ promises to this ignorant, sinful Samaritan woman that if she
chose He would plant in her soul a gift which would thus well up, by
its own inherent energy, and fill her spirit with music, and
refreshment, and satisfaction.

What is that gift? The answer may be put in various ways which really
all come to one. It is Himself, the unspeakable Gift, His own greatest
gift; or it is the Spirit 'which they that believe on Him should
receive,' and whereby He comes and dwells in men's hearts; or it is the
resulting life, kindred with the life bestowed, a consequence of the
indwelling Christ and the present Spirit.

And so the promise is that they who believe in Him and rest upon His
love shall receive into their spirits a new life principle which shall
rise in their hearts like a fountain, 'springing up into everlasting
life.'

I think we shall best get the whole depth and magnitude of this great
promise if, throwing aside all mere artificial order, we simply take
the words as they stand here in the text, and think, first, of Christ's
gift as a fountain within; then as a fountain springing, leaping up, by
its own power; and then as a fountain 'springing into everlasting
life.'

I. First, Christ's gift is represented here as a fountain within.

Most men draw their supplies from without; they are rich, happy,
strong, only when externals minister to them strength, happiness,
riches. For the most of us, what we have is that which determines our
felicity.

Take the lowest type of life, for instance, the men of whom the
majority, alas! I suppose, in every time is composed, who live
altogether on the low plane of the world, and for the world alone,
whether their worldliness take the form of sensuous appetite, or of
desire to acquire wealth and outward possessions. The thirst of the
body is the type of the experience of all such people. It is satisfied
and slaked for a moment, and then back comes the tyrannous appetite
again. And, alas! the things that you drink to satisfy the thirst of
your souls are too often like a publican's adulterated beer, which has
got salt in it, and chemicals, and all sorts of things to stir up,
instead of slaking and quenching, the thirst. So 'he that loveth silver
shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with
increase.' The appetite grows by what it feeds on, and a little lust
yielded to to-day is a bigger one to-morrow, and half a glass to-day
grows to a bottle in a twelvemonth. As the old classical saying has it,
he 'who begins by carrying a calf, before long is able to carry an ox';
so the thirst in the soul needs and drinks down a constantly increasing
draught.

And even if we rise up into a higher region and look at the experience
of the men who have in some measure learned that 'a man's life
consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth,' nor
in the abundance of the gratification that his animal nature gets, but
that there must be an inward spring of satisfaction, if there is to be
any satisfaction at all; if we take men who live for thought, and
truth, and mental culture, and yield themselves up to the enthusiasm
for some great cause, and are proud of saying, 'My mind to me a kingdom
is,' though they present a far higher style of life than the former,
yet even that higher type of man has so many of his roots in the
external world that he is at the mercy of chances and changes, and he,
too, has deep in his heart a thirst that nothing, no truth, no wisdom,
no culture, nothing that addresses itself to one part of his nature,
though it be the noblest and the loftiest, can ever satisfy and slake.

I am sure I have some such people in my audience, and to them this
message comes. You may have, if you will, in your own hearts, a
springing fountain of delight and of blessedness which will secure that
no unsatisfied desires shall ever torment you. Christ in His fulness,
His Spirit, the life that flows from both and is planted within our
hearts, these are offered to us all; and if we have them we carry
inclosed within ourselves all that is essential to our felicity; and we
can say, 'I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be
self-satisfying,' not with the proud, stoical independence of a man who
does not want either God or man to make him blessed, but with the
humble independence of a man who can say 'my sufficiency is of God.'

No independence of externals is possible, nor wholesome if it were
possible, except that which comes from absolute dependence on Jesus
Christ.

If you have Christ in your heart then life is possible, peace is
possible, joy is possible, under all circumstances and in all places.
Everything which the soul can desire, it possesses. You will be like
the garrison of a beleaguered castle, in the courtyard of which is a
sparkling spring, fed from some source high up in the mountains, and
finding its way in there by underground channels which no besiegers can
ever touch. Sorrows will come, and make you sad, but though there may
be much darkness round about you, there will be light in the darkness.
The trees may be bare and leafless, but the sap has gone down to the
roots. The world may be all wintry and white with snow, but there will
be a bright little fire burning on your own hearthstone. You will carry
within yourselves all the essentials to blessedness. If you have
'Christ in the vessel' you can smile at the storm. They that drink from
earth's fountains 'shall thirst again'; but they who have Christ in
their hearts will have a fountain within which will not freeze in the
bitterest cold, nor fail in the fiercest heat. 'The water that I shall
give him shall be in him a fountain.'

II. Christ's gift is a springing fountain.

The emblem, of course, suggests motion by its own inherent impulse.
Water may be stagnant, or it may yield to the force of gravity and
slide down a descending river-bed, or it may be pumped up and lifted by
external force applied to it, or it may roll as it does in the sea,
drawn by the moon, driven by the winds, borne along by currents that
owe their origin to outward heat or cold. But a fountain rises by an
energy implanted within itself, and is the very emblem of joyous, free,
self-dependent and self-regulated activity.

And so, says Christ, 'The water that I shall give him shall be in him a
springing fountain'; it shall not lie there stagnant, but leap like a
living thing, up into the sunshine, and flash there, turned into
diamonds, when the bright rays smile upon it.

So here is the promise of two things: the promise of activity, and of
an activity which is its own law.

The promise of activity. There seems small blessing, in this overworked
world, in a promise of more active exertion; but what an immense part
of our nature lies dormant and torpid if we are not Christians! How
much of the work that is done is dreary, wearisome, collar-work,
against the grain. Do not the wheels of life often go slowly? Are you
not often weary of the inexpressible monotony and fatigue? And do you
not go to your work sometimes, though with a fierce feeling of
'need-to-do-it,' yet also with inward repugnance? And are there not
great parts of your nature that have never woke into activity at all,
and are ill at ease, because there is no field of action provided for
them? The mind is like millstones; if you do not put the wheat into
them to grind, they will grind each other's faces. So some of us are
fretting ourselves to pieces, or are sick of a vague disease, and are
morbid and miserable because the highest and noblest parts of our
nature have never been brought into exercise. Surely this promise of
Christ's should come as a true Gospel to such, offering, as it does, if
we will trust ourselves to Him, a springing fountain of activity in our
hearts that shall fill our whole being with joyous energy, and make it
a delight to live and to work. It will bring to us new powers, new
motives; it will set all the wheels of life going at double speed. We
shall be quickened by the presence of that mighty power, even as a dim
taper is brightened and flames up when plunged into a jar of oxygen.
And life will be delightsome in its hardest toil, when it is toil for
the sake of, and by the indwelling strength of, that great Lord and
Master of our work.

And there is not only a promise of activity here, but of activity which
is its own law and impulse. That is a blessed promise in two ways. In
the first place, law will be changed into delight. We shall not be
driven by a commandment standing over us with whip and lash, or coming
behind us with spur and goad, but that which we ought to do we shall
rejoice to do; and inclination and duty will coincide in all our lives
when our life is Christ's life in us.

That should be a blessing to some of you who have been fighting against
evil and trying to do right with more or less success, more or less
interruptedly and at intervals, and have felt the effort to be a burden
and a wearisomeness. Here is a promise of emancipation from all that
constraint and yoke of bondage which duty discerned and unloved ever
lays upon a man's shoulders. When we carry within us the gift of a life
drawn from Jesus Christ, and are able to say like Him, 'Lo, I come to
do Thy will, and Thy law is within my heart,' only then shall we have
peace and joy in our lives. 'The law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and death.'

And then, in the second place, that same thought of an activity which
is its own impulse and its own law, suggests another aspect of this
blessedness, namely, that it sets us free from the tyranny of external
circumstances which absolutely shape the lives of so many of us. The
lives of all must be to a large extent moulded by these, but they need
not, and should not be completely determined by them. It is a miserable
thing to see men and women driven before the wind like thistledown.
Circumstances must influence us, but they may either influence us to
base compliance and passive reception of their stamp, or to brave
resistance and sturdy nonconformity to their solicitations. So used,
they will influence us to a firmer possession of the good which is most
opposite to them, and we shall be the more unlike our surroundings, the
more they abound in evil. You can make your choice whether, if I may so
say, you shall be like balloons that are at the mercy of the gale and
can only shape their course according as it comes upon them and blows
them along, or like steamers that have an inward power that enables
them to keep their course from whatever point the wind blows, or like
some sharply built sailing-ship that, with a strong hand at the helm,
and canvas rightly set, can sail almost in the teeth of the wind and
compel it to bear her along in all but the opposite direction to that
in which it would carry her if she lay like a log on the water.

I beseech you all, and especially you young people, not to let the
world take and shape you, like a bit of soft clay put into a
brick-mould, but to lay a masterful hand upon it, and compel it to help
you, by God's grace, to be nobler, and truer, and purer.

It is a shame for men to live the lives that so many amongst us live,
as completely at the mercy of externals to determine the direction of
their lives as the long weeds in a stream that yield to the flow of the
current. It is of no use to preach high and brave maxims, telling men
to assert their lordship over externals, unless we can tell them how to
find the inward power that will enable them to do so. But we can preach
such noble exhortations to some purpose when we can point to the great
gift which Christ is ready to give, and exhort them to open their
hearts to receive that indwelling power which shall make them free from
the dominion of these tyrant circumstances and emancipate them into the
'liberty of the sons of God.' 'The water that I shall give him shall be
in him a leaping fountain.'

III. The last point here is that Christ's gift is a fountain 'springing
up into everlasting life.'

The water of a fountain rises by its own impulse, but howsoever its
silver column may climb it always falls back into its marble basin. But
this fountain rises higher, and at each successive jet higher, tending
towards, and finally touching, its goal, which is at the same time its
course. The water seeks its own level, and the fountain climbs until it
reaches Him from whom it comes, and the eternal life in which He lives.
We might put that thought in two ways. First, the gift is eternal in
its duration. The water with which the world quenches its thirst
perishes. All supplies and resources dry up like winter torrents in
summer heat. All created good is but for a time. As for some, it
perishes in the use; as for other, it evaporates and passes away, or is
'as water spilt upon the ground which cannot be gathered up'; as for
all, we have to leave it behind when we go hence. But this gift springs
into everlasting life, and when we go it goes with us. The Christian
character is identical in both worlds, and however the forms and
details of pursuits may vary, the essential principle remains one. So
that the life of a Christian man on earth and his life in heaven are
but one stream, as it were, which may, indeed, like some of those
American rivers, run for a time through a deep, dark canyon, or in an
underground passage, but comes out at the further end into broader,
brighter plains and summer lands; where it flows with a quieter current
and with the sunshine reflected on its untroubled surface, into the
calm ocean. He has one gift and one life for earth and heaven—Christ
and His Spirit, and the life that is consequent upon both.

And then the other side of this great thought is that the gift tends
to, is directed towards, or aims at and reaches, everlasting life. The
whole of the Christian experience on earth is a prophecy and an
anticipation of heaven. The whole of the Christian experience of earth
evidently aims towards that as its goal, and is interpreted by that as
its end. What a contrast that is to the low and transient aims which so
many of us have! The lives of many men go creeping along the surface
when they might spring heavenwards. My friend! which is it to be with
you? Is your life to be like one of those Northern Asiatic rivers that
loses itself in the sands, or that flows into, or is sluggishly lost
in, a bog; or is it going to tumble over a great precipice, and fall
sounding away down into the blackness; or is it going to leap up 'into
everlasting life'? Which of the two aims is the wiser, is the nobler,
is the better?

And a life that thus springs will reach what it springs towards. A
fountain rises and falls, for the law of gravity takes it down; this
fountain rises and reaches, for the law of pressure takes it up, and
the water rises to the level of its source. Christ's gift mocks no man,
it sets in motion no hopes that it does not fulfil; it stimulates to no
work that it does not crown with success. If you desire a life that
reaches its goal, a life in which all your desires are satisfied, a
life that is full of joyous energy, that of a free man emancipated from
circumstances and from the tyranny of unwelcome law, and victorious
over externals, open your hearts to the gift that Christ offers you;
the gift of Himself, of His death and passion, of His sacrifice and
atonement, of His indwelling and sanctifying Spirit.

He offered all the fulness of that grace to this Samaritan woman, in
her ignorance, in her profligacy, in her flippancy. He offers it to
you. His offer awoke an echo in her heart, will it kindle any response
in yours? Oh! when He says to you, 'The water that I shall give will be
in you a fountain springing into everlasting life,' I pray you to
answer as she did—'Sir!—Lord—give me this water, that I thirst not;
neither come to earth's broken cisterns to draw.'




THE SECOND MIRACLE


'This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when He was come out
of Judaea into Galilee.'—JOHN iv. 54.

The Evangelist evidently intends us to connect together the two
miracles in Cana. His object may, possibly, be mainly chronological,
and to mark the epochs in our Lord's ministry. But we cannot fail to
see how remarkably these two miracles are contrasted. The one takes
place at a wedding, a homely scene of rural festivity and gladness. But
life has deeper things in it than gladness, and a Saviour who preferred
the house of feasting to the house of mourning would be no Saviour for
us. The second miracle, then, turns to the darker side of human
experience. The happiest home has its saddened hours; the truest
marriage joy has associated with it many a care and many an anxiety.
Therefore, He who began by breathing blessing over wedded joy goes on
to answer the piteous pleading of parental anxiety. It was fitting that
the first miracle should deal with gladness, for that is God's purpose
for His creatures, and that the second should deal with sicknesses and
sorrows, which are additions to that purpose made needful by sin.

Again, the first miracle was wrought without intercession, as the
outcome of Christ's own determination that His hour for working it was
come. The second miracle was drawn from Him by the imperfect faith and
the agonising pleading of the father.

But the great peculiarity of this second miracle in Cana is that it is
moulded throughout so as to develop and perfect a weak faith. Notice
how there are three words in the narrative, each of which indicates a
stage in the history. 'Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not
_believe_.' … 'The man _believed_ the word that Jesus had spoken unto
him, and he went his way.' … 'Himself _believed_ and his whole house.'

We have here, then, Christ manifested as the Discerner, the Rebuker,
the Answerer, and therefore the Strengthener, of a very insufficient
and ignorant faith. It is a lovely example of the truth of that ancient
prophecy, 'He will not quench the smoking flax.' So these three stages,
as it seems to me, are the three points to observe. We have, first of
all, Christ lamenting over an imperfect faith. Then we have Him
testing, and so strengthening, a growing faith. And then we have the
absent Christ rewarding and crowning a tested faith. I think if we look
at these three stages in the story we shall get the main points which
the Evangelist intends us to observe.

I. First, then, we have here our Lord lamenting over an ignorant and
sensuous faith.

At first sight His words, in response to the hurried, eager appeal of
the father, seem to be strangely unfeeling, far away from the matter in
hand. Think of how breathlessly, feeling that not an instant is to be
lost, the poor man casts himself at the Master's feet, and pleads that
his boy is 'at the point of death.' And just think how, like a dash of
cold water upon this hot impatience, must have come these strange words
that seem to overleap his case altogether, and to be gazing beyond
him—'Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe.' 'What has
that to do with me and my dying boy, and my impatient agony of
petition?' 'It has everything to do with you.'

It is the revelation, first of all, of Christ's singular calmness and
majestic leisure, which befitted Him who needed not to hurry, because
He was conscious of absolute power. As when the pleading message was
sent to Him: 'He whom Thou lovest is sick, He abode still two days in
the same place where He was'; because He loved Lazarus and Martha and
Mary; and just as when Jairus is hurrying Him to the bed where his
child lies dead, He pauses on the way to attend to the petition of
another sufferer; so, in like calmness of majestic leisure, He here
puts aside the apparently pressing and urgent necessity in order to
deal with a far deeper, more pressing one.

For in the words there is not only a revelation of our Lord's majestic
leisure, but there is also an indication of what He thought of most
importance in His dealing with men. It was worthy of His care to heal
the boy; it was far more needful that He should train and lead the
father to faith. The one can wait much better than the other.

And there is in the words, too, something like a sigh of profound
sorrow. Christ is not so much rebuking as lamenting. It is His own
pained heart that speaks; He sees in the man before Him more than the
man's words indicated; reading his heart with that divine omniscience
which pierces beyond the surface, and beholding in him the very same
evil which affected all his countrymen. So He speaks to him as one of a
class, and thus somewhat softens the rebuke even while the answer to
the nobleman's petition seems thereby to become still less direct, and
His own sorrowful gaze at the wide-reaching spirit of blindness seems
thereby to become more absorbed and less conscious of the individual
sufferer kneeling at His feet.

Christ had just come from Samaria, the scorn of the Jews, and there He
had found people who needed no miracles, whose conception of the
Messiah was not that of a mere wonder-worker, but of one who will 'tell
us all things,' and who believed on Him not because of the portents
which He wrought, but because they heard Him themselves, and His words
touched their consciences and stirred strange longings in their hearts.
On the other hand, this Evangelist has carefully pointed out in the
preceding chapters how such recognition as Christ had thus far received
'in His own country' had been entirely owing to His miracles, and had
been therefore regarded by Christ Himself as quite unreliable (chap.
ii. 23-25), while even Nicodemus, the Pharisee, had seen no better
reason for regarding Him as a divinely sent Teacher than 'these
miracles that Thou doest.' And now here He is no sooner across the
border again than the same spirit meets Him. He hears it even in the
pleading, tearful tones of the father's voice, and that so clearly that
it is for a moment more prominent even to His pity than the agony and
the prayer. And over that Christ sorrows. Why? Because, to their own
impoverishing, the nobleman and his fellows were blind to all the
beauty of His character. The graciousness of His nature was nothing to
them. They had no eyes for His tenderness and no ears for His wisdom;
but if some vulgar sign had been wrought before them, then they would
have run after Him with their worthless faith. And that struck a
painful chord in Christ's heart when He thought of how all the
lavishing of His love, all the grace and truth which shone radiant and
lambent in His life, fell upon blind eyes, incapable of beholding His
beauty; and of how the manifest revelation of a Godlike character had
no power to do what could be done by a mere outward wonder.

This is not to disparage the 'miraculous evidence.' It is only to put
in its proper place the spirit, which was blind to the self-attesting
glory of His character, which beheld it and did not recognise it as
'the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father.'

That very same blindness to the divine which is in Jesus Christ,
because material things alone occupy the heart and appeal to the mind,
is still the disease of humanity. It still drives a knife into the
loving heart of the pitying and helpful Christ. The special form which
it takes in such a story as this before us is long since gone. The
sense-bound people of this generation do not ask for signs. Miracles
are rather a hindrance than a help to the reception of Christianity in
many quarters. People are more willing to admire, after a fashion, the
beauty of Christ's character, and the exalted purity of His teaching
(meaning thereby, generally, the parts of it which are not exclusively
His), than to accept His miracles. So far round has the turn in the
wheel gone in these days.

But although the form is entirely different the spirit still remains.
Are there not plenty of us to whom sense is the only certitude? We
think that the only knowledge is the knowledge that comes to us from
that which we can see and touch and handle, and the inferences that we
may draw from these; and to many all that world of thought and beauty,
all those divine manifestations of tenderness and grace, are but mist
and cloudland. Intellectually, though in a somewhat modified sense,
this generation has to take the rebuke: 'Except ye see, ye will not
believe.'

And practically do not the great mass of men regard the material world
as all-important, and work done or progress achieved there as alone
deserving the name of 'work' or 'progress,' while all the glories of a
loving Christ are dim and unreal to their sense-bound eyes? Is it not
true to-day, as it was in the old time, that if a man would come among
you, and bring you material good, that would be the prophet for you?
True wisdom, beauty, elevating thoughts, divine revelations; all these
go over your heads. But when a man comes and multiplies loaves, then
you say, 'This is of a truth the prophet that should come into the
world.' 'Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.'

And on the other side, is it not sadly true about those of us who have
the purest and the loftiest faith, that we feel often as if it was very
hard, almost impossible, to keep firm our grasp of One who never is
manifested to our sense? Do we not often feel, 'O that I could for
once, for once only, hear a voice that would speak to my outward ear,
or see some movement of a divine hand'? The loftiest faith still leans
towards, and has an hankering after, some external and visible
manifestation, and we need to subject ourselves to the illuminating
rebuke of the Master who says, 'Except ye see signs and wonders, ye
will not believe,' and, therefore, your faith that craves the support
of some outward thing, and often painfully feels that it is feeble
without it, is as yet but very imperfect and rudimentary.

II. And so we have here, as the next stage of the narrative, our Lord
testing, and thus strengthening, a growing faith.

The nobleman's answer to our Lord's strange words sounds, at first
sight, as if these had passed over him, producing no effect at all.
'Sir, come down ere my child die'; it is almost as if he had said, 'Do
not talk to me about these things at present. Come and heal my boy.
That is what I want; and we will speak of other matters some other
time.' But it is not exactly that. Clearly enough, at all events, he
did not read in Christ's words a reluctance to yield to his request,
still less a refusal of it. Clearly he did not misunderstand the sad
rebuke which they conveyed, else he would not have ventured to
reiterate his petition. He does not pretend to anything more than he
has, he does not seek to disclaim the condemnation that Christ brings
against him, nor to assume that he has a loftier degree or a purer kind
of faith than he possesses. He holds fast by so much of Christ's
character as he can apprehend; and that is the beginning of all
progress. What he knows he knows. He has sore need; that is something.
He has come to the Helper; that is more. He is only groping after Him,
but he will not say a word beyond what he knows and feels; and,
therefore, there is something in him to work upon; and faith is already
beginning to bud and blossom. And so his prayer is his best answer to
Christ's word: 'Sir, come down ere my child die.'

Ah! dear brethren, any true man who has ever truly gone to Christ with
a sense even of some outward and temporal need, and has ever really
prayed at all, has often to pass through this experience, that the
first result of his agonising cry shall be only the revelation to him
of the unworthiness and imperfection of his own faith, and that there
shall seem to be strange delay in the coming of the blessing so longed
for. And the true attitude for a man to take when there is unveiled
before him, in his consciousness, in answer to his cry for help, the
startling revelation of his own unworthiness and imperfection—the true
answer to such dealing is simply to reiterate the cry. And then the
Master bends to the petition, and because He sees that the second
prayer has in it less of sensuousness than the first, and that some
little germ of a higher faith is beginning to open, He yields, and yet
He does not yield. 'Sir, come down ere my child die.' Jesus saith unto
him, 'Go thy way, thy son liveth.'

Why did He not go with the suppliant? Why, in the act of granting, does
He refuse? For the suppliant's sake. The whole force and beauty of the
story come out yet more vividly if we take the contrast between it and
the other narrative, which presents some points of similarity with
it—that of the healing of the centurion's servant at Capernaum. There
the centurion prays that Christ would but speak, and Christ says, 'I
will come.' There the centurion does not feel that His presence is
necessary, but that His word is enough. Here the nobleman says 'Come,'
because it has never entered his mind that Christ can do anything
unless He stands like a doctor by the boy's bed. And he says, too,
'Come, _ere my child die_,' because it has never entered his mind that
Christ can do anything if his boy has once passed the dark threshold.

And because his faith is thus feeble, Christ refuses its request,
because He knows that so to refuse is to strengthen. Asked but to
'speak' by a strong faith, He rewards it by more than it prays, and
offers to 'come.' Asked to 'come' by a weak faith, He rewards it by
less, which yet is more, than it had requested; and refuses to come,
that He may heal at a distance; and thus manifests still more
wondrously His power and His grace.

His gentle and wise treatment is telling; and he who was so sense-bound
that 'unless he saw signs and wonders he would not believe,' turns and
goes away, bearing the blessing, as he trusts, in his hands, while yet
there is no sign whatever that he has received it.

Think of what a change had passed upon that man in the few moments of
his contact with Christ. When he ran to His feet, all hot and
breathless and impatient, with his eager plea, he sought only for the
deliverance of his boy, and sought it at the moment, and cared for
nothing else. When he goes away from Him, a little while afterwards, he
has risen to this height, that he believes the bare word, and turns his
back upon the Healer, and sets his face to Capernaum in the confidence
that he possesses the unseen gift. So has his faith grown.

And that is what you and I have to do. We have Christ's bare word, and
no more, to trust to for everything. We must be content to go out of
the presence-chamber of the King with only His promise, and to cleave
to that. A feeble faith requires the support of something sensuous and
visible, as some poor trailing plant needs a prop round which it may
twist its tendrils. A stronger faith strides away from the Master,
happy and peaceful in its assured possession of a blessing for which it
has nothing to rely upon but a simple bare word. That is the faith that
we have to exercise. Christ has spoken. That was enough for this man,
who from the babyhood of Christian experience sprang at once to its
maturity. Is it enough for you? Are you content to say, 'Thy word, Thy
naked word, is all that I need, for Thou hast spoken, and Thou wilt do
it'?

'Go thy way; thy son liveth.' What a test! Suppose the father had not
gone his way, would his son have lived? No! The son's life and the
father's reception from Christ of what he asked were suspended upon
that one moment. Will he trust Him, or will he not? Will he linger, or
will he depart? He departs, and in the act of trusting he gets the
blessing, and his boy is saved.

And look how the narrative hints to us of the perfect confidence of the
father now. Cana was only a few miles from Capernaum. The road from the
little city upon the hill down to where the waters of the lake flashed
in the sunshine by the quays of Capernaum was only a matter of a few
hours; but it was the next day, and well on into the next day, before
he met the servants that came to him with the news of his boy's
recovery. So sure was he that his petition was answered that he did not
hurry to return home, but leisurely and quietly went onwards the next
day to his child. Think of the difference between the breathless rush
up to Cana, and the quiet return from it. 'He that believeth shall not
make haste.'

III. And so, lastly, we have here the absent Christ crowning and
rewarding the faith which has been tested.

We have the picture of the father's return. The servants meet him.
Their message, which they deliver before he has time to speak, is
singularly a verbal repetition of the promise of the Master, 'Thy son
liveth.' His faith, though it be strong, has not yet reached to the
whole height of the blessing, for he inquires 'at what hour he began to
_amend_,' expecting some slow and gradual recovery; and he is told
'that at the seventh hour,' the hour when the Master spoke, 'the fever
left him,' and all at once and completely was he cured. So, more than
his faith had expected is given to him; and Christ, when he lays His
hand upon a man, does His work thoroughly, though not always at once.

Why was the miracle wrought in that strange fashion? Why did our Lord
fling out His power as from a distance rather than go and stand at the
boy's bedside? We have already seen the reason in the peculiar
condition of the father's mind; but now notice what it was that he had
learned by such a method of healing, not only the fact of Christ's
healing power, but also the fact that the bare utterance of His will,
whether He were present or absent, had power. And so a loftier
conception of Christ would begin to dawn on him.

And for us that working of Christ at a distance is prophetic. It
represents to us His action to-day. Still He answers our cries that He
would come down to our help by sending forth from the city on the
hills, the city of the wedding feast, His healing power to descend upon
the sick-beds and the sorrows and the sins that afflict the villages
beneath. 'He sendeth forth His commandment upon earth, His word runneth
very swiftly.'

This new experience enlarged and confirmed the man's faith. The second
stage to which he had been led by Christ's treatment was simply belief
in our Lord's specific promise, an immense advance on his first
position of belief which needed sight as its basis.

But he had not yet come to the full belief of, and reliance upon, that
Healer recognised as Messiah. But the experience which he now has had,
though it be an experience based upon miracle, is the parent of a faith
which is not merely the child of wonder, nor the result of beholding an
outward sign. And so we read:—'So the father knew that it was at the
same hour in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth. And himself
believed and his whole house.'

A partial faith brings experience which confirms and enlarges faith;
and they who dimly apprehend Him, and yet humbly love Him, and
imperfectly trust Him, will receive into their bosoms such large gifts
of His love and gracious Spirit that their faith will be strengthened,
and they will grow into the full stature of peaceful confidence.

The way to increase faith is to exercise faith. And the true parent of
perfect faith is the experience of the blessings that come from the
crudest, rudest, narrowest, blindest, feeblest faith that a man can
exercise. Trust Him as you can, do not be afraid of inadequate
conceptions, or of a feeble grasp. Trust Him as you can, and He will
give you so much more than you expected that you will trust Him more,
and be able to say: 'Now I believe, because I have heard Him myself,
and know that this is the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'




THE THIRD MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL


'Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.'—JOHN v.8

This third of the miracles recorded in John's Gospel finds a place
there, as it would appear, for two reasons: first, because it marks the
beginning of the angry unbelief on the part of the Jewish rulers, the
development of which it is one part of the purpose of this Gospel to
trace; second, because it is the occasion for that great utterance of
our Lord about His Sonship and His divine working as the Father also
works, which occupies the whole of the rest of the chapter, and is the
foundation of much which follows in the Gospel. It is for these
reasons, and not for the mere sake of adding another story of a
miraculous cure to the many which the other Evangelists have given us,
that John narrates for us this history.

If, then, we consider the reason for the introduction of the miracle
into the Gospel, we may be saved from the necessity of dwelling, except
very lightly, upon some of the preliminary details which preceded the
actual cure. It does not matter much to us for our present purpose
which Feast it was on which Jesus went up to Jerusalem, nor whether the
pool was by the sheep-market or by the sheep-gate, nor whereabouts in
Jerusalem Bethesda might happen to be. It may be of importance for us
to notice that the mention of the angel who appears in the fourth verse
is not a part of the original narrative. The true text only tells us of
an intermittent pool which possessed, or was supposed to possess,
curative energy; and round which the kindness of some forgotten
benefactor had built five rude porches. There lay a crowd of wasted
forms, and pale, sorrowful faces, with all varieties of pain and
emaciation and impotence marked upon them, who yet were gathered in
Bethesda, which being interpreted means 'a house of mercy.' It is the
type of a world full of men suffering various sicknesses, but all sick;
the type of a world that gathers with an eagerness, not far removed
from despair, round anything that seems to promise, however vaguely, to
help and to heal; the type of a world, blessed be God, which, amidst
all its sad variety of woe and weariness, yet sits in the porches of 'a
house of mercy,' and has in the midst a 'fountain opened for sin and
for uncleanness,' whose energy is as mighty for the last comer of all
the generations as for the first that stepped into its cleansing flood.

This poor man, sick and impotent for eight and thirty years—many of
which he had spent, as it would appear, day by day, wearily dragging
his paralysed limbs to the fountain with daily diminishing hope—this
poor man attracts the regard of Christ when He enters, and He puts to
him the strange question, 'Wilt thou be made whole?' Surely there was
no need to ask that; but no doubt the many disappointments and the long
years of waiting and of suffering had stamped apathy upon the
sufferer's face, and Christ saw that the first thing that was needed,
in order that His healing power might have a point of contact in the
man's nature, was to kindle some little flicker of hope in him once
more.

And so, no doubt, with a smile on His face, which converted the
question into an offer, He says: 'Wilt thou be made whole?' meaning
thereby to say, 'I will heal thee if thou wilt.' And there comes the
weary answer, as if the man had said: 'Will I be made whole? What have
I been lying here all these years for? I have nobody to put me into the
pool.'

Yes, it is a hopeful prospect to hold out to a man whose disease is
inability to walk, that if he will walk to the water he will get cured,
and be able to walk afterwards. Why, he could not even roll himself
into the pond, and so there he had lain, a type of the hopeless efforts
at self-healing which we sick men put forth, a type of the tantalising
gospels which the world preaches to its subjects when it says to a
paralysed man: 'Walk that you may be healed; keep the commandments that
you may enter into life.'

And so we have come at last to the main point of the narrative before
us, and I fix upon these words, the actual words in which the cure was
conveyed, as communicating to us some very important lessons and
thoughts about Christ and our relation to Him.

I. First, I see in them Christ manifesting Himself as the Giver of
power to the powerless who trust Him.

His words may seem at first hearing to partake of the very same almost
cruel irony as the condition of cure which had already proved
hopelessly impracticable. He, too, says, 'Walk that you may be cured';
and He says it to a paralysed and impotent man. But the two things are
very different, for before this cripple could attempt to drag his
impotent limbs into an upright position, and take up the little light
couch and sling it over his shoulders, he must have had some kind of
trust in the person that told him to do so. A very ignorant trust, no
doubt, it was; but all that was set before him about Jesus Christ he
grasped and rested upon. He only knew Him as a Healer, and he trusted
Him as such. The contents of a man's faith have nothing to do with the
reality of his faith; and he that, having only had the healing power of
Christ revealed to him, lays hold of that Healer, cleaves to Him with
as genuine a faith as the man who has the whole fulness and sublimity
of Christ's divine and human character and redeeming work laid out
before him, and who cleaves to these. The hand that grasps is one,
whatsoever be the thing that it grasps.

So it is no spiritualising of this story, or reading into it a deeper
and more religious meaning than belongs to it, to say that what passed
in that man's heart and mind before he caught up his little bed and
walked away with it, was essentially the same action of mind and heart
by which a sinful man, who knows that Christ is his Redeemer, grasps
His Cross and trusts his soul to Him. In the one case, as in the other,
there is confidence in the person; only in the one case the person was
only known as a Healer, and in the other the person is known as a
Saviour. But the faith is the same whatever it apprehends.

Christ comes and says to him, 'Rise, take up thy bed and walk.' There
is a movement of confidence in the man's heart; he tries to obey, and
in the act of obedience the power comes to him.

Ah, brother! it is always so. All Christ's commandments are gifts. When
He says to you, 'Do this!' He pledges Himself to give you power to do
it. Whatsoever He enjoins He strengthens for. He binds Himself, by His
commandments, and every word of His lips which says to us 'Thou shalt!'
contains as its kernel a word of His which says 'I will.' So when He
commands, He bestows; and we get the power to keep His commandments
when in humble faith we make the effort to do His will. It is only when
we try to obey for the love's sake of Him that has healed us that we
are able to obey. And be sure of this, whensoever we attempt to do what
we know to be the Master's will, because He has given Himself for us,
our power will be equal to our desire, and enough for our duty. As St.
Augustine says: 'Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou
wilt.'

'Rise, take up thy bed and walk,' or as in another case, 'Stretch forth
thy hand.' 'And he stretched it forth, and his hand was restored whole
as the other.' Christ gives power to keep His commandments to the
impotent who try to obey, because they have been healed by Him.

II. In the next place, we have in this miracle our Lord set forth as
the absolute Master, because He is the Healer.

The Pharisees and their friends had no eyes for the miracle; but if
they found a man carrying his light couch on the Sabbath day, that was
a thing that excited their interest, and must be seen to immediately.

And so, paying no attention to the fact that it was a paralysed man who
was doing this, with the true narrow instinct of the formalist, they
lay hold only of the fact of the broken Rabbinical restrictions, and
try to stop him with these. 'It is the Sabbath day! It is not lawful
for thee to carry thy bed.'

And they get an answer which goes a great deal deeper than the speaker
knew, and puts the whole subject of Christian obedience on its right
footing. 'He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto
me, Take up thy bed and walk.' As if he had said: 'He gave me the
power, had He not a right to tell me what to do with it? It was His
gift that I could lift my bed; was I not bound to walk when and where
He that had made me able to walk at all chose to bid me?'

And if you generalise that it just comes to this: the only person that
has a right to command you is the Christ who saves you. He has the
absolute authority to do as He will with your restored spiritual
powers, because He has bestowed them all upon you. His dominion is
built upon His benefits. He is the King because He is the Saviour. He
rules because He has redeemed. He begins with giving, and it is only
afterwards that He commands; and He turns to each of us with that smile
upon His lips, and with tenderness in His voice which will bind any
man, who is not an ingrate, to Him for ever. 'If ye love Me, keep My
commandments.'

There is always something hard and distasteful to the individual will
in the tone of authority assumed by any man whatsoever. We always more
or less rebel and shrink from that; and there is only one thing that
makes commandment sweet, and that is when it drops like honey from the
honeycomb, from lips that we love. So does it in the case of Christ's
commands to us. It is joy to know and to do the will of One to whom the
whole heart turns with gratitude and affection. And Christ blesses and
privileges us by the communication to us of His pleasure concerning us,
that we may have the gladness of yielding to His desires, and so
meeting the love which commands with the happy love which obeys. 'He
that made me whole, the same said unto me…' and what He says it must be
joy to do.

So, 'My yoke is easy and My burden is light,' not because Christ
diminishes the requirements of law; not because the standard of
Christian obedience is lowered beneath any other standard of conduct
and character. It is far higher. The things which make Christian duty
are often very painful in themselves. There is always self-sacrifice in
Christian virtue, and self-sacrifice has always a sting in it; but the
'yoke is easy and the burden is light,' because, if I may so say, the
yoke is padded with the softest velvet of love, and lies upon our necks
lightly because He has laid it there. All the rigid harshness of
precept is done away when the precept comes from Christ's lips, and His
commandment 'makes the crooked things straight and the rough places
plain'; and turns duty, distasteful duty, into joyful service. The
blessed basis of Christian obedience, and of Christ's authority, is
Christ's redemption.

III. And then, still further, we have here our Lord setting Himself
forth as the divine Son, whose working needs and knows no rest.

We find, in the subsequent part of the chapter, that 'the Jews,' as
they are called, by which is meant the antagonistic portion of the
nation, sought to slay Christ 'because He had done these things on the
Sabbath day.' But Jesus answered them, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and
I work.' Unquestionably the form which the healing took was intended by
our Lord to bring into prominence the very point which these pedantic
casuists laid hold of. He meant to draw attention to His sweeping aside
of the Rabbinical casuistries of the law of the Sabbath. And He meant
to do it in order that He might have the occasion of making this mighty
claim, which is lodged in these solemn and profound words, to possess a
Sonship, which, like the divine working, wrought, needing and knowing
no repose.

'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' The rest, which the old story
in Genesis attributed to the Creator after the Creation, was not to be
construed as if it meant the rest of inactivity; but it was the rest of
continuous action. God's rest and God's work are one. Throughout all
the ages preservation is a continuous creation. The divine energy is
streaming out for evermore, as the bush that burns unconsumed, as the
sun that flames undiminished for ever, pouring out from the depth of
that divine nature, and for ever sustaining a universe. So that there
is no Sabbath, in the sense of a cessation from action, proper to the
divine nature; because all His action is repose, and 'e'en in His very
motion there is rest.' And this divine coincidence of activity and of
repose belongs to the divine Son in His divine-human nature. With that
arrogance which is the very audacity of blasphemy, if it be not the
simplicity of a divine consciousness, He puts His own work side by side
with the Father's work, as the same in principle, the same in method,
the same in purpose, the same in its majestic coincidence of repose and
of energy.

'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore for Me, as for Him,
there is no need of a Sabbath of repose.' Human activity is dissipated
by toil, human energy is exhausted by expenditure. Man works and is
weary; man works and is distracted. For the recovery of the serenity of
his spirit, and for the renewal of his physical strength, repose of
body and gathering in of mind, such as the Sabbath brought, were
needed; but neither is needed for Him who toils unwearied in the
heavens; and neither is needed for the divine nature of Him who labours
in labours parallel with the Father's here upon the earth.

Now remember that this is no abolition of the Sabbatic rest for
Christ's followers. Rather the ground on which He here asserts His
superiority over, and His non-dependence upon, such a repose shows, or
at all events implies, that all mere human workers need such rest, and
should thankfully accept it. But it is a claim on His part to a divine
equality. It is a claim on His part to do works which are other than
human works. It is a claim on His part to be the Lord of a divine
institution, living above the need of it, and able to mould it at His
will.

And so it opens up depths, into which we cannot go now, of the
relations of that divine Father and that divine Son; and makes us feel
that the little incident in which He turned to a paralysed man and
said: 'Rise, take up thy bed and walk,' on the Sabbath day, like some
small floating leaf of sea-weed upon the surface, has great deep
tendrils that go down and down into the very abyss of things, and lays
hold upon that central truth of Christianity, the divinity of the Son
of God, who is One with the ever-working Father.

IV. Lastly, we have in this incident yet another lesson. We have the
Healer who is also the Judge, warning the healed of the possibilities
of a relapse.

'Jesus findeth him in the Temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art
made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.' The man's
eight-and-thirty years of illness had apparently been brought on by
dissipation. It was a sin of flesh, avenged in the flesh, that had
given him that miserable life. One would have thought he had got
warning enough, but we all know the old proverb about what happened
when the devil was ill, and what befell his resolutions when he got
better. And so Christ comes to him again with this solemn warning:
'There is a worse thing than eight-and-thirty years of paralysis. You
fell once, and sore was your punishment. If you fall twice, your
punishment will be sorer.' Why? Because the first one had done him no
good. So here are lessons for us. There is always danger that we shall
fall back into old sins, even if we think we have overcome them. The
mystic influence of habit, enfeebled will, the familiar temptation, the
imagination rebelling, the memory tempting, sometimes even, as in the
case of a man that has been a drunkard, the physical effect of the
odour of his temptation upon his nostrils—all these things make it
extremely unlikely that a man who has once been under the condemnation
of any evil shall never be tempted to fall under its sway again.

And such a fall is not only more criminal than the former, it is more
deadly than the former. 'It were better for them not to have known the
way of righteousness, than after they have known it to turn aside.'
'The last state of that man is worse than the first.'

My brother, there is no blacker condemnation; and if I may use a strong
word, there is no hotter hell, than that which belongs to an apostate
Christian. 'It has happened unto them according to the true proverb.
The dog is turned to his vomit again.' Very unpolite, a very coarse
metaphor? Yes; to express a far worse reality.

Christian men and women! you have been made whole. 'Sin no more, lest a
worse thing come unto you.' And turn to that Lord and say, 'Hold Thou
me up and I shall be saved.' Then the enemies will not be able to
recapture you, and the chains which have dropped from your wrists will
never enclose them any more.




THE LIFE-GIVER AND JUDGE


'But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. 18.
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only had
broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making
Himself equal with God. 19. 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. 20. For the Father loveth the Son, and
sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth: and He will shew Him greater
works than these, that ye may marvel. 21. For as the Father raiseth up
the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.
22. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto
the Son: 23. 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. 24. 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 passed from death
unto life. 25. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and
now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they
that hear shall live. 26. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so
hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; 27. And hath given
Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of
Man.'—JOHN v. 17-27.

'The Jews' were up in arms because Jesus had delivered a man from
thirty-eight years of misery. They had no human sympathies for the
sufferer, whom hope deferred had made sick and hopeless, but they
shuddered at the breach of the Sabbath. 'Sacrifice' was more important
in their view than 'mercy.' They did not acknowledge that the miracle
proved Christ's Messiahship, but they were quite sure that doing it on
the Sabbath proved His wickedness. How formalism twists men's judgments
of the relative magnitude of form and spirit!

Jesus' vindication of His action roused them still farther, for He put
it on a ground which seemed to them nothing short of blasphemy: 'My
Father worketh even until now, and I work.' They fastened on one point
in that great saying, namely, that it claimed Sonship in a special
sense, and vindicated His right to disregard the Sabbath law on that
ground. God's rest is not inaction. 'Preservation is a continual
creation.' All being subsists because God is ever working. The Son
co-operates with the Father, and for Him, as for the Father, the
Sabbath law does not apply. The charge of breaking the Sabbath fades
into insignificance before the sin, in the objectors' eyes, of making
such claims. Therefore our Lord proceeds to expand and justify them.

He makes, first, a general statement in verses 19 and 20, in which He
sets forth the relation involved in the very idea of Fatherhood and
Sonship. He, as perfect Son of God, is perfectly one with the Father in
will and act, and so knit to Him in sympathy that a self-originated
action is impossible, not by reason of defect of power, but by reason
of unity of being. That perfect unity is expressed negatively ('can do
nothing') and then positively ('doeth likewise'). But it is not
manifest in actions alone, but has its deep roots in the perfect love
which flows ever from each to each, and in the Father's perfect
communication to the Son, and the Son's perfect reception from the
Father. Jesus claimed to stand in such a relation to the Father that He
was able to do whatsoever the Father did, and 'in like manner' as the
Father did it; that He was the unique object of the Father's love, and
capable of receiving complete communications as to 'all things that
Himself doeth'; that He lived in such complete unity with the Father
that His every act was the result of it, and that no trace of self-will
had ever tinged His perfect spirit. What man has ever made such claims
and not been treated as insane? He makes them, and likewise says that
He is 'lowly of heart'; and the world listens, if not believing, at any
rate reverent, as in the presence of the best man that ever lived.
Strange goodness, to claim such divine prerogatives, unless the claim
is valid!

It is expanded in verses 21-23 into two great classes of works, which
Jesus says that He does. Both are distinctively divine works. To give
life and to judge the world are equally beyond human power; they are
equally His actions. These are the 'greater works' which He foretells
in verse 20, and they are greater than the miracle of healing which had
originated the whole conversation. To give life at first, and to give
it again to the dead, and not only to revivify, but to raise them, are
plainly competent to no power short of the divine; and here Jesus
calmly claims them.

That tremendous claim is here made in the widest sense, including both
the corporeally and the spiritually dead, who are afterwards treated of
separately. The Son is the fountain of life in all the aspects of that
wide-reaching word; and He 'quickeneth whom He will,' as He had
spontaneously healed the impotent man. Does that assertion contradict
the other, just before it, that He does nothing of Himself? No; for His
will, while His, is ever harmonious with the Father's, just as His
love, which is ever coincident with the Father's. Does that assertion
imply His arbitrary pleasure, or make man's will a cipher? No; for His
will is guided by righteous love, and wills to quicken those who comply
with His conditions. But the assertion does declare that His will to
quicken is omnipotent, and that His voice can pierce 'the dull, cold
ear of death,' and bring back the soul to the empty house of this
tabernacle, or rouse the spirit 'dead in trespasses.'

The other divine prerogative of judging is inseparable from that of
revivifying, and in regard to it Christ's claim is still higher, for He
says that it is wholly vested in Him as Son. The idea of judgment here,
like that of quickening, with which it is associated, is to be taken in
its more general sense ('_all_ judgment'), and therefore as including
both the present judgment, for which Jesus said that He was come into
the world, and which men pass on themselves by the very fact of their
attitude to Him and His Gospel, and also the future final judgment,
which manifests character and determines destiny. Both these has the
Father given into the hands of the Son.

The purpose, so far as men are concerned, of the Son's investiture,
with these solemn prerogatives, is that He may receive universal divine
honour. A narrower purpose was stated in verse 20, where the persons
seeing His works are only His then audience, and the effect sought to
be produced is merely 'marvel.' But wonder is meant to lead on to
recognition of the meaning of His power, and of the mystery of His
person, and that, again, to rendering to Him precisely the same honour
as is due to the Father. No more unmistakable demand for worship, no
more emphatic assertion of divinity, can be made than lie in these
words. To worship Christ does not intercept the honour due to God; to
worship the Son is to worship the Father; and no man honours the Father
who sent Him who does not honour the Son whom He has sent.

In verses 24-27 the two related prerogatives are presented in their
spiritual aspect, while in the later verses of the chapter the
resurrection and quickening of the literally dead are dealt with. Mark
the significant new term introduced in verse 24, 'He that believeth.'
That spiritual resurrection from the death of sin and self is wrought
on 'whom He will,' but He wills that it shall be wrought on them who
believe. Similarly, in verse 25, it is 'they that hear' who 'shall
live.' It must be so, for there is no other way by which life from Him,
who is the Life, can pass into and quicken us than by our opening our
hearts by faith for its inflow. The mysteries of the Son's divinity and
of His imparted life are deep, but the condition of receiving that life
is plain. If we will trust Jesus, we shall live; if not, we are dead.
Trusting Him is trusting the Father that sent Him, and that Father
becomes accessible to our trust when we 'hear' Christ's 'word.'

The effects of faith are immediate, and the poor present may be
enriched and clothed in celestial light for each of us, if we will. For
Jesus does not point first to the mysteries of the resurrection of the
dead, and the tremendous solemnities of the final judgment, but to what
we may each enter upon at any moment. The believing man '_hath_ eternal
life,' and 'cometh not into judgment.' That life is not reserved to be
entered on in the blessed future, but is a present possession. True, it
will blossom into unexampled nobleness when it is transported into its
native country, like some exotic in our colder climates if it were
carried back to the tropics. But it is a present possession, and heaven
is not different in kind from the Christian life on earth, but differs
mainly in degree and in circumstances. And he that has the life here
and now is, by its moulding of his outward life, preserved from the
sins which would bring him into judgment, and the merciful judgment to
which he is still subject is that for which his truest self longs. And
that blessed condition carries in it the pledge that, at the last great
day, which is to others a 'day of wrath, a dreadful day,' he whom
Christ has quickened by His own indwelling life shall have 'boldness
before Him.'

Obviously, in these verses the present effects of faith are in view,
since Jesus emphatically declares that the 'hour now is' when they can
be realised. Once more He states in the strongest terms, and as the
reason for the assurance that faith secures to us life, His possession
of the two divine prerogatives of quickening and judging. What a
paradox it is to say that it is '_given_' to Him to have 'life in
_Himself_'! And when was that gift given? In the depths of eternity.

He 'sits on no precarious throne, nor borrows leave to be,' and hence
He can impart life and lose none. Inseparably connected with that
given, and yet self-inherent, life, is the capacity for executing
judgment which belongs to Him as 'a Son of man.' It has been as 'the
Son' of the Father that it has been considered, in the previous verses,
as belonging to Him; but now it is as a true man that He is fitted to
bear, and actually is clothed with, that judicial power. No doubt He is
Judge of all, because by His incarnation and earthly life He presents
to all the offer of eternal life, by their attitude to which offer men
are judged. But the connection of thought seems rather to be that
Christ's Manhood, inextricably intertwined with His divinity, is
equally needed with the latter to constitute Him our Judge. He 'knoweth
our frame,' from the inside, as it were, and the participation in our
nature which fits Him to 'be a merciful and faithful High Priest' also
fits Him to be the Judge of mankind.




THE FOURTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL


'And Jesus took the loaves; and when He had given thanks, He
distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set
down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.'—JOHN vi. 11.

This narrative of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand is
introduced into John's Gospel with singular abruptness. We read in the
first verse of the chapter: 'After these things Jesus went over the Sea
of Galilee,' _i.e._ from the western to the eastern side. But the
Evangelist does not tell us how or when He got to the western side.
'These things,' which are recorded in the previous chapter, are the
healing of the impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda, the consequent
outburst of Jewish hostility, and the profound and solemn discourse of
our Lord, in which He claims filial relationship to the Father. So that
we must insert between the chapters a journey from Jerusalem to
Galilee, and a lapse at all events of some months—or, if the feast
referred to in the previous chapter be, as it may be, the Passover, an
interval of nearly a year. So little care for the mere framework of
events has this fourth Gospel; so entirely would the Evangelist have us
see that his reason for narrating this miracle is mainly its spiritual
lessons and the revelation which it makes of Christ as Himself the
Bread of Life.

Similarly, he has no care to tell us anything about the reasons for our
Lord's retirement with His disciples from Galilee to the eastern bank.
These we have to learn from the other Evangelists. They give us several
concurrent motives—the news of the death of John the Baptist; and of
the desire of the bloody tyrant to see Jesus, which foreboded evil;
also the return of the twelve Apostles from their trial journey, which
involved the necessity of rest for them; and, perhaps, the approach of
the Passover, which our Lord did not purpose to observe in Jerusalem
because of the Jewish hostility, and which, therefore, suggested the
withdrawal to temporary retirement.

All these reasons concurring, He and His disciples would seek for a
brief space of seclusion and repose. But the hope of securing such was
vain. The people followed in crowds so eagerly, so hastily, in such
enormous numbers, that no natural or ordinary provision for their wants
could be thought of. Hence the occasion for the miracle before us.

Now I think that this narrative, with which I wish to deal, falls
mainly into two portions, both of which suggest for us some important
lessons. There is, first, the preparations for the sign; and then there
is the sign itself. Let us look at these two points in succession.

I. First, then, the preparations for the sign.

Now it is to be observed that this is the only incident before our
Lord's last journey to Jerusalem which is recorded by all four
Evangelists; therefore the variations between the narratives are of
especial interest, and these variations are very considerable. We find,
for instance, that in John's account the question as to how the bread
was to be provided came from Christ; in the other Evangelists' accounts
that question is discussed first amongst the Apostles privately. We
find from John's narrative that the question was suggested even before
the multitudes had come to Jesus. We find in the Synoptic Gospels that
it arose at the close of a long day of teaching and of healing.

Now it is possible that this diversity of time may be the solution of
the diversity of the person proposing. That is to say, it is quite
legitimate to conclude that John's account takes up the incident at an
earlier period than the other Evangelists do, and that the full order
of events was this; that, privately, at the beginning of the day,
whilst the people were yet flocking to our Lord, He, to one of the
disciples alone, suggests the question, 'Whence shall we buy bread that
these may eat?' and that the answer, 'Two hundred pennyworth of bread
is not sufficient that every one of them may take a little,' explains
for us the suggestion of the same amount at a subsequent part of the
day, by the Apostles when they asked our Lord the question, 'Shall we
go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread that these may eat?'

Be that as it may, we may pause for a moment upon this question of our
Lord's, 'Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?'

Now notice what a lovely glimpse we get there into the quick-rising
sympathy of the Saviour with all forms of human necessity. He had gone
away to snatch a brief moment of rest. The rest is denied Him; the
hurrying crowds come pressing with their vulgar curiosity—for it was
nothing better—after Him. No movement of impatience passes across His
mind; no reluctance as He turns away from the vanishing prospect of a
quiet afternoon with His friends. He looks upon them, and the first
thought is a quick, instinctive movement of a divine and yet most human
sympathy. The question rises in His mind of how He was to provide for
them; they were not hungry yet; they had not thought where their bread
was to come from. But He cared for the careless, and His heart was
prophetic of their necessities, and quick to determine 'what He should
do' to supply them. So is it ever. Before we call, He answers. Thy
mercy, O loving Christ! needs no more than the sight of human
necessities, or even the anticipation of them, swiftly to bestir itself
for their satisfaction and their supply.

But, farther, He selects for the question Philip, a man who seems to
have been what is called—as if it were the highest praise—an 'intensely
practical person'; who seems to have had little faith in anything that
he could not get hold of by his senses, and who lived upon the low
level of 'common sense.' He always lays stress upon 'seeing.' His
answer to Nathanael when he said, 'Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth?' was, 'Come and see.' A very good answer, and yet one that
relies only on the external manifestation of Christ to the senses.
Then, on another occasion, he breaks in upon the lofty spiritualities
of our Lord's final discourse to His disciples, with the _malapropos_
request, 'Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.' And so here,
to the man who believed in his eyesight, and did not easily apprehend
much else, Jesus puts this question, 'Where is the bread to come from
for all these people? This He said to prove him.' He hoped that the
question might have shaped itself in the hearer's mind into a promise,
and that he might have been able to say in answer, 'Thou canst supply;
we need not buy.'

So Christ does still. He puts problems before us, too, to settle; takes
us, as it were, into His confidence with interrogations that try us,
whether we can rise above the level of the material and visible, or
whether all our conceptions of possibilities are bounded by these. And
sometimes, even though the question at first sight seems to evoke only
such a response as it did here, it works more deeply down below
afterwards, and we are helped by the very difficulty to rise to a clear
faith.

Philip's answer is very significant. 'Two hundred pennyworth of bread
are not sufficient.' He casts his eye over the multitude, he makes a
rough, rapid calculation, one does not exactly see the data on which it
was based; and he comes to the conclusion, 'Two hundred pennyworth' (in
our English money some L. 7 or L. 8 worth) would give them each a
morsel. And no doubt he thought himself very practical. He was a man of
figures; he believed in what could be put into tables and statistics.
Yes; and like a great many other people of his sort, he left out one
small element in his calculation, and that was Jesus Christ, and so his
answer went creeping along the low levels, dragging itself like a
half-wounded snake, when it might have risen on the wings of faith into
the empyrean, and soared and sung.

So learn that when we have to deal with Christ's working—and when have
we not to deal with Christ's working?—perhaps probabilities that can be
tabulated are not altogether the best bases upon which to rest our
calculations. Learn that the audacity of a faith that expects great
things, though there be nothing visible upon which to build, is wiser
and more prudent than the creeping common-sense that adheres to facts
which are shadows, and forgets that the chief fact is that we have an
Almighty Helper and Friend at our sides.

Still further, among these preliminaries, let us point to the
exhibition of the inadequate resources which Christ, according to the
fuller narrative in the other Evangelists, desired to know. 'There is a
little lad here with five barley loaves'—one per thousand—'and two
small fishes'—insufficient in quantity and very, very common in
quality, for barley bread was the food of the poorest. 'But what are
they among so many?' And Christ says, 'Bring them to Me.'

Christ's preparation for making our poor resources adequate for
anything is to drive home into our hearts the consciousness of their
insufficiency. We need, first of all, to be brought to this, 'All that
I have is this wretched little stock; and what is that measured against
the work that I have to do, and the claims upon me?' Only when we are
brought to that can His great power pour itself into us and fill us
with rejoicing and overcoming strength. The old mystics used to say,
and they said truly: 'You must be emptied of yourself before you can be
filled by God.' And the first thing for any man to learn, in
preparation for receiving a mightier power than his own into his
opening heart, is to know that all his own strength is utter and
absolute weakness. 'What are they among so many?' When we have once
gone right down into the depths of felt impotence, and when our work
has risen before us, as if it were far too great for our poor strengths
which are weaknesses, then we are brought, and only then, into the
position in which we may begin to hope that power equal to our desire
will be poured into our souls.

And so the last of the preparations that I will touch upon is that
majestic preparation for blessing by obedience. 'And Jesus said, Make
the men sit down.' And there they sat themselves, as Mark puts it in
his picturesque way, like so many garden plots—the rectangular oblongs
in a garden in which pot-herbs are grown—on the green grass, below the
blue sky, by the side of the quiet lake. Cannot you fancy how some of
them seated themselves with a scoff, and some with a quiet smile of
incredulity; and some half sheepishly and reluctantly; and some in mute
expectancy; and some in foolish wonder; and yet all of them with a
partial obedience? And says John in the true translation: 'So the men
sat down, therefore Jesus took the loaves.' Sit you down where He bids
you, and your mouths will not be long empty. Do the things He tells
you, and you will get the food that you need. Our business is to obey
and to wait, and His business is, when we are seated, to open His hand
and let the mercy drop. So much for the preparations for this great
miracle.

II. Now, in the next place, a word as to the sign itself.

I take two lessons, and two only, out of it. I see in it, first, a
revelation of Christ, as continually through all the ages sustaining
men's physical life. And I see in it, second, a symbol of Christ as
Himself the Bread of Life.

As to the first, there is here, I believe, a revelation of the law of
the universe, of Christ as being through all the ages the Sustainer of
the physical life of men. What was done then once, with the suppression
of certain links in the chain, is done always, with the introduction of
those links. The miraculous moment in the narrative is not described to
us. We do not know where or when there came in the supernatural power
which multiplied the loaves—probably as they passed from the hand of
the Master. But be that as it may, it was Christ's will that made the
provision which fed all these five thousand. And I believe that the
teaching of Scripture is in accordance with the deepest philosophy,
that the one cause of all physical phenomena is the will of a present
God; howsoever that may usually conform to the ordinary method of
working which people generalise and call laws. The reason why anything
is, and the reason why all things change, is the energy there and then
of the indwelling God who is in all His works, and who is the only Will
and Power in the physical world.

And I believe, further, that Scripture teaches us that that continuous
will, which is the cause of all phenomena and the underlying
subsistence on which all things repose, is all managed and mediated by
Him who from of old was named the Word; 'in whom was life, and without
whom was not anything made that was made.' Our Christ is Creator, our
Christ is Sustainer, our Christ moves the stars and feeds the sparrows.
He was 'before all things, and in Him all things consist.' He opens His
hand—and there is the print of a nail in it—and 'satisfies the desire
of every living thing.'

So learn how to think of second causes, and see in this story a
transient manifestation, in unusual form, of an eternal and permanent
fact. Jesus took the loaves and distributed to them that were set down.

And so, secondly, the miracle is a _sign_—a symbol of Him as the true
Bread and Food of the world. That is the explanation and commentary
which He Himself appends to it in the subsequent part of the chapter,
in the great discourse which is founded upon this miracle.

'I am the Bread of Life.' There is a triple statement by our Lord upon
this subject in the remaining portion of the chapter. He says, 'I am
the Bread of Life.' My personality is that which not only sustains life
when it is given, but gives life to them that feed upon it. But more
than that, 'the bread which I will give,' pointing to some future
'giving' beyond the present moment, and therefore something more than
His life and example, 'is My flesh, which'—in some as yet unexplained
way—'I give for the life of the world.' And that there may be no
misunderstanding, there is a third, deeper, more mysterious statement
still: 'My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.'
Repulsive and paradoxical, but in its very offensiveness and paradox,
proclaiming that it covers a mighty truth, and the truth, brother, is
this, the one Food that gives life to will, affections, conscience,
understanding, to the whole spirit of a man, is that great Sacrifice of
the Incarnate Lord who gave upon the Cross His flesh, and on the Cross
shed His blood, for the life of the world that was 'dead in trespasses
and sins.' Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us, and we feed on
the sacrifice. Let your conscience, your heart, your desires, your
anticipations, your understanding, your will, your whole being feed on
Him. He will be cleansing, He will be love, He will be fruition, He
will be hope, He will be truth, He will be righteousness, He will be
all. Feed upon Him by that faith which is the true eating of the true
Bread, and your souls shall live.

And notice finally here, the result of this miracle as transferred to
the region of symbol. 'They did all eat and were filled'; men, women,
children, both sexes, all ages, all classes, found the food that they
needed in the bread that came from Christ's hands. If any man wants
dainties that will tickle the palates of Epicureans, let him go
somewhere else. But if he wants bread, to keep the life in and to stay
his hunger, let him go to this Christ who is 'human nature's daily
food.'

The world has scoffed for nineteen centuries at the barley bread that
the Gospel provides; coarse by the side of its confectionery, but it is
enough to give life to all who eat it. It goes straight to the primal
necessities of human nature. It does not coddle a class, or pander to
unwholesome, diseased, or fastidious appetites. It is the food of the
world, and not of a section. All men can relish it, all men need it. It
is offered to them all.

And more than that; notice the inexhaustible abundance. 'They did all
eat, and were filled.' And then they took up—not 'of the fragments,' as
our Bible gives it, conveying the idea of the crumbs that littered the
grass after the repast was over, but of the 'broken pieces'—the
portions that came from Christ's hands—twelve baskets full, an
immensely greater quantity than they had to start with. 'The gift doth
stretch itself as 'tis received.' Other goods and other possessions
perish with the using, but this increases with use. The more one eats,
the more there is for him to eat. And all the world may live upon it
for ever, and there will be more at the end than there was at the
beginning.

Brethren, why do ye 'spend your money for that which is not bread'?
There is no answer worthy of a rational soul, no answer that will stand
either the light of conscience or the clearer light of the Day of
Judgment. I come to you now, and although my poor words may be but like
the barley bread and the two fishes—nothing amongst all this gathered
audience—I come with Christ in my hands, and I say to you, 'Eat, and
your souls shall live.' He will spread a table for you in the
wilderness, and take you to sit at last at His table in His Kingdom.




'FRAGMENTS' OR 'BROKEN PIECES'


'When they were filled, He said unto His disciples, Gather up the
fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.'—JOHN vi. 12.

The Revised Version correctly makes a very slight, but a very
significant change in the words of this verse. Instead of 'fragments'
it reads 'broken pieces.' The change seems very small, but the effect
of it is considerable. It helps our picture of the scene by correcting
a very common misapprehension as to what it was which the Apostles are
bid to gather up. The general notion, I suppose, is that the
'fragments' are the crumbs that fell from each man's hands, as he ate,
and the picture before the imagination of the ordinary reader is that
of the Apostles' carefully collecting the _debris_ of the meal from the
grass where it had dropped. But the true notion is that the 'broken
pieces which remain over' are the unused portions into which our Lord's
miracle-working hand had broken the bread, and the true picture is that
of the Apostles carefully putting away in store for future use the
abundant provision which their Lord had made, beyond the needs of the
hungry thousands. And that conception of the command teaches far more
beautiful and deeper lessons than the other.

For if the common translation and notion be correct, all that is taught
us, or at least what is principally taught us, is the duty of thrift
and careful economy; whereas the other shows more clearly that what is
taught us is that Jesus Christ always gets ready for His people
something over and above the exact limits of their bare need at the
moment, that He prepares for His poor and hungry dependants in royal
fashion, leaving ever a wide margin of difference between what would be
just enough to keep the life in them, and His liberal housekeeping.
Further, we are taught a lesson of wise husbandry and economy in the
use of that overplus of grace which Christ ministers, and are
instructed that the laws of prudent thrift have as honoured a place in
the management of spiritual as of temporal wealth. 'Gather up,' says
our Lord, 'the pieces which I broke, the large provision which I made
for possible wants. My gifts are in excess of the requirements of the
moment. Take care of them till you need them.' That is a worthier
interpretation of His command than one which merely sees in it an
exhortation to thrifty taking care of the crumbs that fell from the
lips of the hungry eaters.

Looking at this command, then, with this slight alteration of
rendering, and consequent widening of scope, we may briefly try to
gather up the lessons which it obviously suggests.

I. We have that thought, to which I have already referred, as more
strikingly brought out by the slight alteration of translation, which,
by the use of '_broken_ pieces,' suggests the connection with Christ's
_breaking_ the loaves and fishes. We are taught to think of the large
surplus in Christ's gifts over and above our need. Our Lord has Himself
given us a commentary upon this miracle. All Christ's miracles are
parables, for all teach us, on the level of natural and outward things,
lessons that are true in regard to the spiritual world; but this one is
especially symbolical, as indeed are all these recorded in John's
Gospel. And here we have Christ, on the day after the miracle,
commenting upon it in His long and profound discourse upon the Bread of
Life, which plainly intimates that He meant His office of feeding the
hungry crowds, with bread supernaturally increased by the touch of His
hand, to be but a picture and a guide which might lead to the
apprehension of the higher view of Himself as the 'bread of God which
came down from heaven,' feeding and 'giving life to the world' by His
broken body and shed blood.

So that we are not inventing a fanciful interpretation of an incident
not meant to have any meaning deeper than shows on the surface, when we
say that the abundance far beyond what the eaters could make use of at
the moment really represented the large surplus of inexhaustible
resources and unused grace which is treasured for us all in Christ
Jesus. Whom He feeds He feasts. His gifts answer our need, and
over-answer it, for He is 'able to do exceeding abundantly above that
which we ask or think,' and neither our conceptions, nor our petitions,
nor our present powers of receiving, are the real limits of the
illimitable grace that is laid up for us in Christ, and which,
potentially, we have each of us in our hands whenever we lay our hands
on Him.

Oh, dear friends! what you and I have ever had and felt of Christ's
power, sweetness, preciousness, and love is as nothing compared with
the infinite depths of all those which lie in Him. The sea fills the
little creeks along its shore, but it rolls in unfathomed depths,
boundless to the horizon away out there in the mid-Atlantic. And all
the present experience of all Christian people, of what Christ is, is
like the experience of the first settlers in some great undiscovered
continent; who timidly plant a little fringe of population round its
edge and grow their scanty crops there, whilst the great prairies of
miles and miles, with all their wealth and fertility, are lying
untrodden and unknown in the heart of the untraversed continent. The
most powerful telescope leaves nebulae unresolved, which, though they
seem but a dim dust of light, are all ablaze with mighty suns. The
'goodness' which He has 'wrought before the sons of men for them that
fear' Him is, as the Psalmist adoringly exclaims, wondrously 'great,'
but still greater is that which the same verse of the Psalm
celebrates—the goodness which He has 'laid up for them that fear Him.'
The gold which is actually coined and passing from hand to hand, is but
a fraction, a mere scale, as it were, off the surface of the great
uncoined mass of bullion that lies stored in the vaults there. Christ
is a great deal more than any man, or than all men, have yet found Him
to be. 'Gather up the broken pieces'; and see that nothing of that
infinite preciousness of His be lost by us.

II. Then there is another very simple lesson which I draw. This command
suggests for us Christ's thrift (if I may use the word) in the
employment of His miraculous power.

Surely they might have said: 'If thou canst multiply five loaves into
all this abundance, why should we be trudging about, each with a basket
on his back full of bread, when we have with us He whose word can make
it for us at any moment?' Yes, but a law which characterises all the
miraculous, in both the Old and the New Testament, and which broadly
distinguishes Christ's miracles from all the false miracles of false
religions is this, that the miraculous is pared down to the smallest
possible amount, that not one hairsbreadth beyond the necessity shall
be done by miracle; that whatever men can do they shall do; that their
work shall stop as late, and begin again as soon as possible. Thus,
though Christ was going to raise Lazarus, men's hands had to roll away
the stone; and when Christ had raised Lazarus, men's hands had to loose
the napkins from his face. And though Christ was able to say to the
daughter of Jairus, '_Talitha cumi!_' (damsel, arise!) His next word
was: 'Give her something to eat.' Where the miraculous was needed it
was used, and not a hairsbreadth beyond absolute necessity did it
extend.

And so here Christ multiplies the bread, and yet each of the Apostles
has to take a basket, probably some kind of woven wicker-work article
which they would carry for holding their little necessaries in their
peregrinations; each Apostle has to take his basket, and perhaps
emptying it of some of his humble apparel, to fill it with these bits
of bread; for Christ was not going to work miracles where men's thrift
and prudence could be employed.

Nor does He do so now. We live by faith, and our dependence on Him can
never be too absolute. Only laziness sometimes dresses itself in the
garb and speaks with the tongue of faith, and pretends to be truthful
when it is only slothful. 'Why criest thou unto Me?' said God to Moses,
'speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward.' True faith
sets us to work. It is not to be perverted into idle and false
depending upon Him to work for us, when by the use of our own ten
fingers and our own brains, guided and strengthened by His working in
us, we can do the work that is set before us.

III. Still further, there is another lesson here. Not only does the
injunction show us Christ's thrift in the employment of the
supernatural, but it teaches us our duty of thrift and care in the use
of the spiritual grace bestowed upon us.

These men had given to them this miraculously made bread; but they had
to exercise ordinary thrift in the preservation of the supernatural
gift. Christ has been given to you by the most stupendous miracle that
ever was or can be wrought, and if you are Christian people, you have
the Spirit of Christ given to you, to dwell in your hearts, to make you
wise and fair, gentle and strong, and altogether Christlike. But you
have to take care of these gifts. You have to exercise the common
virtues of economy and thrift in your use of the divine gifts as in
your use of the common things of daily life. You have to use wisely and
not waste the Bread of God that came down from heaven, or that Bread of
God will not feed you. You have to provide the basket in which to carry
the unexhausted residue of the divine gift, or you may stand hungry in
the very midst of plenty, and whilst within arm's length of you there
is bread enough and to spare to feed the whole world.

The lesson of my text, which is most eminently brought out if we adopt
the translation which I have referred to at the beginning of these
remarks, is, then, just this: Christian men, be watchful stewards of
that great gift of a living Christ, the food of your souls, that has
been by miracle bestowed upon you. Such gathering together for future
need of the unused residue of grace may be accomplished by three ways.
First, there must be a diligent use of the grace given. See that you
use to the very full, in the measure of your present power of absorbing
and your present need, the gift bestowed upon you. Be sure that you
take in as much of Christ as you can contain before you begin to think
of what to do with the overplus. If we are not careful to take what we
can, and to use what we need, of Christ, there is little chance of our
being faithful stewards of the surplus. The water in a mill-stream runs
over the trough in great abundance when the wheel is not working, and
one reason why so many Christians seem to have so much more given to
them in Christ than they need is because they are doing no work to use
up the gift.

A second essential to such stewardship is the careful guarding of the
grace given from whatever would injure it. Let not worldliness,
business, cares of the world, the sorrows of life, its joys, duties,
anxieties or pleasures—let not these so come into your hearts that they
will elbow Christ out of your hearts, and dull your appetite for the
true Bread that came down from heaven.

And lastly, not only by use and by careful guarding, but also by
earnest desire for larger gifts of the Christ who is large beyond all
measure, shall we receive more and more of His sweetness and His
preciousness into our hearts, and of His beauty and glory into our
transfigured characters. The basket that we carry, this recipient heart
of ours, is elastic. It can stretch to hold any amount that you like to
put into it. The desire for more of Christ's grace will stretch its
capacity, and as its capacity increases the inflowing gift greatens,
and a larger Christ fills the larger room of my poor heart.

So the lesson is taught us of our prudence in the care and use of the
grace bestowed on us, and we are bidden to cherish a happy confidence
in the inexhaustible resources of Christ, and the continual gift in the
future of even larger measures of grace, which are all ours already,
given to us at the first reception of Him into our hearts, and only
needing our faithfulness to be growingly ours in experience as they are
ours from the first in germ.

IV. Finally, a solemn warning is implied in this command, and its
reason 'that nothing be lost.'

Then there is a possibility of losing the gift that is freely given to
us. We may waste the bread, and so, sometime or other when we are
hungry, awake to the consciousness that it has dropped out of our slack
hands. The abundance of Christ's grace may, so far as you are profited
or enriched by it, be like the unclaimed millions of money which nobody
asks for and that is of use to no living soul. You may be paupers while
all God's riches in glory are at your disposal, and starving while
baskets full of bread broken for us by Christ lie unused at our sides.
Some of us have never tasted the sweetness or been fed by the
nutritiousness of that Bread of God which came down from heaven. And
more marvellous still, there may be some of us, who having come to
Christ hungry and been fed by Him, have ceased to care for the pure
nourishment and taste for the manna, and are turning again with gross
appetite to the husks in the swine's trough. Negligent Christians!
worldly Christians! you who care more for money and other dainties and
delights which perish with the using—backsliding Christians, who once
hungered and thirsted for more of Christ, and now have no longing for
Him—awake to the danger in which you stand of letting all your
spiritual wealth slip through your fingers; behold the treasures, yet
unreached, within your grasp, and seek to garner and realise them.
Gather up the broken pieces which remain over, lest everything be lost.




THE FIFTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL


'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. 20. But He said unto them, It is I; be not afraid.'—JOHN
vi. 19,20.

There are none of our Lord's parables recorded in this Gospel, but all
the miracles which it narrates are parables. Moral and religious truth
is communicated by the outward event, as in the parable it is
communicated by the story. The mere visible fact becomes more than
semi-transparent. The analogy between the spiritual and the natural
world which men instinctively apprehend, of which the poet and the
orator and the religious teacher have always made abundant use, and
which it has sometimes been attempted, unsuccessfully as I think, to
elevate to the rank of a scientific truth, underlies the whole series
of these miracles. It is the principal if not the only key to the
meaning of this one before us.

The symbolism which regards life under the guise of a voyage, and its
troubles and difficulties under the metaphor of storm and tempest, is
especially natural to nations that take kindly to the water, like us
Englishmen. I do not know that there is any instance, either in the Old
or in the New Testament, of the use of that to us very familiar
metaphor; but the emblem of the sea as the symbol of trouble, unrest,
rebellious power, is very familiar to the writers of the Old Testament.
And the picture of the divine path as in the waters, and of the divine
prerogative as being to 'tread upon the heights of the sea,' as Job has
it, is by no means unknown. So the natural symbolism, and the Old
Testament use of the expressions, blend together, as I think, in
suggesting the one point of view from which this miracle is to be
regarded.

It is found in two of the other Evangelists, and the condensed account
of it which we have in this Gospel, by its omission of Peter's walking
on the water, and of some other smaller but graphic details that the
other Evangelists give us, serves to sharpen the symbolical meaning of
the whole story, and to bring that as its great purpose and
signification into prominence.

We shall, I think, then, best gain the lessons intended to be drawn if
we simply follow the points of the narrative in their order as they
stand here.

I. We have here, first of all, then, the struggling toilers.

The other Evangelists tell us that after the feeding of the five
thousand our Lord 'constrained' His disciples to get into the ship, and
to pass over to the other side. The language implies unwillingness, to
some extent, on their part, and the exercise of authority upon His. Our
Evangelist, who does not mention the constraint, supplies us with the
reason for it. The preceding miracle had worked up the excitement of
the mob to a very dangerous point. Crowds are always the same, and this
crowd thought, as any other crowd anywhere and in any age would have
done, that the prophet that could make bread at will was the kind of
prophet whom they wanted. So they determined to take Him by force, and
make Him a king; and Christ, seeing the danger, and not desiring that
His Kingdom should be furthered by such unclean hands and gross
motives, determined to withdraw Himself into the loneliness of the
bordering hills. It was wise to divide the little group; it would
distract attention; it might lead some of the people, as we know it did
lead them, to follow the boat when they found it was gone. It would
save the Apostles from being affected by the coarse, smoky enthusiasm
of the crowd. It would save them from revealing the place of His
retirement. It might enable Him to steal away more securely unobserved;
so they are sent across to the other side of the lake, some five or six
miles. An hour or two might have done it, but for some unknown reason
they seem to have lingered. Perhaps they had no special call for haste.
The Paschal moon, nearly full, would be shining down upon the waters;
their hearts and minds would be busy with the miracle which they had
just seen. And so they may have drifted along, not caring much when
they reached their destination. But suddenly one of the gusts of wind
which are frequently found upon mountain lakes, especially towards
nightfall, rose and soon became a gale with which they could not
battle. Our Evangelist does not tell us how long it lasted, but we get
a note of time from St. Mark, who says it was 'about the fourth watch
of the night'; that is between the hours of three and six in the
morning of the subsequent day. So that for some seven or eight hours at
least they had been tugging at the useless oars, or sitting shivering,
wet and weary, in the boat.

Is it not the history of the Church in a nutshell? Is it not the symbol
of life for us all? The solemn law under which we live demands
persistent effort, and imposes continual antagonism upon us; there is
no reason why we should regard that as evil, or think ourselves hardly
used, because we are not fair-weather sailors. The end of life is to
make men; the meaning of all events is to mould character. Anything
that makes me stronger is a blessing, anything that develops my
_morale_ is the highest good that can come to me. If therefore
antagonism mould in me

  'The wrestling thews that throw the world,'

and give me good, strong muscles, and put tan and colour into my cheek,
I need not mind the cold and the wet, nor care for the whistling of the
wind in my face, nor the dash of the spray over the bows. Summer
sailing in fair weather, amidst land-locked bays, in blue seas, and
under calm skies, may be all very well for triflers, but

  'Blown seas and storming showers'

are better if the purpose of the voyage be to brace us and call out our
powers.

And so be thankful if, when the boat is crossing the mouth of some glen
that opens upon the lake, a sudden gust smites the sheets and sends you
to the helm, and takes all your effort to keep you from sinking. Do not
murmur, or think that God's Providence is strange, because many and
many a time when 'it is dark, and Jesus is not yet come to us,' the
storm of wind comes down upon the lake and threatens to drive us from
our course. Let us rather recognise Him as the Lord who, in love and
kindness, sends all the different kinds of weather which, according to
the old proverb, make up the full-summed year.

And then notice how, in this first picture of our text, the symbolism
so naturally lends itself to spiritual meanings, not only in regard to
the tempest that caught the unthinking voyagers, but also in regard to
other points; such as the darkness amidst which they had to fight the
tempest, and the absence of the Master. Once before, they had been
caught in a similar storm on the lake, but it was daylight then, and
Jesus was with them, and that made all the difference. This time it was
night, and they looked up in vain to the green Eastern hills, and
wondered where in their folds He was lurking, so far from their help.
Mark gives us one sweet touch when he tells us that Christ on the
hillside there _saw_ them toiling in rowing, but they did not see Him.
No doubt they felt themselves deserted, and sent many a wistful glance
of longing towards the shore where He was. Hard thoughts of Him may
have been in some of their minds. 'Master, carest Thou not?' would be
springing to some of their lips with more apparent reason than in the
other storm on the lake. But His calm and loving gaze looked down
pitying on all their fear and toil. The darkness did not hide from Him,
nor His own security on the steadfast land make Him forget, nor his
communion with the Father so absorb Him as to exclude thoughts of them.

It is a parable and a prophecy of the perpetual relation between the
absent Lord and the toiling Church. He is on the mountain while we are
on the sea. The stable eternity of the Heavens holds Him; we are tossed
on the restless mutability of time, over which we toil at His command.
He is there interceding for us. Whilst He prays He beholds, and He
beholds that He may help us by His prayer. The solitary crew were not
so solitary as they thought. That little dancing speck on the waters,
which held so much blind love and so much fear and trouble, was in His
sight, as on the calm mountain-top He communed with God. No wonder that
weary hearts and lonely ones, groping amidst the darkness, and fighting
with the tempests and the sorrows of lift, have ever found in our story
a symbol that comes to them with a prophecy of hope and an assurance of
help, and have rejoiced to know that they on the sea are beheld of the
Christ in the sky, and that 'the darkness hideth not from' His loving
eye.

II. And now turn to the next stage of the story before us. We have the
approaching Christ.

'When they had rowed about five-and-twenty or thirty furlongs,' and so
were just about the middle of the lake, 'they see Jesus walking on the
sea and drawing nigh unto the ship.' They were about half-way across
the lake. We do not know at what hour in the fourth watch the Master
came. But probably it was towards daybreak. Toiling had endured for a
night. It would be in accordance with the symbolism that joy and help
should come with the morning.

If we look for a moment at the miraculous fact, apart from the
symbolism, we have a revelation here of Christ as the Lord of the
material universe, a kingdom wider in its range and profounder in its
authority than that which that shouting crowd had sought to force upon
Him. His will consolidated the yielding wave, or sustained His material
body on the tossing surges. Whether we suppose the miracle as wrought
on the one or the other, makes no difference to its value as a
manifestation of the glory of Christ, and of His power over the
physical order of things. In the latter case there would, perhaps, be a
hint of a power residing in His material frame, of which we possibly
have other phases, as in the Transfiguration, which may be a prophecy
of what lordship over nature is possible to a sinless manhood. However
that may be, we have here a wonderful picture which is true for all
ages of the mighty Christ, to whose gentle footfall the unquiet surges
are as a marble pavement; and who draws near in the purposes of His
love, unhindered by antagonism, and using even opposing forces as the
path for His triumphant progress. Two lessons may be drawn from this.
One is that in His marvellous providence Christ uses all the tumults
and unrest, the opposition and tempests which surround the ship that
bears His followers, as the means of achieving His purposes. We stand
before a mystery to which we have no key when we think of these two
certain facts; first, the Omnipotent redeeming will of God in Christ;
and, second, the human antagonism which is able to rear itself against
that. And we stand in the presence of another mystery, most blessed,
and yet which we cannot unthread, when we think, as we most assuredly
may, that in some mysterious fashion He works His purposes by the very
antagonism to His purposes, making even head-winds fill the sails, and
planting His foot on the white crests of the angry and changeful
billows. How often in the world's history has this scene repeated
itself, and by a divine irony the enemies have become the helpers of
Christ's cause, and what they plotted for destruction has turned out
rather to the furtherance of the Gospel! 'He maketh the wrath of man to
praise Him, and with the residue thereof He girdeth Himself.'

Another lesson for our individual lives is this, that Christ, in His
sweetness and His gentle sustaining help, comes near to us all across
the sea of sorrow and trouble. A more tender, a more gracious sense of
His nearness to us is ever granted to us in the time of our darkness
and our grief than is possible to us in the sunny hours of joy. It is
always the stormy sea that Christ comes across, to draw near to us; and
they who have never experienced the tempest have yet to learn the
inmost sweetness of His presence. When it is night, and it is dark, at
the hour which is the keystone of night's black arch, Christ comes to
us, striding across the stormy waters. Sorrow brings _Him_ near to
_us_. Do you see that sorrow does not drive _you_ away from Him!

III. Then, still further, we note in the story before us the terror and
the recognition.

St. John does not tell us why they were afraid. There is no need to
tell us. They see, possibly in the chill uncertain light of the grey
dawn breaking over the Eastern hills, a Thing coming to them across the
water there. They had fought gallantly with the storm, but this
questionable shape freezes their heart's blood, and a cry, that is
audible above even the howling of the wind and the dash of the waves,
gives sign of the superstitious terror that crept round the hearts of
those commonplace, rude men.

I do not dwell upon the fact that the average man, if he fancies that
anything from out of the Unseen is near him, shrinks in fear. I do not
ask you whether that is not a sign and indication of the deep
conviction that lies in men's souls, of a discord between themselves
and the unseen world; but I ask you if we do not often mistake the
coming Master, and tremble before Him when we ought to be glad?

We are often so absorbed with our work, so busy tugging at the oar, so
anxiously watching the set of current, so engaged in keeping the helm
right, that we have no time and no eyes to look across the ocean and
see who it is that is coming to us through all the hurly-burly. Our
tears fill our eyes, and weave a veil between us and the Master. And
when we do see that there is Something there, we are often afraid of
it, and shrink from it. And sometimes when a gentle whisper of
consolation, or some light air, as it were, of consciousness of His
presence, breathes through our souls, we think that it is only a
phantasm of our own making, and that the coming Christ is nothing more
than the play of our thoughts and imaginations.

Oh, brethren, let no absorption in cares and duties, let no unchildlike
murmurings, let no selfish abandonment to sorrow, blind you to the Lord
who always comes near troubled hearts, if they will only look and see!
Let no reluctance to entertain religious ideas, no fear of contact with
the Unseen, no shrinking from the thought of Christ as a _Kill-joy_
keep you from seeing Him as He draws near to you in your troubles. And
let no sly, mocking Mephistopheles of doubt, nor any poisonous air,
blowing off the foul and stagnant marshes of present materialism, make
you fancy that the living Reality, treading on the flood there, is a
dream or a fancy or the projection of your own imagination on to the
void of space. He is real, whatever may be phenomenal and surface. The
storm is not so real as the Christ, the waves not so substantial as He
who stands upon them. They will pass and quieten, He will abide for
ever. Lift up your hearts and be glad, because the Lord comes to you
across the waters, and hearken to His voice: 'It is I! Be not afraid.'

The encouragement not to fear follows the proclamation, 'It is I!' What
a thrill of glad confidence must have poured itself into their hearts,
when once they rose to the height of that wondrous fact!

  'Well roars the storm to those who hear
   A deeper voice across the storm.'

There is no fear in the consciousness of His presence. It is His old
word: 'Be not afraid!' And He breathes it whithersoever He comes; for
His coming is the banishment of danger and the exorcism of dread. So
that if only you and I, in the midst of all storm and terror, can say
'It is the Lord,' then we may catch up the grand triumphant chorus of
the old psalm, and say: 'Though the waters thereof roar and be
troubled, and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, yet I
will not fear.' The Lord is with us; the everlasting Christ is our
Helper, our Refuge, and our Strength.

IV. So, lastly, we have here in this story the end of the tempest and
of the voyage.

Our Evangelist does not record, as the others do, that the storm ceased
upon Christ's being welcomed into the little boat. The other
Evangelists do not record, as he does, the completion of the voyage.
'Immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.' The two
things are cause and effect. I do not suppose, as many do, that a
subordinate miracle is to be seen in that last clause of our text, or
that the 'immediately' is to be taken as if it meant that without one
moment's delay, or interval, the voyage was completed; but only, which
I think is all that is needful, that the falling of the tempest and the
calming of the waters which followed upon the Master's entrance into
the vessel made the remainder of the voyage comparatively brief and
swift.

It is not always true, it is very seldom true, that when Christ comes
on board opposition ends, and the haven is reached. But it is always
true that when Christ comes on board a new spirit enters into the men
who have Him for their companion, and are conscious that they have. It
makes their work easy, and makes them 'more than conquerors' over what
yet remains. With what a different spirit the weary men would bend
their backs to the oars once more when they had the Master on board,
and with what a different spirit you and I will set ourselves to our
work if we are sure of His presence. The worst of trouble is gone when
Christ shares it with us. There is a wonderful charm to stay His rough
wind in the assurance that in all our affliction He is afflicted. If we
feel that we are following in His footsteps, we feel that He stands
between us and the blast, a refuge from the storm and a covert from the
tempest. And if still, as no doubt will be the case, we have our share
of trouble and storm and sorrow and difficulty, yet the worst of the
gale will be passed, and though a long swell may still heave, the
terror and the danger will have gone with the night, and hope and
courage and gladness revive as the morning's sun breaks over the still
unquiet waves, and shows us our Master with us and the white walls of
the port glinting in the level beams.

Friends, life is a voyage, anyhow, with plenty of storm and danger and
difficulty and weariness and exposure and anxiety and dread and sorrow,
for every soul of man. But if you will take Christ on board, it will be
a very different thing from what it will be if you cross the wan waters
alone. Without Him you will make shipwreck of yourselves; with Him your
voyage may seem perilous and be tempestuous, but He will 'make the
storm a calm,' and will bring you to the haven of your desire.




HOW TO WORK THE WORK OF GOD


'Then said they unto Him, What shall we do, that we might work the
works of God? 29. Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work
of God, that ye, believe on Him whom He hath sent.'—JOHN vi. 28, 29.

The feeding of the five thousand was the most 'popular' of Christ's
miracles. The Evangelist tells us, with something between a smile and a
sigh, that 'when the people saw it, they said, This is of a truth that
Prophet that should come into the world,' and they were so delighted
with Him and with it, that they wanted to get up an insurrection on the
spot, and make a King of Him. I wonder if there are any of that sort of
people left. If two men were to come into Manchester to-morrow morning,
and one of them were to offer material good, and the other wisdom and
peace of heart, which of them, do you think, would have the larger
following? We need not cast a stone at the unblushing, frank admiration
that these men had for a Prophet who could feed them, for that is
exactly the sort of prophet that a great number of us would like best
if they spoke out.

So Jesus Christ had to escape from the inconvenient enthusiasm of these
mistaken admirers of His; and they followed Him in their eagerness, but
were met with words which lift them into another region and damp their
zeal. He tries to turn away their thoughts from the miracle to a far
loftier gift. He contrasts the trouble which they willingly took in
order to get a meal with their indifference as to obtaining the true
bread from heaven, and He bids them work for it just as they had shown
themselves ready to work for the other.

They put to Him this question of my text, so strangely blending as it
does right and wrong, 'You have bid us work; tell us how to work? What
must we do that we may work the works of God?' Christ answers, in words
that illuminate their confusions and clear the whole matter, 'This is
the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.'

I. Faith, then, is a work.

You know that the commonplace of evangelical teaching opposes faith to
works; and the opposition is perfectly correct, if it be rightly
understood. But I have a strong impression that a great deal of our
preaching goes clean over the heads of our hearers, because we take for
granted, and they fancy that they understand, the meaning of terms
because the terms themselves are so familiar. And I believe that many
people go to churches and chapels all their lives long, and hear this
doctrine dinned into them, that they are to be saved by faith, and not
by works, and never approach a definite understanding of what it means.

So let me just for a moment try to clear up the terms of this
apparently paradoxical statement that faith is a work. What do we mean
by faith? What do you mean by saying that you have faith in your
friend, in your wife, in your husband, in your guide? You simply mean,
and we mean, that you trust the person, grasping him by the act of
trust. On trust the whole fabric of human society depends, as well as
in another aspect of the same expression does the whole fabric of
Manchester commerce. Faith, confidence, the leaning of myself on one
discerned to be true, trusty, strong, sufficient for the purpose in
hand, whatever it may be—that, and nothing more mysterious, nothing
further away from daily life and the common emotions which knit us to
one another, is, as I take it, what the New Testament means when it
insists upon faith.

Ah, we all exercise it. You put it forth in certain low levels and
directions. 'The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her,' is the
short summary of the happy lives of many, I have no doubt, of my
present hearers. Have you none of that confidence to spare for God? Is
it all meant to be poured out upon weak, fallible, changeful creatures
like ourselves, and none of it to rise to the One in whom absolute
confidence may eternally be fixed?

But then, of course, as we may see by the exercise of the same emotion
in regard to one Another, the under side (as I have been accustomed to
say to you) of this confidence in God or Christ is diffidence of
myself. There is no real exercise of confidence which does not involve,
as an essential part of itself, the going out from myself in order that
I may lay all the weight and the responsibility of the matter in hand
upon Him in whom I trust. And so Christian faith is compounded of these
two elements, or rather, it has these two sides which correspond to one
another. The same figure is convex or concave according as you look at
it from one side or another. If you look at faith from one side, it
rises towards God; if from the other, it hollows itself out into a
great emptiness. And so the under side of faith is distrust; and he
that puts his confidence in God thereby goes out of himself, and
declares that in himself there is nothing to rest upon.

Now that two-sided confidence and diffidence, trust and distrust, which
are one, is truly a work. It is not an easy one either; it is the
exercise of our own inmost nature. It is an effort of will. It has to
be done by coercing ourselves. It has to be maintained in the face of
many temptations and difficulties. The contrast between faith and work
is between an inward act and a crowd of outward performances. But the
faith which knits me to God is my act, and I am responsible for it.

But yet it is not a work, just because it is a ceasing from my own
works, and going out from myself that He may enter in. Only remember,
when we say, 'Not by works of righteousness, but by the faith of
Christ,' we are but proclaiming that the inward man must exercise that
act of self-abnegation and confession of its own impotence, and ceasing
from all reliance on anything which it does, whereby, and whereby
alone, it can be knit to God. 'Labour not for the meat that perisheth,
but for that meat which endureth unto eternal life…. This is the work
of God, that ye believe.' You are responsible for doing that, or for
not doing it.

II. Secondly, faith, and not a multitude of separate acts, is what
pleases God.

Mark the difference between the form of the question and that of the
answer. The people say, 'What are we to do that we may work the _works_
of God?' Christ answers in the singular: 'This is the _work_.' They
thought of a great variety of observances and deeds. He gathers them
all up into one. They thought of a pile, and that the higher it rose
the more likely they were to be accepted. He unified the requirement,
and He brought it all down to this one act, in which all other acts are
included, and on which alone the whole weight of a man's salvation is
to rest. 'What shall we do that we might work the works of God?' is a
question asked in all sorts of ways, by the hearts of men all round
about us; and what a babble of answers comes! The priest says, 'Rites
and ceremonies.' The thinker says, 'Culture, education.' The moralist
says, 'Do this, that, and the other thing,' and enumerates a whole
series of separate acts. Jesus Christ says, 'One thing is needful….
This is the work of God.' He brushes away the sacerdotal answer and the
answer of the mere moralist, and He says, 'No! Not _do_; but _trust_.'
In so far as that is act, it is the only act that you need.

That is evidently reasonable. The man is more than his work; motive is
more important than action; character is deeper than conduct. God is
pleased, not by what men do, but by what men are. We must _be_ first,
and then we shall _do_. And it is obviously reasonable, because we can
find analogies to the requirement in all other relations of life. What
would you care for a child that scrupulously obeyed, and did not love
or trust? What would a prince think of a subject who was ostentatious
in acts of loyalty, and all the while was plotting and nurturing
treason in his heart?

If doing separate acts of righteousness be the way to work the works of
God, then no man has ever done them. For it is a plain fact that every
man falls below his own conscience—which conscience is less scrupulous
than the divine law. The worst of us knows a great deal more than the
best of us does; and our lives, universally, are, at the best, lives of
partial effort after unreached attainments of obedience and of virtue.

But, even supposing that we could perform, far more completely than we
do, the requirements of our own consciences, and conform to the evident
duties of our position and relations, do you think that without faith
we should be therein working the works of God? Suppose a man were able
fully to realise his own ideal of goodness, without any confidence in
God underlying all his acts; do you think that these would be acts that
would please God? It seems to me that, however lovely and worthy of
admiration, looked at with human eyes only, many lives are, which have
nobly and resolutely fought against evil, and struggled after good, if
they have lacked the crowning grace of doing this for God's sake, they
lack, I was going to say, almost everything; I will not say that, but I
will say that they lack that which makes them acceptable, well-pleasing
to Him. The poorest, the most imperfect realisation of our duty and
ideal of conduct which has in it a love towards God and a faith in Him
that would fain do better if it could, is a nobler thing, I venture to
say, in the eyes of Heaven—which are the truth-seeing eyes—than the
noblest achievements of an untrusting soul. It does not seem to me that
to say so is bigotry or narrowness or anything else but the plain
deduction from this, that a man's relation to God is the deepest thing
about him, and that if that be right, other things will come right, and
if that be wrong nothing is as right as it might be.

Here we have Jesus Christ laying the foundation for the doctrine which
is often said to be Pauline, as if that meant something else than
coming from Jesus Christ. We often hear people say, 'Oh, your
evangelical teaching of justification by faith, and all that, comes out
of Paul's Epistles, not out of Christ's teaching, nor out of John's
Gospel.' Well, there is a difference, which it is blindness not to
recognise, between the seeds of teaching in our Lord's words, and the
flowers and fruit of these seeds, which we get in the more systematised
and developed teaching of the Epistles. I frankly admit that, and I
should expect it, with my belief as to who Christ is, and who Paul is.
But in that saying, 'This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him
whom He hath sent,' is the germ of everything that Paul has taught us
about the works of the law being of no avail, and faith being alone and
unfailing in its power of uniting men to God, and bringing them into
the possession of eternal life. The saying stands in John's Gospel, and
so Paul and John alike received, though in different fashions, and
wrought out on different lines of subsequent teaching, the germinal
impulse from these words of the Master. Let us hear no more about
salvation by faith being a Pauline addition to Christ's Gospel, for the
lips of Christ Himself have declared 'this is the work of God, that ye
believe on Him whom He hath sent.'

III. Thirdly, this faith is the productive parent of all separate works
of God.

The teaching that I have been trying to enforce has, I know, been so
presented as to make a pillow for indolence, and to be closely allied
to immorality. It has been so presented, but it has not been so
presented half as often as its enemies would have us believe. For I
know of but very few, and those by no means the most prominent and
powerful of the preachers of the great doctrine of salvation by faith,
who have not added, as its greatest teacher did: 'Let ours also be
careful to maintain good works for necessary uses.' But the true
teaching is not that trust is a substitute for work, but that it is the
foundation of work. The Gospel is, first of all, Trust; then, set
yourselves to do the works of faith. It works by love, it is the
opening of the heart to the entrance of the life of Christ, and, of
course, when that life comes in, it will act in the man in a manner
appropriate to its origin and source, and he that by faith has been
joined to Jesus Christ, and has opened his heart to receive into that
heart the life of Christ, will, as a matter of course, bring forth, in
the measure of his faith, the fruits of righteousness.

We are surely not despising fruits and flowers when we insist upon the
root from which they shall come. A man may take separate acts of
partial goodness, as you see children in the springtime sticking
daisies on the spikes of a thorn-twig picked from the hedges. But these
will die. The basis of all righteousness is faith, and the
manifestation of faith is practical righteousness. 'Show Me thy faith
by thy works' is Christ's teaching quite as much as it is the teaching
of His sturdy servant James. And so, dear friends, we are going the
shortest way to enrich lives with all the beauties of possible human
perfection when we say, 'Begin at the beginning. The longest way round
is the shortest way home; trust Him with all your hearts first, and
that will effloresce into "whatsoever things are lovely and whatever
things are of good report."' In the beautiful metaphor of the Apostle
Peter, in his second Epistle, Faith is the damsel who leads in the
chorus of consequent graces; and we are exhorted to 'add to our faith
virtue,' and all the others that unfold themselves in harmonious
sequence from that one central source.

If I had time I should be glad to turn for a moment to the light which
such considerations cast upon subjects that are largely occupying the
attention of the Christian Church to-day. I should like to insist that,
before you talk much about applied Christianity, you should be very
sure that in men there _is_ a Christianity to apply. I venture to
profess my own humble belief that in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred, Christian ministers and churches will do no more for the
social, political, and intellectual and moral advancement of men and
the elevation of the people by sticking to their own work and preaching
this Gospel—'This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He
hath sent.'

IV. Lastly, this faith secures the bread of life.

The bread of life is the starting-point of the whole conversation. In
the widest possible sense it is whatsoever truly stills the hunger of
the immortal soul. In a deeper sense it is the person of Jesus Christ
Himself, for He not only says that He will _give_, but that He _is_ the
Bread of Life. And, in the deepest sense of all, it is His flesh broken
for us in His sacrifice on the Cross. That bread is a gift. So the
paradox results which stands in our text—_work_ for the bread which God
will _give_. If it be a gift, that fact determines what sort of work
must be done in order to possess it. If it be a gift, then the only
work is to accept it. If it be a gift, then we are out of the region of
_quid pro quo_; and have not to bring, as Chinese do, great strings of
copper cash that, all added up together, do not amount to a shilling,
in order to buy what God will bestow upon us. If it be a gift, then to
trust the Giver and to accept the gift is the only condition that is
possible.

It is not a condition that God has invented and arbitrarily imposed.
The necessity of it is lodged deep in the very nature of the case. Air
cannot get to the lungs of a mouse in an air-pump. Light cannot come
into a room where all the shutters are up and the keyhole stopped. If a
man chooses to perch himself on some little stool of his own, with
glass legs to it, and to take away his hand from the conductor, no
electricity will come to him. If I choose to lock my lips, Jesus Christ
does not prise open my clenched teeth to put the bread of life into my
unwilling mouth. If we ask, we get; if we take, we get.

And so the paradox comes, that we work for a gift, with a work which is
not work because it is a departure from myself. It is the same blessed
paradox which the prophet spoke when he said, 'Buy … without money and
without price.' Oh! what a burden of hopeless effort and weary
toil—like that of the man that had to roll the stone up the hill, which
ever slipped back again—is lifted from our shoulders by such a word as
this that I have been poorly trying to speak about now! 'Thou art
careful and troubled about many things,' poor soul! trying to be good;
trying to fight yourself, and the world, and the devil. Try the other
plan, and listen to Him saying, 'Give up self-imposed effort in thine
own strength. Take, eat, this is My body, which is broken for you.'




THE MANNA


'I am that bread of life. 49. Your fathers did eat manna in the
wilderness, and are dead. 50. This is the bread which cometh down from
heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.'—JOHN vi. 48-50.

'This is of a truth that Prophet,' said the Jews, when Christ had fed
the five thousand on the five barley loaves and the two small fishes.
That was the kind of Teacher for them; they were quite unaffected by
the wisdom of His words and the beauty of His deeds, but a miracle that
found food precisely met their wants, and so there was excited an
impure enthusiasm, very unwelcome to Jesus. Therefore He withdrew
Himself from it, and when the people followed Him, all full of
expectation, to get some more loaves and see some more miracles, He met
them with a douche of cold water that cooled their enthusiasm and flung
them back into a critical, questioning mood. They pointed to the
miracle of the manna, and hinted that, if He expected them to accept
Him, He must do as Moses had done, or something like it. Probably there
was a Jewish tradition in existence then to the effect that the Messiah
was to repeat the miracle of the manna. But, at all events, Christ lays
hold of the reference that they put into His hands, and He said in
effect, 'Manna? Yes; I give, and am, the true Manna.'

So this is the third of the instances in this Gospel in which our Lord
pointed to Old Testament incidents and institutions as symbolising
Himself. In the first of them, when He likened Himself to the ladder
that Jacob saw, He claimed to be the Medium of communication between
heaven and earth. In the second of them, when He likened Himself to the
brazen serpent lifted in the camp, He claimed to be the Healer of a
sin-stricken and poisoned world. And now, with an allusion both to the
miracle and to the Jewish demand for the repetition of the manna sign,
He claims to be the true Food for a starving world. So there are three
things in my text: Christ's claim, His requirements, and His promise;
the bread, the eating, the issues.

I. Here is a claim of Christ's.

As I have already said, in the whole wonderful conversation of which I
have selected a portion for my text, there is a double reference to the
miracle of the loaves and of the manna. What our Lord means to assert
for Himself is that which is common to both of these—viz. that He
supplies the great primal wants of humanity, the hunger of the heart.
There may be another reference also, which I just notice without
dwelling upon it. Barley loaves were the coarsest and least valuable
form of bread. They were not only of little worth, but altogether
inadequate to feeding the five thousand. The palates, unaccustomed to
the stinging savours of the garlic and the leeks of Egypt, loathed the
light bread. And so Jesus Christ comes into the world in lowly form,
like the barley loaf or the light bread from which men whose tastes
have been vitiated by the piquant savours of more earthly nourishment
turn away as insipid. And yet He in His lowliness, He in His
savourlessness, is that which meets the deepest wants of humanity, and
is every man's fare because He will be any man's satisfaction.

But I wish to bring before your notice the wonderful way in which our
Lord, in this great dissertation concerning Himself as the Bread of
Life, gradually unfolds the depths of His meaning and of His offer. He
began with saying that He, the Son of Man, will give to men the bread
that 'endures to everlasting life.' And then when that saying is but
dimly understood, and yet awakes some strange new desires and appetites
in the hearers, and they come to Him and ask, 'Lord, evermore give us
this bread,' He answers them with opening another finger of His hand,
as it were, and showing them a little more of the treasure that lies in
His palm. For He says, 'I _am_ that Bread of Life.' That is an advance
on the previous saying. He gives bread, and any man that was conscious
of possessing some great truth or some great blessing which, believed
and accepted, would refresh and nourish humanity, might have said the
same thing. But now we pass into the _penumbra_ of a greater mystery:
'I am that Bread of Life.' You cannot separate what Christ gives from
what Christ is. You can take the truths that another man proclaims,
altogether irrespective of him and his personality. That only disturbs,
and the sooner it is got rid of, the firmer and the purer our
possession of the message for which he is only the medium. You can take
Plato's teaching and do as you like with Plato. But you cannot take
Christ's teaching and do as you like with Christ. His personality is
the centre of His gift to the world. 'I am that Bread of Life.' That He
should give it is much; that He should _be_ it is far more.

And notice how, when He has thus drawn us a little further into the
magic circle of the light, He not only asserts the inseparableness of
His gift from His Person, but also asserts, with a reference, no doubt,
to the manna, 'I am the Bread that came down from heaven.' The
listeners immediately laid hold of that one point, and neglected for
the moment all the rest, and they fixed with a true instinct—although
it was for the purpose of contradicting it—on this central point, 'that
came down from heaven.' They said one to the other, 'How can this man
say that He came down from heaven? Is not this Jesus the Son of Joseph,
whose father and mother we know?' So, brethren, as the manna that
descended from above in the dew of the night was to the bread that was
baked in a baker's oven, so is the Christ to the manhood that has its
origin in the natural processes of birth. The Incarnation of the Son of
God, becoming Son of Man for us and for our salvation, is involved in
this great claim. You do not get to the heart of Christ's message
unless you have accepted this as the truth concerning Him, that 'in the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God,' and that at a definite point in the long process of the ages,
'the Word became flesh, and dwelt amongst us.' He will never be 'the
Bread of Life' unless He is 'the Bread that came down from heaven.' For
humanity needs that the blue heavens that bend remote above should come
down; and we cannot be lifted 'out of the horrible pit and the miry
clay' unless a Hand from above be reached down into the depths of our
degradation, and lift us from our lowness. Heaven must come to earth,
if earth is to rise to heaven. The ladder must be let down from above,
if ever from the lower levels men are to ascend thither where at the
summit the face of God can be seen.

But that is not all. Our Lord, if I may recur to a former figure, went
on to open another finger of His hand, and to show still more of the
gift. For He not only said, 'the Son of Man gives the bread,' and 'I am
the Bread that came down from heaven,' but He went on to say, in a
subsequent stage of the conversation, 'the Bread that I will give is My
flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.' Now, notice that
'_will_ give.' Then, though the Word was made flesh, and the manna came
down from heaven, the especial gift of His flesh for the life of the
world was, at the time of His speaking, a future thing. And what He
meant is still more clearly brought out, when we read other words which
are the very climax of this conversation, when He declares that the
condition of our having life in ourselves is our 'eating the flesh and
drinking the blood of the Son of Man.' The figure is made repulsive on
purpose, in order that it may provoke us to penetrate to its meaning.
It was even more repulsive to the Jew, with his religious horror of
touching or tasting anything in which the blood was. And yet our Lord
not only speaks of Himself as the Bread, but of His flesh and blood as
being the Food of the world. The separation of the two clearly
indicates a violent death, and I, for my part, have no manner of doubt
that, in these great words in which our Lord lays bare the deepest
foundations of His claim to be the Food of humanity, there is couched,
in the veiled language which was necessary at the then stage of His
mission, a distinct reference to His death, as being the Sacrifice on
which a hunger-stricken world may feed and be satisfied.

So here we have, in three steps, the great central truth of the Gospel
set forth in symbolical aspect: the Son that gives, the Son that is,
the Bread of the world, and the death whereby His flesh and blood are
separated and become the nourishment of all sin-stricken souls. I do
not say one word to enforce these claims, but I beseech you deal fairly
with these Gospel narratives, and do not go on picking out of them bits
of Christ's actions or words, which commend themselves to you, and
ignoring all the rest. There is no more reason to believe that Jesus
Christ ever said, 'As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them likewise,' or any other part of that Sermon on the Mount which
some people take as their Christianity, than there is to believe that
He said, 'The bread which I give is My flesh, which I will give for the
life of the world.' Believe it or not, it is not dealing with the
Scripture records as you deal with other historical records if, for
subjective reasons, you brush aside all that department of our Lord's
teaching. And if you do accept it, what becomes of His 'sweet
reasonableness'? What becomes of His meekness and lowliness of heart? I
was going to say what becomes of His sanity, that He should stand up, a
youngish man from Nazareth, in the synagogue of Capernaum, and should
say, 'I, heaven-descended, and slain by men, am the Bread of Life to
the whole world'?

I was going to make another observation, which I must just pass with
the slightest notice, and that is that, taking this point of view and
giving full weight to these three stages of our Lord's progressive
revelation of Himself, we have the answer to the question, What is the
connection between these discourses and the ordinance of the Lord's
Supper? Our modern sacramentarian friends will have it that Jesus
Christ is speaking of the Communion in this chapter. I take it, and I
venture to think it the reasonable explanation, that He is not speaking
about the Communion, but that this discourse and that rite are dealing
with the same truths—the one in articulate words, the other in
equivalent symbols. And so we have not to read into the text any
allusion to the rite, but to see in the text and in the rite the
proclamation of the same thing—viz. that the flesh and the blood of the
Sacrifice for sins is the food on which a sinful and cleansed world may
feed.

II. So, secondly, let me ask you to note our Lord's requirement here.

He carries on the metaphor. 'This is the Bread which cometh down from
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die.' The eating necessarily
follows from the symbol of the bread, as the designation of the way by
which we all, with our hungry hearts, may feed upon this Bread of God.
I need not remind you that in many a place, and in this whole context,
we find the explanation of the symbol very plainly. In another part of
this conversation we read, under another metaphor which comes to the
same thing, 'He that cometh unto Me shall never hunger, and he that
believeth on Me shall never thirst. So the eating and the coming are
diverse symbols for the one thing, the believing. When a man eats he
appropriates to himself, and incorporates into his very being, the food
of which he partakes. And when a man trusts Christ he appropriates to
himself, and incorporates into his inmost being, the very life of Jesus
Christ. You say, 'That is mysticism'; but it is the New Testament
teaching, that when I trust Christ I get more than His gifts—I get
Himself; that when my faith goes out to Him it not only rests me on
Him, but it brings Him into me, and that food of the spirit becomes the
life, as we shall see, of _my_ spirit.

That condition is indispensable. It is useless to have food on your
table or your plate or in your hand, it does not nourish you there: you
must eat it, and then you gain sustenance from it. Many a hungry man
has died at the door of a granary. Some of us are starving, though
beside us there is 'the Bread of God that came down from heaven.'
Brethren, you must eat, and I venture to put the question to you—_not_
Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the world's Saviour? _not_ Do you
believe in an Incarnation? _not_ Do you believe in an Atonement? but
Have you claimed your portion in the Bread? Have you taken it into your
own lips? _Crede et manducasti_, said Augustine, 'believe'—or, rather,
_trust_—'and thou hast eaten.' Have _you_?

Further, let me remind you that under this eating is included not only
some initial act of faith, but a continuous course of partaking. The
dinner you ate this day last year is of no use for to-day's hunger. The
act of faith done long ago will not bring the Bread to nourish you now.
You must repeat the meal. And very strikingly and beautifully in the
last part of this conversation our Lord varies the word for eating, and
substitutes—as if He were speaking to those who had fulfilled the
previous condition—another one which implies the ruminant action of
certain animals. And that is what Christian men have to do, to feed
over and over and over again on the 'Bread of God which came down from
heaven.' Christ, and especially in and through His death for us, can
nourish and sustain our wills, giving them the pattern of what they
should desire, and the motive for which they should desire it. Christ,
and especially through His death, can feed our consciences, and take
away from them all the painful sense of guilt, while He sharpens them
to a far keener sensitiveness to evil. Christ, and especially through
His death, can feed our understandings, and unveil therein the deepest
truths concerning God and man, concerning man's destiny and God's
mercy. Christ, and especially in His death, can feed our affections,
and minister to love and desire and submission and hope their celestial
nourishment. He is 'the Bread of God,' and we have but to eat of that
which is laid before us.

III. So, lastly, we have here the issues.

'Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.' This
Bread secures that if 'a man eat thereof he shall not die.' The bread
that perishes feeds a life that perishes; but this Bread not only
sustains but creates a life that cannot perish, and, taken into the
spirits of men that are 'dead in trespasses and sins,' imparts to them
a life that has no affinity to evil, and therefore no dread of
extinction.

If 'a man eats thereof he shall not die,' Christ annihilates for us the
mere accident of physical death. That is only a momentary jolt on the
course. That may all be crammed into a parenthesis. 'He shall not die,'
but live the true life which comes from the possession of union with
Him who is the Life. The bread which we eat sustains life; the Bread
which He gives originates it. The bread which we eat is assimilated to
our bodily frame, the Bread which He gives assimilates our spiritual
nature to His. And so it comes to be the only food that stills a hungry
heart, the only food that satisfies and yet never cloys, which, eating,
we are filled, and being filled are made capable of more, and, being
capable of more, receive more. In blessed and eternal alternation,
fruition and desire, satisfaction and appetite, go on.

'Why do ye spend money for that which is not bread?' You cannot answer
the question with any reasonable answer. Oh, dear friends! I beseech
you, listen to that Lord who is saying to each of us, 'Take, eat, this
is My body, which is broken for you.'




ONE SAYING WITH TWO MEANINGS


'Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then
I go unto Him that sent Me. 34. Ye shall seek Me, and shall not find
Me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come.'—JOHN vii. 33, 34.

'Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek Me;
and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say
to you.'—JOHN xiii. 33.

No greater contrast can be conceived than that between these two groups
to whom such singularly similar words were addressed. The one consists
of the officers, tools of the Pharisees and of the priests, who had
been sent to seize Christ, and would fain have carried out their
masters' commission, but were restrained by a strange awe, inexplicable
even to themselves. The other consists of the little company of His
faithful, though slow, scholars, who made a great many mistakes, and
sometimes all but tired out even His patience, and yet were forgiven
much because they loved much. Hatred animated one group, loving sorrow
the other.

Christ speaks to them both in nearly the same words, but with what a
different tone, meaning, and application! To the officers the saying is
an exhibition of His triumphant confidence that their malice is
impotent and their arms paralysed; that when He wills He will _go_, not
be dragged by them or any man, but go to a safe asylum, where foes can
neither find nor follow. The officers do not understand what He means.
They think that, bad Jew as they have always believed Him to be, He may
very possibly consummate His apostasy by going over to the Gentiles
altogether; but, at any rate, they feel that He is to escape their
hands.

The disciples understand little more as to whither He goes, as they
themselves confess a moment after; but they gather from His words His
loving pity, and though the upper side of the saying seems to be
menacing and full of separation, there is an under side that suggests
the possibility of a reunion for them.

The words are nearly the same in both cases, but they are not
absolutely identical. There are significant omissions and additions in
the second form of them. 'Little children' is the tenderest of all the
names that ever came from Christ's lips to His disciples, and never was
heard on His lips except on this one occasion, for parting words ought
to be very loving words. 'A little while I am with you,' but He does
not say, 'And then I go to Him that sent Me.' 'Ye shall seek Me,' but
He does not say, 'And shall not find Me.' 'As I said unto the Jews,
whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say to you,' that little word
'now' makes the announcement a truth for the present only. His
disciples shall not seek Him in vain, but when they seek they shall
find. And though for a moment they be parted from Him, it is with the
prospect and the confidence of reunion. Let us, then, look at the two
main thoughts here. First, the two 'seekings,' the seeking which is
vain, and the seeking which is never vain; and the two 'cannots,' the
inability of His enemies for evermore to come where He is, and the
inability of His friends, for a little season, to come where He is.

I. The two seekings.

As I have observed, there is a very significant omission in one of the
forms of the words. The enemies are told that they will never find Him,
but no such dark words are spoken to the friends. So, then, hostile
seeking of the Christ is in vain, and loving seeking of Him by His
friends, though they understand Him but very poorly, and therefore seek
Him that they may know Him better, is always answered and
over-answered.

Let me deal just for a moment or two with each of these. In their
simplest use the words of my first text merely mean this: 'You cannot
touch Me, I am passing into a safe asylum where your hands can never
reach Me.'

We may generalise that for a moment, though it does not lie directly in
our path, and preach the old blessed truth that no man with hostile
intent seeking for Christ in His person, in His Gospel, or in His
followers and friends, can ever find Him. All the antagonism that has
stormed against Him and His cause and words, and His followers and
lovers, has been impotent and vain. The pursuers are like dogs chasing
a bird, sniffing along the ground after their prey, which all the while
sits out of their reach on a bough, and carols to the sky. As in the
days of His flesh, His foes could not touch His person till He chose,
and vainly sought Him when it pleased Him to hide from them, so ever
since, in regard to His cause, and in regard to all hearts that love
Him, no weapon that is formed against them shall prosper. They shall be
wrapped, when need be, in a cloud of protecting darkness, and stand
safe within its shelter. Take good cheer, all you that are trying to do
anything, however little, however secular it may appear to be, for the
good and well-being of your fellows! All such service is a prolongation
of Christ's work, and an effluence from His, if there be any good in it
at all; and it is immortal and safe, as is His. 'Ye shall seek Me and
shall not find Me.'

But then, besides that, there is another thought. It is not merely
hostile seeking of Him that is hopeless vain. When the dark days came
over Israel, under the growing pressure of the Roman yoke, and amidst
the agonies of that last siege, and the unutterable sufferings which
all but annihilated the nation, do you not think that there were many
of these people who said to themselves: 'Ah! if we had only that Jesus
of Nazareth back with us for a day or two; if we had only listened to
Him!' Do you not think that before Israel dissolved in blood there were
many of those who had stood hostile or alienated, who desired to see
'one of the days of the Son of Man,' and did not see it? They sought
Him, not in anger any more; they sought Him, not in penitence, or else
they would have found Him; but they sought Him simply in distress, and
wishing that they could have back again what they had cared so little
for when they had it.

And are there no people listening to me now, to whom these words
apply?—

  'He that will not, when he may,
  When he will it shall be—Nay!'

Although it is (blessed be His name) always true that a seeking heart
finds Him, and whensoever there is the faintest trace of penitent
desire to get hold of Christ's hand it does grasp ours, it is also true
that things neglected once cannot be brought back; that the sowing time
allowed to pass can never return; and that they who have turned, as
some of you have turned, dear friends, all your lives, a deaf ear to
the Christ that asks you to love Him and trust Him, may one day wish
that it had been otherwise, and go to look for Him and not find Him.

There is another kind of seeking that is vain, an intellectual seeking
without the preparation of the heart. There are, no doubt, some people
here to-day that would say, 'We have been seeking the truth about
religion all our lives, and we have not got to it yet.' Well, I do not
want to judge either your motives or your methods, but I know this,
that there is many a man who goes on the quest for religious certainty,
and looks _at_, if not _for_ Jesus Christ, and is not really capable of
discerning Him when he sees Him, because his eye is not single, or
because his heart is full of worldliness or indifference, or because he
begins with a foregone conclusion, and looks for facts to establish
that; or because he will not cast down and put away evil things that
rise up between him and his Master.

My brother! if you go to look for Jesus Christ with a heart full of the
world, if you go to look for Him while you wish to hold on by all the
habitudes and earthlinesses of your past, you will never find Him. The
sensualist seeks for Him, the covetous man seeks for Him, the
passionate, ill-tempered man seeks for Him; the woman plunged in
frivolities, or steeped to the eyebrows in domestic cares,—these may in
some feeble fashion go to look for Him and they will not find Him,
because they have sought for Him with hearts overcharged with other
things and filled with the affairs of this life, its trifles and its
sins.

I turn for a moment to the seeking that is not vain. 'Ye shall seek Me'
is not on Christ's lips to any heart that loves Him, however
imperfectly, a sentence of separation or an appointment of a sorrowful
lot, but it is a blessed law, the law of the Christian life.

That life is all one great seeking after Christ. Love seeks the absent
when removed from our sight. If we care anything about Him at all, our
hearts will turn to Him as naturally as, when the winter begins to
pinch, the migrating birds seek the sunny south, impelled by an
instinct that they do not themselves understand.

The same law which sends loving thoughts out across the globe to seek
for husband, child, or friend when absent, sets the really Christian
heart seeking for the Christ, whom, having not seen, it loves, as
surely as the ivy tendril feels out for a support. As surely as the
roots of a mountain-ash growing on the top of a boulder feel down the
side of the rock till they reach the soil; as surely as the stork
follows the warmth to the sunny Mediterranean, so surely, if your heart
loves Christ, will the very heart and motive of your action be the
search for Him.

And if you do _not_ seek Him, brother, as surely as He is parted from
our sense you will lose Him, and He will be parted from you wholly, for
there is no way by which a person who is not before our eyes may be
kept near us except only by diligent effort on our part to keep thought
and love and will all in contact with Him; thought meditating, love
going out towards Him, will submitting. Unless there be this effort,
you will lose your Master as surely as a little child in a crowd will
lose his nurse and his guide, if his hand slips from out the protecting
hand. The dark shadow of the earth on which you stand will slowly steal
over His silvery brightness, as when the moon is eclipsed, and you will
not know how you have lost Him, but only be sadly aware that your
heaven is darkened. 'Ye shall seek Me,' is the condition of all happy
communion between Christ and us.

And that seeking, dear brother, in the threefold form in which I have
spoken of it—effort to keep Him in our thoughts, in our love, and over
our will—is neither a seeking which starts from a sense that we do not
possess Him, nor one which ends in disappointment. But we seek for Him
because we already have Him in a measure, and we seek Him that we may
possess Him more abundantly, and anything is possible rather than that
such a search shall be vain. Men may go to created wells, and find no
water, and return ashamed, and with their vessels empty, but every one
who seeks for that Fountain of salvation shall draw from it with joy.
It is as impossible that a heart which desires Jesus Christ shall not
have Him, as it is that lungs dilated shall not fill with air, or as it
is that an empty vessel put out in a rainfall shall not be replenished.
He does not hide Himself, but He desires to be found. May I say that as
a mother will sometimes pretend to her child to hide, that the child's
delight may be the greater in searching and in finding, so Christ has
gone away from our sight in order, for one reason, that He may
stimulate our desires to feel after Him! If we seek Him hid in God, we
shall find Him for the joy of our hearts.

A great thinker once said that he would rather have the search after
truth than the possession of truth. It was a rash word, but it pointed
to the fact that there is a search which is only one shade less blessed
than the possession. And if that be so in regard to any pure and high
truth, it is still more so about Christ Himself. To seek for Him is
joy; to find Him is joy. What can be a happier life than the life of
constant pursuit after an infinitely precious object, which is ever
being sought and ever being found; sought with a profound consciousness
of its preciousness, found with a widening appreciation and capacity
for its enjoyment? 'Ye shall seek Me' is a word not of evil but of good
cheer; for buried in the depth of the commandment to search is the
promise that we shall find.

II, Secondly, let us look briefly at these two 'cannots.'

'Whither I go, ye cannot come,' says He to His enemies, with no
limitation, with no condition. The 'cannot' is absolute and permanent,
so long as they retain their enmity. To His friends, on the other hand,
He says, 'So now I say to you,' the law for to-day, the law for this
side the flood, but not the law for the beyond, as He explains more
fully in the subsequent words: 'Thou canst not follow Me now, but thou
shalt follow Me afterwards.'

So, then, Christ is somewhere. When He passed from life it was not into
a state only, but into a place; and He took with Him a material body,
howsoever changed. He is somewhere, and there friend and enemy alike
cannot enter, so long as they are compassed with 'the earthly house of
this tabernacle.' But the incapacity is deeper than that. No sinful man
can pass thither. Where has He gone? The preceding words give us the
answer. 'God shall glorify Him in Himself.' The prospect of that
assumption into the inmost glory of the divine nature directly led our
Lord to think of the change it would bring about in the relation of His
humble friends to Him. While for Himself He triumphs in the prospect,
He cannot but turn a thought to their lonesomeness, and hence come the
words of our text. He has passed into the bosom and blaze of divinity.
Can I walk there, can I pass into that tremendous fiery furnace? 'Who
shall dwell with the everlasting burnings?' 'Ye cannot follow Me now.'
No man can go thither except Christ goes thither.

There are deep mysteries lying in that word of our Lords,—'I go to
prepare a place for you.' We know not what manner of activity on His
part that definitely means. It seems as if somehow or other the
presence in Heaven of our Brother in His glorified humanity was
necessary in order that the golden pavement should be trodden by our
feet, and that our poor, feeble manhood should live and not be
shrivelled up in the blaze of that central brightness.

We know not how He prepares the place, but heaven, whatever it be, is
no place for a man unless the Man, Christ Jesus, be there. He is the
Revealer of God, not only for earth, but for heaven; not only for time,
but for eternity. 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,' is true
everywhere and always, there as here. So I suppose that, but for His
presence, heaven itself would be dark, and its King invisible, and if a
man could enter there he would either be blasted with unbearable
flashes of brightness or grope at its noonday as the blind, because his
eye was not adapted to such beams. Be that as it may, 'the Forerunner
is for us entered.' He has gone before, because He knows the great
City, 'His own calm home, His habitation from eternity.' He has gone
before to make ready a lodging for us, in whose land He has dwelt so
long, and He will meet us, who would else be bewildered like some
dweller in a desert if brought to the capital, when we reach the gates,
and guide our unaccustomed steps to the mansion prepared for us.

But the power to enter there, even when He is there, depends on our
union with Christ by faith. When we are joined to Him, the absolute
'cannot,' based upon flesh, and still more upon sin, which is a radical
and permanent impossibility, is changed into a relative and temporary
incapacity. If we have faith in Christ, and are thereby drawing a
kindred life from Him, our nature will be in process of being changed
into that which is capable of bearing the brilliance of the felicities
of heaven. But just as these friends of Christ, though they loved Him
very truly, and understood Him a little, were a long way from being
ready to follow Him, and needed the schooling of the Cross, and Olivet,
and Pentecost, as well as the discipline of life and toil, before they
were fully ripe for the harvest, so we, for the most part, have to pass
through analogous training before we are prepared for the place which
Christ has prepared for us. Certainly, so soon as a heart has trusted
Christ, it is capable of entering where He is, and the real reason why
the disciples could not come where He went was that they did not yet
clearly know Him as the divine Sacrifice for theirs and the world's
sins, and, however much they believed in Him as Messiah, had not yet,
nor could have, the knowledge on which they could found their trust in
Him as their Saviour.

But, while that is true, it is also true that each advance in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour will bring with it capacity to
advance further into the heart of the far-off land, and to see more of
the King in His beauty. So, as long as His friends were wrapped in such
dark clouds of misconception and error, as long as their Christian
characters were so imperfect and incomplete as they were at the time of
my text being spoken, they could not go thither and follow Him. But it
was a diminishing impossibility, and day by day they approximated more
and more to His likeness, because they understood Him more, and trusted
Him more, and loved Him more, and grew towards Him, and, therefore, day
by day became more and more able to enter into that Kingdom.

Are you growing in power so to do? Is the only thing which unfits you
for heaven the fact that you have a mortal body? In other respects are
you fit to go into that heaven, and walk in its brightness and not be
consumed? The answer to the question is found in another one—Are you
joined to Jesus Christ by simple faith? The incapacity is absolute and
eternal if the enmity is eternal.

State and place are determined yonder by character, and character is
determined by faith. Take a bottle of some solution in which
heterogeneous substances have all been melted up together, and let it
stand on a shelf and gradually settle down, and its contents will
settle in regular layers, the heaviest at the bottom and the lightest
at the top, and stratify themselves according to gravity. And that is
how the other world is arranged—stratified. When all the confusions of
this present are at an end, and all the moisture is driven off, men and
women will be left in layers, like drawing to like. As Peter said about
Judas with equal wisdom and reticence, 'He went to his own place.' That
is where we shall all go, to the place we are fit for.

God does not slam the door of heaven in anybody's face; it stands wide
open. But there is a mystic barrier, unseen, but most real, more
repellent than cherub and flaming sword, which makes it impossible for
any foot to cross that threshold except the foot of the man whose heart
and nature have been made Christlike, and fitted for heaven by simple
faith in Him.

Love Him and trust Him, and then your life on earth will be a blessed
seeking and a blessed finding of Him whom to seek is joyous effort,
whom to find is an Elysium of rest. You will walk here not parted from
Him, but with your thoughts and your love, which are your truest self,
going up where He is, until you drop 'the muddy vesture of decay' which
unfits you whilst you wear it for the presence-chamber of the King, and
so you will enter in and be 'for ever with the Lord.'




THE ROCK AND THE WATER


'In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. 38. He that
believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water.'—JOHN vii. 37,38.

The occasion and date of this great saying are carefully given by the
Evangelist, because they throw much light on its significance and
importance. It was 'on the last day, that great day of the Feast,' that
'Jesus stood and cried.' The Feast was that of Tabernacles, which was
instituted in order to keep in mind the incidents of the desert
wandering. On the anniversary of this day the Jews still do as they
used to, and in many a foul ghetto and frowsy back street of European
cities, you will find them sitting beneath the booths of green
branches, commemorating the Exodus and its wonders. Part of that
ceremonial was that on each morning of the seven, and possibly on the
eighth, 'the last day of the Feast,' a procession of white-robed
priests wound down the rocky footpath from the Temple to Siloam, and
there in a golden vase drew water from the spring, chanting, as they
ascended and re-entered the Temple gates where they poured out the
water as a libation, the words of the prophet, 'with joy shall ye draw
water out of the wells of salvation.'

Picture the scene to yourselves—the white-robed priests toiling up the
pathway, the crowd in the court, the sparkling water poured out with
choral song. And then, as the priests stood with their empty vases,
there was a little stir in the crowd, and a Man who had been standing
watching, lifted up a loud voice and cried, 'If any man thirst, let him
come unto _Me_, and drink.' Strange words to say, anywhere and anywhen,
daring words to say there in the Temple court! For there and then they
could mean nothing less than Christ's laying His hand on that old
miracle, which was pointed to by the rite, when the rock yielded the
water, and asserting that all which it did and typified was repeated,
fulfilled, and transcended in Himself, and that not for a handful of
nomads in the wilderness, but for all the world, in all its
generations.

So here is one more instance to add to those to which I have directed
your attention on former occasions, in which, in this Gospel, we find
Christ claiming to be the fulfilment of incidents and events in that
ancient covenant, Jacob's ladder, the brazen serpent, the manna, and
now the rock that yielded the water. He says of them all that they are
the shadow, and the substance is in Him.

I. So then, we have to look, first, at Christ's view of humanity as set
forth here.

You remember the story of how the people in the wilderness, distressed
by that most imperative of all physical cravings, thirst, turned upon
Moses and Aaron and said, 'Why have ye brought us here to die in the
wilderness, where there are neither vines nor pomegranates,' but a land
of thirst and death? Just as Christ, in the former instances to which
we have already referred, selected and pointed to the poisoned and
serpent-stricken camp as an emblem of humanity, and just as He pointed
to the hunger of the men that were starving there, as an emblem, go
here He says: 'That is the world—a congregation of thirsty men raging
in their pangs, and not knowing where to find solace or slaking for
their thirst.' I do not need to go over all the dominant desires that
surge up in men's souls, the mind craving for knowledge, the heart
calling out for love, the whole nature feeling blindly and often
desperately after something external to itself, which it can grasp, and
in which it can feel satisfied. You know them; we all know them. Like
some plant growing in a cellar, and with feeble and blanched tendrils
feeling towards the light which is so far away, every man carries about
within himself a whole host of longing desires, which need to find
something round which they may twine, and in which they can be at rest.

'The misery of man is great upon him,' because, having these desires,
he misreads so many of them, and stifles, ignores, atrophies to so
large an extent the noblest of them. I know of no sadder tragedy than
the way in which we misinterpret the meaning of these inarticulate
cries that rise from the depths of our hearts, and misunderstand what
it is that we are groping after, when we put out empty, and, alas! too
often unclean, hands, to lay hold on our true good.

Brethren, you do not know what you want, many of you, and there is
something pathetic in the endless effort to fill up the heart by a
multitude of diverse and small things, when all the while the deepest
meaning of aspirations, yearnings, longings, unrest, discontent is, 'My
soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.' Nothing less than
infinitude will satisfy the smallest heart of the humblest and least
developed man. Nothing less than to have all our treasures in one
accessible, changeless Infinity will ever give rest to a human soul.
You have tried a multiplicity of trifles. It takes a great many bags of
coppers to make up L. 1000, and they are cumbrous to carry. Would it
not be better to part with a multitude of goodly pearls, if need be, in
order to have all your wealth, and the satisfaction of all your
desires, in the 'One Pearl of great price'? It is God for whom men are
thirsting, and, alas! so many of us know it not. As the old prophet
says, in words that never lose their pathetic power, 'they have hewn
out for themselves cisterns'—one is not enough—they need many. They are
only cisterns, which hold what is put into them, and they are 'broken
cisterns,' which cannot hold it. Yet we turn to these with a strange
infatuation, which even the experience that teaches fools does not
teach us to be folly. We turn _to_ these; and we turn _from_ the
Fountain; the one, the springing, the sufficient, the unfailing, the
exuberant Fountain of living waters. Some of you have cisterns on the
tops of your houses, with a coating of green scum and soot on them, and
do you like that foul draught better than the bright blessing that
comes out of the heart of the rock, flashing and pure?

But not only are these desires misread, but the noblest of them are
stifled. I have said that the condition of humanity is that of thirst.
Christ speaks in my text as if that thirst was by no means universal,
and, alas! it is not, '_If_ any man thirst'; there are some of us that
do not, for we are all so constituted that, unless by continual
self-discipline, and self-suppression, and self-evolution, the lower
desires will overgrow the loftier ones, and kill them, as weeds will
some precious crop. And some of you are so much taken up with
gratifying the lowest necessities and longings of your nature, that you
leave the highest all uncared for, and the effect of that is that the
unsatisfied longing avenges itself, for your neglect of it, by infusing
unrest and dissatisfaction into what else would satisfy the lowest. 'He
that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that
loveth abundance with increase,' but he that loves God will be
satisfied with less than silver, and will continue satisfied when
decrease comes. If you would suck the last drop of sweetness out of the
luscious purple grapes that grow on earth, you must have the appetite
after the best things, recognised, and ministered to, and satisfied.
And when we are satisfied with God, we shall 'have learnt in whatsoever
state we are, therewith to be self-sufficing.' But, as I say, the
highest desires are neglected, and the lowest are cockered and
pampered, and so the taste is depraved. Many of you have no wish for
God, and no desire after high and noble things, and are perfectly
contented to browse on the low levels, or to feed on 'the husks that
the swine do eat,' whilst all the while the loftiest of your powers is
starving within. Brethren, before we can come to the Rock that yields
the water, there must be the sense of need. Do you know what it is that
you want? Have you any desire after righteousness and purity and
nobleness, and the vision of God flaming in upon the pettinesses and
commonplaces of this life which is 'sound and fury, signifying
nothing,' and is trivial in all its pretended greatness, unless you
have learned that you need God most of all, and will never be at rest
till you have Him?

II. Secondly, note here Christ's consciousness of Himself.

Is there anything in human utterances more majestic and wonderful than
this saying of my text, 'If any man thirst, let him come to Me'? There
He claims to be separate altogether from those whose thirst He would
satisfy. There He claims to be able to meet every aspiration, every
spiritual want, every true desire in this complex nature of ours. There
He claims to be able to do this for one, and therefore for all. There
He claims to be able to do it for all the generations of mankind, right
away down to the end. Who is He who thus plants Himself in the front of
the race, knows their deep thirsts, takes account of the impotence of
anything created to satisfy them, assumes the divine prerogative, and
says, 'I come to satisfy every desire in every soul, to the end of
time'? Yes, and from that day when He stood in the Temple and cried
these words, down to this day, there have been, and there are, millions
who can say, 'We have drawn water from this fountain of salvation, and
it has never failed us.' Christ's audacious presentation of Himself to
the world as adequate to fill all its needs, and slake all its thirst,
has been verified by nineteen centuries of experience, and there are
many men and women all over the world to-day who would be ready to set
to their seals that Christ is true, and that He, indeed, is
all-sufficient for the soul.

Brethren, I do not wish to dwell upon this aspect of our Lord's
character in more than a sentence, but I beseech you to ask yourselves
what is the impression that is left of the character of a man who says
such things, unless He was something more than one of our race? Jesus
Christ, it is as clear as day, in these words makes a claim which only
divinity can warrant Him in making, or can fulfil when it is made. And
I would urge you to consider what the alternative is, if you do not
believe that Jesus Christ here sets Himself forth as the Incarnate Word
of God, sufficient for all humanity. 'I am meek and lowly in heart'—and
His lowliness of heart is proved in a strange fashion, if He stands up
before the race and says, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and
drink.'

III. Note, further, Christ's invitation.

'Let him come … and drink'—two expressions for one thing. That
invitation sounds all through Scripture, and, perhaps, there was
lingering in our Lord's mind, besides the reference to the rock that
yielded the water, some echo of the words of the second Isaiah: 'Ho!
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.' 'Nay!' said Christ,
'not to the waters, but to Me.' And then we hear from His own lips the
same invitation addressed to the woman of Samaria, with the difference
that to her, an alien, He pointed only to the natural water in the well
that had been Jacob's, whereas, to these people, the descendants of the
chosen race, He pointed to the miracle in the desert, and claimed to
fulfil that. And on the very last page of Scripture, as it is now
arranged, there stands the echo again of this saying of my text, 'Let
him that is athirst come'—there must be the sense of need, as I was
saying, before there is the coming—'and whosoever will, let him take of
the water of life freely.'

Now, dear friends, beneath these two metaphorical expressions there
lies one simple condition. I put it into three words, which, for the
sake of being easily remembered, I cast into an alliterative form:
approach Christ, appropriate Christ, adhere to Christ.

Approach Christ. You come by faith, you come by love, you come by
communion. And you can come if you will, though He is now on the
throne.

Appropriate Christ. It is vain that the water should be gushing from
the rock there, unless you make it your own by drinking. It must pass
your lips. It must become your personal possession. You must enclose a
piece of the common, and make it your very own. 'He loved _us_, and
gave Himself for _us_'; well and good, but strike out the 'us' and put
in 'me.' 'He loved _me_ and gave Himself for _me_.' The river may be
flowing right past your door, yet your lips may be cracked with thirst,
even whilst you hear the tinkle of its music amongst the sedges and the
pebbles. Appropriate Christ. 'Come … and drink.'

Adhere to Christ. You were thirsty yesterday: you drank. That will not
slake to-day's thirst, nor prevent its recurrence. And you must keep on
drinking if you are to keep from perishing of thirst. Day by day, drop
by drop, draught by draught, you must drink. According to the ancient
Jewish legend, which Paul in one of his letters refers to, about this
very miracle, you must have the Rock following you all through your
desert pilgrimage, and you must drink daily and hourly, by continual
faith, love, and communion.

IV. We have here not only these points, but a fourth. Christ's promise.

'He that believeth on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water.' That is one case of the universal law that a man who trusts
Christ becomes like the Christ whom he trusts. Derivatively and by
impartation, no doubt, but still the man who has gone to that Rock, to
the springing fountain as it pushes forth, receives into himself an
inward life by the communication of Christ's divine Spirit, so that he
has in him a fountain 'springing up into life everlasting.' The Book of
Proverbs says, 'The good man shall be satisfied from himself,' but the
good man is only satisfied from himself when he can say, 'I live, yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me,' and from that better self he will be
satisfied.

So we may have a well in the courtyard, and may be able to bear in
ourselves the fountain of water, and where the divine life of Christ by
His Spirit has through faith been implanted within us, it will come out
from us. There is a question for you Christian people—do any rivers of
living water flow out of you? If they do not, it is to be doubted
whether you have drunk of the fountain. There are many professing
Christians who are like the foul little rivers that pass under the
pavements in Manchester, all impure, and covered over so that nobody
sees them. 'Out of him shall flow rivers of living water'—that is
Christ's way of communicating the blessing of eternal life to the
world—by the medium of those who have already received it. Christian
men and women, if your faith has brought the life into you, see to it
that approaching Christ, and appropriating Christ, and adhering to
Christ, you are becoming assimilated to Christ, and in your daily life,
God's grace fructifying through you to all, are 'become as rivers of
water in a dry place, and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.'




THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD


'… I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life.'—JOHN viii. 12.

Jesus Christ was His own great theme. Whatever be the explanation of
the fact, there stands the fact that, if we know anything at all about
His habitual tone of teaching, we know that it was full of Himself. We
know, too, that what He said about Himself was very unlike the language
becoming a wise and humble religious teacher. Both the prominence given
to His own personality, and the tremendous claims He advances for
Himself, are hard to reconcile with any conception of His nature and
work except one,—that there we see God manifest in the flesh. Are such
words as these fit to be spoken by any man conscious of his own
limitations and imperfections of life and knowledge? Would they not be
fatal to any one's pretensions to be a teacher of religion or morality?
They assert that the Speaker is the Source of illumination for the
world; the only Source; the Source for all. They assert that
'following' Him, whether in belief or in deed, is the sure deliverance
from all darkness, either of error or of sin; and implants in every
follower a light which is life. And the world, instead of turning away
from such monstrous assumptions, and drowning them in scornful
laughter, or rebelling against them, has listened, and largely
believed, and has not felt them to mar the beauty of meekness, which,
by a strange anomaly, this Man says that He has.

Words parallel to these are frequent on our Lord's lips. In each
instance they have some special appropriateness of application, as is
probably the case here. The suggestion has been reasonably made, that
there is an allusion in them to part of the ceremonial connected with
the Feast of Tabernacles, at which we find our Lord present in the
previous chapter. Commentators tell us that on the first evening of the
Feast, two huge golden lamps, which stood one on each side of the altar
of burnt offering in the Temple court, were lighted as the night began
to fall, and poured out a brilliant flood over Temple and city and deep
gorge; while far into the midnight, troops of rejoicing worshippers
clustered about them with dance and song. The possibility of this
reference is strengthened by the note of place which our Evangelist
gives. 'These things spake Jesus in the treasury, as He taught in the
Temple,' for the 'treasury' stood in the same court, and doubtless the
golden lamps were full in sight of the listening groups. It is also
strengthened by the unmistakable allusion in the previous chapter to
another portion of the ceremonial of the Feast, where our Lord puts
forth another of His great self-revelations and demands, in singular
parallelism with that of our text, in the words, 'If any man thirst,
let him come unto Me and drink.' That refers to the custom during the
Feast of drawing water from the fountain of Siloam, which was poured
out on the altar, while the gathered multitude chanted the old strain
of Isaiah's prophecy: 'With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of
salvation.' It is to be remembered, too, in estimating the probability
of our text belonging to these Temple-sayings at the Feast, that the
section which separates it from them, and contains the story about the
woman taken in adultery, is judged by the best critics to be out of
place here, and is not found in the most valuable manuscripts. If,
then, we suppose this allusion to be fairly probable, I think it gives
a special direction and meaning to these grand words, which it may be
worth while to think of briefly.

The first thing to notice is—the intention of the ceremonial to which
our Lord here points as a symbol of Himself. What was the meaning of
these great lights that went flashing through the warm autumn nights of
the festival? All the parts of that Feast were intended to recall some
feature of the forty years' wanderings in the wilderness; the lights by
the altar were memorials of the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by
night. When, then, Jesus says, 'I am the Light of the world,' He would
declare Himself as being in reality, and to every soul of man to the
end of time, what that cloud with its heart of fire was in outward
seeming to one generation of desert wanderers.

Now, the main thing which _it_ was to these, was the visible vehicle of
the divine presence. 'The Lord went before them in a pillar of a
cloud.' 'The Lord looked through the pillar.' 'The Lord came down in
the cloud and spake with him.' The 'cloud covered the Tabernacle, and
the glory of the Lord appeared.' Such is the way in which it is ever
spoken of, as being the manifestation to Israel in sensible form of the
presence among them of God their King. 'The glory of the Lord' has a
very specific meaning in the Old Testament. It usually signifies that
brightness, the flaming heart of the cloudy pillar, which for the most
part, as it would appear, veiled by the cloud, gathered radiance as the
world grew darker at set of sun, and sometimes, at great crises in the
history, as at the Red Sea, or on Sinai, or in loving communion with
the law-giver, or in swift judgment against the rebels, rent the veil
and flamed on men's eyes. I need not remind you how this same pillar of
cloud and fire, which at once manifested and hid God, was thereby no
unworthy symbol of Him who remains, after all revelation, unrevealed.
Whatsoever sets forth, must also shroud, the infinite glory. Concerning
all by which He makes Himself known to eye, or mind, or heart, it must
be said, 'And there was the hiding of His power.' The fire is ever
folded in the cloud. Nay, at bottom, the light which is full of glory
is therefore inaccessible, and the thick darkness in which He dwells is
but the 'glorious privacy' of perfect light.

That guiding pillar, which moved before the moving people—a cloud to
shelter from the scorching heat, a fire to cheer in the blackness of
night—spread itself above the sanctuary of the wilderness; and 'the
glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle.' When the moving Tabernacle
gave place to the fixed Temple, again '_the_ cloud filled the house of
the Lord'; and there—dwelling between the cherubim, the types of the
whole order of creatural life, and above the mercy-seat, that spoke of
pardon, and the ark that held the law, and behind the veil, in the
thick darkness of the holy of holies, where no feet trod, save once a
year one white-robed priest, in the garb of a penitent, and bearing the
blood that made atonement—shone the light of the glory of God, the
visible majesty of the present Deity.

But long centuries had passed since that light had departed. 'The
glory' had ceased from the house that now stood on Zion, and the light
from between the cherubim. Shall we not, then, see a deep meaning and
reference to that awful blank, when Jesus standing there in the courts
of that Temple, whose inmost shrine was, in a most sad sense, empty,
pointed to the quenched lamps that commemorated a departed Shechinah,
and said, 'I am the Light of the world'?

He is the Light of the world, because in Him is the glory of God. His
words are madness, and something very like blasphemy, unless they are
vindicated by the visible indwelling in Him of the present God. The
cloud of the humanity, 'the veil, that is to say, His flesh,' enfolds
and tempers; and through its transparent folds reveals, even while it
swathes, the Godhead. Like some fleecy vapour flitting across the sun,
and irradiated by its light, it enables our weak eyes to see light, and
not darkness, in the else intolerable blaze. Yes! Thou art the Light of
the world, because in Thee dwelleth 'the fulness of the Godhead
bodily.' Thy servant hath taught us the meaning of Thy words, when he
said: 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld His
glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth.'

Then, subordinate to this principal thought, is the other on which I
may touch for a moment—that Christ, like that pillar of cloud and fire,
_guides_ us in our pilgrimage. You may remember how emphatically the
Book of Numbers (chap. ix.) dwells upon the absolute control of all the
marches and halts by the movements of the cloud. When it was taken up,
they journeyed; when it settled down, they encamped. As long as it lay
spread above the Tabernacle, there they stayed. Impatient eyes might
look, and impatient spirits chafe—no matter. The camp might be pitched
in a desolate place, away from wells and palm-trees, away from shade,
among fiery serpents, and open to fierce foes—no matter. As long as the
pillar was motionless, no man stirred. Weary slow days might pass in
this compulsory inactivity; but 'whether it were two days, or a month,
or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the Tabernacle, the children of
Israel journeyed not.' And whenever It lifted itself up,—no matter how
short had been the halt, how weary and footsore the people, how
pleasant the resting-place—up with the tent-pegs immediately, and away.
If the signal were given at midnight, when all but the watchers slept,
or at midday, it was all the same. There was the true Commander of
their march. It was not Moses, nor Jethro, with his quick Arab eye and
knowledge of the ground, that guided them; but that stately, solemn
pillar, that floated before them. How they must have watched for the
gathering up of its folds as they lay softly stretched along the
Tabernacle roof; and for its sinking down, and spreading itself out,
like a misty hand of blessing, as it sailed in the van!

'I am the Light of the world.' We have in Him a better guide through
worse perplexities than theirs. By His Spirit within us, by that
all-sufficient and perfect example of His life, by the word of His
Gospel, and by the manifold indications of His providence, Jesus Christ
is our Guide. If ever we go astray, it is not His fault, but ours. How
gentle and loving that guidance is, none who have not yielded to it can
tell. How wise and sure, none but those who have followed it know. He
does not say 'Go,' but 'Come.' When He puts forth His sheep, He goes
before them. In all rough places His quick hand is put out to save us.
In danger He lashes us to Himself, as Alpine guides do when there is
perilous ice to get across. As one of the psalms puts it, with
wonderful beauty: 'I will guide thee with Mine eye'—a glance, not a
blow—a look of directing love, that at once heartens to duty and tells
duty. We must be very near Him to catch that look, and very much in
sympathy with Him to understand it; and when we do, we must be swift to
obey. Our eyes must be ever toward the Lord, or we shall often be
marching on, unwitting that the pillar has spread itself for rest, or
idly dawdling in our tents long after the cloud has gathered itself up
for the march. Do not let impatience lead you to hasty interpretation
of His plans before they are fairly evolved. Many men by self-will, by
rashness, by precipitate hurry in drawing conclusions about what they
ought to do, have ruined their lives. Take care, in the old-fashioned
phrase, of 'running before you are sent.' There should always be a good
clear space between the guiding ark and you, 'about two thousand cubits
by measure,' that there may be no mistakes about the road. It is
neither reverent nor wise to be treading on the heels of our Guide in
our eager confidence that we know where He wants us to go.

Do not let the warmth by the camp-fire, or the pleasantness of the
shady place where your tent is pitched, keep you there when the cloud
lifts. Be ready for change, be ready for continuance, because you are
in fellowship with your Leader and Commander; and let Him say, Go, and
you go; Do this, and you gladly do it, until the hour when He will
whisper, Come; and, as you come, the river will part, and the journey
will be over, and 'the fiery, cloudy pillar,' that 'guided you all your
journey through,' will spread itself out an abiding glory, in that
higher home where 'the Lamb is the light thereof.'

All true following of Christ begins with faith, or we might almost say
that following _is_ faith, for we find our Lord substituting the former
expression for the latter in another passage of this Gospel parallel
with the present. 'I am come a Light into the world, that whosoever
believeth on Me should not walk in darkness.' The two ideas are not
equivalent, but faith is the condition of following; and following is
the outcome and test, because it is the operation, of faith. None but
they who trust Him will follow Him. He who does not follow, does not
trust. To follow Christ, means to long and strive after His
companionship; as the Psalmist says, 'My soul followeth hard after
Thee.' It means the submission of the will, the effort of the whole
nature, the daily conflict to reproduce His example, the resolute
adoption of His command as my law, His providence as my will, His
fellowship as my joy. And the root and beginning of all such following
is in coming to Him, conscious of mine own darkness, and trustful in
His great light. We must rely on a Guide before we accept His
directions; and it is absurd to pretend that we trust Him, if we do not
go as He bids us. So 'Follow thou Me' is, in a very real sense, the sum
of all Christian duty.

That thought opens out very wide fields, into which we must not even
glance now; but I cannot help pausing here to repeat the remark already
made, as to the gigantic and incomprehensible self-confidence that
speaks here. 'Followeth _Me_'; then Jesus Christ calmly proposes
Himself as the aim and goal for every soul of man; sets up His own
doings as an all-sufficient rule for us all, with all our varieties of
temper, character, culture, and work, and quietly assumes to have a
right of precedence before, and of absolute command over, the whole
world. They are all to keep _behind_ Him, He thinks, be they saints or
sages, kings or beggars; and the liker they are to Himself, He thinks,
the nearer they will be to perfectness and life. He puts Himself at the
head of the mystic march of the generations, and, like the mysterious
Angel that Joshua saw in the plain by Jericho, makes the lofty claim:
'Nay, but as _Captain_ of the Lord's host am I come up.' Do we admit
His claim because we know His Name? Do we yield Him full trust because
we have learned that He is the Light of men since He is the Word of
God? Do we follow Him with loyal obedience, longing love, and lowly
imitation, since He has been and is to us the Saviour of our souls?

In the measure in which we do, the great promises of this wonderful
saying will be verified and understood by us—'He that followeth Me
shall not walk in darkness.' That saying has, as one may say, a lower
and a higher fulfilment. In the lower, it refers to practical life and
its perplexities. Nobody who has not tried it would believe how many
difficulties are cleared out of a man's road by the simple act of
trying to follow Christ. No doubt there will still remain obscurities
enough as to what we ought to do, to call for the best exercise of
patient wisdom; but an enormous proportion of them vanish like mist
when the sun breaks through, when once we honestly set ourselves to
find out whither the pillared Light is guiding. It is a reluctant will,
and intrusive likings and dislikings, that obscure the way for us, much
oftener than real obscurity in the way itself. It is seldom impossible
to discern the divine will, when we only wish to know it that we may do
it. And if ever it is impossible for us, surely that impossibility is
like the cloud resting on the Tabernacle—a sign that for the present
His will is that we should be still, and wait, and watch.

But there is a higher meaning in the words than even this promise of
practical direction. In the profound symbolism of Scripture, especially
of this Gospel, 'darkness' is the name for the whole condition of the
soul averted from God. So our Lord here is declaring that to follow Him
is the true deliverance from that midnight of the soul. There are a
darkness of ignorance, a darkness of impurity, a darkness of sorrow;
and in that threefold gloom, thickening to a darkness of death, are
they enwrapt who follow not the Light. That is the grim, tragical side
of this saying, too sad, too awful for our lips to speak much of, and
best left in the solemn impressiveness of that one word. But the
hopeful, blessed side of it is, that the feeblest beginnings of trust
in Jesus Christ, and the first tottering steps that try to tread in
His, bring us into the light. It does not need that we have reached our
goal, it is enough that our faces are turned to it, and our hearts
desire to attain it, then we may be sure that the dominion of the
darkness over us is broken. To follow, though it be afar off, and with
unequal steps, fills our path with increasing brightness, and even
though evil and ignorance and sorrow may thrust their blackness in upon
our day, they are melting in the growing glory, and already we may give
thanks 'unto the Father who hath made us meet to be partakers of the
inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the
power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear
Son.'

But we have not merely the promise that we shall be led by the light
and brought into the light. A yet deeper and grander gift is offered
here: 'He shall have the light of life.' I suppose that means, not, as
it is often carelessly taken to mean, a light which illuminates the
life, but, like the similar phrases of this Gospel, 'bread of life,'
'water of life,'—light which is life. 'In Him was life, and the life
was the light of men.' These two are one in their source, which is
Jesus, the Word of God. Of Him we have to say, 'With Thee is the
fountain of life, in Thy light shall we see light.' They are one in
their deepest nature; the life is the light, and the light the life.
And this one gift is bestowed upon every soul that follows Christ. Not
only will our outward lives be illumined or guided from without, but
our inward being will be filled with the brightness. 'Ye were sometimes
darkness, now are ye light in the Lord.'

That pillar of fire remained apart and without. But this true and
better Guide of our souls enters in and dwells in us, in all the
fulness of His triple gift of life, and light, and love. Within us He
will chiefly prove Himself the Guide of our spirits, and will not
merely cast His beams on the path of our feet, but will fill and flood
us with His own brightness. All light of knowledge, of goodness, of
gladness will be ours, if Christ be ours; and ours He surely will be if
we follow Him. Let us take heed, lest turning away from Him we follow
the will-o'-the-wisps of our own fancies, or the dancing lights, born
of putrescence, that flicker above the swamps, for they will lead us
into doleful lands where evil things haunt, and into outer darkness.
Let us take heed how we use that light of God; for Christ, like His
symbol of old, has a double aspect according to the eye which looks.
'It came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and
it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to
these.' He is either a Stone of stumbling or a sure Foundation, a
savour of life or of death, and which He is depends on ourselves.
Trusted, loved, followed, He is light. Neglected, turned from, He is
darkness. Though He be the Light of the world, it is only the man who
follows Him to whom He can give the light of life. Therefore, man's
awful prerogative of perverting the best into the worst forced Him, who
came to be the light of men, to that sad and solemn utterance: 'For
judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see,
and that they which see might be made blind.'




THREE ASPECTS OF FAITH


'Many believed on Him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on
Him….'—JOHN viii. 30,31.

The Revised Version accurately represents the original by varying the
expression in these two clauses, retaining 'believed on Him' in the
former, and substituting the simple 'believed Him' in the latter. The
variation in two contiguous clauses can scarcely be accidental in so
careful a writer as the Apostle John. And the reason and meaning of it
are obvious enough on the face of the narrative. His purpose is to
distinguish between more and less perfect acceptance of Jesus Christ.
The more perfect is the former, 'they believed on Him'; the less
perfect is the latter, the simple acceptance of His word on His claim
of Messiahship, which is stigmatised as shallow, and proved to be
transient by the context.

They were 'Jews' which believed, and they continued to be so whilst
they were believing. Now, the word 'Jew' in this Gospel always connotes
antagonism to Jesus Christ; and as for these persons, how slight and
unreliable their adhesion to the Lord is, comes out in the course of
the next few verses; and by the end of the chapter they are taking up
stones to stone Him. So John would show us that there is a kind of
acceptance which may be real, and may be the basis of something much
better hereafter, but which, if it does not grow, rots and disappears;
and he would draw a broad line of distinction between that and the
other mental act, far deeper, more wholesome, more lasting and vital,
which he designates as 'believing _on_ Him.' I take these words, then,
for consideration, not so much to deal with other thoughts suggested by
them, as because they afford me a starting-point for the consideration
of the various phases of the act of believing, its blessings and its
nature, and its relation to its objects, which are expressed in the New
Testament by the various grammatical connections and constructions of
this word.

Now, the facts with which I wish to deal may be very briefly stated.
There are three ways in which the New Testament represents the act of
believing, and its relation to its Object, Christ. These three are,
first, the simple one which appears in the text as 'believed Him.' Then
there is a second, which appears in two forms, slightly different, but
which, for our purpose, may be treated as substantially the
same—'believing on Him.' And then there is a third, which, literally
and accurately translated is, 'believing unto' or 'into Him.' That
phrase is John's favourite one, and rather unfortunately, though
perhaps necessarily, it has been generally rendered by our translators
by the less forcible 'believing in,' which gives the idea of repose in,
but does not give the idea of motion towards. These three, then, I
think, do set forth, if we will ponder them, very large lessons as to
the essence of this act of believing, as to the Object upon which it
fastens, and as to the blessings which flow from it, which it will be
worth our while to consider now. I may cast the whole into the shape of
three exhortations: believe Him, believe on Him, believe unto Him.

I. First, then, believe Christ.

We accept a man's words when we trust the man. Even if belief, or
faith, is represented in the New Testament, as it very rarely is, as
having for its object the words of revelation, behind that acceptance
of the words lies confidence in the person speaking. And the beginning
of all true Christian faith has in it, not merely the intellectual
acceptance of certain propositions as true, but a confidence in the
veracity of Him by whom they are made known to us—even Jesus Christ our
Lord.

I do not need to insist upon that at any length here—it would take me
away from my present purpose; but what I do wish to emphasise is, that
from the very starting-point, the smallest germ of the most rudimentary
and imperfect faith which knits a soul to Jesus Christ has Him for its
Object, and is thus distinguished from the mere acceptance of truths
which, on other grounds than the authority of the speaker, may
legitimately commend themselves to a man.

Then believe Him. Now, that breaks up into two thoughts, which are all
that I intend to deduce from it now, although many more might be
suggested. The one is this, that the least and the lowest that Jesus
Christ asks from us is the entire and unhesitating acceptance of His
utterances as final, conclusive, and absolutely true. Whatever more
Jesus Christ may be, He is, by His life and words, the Communicator of
divine and certain truth. He is a Teacher, though He is a great deal
more. And whatever more Christian faith may be—and it is a great deal
more—it requires, at least, the frank and full recognition of the
authority of every word that comes from His lips. A Christianity
without a creed is a dream. Bones without flesh are very dry, no doubt;
but what about flesh without bones? An inert, shapeless mass. You will
never have a vigorous and true Christian life if it is to be moulded
according to the fantastic dream of these latter days, which tells us
that we may take Jesus as the Guide of our conduct and need not mind
about what He says to us. 'Believe Me' is His requirement. The words of
His mouth, and the revelations which He has made in the sweetness of
His life, and in all the graciousness of His dealings, are the very
unveiling to man of absolute and final and certain truth.

But then, on the other hand, let us remember that, while all this is
most clear and distinct in the teaching of Scripture, it carries us but
a very short way. We find, in the instance from which we take our
starting-point in this sermon, the broad distinction drawn, and
practically illustrated in the conduct of the persons concerned,
between the simple acceptance of what Christ says, and a true faith
that clings to Him for evermore. And the same kind of disparagement of
the lower process of merely accepting His word is found more than once
in connection with the same phrases. We find, for instance, the two
which are connected in our texts used in a previous conversation
between our Lord and His antagonists. When He says to them, 'This is
the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent,' they reply,
dragging down His claim to a lower level, 'What sign showest Thou, that
we may see, and believe Thee?' He demanded belief _on_ Himself; they
answer, 'We are ready to _believe you_, on condition that we see
something that may make the rendering of our belief a logical necessity
for us.'

Let us lay to heart the rudimentary and incomplete character of a faith
which simply accepts the teaching of Jesus Christ, and does no more.
The notion that orthodoxy is Christianity, that a man who does not
contradict the teaching of the New Testament is thereby a Christian, is
a very old and very perilous and very widespread one. There are many of
us who have no better claim to be called Christians than this, that we
never denied anything that Jesus Christ said, though we are not
sufficiently interested in it, I was going to say, even to deny it.
This rudimentary faith, which contents itself with the acceptance of
the truth revealed, hardens into mere formalism, or liquefies into mere
careless indifference as to the very truth that it professes to
believe. There is nothing more impotent than creeds which lie dormant
in our brains, and have no influence upon our lives. I wonder how many
readers of this sermon, who fancy themselves good Christians, do with
their creed as the Japanese used to do with their Emperor—keep him in a
palace behind bamboo screens, and never let him do anything, whilst all
the reality of power was possessed by another man, who did not profess
to be a king at all. Do you think you are Christians because you would
sign thirty-nine or three hundred and ninety articles of Christianity,
if they were offered to you, while there is not one of them that
influences either your thinking or your conduct? Do not let us have
these 'sluggish kings,' with a mayor of the place to do the real
government, but set on the throne of your hearts the principles of your
religion, and see to it that all your convictions be translated into
practice, and all your practice be informed by your convictions.

This belief in a set of dogmas, on the authority of Jesus Christ, about
which dogmas we do not care a rush, and which make no difference upon
our lives, is the faith about which James has so many hard things to
say; and he ventures upon a parallel that I should not like to venture
on unless I were made bold by his example: 'Thou believest, O vain man!
thou doest well: the devils also believe, and'—better than you, in that
their belief does something for them, they 'believe—and _tremble_!' But
what shall we say about a man who professes himself a disciple, and
neither trembles, nor thrills, nor hopes, nor dreads, nor desires, nor
does any single thing because of his creed? Believe Jesus, but do not
stop there.

II. Believe on Christ.

Now, as I have remarked already, and as many of you know, there is a
slightly different, twofold form of this phrase in Scripture. I need
not trouble you with the minute distinction between the one and the
other. Both forms coincide in the important point on which I wish to
touch. That representation of believing on Christ carries us away at
once from the mere act of acceptance of His word on His authority to
the far more manifestly voluntary, moral, and personal act of reliance
upon Him. The metaphor is expanded in various ways in Scripture, and
instead of offering any thoughts of my own about it, I would simply ask
attention to three of the forms in which it is set forth in the Old and
in the New Testaments.

The first of them, and the one which we may regard as governing the
others, is that found in the words of Isaiah, 'Behold, I lay in Zion a
stone, a sure Foundation'; and, as the Apostle Peter comments, 'He that
believeth on Him shall not be confounded.' There the thoughts presented
are the superposition of the building upon its Foundation, the rest of
the soul, and the rearing of the life on the basis of Jesus Christ.

How much that metaphor says to us about Him as the Foundation, in all
the aspects in which we can apply that term! He is the Basis of our
hope, the Guarantee of our security, the Foundation-stone of our
beliefs, the very Ground on which our whole life reposes, the Source of
our tranquillity, the Pledge of our peace. All that I think, feel,
desire, wish, and do, ought to be rested upon that dear Lord, and
builded on Him by simple faith. By patient persistence of effort
rearing up the fabric of my life firmly upon Him, and grafting every
stone of it—if I might so use the metaphor—into the bedding-stone,
which is Christ, I shall be strong, peaceful, and pure.

The storm comes, the waters rise, the winds howl, the hail and the rain
'sweep away the refuge of lies,' and the dwellers in these frail and
foundationless houses are hurrying in wild confusion from one peak to
another, before the steadily rising tide. But he that builds on that
Foundation 'shall not make haste,' as Isaiah has it; shall not need to
hurry to shift his quarters before the flood overtake him; shall look
out serene upon all the hurtling fury of the wild storm, and the rise
of the sullen waters. So, reliance on Christ, and the honest making of
Him the Basis, not of our hopes only, but of our thinkings and of our
doings, and of our whole being, is the secret of security, and the
pledge of peace.

Then there is another form of the same phrase, 'believing on,' in which
is suggested not so much the figure of building upon a foundation, as
of some feeble man resting upon a strong stay, or clinging to an
outstretched and mighty arm. The same metaphor is implied in the word
'reliance.' We lean upon Christ when, forsaking all other props, and
realising His sufficiency and sweetness, we rest the whole weight of
our weariness and all the impotence of our weakness upon His strong and
unwearied arm, and so are saved. All other stays are like that one to
which the prophet compares the King of Egypt—the papyrus reed in the
Nile stream, on which, if a man leans, it will break into splinters
which will go into his flesh, and make a poisoned wound. But if we lean
on Christ, we lean on a brazen wall and an iron pillar, and anything is
possible sooner than that that stay shall give.

There is still another form of the metaphor, in which neither building
upon a foundation, nor leaning upon a support which is thought of as
below what rests upon it, are suggested, but rather the hanging upon
something firm and secure which is above what hangs from it. The same
picture is suggested by our word 'dependence.' 'As a nail fastened in a
sure place,' said one of the prophets, 'on Him shall hang all the glory
of His Father's house.'

  'Hangs my helpless soul on Thee.'

The rope lowered over the cliffs supports the adventurous bird-nester
in safety above the murmuring sea. They who clasp Christ's hand
outstretched from above, may swing over the deepest, most vacuous
abyss, and fear no fall.

So, brother, build on Christ, rely on Him, depend on Him, and it shall
not be in vain. But if you will not build on the sure Foundation, do
not wonder if the rotten one gives way. If you will not lean on the
strong Stay, complain not when the weak one crumbles to dust beneath
your weight. And if you choose to swing over the profound depth at the
end of a piece of pack-thread, instead of holding on by an adamantine
chain wrapped round God's throne, you must be prepared for its breaking
and your being smashed to pieces below.

III. The last exhortation that comes out of this comparative study of
these phrases is—Believe into Christ.

That is a very pregnant and remarkable expression, and it can scarcely,
as you see, be rendered into our language without a certain harshness;
but still it is worth while to face the harshness for the sake of
getting the double signification that is involved in it. For when we
speak of believing unto or into Him, we suggest two things, both of
which, apparently, were in the minds of the writers of the New
Testament. One is motion towards, and the other is repose in, that dear
Lord.

So, then, true Christian faith is the flight of the soul towards
Christ. Therein is one of the special blessednesses of the Christian
life, that it has for its object and aim absolutely infinite and
unattainable completeness and glory, so that unwearied freshness,
inexhaustible buoyancy, endless progress, are the dower of every spirit
that truly trusts in Christ. All other aims and objects are limited,
transient, and will be left behind. Every other landmark will sink
beneath the horizon, where so many of our landmarks have sunk already,
and where they will all disappear when the last moment comes. But we
may have, and if we are Christian people we shall have, bright before
us, sufficiently certain of being reached to make our efforts hopeful
and confident, sufficiently certain of never being reached to make our
efforts blessed with endless aspirations, the great light and love of
that dear Lord, to yearn after whom is better than to possess all
besides, and following hard after whom, even in the very motion there
is rest, and in the search there is finding. Religion is the flight of
the soul, the aspiration of the whole man after the unattainable
Attainable—'that I may know Him, and be found in Him.'

Oh, how such thoughts ought to shame us who call ourselves Christians!
Growth, progress, getting nearer to Christ, yearning ever with a great
desire after Him!—do not the words seem irony when applied to most of
us? Think of the average type of sluggish contentment with present
attainments that marks Christian people—tortoises in their crawling
rather than eagles in their flight. And let us take our portion of
shame, and remember that the faith which believes Him, and that which
believes on Him, both need to be crowned and perfected by that which
believes towards Him, of which the motto is, 'Forgetting the things
that are behind, I reach forward to the things that are before.'

But there is another side to this last phase of faith. That true
believing towards or unto Christ is the rest of the soul in Him. By
faith that deep and most real union of the believing soul with Jesus
Christ is effected which may be fitly described as our entrance into
and abode in Him. The believer is as if incorporated into Him in whom
he believes. Indeed, the Apostle ventures to use a more startling
expression than _incorporation_ when he says that 'he that is joined to
the Lord is one Spirit.' If by faith we press towards, by faith we
shall be in, Christ. Faith is at once motion and rest, search and
finding, desire and fruition. The felicity of this last form of the
phrase is its expression of both these ideas, which are united in fact
as in word. A rare construction of the verb _to believe_, with the
simple preposition _in_, coincides with this part of the meaning of
_believing unto_ or _into_, and need not be separately considered.

With this understanding of its meaning, we see how natural is John's
preference for this construction. For surely, if he has anything to
tell us, it is that the true Christian life is a life enclosed, as it
were, in Jesus Christ. Nor need I remind you how Paul, though he starts
from a different point of view, yet coincides with John in this
teaching. For, to him, to be 'in Christ' is the sum of all blessedness,
righteousness, peace, and power. As in an atmosphere, we may dwell in
Him. He may be the strong Habitation to which we may continually
resort. One of the Old Testament words for trusting means taking
refuge, and such a thought is naturally suggested by this New Testament
form of expression. 'I flee unto Thee to hide me.' In that Fortress we
dwell secure.

To be in Jesus, wedded to Him by the conjunction of will and desire,
wedded to Him in the oneness of a believing spirit and in the obedience
of a life, to be thus in Christ is the crown and climax of faith, and
the condition of all perfection. To be in Christ is life; to be out of
Him is death. In Him we have redemption; in Him we have wisdom, truth,
peace, righteousness, hope, confidence. To be in Him is to be in
heaven. We enter by faith. Faith is not the acceptance merely of His
Word, but is the reliance of the soul on Him, the flight of the soul
towards Him, the dwelling of the soul in Him. 'Come, My people, into
thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee … until the indignation be
overpast.'




'NEVER IN BONDAGE'


'We… were never in bondage to any man: how gayest Thou, Ye shall be
made free!'—JOHN viii. 33.

'Never in bondage to any man'? Then what about Egypt, Babylon, Persia,
Syria? Was there not a Roman garrison looking down from the castle into
the very Temple courts where this boastful falsehood was uttered? It
required some hardihood to say, 'Never in bondage to any man,' in the
face of such a history, and such a present. But was it not just an
instance of the strange power which we all have and exercise, of
ignoring disagreeable facts, and by ingenious manipulation taking the
wrinkles out of the photograph? The Jews were perhaps not
misunderstanding Jesus Christ quite so much as these words may suggest.
If He had been promising, as they chose to assume, political and
external liberty, I fancy they would have risen to the bait a little
more eagerly than they did to His words.

But be that as it may, this strange answer of theirs suggests that
power of ignoring what we do not want to see, not only in the way in
which I have suggested, but also in another. For if they had any
inkling of what Jesus meant by slavery and freedom, they, by such words
as these, put away from themselves the thought that they were, in any
deep and inward sense, bondsmen, and that a message of liberty had any
application to them. Ah, dear friends! there was a great deal of human
nature in these men, who thus put up a screen between them and the
penetrating words of our Lord. Were they not doing just what many of
us—all of us to some extent—do: ignoring the facts of their own
necessities, of their own spiritual condition, denying the plain
lessons of experience? Like them, are not we too often refusing to look
in the face the fact that we all, apart from Him, are really in
bondage? Because we do not realise the slavery, are we not indifferent
to the offer of freedom? 'We were never in bondage'; consequently we
add, 'How sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free?' So then, my text brings
us to think of three things: our bondage, our ignorance of our bondage,
our consequent indifference to Christ's offer of liberty. Let me say a
word or two about each of these.

First as to—

I. Our bondage.

Christ follows the vain boast in the text, with the calm, grave,
profound explanation of what He meant: 'Whoso committeth sin is the
slave of sin.' That is true in two ways. By the act of sinning a man
shows that he is the slave of an alien power that has captured him; and
in the act of sinning, he rivets the chains and increases the tyranny.
He is a slave, or he would not obey sin. He is more a slave because he
has again obeyed it. Now, do not let us run away with the idea that
when Jesus speaks of sin and its bondage, He is thinking only, or
mainly, of gross outrages and contradictions of the plain law of
morality and decency, that He is thinking only of external acts which
all men brand as being wrong, or of those which law qualifies as
crimes. We have to go far deeper than that, and into a far more inward
region of life than that, before we come to apprehend the inwardness
and the depth of the Christian conception of what sin is. We have to
bring our whole life close up against God, and then to judge its deeds
thereby. Therefore, though I know I am speaking to a mass of
respectable, law-abiding people, very few of you having any knowledge
of the grosser and uglier forms of transgression, and I dare say none
of you having any experience of what it is to sin against human law,
though I do not charge you—God forbid!—with _vices_, and still less
with _crimes_, I bring to each man's conscience a far more searching
word than either of these two, when I say, 'We all have _sinned_ and
come short of the glory of God.' This declaration of the universality
and reality of the bondage of sin is only the turning into plain words
of a fact which is of universal experience, though it may be of a very
much less universal consciousness. We may not be aware of the fact,
because, as I have to show you, we do not direct our attention to it.
But there it is; and the truth is that every man, however noble his
aspirations sometimes, however pure and high his convictions, and
however honest in the main may be his attempts to do what is right,
when he deals honestly with himself, becomes more or less conscious of
just that experience which a great expert in soul analysis and
self-examination made: 'I find a law'—an influence working upon my
heart with the inevitableness and certainty of law—'that when I would
do good, evil is present with me.'

We all know that, whether we regard it as we ought or no. We all say
Amen to that, when it is forced upon our attention. There _is_
something in us that thwarts aspiration towards good, and inclines to
evil.

  'What will but felt the fleshly screen?'

And it is not only a screen. It not only prevents us from rising as
high as we would, but it sinks us so low as to do deeds that something
within us recoils from and brands as evil. Jesus teaches us that he who
commits sin is the slave of sin; that is to say, that an alien power
has captured and is coercing the wrongdoer. That teaching does not
destroy responsibility, but it kindles hope. A foreign foe, who has
invaded the land, may be driven out of the land, and all his prisoners
set free, if a stronger than he comes against him. Christianity is
called gloomy and stern, because it preaches the corruption of man's
heart. Is it not a gospel to draw a distinction between the evil that a
man does, and the self that a man may be? Is it not better, more
hopeful, more of a true evangel, to say to a man, 'Sin dwelleth in
you,' than to say, 'What is called sin is only the necessary action of
human nature'? To believe that their present condition is not slavery
makes men hopeless of ever gaining freedom, and the true gospel of the
emancipation of humanity rests on the Christian doctrine of the bondage
of sin.

Let me remind you that freedom consists not in the absence of external
constraints, but in the animal in us being governed by the will, for
when the flesh is free the man is a slave. And it means that the will
should be governed by the conscience; and it means that the conscience
should be governed by God. These are the stages. Men are built in three
stories, so to speak. Down at the bottom, and to be kept there, are
inclinations, passions, lust, desires, all which are but blind aimings
after their appropriate satisfaction, without any question as to
whether the satisfaction is right or wrong; and above that a dominant
will which is meant to control, and above that a conscience. That is
the pyramid; and as by the sunshine on the gilded top of some spire,
the shining apex, the conscience, is illnmined when the light of God
falls upon it. And when a man is built in that fashion, and keeps to
that fashion, then, and only then, is he free.

I need not remind you of how the metaphor of my text receives its most
tragical and yet most common illustration and confirmation in the awful
fact of the power of any evil thing, once thought or done by a man, to
reproduce itself, onwards and ever onwards. It is a far commoner thing
for a man never to have done some given evil, never to have got drunk,
never to have stolen, or the like, than to have done it only once. I
have heard of a mysterious illness, in which at first medical analysis
detected with difficulty one single bacterion in a great quantity of
blood. But in a few days, so had they multiplied that no drop could be
taken anywhere from the veins which was not full of them. That is how
men get under the slavery of any evil thing; and habit becomes stronger
than anything except that "strong Son of God, immortal Love," whose
Spirit can conquer even it." Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the
leopard his spots? Then may ye that are wont to do evil learn to do
well." The bondage is real and hard.

My text suggests to us that strange, sad fact­

II. OUR IGNORANCE OF OUR SLAVERY.

"We were never in bondage to any man," said the Jews. We are but too
apt to repeat the empty boast, and as they forgot Pharaoh and
Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus,and Cesar, we forget our failures, our
faults, our sins. We ignore them. Is not that, too, a plain fact of
experience? A sadly large percentage of men never have really opened
their eyes to the undeniable truth that sin has dominion over them.
They go along on the surface of things, keeping to the shallows of
human life, occupying themselves with their various duties and
enjoyments, and they never know, just because they shut their eyes to
facts, or rather turn their eyes away from facts-what is their real
condition in God's sight. Some of my present hearers are, in regard to
this matter, what the old Puritans used to call "Gospel-hardened." They
have their hearts and minds, I was going to say water-proofed, by
repeated application to them, as I am trying to apply them now, of
truths which but add one more film to the layers between their hearts
and the Gospel. Because they are so familiar with the words of our
message, they all but lose the faculty of bringing its power into
contact with themselves. Oh! if I could overcome that tendency which
there is in all regular church and chapel-goers to make themselves
comfortable in their corners, and suppose that the man in the pulpit is
saying what he ought to say, and that they need not give much heed to
his message because they have heard it all before-if I could once get
the sharp point of this great Christian truth of our slavery under sin,
through the manifold layers with which your heart is encrusted, you
would find out the weight of a good many things that some of you think
very phantasmal and of little consequence.

There is nothing about us that is more remarkable and more awful, when
you come to think of it, than the power that we have, by not attending
to something, of making that something practically non-existent. The
great search-lights, that they now have on battleships, will fling a
beam of terrible revealing power on one sma11 segment of the vast
circle of the sea; and all the rest, though it may be filled with the
enemy's fleet, will be lying in darkness. So just because we cannot get
you to think of the facts of your slavery to sin, the facts are
non-existent as far as you are concerned. Let me plead with you.
Surely! sure1y, it is not a thing worthy of a man never to go down into
the deep places of your own hearts and see the ugly things that coil
and wrestle and swarm and multiply there! Ezekiel was once led to a
place where, through a hole broken in the wall, there was showed him an
inner chamber, on the walls of which were painted the hideous idols of
the heathen. And there, in the presence of the foul shapes, stood
venerable priests and official dignitaries of Israel, with their
censers in their hands, and their backs to the oracle of God. There is
a chamber like that in all our hearts; and it would be a great deal
better that we should go down, through the hole in the wall, and see
it, than that we should live, as so many of us do, in this fool's
paradise of ignorance of our own sin. It is because we will not attend
to the facts that we ignore the facts. The evils that we do, and that
we cherish undone in our hearts, are like the wreckers on some stormy
coast, that begin operations by taking the tongue out of the bell that
hangs on the buoy, and putting out the light that beams from the
beacon. Sin chokes conscience; and so the worse a man is, the less he
feels himself to be bad; and while a saint will be tortured with
agonies of remorse for some slight peccadillo, a brigand will add a
murder or two to his list, and wipe his mouth and say, "I have done no
harm." We are ignorant of our sin because we bribe our consciences,
because we drug our consciences, because we will not attend to the
facts of our own spiritual being.

That ignorance of our bondage is characteristic of the tone of mind of
this generation. Things have changed in that respect, as in a great
many others, since I was a boy. I do not hear now, from people who
desire to unite themselves to Jesus Christ, the deep poignant penitence
and confession of sin that one used to hear. I do not hear the facts of
sin, its gravity and universality, preached from pulpits in the way it
used to be. I notice in the ordinary, average man a tendency to think
more about environment and heredity, than about individidual
responsibility, and on the whole a very much lowered sense of the depth
and the power and the universality of transgression. And that is why,
to a large extent, the Christianity of this generation is so shallow a
thing as it is.

That brings me, lastly, to say a word about­

III. THE CONSEQUENT INDIFFERENCE TO CHRIST'S OFFER OF FREEDOM.

"How sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free?" Of course, if they had no
consciousness of bondage, there was no attraction for them in a promise
of freedom.

That remark opens out two thoughts, on which I do not dwell. First, the
ignoring of the fact of sin which is so common amongst us all to-day,
makes it impossible to understand Christ and Christianity. Brethren,
that great Gospel, and that great Lord who is the subject of the
Gospel, have many other aspects than this. But this is the central
thought as to it and Him, that it is the emancipation from sin, because
He is the Emancipator. "The spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He
hath anointed Me to preach deliverance to the captives." And wherever
we find, as we do find, in many quarters to-day, that the central fact
of Christianity, the Death for the sin of the world, is deposed from
its place, there the life-blood is ebbing out of the Gospel.
Historically, the beginning of almost all heresies has been the
under-estimate of the fact of sin. As long as you dwell in the shallows
of human experience, a shallow Christianity and a shallow Christ will
be enough for you. But when once you get to understand the depths of
your own need, and the depths of your brother's need, then nothing less
than the Christ that died to solve the problem, insoluble else, of how
to emancipate the soul and the world from the tyranny of sin, will be
enough for you. Once "the waters of the great deep are broken up," and
the floods are out, there is nothing for it but the Ark. It is not
enough then to speak of a human Christ; it is not enough, when a man's
conscience has been roused, not to exaggeration, but to clear sight, of
what he is­it is not enough then to speak of an example Christ, or of a
teaching Christ. Ah! we want more than that. We want "that which first
of all I delivered unto you, how that Jesus Christ died for our sins,
according to the Scriptures."

And, brethren, just as the ignoring of the fact of sin makes the
understanding of Christ and His word impossible, so it makes real
reception of Him for ourselves impossible. Many men are brought near to
Jesus by other roads; thank God for it! There are a thousand ways to
the Cross, but it is the Cross that we must clasp if in any true sense
we are to clasp Christ. And there is all the difference between the
superficial, partial, and easy-going profession of Christianity which
is so common amongst us to-day, and the life and death clutching and
clinging to Him which comes when, and only when, a man feels that the
tyrant whom he served as a slave, is close behind him, and that his
only chance of freedom is to hold fast by the horns of the altar of the
Sanctuary, and to cleave to the Christ in Whom, and in Whom alone, we
are free indeed.




ONE METAPHOR AND TWO MEANINGS


'I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night
cometh when no man can work.'—JOHN ix. 4.

'The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off
the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.'—ROMANS
xiii. 12.

The contrast between these two sayings will strike you at once. Using
the same metaphors, they apply them in exactly opposite directions. In
the one, life is the day, and the state beyond death the night; in the
other, life is the night, and the state beyond death the day.
Remarkable as the contrast is, it comes to be still more so if we
remember the respective speakers. For each of them says what we should
rather have expected the other to say. It would have been natural for
Paul to have given utterance to the stimulus to diligence caused by the
consciousness that the time of work was brief; and it would have been
as natural for Jesus, who, as we believe, came from God, from the place
of the eternal supernal glory, to have said that life here was night as
compared with the illumination that He had known. But it is the divine
Master who gives utterance to the common human consciousness of a brief
life ending in inactivity, and it is the servant who takes the higher
point of view.

So strange did the words of my first text seem as coming from our
Lord's lips, that the sense of incongruity seems to have been the
occasion of the remarkable variation of reading which the Revised
Version has adopted when it says '_We_ must work the works of Him that
sent Me.' But that thought seems to me to be perfectly irrelevant to
our Lord's purpose in this context, where He is vindicating His own
action, and not laying down the duty of His servants. He is giving here
one of these glimpses, that we so rarely get, into His own inmost
heart. And so we have to take the sharp contrast between the Master's
thought and the servant's thought, and to combine them, if we would
think rightly about the present and the future, and do rightly in the
present.

I. Let me ask you to look at the Master's thought about the present and
the future.

As I have already said, our Lord gives utterance here to the very
common, in fact, universal human consciousness. The contrast between
the intense little spot of light and the great ring of darkness round
about it; between 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day' and the cold
solitudes of the inactive night has been the commonplace and
stock-in-trade of moralists and thoughtful men from the beginning; has
given pathos to poetry, solemnity to our days; and has been the ally of
base as well as of noble things. For to say to a man, 'there are twelve
hours in the day of life, and then comes darkness, the blackness that
swallows up all activity,' may either be made into a support of all
lofty and noble thoughts, or, by the baser sort, may be, and has been,
made into a philosophy of the 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die' kind; 'Gather ye roses while ye may'; 'A short life and a merry
one.' The thought stimulates to diligence, but it does nothing to
direct the diligence. It makes men work furiously, but it never will
prevent them from working basely. 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with thy might,' is a conclusion from the consideration that
'there is neither wisdom nor knowledge nor device in the grave whither
we go,' but what the hand should find to do must be settled from
altogether different considerations.

Our Lord here takes the common human point of view, and says, 'Life is
the time for activity, and it must be the more diligent because it is
ringed by the darkness of the night.' What precisely does our Lord
intend by His use of that metaphor of the night? No figures, we know,
run upon all-fours. The point of comparison may be simply in some one
feature common to the two things compared, and so all sorts of mischief
may be done by trying to extend the analogy to other features. Now,
there are a great many points in which day and night may respectively
be taken as analogues of Life and Death and the state beyond death.
There is a 'night of weeping'; there is a 'night of ignorance.' But our
Lord Himself tells us what is the one point of comparison which alone
is in His mind, when He says, 'The night cometh, when no man can work.'
It is simply the night as a season of compulsory inactivity that
suggests the comparison in our text. And so we have here the
presentation of that dear Lord as influenced by the common human
motive, and feeling that there was work to be done which must be
crowded into a definite space, because when that space was past, there
would be no more opportunity for the work to be done.

Look at how, in the words of my first text, we have, as I said, a
glimpse into His inmost heart. He lets us see that all His life was
under the solemn compulsion of that great _must_ which was so often
upon His lips, that He felt that He was here to do the Father's will,
and that that obligation lay upon Him with a pressure which He neither
could, nor would if He could, have got rid of.

There are two kinds of 'musts' in our lives. There is the unwelcome
necessity which grips us with iron and sharpened fangs; the needs-be
which crushes down hopes and dreams and inclinations, and forces the
slave to his reluctant task. And there is the 'must' which has passed
into the will, into the heart, and has moulded the inmost desire to
conformity with the obligation which no more stands over against us as
a taskmaster with whip and chain, but has passed within us and is there
an inspiration and a joy. He that can say, as Jesus Christ in His
humanity could, and did say: 'My meat'—the refreshment of my nature,
the necessary sustenance of my being—'is to do the will of my Father';
that man, and that man alone, feels no pressure that is pain from the
incumbency of the necessity that blessedly rules His life. When 'I
will' and 'I choose' coincide, like two of Euclid's triangles atop of
one another, line for line and angle for angle, then comes liberty into
the life. He that can say, not with a knitted brow and an unwilling
ducking of his head to the yoke, 'I must do it,' but can say, 'Thy law
is within my heart,' that is the Christlike, the free, the happy man.

Further, our Lord here, in His thoughts of the present and the future,
lets us see what He thought that the work of God in the world was. The
disciples looked at the blind man sitting by the wayside, and what he
suggested to them was a curious, half theological, half metaphysical
question, in which Rabbinical subtlety delighted. 'Who did sin, this
man or his parents?' They only thought of talking over the theological
problem involved in the fact that, before he had done anything in this
world to account for the calamity, he was _born_ blind. Jesus Christ
looked at the man, and He did not think about theological cobwebs. What
was suggested to Him was to fight against the evil and abolish it. It
is sometimes necessary to discuss the origin of an evil thing, of a
sorrow or a sin, in order to understand how to deal with and get rid of
it. But unless that is the case, our first business is not to say, 'How
comes this about?' but our business is to take steps to make it cease
to come about. Cure the man first and then argue to your heart's
content about what made him blind, but cure him first. And so Jesus
Christ taught us that the meaning of the day of life was that we should
set ourselves to abolish the works of the devil, and that the work of
God was that we should fight against sin and sorrow, and in so far as
it was in our power, abolish these, in all the variety of their forms,
in all the vigour of their abundant growth. Sorrow and sin are God's
call to every one of His sons and daughters to set themselves to cast
them out of His fair creation; and 'the day' is the opportunity for
doing that.

Our Lord here, as I have already suggested, shows us very touchingly
and beautifully, how entirely He bore our human nature, and had entered
into our conditions, in that He, too, felt that common human emotion,
and was spurred to unhasting and yet unresting diligence by the thought
of the coming of the night. I suppose that although we have few
chronological data in this Gospel of John, the hour of our Lord's death
was really very near at that time. He had just escaped from a
formidable attempt upon His life. 'They took up stones to stone Him,
but He, passing through the midst of them, went His way,' is the
statement which immediately precedes the account of His meeting with
this blind man. And so under the pressure, perhaps, of that immediate
experience which revealed the depths of hatred that was ready for
anything against Him, He gives utterance to this expression: 'If it be
the case that the time is at hand, then the more need that, Sabbath day
as it is, I should pause here.' Though the multitude were armed with
stones to stone Him, He stopped in His flight because there was a poor
blind man there whom He felt that He needed to cure. Beautiful it is,
and drawing Him very near to us,—and it should draw us very near to
Him—that thus He shared in that essentially human consciousness of the
limitation of the power to work, by the ring of blackness that
encircled the little spot of illuminated light.

But some will say, 'How is it possible that such a consciousness as
this should really have been in the mind of Jesus Christ?' 'Did He not
know that His death was not to be the end of His work? Did He not know,
and say over and over again, in varying forms, that when He passed from
earth, it was not into inactivity? Is it not the very characteristic of
His mission that it is different from that of all other helpers and
benefactors and teachers of the world, in that His death stands in the
very middle of His work, and that on the one side of it there is
activity, and on the other side of it there is still, and in some sense
loftier and greater, activity?' Yes; all that is perfectly true, and I
do not for a moment believe that our Lord was forgetting that the life
on the earth was but the first volume of His biography, and of the
records of His deeds, and that He contemplated them, as He contemplated
always, the life beyond, as working in and on and over and through His
servants, even unto the end of the world.

But you have only to remember the difference between the earthly and
the heavenly life of the Lord fully to understand the point of view
that He takes here. The one is the basis of the other; the one is the
seedtime, the other is the harvest. The one has only the limited years
of the earthly life, in which it can be done; the other has the endless
years of Eternity, through which it is to be continued. And if any part
of that earthly life of the Lord had been void of its duty, and of its
discharge of the Father's will, not even He, amidst the blaze of the
heavenly glory, could have thereafter filled up the tiny gap. All the
earthly years were needed to be filled with service, up to the great
service and sacrifice of the Cross, in order that upon them might be
reared the second stage and phase of His heavenly life. With regard to
the one, He said on the Cross, 'It is finished.' But when He died He
passed not into the night of inactivity, but into the day of greater
service. And that higher and heavenly form of His work continues, and
not until 'the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our
God and of His Christ,' and the whole benefit and effect of His earthly
life are imparted to the whole race of man, will it be said, 'It is
done,' and the angels of heaven proclaim the completion of His work for
man. But seeing that that work has its twofold forms, Jesus, like us,
had to be conscious of the limitations of life, and of the night that
followed the day.

II. And now turn, in the second place, to the servant's thought.

As I have already pointed out, it is the precise reversal of the other.
What to Christ is 'day' to Paul is 'night.' What to Christ is 'night'
to Paul is 'day.' Now the first point that I would make is this, that
the future would never have been 'day' to Paul if Jesus had not gone
down into the darkness of the 'night.' I have said that there was only
one point of comparison in our Lord's mind between night and death. But
we may venture to extend the figure a little, and to say that the Light
went into the 'valley of the shadow of Death,' and lit it up from end
to end. The Life went into the palace of Death, and breathed life into
all there. There is a great picture by one of the old monkish masters,
on the walls of a Florentine convent, which represents the descent of
Jesus to that dim region of the dead. Around Him there is a halo of
light that shines into the gloomy corridor, up which the thronging
patriarchs and saints of the Old Dispensation are coming, with
outstretched hands of eager welcome and acceptance, to receive the
blessing. Ah! it is true, 'the people that walked in darkness have seen
a great Light; and to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of
death, unto them hath the Light shined.' Christ the Light has gone down
into the darkness, and what to Him was night He has made for us day.
Just as Scripture all but confines the name of _death_ to Christ's
experience upon the Cross, and by virtue of that experience softens it
down for the rest of us into the blessed image of _sleep_, so the
Master has turned the night of death into the dawning of the day.

Further, to the servant the brightness of that future day dimmed all
earth's garish glories into darkness. It was because Paul saw the
Beyond flaming with such lustre that the nearer distance to him seemed
to have sunk into gloom. Just as a man or other object between you and
the western sky when the sun is there will be all dark, so earth with
heaven behind it becomes a mere shadowy outline. The day that is beyond
outshines all the lustres and radiances of earth, and turns them into
darkness. You go into a room out of blazing tropical sunshine, and it
is all gloom and obscurity. He whose eyes are fixed on the day that is
to come will find that here he walks as one in the night.

And the brightness of that day, as well as the darkness of the present
night, directed the servant as to what he should be diligent in. Since
it is true that 'the day is at hand,' let us put on the armour of
light, and dress ourselves in garb fitting for it. Since it is true
that 'the night is far spent' let us put off the works of darkness.

III. And so that brings me to the last point, and that is the
combination of the Master's and the servant's thought, and the effect
that it should produce upon us.

It is not enough either for our hearts or our minds that we should say
'the night cometh when no man can work.' Life is day, but it is night
also. Death is night but it is dawning as well. We cannot understand
either the present or the future unless we link them together. That
death which is the cessation of activity in one aspect, is, for
Christ's servants, as truly as for Christ, the beginning of an activity
in a higher and nobler form. I do not believe in a heaven of rest,
meaning by that, inaction; I still less believe in a death which puts
an end to the activity of the human spirit. I believe that this world
is our school, our apprenticeship, the place where we learn our trade
and exercise our faculties, where we paint the picture, as it were,
which we offer when we desire to be admitted to the great guild of
artists, and according to the result of which, in the eye of the Judge,
is our place hereafter. What the Germans call 'proof pieces'—that is
the meaning of life. And though 'the night cometh when no man can
work,' the day cometh when the characters we have made ourselves here,
the habits we have cultivated and indulged in, the capacities we have
exercised, and the set and drift of all our activity upon earth, will
determine the work that we get to do there.

So then, stereoscoping these two thoughts, we get the solid image that
results from them both. And it teaches us not only diligence, and thus
supplies stimulus, but it determines the direction of our diligence,
and thus supplies guidance. We ought to be misers of our time and
opportunities. Jesus Christ said, 'I must work the work of Him that
sent Me while it is day; the night cometh.' How much more ought you and
I to say so? And some of us ought very specially to say it, and to feel
it, because the hour when we shall have to lay down our tools is
getting very near, and the shadows are lengthening. If you had been in
the fields in these summer evenings during the last few days, you would
have seen the haymakers at work with more and more diligence as the
evening drew on darker and darker. Dear friends, some of us are at the
eleventh hour. Let us fill it with diligent work. The night cometh.

But my texts not only stimulate to diligence, but they direct the
diligence. If it be that there is a day beyond, and that Christ's folk
are 'the children of the day,' then 'let us not sleep as do others, but
let us watch and be sober.' We have to cast ourselves on Him as our
Saviour, to love Him as our Lord and Friend, to take Him as our Pattern
and our Guide, our Help, our Light, and our Life. And then we shall
neither be deceived by life's garish splendours nor oppressed by its
gloom and its sorrow; we shall neither shrink from that last moment, as
a night of inaction, nor be too eager to cast off the burden of our
present work, but we shall cheerfully toil at what will prepare us for
'the day,' and the bell at night that rings us out of mill and factory
will not be unwelcome, for it will ring us in to higher work and nobler
service. The transition will be like one of those summer nights in the
Arctic circle, when the sun does not dip. Through a little thin film of
less light we shall pass into the perfect day, where 'the Lord God
Almighty and the Lamb are the light thereof,' and 'there shall be no
more night.'




THE SIXTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL—THE BLIND MADE TO SEE, AND THE
SEEING MADE BLIND


'When Jesus had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay of
the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,
7. And said unto him, Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam, (which is by
interpretation, Sent). He went his way, therefore, and washed, and came
seeing.'—JOHN ix. 6, 7.

The proportionate length at which this miracle and its accompanying
effects are recorded, indicates very clearly the Evangelist's idea of
their relative importance. Two verses are given to the story of the
miracle; all the rest of the chapter to its preface and its issues. It
was a great thing to heal a man that was blind from his birth, but the
story of the gradual illumination of his spirit until it came to the
full light of the perception of Christ as the Son of God, was far more
to the Evangelist, and ought to be far more to us than giving the
outward eye power to discern the outward light.

The narrative has a prologue and an epilogue, and the true point of
view from which to look at it is found in the solemn words with which
our Lord closes the incident. 'For judgment am I come into this world,
that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be
made blind.'

So then the mere sign, important as it is, is the least thing that we
have to look at in our contemplations now.

I. We have here our Lord unveiling His deepest motives for bestowing an
unsought blessing.

It is remarkable, I think, that out of the eight miracles recorded in
this Gospel, there is only one in which our Lord responds to a request
to manifest His miraculous power; the others are all spontaneous.

In the other Gospels He heals sometimes because of the pleading of the
sufferer; sometimes because of the request of compassionate friends or
bystanders; sometimes unasked, because His own heart went out to those
that were in pain and sickness. But in John's Gospel, predominantly we
have the Son of God, who acts throughout as moved by His own deep
heart. That view of Christ reaches its climax in His own profound words
about His own laying down of His life: 'I came forth from the Father,
and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go unto the
Father.' So, not so much influenced by others as deriving motive and
impulse and law from Himself, He moves upon earth a fountain and not a
reservoir, the Originator and the Beginner of the blessings that He
bears.

And that is the point of view from which most strikingly the prologue
of our narrative sets forth His action in the miracle here. 'As Jesus
passed by,' says the story, 'He saw a man which was blind from his
birth.' He fixes His eye upon him. No cry from the blind man's lips
draws Him. He sits there unconscious of the kind eyes that were
fastened upon him. The disciples stand at Christ's side, and have no
share in His feelings. They ask Him to do nothing. To them the blind
man is—what? A theological problem. No trace of pity touches their
hearts. They do not even seem to have reckoned upon or expected
Christ's miraculous intervention. And that is a very remarkable feature
in the Gospels. At all events, they evidently do not expect it here;
but all that the sight of this lifelong sufferer does in them is to
raise a question, 'Who did sin; he or his parents?' Perhaps they do not
quite see to the bottom of the alternative that they are suggesting;
and we need not trouble ourselves to ask whether there was a full-blown
notion of the pre-existence of the man's soul in their minds as they
ask the question. Perhaps they remembered the impotent man to whom our
Lord said, 'Go and sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee.' And
they may have thought that they had His sanction to the doctrine—as old
as Job's friends—that wherever there was great suffering there must
first have been great sin.

That is all that the sight of sorrow does for some people. It leads to
censorious judgments, or to mere idle and curious speculations. Christ
lets us see what it did for Him, and what it is meant to do for us.
'Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but he is born blind
that the works of God may be made manifest in him.' That is to say,
human sorrow is to be looked at by us as an opportunity for the
manifestation through us of God's mercy in relieving and stanching the
wounds through which the lifeblood is ebbing away. Do not stand coldly
curious or uncharitably censorious. Do not make miserable men
theological problems, but see in them a call for service. See in them
an opportunity for letting the light of God, so much of it as is in
you, shine from you, and your hands move in works of mercy.

And then the Master goes on to state still more distinctly the law
which dominated His life, and which ought to dominate ours: 'I must
work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh
when no man can work.' Then poor men's misery is an occasion for the
love of God manifesting itself. Yes. But the love of God manifests
itself through human media, through persons; and if we adopt the
reading of these words which you will find in the Revised Version, and
instead of saying '_I_ must work,' read '_We_ must work,' then we have
Christ extending the law which ruled over His own life to all His
followers, and making it supremely obligatory and binding upon each of
us. He for His part, as I have said, moves through this Gospel as the
Son of God, whose mercy, and all whose doings are self-originated. But
the other side of that is that He moves through this Gospel in the
humble attitude of filial obedience, ever recognising that the Father's
will is supreme in His life; and that He is bound, with an obligation
in which He rejoices, to do the will of Him that sent Him. The
consciousness of a mission, the sense of filial obedience, the joyful
surrender and harmonising of the will of the Son with the will of the
Father; these things were the secret of the Master's life.

And coupled with them, even in Him there was the consciousness that
time was short; and although beyond the Cross and the grave there
stretched for Him an eternity in which He would work for the blessing
of the world, yet the special work which He had to do, while wearing
the veil and weakness of flesh, had but few days and hours in which it
could be done. Therefore, as we ought to do, He worked under the
limitations of mortality, and recognised in the brevity of life another
call to eager and continuous service.

These were His motives which, in common with Him, we may share. But He
adds another in which we have no share; and declares the unique
consciousness which ever stirred Him to His self-manifesting and
God-manifesting acts: 'As long as I am in the world I am the Light of
the world.'

Thus, moved by sorrow, recognising in man's misery the dumb cry for
help, seeing in it the opportunity for the manifestation of the higher
mercy of God; taking all evil to be the occasion for a brighter display
of the love and the good which are divine; feeling that His one purpose
upon earth was to crowd the moments with obedience to the will, and
with the doing of the works of Him that sent Him; and possessing the
sole and strange consciousness that from His person streams out all the
light which illuminates the world—the Christ pauses before the
unconscious blind man, and looking upon the poor, useless eyeballs,
unaware how near light and sight stood, obeys the impulse that shapes
His whole life, 'and when He had spoken _thus_,' proceeds to the
strange cure.

II. So we come, in the next place, to consider Christ as veiling His
power under material means.

There is only one other instance in the Gospels where a miracle is
wrought in the singular fashion which is here employed, namely, the
healing of the deaf-mute recorded in Mark's Gospel, where, in like
manner, our Lord makes clay of the spittle, and anoints the ears of the
deaf man with the clay. The variety of method in our Lord's miracles
serves important purposes, as teaching us that the methods are nothing,
and that He moved freely amongst them all, the real cause in every case
being one and the same, the bare forth-putting of His will; and
teaching us further that in each specific case there were reasons in
the moral and religious condition of the persons operated upon for the
adoption of the specific means employed, which we of course have no
means of discovering. There is here, first then, healing by material
means. The clay had no power of healing; the water of Siloam had no
power of healing. The thing that healed was Christ's will, but He uses
these externals to help the poor blind man to believe that he is going
to be healed. He condescends to drape and veil His power in order that
the dim eye, unaccustomed to the light, may look upon that shadowed
representation of it when it could not gaze upon the pure brightness;
as an eye may look upon a shaded lamp which could not bear its
brilliance unsoftened and naked.

This healing by material means in order to accommodate Himself to the
weak faith which He seeks to evoke, and to strengthen thereby, is
parallel, in principle, to His own Incarnation, and to His appointment
of external rites and ordinances. Baptism, the Lord's Supper, a visible
Church, outward means of worship, and so on, all these come under that
same category. There is no life nor power in them except His will works
through them, but they are crutches and helps for a weak and
sense-bound faith to climb to the apprehension of the spiritual
reality. It is not the clay, it is not the water, it is not the Church,
the ordinances, the outward worship, the form of prayer, the
sacrament—it is none of these things that have the healing and the
grace in them. They are only ladders by which we may ascend to Him. So
let us neither presumptuously antedate the time when we shall be able
to do without them—the Heaven in 'which there is no Temple'—nor
grovellingly and superstitiously elevate them to a place of importance
and of power in the Christian life which Christ never meant them to
fill. He heals through material means; the true source of healing is
His own loving will.

Further, He heals at a distance. We have here a parallel with the story
of the nobleman's son at Capernaum, which we have already considered.
There, too, we have the same phenomenon, the healing power sent forth
from the Master, and operating far away from His corporeal personal
presence. This was a test of faith, as the use of the clay had been a
help to faith. Still He works His healing from afar, because to Him
there is neither near nor far. In His divine ubiquity, that Son of Man,
who in His glorified manhood is at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty, is here and everywhere where there are weakness and suffering
that turn to Him; ready to help, ready to bless and heal. 'Lo, I am
with you always, even unto the end of the world.'

Our Evangelist sees in the very name of that fountain in which the man
washed, a symbol which is not to be passed by. 'Go, wash in the Pool of
Siloam,' which, says John, 'is by interpretation, _Sent._' We have
heard already about the Pool of Siloam in this section of the Gospel.
In Chapter vii. we read, 'In the last day, that great day of the Feast,
Jesus stood and said, "If any man thirst let him come to Me and
drink."' These words were probably spoken on the last day of the Feast
of Tabernacles, on which one part of the ceremonial was the drawing,
with exuberant rejoicing, of water from the Pool of Siloam, and bearing
it up to the Temple. In these words Christ pointed to that fountain
which rises 'fast by the oracles of God,' and wells up from beneath the
hill, that on which the Temple is built, as being a symbol of Himself.

And here the Evangelist would have us suppose that, in like manner, the
very name which the fountain bore (whether as being an outgush from
beneath the Temple rock, or whether as being the gift of God) as
applicable to Himself. The lesson to be learned is that the fountain in
which we have to be cleansed 'from sin and from uncleanness,' whose
waters are the lotion that will give eyesight to the blind, the true
'fountain of perpetual youth,' which men have sought for in every land,
is Christ Himself. In Him we have the welling forth of the heart of
God, the water of life, the water of gladness, the immortal stream of
which 'whoso drinketh shall never thirst,' and which, touching the
blind eyeballs, washes away obscuration and gives new power of vision.

III. Then, still further, we have here our Lord suspending healing on
obedience.

'Go and wash.' As He said to the impotent man: 'Stretch forth thine
hand'; as He said to the paralytic in this Gospel: 'Take up thy bed and
walk'; so here He says, 'Go and wash.' And some friendly hand being
stretched out to the blind man, or he himself feeling his way over the
familiar path, he comes to the pool and washes, and returns seeing.

There is a double lesson there, on which I have no need to dwell. There
is, first, the general truth that healing is suspended by Christ on
compliance with His conditions. He does not simply say to any man, Be
whole. He could and did say so sometimes in regard to bodily healing.
But He cannot do so as regards the cure of our blind souls. To the
sin-sick and sin-blinded man He says, 'Thou shalt be whole, if'—or 'I
will make thee whole, provided that'—what?—provided that thou goest to
the fountain where He has lodged the healing power. The condition on
which sight comes to the blind is compliance with Christ's invitation,
'Come to Me; trust in Me; and thou shalt be whole.'

Then there is a special lesson here, and that is, Obedience brings
sight. 'If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' Are
there any of you groping in darkness, compassed about with theological
perplexities and religious doubts? Obey what you know. Do what you see
clearly you ought to do. Bow your wills to the recognised truth. He who
has turned all his knowledge into action will get more knowledge as
soon as he needs it. 'Go and wash; and he went, and came seeing.'

IV. And now, lastly, we have here our Lord shadowing His highest work
as the Healer of blind souls.

It is impossible for me to enter upon that wonderfully dramatic and
instructive narrative which follows the account of the miracle, and
describe the controversies between the sturdy, quick-witted, candid,
blind man, and the narrow, bitter Pharisees. But just notice one or two
points.

The two parties are evidently represented as types of two contrasted
classes. The blind man stands for an example of honest ignorance,
knowing itself ignorant, and not to be coaxed or frightened or in any
way provoked to pretending to knowledge which it does not possess;
firmly holding by what it does know, and because conscious of its
little knowledge, therefore waiting for light and willing to be led.
Hence he is at once humble and sturdy, docile and independent, ready to
listen to any voice which can really teach, and formidably quick to
prick with wholesome sarcasm the inflated claims of mere official
pretenders. The Pharisees, on the other hand, are sure that they know
everything that can be known about anything in the region of religion
and morality, and in their absolute confidence of their absolute
possession of the truth, in their blank unconsciousness that it was
more than their official property and stock-in-trade, in their complete
incapacity to discern the glory of a miracle which contravened
ecclesiastical proprieties and conventionalities, in their contempt for
the ignorance which they were responsible for and never thought of
enlightening, in their cruel taunt directed against the man's calamity,
and in their swift resort to the weapon of excommunication of one whom
it was much easier to cast out than to answer, are but too plain a type
of a character which is as ready to corrupt the teachers of the Church
as of the synagogue.

One cannot but notice how constantly the phrase 'We know' occurs. The
parents of the man use it thrice. The Pharisees have it on their lips
in their first interview with him: 'We know that this man is a sinner.'
He answers, declining to affirm anything about the character of the Man
Jesus, because he, for his part, 'knows not,' but standing firmly by
the solid reality which he 'knows,' in a very solid fashion, that his
eyes have been opened. So we have the first encounter between knowledge
which is ignorant, and ignorance which knows, to the manifest victory
of the latter. Again, in the second round, they try to overbear the
man's cool sarcasm with their vehement assertion of knowledge that God
spake to Moses, but by the admission that even their knowledge did not
reach to the determination of the question of the origin of Jesus'
mission, lay themselves open to the sudden thrust of keen-eyed, honest
humility's sharp rapier-like retort. 'Herein is a marvellous thing,'
that you _Know-alls_, whose business it is to know where a professed
miracle-worker comes from, 'know not from whence He is, and yet He hath
opened mine eyes.' 'Now we know' (to use your own words) 'that God
heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth
His will, him He heareth.'

Then observe how, on both sides, a process is going on. The man is
getting more and more light at each step. He begins with 'a Man which
is called Jesus.' Then he gets to a 'prophet,' then he comes to 'a
worshipper of God, and one that does His will.' Then he comes to, 'If
this man were not of God,' in some very special sense, 'He could do
nothing.' These are his own reflections, the working out of the
impression made by the fact on an honest mind; and because he had so
used the light which he had, therefore Jesus gives him more, and finds
him with the question, 'Dost thou believe on the Son of God?' Then the
man who had shown himself so strong in his own convictions, so
independent, and hard to cajole or coerce, shows himself now all docile
and submissive, and ready to accept whatever Jesus says: 'Lord, who is
He, that I might believe on Him?' That was not credulity. He already
knew enough of Christ to know that he ought to trust Him. And to his
docility there is given the full revelation; and he hears the words
which Pharisees and unrighteous men were not worthy to hear: 'Thou hast
both _seen_ it is He that talketh with thee.' Then intellectual
conviction, moral reliance, and the utter prostration and devotion of
the whole man bow him at Christ's feet. 'Lord, I believe; and He
worshipped Him.'

There is the story of the progress of an honest, ignorant soul that
knew itself blind, into the illumination of perfect vision.

And as he went upwards, so steadily and tragically, downwards went the
others. For they had light and they would not look at it; and it
blasted and blinded them. They had the manifestation of Christ, and
they scoffed and jeered at it, and turned their backs upon it, and it
became a curse to them; falling not like dew but like vitriol on their
spirits, blistering, not refreshing.

Therefore Christ pronounces their fate, and sums up the story in the
solemn two-edged sentence: 'For judgment am I come into the world, that
they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made
blind.'

The purpose of His coming is not to judge, but to save. But if men will
not let Him save, the effect of His coming will be to harm. Therefore,
His coming will separate men into two parts, as a magnet will draw all
the iron filings out of a heap and leave the brass. He comes not to
judge, but His coming does judge. He is set for the rise or for the
fall of men, and is 'a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the
heart.'

Light has a twofold effect. It is torture to the diseased eye; it is
gladdening to the sound one. Christ is the light, as He is also both
the power of seeing and the thing seen. Therefore, it cannot but be
that His shining upon men's hearts shall judge them, and shall either
enlighten or darken.

We all have eyes—the organs by which we may see 'the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God.' We have all blinded ourselves by our
sin. Christ is come to show us God, to be the light by which we see
God, and to strengthen and restore our faculty of seeing Him. If you
welcome Him, and take Him into your hearts, He will be at once light
and eyesight to you. But if you turn away from Him He will be blindness
and darkness to you. He comes to pour eyesight on the blind, but He
comes therefore also, most assuredly, to make still blinder those who
do not know themselves to be blind, and conceit themselves to be
clear-sighted. 'I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'

They who see themselves to be blind, who know themselves to be
ignorant, the lowly who recognise their sinfulness and misery and
helplessness, and turn in their sore need to Christ, will be led by
paths of growing knowledge and blessedness to the perfect day where
their strengthened vision will be able to see light in the blaze which
to us now is darkness. They who say 'I see,' and know not that they are
miserable and blind, nor hearken to His counsel to 'anoint their eyes
with eye salve that they may see,' will have yet another film drawn
over their eyes by the shining of the light which they reject, and will
pass into darkness where only enough of light and of eyesight remain to
make guilt. Jesus Christ is for us light and vision. Trust to Him, and
your eyes will be blessed because they see God. Turn from Him and
Egyptian darkness will settle on your soul. 'To him that hath shall be
given, and from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be
taken away.'




THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK


'… By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and
out, and find pasture.'—JOHN x. 9.

One does not know whether the width or the depth of this marvellous
promise is the more noteworthy. Jesus Christ presents Himself before
the whole race of man, and declares Himself able to deal with the needs
of every individual in the tremendous whole. 'If _any man_'—no matter
who, where, when.

For all noble and happy life there are at least three things needed:
security, sustenance, and a field for the exercise of activity. To
provide these is the end of all human society and government. Jesus
Christ here says that He can give all these to every one.

The imagery of the sheep and the fold is still, of course, in His mind,
and colours the form of the representation. But the substance is the
declaration that, to any and every soul, no matter how ringed about
with danger, no matter how hampered and hindered in work, no matter how
barren of all supply earth may be, He will give these, the primal
requisites of life. 'He shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and
find pasture.'

Now I only wish to deal with these three aspects of the blessedness of
a true Christian life which our Lord holds forth here as accessible to
us all: security, the unhindered exercise of activity, and sustenance
or provision.

I. First, then, in and through Christ any man may be saved.

I take it that the word 'saved' here is rather used with reference to
the imagery of the parable than in its full Christian sense of ultimate
and everlasting salvation, and that its meaning in its present
connection might perhaps better be set forth by the rendering 'safe'
than 'saved.' At the same time, the two ideas pass into one another;
and the declaration of my text is that because, step by step, conflict
by conflict, in passing danger after danger, external and internal,
Jesus Christ, through our union with Him, will keep us safe, at the
last we shall reach eternal and everlasting salvation. 'He will save
us' by the continual exercise of His protecting power, 'into His
everlasting kingdom.' There is none other shelter for men's defenceless
heads and naked, soft, unarmed bodies except only the shelter that is
found in Him. There are creatures of low grade in the animal world
which have the instinct, because their own bodies are so undefended and
impotent to resist contact with sharp and penetrating substances, that
they take refuge in the abandoned shells of other creatures. You and I
have to betake ourselves behind the defences of that strong love and
mighty Hand if ever we are to pass through life without fatal harm.

For consider that, even in regard to outward dangers, union with Jesus
Christ defends and delivers us. Suppose two men, two Manchester
merchants, made bankrupt by the same commercial crisis; or two
shipwrecked sailors lashed upon a raft; or two men sitting side by side
in a railway carriage and smashed by the same collision. One is a
Christian and the other is not. The same blow is altogether different
in aspect and actual effect upon the two men. They endure the same
thing externally, in body or in fortune. The outward man is similarly
affected, but the man is differently affected. The one is crushed, or
embittered, or driven to despair, or to drink, or to something or other
to soothe the bitterness; the other bows himself with 'It is the Lord!
Let Him do what seemeth Him good.'

So the two disasters are utterly different, though in form they may be
the same, and he that has entered into the fold by Jesus Christ is
safe, not _from_ outward disaster—that would be but a poor thing—but
_in_ it. For to the true heart that lives in fellowship with Jesus
Christ, Sorrow, though it be dark-robed, is bright-faced, soft-handed,
gentle-hearted, an angel of God. 'By Me if any man enter in, he shall
be safe.'

And further, in our union with Jesus Christ, by simple faith in Him and
loyal submission and obedience, we do receive an impenetrable defence
against the true evils, and the only things worth calling dangers. For
the only real evil is the peril that we shall lose our confidence and
be untrue to our best selves, and depart from the living God. Nothing
is evil except that which tempts, and succeeds in tempting, us away
from Him. And in regard to all such danger, to cleave to Christ, to
realise His presence, to think of Him, to wear His name as an amulet on
our hearts, to put the thought of Him between us and temptation as a
filter through which the poisonous air shall pass, and be deprived of
its virus, is the one secret of safety and victory.

Real gift of power from Jesus Christ, the influx of His strength into
our weakness, of some portion of the Spirit of life that was in Him
into our deadness, is promised, and the promise is abundantly fulfilled
to all men who trust Him when their hour of temptation comes. As the
dying martyr, when he looked up into heaven, saw Jesus Christ 'standing
at the right hand of God' ready to help, and, as it were, having
started from His eternal seat on the Throne in the eagerness of His
desire to succour His servant, so we may all see, if we will, that dear
Lord ready to succour us, and close by our sides to deliver us from the
evil in the evil, its power to tempt. If we could carry that vision
into our daily life, and walk in its light, when temptation rings us
round, how poor all the inducements to go away from Him would look!

There is a power in the remembrance of Jesus to slay every wicked
thought; and the things that tempt us most, that most directly appeal
to our worst sides, to our sense, our ambition, our pride, our
distrust, our self-will, all these lose their power upon us, and are
discovered in their emptiness and insignificance, when once this
thought flashes across the mind—Jesus Christ is my Defence, and Jesus
Christ is my Pattern and my Companion.

Oh, brother! do not trust yourself out amongst the pitfalls and snares
of life without Him. If you do, the real evil of all evils will seize
you for its own; but keep close to that dear Lord, and then 'there
shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy
dwelling.' The hidden temptation thou wilt pass by without being
harmed; the manifest temptation thou wilt trample under foot. 'Thou
shalt not be afraid for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor
for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.' Hidden known temptations
will be equally powerless; and in the fold into which all pass by faith
in Christ thou shalt be safe. And so, kept safe from each danger and in
each moment of temptation, the aggregate and sum of the several
deliverances will amount to the everlasting salvation which shall be
perfected in the heavens.

Only remember the condition, 'By Me if any man enter in.' That is not a
thing to be done once for all, but needs perpetual repetition. When we
clasp anything in our hands, however tight the initial grasp, unless
there is a continual effort of renewed tightening, the muscles become
lax, and we have to renew the tension, if we are to keep the grasp. So
in our Christian life it is only the continual repetition of the act
which our Lord here calls 'entering in by Him' that will bring to us
this continual exemption from, and immunity in, the dangers that beset
us.

Keep Christ between you and the storm. Keep on the lee side of the Rock
of Ages. Keep behind the breakwater, for there is a wild sea running
outside; and your little boat, undecked and with a feeble hand at the
helm, will soon be swamped. Keep within the fold, for wolves and lions
lie in every bush. Or, in plain English, live moment by moment in the
realising of Christ's presence, power, and grace. So, and only so,
shall you be safe.

II. Now, secondly, note, in Jesus Christ any man may find a field for
the unrestricted exercise of his activity.

That metaphor of 'going in and out' is partly explained to us by the
image of the flock, which passes into the fold for peaceful repose, and
out again, without danger, for exercise and food; and is partly
explained by the frequent use, in the Old Testament and in common
conversation, of the expression 'going out and in' as the designation
of the two-sided activity of human life. The one side is the
contemplative life of interior union with God by faith and love; the
other, the active life of practical obedience in the field of work
which God provides for us. These two are both capable of being raised
to their highest power, and of being discharged with the most
unrestricted and joyous activity, on condition of our keeping close to
Christ, and living by the faith of Him.

Note, then, 'He shall go in.' That comes first, though it interferes
with the propriety of the metaphor, since the previous words already
contemplate an initial 'entering in by Me, the Door.' That is to say,
that, given the union with Jesus Christ by faith, there must then, as
the basis of all activity, follow very frequent and deep inward acts of
contemplation, of faith, and aspiration, and desire. You must go into
the depths of God through Christ. You must go into the depths of your
own souls through Him. You must become accustomed to withdraw
yourselves from spreading yourselves out over the distractions of any
external activity, howsoever imperative, charitable, or necessary, and
live alone with Jesus, 'in the secret place of the Most High.' It is
through Him that we have access to the mysteries and innermost shrine
of the Temple. It is through Him that we draw near to the depths of
Deity. It is through Him that we learn the length and breadth and
height and depth of the largest and loftiest and noblest truths that
concern the spirit. It is through Him that we become familiar with the
inmost secrets of our own selves. And only they who habitually live
this hidden and sunken life of solitary and secret communion will ever
do much in the field of outward work. Christians of this generation are
far too much accustomed to live only in the front rooms of the house,
that look out upon the street; and they know very little—far too little
for their soul's health, and far too little for the freshness of their
work and its prosperity—of that inward life of silent contemplation and
expectant adoration, by which all strength is fed. Do not keep all your
goods in the shop windows, and have nothing on your shelves but
dummies, as is the case with far too many of us to-day. Remember that
the Lord said first, 'He shall go in,' and unless you do you will not
be 'saved.'

But then, further, if there have been, and continue to be, this
unrestricted exercise through Christ of that sweet and silent life of
solitary communion with Him, then there will follow upon that an
enlargement of opportunity, and power for outward service such as
nothing but emancipation by faith in Him can ever bring. Howsoever, by
external circumstances, you and I may be hampered and hindered, however
often we may feel that if something outside of us were different, the
development of our active powers would be far more satisfactory, and we
could do a great deal more in Christ's cause, the true hindrance lies
never without, but within; and it is only to be overcome by that
plunging into the depths of fellowship with Him. And then, if we carry
with us into the field of work, whether it be the commonplace, dusty,
tedious, and often repulsive duties of our monotonous business; or
whether it be the field of more distinctly unselfish and Christian
service—if we carry with us into all places where we go to labour, the
sweet thought of His presence, of His example, of His love, and of the
smile that may come on His face as the reward of faithful service, then
we shall find that external labour, drawing its pattern, its motive,
its law, and the power for its discharge, from communion with Him, is
no more task-work nor slavery; and even 'the rough places will be made
smooth, and the crooked things will be made straight,' and distasteful
work will be made at least tolerable, and hard burdens will be
lightened, and the things that are 'seen and temporal' will shimmer
into transparency, through which will shine out the things that are
'unseen and eternal.'

Some of us are constitutionally made to prefer the one of these forms
of Christian activity; some of us to prefer the other. The tendencies
of this generation are far too much to the latter, to the exclusion of
the former. It is hard to reconcile the conflicting claims, and I know
of no better way to hit the just medium than by trying to keep
ourselves always in touch with Jesus Christ, and then outward labour of
any sort, whether for the bread that perishes or for His kingdom and
righteousness, will never become so absorbing but that in it we may
have our hearts in heaven, and the silent hour of communion with Him
will never be so prolonged as to neglect outward duties. There was a
demoniac boy in the plain, and therefore it was impossible to build
tabernacles on the Mount of Transfiguration. But the disciples that had
not climbed the Mount were all impotent to cast out the demoniac boy.
We, if we keep near to Jesus Christ, will find that through Him we can
'go in and out,' and in both be pursuing the one uniform purpose of
serving and pleasing Him. So shall be fulfilled in our cases the
Psalmist's prayer, that 'I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the
days of ray life, to behold His beauty, and to inquire in His Temple.'

III. Lastly, in Jesus Christ any man may receive sustenance. 'They
shall find pasture.'

The imagery of the sheep and the fold is still, of course, present to
the Master's mind, and shapes the form in which this great promise is
set forth.

I need only remind you, in illustration of it, of two facts, one, that
in Jesus Christ Himself all the true needs of humanity are met and
satisfied. He is 'the Bread of God that came down from heaven to give
life to the world.' Do I want an outward object for my intellect? I
have it in Him. Does my heart feel with its tendrils, which have no
eyes at the ends of them, after something round which it may twine, and
not fear that the prop shall ever rot or be cut down or pulled up?
Jesus Christ is the home of love in which the dove may fold its wings
and be at rest. Do I want (and I do if I am not a fool) an absolute and
authoritative command to be laid upon my will; some one 'whose looks
enjoin, whose lightest words are spells'? I find absolute authority,
with no taint of tyranny, and no degradation to the subject, in that
Infinite Will of His. Does my conscience need some strong detergent to
be laid upon it which shall take out the stains that are most
indurated, inveterate, and ingrained? I find it only in the 'blood that
cleanseth from all sin.' Do my aspirations and desires seek for some
solid and substantial and unquestionable and imperishable good to
which, reaching out, they may be sure that they are not anchoring on
cloudland? Christ is our hope. For all this complicated and craving
commonwealth that I carry within my soul, there is but one
satisfaction, even Jesus Christ Himself. Nothing else nourishes the
whole man at once, but in Him are all the constituents that the human
system requires for its nutriment and its growth in every part. So in
and through Christ we find 'pasture.'

But beyond that, if we are knit to Him by simple and continual faith,
love, and obedience, then what is else barrenness becomes full of
nourishment, and the unsatisfying gifts of the world become rich and
precious. They are nought when they are put first, they are much when
they are put second.

I remember when I was in Australia seeing some wretched cattle trying
to find grass on a yellow pasture where there was nothing but here and
there a brown stalk that crumbled to dust in their mouths as they tried
to eat it. That is the world without Jesus Christ. And I saw the same
pasture six weeks after, when the rains had come, and the grass was
high, rich, juicy, satisfying. That is what the world may be to you, if
you will put it second, and seek first that your souls shall be fed on
Jesus Christ. Then, and only then, will what is else water be turned by
His touch and blessing into wine that shall fill the great jars to the
brim, and be pronounced by skilled palates to be the good wine. 'I will
feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel
shall their fold be. There shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat
pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.'




THE GOOD SHEPHERD


'I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. 15.
As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down My
life for the sheep.'—JOHN x. 14,15.

'I am the Good Shepherd.' Perhaps even Christ never spoke more fruitful
words than these. Just think how many solitary, wearied hearts they
have cheered, and what a wealth of encouragement and comfort there has
been in them for all generations. The little child as it lays itself
down to sleep, cries—

  'Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,
  Bless Thy little lamb to-night,'

and the old man lays himself down to die murmuring to himself, 'Though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil,
for Thou art with me.' 'I am the Good Shepherd.' No preaching can do
anything but weaken and dilute the force of such words, and yet, though
in all their sweet, homely simplicity they appeal to every heart, there
are great depths in them that are worth pondering, and profound
thoughts that need some elucidation.

There are three points to be noticed—First, the general force of the
metaphor, and then the two specific applications of it which our Lord
Himself makes.

I. First of all, then, let me say a few words as to the general
application of the metaphor. The usual notion of these words confines
itself to the natural meaning, and runs out into very true, but perhaps
a little sentimental, considerations, laying hold of what is so plain
on the very surface that I need not spend any time in speaking about
it. Christ's pattern is my law; Christ's providence is my guidance and
defence—which in the present case means Christ's companionship—is my
safety, my sustenance—which in the present case means that Christ
Himself is the bread of my soul. The Good Shepherd exercises care,
which absolves the sheep from care, and in the present case means that
my only duty is meek following and quiet trust. 'I am the Good
Shepherd'—here is guidance, guardianship, companionship, sustenance—all
responsibility laid upon His broad shoulders, and all tenderness in His
deep heart, and so for us simple obedience and quiet trust.

Another way by which we get the whole significance of this symbol is by
noticing how the idea is strengthened by the word that accompanies it.
Christ does not say 'I am a Shepherd,' but He says, 'I am _the good_
Shepherd.' At first sight that word 'good' is interpreted, as I have
said, in a kind of sentimental, poetic way, as expressing our Lord's
tenderness and love and care; but I do not think that is the full
meaning here. You find up and down this Gospel of St. John phrases such
as, 'I am the true bread,' 'I am the true vine,' and the meaning of the
word that is here translated 'good' is very nearly parallel with that
idea. The true bread, the true vine, the true Shepherd—which comes to
this, to use modern phraseology, that Jesus Christ, in His relation to
you and me, fulfils all that in figure and shadow is represented to the
meditative eye by that lower relationship between the material shepherd
and his sheep. That is the picture, this the reality. There is another
point to be made clear, and that is, that whilst the word 'good' is
perhaps a fair enough representation of that which is employed by our
Lord, there is a special force and significance attached to the
original, which is lost in our Bible. I do not know that it could have
been preserved; but still it is necessary to state it. The expression
here is the one that is generally rendered 'fair,' or 'lovely,' or
'beautiful,' and it belongs to the genius of that wonderful tongue in
which the New Testament is written that it has a name for moral purity,
considered as being lovely, the highest goodness, and the serenest
beauty, which was what the old Greeks taught, howsoever little they may
have practised it in their lives. And so here the thought is that _the_
Shepherd stands before us, the realisation of all which that name
means, set forth in such a fashion as to be infinitely lovely and
perfectly fair, and to draw the admiration of any man who can
appreciate that which is beautiful, and can admire that which is of
good report.

There is another point still in reference to this first view of the
text. Our Lord not only declares that He is the reality of which the
earthly shepherd is the shadow, and that He as such is the flawless,
perfect One, but that He alone is the reality. 'I am the Good Shepherd;
in Me and in Me alone is that which men need.' And that leads me to
another point which must just be mentioned, that we shall not reach the
full meaning of these great words without taking into account the
history of the metaphor in the Old Testament. Christ gives a second
edition of the figure, and we are to remember all that went before.
'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want'; 'Thou leddest Thy people
like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.' These are but specimens
of a continuous series of utterances in the old Revelation in which
Jehovah Himself is the Shepherd of mankind; and there is also another
class of passages of which I will quote one or two. 'He shall feed His
flock like a shepherd, and carry them in His arms.' 'Awake, O sword,
against the Man who is my fellow; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep
shall be scattered.' There were, we should remember, two streams of
representation, according to the one of which God Himself was the
Shepherd of Israel, and according to the other of which the Messiah was
the Shepherd; and here, as I believe, Jesus lays His hand on both the
one and the other, and says: 'They are Mine, and they testify of Me.'
So sweet, so gracious are the words, that we lose the sense of the
grandeur of them, and need to think before we are able to understand
how great and immense the claim that is made here upon our faith, and
that this Man stands before us and arrogates to Himself the divine
prerogative witnessed from of old by psalmist and prophet, and says
that for Him were meant the prophecies of ancient times that spake of a
human shepherd, and asserts that all the sustenance, care, authority,
command, which the emblem suggests meet in Him in perfect measure.

II. Now let us turn to the two special points which our Lord emphasises
here, as being those in which His relation as the Good Shepherd is most
conspicuously given. The language of my text runs: 'I am the Good
Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. As the Father
knoweth Me, even so know I the Father.' Our Western ways fail to bring
out the full meaning of the emblem; but all Eastern travellers tell us
what a strange bond of sympathy and loving regard, and docile
recognition, springs up between the shepherd and his sheep away there
in the Eastern pastures and deserts; and how he knows every one, though
to a stranger's eye they are so like each other; and how even the dumb
instincts and the narrow intelligence of the silly sheep recognise the
shepherd, and will not be deceived by shepherd's garments worn to
deceive, and will not follow the voice of a stranger.

But we must further note that Christ lays hold of the dumb instincts of
the animal, as illustrating, at the one end of the scale, the relation
between Him and His followers, and lays hold of the communion between
the Father and the Son at the other end of the scale, as illustrating
the same thing. 'I know My sheep.' That is a knowledge like the
knowledge of the shepherd, a bond of close intimacy. But He does not
know them by reason of looking at them and thinking about them. It is
something far more blessed than that. He knows me because He loves me;
He knows me because He has sympathy with me, and I know Him, if I know
Him at all, by my love, and I know Him by my sympathy, and I know Him
by my communion. A loveless heart does not know the Shepherd, and
unless the Shepherd's heart was all love He would not know His sheep.
The Shepherd's love is an individualised love. He knows His flock as a
flock because He knows the units of it, and we can rest ourselves upon
the personal knowledge, which is personal love and sympathy, of Jesus
Christ. 'And My sheep know Me'—not by force of intellect, not by
understanding certain truths, all-important as that may be, but by
having our hearts harmonised in Him, and our spirits put into sympathy
and communion with Him. 'They know Me,' and rest comes with the
knowledge; 'they know Me,' and in that knowing is the best answer to
all doubt and fear. They are exposed to danger, but in the fold they
can go quietly to rest, for they know that He is at the door watching
through all dangers.

III. Turn for a moment to the last point, 'I lay down My life for the
sheep.' I have said that our Western ways fail to bring out fully the
element of the metaphor which refers to the kind of sympathy between
the shepherd and the sheep; and our Western life also fails to bring
out this other element also. Shepherds in England never have need to
lay down their life for the sheep. Shepherds in Palestine often did,
and sometimes do. You remember David with the lion and the bear, which
is but an illustration of the reality which underlies this metaphor.
So, then, in some profound way, the shepherd's death is the sheep's
safety. First of all, look at that most unmistakable, emphatic—I was
going to say vehement, at any rate, intense—expression of the absolute
voluntariness of Christ's death, 'I lay down My life,' as a man might
strip off a vesture. And this application of the metaphor is made all
the stronger by the words which follow: 'Therefore doth My Father love
Me, because I lay down My life that I might take it again. No man
taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it again.' We read, 'Smite the shepherd,
and the sheep shall be scattered,' but here, somehow or other, the
smiting of the Shepherd is not the scattering but the gathering of the
flock. Here, somehow or other, the dead Shepherd has power to guard, to
guide, to defend them. Here, somehow or other, the death of the
Shepherd is the security of the sheep; and I say to you, the flock,
that for every soul the entrance into the flock of God is through the
door of the dying Christ, who laid down His life for the sheep, and
makes them His sheep who trust in Him.




'OTHER SHEEP'


[Footnote: Preached before the Baptist Missionary Society.]

'Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must
bring, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock
and one Shepherd.'—JOHN x. 16 (R.V.).

There were many strange and bitter lessons in this discourse for the
false shepherds, the Pharisees, to whom it was first spoken. But there
was not one which would jar more upon their minds, and as they fancied,
on their sacredest convictions, than this, that God's flock was wider
than God's fold. Our Lord distinctly recognises Judaism with its middle
wall of partition as a divine institution, and then as distinctly
carries His gaze beyond it. To His hearers 'this fold,' their own
national polity, held all the flock. Without were dogs, a doleful land,
where 'the wild beasts of the desert met with the wild beasts of the
islands.' And now this new Teacher, not content with declaring them
hirelings, and Himself the only true Shepherd of Israel, breaks down
the hedges and speaks of Himself as the Shepherd of men. No wonder that
they said, 'He hath a devil and is mad.'

During His earthly life our Lord, as we know, confined His own personal
ministry for the most part to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Not exclusively so, for He made at least one journey into the coasts of
Tyre and Sidon, teaching and healing; a Syro-Phcenician woman held His
feet, and received her request; and one of His miracles, of feeding the
multitude, was wrought for hungry Gentiles. But while His work was in
Israel, it was for mankind; and while 'this fold,' generally speaking,
circumscribed His toils, it did not confine His love nor His thoughts.
More than once world-wide declarations and promises broke from His
lips, even before the final universal commission, 'Preach the Gospel to
every creature.' 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' 'I
am the Light of the world.' These and other similar sayings give us His
lofty consciousness that He has received 'the heathen for His
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.'
Parallel with them in substance are the words before us, which, for our
present purpose, we may regard as containing lessons from our Lord
Himself of how He looked and would have us look on the heathen world,
on His work and ours, and on the certain issues of both.

I. We have here Christ teaching us how to think of the heathen world.

Observe that His words are not a declaration that all mankind are His
sheep. The previous verses have distinctly defined a class of men as
possessing the name, and the succeeding ones reiterate the definition,
and with equal distinctness exclude another class. 'Ye believe not,
because ye are not My sheep as I said unto you.' His sheep are they who
know Him and are known of Him. Between Him and them there is a
communion of love, a union of life, and a consequent reciprocal
knowledge, which transcends the closest intimacies of earthly life, and
finds its only analogue in that deep and mysterious oneness which
subsists between the Father, who alone knoweth the Son, and the only
begotten Son, who being ever in the bosom of the Father, alone knoweth
Him and revealeth Him to us. 'I know My sheep and am known of Mine; as
the Father knoweth Me and I know the Father. They hear My voice and
follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life.' Such are the
characteristics of that relation between Christ and men by which they
become His sheep. It is such souls as these whom our Lord beholds in
the wasteful wilderness. He is speaking not of a relation which all men
bear to Him by virtue of their creation, but of one which _they_ bear
to Him who believe in His name.

Now this interpretation of the words does by no means contradict, but
rather presupposes and rests upon the truth that all mankind come
within the love of the divine heart, that He died for all, that all may
be the subjects of His mediatorial kingdom, recipients of the offered
mercy of God in Christ, and committed to the stewardship of the
missionary Church. Resting upon these truths, the words of our text
advance a step further and contemplate those who 'shall hereafter
believe on Me.' Whether they be few or many is not the matter in hand.
Whether at any future time they shall include all the dwellers upon
earth is not the matter in hand. That every soul of man is included in
the adaptation and intention and offer of the Gospel is not the matter
in hand. But this is the matter in hand, that Jesus Christ in that
moment of lofty elevation when He looked onwards to giving His life for
the sheep, looked outwards also, far afield, and saw in every nation
and people souls that He knew were His, and would one day know Him, and
be led by Him 'in green pastures and beside still waters.'

But where or what were they when He spoke? He does not mean that
already they had heard His voice and were following His steps, and knew
His love, and had received eternal life at His hand. This He cannot
mean, for the plain reason that He goes on to speak of His 'bringing'
them and of their 'hearing,' a work yet to be done. It can only be,
then, that He speaks of them thus in the fullness of that divine
knowledge which 'calls things that are not as though they were.' It is
then a prophetic word which He speaks here.

We have only to think of the condition of the civilised heathendom of
Christ's own day in order to feel the force of our text in its primary
application. While the work of salvation was being prepared for the
world in the life and death of our Lord, the world was being prepared
for the tidings of salvation. Everywhere men were losing their faith in
their idols, and longing for some deliverer. Some had become weary of
the hollowness of philosophical speculation, and, like Pilate, were
asking 'What is truth?' whilst, unlike Him, they waited for an answer,
and will believe it when it comes from the lips of the Incarnate
wisdom. Such were the Magi who were led by their starry science to His
cradle, and went back to the depths of the Eastern lands with a better
light than had guided them thither. Such were not a few of the early
Christian converts, who had long been seeking hopelessly for goodly
pearls, and had so been learning to know the worth of the One when it
was offered to them. There were men who had been long sickening with
despair amidst the rottenness of decaying mythologies and corrupting
morals, and longing for some breath from heaven to blow health to
themselves and to the world, and had so been learning to welcome 'the
rushing mighty wind' when it came in power. There were simple souls,
without as well as within the chosen people, waiting for the
Consolation, though they knew not whence it was to come. There were
many who had already learned to believe that 'salvation is of the
Jews,' though they had still to learn that salvation is in Jesus. Such
were that Aethiopian statesman who was poring over Isaiah when Philip
joined him, the Roman centurion at Caesarea whose prayers and alms came
up with acceptance before God, these Greeks of the West who came to His
cross as the Eastern sages to His cradle, and were in Christ's eyes the
advance guard and first scattered harbingers of the flocks who should
come flying for refuge to Him lifted on the Cross, 'like doves to their
windows.' The whole world showed that the fullness of time had come;
and the history of the early years of the Church reveals in how many
souls the process of preparation had been silently going on. It was
like the flush of early spring, when all the buds that had been
maturing and swelling in the cold, burst, and the tender flowers that
had been reaching upwards to the surface in all the hard winter laugh
out in beauty, and a green veil covers all the hedges at the first
flash of the April sun.

Not only these were in our Lord's thoughts when He saw His sheep in
heathen lands. There were many who had no such previous preparation,
but were plunged in all the darkness, nor knew that it was dark. Not
only those wearied of idolatry, and dissatisfied with creeds outworn,
but the barbarous people of Illyricum, the profligates of Corinth, hard
rude men like the jailer at Philippi, and many more were before His
penetrating eye. He who sees beneath the surface, and beyond the
present, beholds His sheep where men can only see wolves. He sees an
Apostle in the blaspheming Saul, a teacher for all generations in the
African Augustine while yet a sensualist and a Manichee, a reformer in
the eager monk Luther, a poet-evangelist in the tinker Bunyan. He sees
the future saint in the present sinner, the angel's wings budding on
many a shoulder where the world's burdens lie heavy, and the new name
written on many a forehead that as yet bears but the mark of the beast,
and the number of His name.

And the sheep whom He sees while He speaks are not only the men of that
generation. These mighty words are world-wide and world-lasting. The
whole of the ages are in His mind. All nations are gathered before His
prophetic vision, even as they shall one day be gathered before His
judgment throne, and in all the countless mass His hand touches and His
love clasps those who to the very end of time shall come to His call
with loving faith, shall follow His steps with glad obedience.

Thus does Christ look out upon the world that lay beyond the fold. I
cannot stay to do more than refer in passing to the spirit which the
words of our text breathe. There is the lofty consciousness that He is
the Leader and Guide, the Friend and Helper of all, that He stands
solitary in His power to bless. There is the full confidence that the
earth is His to its uttermost border. There is the clear vision of the
sorrowful condition of these heathen people, without a shepherd and
without a fold, wandering on every high mountain and dying in every
thirsty land where there is no water. There are the tenderest pity and
yearning love for them in their extremity. There is the clear assurance
that they will come and be blessed in Him. I pass by all the other
thoughts, which naturally found themselves on these words, in order to
urge the one which is most appropriate to our present engagement. Let
us, dear brethren, take Christ as our pattern in our contemplations of
the heathen world.

He has set us the example of an outgoing look directed far beyond the
limits of the existing churches, far beyond the point of present
achievement. We are but too apt to circumscribe our operative thoughts
and our warm sympathies within the circle of our sight, or of our own
personal associations. Our selfishness and our indolence affect the
objects of our contemplations quite as much as they do the character of
our work. They vitiate both, by making ourselves the great object of
both, and by weakening the force of both in a ratio that increases
rapidly with the increasing distance from that favourite centre. It is
but a subtle form of the same disease which keeps our thoughts penned
within the bounds of any fold, or limited by the progress already
achieved. For us the whole world is the possession of our Lord, who has
died to redeem us. By us the whole ought to be contemplated with that
same spirit of prophetic confidence which filled Him when He said,
'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.' To press onwards,
'forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those
which are before,' is the only fitting attitude for Christian men,
either in regard to the gradual purifying of their own characters, or
in regard to the gradual winning of the world for Christ. We ought to
make all past successes stepping-stones to nobler things. The true use
of the present is to reach up from it to a loftier future. The distance
beckons; well for us if it do not beckon us in vain. We have yet to
learn the first lesson of our Master's spirit, as expressed in these
words, if we have not become familiar with the pitying contemplation of
the wastes beyond the fold, nor fixed deep in our minds the faith that
the amplitude of its walls will have to be widened with growing years
till it fills the world. The cry echoes to us from of old, 'Lengthen
thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes, for thou shalt break forth on the
right hand and on the left.' We take the first step to respond to the
summons when we make the 'regions beyond' one of the standing subjects
of our devout thoughts, and take heed of supposing that the Church as
we know it, has the same measurement which the man with the golden rod
has measured for the eternal courts of Jerusalem, that shall be the joy
of the whole earth. The very genius of the Gospel is aspiring. It is
content with nothing short of universality for the sweep, and eternity
for the duration, and absolute completeness for the measure, of its
bestowments on man. We should be like men on a voyage of discovery,
whose task is felt to be incomplete until headland after headland that
fades in the dim distance has been rounded and surveyed, and the flag
of our country planted upon it. After each has been passed another
arises from the water, onwards we must go. There is no pause for our
thoughts, none for our sympathy, none for our work, till our keels have
visited, and the 'shout of a King' has been heard on every shore that
fills 'the breadth of Thy land, O Emmanuel!' The limits of the visible
community of Christ's Church to-day are far within the borders to which
it must one day stretch. It is for us, taught by His words, to
understand that we are yet as it were but encamped by Jericho, and at
the beginning of the campaign. Ai and Bethhoron, and many a fight more
are before us yet. The camp of the invaders, when they lay around the
city of palm-trees, with the mountains in front and the Jordan behind,
was not more unlike the settled order of the nation when it filled the
land, than the ranks of Christ's army to-day are to the mighty
multitudes that shall one day name His name, and follow His banner. Let
us live in the future, and lay strongly hold on the distant; for both
are our Lord's, and by so doing we shall the better do our Master's
work in the present, and at hand.

He has set us the example of a _penetrating_ gaze into heathenism,
which reveals beneath its monotonous miseries, the souls that are His.
We ought to look on every field of Christian effort with the assurance
that in it there are some who will hear His voice. As it was when He
came, so it is ever and everywhere. The world is being prepared for the
Gospel. In some broad regions, faith in idolatry is dying out, and the
moral condition of the people is undergoing a slow elevation.
Individuals are being weaned from their gods, they know not how, and
they will not know why till they hear of Christ. He sees in every land
where the Gospel is being taken 'a people prepared for the Lord.' He
sees the gold gleaming in the crevices of the caves, the gems, rough
and unpolished, lying in the matrix. He looks not merely on the great
mass of idolaters, but He sees the single souls who shall hear. It is
for us to look on the same mass with confidence caught from His.
Neither apathetic indifference nor faint-hearted doubt should be
permitted to weaken our hands. The prospect may seem very dark, the
power of the enemy very great, our resources very inadequate; but let
us look with Christ's eye, we shall know that everywhere we may hope to
find a response to our message. Who they may be, we know not. How many
they may be, we know not. How they may be guided by Him, they know not.
But He knows all. We may know that they are there. And as we cannot
tell who they are but only that they are, we are bound to cherish hopes
for all—the most degraded and outcast of our race. We have no right to
give up any field or any man as hopeless. Christ's sheep will be found
coming out of the midst of wolves and goats. Darkness may cover the
earth, and gross darkness the people; but if we look upon it as Christ
did, and as He would have us to look, we shall see lights flickering
here and there in the obscurity, which shall burst out into a blaze.
The prophetic eye, the boundlessly hopeful heart, the strong confidence
that in every land where He is preached there will be those who shall
hear—these are what He gives us when He says, 'Other sheep I have,
which are not of this fold.'

There is one other thought connected with these words which may be
briefly referred to. It is that even now, in all lands where the Gospel
has been preached, there are those whom Christ has received, although
they have no connection with His visible Church.

There are many goats within the fold. There are many sheep without it.
Even in lands where the Gospel has long been preached, we do not
venture to identify profession by Church fellowship with living union
with Christ. Much more is this true of our missionary efforts, and the
apparent converts whom they make. The results that appear are no
measure of the results that have actually been accomplished. We often
hear of men who had caught up some stray word in a Bengali
market-place, or received a tract by the roadside from some passing
missionary, and who, having carried away the seed in their hearts, had
long been living as Christians remote from all churches and unknown by
any. We can easily conceive that timidity in some cases, and distance
in others, swell the ranks of these secret disciples. Though they
follow not the footsteps of the flock, the Shepherd will lead them in
their solitude. There will be many more names in the Lamb's book of
life, depend upon it, than ever are written on the roll-calls of our
churches, or in missionary statistics. The shooting-stars that yearly
fill our sky are visible to us for a moment, when their orbit passes
into the lighted heavens, and then they disappear in the shadow of the
earth. But astronomers tell us that they are always there though to us
they seem to blaze but for a moment. We cannot see them, but they move
on their darkling path and have a sun round which they circle. So be
sure that in many heathen lands there are believing souls, seen by us
but for an instant and then lost, who yet fill their unseen place, and
move obedient round the Sun of Righteousness. Their names on earth are
dark, but when the manifestation of the sons of God shall come, they
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for
ever and ever. Our work has results beyond our knowledge now. When the
Church, the Lamb's wife, shall lift up her eyes at the end of the days,
prophecy tells us that she shall wonder to see her thronging children,
whom she had never known till then, and will say, 'Who hath begotten me
these? Behold I was left alone. These, where had they been?' These were
God's hidden ones, nourished and brought up beyond the pale of the
outward Church, but brought at last to share her triumph, and to abide
at her side. 'Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.'

What confidence then, what tender pity, what hope should fill our minds
when we look on the heathen world! We must never be contented with
present achievements. We are committed to a task which cannot end till
all the world hears the joyful sound and is blessed by walking in the
light of His countenance. When the great Roman Catholic missionary, the
Apostle of the East, was lying on his dying bed among the barbarous
people whom he loved, his passing spirit was busy about his work, and,
even in the article of death, while the glazing eye saw no more clearly
and the ashen lips had begun to stiffen into eternal silence, visions
of further conquests flashed before him, and his last word was
'Amplius'—_Onward_! It ought to be the motto of the missionary work of
us, who boast a purer faith, to carry to the heathen and to fire our
own souls. If ever we are tempted to repose, to despondency, to rest
and be thankful when we number up our work and our converts, let us
listen to His voice as it speaks in that supreme hour when He beheld
the vision of the Cross, and beyond it that of a gathered world: 'Other
sheep I have, which are not of this fold.'

We have here—

II. Christ teaching us how to think of His work and ours.

'Them also I must bring.' A necessity is laid upon Him, which springs
at once from that divine work which is the law of His life, and from
His own love and pity. The means for accomplishing this necessary work
are implied in the context, as in other parallel Scriptural sayings, to
be His propitiatory death. The instrumentality employed is not only His
own personal agency on earth, nor only His throned rule on the right
hand of God with power over the Spirit of holiness, but also the work
of His Church, and His work through them. Of that He is mainly speaking
when He says, 'Them also I must bring.' Here, then, are some truths
which ought to underlie and shape as well as animate our efforts for
heathenism.

And first, remember that the same sovereign necessity which was laid on
Him presses on us.

The 'Spirit of life' which was in Christ had its 'law,' which was the
will of God. That shaped all His being, and He set us the example of
perfectly clear recognition of, and perfect obedience to it, from the
first moment when He said, 'I must be about My Father's business,' to
the last, when He sighed forth, 'Father, into Thy hands I commit My
spirit.' Hence the frequent sayings setting forth His work as
determined by an imperative 'must,' which, whether it be alleged in
reference to some apparently small or to some manifestly great thing in
His life, is always equally imperative, and whether it seem to be based
on the need for the fulfilment of some prophetic word, or on the
proprieties and congruities of sonship, reposes at last on the will of
God. His final words on the Passover night, before he went out to
Gethsemane in the moonlight, contain the influence which moulded His
whole earthly life, 'As the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do.'

And this divine will constitutes for Him the deepest ground of the
necessity in the case before us. The eternal counsels of God had willed
that 'all the ends of the earth should see the salvation of the Lord';
therefore, whatever the toils and the pains, the loss and the death,
He, whose meat and drink was to do the will of Him that sent Him, must
give Himself to the task, nor rest till, one by one, the weary
wanderers are brought back on His shoulders and folded in His love.

In all which, let us remember, Jesus Christ is our pattern, not in His
work for the salvation of men, but in the spirit in which He did His
work. The solemn law of duty before which He bowed His head is a law
for us also. The authoritative imperative which He obeyed has power
over us. If we would have our lives holy and strong, wise and good, we
must have 'the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, making us
free from the law of sin and death,' for the obedience to the higher
law enfranchises from slavery to the lower, and all other authority
ceases over us when we are Christ's men. We are bound to service
directed to the same end as His—even the salvation of the world. The
same voice which says to Him, 'I will give Thee for a light to the
Gentiles,' says to us, 'Ye are My witnesses, and My servant whom I have
chosen.' The same Will which hath constituted Him the anointed Prophet,
says of us, 'Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.' We
are redeemed that we may show forth God's praises. Not for ourselves
alone, nor for purposes terminating in our own personal acceptance with
God, or the perfecting of our own characters, priceless as these are,
but for ends which affect the world has God had mercy on us. We are
bought with a price that we may be the servants of God. We have
received that we may give forth,

  'God doth with us, as we with torches do,
  Not light them for themselves.'

'Arise, shine, for thy light is come.'

This missionary work of ours, then, is not one that can be taken up and
laid down at our own pleasure. It is no excrescence, or accidental
outgrowth of the Church's life. We are all too apt to think of it as an
extra, a kind of work of supererogation, which those may engage in who
have a liking that way, and which those who do not care about it may
leave alone, and no harm done. When shall we come to feel deeply,
constantly, practically, that it must be done, and that we are sinning
when we neglect it? Dear brethren, have we laid on our hearts and
consciences the solemn weight of that necessity which moulded His life?
Have we felt the awful power of God's plainly spoken will, driving us
to this task? Do we know anything of that spirit which hears
ever-pealing in our ears that awful commandment, 'Go, go to all the
world, preach, preach the Gospel to every creature?' God commands us to
take the trumpet, and if we would not soil our souls with gross and
palpable sin, we must set it to our lips and sound an alarm, that by
His grace shall wake the sleepers, and make the hoary walls of the
robber-city that has afflicted the earth for so many weary millenniums,
rock to their fall, that the redeemed of the Lord may pass over and set
the captives free.

If we felt this as we ought, surely our consecration would be more
complete, and our service more worthy. A clear conviction of God's will
pointing the path for us, is, in all things, a wondrous help to
vigorous action, to calmness of heart, and thus to success. In this
mighty work, it would brace us for larger efforts, and fit us for
larger results. It would simplify and deepen our motives, and thus
evolve from them nobler deeds and purer sacrifices. To all objections
from so-called prudence, to all calculations from sparse results, to
all cavils of onlookers who may carp and seek to hinder, we should have
one all-sufficient answer. It is not for us to bandy arguments on such
points as these. We care nothing for difficulties, for discouragements,
for cost. We may think about these till we lose all the manly chivalry
of Christian character, like the Apostle who gazed on the white crests
of the angry breakers flashing in the pale moonlight, till he forgot
who stood on the storm, and began to sink in his great fear. A nobler
spirit ought to be ours. The toil is sore, the sacrifices many, and the
yield seems small. Be it so! To all such thoughts we have one
answer—Oh! that we felt more its solemn power!—such is the will of God.
We are doing as we are bid, and we mean to go on. 'Them also must I
bring,' says the Master. 'Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is me if
I preach not the Gospel,' echoes the Apostle. Let us, in the
consecration of resolved hearts, and in trembling obedience to the
divine will, add our choral Amen, and in the face of all the paralysing
suggestions of our own selfishness, and all the tempting voices of
worldly wisdom and unbelieving scornfulness that would stay our
enterprise, let us fling back the grand old answer, 'Whether it be
right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge
ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.'

We must not forget, however, that it was no abhorrent toil to which
Christ reluctantly consented. But in this case, as always with Him, the
words of prophecy were true, 'I delight to do Thy will.' The schism
between law and choice had no existence for Him; and when He says that
He must bring the wandering sheep into the fold, He means not more
because of God's will than because of His own yearning desire to pour
out the treasures of His mercy.

So it ought to be with us. Our missionary work should not be degraded
beneath the level of duty indeed, but neither should it be left on that
level. We ought not only to be led to it by a power without, but
impelled by an energy within. If we would be like our Master, we must
know the necessity arising from our own heart's promptings, which leads
us to work for Him. He has very imperfectly caught the spirit of the
Gospel who has never felt the word as a fire in his bones, making him
weary of forbearing. If we only take to this work because we are bid,
and without sympathy for men, and longing desire to bring them all to
Him who has blessed us, we may almost as well leave it alone. We shall
do very little good to anybody, to ourselves little, to the world less.
That our own hearts may teach us this necessity, we must live near our
Master, and know His grace for ourselves. In proportion as we do, we
shall be eager to proclaim it, and not stand idling in a corner of the
market-place, till some unmistakable order sends us into the vineyard,
but go for the relief of our own feelings. 'This is a day of good
tidings, and we cannot hold our peace,' said the poor lepers in the
camp to one another. The same feeling that we must tell the good news
just because we know it, and it will make our brethren glad, is part of
the Christian character. A blessed necessity, then, is laid upon us. A
blessed work is given us, which brings with it at once the joy of
obedience to our Father's will, and the joy of gratifying a deep
instinct of our nature. 'Them also must I bring,' said the Saviour,
because He loved men. 'To me who am less than the least of all saints,
is this _grace_ given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches,' echoes the Apostle. Let us live in the light of
our Lord's eye, and drink deep of His spirit, till the talk becomes a
grace and privilege, not a burden, and till silence and idleness in His
cause shall be felt to be impossible, because it would be violence to
our own feelings, and the loss of a great joy as well as sin against
our Father's will.

Consider again, by what means the sheep are to be brought to Christ?
The context distinctly answers the question. There His propitiatory
death is emphatically set forth as the power by which it is to be
accomplished. The verse before our text says, 'I lay down My life for
the sheep'; that after our text says, 'Therefore doth My Father love
Me, because I lay down My life.' It is the same connection of means and
end as appears in the wonderful words with which He received the Greeks
who came up to the feast, and heard the great truth, for want of which
their philosophy and art came to nothing. 'Except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die it abideth alone'—'I, if I be lifted up from
the earth will draw all men unto Me.'

Yes, brethren! the Cross of Christ, and it alone, gathers men into a
unity; for it alone draws men to Christ. His death, as our
propitiation, effects such a change in the aspects of the divine
government, and in the incidence of the divine justice, that 'we who
were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.' His death, as the
constraining motive of life in the hearts which receive it, draws them
away from their own ways by the cords of love, and binds them to Him.
His death is His purchase of the gifts of that divine Spirit for the
rebellious, who now convinces the world and endows the Church, 'till we
all come unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.'
The First Begotten from the dead is therefore the prince of all the
kings of the earth, and He so rides among the nations as to bring the
world to Himself. The philosophy of history lies in the words, 'Other
sheep I have, them also I must bring.'

Christian missions abundantly prove that the Cross and the proclamation
of the Cross have this power, and that nothing else has. It is not the
ethics of Christianity, nor the abstract truths which may be deduced
from its story, but it is the story of the suffering Redeemer that
gives it its power over human hearts, in all conditions, and climates,
and stages of culture. The magnetism of the Cross alone is mighty
enough to overcome the gravitation of the soul to sin and the world. We
hear much nowadays about a new reformation which is to be effected on
Christianity, by purifying it of its historical facts and of its
repulsive sacrificial aspect. When this is done, and the pure spiritual
ideas are disengaged from their fleshly garb, then, we are told, will
be the apotheosis and glorification of Christ. This will be the real
lifting up from the earth; this will draw all men. Aye, and when this
is done what will be left? Christianity will be purified back again
into a vague Deism, which one would have thought had proved itself
toothless and impotent, centuries ago. Spiritualising will turn out to
be very like evaporating, the residuum will be a miserably
unsatisfactory something, near akin to nothing, and certainly incapable
either of firing its disciples with a desire to spread their faith, if
we may call it so by courtesy, or of drawing men to itself. A
Christianity without a Sacrifice on the altar will be a Christianity
without worshippers in the Temple. The King of Kings who rides forth
conquering is clothed in a vesture dipped in blood. The Christian
Emperor saw in the heavens the Cross, with the legend: 'In this sign
thou shalt conquer!' It is an emblem true for all time. The Cross is
the power unto salvation. The races scattered on the earth have often
sought to make for themselves a rallying-point, and their attempts at
union have become Babels, centres of repulsion and confusion. God has
given us the Centre, the Tree of life in the midst. The crucified
Saviour is the Root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign for the
people; to it shall the Gentiles seek, and resting beneath the shadow
of the Cross be at peace. 'I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto Me.'

Once more our Lord teaches us here to identify the work of the Church
with His own. What His servants do for Him He does, for from Him they
derive the power to do it, and from Him comes the blessing which makes
it effectual. He works in us, He works with us, He works for us. He
works in us. We have the grace of His Spirit to touch our hearts and
sanctify us for service. He puts it into the wills and desires of His
Church to consecrate themselves to the task. He teaches them sympathy
and self-devotion. He breathes world-wide aspirations into them. He
raises up men to go forth. He works _with_ us, helping our weakness,
enlightening our ignorance, directing our steps, giving power to the
student at his dry task of grammar and dictionary, being mouth and
wisdom to them that speak in His name, touching the hearts of them that
hear. In our basket He puts the seed-corn; the furrows of the field He
makes soft with showers, and when it is sown He blesses the springing
thereof. He works for us, opening doors among the nations, ordering the
courses of providence, and holding His hand around His servants, so
that they are immortal till their work is done; and can ever lift up
thankful voices to Him who leads them joyful captives at His own
triumphal car, as it rolls on its stately march, scattering the sweet
odours of His name wherever the long procession sweeps through the
world. We neither go a warfare at our own charges, nor in our own
might. He will fight with us, and He will pay us liberally at the last.
When we count up our own resources, do not we often leave Christ out of
the reckoning? Do we not measure our strength against the enemies', and
forget that one weak man, plus Christ, is always in the majority? 'It
is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of My Father which speaketh in
you.' 'I laboured, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.'
So helped, so inspired, we are wrong to despond; we are wrong not to
expect great things and attempt great things; we are wrong not to dare,
we are wrong to do the work of the Lord negligently. Let us feel that
Christ's work is ours, and we shall be bowed beneath the solemnity of
the thought, shall accept joyfully the necessity. Let us feel that our
work is Christ's, and we shall rejoice in infirmity that His power may
rest upon us, shall bid adieu to faint-hearted fears, and be sure that
then it must prosper. 'Arise, O Lord! plead Thine own cause.' Not unto
us, O Lord! not unto us, but to Thy name give glory.

'The Lord ascended into Heaven and sat on the right hand of God, and
they went everywhere preaching the word.' It seems a strange contrast
between the rest of the Lord, sitting in sublime expectancy of
conscious power til His enemies become His footstool, and the toils of
His scattered disciples. It is like that moment which the genius of the
great painter has caught in an immortal work, when Jesus in rapt
communion with the mighty dead, and crowned with the accepting word
from Heaven, floated transfigured above the Holy Mount, while below His
disciples wrestled impotently with the demon that would not be cast
out. But it is not really contrast. He has not so parted the toils as
that His are over ere ours begin. He has not left His Church militant
to bear the brunt of the battle while the Captain of the Lord's host
only watches the current of the heady fight—like Moses from the safe
mountain. The Evangelist goes on to tell us that the Lord also was
working with them and sharing their toils, lightening their burdens,
preparing for them successes on earth, and a rest like His when He
shall gird Himself and serve them. Thus, the first time that the
heavens opened again to mortal eyes after they closed on His ascending
form, was to show Him to the martyr in the council chamber, not sitting
careless or restful, but _standing_ at the right hand of God, to
intercede for, to strengthen, to receive and glorify His dying servant.
He goes with us where we go, and through our works and gifts and
prayers, through our proclamation of the Cross, He worketh His will,
and shall finally accomplish that great necessity laid upon Him by the
Father's counsels, and upon us by His commandment, and to be effected
by His death, that He should die, not for that nation only, but also
that He should gather together in one the children of God who are
scattered abroad.

We have here—

III. Our Lord teaching us how to think of the certain issues of His
work and ours.

'They shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one
Shepherd.' We may regard these words as embracing two things; a nearer
issue, namely, the response that will always attend His call; and a
more remote, namely, the completion of His work. There is, of course, a
very blessed sense in which the latter words are true now, and have
been ever since Paul could say to those who had been aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, 'He hath made both one. Now, therefore, ye are
no more foreigners but fellow-citizens with the saints.' But the fold
which now exists, limited in numbers, with its members but partially
conscious of their unity, and surrounded by those who follow hireling
shepherds, does not exhaust these great words. They shall not be
accomplished till that far-off future have come.

But for the present we have the predictions of the former clause, 'They
shall hear My voice.' What manner of expectations does it teach us to
cherish? It seems to speak not of universal reception of Christ's
message, but of some as hearing and some as forbearing. It teaches us
to look for divers results attending our missionary work. There will
always be a Dionysius the Areopagite, the woman Lydia, the kindly
barbarians, the conscience-stricken jailer. There will always be the
scoffers, who mock when they hear of 'Jesus and the resurrection'; the
hesitating who compound with conscience by promising to hear again of
this matter, the fierce opponents who invoke constituted authorities or
mob violence to crush the message.

Again, the words seem to contemplate a long task. There is nothing
about the rate at which His Kingdom shall spread, not a syllable to
answer inquiries as to when the end shall come. The whole tone of the
language suggests the idea that bringing back the sheep is to take a
long time, and to cost many a tedious journey into the wilderness. Not
a sudden outburst, but a slow kindling of the flame, is what our Lord
teaches us here to expect.

But while thus calm in tone and moderate in expectation, the words
breathe a hope as confident as it is calm, as clear as it is moderate.
There will always be a response. His voice shall never be lifted up in
the snow-storm or lonely hillsides only to be blown back into His own
ears, unheard and unheeded. Be they few or many, they shall hear. Be
the toil longer or shorter, more or less severe, it shall not be in
vain.

And to these expectations we shall do wisely if we attune ours. Omit
from your hopes what your Lord has omitted from His promises; do not
ask what He has not told. Do not wonder if you encounter what He met,
for the disciple is not greater than his Master, and only if they have
kept My saying will they keep yours also. But, on the other hand,
expect as much as He has prophesied; accept it when it comes as the
fruit of His work, not of yours, and build a firm faith that your
labour shall not be in vain on these calm and prescient words.

So much for the course of the kingdom. And what of the end? One by one
the sheep have been brought, at last they are all gathered in, not a
hoof left behind. The stars steal singly into their places in the
heavens as the darkness deepens, and He 'bringeth them forth by
number,' until at the noon of night the sky is crowded with their
lights, and 'for that He is great in power, not one faileth.' What
expectations are we here taught to cherish then of the final issue?

Mark, to begin with, that there is implied the ultimate universality of
His dominion and sole supremacy of His throne. There is to be but one
Shepherd, and over all the earth a great unity of obedience to Him.
Here is the knell of all authority that does not own Him, and the
subordination of all that does. The hirelings, the blind guides, that
have misled and afflicted humanity for so many weary ages, shall be all
sunk in oblivion. The false gods shall be discrowned, and lie shattered
on their temple-sill, and there shall be no worshippers to care for or
to try to repair their discomfiture. Bow your heads before Him,
thinkers who have led men on devious paths and spoken but a partial
truth and a wisdom all confused with foolishness! Lower your swords
before Him, warriors who have builded your cities on blood and led men
like sheep to the slaughter! He is more glorious and excellent than the
mountains of prey. Cast your crowns before Him, princes and all judges
of the earth, for He is King by right of the crown of thorns! This is
the Lord of all—Teacher, Leader, Ruler of all men. All other names
shall be forgotten but His shall abide. If they have been shepherds who
would not come in by the door, a ransomed world shall rejoice over
their fall with the ancient hymn, 'Other gods beside Thee have had
dominion over us; they are dead, they shall not live, Thou hast
destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.' If they have been
subject to the chief Shepherd and ensamples to the flock, they will
rejoice to decrease before His increase, and having helped to bring the
Bride to the Bridegroom, will gladly stand aside and be forgotten in
the perfect love that enters into full fruition at the last. Then when
none contest nor intercept the reverential obedience that the whole
world brings to Him, shall be fulfilled the firm promise which declared
long ago: 'I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He will feed them
and be their Shepherd.'

Mark again the blessed nature of the relation between Christ and all
men which is here foretold. From of old, the shepherd has been in all
nations the emblem of kingly power, of leadership of every sort. How
often the fact has contradicted the symbol let history tell. But with
Jesus the reality does not only contradict, but even transcends, the
tender old comparison. He rules with a gentle sway. His sceptre is no
rod of iron, but the shepherd's crook, and the inmost meaning of its
use is that it may 'comfort' us, as David learned to feel. There gather
round the metaphor all thoughts of merciful guidance, of tender care,
of a helping arm when we are weak, of a loving bosom where we are
carried when we are weary. It speaks of a seeking love that roams over
every high hill till it finds, and of a strong shoulder that bears us
back when He has found. It tells of sweet hours of rest in the hot
noontide by still waters, of ample provision for all the soul's
longings in green pastures. It speaks of footsteps that go before, in
which men may follow and find them ways of pleasantness. It speaks of
gentle callings by name which draw the heart. It speaks of defence when
lion and bear come ravening down, and of safe couching by night when
the silent stars behold the sleeping sheep and the wakeful shepherd. He
Himself gives its highest significance to the emblem, in the words of
this great discourse, when He fixes on His knowledge, His calling of
His sheep, His going before them, His giving His life for them. Such
are the gracious blessings which here He teaches us to think of as
possessed in the happy days that shall be, by all the world.

And, on the other hand, the symbol speaks of confiding love in the
hearts of men, of a great peacefulness of meek obedience stilling and
gladdening their wills, of the consciousness of His perfect love, and
the knowledge of all His gracious character, of sweet answering
communion with Him, of safety from all enemies, of freedom, of familiar
passage in and out to God. Thus knit together shall be the one fold and
the one Shepherd. 'They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures
shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither
shall the heat nor sun smite them, for He that hath mercy on them shall
feed them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them.'

Mark again what a vision is here given of the relations of men with one
another.

They are to be all gathered into a peaceful unity. They are to be one
because they all hearken to one voice. It is to be observed that our
Lord does not say, as our English Bible makes Him say, that there is to
be one fold. He drops that word of set purpose in the latter clause of
our text, and substitutes for it another, which may perhaps be best
rendered flock. Why this change in the expression? Because, as it would
seem, he would have us learn that the unity of that blessed future time
is not to be like the unity of the Jewish Church, a formal and external
one. That ancient polity was a fold. It held its members together by
outward bonds of uniformity. But the universal Church of the future is
to be a flock. It is to be really and visibly one. But it is to be so,
not because it is hemmed in by one enclosure, but because it is to be
gathered round one Shepherd. The more closely they are drawn to Him,
the more near will they be to each other. The centre in which all the
radii meet keeps them all in their places. 'We being many are one
bread, for we are all partakers of that one bread.' In the ritual of
the Old Covenant, the great golden candlestick with its seven branches
stood in the court of the Temple, emblem of the formal oneness of the
people, which was meant to be the light of the Lord to a dark world. In
the vision of the New Covenant, the seer in Patmos beheld not the one
lamp with its branches, but the seven golden candlesticks, which were
made into a holier and a freer unity because the Son of Man walked in
their midst—emblem of the oneness in diversity of the peoples, who were
sometimes darkness, but shall one day be light in the Lord. There may
continue to be national distinctions. There may or there may not be any
external unity. But at all events our Lord turns away our thoughts from
the outward to the inward, and bids us be sure that though the folds be
many the flock shall be one, because they shall all hear and follow
Him.

The words, however, suggest for us the blessed thought of the peaceful
relations that shall then subsist among men. The tribes of the earth
shall couch beside each other like the quiet sheep in the fold, and
having learned of His great meekness, they shall no more bite nor
devour one another. Alas! alas! the words seem too good to be true.
They seem long, long of coming to pass. Ever since they were spoken the
old bloody work has been going on, and the old lusts of the human heart
have been busy sowing the dragon's teeth that shall spring up in wars
and fightings. In savage lands warfare rages on, ceaseless, ignoble,
unrecorded, and seemingly purposeless as that of animalcules in a drop
of water. On civilised soil, men, who love the same Christ and worship
Him in the same tongue, are fronting each other at this hour. The war
of actual swords, and the war of conflicting creeds, and the jostling
of human selfishness in the rough road of life, are all around us, and
their seeds are within ourselves. The race of men do not live like
folded sheep, rather like a flock of wolves, who first run over and
then devour their weaker fellows.

But here is a fairer hope, and it will be fulfilled when all evil
thoughts, and all selfish desires, and all jealous grudgings shall
vanish from men's hearts, as unclean spirits at cockcrow, and shall
leave them, self-forgetful, yielding of their own prerogatives,
desirous of no other man's, abhorrent of inflicting, and patient of
receiving wrong. There will be no fuel then to blow into sulphurous
flame, though all the blasts from hell were to fan the embers. But
peace and concord shall be in all men, for Christ shall be in all.
National distinctions may abide, but national enmities—the oldest and
deepest, shall disappear. There shall still be Assyria, and Egypt, and
Israel, but their former relation will be replaced by a bond of amity
in their common possession of Him who is our peace. 'In that day shall
Israel be the third with Egypt, and with Assyria, even a blessing in
the midst of the land, whom the Lord shall bless, saying, Blessed be
Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine
inheritance.' God be thanked! that though we see, and our fathers have
seen, so much that seems to contradict our hopes of a peaceful world,
and though to-day the hell-hounds of war are baying over the earth, and
though nowhere can we see signs even of the approach of the halcyon
time, yet we can wait for the vision, knowing that it will come at the
appointed time, when

  'No war or battle's sound
  Is heard the world around,
  The idle spear and shield are high uphung;
  The trumpet speaks not to the armed throng,
  And Kings sit still, with awful eye,
  As if they surely knew their Sovereign Lord was by.'

Such are the thoughts which our Lord would teach us as to the present
and as to the future of our missionary work. For the one, moderate
expectations of success, not unchequered by disappointment, and a brave
patience in long toil. For the other, hopes which cannot be too
glowing, and a faith which cannot be too obstinate. The one is being
fulfilled in our own and our brethren's experience even now; we may be
therefore all the more sure that the other will be so in due time. If
we look with Christ's eyes, we shall not be depressed by the apparent
unbroken surface of heathenism but see, as He did, everywhere souls
that belong to Him, who may and must be won; we shall joyfully embrace
the work which He has given us to do; we shall arm ourselves against
the discouragements of the present, by living much in the past at the
foot of the Cross, till we catch the true image of the Saviour's love,
and much in the future in the midst of the ransomed flock, till we too
behold the roses blossoming in the wilderness, the bright waters
covering all the dry places in the desert, and the families of men
sitting, clothed and in their right mind, at the feet of Jesus.

Our missionary work is the pure and inevitable result of a belief in
these words of my text. Can a man believe that Christ has other sheep
for whom He died because He must bring them in, whom He will bring in
because He died, and _not_ work according to his power in the line of
the divine purposes? The missionary spirit is but the Christian spirit
working in one particular direction. Missionary societies are but one
of the authentic outcomes of Christian principles, as natural as
holiness of life, or the act of prayer.

To secure, then, a more vigorous energy in such work, we need chiefly
what we need for all Christian growth—namely, more and deeper communion
with Christ, a more vivid realisation of His grace and love for
ourselves. And then we need that, under the double stimulus of His love
and of His commandment—which at bottom are one—our minds should be more
frequently occupied with this subject of Christian missions. Most of us
know too little about the matter to feel very much. And then we need
that we should more seriously reflect upon the facts in relation to our
own personal responsibility and duty. You complain of the triteness of
such appeals as this sermon. Brethren, have you ever tried that recipe
for freshening up well-worn truths, namely, thinking about them in
connection with the simplest, most important of all questions—what,
then, ought I to do in view of these truths? Am I exaggerating when I
say, that not one-half of the professing Christians of our day give an
hour in the year to pondering that question, with reference to
missionary work? Oh! dear friends, see to it that you live in Christ
for yourselves, and then see to it that you think His thoughts about
the heathen world, till your pity is stirred and your mind braced to
the firm resolve that you too will work the works of Christ and bring
in the wanderers.

We have had as large results as Christ has led us to expect, and far
larger than we deserved. Christian missions are yet in their
infancy—alas! that it should be so. But in these seventy years since
they may be said to have begun, what wonderful successes have been
achieved. We are often told that we have done nothing. Is it so? The
plant has been got together, methods of working have been systematised,
mistakes in some measure corrected. We have spent much of our time in
learning how to work, and that process is by no means over yet. But
with all these deductions, which ought fairly to be made, how much has
been accomplished? The Bible has been put into the languages of seven
hundred millions of men. The beginnings of a Christian literature have
been supplied for five-sixths of the world. Half a million of professed
converts have been gathered in, or as many as there were at the end of
the first century, after about the same number of years of labour, and
with apostles for missionaries and miracles for proof. And if these
still bear on their ankles the marks of the fetters, and limp as they
walk, or cannot see very clearly at first, it is no more than might be
expected from their long darkness in the prison-house, and it is no
more than Paul had to contend with at Ephesus and Corinth.

Every church that has engaged in the toil has shared in the blessing,
and has its own instances of special prosperity. We have had Jamaica;
the London Missionary Society, Madagascar, and the South Seas; the
Wesleyans, Fiji; the Episcopal Societies, Tinnevelly; the American
brethren, Burmah, and the Karens. Some of the ruder mythologies have
been so utterly extirpated that the children of idolaters have seen the
gods whom their fathers worshipped for the first time in the British
Museum. While over those more compact and scientific systems which lie
like an incubus on mighty peoples, there has crept a sickening
consciousness of a coming doom, and they already half own their
conqueror in the Stronger One than they.

  'They feel from Judah's land
  The dreaded Infant's hand.'

'Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, the idols are upon the beasts.' Surely
God has granted us success enough for our thankful confidence, more
than enough for our deserts. I repeat it, it is as much as He promised,
as much as we had any right to expect, and it is a vast deal more than
any other system of belief or of no belief, any of your spiritualised
Christianities, or still more intangible creeds has ever managed, or
ever thought of trying. To those who taunt us with no success, and who
perhaps would not dislike Christian missions so much if they disliked
Christian truth a little less, we may very fairly and calmly
answer—This rod has budded at all events; do you the same with your
enchantments.

But the past is no measure of the future. From the very nature of the
undertaking the ratio of progress increases at a rapid rate. The first
ten years of labour in India showed twenty-seven converts, the seventh
ten showed more than twenty-seven thousand. The preparation may be as
slow as the solemn gathering of the thunder-clouds, as they noiselessly
steal into their places, and slowly upheave their grey billowing
crests; the final success may be as swift as the lightning which
flashes in an instant from one side of the heavens to the other. It
takes long years to hew the tunnel, to 'make the crooked straight, and
the rough places plain,' and then smooth and fleet the great power
rushes along the rails. To us the cry comes, 'Prepare ye in the desert
an highway for our God.' The toil is sore and long, but 'the glory of
the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.' The
Alpine summits lie white and ghastly in the spring sunshine, and it
seems to pour ineffectual beams on their piled cold; but by slow
degrees it is silently loosening the bands of the snow, and after a
while a goat's step, as it passes along a rocky ledge, or a breath of
wind will move a tiny particle, and in an instant its motion spreads
over a mile of mountain side, and the avalanche is rushing swifter and
mightier at every foot down to the valley below, where it will all turn
into sweet water, and ripple glancing in the sunshine. Such is our
work. It may seem very hopeless, and be mostly unobservable in surface
results, but it is very real for all that. The conquering impulse, for
which our task may have been to prepare the way, will be given, and
then we shall wonder to see how surely the kingdom was coming, even
when we observed it not.

Ye have need of patience, and to feed your patience, ye have need of
fellowship with Christ, of faith in His promises, of sympathy with His
mind. God has given us, dear brethren, special reason for renewed
consecration to this service in the blessings which have during the
year terminated our anxieties and crowned our work for our own Society.
But let us not dwell upon what has been done. These successes are
brooks by the way at which we may drink—nothing more. We ought to be
like shepherds in the lonely mountain glens, who see in the
fast-falling snow and the bitter blast a summons to the hillside, and
there all the night long wherever the drift lies deepest and the wind
bites the most sharply, search the most eagerly for the poor half-dead
creatures, and as they find each, bear it back to the safe shelter, nor
stay behind to count the rescued, nor to rest their weariness, for all
the bright light in the cottage and the blackness without, but forth
again on the same quest, till all the Master's sheep have been rescued
from the white death that lay treacherous around, and are sleeping at
peace in His folds. A mighty Voice ought ever to be sounding in our
ears, 'Other sheep I have,' and the answer of our hearts and of our
lives should be, 'Them also, O Lord! will I try to bring.' Not till the
far-off issue is accomplished shall we have a right to rest, and then
we, with all those He has helped us to gather to His side, shall be
among that flock, whom He who is at once Lamb and Shepherd, our Brother
and our Lord, our Sacrifice and King, 'shall feed and lead by living
fountains of waters,' in the sweet pastures of the upper world, where
there are no ravening wolves, nor false guides to terrify and bewilder
His flock any more at all for ever.




THE DELAYS OF LOVE


'Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He had heard
therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place
where He was.'—JOHN xi. 5, 6.

We learn from a later verse of this chapter that Lazarus had been dead
four days when Christ reached Bethany. The distance from that village
to the probable place of Christ's abode, when He received the message,
was about a day's journey. If, therefore, to the two days on which He
abode still after the receipt of the news, we add the day which the
messengers took to reach Him and the day which He occupied in
travelling, we get the four days since which Lazarus had been laid in
his grave. Consequently the probability is that, when our Lord had the
message, the man was dead. Christ did not remain still, therefore, in
order to work a greater miracle by raising Lazarus from the dead than
He would have done by healing, but He stayed—strange as it would
appear—for reasons closely connected with the highest well-being of all
the beloved three, and _because_ He loved them.

John is always very particular in his use of that word 'therefore,' and
he points out many a subtle and beautiful connection of cause and
effect by his employment of it. I do not know that any of them are more
significant and more full of illumination with regard to the ways of
divine providence than the instance before us. How these two sisters
must have looked down the rocky road that led up from Jericho during
those four weary days, to see if there were any signs of His coming.
How strange it must have appeared to the disciples themselves that He
made no sign of movement, notwithstanding the message. Perhaps John's
scrupulous carefulness in pointing out that His love was Christ's
reason for His quiescence may reflect a remembrance of the doubts that
had crept over the minds of himself and his brethren during these two
days of strange inaction. The Evangelist will have us learn a lesson,
which reaches far beyond the instance in hand, and casts light on many
dark places.

I. Christ's delays are the delays of love.

We have all of us, I suppose, had experience of desires for the removal
of bitterness or sorrows, or for the fulfilment of expectations and
wishes, which we believed, on the best evidence that we could find, to
be in accordance with His will, and which we have been able to make
prayers out of, in true faith and submission, which prayers have had to
be offered over and over and over again, and no answer has come, It is
part of the method of Providence that the lifting away of the burden
and the coming of the desires should be a hope deferred. And instead of
stumbling at the mystery, or feeling as if it made a great demand upon
our faith, would it not be wiser for us to lay hold of that little word
of the Apostle's here, and to see in it a small window that opens out
on to a boundless prospect, and a glimpse into the very heart of the
divine motives in His dealings with us?

If we could once get that conviction into our hearts, how quietly we
should go about our work! What a beautiful and brave patience there
would be in us, if we habitually felt that the only reason which
actuates God's providence in its choice of times of fulfilling our
desires and lifting away our bitterness is our own good! Nothing but
the purest and simplest love, transparent and without a fold in it,
sways Him in all that He does. Why should it be so difficult for us to
believe this? If we were more in the way of looking at life, with all
its often unwelcome duty, and its arrows of pain and sorrow, and all
the disappointments and other ills that it is heir to, as a discipline,
and were to think less about the unpleasantness, and more about the
purpose, of what befalls us, we should find far less difficulty in
understanding that His delay is born of love, and is a token of His
tender care.

Sorrow is prolonged for the same reason as it was sent. It is of little
use to send it for a little while. In the majority of cases, time is an
element in its working its right effect upon us. If the weight is
lifted, the elastic substance beneath springs up again. As soon as the
wind passes over the cornfield, the bowing ears raise themselves. You
have to steep foul things in water for a good while before the pure
liquid washes out the stains. And so time is an element in all the good
that we get out of the discipline of life. Therefore, the same love
which sends must necessarily protract, beyond our desires, the
discipline under which we are put. If we thought of it, as I have said,
more frequently as discipline and schooling, and less frequently as
pain and a burden, we should understand the meaning of things a great
deal better than we do, and should be able to face them with braver
hearts, and with a patient, almost joyous, endurance.

If we think of some of the purposes of our sorrows and burdens, we
shall discern still more clearly that time is needed for accomplishing
them, and that, therefore, love must delay its coming to take them
away. For example, the object of them all, and the highest blessing
that any of us can obtain, is that our wills should be bent until they
coincide with God's, and that takes time. The shipwright, when he gets
a bit of timber that he wants to make a 'knee' out of, knows that to
mould it into the right form is not the work of a day. A will may be
_broken_ at a blow, but it will take a while to _bend_ it. And just
because swiftly passing disasters have little permanent effect in
moulding our wills, it is a blessing, and not an evil, to have some
standing fact in our lives, which will make a continual demand upon us
for continually repeated acts of bowing ourselves beneath His sweet,
though it may seem severe, will. God's love in Jesus Christ can give us
nothing better than the opportunity of bowing our wills to His, and
saying, 'Not mine, but Thine be done.' If that is why He stops on the
other side of Jordan, and does not come even to the loving messages of
beloved hearts, then He shows His love in the sweetest and the loftiest
form. So, dear friends, if you carry a lifelong sorrow, do not think
that it is a mystery why it should lie upon your shoulders when there
are omnipotence and an infinite heart in the heavens. If it has the
effect of bending you to His purpose, it is the truest token of His
loving care that He can send. In like manner, is it not worth carrying
a weight of unfulfilled wishes, and a weariness of unalleviated
sorrows, if these do teach us three things, which are one thing—faith,
endurance, prayerfulness, and so knit us by a threefold cord that
cannot be broken, to the very heart of God Himself?

II. This delayed help always comes at the right time.

Do not let us forget that Heaven's clock is different from ours. In our
day there are twelve hours, and in God's a thousand years. What seems
long to us is to Him 'a little while.' Let us not imitate the
shortsighted impatience of His disciples, who said, 'What is this that
He saith, A little while? We cannot tell what He saith.' The time of
separation looked so long in anticipation to them, and to Him it had
dwindled to a moment. For two days, eight-and-forty hours, He delayed
His answer to Mary and Martha, and they thought it an eternity, while
the heavy hours crept by, and they only said, 'It's very weary, He
cometh not, they said.' How long did it look to them when they had got
Lazarus back?

The longest protraction of the fulfilment of the most yearning
expectation and fulfilled desire will seem but as the winking of an
eyelid when we get to estimate duration by the same scale by which He
estimates it, the scale of Eternity. The ephemeral insect, born in the
morning and dead when the day fades, has a still minuter scale than
ours, but we should not think of regulating our estimate of long and
short by it. Do not let us commit the equal absurdity of regulating the
march of His providence by the swift beating of our timepieces. God
works leisurely because God has eternity to work in.

The answer always comes at the right time, and is punctual though
delayed. For instance, Peter is in prison. The Church keeps praying for
him; prays on, day after day. No answer. The week of the feast comes.
Prayer is made intensely and fervently and continuously. No answer. The
slow hours pass away. The last day of his life, as it would appear,
comes and goes. No answer. The night gathers; prayer rises to heaven.
The last hour of the last watch of the last night that he had to live
has come, and as the veil of darkness is thinning, and the day is
beginning to break, 'the angel of the Lord shone round about him.' But
there is no haste in his deliverance. All is done leisurely, as in the
confidence of ample time to spare, and perfect security. He is bidden
to arise quickly, but there is no hurry in the stages of his
liberation. 'Gird thyself and bind on thy sandals.' He is to take time
to lace them. There is no fear of the quaternion of soldiers waking, or
of there not being time to do all. We can fancy the half-sleeping and
wholly-bewildered Apostle fumbling at the sandal-strings, in dread of
some movement rousing his guards, and the calm angel face looking on.
The sandals fastened, he is bidden to put on his garments and follow.
With equal leisure and orderliness he is conducted through the first
and the second guard of sleeping soldiers, and then through the prison
gate. He might have been lifted at once clean out of his dungeon, and
set down in the house many were gathered praying for him. But more
signal was the demonstration of power which a deliverance so gradual
gave, when it led him slowly past all obstacles and paralysed their
power. God is never in haste. He never comes too soon nor too late.
'The Lord shall help them, and that right early.' Sennacherib's army is
round the city, famine is within the walls. To-morrow will be too late.
But to-night the angel strikes, and the enemies are all dead men. So
God's delay makes the deliverance the more signal and joyous when it is
granted. And though hope deferred may sometimes make the heart sick,
the desire, when it comes, is a tree of life.

III. The best help is not delayed.

The principle which we have been illustrating applies only to one
half—and that the less important half—of our prayers and of Christ's
answers. For in regard to spiritual blessings, and our petitions for
fuller, purer, and diviner life, there is no delay. In that region the
law is not 'He abode still two days in the same place,' but 'Before
they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear.'
If you have been praying for deeper knowledge of God, for lives liker
His, for hearts more filled with the Spirit, and have not had the
answer, do not fall back upon the misapplication of such a principle as
this of my text, which has nothing to do with that region; but remember
that the only reason why good people do not immediately get the
blessings of the Christian life for which they ask lies in themselves,
and not at all in God. 'Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and
have not, because'—not because He delays, but because—'ye ask amiss,'
or because, having asked, you get up from your knees and go away, not
looking to see whether the blessing is coming down or not.

Ah! there is a sad amount of lying and hypocrisy in prayers for
spiritual blessings. Many petitioners do not want to have them. They
would not know what to do with them if they got them. They make the
requests because their fathers did so before them, and because these
are the right kind of things to say in a prayer. Such prayers get no
answers. If a man prays for some spiritual enlargement, and then goes
out into the world and lives clean contrary to his prayers, what right
has he to say that God delays His answers? No, He does not delay His
answers, but we push back His answers, and the gift that _is_ given we
will not take. Let us remember that the two halves of the divine
dealings are not regulated by the same principle, though they be
regulated by the same motive; and that the love which often delays for
our good, in regard to the desires that have reference to outward
things, is swift as the lightning to answer every petition which moves
within the circle of our spiritual life.

'Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye stand praying, believe that' then
and there 'ye receive them'; and the undelaying God will take care that
'you shall have them.'




CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH


_For the Young_

'… Believest then this? She saith unto Him, Yea, Lord.'—JOHN xi. 26,
27.

As each of these annual sermons which I have preached for so long comes
round, I feel more solemnly the growing probability that it may be the
last. Like a man nearing the end of his day's work, I want to make the
most of the remaining moments. Whether this is the last sermon of the
sort that I shall preach or not, it is certainly the last of the kind
that some of you will hear from me, or possibly from any one.

So, dear friends, I have felt that neither you nor I can afford to
waste this hour in considering subjects of secondary interest,
appropriate as some of them might be. I wish to come to the main point
at once, and to press upon you all, and especially on the younger
portion of this audience, the question of your own personal religion.

The words of my text, as you will probably remember, were addressed by
our Lord to Martha, as she was writhing in agony over her dead brother.
Christ proclaims, with singular calmness and majesty, His character and
work as the Resurrection and the Life, and then seeks to draw her from
her absorbing sorrow to an effort of faith which shall grasp the truths
He proclaims. He flashes out this sudden question, like the swift
thrust of a gleaming dagger. It is a demand for credence to His
assertion—on His bare word—tremendous as that assertion is. And nobly
was the demand met by the as swift, unfaltering answer, 'Yea, Lord,' I
believe in Thee, and so I believe in Thy word.

Now, friends, Jesus Christ is putting the same question to each of us.
And I pray that our answers may be Martha's.

I. Note, first, the significance of the question.

'This.' What is _this_? The answer will tell us what are the central
essential facts, faith in which makes a Christian. Of course the form
in which our Lord's previous utterance was cast was coloured by the
circumstances under which He spoke, and was so shaped as to meet the
momentary exigency. But whilst thus the form is determined by the fact
that He was speaking to a heart wrung by separation, and as a
preliminary to a mighty act of resurrection, the essential truths which
are so expressed are those which, as I believe, constitute the
fundamental truths of Christianity—the very core and heart of the
Gospel.

Turn, then, but for a moment, to what immediately precedes my text. Our
Lord says three things. First, He asserts His supernatural character
and divine relation to life: 'I am the Resurrection and the Life.'
Next, He declares that it is possible for Him to communicate to dying
and to dead men a life which triumphs over death, and laughs at change,
and persists through the superficial experience which we christen by
the name of Death, unaffected, undiminished, as some sweet spring might
gush up in the heart of a salt, solitary sea. And then He declares that
the condition on which He, the Life-giver, gives of His immortal life
to dying men, is their trust in Him. These three—His character and
work, the gifts of which His hands are full, and the way by which the
gifts may be appropriated by us men—these three are, as I take it, the
central facts of Christianity. 'Believest thou this?'

The question comes to us all; and in these days of unsettlement it is
well to have some clear understanding of what is the 'irreducible
minimum' of Christian teaching. I take it that it lies here. There are
two opposite errors which, like all opposite errors, are bolted
together, and revolve round a common centre. The one of them is the
extreme conservative tendency which regards every pin and bolt of the
tabernacle as if it were equally sacred with the altar and the ark. And
the other is the tendency which christens itself 'liberal and
progressive,' and which is always ready to exchange old lamps, though
they have burnt brightly in the past, for new ones that are as yet only
glittering metal and untried. In these days, when it is a presumption
against any opinion, that our fathers believed it (an error into which
young people are most prone to fall), and when, by the energy of
contradiction, that error has evoked, and is evoking, the opposite
exaggeration that adheres to all that is traditional, to all that has
been regarded as belonging to the essentials of the Christian faith,
and so is fearful, trembling for the Ark of God when there is no need,
let us fall back upon these great words of the Master, and see that the
things which constitute the living heart of His message and gift to the
world are neither more nor less than these three: the supernatural
Christ, the life which He imparts, and the condition on which He
bestows it. 'Believest thou this?' If you do, you need take very little
heed of the fluctuations of contemporary opinion as to other matters,
valuable and important as these may be in their place; and may let men
say what they will about disputed questions—about the method by which
the vehicle of revelation has been created and preserved, about the
regulation of the external forms of the Church, about a hundred other
things that men often lose their tempers and spoil their Christianity
by fighting for, and fall back upon the great central verity, a Christ
from above, the Giver of Life to all that put their trust in Him.

Let me expand this question for you. 'We all have sinned and come short
of the glory of God'—'believest thou this?' 'We must all appear before
the judgment-seat of Christ'—'believest thou this?' 'God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on
Him should not perish'—'believest thou this?' 'The Son of Man came… to
give His life a ransom for many'—'believest thou this?' 'Being
justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ'—'believest thou this?' 'Now is Christ risen from the dead, and
become the first fruits of them that slept'—'believest thou this?' 'I
go to prepare a place for you'—'believest thou this?' 'Where I am there
shall also My servant be'—'believest thou this?' 'So shall we ever be
with the Lord'—'believest thou this?' That is Christianity; and not
theories about inspiration, and priesthood, and sacramental efficacy,
or any of the other thorny questions which have, in the course of ages,
started up. Here is the living centre; hold fast, I beseech you, by it.

Then, again, the significance of this question is in the direction of
making clear for us the way by which men lay hold of these great
truths. The truths are of such a sort as that merely to say, 'Oh yes, I
believe it; it is quite true!' is by no means sufficient. If a man
tells me that two parallel lines produced ever so far will never meet,
I say, 'Yes, I believe it'; and there is nothing more to be done or
said. If a man says to me, 'Two and two make four,' I say, 'Yes'; and
there my assent ends. If a man says, 'It is right to do right,' it is
quite clear that the attitude of intellectual assent, which was quite
enough for the other order of statements, is not enough for this one;
and to merely say, 'Oh yes, it is right to do right,' is by no means
the only attitude which we ought to take in regard to such a truth. And
if God comes to me and says, 'Thou art a sinful man, and Jesus Christ
has died for thee; and if thou takest Him for thy Saviour thou shalt be
saved in this life, and saved for ever,' it is just as clear that no
mere acceptance of the saying as a verity exhausts my proper attitude
in reference to it. Or to come to plainer words, no man will really,
and out and out, and adequately, believe this gospel unless he does a
great deal more than assent to it or refrain from contradicting it.

So I desire to urge this form of the question on you now. Dear
brethren, do you _trust_ in 'this,' which you say you believe? There is
no greater enemy of the Christian faith than the ordinary lazy—what the
philosophers call _otiose_, which is only a grand word for lazy—assent
of the understanding, because men will not take the trouble to
contradict it or think about it.

That is the sort of Christianity which is the Christianity of a good
many church and chapel-goers. They do not care enough about the subject
to contradict the ordinary run of belief. Of all impotent things there
is nothing more impotent than a creed which lies idly in a man's head,
and never has touched his heart or his will. Why, I should get on a
great deal better if I were talking to people that had never heard
anything about the gospel than I have any chance of getting on with
you, who have been drenched with it all your days, till it goes over
you and runs off like water off a duck's back. The shells that were
hurled against the earthworks of Sebastopol broke away the front
surface of the mounds, and then the rubbish protected the
fortifications; and that is what happens with many of my hearers. You
have heard the gospel so often that the _debris_ of your old hearings
is raised between you and me, and my words cannot get at you.
'Believest thou this?'—not in the fashion in which people stand up in
church or chapel and look about them and rattle off the Creed every
Sunday of their lives, and attach not the ghost of an idea to a single
clause of it; but in the sense that the conviction of these truths is
so deep in your hearts that it moves your whole nature to cast
yourselves on Jesus Christ as your Saviour and your all. That is the
belief to which alone the life that is promised here will come. Oh!
brethren, I have no business to ask you the question, and you have no
need to answer it to me! Sometimes good, well-meaning people do a mint
of harm by pushing such questions into the faces of people unprepared.
But take the question into your own hearts, and remember what belief
is, and what it is that you have to believe, and answer according to
its true significance, and in the light of conscience, the solemn
question that I press upon you.

II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to think of what depends upon the
answer.

In the case before us—if I may look back to it for an instant—there is
a very illuminative instance of what did depend upon it. Martha had to
believe that Christ was the Resurrection and the Life as a condition
precedent to her seeing that He was so. For, as He said Himself before
He spoke the mighty word which raised Lazarus, 'Said I not unto thee
that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?'
and so her faith was the condition of her being able to verify the
facts which her faith grasped. Well, let me put that into plainer
words. It is just this—a man gets from Christ what he trusts Christ to
give him, and there is no other way of proving the truth of His
promises than by accepting His promises, and then they fulfil
themselves. You cannot know that a medicine will cure you till you
swallow it. You must first 'taste' before you 'see that God is good.'
Faith verifies itself by the experience it brings.

And what does it bring? I said, all for which a man trusts Christ. All
is summed up in that one favourite word of our Lord as revealed in this
fourth Gospel, which includes in itself everything of blessedness and
of righteousness—life, life eternal. Dear brethren, you and I, apart
from Jesus Christ, are dead in trespasses and sins. The life that we
live in the flesh is an apparent life, which covers over the true death
of separation from God. And you young people, fix this in your minds at
the beginning, it will save you many a heartache, and many an
error—there is nothing worth calling life, except that which comes to a
quiet heart submissive and enfranchised through faith in Jesus Christ.
And if you will trust yourselves to Him, and answer this question with
your ringing 'Yea, Lord!' then you will get a life which will quicken
you out of your deadness; a life which will mould you day by day into
more entire beauty of character and conformity with Himself; a life
which will shed sweetness and charm over dusty commonplaces, and make
sudden verdure spring in dreary, herbless deserts; a life which will
bring a solemn joy into sorrow, a strength for every duty; which will
bring manna in the wilderness, honey from the rock, light in darkness,
and a present God for your sufficient portion; a life which will run on
into the dim glories of eternity, and know no change but advancement,
through the millenniums of ages.

But, dear brethren, whilst thus, on condition of their faith, the door
into all divine and endless blessedness and progress is flung wide open
for men, do not forget the other side of the issues which depend on
this question. For if it is true that Jesus Christ is Life, and the
Source of it, and that faith in Him is the way by which you and I get
it, then there is no escape from the solemn conclusion that to be out
of Christ, and not to be exercising faith in Him, is to be infected
with death, and to be shut up in a charnel-house. I dare not suppress
the plain teaching of Jesus Christ Himself: 'He that hath the Son hath
life; he that hath not the Son hath not life.' The issues that depend
upon the answer to this question of my text may be summed up, if I may
venture to say so, by taking the words of our Lord Himself and
converting them into their opposite. He said, 'He that believeth …
though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and
believeth on Me shall never die.' That implies, He that believeth _not_
in Christ, though he were living, yet shall he die, and whosoever
liveth and believeth _not_ shall never live. _These_ are the issues—the
alternative issues—that depend on your answer to this question.

III. And now, lastly, let me ask you to think of the direct personal
appeal to every soul that lies in this question.

I have dwelt upon two out of the three words of which the question is
composed—'_believest_ thou _this_?' Let me dwell for a moment on the
third of them—'believest _thou_?'

Now that suggests the thought on which I do not need to dwell, but
which I seek briefly to lay upon your hearts and consciences—viz., the
intensely personal act of your own faith, by which alone Jesus Christ
can be of any use to you. Do not be led away by any vague notions which
people have about the benefits of a Church or its ordinances. Do not
suppose that any sacraments or any priest can do for you what you have
to do in the awful solitude of your own determining will—put out your
hand and grasp Jesus Christ. Can any person or thing be the condition
or channel of spiritual blessing to you, except in so far as your own
individual act of trust comes into play? You must take the bread with
your own hands, you must masticate it with your own teeth, you must
digest it with your own organs, before it can minister nourishment to
your blood and force to your life. And there is only one way by which
any man can come into any vital and life-giving connection with Jesus
Christ, and that is, by the exercise of his own personal faith.

And remember, too, that as the exercise of uniting trust in Jesus
Christ is exclusively your own affair, so exclusively your own affair
is the responsibility of answering this question. To you alone is it
addressed. You, and only you, have to answer it.

There was once a poor woman who went after Jesus Christ, and put out a
pale, wasted, tremulous finger to touch the hem of His garment. His
fine sensitiveness detected the light pressure of that petitioning
finger, and allowed virtue to go out, though the crowd surged about Him
and thronged Him. No crowds come between you and Jesus Christ. You and
He, the two of you, have, so to speak, the world to yourselves, and
straight to _you_ comes this question, 'Believest _thou_?'

Ah! brethren, that habit of skulking into the middle of the multitude,
and letting the most earnest appeal from the pulpit go diffused over
the audience is the reason why you sit there quiet, complacent, perhaps
wholly unaffected by what I am trying to make a pointed, individual
address. Suppose all the other people in this place of worship were
away but you and I, would not the word that I am trying to speak come
with more force to your hearts than it does now? Well, think away the
world and all its millions, and realise the fact that you stand in
Christ's presence, with all His regard concentrated upon you, and that
to thee individually this question comes from a gracious, loving heart,
which longs that you answer, 'Yea, Lord, I believe!'

Why should you not? Suppose you said to Him, 'No, Lord, I do not'; and
suppose He said, 'Why do you not?' what do you think you would say
then? You will have to answer it one day, in very solemn circumstances,
when all the crowds will fall away, as they do from a soldier called
out of the ranks to go up and answer for mutiny to his commanding
officer. 'Every one of us shall give an account of himself,' and the
lips that said so lovingly at the grave of Lazarus, 'Believest thou
this?' and are saying it again, dear friend, to you, even through my
poor words, will ask it once more. For this is the question the answer
to which settles whether we shall stand at His right hand or at His
left. Say now, with humble faith, 'Yea, Lord!' and you will have the
blessing of them who have not seen, and yet have believed.




THE OPEN GRAVE AT BETHANY


'Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where
Martha met Him. The Jews then which were with her in the house, and
comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went
out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then
when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His
feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had
not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also
weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was
troubled, And said, Where have ye laid him? They say unto Him, Lord,
come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him!
And some of them said. Could not this Man, which opened the eyes of the
blind, have caused that even this man should not have died! Jesus
therefore again groaning in Himself, cometh to the grave. It was a
cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone.
Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this
time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto
her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou
shouldest see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the
place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said,
Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. And I know that Thou
hearest Me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it,
that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And when He thus had
spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that
was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his
face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him,
and let him go. Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen
the things which Jesus did, believed on Him.'—JOHN xi. 30-45.

Why did Jesus stay outside Bethany and summon Martha and Mary to come
to Him? Apparently that He might keep Himself apart from the noisy
crowd of conventional mourners whose presence affronted the majesty and
sanctity of sorrow, and that He might speak to the hearts of the two
real mourners. A divine decorum forbade Him to go to the house. The
Life-bringer keeps apart. His comforts are spoken in solitude. He
reverenced grief. How beautifully His sympathetic delicacy contrasts
with the heartless rush of those who 'were comforting' Mary when they
thought that she was driven to go suddenly to the grave by a fresh
burst of sorrow! If they had had any real sympathy or perception, they
would have stayed where they were, and let the poor burdened heart find
ease in lonely weeping. But, like all vulgar souls, they had one
idea—never to leave mourners alone or let them weep.

Three stages seem discernible in the self-revelation of Jesus in this
crowning miracle: His agitation and tears, His majestic confidence in
His life-giving power now to be manifested, and His actual exercise of
that power.

I. The repetition by Mary of Martha's words, as her first salutation,
tells a pathetic story of the one thought that had filled both sisters'
hearts in these four dreary days. Why had He not come? How easily He
could have come! How surely He could have prevented all this misery!
Confidence in His power blends strangely with doubt as to His care. A
hint of reproach is in the words, but more than a hint of faith in His
might. He does not rebuke the rash judgment implied, for He knew the
true love underlying it; but He does not directly answer Mary, as He
had done Martha, for the two sisters needed different treatment.

We note that Mary has no such hope as Martha had expressed. Her more
passive, meditative disposition had bowed itself, and let the grief
overwhelm her. So in her we see a specimen of the excess of sorrow
which indulges in the monotonous repetition of what would have happened
if something else that did not happen had happened, and which is too
deeply dark to let a gleam of hope shine in. Words will do little to
comfort such grief. Silent sharing of its weeping and helpful deeds
will do most.

So a great wave of emotion swept across the usually calm soul of Jesus,
which John bids us trace to its cause by 'therefore' (ver. 33). The
sight of Mary's real, and the mourners' half-real, tears, and the sound
of their loud 'keening,' shook His spirit, and He yielded to, and even
encouraged, the rush of feeling ('troubled Himself'). But not only
sympathy and sorrow ruffled the clear mirror of His spirit; another
disturbing element was present. He 'was moved with indignation' (Rev.
Ver. marg.). Anger at Providence often mingles with our grief, but that
was not Christ's indignation. The only worthy explanation of that
strange ingredient in Christ's agitation is that it was directed
against the source of death,—namely, sin. He saw the cause manifested
in the effects. He wept for the one, He was wroth at the other. The
tears witnessed to the perfect love of the man, and of the God revealed
in the man; the indignation witnessed to the recoil and aversion from
sin of the perfectly righteous Man, and of the holy God manifested in
Him. We get one glimpse into His heart, as on to some ocean heaving and
mist-covered. The momentary sight proclaims the union in Him, as the
Incarnate Word, of pity for our woes and of aversion from our sins.

His question as to the place of the tomb is not what we should have
expected; but its very abruptness indicates effort to suppress emotion,
and resolve to lose no time in redressing the grief. Most sweetly human
are the tears that start afresh after the moment's repression, as the
little company begin to move towards the grave. And most sadly human
are the unsympathetic criticisms of His sacred sorrow. Even the best
affected of the bystanders are cool enough to note them as tokens of
His love, at which perhaps there is a trace of wonder; while others
snarl out a sarcasm which is double-barrelled, as casting doubt on the
reality either of the love or of the power. 'It is easy to weep, but if
He had cared for him, and could work miracles, He might surely have
kept him alive.' How blind men are! 'Jesus wept,' and all that the
lookers-on felt was astonishment that He should have cared so much for
a dead man of no importance, or carping doubt as to the genuineness of
His grief and the reality of His power. He shows us His pity and sorrow
still—to no more effect with many.

II. The passage to the tomb was marked by his continued agitation. But
his arrival there brought calm and majesty. Now the time has come which
He had in view when He left his refuge beyond Jordan; and, as is often
the case with ourselves, suddenly tremor and tumult leave the spirit
when face to face with a moment of crisis. There is nothing more
remarkable in this narrative than the contrast between Jesus weeping
and indignant, and Jesus serene and authoritative as He stands fronting
the cave-sepulchre. The sudden transformation must have awed the
gazers.

He points to the stone, which, probably like that of many a grave
discovered in Palestine, rolled in a groove cut in the rocky floor in
front of the tomb. The command accords with His continual habit of
confining the miraculous within the narrowest limits. He will do
nothing by miracle which can be done without it. Lazarus could have
heard and emerged, though the stone had remained. If the story had been
a myth, he very likely would have done so. Like 'loose him, and let him
go,' this is a little touch that cannot have been invented, and helps
to confirm the simple, historical character of the account.

Not less natural, though certainly as unlikely to have been told unless
it had happened, is Martha's interruption. She must have heard what was
going on, and, with her usual activity, have joined the procession,
though we left her in the house. She thinks that Jesus is going into
the grave; and a certain reverence for the poor remains, as well as for
Him, makes her shrink from the thought of even His loving eyes seeing
them now. Clearly she has forgotten the dim hopes which had begun in
her when she talked with Jesus. Therefore He gently reminds her of
these; for His words (ver. 40) can scarcely refer to anything but that
interview, though the precise form of expression now used is not found
in the report of it (vers. 25-27).

We mark Christ's calm confidence in His own power. His identification
of its effect with the outflashing of the glory of God, and His
encouragement to her to exercise faith by suspending her sight of that
glory upon her faith. Does that mean that He would not raise her
brother unless she believed? No; for He had determined to 'awake him
out of sleep' before He left Peraea. But Martha's faith was the
condition of her seeing the glory of God in the miracle. We may see a
thousand emanations of that glory, and see none of it. We shall see it
if we exercise faith. In the natural world, 'seeing is believing'; in
the spiritual, believing is seeing.

Equally remarkable, as breathing serenest confidence, is the wonderful
filial prayer. Our Lord speaks as if the miracle were already
accomplished, so sure is He: 'Thou heardest Me.' Does this thanksgiving
bring Him down to the level of other servants of God who have wrought
miracles by divine power granted them? Certainly not; for it is in full
accord with the teaching of all this Gospel, according to which 'the
Son can do nothing of Himself,' but yet, whatsoever things the Father
doeth, 'these also doeth the Son likewise.' Both sides of the truth
must be kept in view. The Son is not independent of the Father, but the
Son is so constantly and perfectly one with the Father that He is
conscious of unbroken communion, of continual wielding of the whole
divine power.

But the practical purpose of the thanksgiving is to be specially noted.
It suspends His whole claims on the single issue about to be decided.
It summons the people to mark the event. Never before had He thus
heralded a miracle. Never had He deigned to say thus solemnly, 'If God
does not work through Me now, reject Me as an impostor; if He does,
yield to Me as Messiah.' The moment stands alone in His life. What a
scene! There is the open tomb, with its dead occupant; there are the
eager, sceptical crowd, the sisters pausing in their weeping to gaze,
with some strange hopes beginning to creep into their hearts, the
silent disciples, and, in front of them all, Jesus, with the radiance
of power in the eyes that had just been swimming in tears, and a new
elevation in His tones. How all would be hushed in expectance of the
next moment's act!

III. The miracle itself is told in the fewest words. What more was
there to tell? The two ends, as it were, of a buried chain, appear
above ground. Cause and effect were brought together. Rather, here was
no chain of many links, as in physical phenomena, but here was the
life-giving word, and there was the dead man living again. The 'loud
voice' was as needless as the rolling away of the stone. It was but the
sign of Christ's will acting. And the acting of His will, without any
other cause, produces physical effects.

Lazarus was far away from that rock cave. But, wherever he was, he
could hear, and he must obey. So, with graveclothes entangling his
feet, and a napkin about his livid face, he came stumbling out into the
light that dazed his eyes, closed for four dark days, and stood silent
and motionless in that awestruck crowd. One Person there was not
awestruck. Christ's calm voice, that had just reverberated through the
regions of the dead, spoke the simple command, 'Loose him, and let him
go.' To Him it was no wonder that He should give back a life. For the
Christ who wept is the Christ whose voice all that are in the graves
shall hear, and shall come forth.




THE SEVENTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL—THE RAISING OF LAZARUS


'And when Jesus thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus,
Come forth. 44. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot
with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin.'—JOHN
xi. 43, 44.

The series of our Lord's miracles before the Passion, as recorded in
this Gospel, is fitly closed with the raising of Lazarus. It crowns the
whole, whether we regard the greatness of the fact, the manner of our
Lord's working, the minuteness and richness of the accompanying
details, the revelation of our Lord's heart, the consolations which it
suggests to sorrowing spirits, or the immortal hopes which it kindles.

And besides all this, the miracle is of importance for the development
of the Evangelist's purpose, in that it makes the immediate occasion of
the embittered hostility which finally precipitates the catastrophe of
the Cross. Therefore the great length to which the narrative extends.

Of course it is impossible for us to attempt, even in the most cursory
manner, to go over the whole. We must content ourselves with dealing
with one or two of the salient points. And there are three things in
this narrative which I think well worthy of our notice. There is the
revelation of Christ as our Brother, by emotion and sorrow. There is
the revelation of Christ as our Lord by His consciousness of divine
power. There is the revelation of Christ as our Life by His mighty
life-giving word. And to these three points I ask you to turn briefly.

I. First, then, we have here a revelation of Christ as our Brother, by
emotion and sorrow.

This miracle stands alone in the whole majestic series of His mighty
works by the fact that it is preceded by a storm of emotion, which
shakes the frame of the Master, which He is represented by the
Evangelist not so much as suppressing as fostering, and which diverges
and parts itself into the two feelings expressed by His groans and by
His tears. The word which is rendered in our version 'He groaned in the
spirit,' and which is twice repeated in the narrative, is, according to
the investigations of the most careful philological commentators,
expressive not only of the outward sign of an emotion, but of the
nature of it. And the nature of the emotion is not merely the grief and
the sympathy which distilled in tears, but it is something deeper and
other than that. The word contains in it at least a tinge of the
passion of 'indignation' (as it is expressed in the margin of the
Revised Version). What caused the indignation? Cannot we fancy how
there rose up, as in pale, spectral procession before His vision, the
whole long series of human sorrows and losses, of which one was visible
there before Him? He saw, in the one individual case, the whole
_genus_. He saw the whole mass represented there, the ocean in the
drop, and He looked beyond the fact and linked it with its cause. And
as there rose before Him the reality of man's desolation through sin,
and the thought that all this misery, loss, pain, parting, death, was a
contradiction of the divine purpose, and an interruption of God's
order, and that it had all been pulled down upon men's desperate heads
by their own evil and their own folly, there rose in His heart the
anger which is part of the perfectness of humanity when it looks upon
sorrow linked by adamantine chains with sin.

But the lightning of the wrath dissolved soon into the rain of pity and
of sorrow, and, as we read, 'Jesus wept.' Looking upon the weeping Mary
and the lamenting crowd, and Himself feeling the pain of the parting
from the friend whom He loved, the tears, which are the confession of
human nature that it is passing through an emotion too deep for words,
came to His all-seeing eyes.

Oh! brethren, surely—surely in this manifestation, or call it better,
this revelation of Christ the Lord, expressed in these two
emotions—surely there are large and blessed lessons for us! On them I
can only touch in the lightest manner. Here, for one thing, is the
blessed sign and proof of His true brotherhood with us. This
Evangelist, to whom it was given to tell the Church and the world more
than any of the others had imparted to them of the divine uniqueness of
the Master's person, had also given to him in charge the corresponding
and complementary message—to insist upon the reality and the verity of
His manhood. His proclamation was 'the Word was made flesh,' and he had
to dwell on both parts of that message, showing Him as the Word and
showing Him as flesh. So he insists upon all the points which emerge in
the course of his narrative that show the reality of Christ's corporeal
manhood.

He joins with the others, who had no such lofty proclamation entrusted
to them, in telling us how He was 'bone of our bone, and flesh of our
flesh,' in that He hungered and thirsted and slept, and was wearied;
how He was man, reasonable soul and human spirit, in that He grieved
and rejoiced, and wondered and desired, and mourned and wept. And so we
can look upon Him, and feel that this in very deed is One of ourselves,
with a spirit participant of all human experiences, and a heart
tremulously vibrating with every emotion that belongs to man.

Here we are also taught the sanction and the limits of sorrow.
Christianity has nothing to do with the false Stoicism and the false
religion which is partly pride and partly insincerity, that proclaims
it wrong to weep when God smites. But just as clearly and distinctly as
the story before us says to us, 'Weep for yourselves and for the loved
ones that are gone,' so distinctly does it draw the limits within which
sorrow is sacred and hallowing, and beyond which it is harmful and
weakening. Set side by side the grief of these two poor weeping
sisters, and the grief of the weeping Christ, and we get a large
lesson. They could only repine that something else had not happened
differently which would have made all different. 'If Thou hadst been
here, my brother had not died.' One of the two sits with folded arms in
the house, letting her sorrow flow over her pained head. Martha is
unable, by reason of her grief, to grasp the consolation that is held
out to her; her sorrow has made the hopes of the future seem to her
very dim and of small account, and she puts away 'Thy brother shall
rise again' with almost an impatient sweep of her hand. 'I know that he
will rise in the resurrection at the last day. But oh! that is so far
away, and what I want is present comfort.' Thus oblivious of duty,
murmuring with regard to the accidents which might have been different,
and unfitted to grasp the hopes that fill the future, these two have
been hurt by their grief, and have let it overflow its banks and lay
waste the land. But this Christ in His sorrow checks His sorrow that He
may do His work; in His sorrow is confident that the Father hears; in
His sorrow thinks of the bystanders, and would bring comfort and cheer
to them. A sorrow which makes us more conscious of communion with the
Father who is always listening, which makes us more conscious of power
to do that which He has put it into our hand to do, which makes us more
tender in our sympathies with all that mourn, and swifter and readier
for our work—such a sorrow is doing what God meant for us; and is a
blessing in so thin a disguise that we can scarcely call it veiled at
all.

And then, still further, there are here other lessons on which I cannot
touch. Such, for instance, is the revelation in this emotion of the
Master's, of a personal love that takes individuals to His heart, and
feels all the sweetness and the power of friendship. That personal love
is open to every one of us, and into the grace and the tenderness of it
we may all penetrate. 'The disciple whom Jesus loved' is the Evangelist
who, without jealousy, is glad to tell us that the same loving Lord
took into the same sanctuary of His pure heart, Mary and Martha, and
her brother. That which was given to them was not taken from him, and
they each possessed the whole of the Master's love. So for every one of
us that heart is wide open, and you and I, brethren, may contract such
personal relations to the Master that we shall live with Christ as a
man with his friend, and may feel that His heart is all ours.

So much for the lessons of the emotions whereby Christ is manifested to
us as our Brother.

II. And now turn, in the next place, and that very briefly, to what
lies side by side with this in the story, and at first sight may seem
strangely contradictory of it, but in fact only completes the idea,
viz. the majesties, calm consciousness of divine power by which He is
revealed as our Lord.

At one step from the agitation and the storm of feeling there comes,
'Take ye away the stone.' And in answer to the lamentations of the
sister are spoken the great and wonderful words, 'Said I not unto thee
that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God?' And
He looks back there to the message that had been sent to the sisters in
response to their unspoken hope that He would come, 'This sickness is
not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be
glorified thereby.' And He shows us that from the first moment, with
the spontaneousness which, as I have already remarked in previous
sermons on these 'signs,' characterises all the miracles of John's
Gospel, 'He Himself knew what He would do,' and in the consciousness of
His divine power had resolved that the dead Lazarus should be the
occasion for the manifestation, the flashing out to the world, of the
glory of God in the life-giving Son.

And then, in the same tone of majestic consciousness, there follows
that thanksgiving _prior_ to the miracle as for the accomplished
miracle. 'I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me, and I knew that Thou
hearest Me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it,
that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.' The best commentary upon
these words, the deepest and the fullest exposition of the large truths
that lie in them concerning the co-operation of the Father and the Son,
is to be found in the passage from the fifth chapter of this Gospel,
wherein there is set forth, drawn with the firmest hand, the clearest
lines of truth upon this great and profound subject. 'The Son does
nothing of Himself,' but 'whatsoever the Father doeth, that doeth the
Son likewise.' A consciousness of continual co-operation with the
Almighty Father, a consciousness that His will continually coincides
with the Father's will, that unto Him there comes the power ever to do
all that Omnipotence can do, and that though we may speak of a gift
given and a power derived, the relation between the giving Father and
the recipient Son is altogether different from, and other than the
relation between, the man that asks and the God that bestows. Poor
Martha said, 'I know that even now, whatsoever Thou askest of God He
will give Thee.' She thought of Him as a good Man whose prayers had
power with Heaven. But up into an altogether other region soars the
consciousness expressed in these words as of a divine Son whose work is
wholly parallel with the Father's work, and of whom the two things that
sound contradictory can both be said. His omnipotence is His own; His
omnipotence is the Father's: 'As the Father hath life' and therefore
power in Himself, 'so hath He _given_'—there is the one half of the
paradox—'so hath He given to the Son to have life _in Himself_'; there
is the other. And unless you put them both together you do not think of
Christ as Christ has taught us to think.

III. Lastly, we have here the revelation of Christ as our Life in His
mighty, life-giving word.

The miracle, as I have said, stands high in the scale, not only by
reason of what to us seems the greatness of the fact, though of course,
properly speaking, in miracles there is no distinction as to the
greatness of the fact, but also by reason of the manner of the working.
The voice thrown into the cave reaches the ears of the sheeted dead:
'Lazarus, come forth!' And then, in words which convey the profound
impression of awfulness and solemnity which had been made upon the
Evangelist, we have the picture of the man with the graveclothes
wrapped about his limbs, stumbling forth; and loving hands are bidden
to take away the napkin which covered his face. Perhaps the hand
trembled as it was put forth, not knowing what awful sight the veil
might cover.

With tenderest reticence, no word is spoken as to what followed. No
hint escapes of the joy, no gleam of the experiences which the
traveller brought back with him from that 'bourne' whence he had come.
Surely some draught of Lethe must have been given him, that his spirit
might be lulled into a wholesome forgetfulness, else life must have
been a torment to him.

But be that as it may, what we have to notice is the fact here, and
what it teaches us as a fact. Is it not a revelation of Jesus Christ as
the absolute Lord of Life and Death, giving the one, putting back the
other? Death has caught hold of his prey. 'Shall the prey be taken from
the mighty, and the lawful captive delivered? Yea, the prey shall be
taken from the mighty.' His bare word is divinely operative. He says to
that grisly shadow 'Come!' and he cometh; He says to him 'Go!' and he
goeth. And as a shepherd will drive away the bear that has a lamb
between his bloody fangs, and the brute retreats, snarling and
growling, but dropping his prey, so at the Lord's voice Lazarus comes
back to life, and disappointed Death skulks away to the darkness.

The miracle shows Him as Lord of Death and Giver of Life. And it
teaches another lesson, namely, the continuous persistency of the bond
between Christ and His friend, unbroken and untouched by the
superficial accident of life or death. Wheresoever Lazarus was he heard
the voice, and wheresoever Lazarus was he knew the voice, and
wheresoever Lazarus was he obeyed the voice. And so we are taught that
the relationship between Christ our life, and all them that love and
trust Him, is one on which the tooth of death that gnaws all other
bonds in twain hath no power at all. Christ is the Life, and,
therefore, Christ is the Resurrection, and the thing that we call death
is but a film which spreads on the surface, but has no power to
penetrate into the depths of the relationship between us and Him.

Such, in briefest words, are the lessons of the miracle as a fact, but
before I close I must remind you that it is to be looked at not only as
a fact, but as a prophecy and as a parable.

It is a prophecy in a modified sense, telling us at all events that He
has the power to bid men back from the dust and darkness, and giving us
the assurance which His own words convey to us yet more distinctly:
'The hour is coming when all that are in the graves shall hear His
voice and shall come forth.' My brother! there be two resurrections in
that one promise: the resurrection of Christ's friends and the
resurrection of Christ's foes. And though to both His voice will be the
awakening, some shall rise to joy and immortality and 'some to shame
and everlasting contempt.' You will hear the voice; settle it for
yourselves whether when He calls and thou answerest thou wilt say, 'Lo!
here am I,' joyful to look upon Him; or whether thou wilt rise
reluctant, and 'call upon the rocks and the hills to cover thee, and to
hide thee from the face of Him that sitteth upon the Throne.'

And this raising is a parable as well as a prophecy; for even as Christ
was the life of this Lazarus, so, in a deeper and more real sense, and
not in any shadowy, metaphorical, mystical sense, is Jesus Christ the
life of every spirit that truly lives at all. We are 'dead in
trespasses and sins.' For separation from God is death in all regions,
death for the body in its kind, death for the mind, for the soul, for
the spirit in their kinds; and only they who receive Christ into their
hearts do live. Every Christian man is a miracle. There has been a true
coming into the human of the divine, a true supernatural work, the
infusion into a dead soul of the God-life which is the Christ-life.

And you and I may have that life. What is the condition? 'They that
hear shall live.' Do you hear? Do you welcome? Do you take that Christ
into your hearts? Is He your Life, my brother?

It is possible to resist that voice, to stuff your ears so full of
clay, and worldliness, and sin, and self-reliance as that it shall not
echo in your hearts. 'The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead
shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall live,'
and obtain to-day 'a better resurrection' than the resurrection of the
body. If you do not hear that voice, then you will 'remain in the
congregation of the dead.'




CAIAPHAS


'And one of them, named Caiaphas being the high priest that same year,
said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is
expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the
whole nation perish not.'—JOHN xi. 49,50.

The resurrection of Lazarus had raised a wave of popular excitement.
Any stir amongst the people was dangerous, especially at the Passover
time, which was nigh at hand, when Jerusalem would be filled with
crowds of men, ready to take fire from any spark that might fall
amongst them. So a hasty meeting of the principal ecclesiastical
council of the Jews was summoned, in order to dismiss the situation,
and concert measures for repressing the nascent enthusiasm. One might
have expected to find there some disposition to inquire honestly into
the claims of a Teacher who had such a witness to His claims as a man
alive that had been dead. But nothing of the sort appears in their
ignoble calculations. Like all weak men, they feel that 'something must
be done' and are perfectly unable to say what. They admit Christ's
miracles: 'This man doeth many miracles,' but they are not a bit the
nearer to recognising His mission, being therein disobedient to their
law and untrue to their office. They fear that any disturbance will
bring Rome's heavy hand down on them, and lead to the loss of what
national life they still possess. But even that fear is not patriotism
nor religion. It is pure self-interest. 'They will take away _our_
place'—the Temple, probably—'and our nation.' The holy things were, in
their eyes, their special property. And so, at this supreme moment, big
with the fate of themselves and of their nation, their whole anxiety is
about personal interests. They hesitate, and are at a loss what to do.

But however they may hesitate, there is one man who knows his own
mind—Caiaphas, the high priest. He has no doubt as to what is the right
thing to do. He has the advantage of a perfectly clear and single
purpose, and no sort of restraint of conscience or delicacy keeps him
from speaking it out. He is impatient at their vacillation, and he
brushes it all aside with the brusque and contemptuous speech: 'Ye know
nothing at all!' 'The one point of view for us to take is that of our
own interests. Let us have that clearly understood; when we once ask
what is "expedient for us," there will be no doubt about the answer.
This man must die. Never mind about His miracles, or His teaching, or
the beauty of His character. His life is a perpetual danger to our
prerogatives. I vote for death!' And so he clashes his advice down into
the middle of their waverings, like a piece of iron into yielding
water; and the strong man, restrained by no conscience, and speaking
out cynically the thought that is floating in all their minds, but
which they dare not utter, is master of the situation, and the resolve
is taken. 'From that day forth' they determined to put Him to death.

But John regards this selfish, cruel advice as a prophecy. Caiaphas
spoke wiser things than he knew. The Divine Spirit breathed in strange
fashion through even such lips as his, and moulded his savage utterance
into such a form as that it became a fit expression for the very
deepest thought about the nature and the power of Christ's death. He
did indeed die for that people—thinks the Evangelist—even though they
have rejected Him, and the dreaded Romans _have_ come and taken away
our place and nation—but His death had a wider purpose, and was not for
that nation only, but that also 'He should gather together in one the
children of God that are scattered abroad.'

Let us, then, take these two aspects of the man and his counsel: the
unscrupulous priest and his savage advice; the unconscious prophet and
his great prediction.

I. First, then, let us take the former point of view, and think of this
unscrupulous priest and his savage advice. 'It is expedient for us that
one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.'

Remember who he was, the high priest of the nation, with Aaron's mitre
on his brow, and centuries of illustrious traditions embodied in his
person; set by his very office to tend the sacred flame of their
Messianic hopes, and with pure hands and heart to offer sacrifice for
the sins of the people; the head and crown of the national religion, in
whose heart justice and mercy should have found a sanctuary if they had
fled from all others; whose ears ought to have been opened to the
faintest whisper of the voice of God; whose lips should ever have been
ready to witness for the truth.

And see what he is! A crafty schemer, as blind as a mole to the beauty
of Christ's character and the greatness of His words; utterly
unspiritual; undisguisedly selfish; rude as a boor; cruel as a
cut-throat; and having reached that supreme height of wickedness in
which he can dress his ugliest thought in the plainest words, and send
them into the world unabashed. What a lesson this speech of Caiaphas,
and the character disclosed by it, read to all persons who have a
professional connection with religion!

He can take one point of view only, in regard to the mightiest
spiritual revelation that the world ever saw; and that is, its bearing
upon his own miserable personal interests, and the interests of the
order to which he belongs. And so, whatever may be the wisdom, or
miracles, or goodness of Jesus, because He threatens the prerogatives
of the priesthood, He must die and be got out of the way.

This is only an extreme case of a temper and a tendency which is
perennial. Popes and inquisitors and priests of all Churches have done
the same, in their degree, in all ages. They have always been tempted
to look upon religion and religious truth and religious organisations
as existing somehow for their personal advantage. And so 'the Church is
in danger!' generally means 'my position is threatened,' and heretics
are got rid of, because their teaching is inconvenient for the
prerogatives of a priesthood, and new truth is fought against, because
officials do not see how it harmonises with their pre-eminence.

It is not popes and priests and inquisitors only that are examples of
the tendency. The warning is needed by every man who stands in such a
position as mine, whose business it is professionally to handle sacred
things, and to administer Christian institutions and Christian ritual.
All such men are tempted to look upon the truth as their
stock-in-trade, and to fight against innovations, and to array
themselves instinctively against progress, and frown down new aspects
and new teachers of truth, simply because they threaten, or appear to
threaten, the position and prerogatives of the teachers that be.
Caiaphas's sin is possible, and Caiaphas's temptation is actual, for
every man whose profession it is to handle the oracles of God.

But the lessons of this speech and character are for us all. Caiaphas's
sentence is an undisguised, unblushing avowal of a purely selfish
standpoint. It is not a common depth of degradation to stand up, and
without a blush to say: 'I look at all claims of revelation, at all
professedly spiritual truth, and at everything else, from one
delightfully simple point of view—I ask myself, how does it bear upon
what I think to be to my advantage?' What a deal of perplexity a man is
saved if he takes up that position! Yes! and how he has damned himself
in the very act of doing it! For, look what this absorbing and
exclusive self-regard does in the illustration before us, and let us
learn what it will do to ourselves.

This selfish consideration of our own interests will make us as blind
as bats to the most radiant beauty of truth; aye, and to Christ
Himself, if the recognition of Him and of His message seems to threaten
any of these. They tell us that fishes which live in the water of
caverns come to lose their eyesight; and men that are always living in
the dark holes of their own selfishly absorbed natures, they, too, lose
their spiritual sight; and the fairest, loftiest, truest, and most
radiant visions (which are realities) pass before their eyes, and they
see them not. When you put on regard for yourselves as they do blinkers
upon horses, you have no longer the power of wide, comprehensive
vision, but only see straight forward upon the narrow line which you
fancy to be marked out by your own interests. If ever there comes into
the selfish man's mind a truth, or an aspect of Christ's mission, which
may seem to cut against some of his practices or interests, how blind
he is to it! When Lord Nelson was at Copenhagen, and they hoisted the
signal of recall, he put his telescope up to his blind eye and said, 'I
do not see it!' And that is exactly what this self-absorbed regard to
our own interests does with hundreds of men who do not in the least
degree know it. It blinds them to the plain will of the
Commander-in-chief flying there at the masthead. 'There are none so
blind as those who will not see'; and there are none who so certainly
will not see as those who have an uneasy suspicion that if they do see
they will have to change their tack. So I say, look at the instance
before us, and learn the lesson of the blindness to truth and beauty
which are Christ Himself, which comes of a regard to one's own
interests.

Then again, this same self-regard may bring a man down to any kind and
degree of wrongdoing. Caiaphas was brought down by it, being the
supreme judge of his nation, to be an assassin and an accomplice of
murderers. And it is only a question of accident and of circumstances
how far that man will descend who once yields himself up to the
guidance of such a disposition and tendency. We have all of us to fight
against the developed selfishness which takes the form of this, that,
and the other sin; and we have all of us, if we are wise, to fight
against the undeveloped sin which lies in all selfishness. Remember
that if you begin with laying down as the canon of your conduct, 'It is
expedient for me,' you have got upon an inclined plane that tilts at a
very sharp angle, and is very sufficiently greased, and ends away down
yonder in the depths of darkness and of death, and it is only a
question of time how far and how fast, how deep and irrevocable, will
be your descent.

And lastly, this same way of looking at things which takes 'It is
expedient' as the determining consideration, has in it an awful power
of so twisting and searing a man's conscience as that he comes to look
at evil and never to know that there is anything wrong in it. This
cynical high priest in our text had no conception that he was doing
anything but obeying the plainest dictates of the most natural
self-preservation when he gave his opinion that they had better kill
Christ than have any danger to their priesthood. The crime of the
actual crucifixion was diminished because the doers were so unconscious
that it was a crime; but the crime of the process by which they had
come to be unconscious—Oh how that was increased and deepened! So, if
we fix our eyes sharply and exclusively on what makes for our own
advantage, and take that as the point of view from which we determine
our conduct, we may, and we shall, bring ourselves into such a
condition as that our consciences will cease to be sensitive to right
and wrong; and we shall do all manner of bad things, and never know it.
We shall 'wipe our mouths and say: "I have done no harm."' So, I
beseech you, remember this, that to live for self is hell, and that the
only antagonist of such selfishness, which leads to blindness, crime,
and a seared conscience, is to yield ourselves to the love of God in
Jesus Christ and to say: 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'

II. And now turn briefly to the second aspect of this saying, into
which the former, if I may so say, melts away. We have the unconscious
prophet and his great prediction.

The Evangelist conceives that the man who filled the office of high
priest, being the head of the theocratic community, was naturally the
medium of a divine oracle. When he says, 'being the high priest _that
year_, Caiaphas prophesied,' he does not imply that the high priestly
office was annual, but simply desires to mark the fateful importance of
that year for the history of the world and the priesthood. 'In that
year' the great 'High Priest for ever' came and stood for a moment by
the side of the earthly high priest—the Substance by the shadow—and by
His offering of Himself as the one Sacrifice for sin for ever, deprived
priesthood and sacrifice henceforward of all their validity. So that
Caiaphas was in reality the last of the high priests, and those that
succeeded him for something less than half a century were but like
ghosts that walked after cock-crow. And what the Evangelist would mark
is the importance of 'that year,' as making Caiaphas ever memorable to
us. Solemn and strange that the long line of Aaron's priesthood ended
in such a man—the river in a putrid morass—and that of all the years in
the history of the nation, 'in that year' should such a person fill
such an office!

'Being high priest he prophesied.' And was there anything strange in a
bad man's prophesying? Did not the Spirit of God breathe through Balaam
of old? Is there anything incredible in a man's prophesying
unconsciously? Did not Pilate do so, when he nailed over the Cross,
'This is the King of the Jews,' and wrote it in Hebrew, and in Greek,
and in Latin, conceiving himself to be perpetrating a rude jest, while
he was proclaiming an everlasting truth? When the Pharisees stood at
the foot of the Cross and taunted Him, 'He saved others, Himself He
cannot save,' did they not, too, speak deeper things than they knew?
And were not the lips of this unworthy, selfish, unspiritual,
unscrupulous, cruel priest so used as that, all unconsciously, his
words lent themselves to the proclamation of the glorious central truth
of Christianity, that Christ died for the nation that slew Him and
rejected Him, nor for them alone, but for all the world? Look, though
but for a moment, at the thoughts that come from this new view of the
words which we have been considering.

They suggest to us, first of all, the twofold aspect of Christ's death.
From the human point of view it was a savage murder by forms of law for
political ends: Caiaphas and the priests slaying Him to avoid a popular
tumult that might threaten their prerogatives, Pilate consenting to His
death to avoid the unpopularity that might follow a refusal. From the
divine point of view it is God's great sacrifice for the sin of the
world. It is the most signal instance of that solemn law of Providence
which runs all through the history of the world, whereby bad men's bad
deeds, strained through the fine network, as it were, of the divine
providence, lose their poison and become nutritious and fertilising.
'Thou makest the wrath of men to praise Thee; with the residue thereof
Thou girdest Thyself.' The greatest crime ever done in the world is the
greatest blessing ever given to the world. Man's sin works out the
loftiest divine purpose, even as the coral insects blindly build up the
reef that keeps back the waters, or as the sea in its wild, impotent
rage, seeking to overwhelm the land, only throws upon the beach a
barrier that confines its waves and curbs their fury.

Then, again, this second aspect of the counsel of Caiaphas suggests for
us the twofold consequences of that death on the nation itself. This
Gospel of John was probably written after the destruction of Jerusalem.
By the time that our Evangelist penned these words, the Romans _had_
come and taken away their place and their nation. The catastrophe that
Caiaphas and his party had, by their short-sighted policy, tried to
prevent, had been brought about by the very deed itself. For Christ's
death was practically the reason for the destruction of the Jewish
commonwealth. When 'the husbandmen said, Come! let us kill Him, and
seize on the inheritance,' which is simply putting Caiaphas's counsel
into other language, they thereby deprived themselves of the
inheritance. And so Christ's death was the destruction and not the
salvation of the nation.

And yet, it was true that He died for that people, for every man of
them, for Caiaphas as truly as for John, for Judas as truly as for
Peter, for all the Scribes and the Pharisees that mocked round His
Cross, as truly as for the women that stood silently weeping there. He
died for them all, and John, looking back upon the destruction of his
nation, can yet say, 'He died for that people.' Yes! and just because
He did, and because they rejected Him, His death, which they would not
let be their salvation, became their destruction and their ruin. Oh!
brethren, it is always so! He is either 'a savour of life unto life, or
a savour of death unto death!' 'Behold! I lay in Zion for a foundation,
a tried Stone.' Build upon it and you are safe. If you do not build
upon it, that Stone becomes 'a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence.' You must either build upon Christ or fall over Him; you must
either build _upon_ Christ, or be crushed to powder _under_ Him. Make
your choice! The twofold effect is wrought ever, but we can choose
which of the two shall be wrought upon us.

Lastly, we have here the twofold sphere in which our Lord's mighty
death works its effects.

I have already said that this Gospel was written after the fall of
Jerusalem. The whole tone of it shows that the conception of the Church
as quite separate from Judaism was firmly established. The narrower
national system had been shivered, and from out of the dust and hideous
ruin of its crushing fall had emerged the fairer reality of a Church as
wide as the world. The Temple on Zion—which was but a small building
after all—had been burned with fire. It was _their_ place, as Caiaphas
called it. But the clearing away of the narrower edifice had revealed
the rising walls of the great temple, the Christian Church, whose roof
overarches every land, and in whose courts all men may stand and praise
the Lord. So John, in his home in Ephesus, surrounded by flourishing
churches in which Jews formed a small and ever-decreasing element,
recognised how far the dove with the olive-branch In its mouth flew,
and how certainly that nation was only a little fragment of the many
for whom Christ died.

'The children of God that were scattered abroad' were all to be united
round that Cross. Yes! the only thing that unites men together is their
common relation to a Divine Redeemer. That bond is deeper than all
national bonds, than all blood-bonds, than community of race, than
family, than friendship, than social ties, than community of opinion,
than community of purpose and action. It is destined to absorb them
all. All these are transitory and they are imperfect; men wander
isolated notwithstanding them all. But if we are knit to Christ, we are
knit to all who are also knit to Him. One life animates all the limbs,
and one life's blood circulates through all the veins. 'So also is
Christ.' We are one in Him, in whom all the body fitly joined together
maketh increase, and in whom all the building fitly framed together
groweth. If we have yielded to the power of that Cross which draws us
to itself, we shall have been more utterly alone, in our penitence and
in our conscious surrender to Christ, than ever we were before. But He
sets the solitary in families, and that solemn experience of being
alone with our Judge and our Saviour will be followed by the blessed
sense that we are no more solitary, but 'fellow-citizens with the
saints and of the household of God.'

That death brings men into the _family_ of God. He will 'gather into
one the scattered children of God.' They are called children by
anticipation. For surely nothing can be clearer than that the doctrine
of all John's writings is that men are not children of God by virtue of
their humanity, except in the inferior sense of being made by Him, and
in His image as creatures with spirit and will, but _become_ children
of God through faith in the Son of God, which brings about that new
birth, whereby we become partakers of the Divine nature. 'To as many as
received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to
them that believe on His name.'

So I beseech you, turn yourselves to that dear Christ who has died for
us all, for us each, for me and for thee, and put your confidence in
His great sacrifice. You will find that you pass from isolation into
society, from death into life, from the death of selfishness into the
life of God. Listen to Him, who says: 'Other sheep I have which are not
of this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice: and
there shall be one flock' because there is 'one Shepherd.'




LOVE'S PRODIGALITY CENSURED AND VINDICATED


'Then Jesus, six days before the passover, came to Bethany, where
Lazarus was which had been dead, whom He raised from the dead. There
they made Him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them
that sat at the table with Him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of
spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His
feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the
ointment. Then saith one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son,
which should betray Him, Why was not this ointment sold for three
hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared
for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare
what was put therein. Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day
of My burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you;
but Me ye have not always. Much people of the Jews therefore knew that
He was there: and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they
might see Lazarus also, whom He had raised from the dead. But the chief
priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death; because
that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on
Jesus.'—JOHN xii. 1-11.

Jesus came from Jericho, where He had left Zacchaeus rejoicing in the
salvation that had come to his house, and whence Bartimaeus, rejoicing
in His new power of vision, seems to have followed Him. A few hours
brought Him to Bethany, and we know from other Evangelists what a
tension of purpose marked Him, and awed the disciples, as He pressed on
before them up the rocky way. His mind was full of the struggle and
death which were so near. The modest village feast in the house of
Simon the leper comes in strangely amid the gathering gloom; but, no
doubt, Jesus accepted it, as He did everything, and entered into the
spirit of the hour. He would not pain His hosts by self-absorbed
aloofness at the table. The reason for the feast is obviously the
raising of Lazarus, as is suggested by his being twice mentioned in
verses 1 and 2.

Our Lord had withdrawn to Ephraim so immediately after the miracle that
the opportunity of honouring Him had not occurred. It was a brave
tribute to pay Him in the face of the Sanhedrim's commandment (ch. xi.
57). This incident sets in sharpest contrast the two figures of Mary,
the type of love which delights to give its best, and Judas, the type
of selfishness which is only eager to get; and it shows us Jesus
casting His shield over the uncalculating giver, and putting meaning
into her deed.

I. In Eastern fashion, the guests seem to have all been males, no doubt
the magnates of the village, and Jesus with His disciples. The former
would have become accustomed to seeing Lazarus, but Christ's immediate
followers would gaze curiously on him. And how he would gaze on Jesus,
whom he had probably not seen since the napkin had been taken from his
face. The two sisters were true to their respective characters. The
bustling, practical Martha had perhaps not very fine or quickly moved
emotions. She could not say graceful things to their benefactor, and
probably she did not care to sit at His feet and drink in His teaching;
but she loved Him with all her heart all the same, and showed it by
serving. No doubt, she took care that the best dishes were carried to
Jesus first, and, no doubt, as is the custom in those lands, she plied
Him with invitations to partake. We do Martha less than justice if we
do not honour her, and recognise that her kind of service is true
service. She has many successors among Christ's true followers, who
cannot 'gush' nor rise to the heights of His loftiest teaching, but who
have taken Him for their Lord, and can, at any rate, do humble,
practical service in kitchen or workshop. Their more 'intellectual' or
poetically emotional brethren are tempted to look down on them, but
Jesus is as ready to defend Martha against Mary, if she depreciates
her, as He is to vindicate Mary's right to her kind of expression of
love, if Martha should seek to force her own kind on her sister. 'There
are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.'

Mary was one of the unpractical sort, whom Martha is very apt to
consider supremely useless, and often to lose patience with. Could she
not find something useful to do in all the bustle of the feast? Had she
no hands that could carry a dish, and no common sense that could help
things on? Apparently not. Every one else was occupied, and how should
she show the love that welled up in her heart as she looked at Lazarus
sitting there beside Jesus? She had one costly possession, the pound of
perfume. Clearly it was her own, for she would not have taken it if
Lazarus and Mary had been joint owners. So, without thinking of
anything but the great burden of love which she blessedly bore, she
'poured it on His head' (Mark) and on His feet, which the fashion of
reclining at meals made accessible to her, standing behind Him, True
love is profuse, not to say prodigal. It knows no better use for its
best than to lavish it on the beloved, and can have no higher joy than
that. It does not stay to calculate utility as seen by colder eyes. It
has even a subtle delight in the very absence of practical results, for
the expression of itself is the purer thereby. A basin of water and a
towel would have done as well or better for washing Christ's feet, but
not for relieving Mary's full heart. Do we know anything of that
omnipotent impulse? Can we complacently set our givings beside Mary's?

II. Judas is the foil to Mary. His sullen, black selfishness,
stretching out hands like talons in eagerness to get, makes more
radiant, and is itself made darker by, her shining deed of love.
Goodness always rouses evil to self-assertion, and the other
Evangelists connect Mary's action with Judas's final treachery as part
of its impelling cause. They also show that his specious objection, by
its apparent common sense and charitableness, found assent in the
disciples. Three hundred pence worth of good ointment wasted which
might have helped so many poor! Yes, and how much poorer the world
would have been if it had not had this story! Mary was more utilitarian
than her censors. She served the highest good of all generations by her
uncalculating profusion, by which the poor have gained more than some
few of them might have lost.

Judas's criticism is still repeated. The world does not understand
Christian self-sacrifice, for ends which seem to it shadowy as compared
with the solid realities of helping material progress or satisfying
material wants. A hundred critics, who do not do much for the poor
themselves, will descant on the waste of money in religious
enterprises, and smile condescendingly at the enthusiasts who are so
unpractical. But love knows its own meaning, and need not be abashed by
the censure of the unloving.

John flashes out into a moment's indignation at the greed of Judas,
which was masquerading as benevolence. His scathing laying bare of
Judas's mean and thievish motive is no mere suspicion, but he must have
known instances of dishonesty. When a man has gone so far in selfish
greed that he has left common honesty behind him, no wonder if the
sight of utterly self-surrendering love looks to him folly. The world
has no instruments by which it can measure the elevation of the godly
life. Mary would not be Mary if Judas approved of her or understood
her.

III. Jesus vindicates the act of His censured servant. His words fall
into two parts, of which the former puts a meaning into Mary's act, of
which she probably had not been aware, while the latter meets the
carping criticism of Judas. That Jesus should see in the anointing a
reference to His burying, pathetically indicates how that near end
filled His thoughts, even while sharing in the simple feast. The clear
vision of the Cross so close did not so absorb Him as to make Him
indifferent either to Mary's love or to the villagers' humble
festivity. However weighed upon, His heart was always sufficiently at
leisure from itself to care for His friends and to defend them. He
accepts every offering that love brings, and, in accepting, gives it a
significance beyond the offerer's thought. We know not what use He may
make of our poor service; but we may be sure that, if that which we can
see to is right—namely, its motive,—He will take care of what we cannot
see to—namely, its effect,—and will find noble use for the sacrifices
which unloving critics pronounce useless waste.

'The poor always ye have with you.' Opportunities for the exercise of
brotherly liberality are ever present, and therefore the obligation to
it is constant. But these permanent duties do not preclude the
opportunities for such special forms of expressing special love to
Jesus as Mary had shown, and as must soon end. The same sense of
approaching separation as in the former clause gives pathos to that
restrained 'not always.' The fact of His being just about to leave them
warranted extraordinary tokens of love, as all loving hearts know but
too well. But, over and above the immediate reference of the words,
they carry the wider lesson that, besides the customary duties of
generous giving laid on us by the presence of ordinary poverty and
distresses, there is room in Christian experience for extraordinary
outflows from the fountain of a heart filled with love to Christ. The
world may mock at it as useless prodigality, but Jesus sees that it is
done for Him, and therefore He accepts it, and breathes meaning into
it.

'Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there
shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of
her.' The Evangelist who records that promise does not mention Mary's
name; John, who does mention the name, does not record the promise. It
matters little whether our names are remembered, so long as Jesus beam
them graven on His heart.




A NEW KIND OF KING


'On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they
heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm-trees,
and went forth to meet Him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of
Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. And Jesus, when He had
found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of
Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt. These things
understood not His disciples at the first: but when Jesus was
glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of Him,
and that they had done these things unto Him. The people therefore that
was with Him when He called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him
from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met Him, for
that they heard that He had done this miracle. The Pharisees therefore
said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing! behold, the
world is gone after Him. And there were certain Greeks among them that
came up to worship at the feast: The same came therefore to Philip,
which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we
would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and
Philip tell Jesus, and Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come,
that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto
you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his
life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall
keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and
where I am, there shall also My servant be: if any man serve Me, him
will My Father honour.'—JOHN xii. 12-26.

The difference between John's account of the entry into Jerusalem and
those of the Synoptic Gospels is very characteristic. His is much
briefer, but it brings the essentials out clearly, and is particular in
showing its place as a link in the chain that drew on the final
catastrophe, and in noting its effect on various classes.

'The next day' in verse 12 was probably the Sunday before the
crucifixion. To understand the events of that day we must try to
realise how rapidly, and, as the rulers thought, dangerously,
excitement was rising among the crowds who had come up for the
Passover, and who had heard of the raising of Lazarus. The Passover was
always a time when national feeling was ready to blaze up, and any
spark might light the fire. It looked as if Lazarus were going to be
the match this time, and so, on the Saturday, the rulers had made up
their minds to have him put out of the way in order to stop the current
that was setting in, of acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah.

They had already made up their minds to dispose of Jesus, and now, with
cynical contempt for justice, they determined to 'put Lazarus also to
death.' So there were to be two men who were to 'die for the people.'
Keeping all this wave of popular feeling in view, it might have been
expected that Jesus would, as hitherto, have escaped into privacy, or
discouraged the offered homage of a crowd whose Messianic ideal was so
different from His.

John is mainly concerned in bringing out two points in his version of
the incident. First, he tells us what we should not have gathered from
the other Evangelists, that the triumphal procession began in
Jerusalem, not in Bethany. It was the direct result of the ebullition
of enthusiasm occasioned by the raising of Lazarus. The course of
events seems to have been that 'the common people of the Jews' came
streaming out to Bethany on the Sunday to gape and gaze at the risen
man and Him who had raised him, that they and some of those who had
been present at the raising went back to the city and carried thither
the intelligence that Jesus was coming in from Bethany next day, and
that then the procession to meet Him was organised.

The meaning of the popular demonstration was plain, both from the palm
branches, signs of victory and rejoicing, and from the chant, which is
in part taken from Psalm cxviii. The Messianic application of that
quotation is made unmistakable by the addition, 'even the King of
Israel.' In the Psalm, 'he that cometh in the name of Jehovah,' means
the worshipper drawing near to the Temple, but the added words divert
the expression to Jesus, hail Him as the King, and invoke Him as
'Saviour.' Little did that shouting crowd understand what sort of a
Saviour He was. Deliverance from Rome was what they were thinking of.

We must remember what gross, unspiritual notions of the Messiah they
had, and then we are prepared to feel how strangely unlike His whole
past conduct Jesus' action now was. He had shrunk from crowds and their
impure enthusiasm; He had slipped away into solitude when they wished
to come by force to make Him a King, and had in every possible way
sought to avoid publicity and the rousing of popular excitement. Now He
deliberately sets Himself to intensify it. His choice of an ass on
which to ride into Jerusalem was, and would be seen by many to be, a
plain appropriation to Himself of a very distinct Messianic prophecy,
and must have raised the heat of the crowd by many degrees. One can
fancy the roar of acclaim which hailed Him when He met the multitude,
and the wild emotion with which they strewed His path with garments
hastily drawn off and cast before Him.

Why did He thus contradict all His past, and court the smoky enthusiasm
which He had hitherto damped? Because He knew that 'His hour' had come,
and that the Cross was at hand, and He desired to bring it as speedily
as might be, and thus to shorten the suffering that He would not avoid,
and to finish the work which He was eager to complete. The impatience,
as we might almost call it, which had marked Him on all that last
journey, reached its height now, and may indicate to us for our
sympathy and gratitude both His human longing to get the dark hour over
and His fixed willingness to die for us.

But even while Jesus accepted the acclamations and deliberately set
Himself to stir up enthusiasm, He sought to purify the gross ideas of
the crowd. What more striking way could He have chosen of declaring
that all the turbulent passions and eagerness for a foot-to-foot
conflict with Rome which were boiling in their breasts were alien to
His purposes and to the true Messianic ideal, than that choosing of the
meek, slow-pacing ass to bear Him? A conquering king would have made
his triumphal entry in a chariot or on a battle-horse. This strange
type of monarch is throned on an ass. It was not only for a verbal
fulfilment of the prophecy, but for a demonstration of the essential
nature of His kingdom, that He thus entered the city.

John characteristically takes note of the effects of the entry on two
classes, the disciples and the rulers. The former remembered with a
sudden flash of enlightenment the meaning of the entry when the Cross
and the Resurrection had taught them it. The rulers marked the popular
feeling running high with bewilderment, and were, as Jesus meant them
to be, made more determined to take vigorous measures to stop this
madness of the mob.

The second incident in this passage contrasts remarkably with the
first, and yet is, in one aspect, a continuation of it. In the former,
Jesus brought into prominence the true nature of His rule by His
choosing the ass to carry Him, so declaring that His dominion rested,
not on conquest, but on meekness. In the latter, He reveals a yet
deeper aspect of His work, and teaches that His influence over men is
won by utter self-sacrifice, and that His subjects must tread the same
path of losing their lives by which He passes to His glory. The details
of the incident are of small importance as compared with that great and
solemn lesson; but we may note them in a few words. The desire of a few
Greeks to see Him was probably only a reflection of the popular
enthusiasm, and was prompted mainly by curiosity and the characteristic
Greek eagerness to see any 'new thing.' The addressing of the request
to Philip is perhaps explained by the fact that he 'was of Bethsaida of
Galilee,' and had probably come into contact with these Greeks in the
neighbouring Decapolis, on the other side of the lake. Philip's
consultation of his fellow-townsman, Andrew, who is associated with him
in other places, probably implies hesitation in granting so
unprecedented a request. They did not know what Jesus might say to it.
And what He did say was very unlike anything that they could have
anticipated.

The trivial request was as a narrow window through which Jesus'
yearning spirit saw a great expanse—nothing less than the coming to Him
of myriads of Gentiles, the 'much fruit' of which He immediately
speaks, the 'other sheep' whom He 'must bring.' The thought must have
been ever present to Him, or it would never have leaped to utterance on
such an occasion. The little window shows us, too, what was habitually
in His mind and heart. He, as it were, hears the striking of the hour
of His glorification; in which expression the ideas of His being
glorified by drawing men to the knowledge of His love, and of the Cross
being not the lowest depth of His humiliation, but the highest apex of
His glory—as it is always represented in this Gospel—seemed to be fused
together.

The seed must die if a harvest is to spring from it. That is the law
for all moral and spiritual reformations. Every cause must have its
martyrs. No man can be fruit-bearing unless he sacrifices himself. We
shall not 'quicken' our fellows unless we 'die,' either literally or by
the not less real martyrdom of rigid self-crucifixion and suppression.

But that necessity is not only for Apostles or missionaries of great
causes; it is the condition of all true, noble life, and prescribes the
path not only for those who would live for others, but for all who
would truly live their own lives. Self-renunciation guards the way to
the 'tree of life.' That lesson was specially needed by 'Greeks,' for
ignorance of it was the worm that gnawed the blossoms of their trees,
whether of art or of literature. It is no less needed by our sensuously
luxurious and eagerly acquisitive generation. The world's war-cries
to-day are two—'Get!' 'Enjoy!' Christ's command is, 'Renounce!' And in
renouncing we shall realise both of these other aims, which they who
pursue them only, never attain.

Christ's servant must be Christ's follower: indeed service is
following. The Cross has aspects in which it stands alone, and is
incapable of being reproduced and makes all repetition needless. But it
has also an aspect in which it not only _may_, but _must_, be
reproduced in every disciple. And he who takes it for the ground of his
trust only, and not as the pattern of his life, has need to ask himself
whether his trust in it is genuine or worth anything. Of course they
who follow a leader will arrive where the leader has gone, and though
our feet are feeble and our progress devious and slow, we have here His
promise that we shall not be lost in the desert, but, sustained by Him,
will reach His side, and at last be where He is.




AFTER CHRIST: WITH CHRIST


'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall
also My servant be.'—John xii. 26.

Our Lord was strangely moved by the apparently trivial incident of
certain Greeks desiring to see Him. He recognised and hailed in them
the first-fruits of the Gentiles. The Eastern sages at His cradle, and
these representatives of Western culture within a few hours of the
Cross, were alike prophets. So, in His answer to their request, our
Lord passes beyond the immediate bearing of the request, and
contemplates it in its relation to the future developments of His work.
And the thought that the Son of Man is now about to begin to be
glorified, at once brings Him face to face with the fact which must
precede the glory, viz., His death.

That great law that a higher life can only be reached by the decay of
the lower, of which the Cross is the great instance, He illustrates,
first, by an example from Nature, the corn of wheat which must die ere
it brings forth fruit. Then He declares that this is a universal law,
'He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in
this world shall keep it unto life eternal.' And then He declares that
this universal law, which has its adumbration in Nature, and applies to
all mankind, and is manifested in its highest form on the Cross, is the
law of the Christian discipleship. 'If any man serve Me, let him follow
Me,' and, as a consequence, 'where I am, there shall also My servant
be.'

In two clauses He covers the whole ground of the present and the
future. Many thinkers and teachers have tried to crystallise their
systems into some brief formula which may stick in the memory and be
capable of a handy application. 'Follow Nature,' said ancient sages,
attaching a nobler meaning to the condensed commandment than its modern
repeaters often do; 'Follow duty,' say others; 'Follow _Me_' says
Christ. That is enough for life. And for all the dim regions beyond,
this prospect is sufficient, 'Where I am, there shall also My servant
be.' One Form towers above the present and the future, and they both
derive their colouring and their worth from Him and our relation to
Him. 'To follow'—that is the condensed summary of life's duty. 'To be
with'—that is the crystallising of all our hopes.

I. The all-sufficient law for life.

'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.' Everything is smelted down
into that; and there you have a sufficient directory for every man's
every action.

Now although it has nothing to do with my present purpose, I can
scarcely avoid pausing, just for a moment, to ask you to consider the
perfect uniqueness of such an utterance as that. Think of one Man
standing up before all mankind, and coolly and deliberately saying to
them, 'I am the realised Ideal of human conduct; I am Incarnate
Perfection; and all of you, in all the infinite variety of condition,
culture, and character, are to take Me for your pattern and your
guide.' The world has listened, and the world has not laughed nor been
angry. Neither indignation nor mockery, which one might have expected
would have extinguished such absurdity, has waited upon Christ's
utterance. I have no time to dwell on this; it is apart from my
purpose, but I would ask you fairly to consider how strange it is, and
to ask how it is to be accounted for, that a Man said that, and that
the wisest part of the world has consented to take Him at His own
valuation; and after such an utterance as that, yet calls Him 'meek and
lowly of heart.'

But I pass away from that. What does He mean by this commandment,
'Follow Me'? Of course I need not remind you that it brings all duty
down to the imitation of Jesus Christ. That is a commonplace that I do
not need to dwell upon, nor to follow out into the many regions into
which it would lead us, and where we might find fruitful subjects of
contemplation; because I desire, in a sentence or two, to insist upon
the special form of following which is here enjoined. It is a very
grand thing to talk about the imitation of Christ, and even in its most
superficial acceptation it is a good guide for all men. But no man has
penetrated to the depths of that stringent and all-comprehensive
commandment who has not recognised that there is one special thing in
which Christ is to be our Pattern, and that is in regard to the very
thing in which we think that He is most unique and inimitable. It is
His Cross, and not His life; it is His death, and not His virtues,
which He is here thinking about, and laying it upon all of us as the
encyclopaedia and sum of all morality that we should be conformed to
it. I have already pointed out to you in my introductory remarks the
force of the present context. And so I need not further enlarge upon
that, nor vindicate my declaration that Christ's death is the pattern
which is here set before us. Of course we cannot imitate that in its
effects, except in a very secondary and figurative fashion. But the
spirit that underlay it, as the supreme Example of self-sacrifice, is
commended to us all as the royal law for our lives, and unless we are
conformed thereto we have no right to call ourselves Christ's
disciples. To die for the sake of higher life, to give up our own will
utterly in obedience to God, and in the unselfish desire to help and
bless others, that is the _Alpha_ and the _Omega_ of discipleship. It
always has been so and always will be so. And so, dear brethren, let us
lay it to our own hearts, and make very stringent inquiry into our own
conduct, whether we have ever come within sight of what makes a true
disciple—viz., that we should be 'conformable unto His death.'

Now our modern theology has far too much obscured this plain teaching
of the New Testament, because it has been concerned—I do not say too
much, but too exclusively, concerned—in setting forth the other aspect
of Christ's death, by which it is what none of ours can ever even begin
to be, the sacrifice for a world's sin. But, mind, there are two ways
of looking at Christ's Cross. You must begin with recognising it as the
basis of all your hope, the power by which you are delivered from sin
as guilt, habit, and condemnation. And then you must take it, if it is
to be the sacrifice and atonement for your sins, for the example of
your lives, and mould yourselves after it. 'If any man serve Me, let
him follow Me,' and here is the special region in which the following
is to be realised: 'He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that
hateth his life shall keep it unto life eternal.'

Now, further, let me remind you that this brief, crystallised
commandment, the essence of all practical godliness and Christianity,
makes the blessed peculiarity of Christian morality. People ask what it
is that distinguishes the teaching of the New Testament in regard to
duty, from the teaching of lofty moralists and sages of old. Not the
specific precepts, though these are, in many cases, deeper. Not the
individual commandments, though the perspective of human excellences
and virtues has been changed in Christianity, and the gentler and
sweeter graces have been enthroned in the place where the world's
morality has generally set the more ostentatious ones; the hero is,
roughly speaking, the world's type, the saint is the New Testament's.
But the true characteristic of Christian teaching as to conduct lies in
this, that the law is in a Person, and that the power to obey the law
comes from the love of the Person. All things are different; unwelcome
duties are made less repulsive, and hard tasks are lightened, and
sorrows are made tolerable, if only we are following Him. You remember
the old story in Scottish history of the knight to whom was entrusted
the king's heart; how, beset by the bands of the infidels, he tossed
the golden casket into the thickest of their ranks and said, 'Go on, I
follow thee'; and death itself was light when that thought spurred his
steed forward.

And so, brethren, it is far too hard a task to tread the road of duty
which our consciences command us, unless we are drawn by Him Who is
before us there on the road, and see the shining of His garments as He
sets His face forward, and draws us after Him. It is easy to climb a
glacier when the guide has cut with his ice-axe the steps in which he
sets his feet, and we may set ours. The sternness of duty, and the
rigidity of law, and the coldness of 'I ought,' are all changed when
duty consists in following Christ, and He is before us on the rocky and
narrow road.

This precept is all-sufficient. Of course it will be a task of wisdom,
of common sense, of daily culture in prudence and other graces; to
apply the generalised precept to the specific cases that emerge in our
lives. But whilst the application may require a great many subordinate
by-laws, the royal statute is one, and simple, and enough. 'Follow Me.'
Is it not a strange thing—it seems to me to be a perfectly unique
thing, inexplicable except upon one hypothesis—that a life so brief, of
which the records are so fragmentary, in which some of the
relationships in which we stand had no place, and which was lived out
in a world so utterly different from our own, should yet avail to be a
guide to men, not in regard to specific points, so much as in regard to
the imperial supremacy in it of these motives—Even Christ pleased not
Himself; 'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me.'

And so, brethren, take this sharp test and apply it honestly to your
own lives, day by day, in all their _minutiae_ as well as in their
great things. 'If any man _serve_ Me,' how miserably that Christian
'service' has been evacuated of its deepest meaning, and
superficialised and narrowed! 'Service'—that means people getting into
a building and singing and praying. Service—that means acts of
beneficence, teaching and preaching and giving material or spiritual
helps of various kinds. These things have almost monopolised the word.
But Christ enlarges its shrivelled contents once more, and teaches us
that, far above all specifically so-called acts of religious worship,
and more indispensable than so-called acts of Christian activity and
service, lies the self-sacrificing conformity of character to Him. 'If
any man serve Me,' let him sing and praise and pray? Yes; 'If any man
serve Me,' let him try to help other people, and in the service of man
do service to Me? Yes; but deeper than all, and fundamental to the
others, 'If any man serve Me, let him _follow_ Me'—Is that _my_
discipleship? Let each one of us professing Christians ask himself.

II. We have here the all-sufficient hope for the future.

I know few things more beautiful than the perfectly _naive_ way in
which the greatest of thoughts is here set forth by the simplest of
figures. If two men are walking on the same road to a place, the one
that is in front will get there first, and his friend that is coming up
after him will get there second, if he keeps on; and they will be
united at the end, because, one after the other, they travel the road.
And so says Christ: 'Of course, if you follow Me, you will join Me; and
where I am, there shall also My servant be.' The implications of a
Christian life, which is true following of Christ here, necessarily led
to the confidence that in that future there will be union with Him.
That is a deep thought, which might afford material for much to be
said, but on which I cannot dwell now.

I remarked at an early stage of this sermon how singular it was that
our Lord should present Himself as the Pattern for all human
excellence. Is it not even more singular that He should venture to
present His own companionship as the sufficient recompense for every
sorrow, for every effort, for all pain, for all pilgrimage? To be with
Him, He thinks, is enough for any man and enough for all men. Who did
He think Himself to be? What did _He_ suppose His relation to the rest
of us to be, who could thus calmly suggest to the world that the only
thing that a heart needed for blessedness was to be beside Him? And we
believe it, too little as it influences our lives. 'To be with Christ'
is 'very much better'; better than all beneath the stars; better than
all on this side eternity.

What does our Lord mean by this all-sufficient hope? We know very
little of that dim region beyond, but we know that until He comes again
His departed servants are absent from the body. And, in our sense of
the word, there can be no _place_ for spirits thus free from corporeal
environment. And so place, to-day at all events for the departed
saints, and in a subordinate degree all through eternity, even when
they are clothed with a glorified body, must be but a symbol of state,
of condition, of spiritual character. 'Where I am there shall My
servant be,' means specially '_What I_ am, _that_ shall My servant be.'
This perfect conformity to that dear Lord, whose footsteps we have
followed; assimilation there, which is the issue of imitation here,
though broken and imperfect, this is the hope that may gladden and
animate every Christian heart.

To be with Him is to be like Him, and therefore to be conscious of His
presence in some fashion so intimate, so certain, as that all our
earthly notions of presence, derived from the juxtaposition of
corporeal frames, are infinite distance as compared with it. That is
what my text dimly shadows for us. We know not how that union, which is
to be as close as is possible while the distinction of personality is
retained, may be accomplished. But this we know, that the coalescence
of two drops of mercury, the running together of two drops of water,
the blending of heart with heart here in love, are distance in
comparison with the complete union of Christ and of the happy soul that
rests in Him, as in an atmosphere and an ocean. Oh, brethren! it is not
a thing to talk about; it is a thing to take to our hearts, and in
silence to be thankful for; 'absent from the body; present with the
Lord.'

And is that not enough? The ground of it is enough. 'If we believe that
Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will
God bring with Him.' That future companionship is guaranteed to the
Christian man by the words of Incarnate Truth, and by the resurrection
of his Lord. The ground of it is enough, and the contents are
enough—enough for faith; enough for hope; enough for peace; enough for
work; and eminently enough for comfort.

Ah! there are many other questions that we would fain ask, but to which
there is no reply; but as the good old rough music of one of the
eighteenth-century worthies has it, we have sufficient.

  'My knowledge of that life is small,
  The eye of faith is dim;
  But 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
  And I shall be with Him.'

'It is enough for the disciple that he be as' (that is, with) 'his
Master.' So let us take that thought to our hearts and animate
ourselves with it, for it is legitimate for us to do so. That one hope
is sufficient for us all.

Only let us remember that, according to the teaching of my text, the
companionship that blesses the future is the issue of following Him
now. I know of no magic in death that is able to change the direction
in which a man's face is turned. As he is travelling and has travelled,
so he will travel when he comes through the tunnel, and out into the
brighter light yonder. The line of a railway marked upon a map may stop
at the boundaries of the country with which the map is concerned, but
it is clearly going somewhere, and in the same direction. You want the
other sheet of the map in order to see whither it is going. That is
like your life. The map stops very abruptly, but the line does not
stop. Take an unfinished row of tenements. On the last house there
stick out bricks preparatory to the continuation of the row. And so our
lives are, as it were, studded over with protuberances and preparations
for the attachment thereto of a 'house not made with hands,' and yet
conformed in its architecture to the row that we have built. The man
that follows will attain. For life, the all-sufficient law is, _after
Christ_; for hope, the all-sufficient assurance is, _with Christ_.




THE UNIVERSAL MAGNET


'I, if I be lifted up … will draw all men unto Me.'—JOHN xii. 32.

'Never man spake like this Man,' said the wondering Temple officials
who were sent to apprehend Jesus. There are many aspects of our Lord's
teaching in which it strikes one as unique; but perhaps none is more
singular than the boundless boldness of His assertions of His
importance to the world. Just think of such sayings as these: 'I am the
Light of the world'; 'I am the Bread of Life'; 'I am the Door'; 'A
greater than Solomon is here'; 'In this place is One greater than the
Temple.' We do not usually attach much importance to men's estimate of
themselves; and gigantic claims such as these are generally met by
incredulity or scorn. But the strange thing about Christ's loftiest
assertions of His world-wide worth and personal sinlessness is that
they provoke no contradiction, and that the world takes Him at His own
valuation. So profound is the impression that He has made, that men
assent when He says, 'I am meek and lowly in heart,' and do not answer
as they would to anybody else, 'If you were, you would never have said
so.'

Now there is no more startling utterance of this extraordinary
self-consciousness of Jesus Christ than the words that I have used for
my text. They go deep down into the secret of His power. They open a
glimpse into His inmost thoughts about Himself which He very seldom
shows us. And they come to each of us with a very touching and strong
personal appeal as to what we are doing with, and how we individually
are responding to, that universal appeal on which He says that He is
exercising.

I. So I wish to dwell on these words now, and ask you first to notice
here our Lord's forecasting of the Cross.

A handful of Greeks had come up to Jerusalem to the Passover, and they
desired to see Jesus, perhaps only because they had heard about Him,
and to gratify some fleeting curiosity; perhaps for some deeper and
more sacred reason. But in that tiny incident our Lord sees the first
green blade coming up above the ground which was the prophet of an
abundant harvest; the first drop of a great abundance of rain. He
recognises that He is beginning to pass out from Israel into the world.
But the thought of His world-wide influence thus indicated and
prophesied immediately brings along with it the thought of what must be
gone through before that influence can be established. And he discerns
that, like the corn of wheat that falls into the ground, the condition
of fruitfulness for Him is death.

Now we are to remember that our Lord here is within a few hours of
Gethsemane, and a few days of the Cross, and that events had so
unfolded themselves that it needed no prophet to see that there could
only be one end to the duel which he had deliberately brought about
between Himself and the rulers of Israel. So that I build nothing upon
the anticipation of the Cross, which comes out at this stage in our
Lord's history, for any man in His position might have seen, as clearly
as He did, that His path was blocked, and that very near at hand, by
the grim instrument of death. But then remember that this same
expression of my text occurs at a very much earlier period of our
Lord's career, and that if we accept this Gospel of John, at the very
beginning of it He said, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up'; and that that
was no mere passing thought is obvious from the fact that midway in His
career, if we accept the testimony of the same Gospel, He used the same
expression to cavilling opponents when He said: 'When ye have lifted up
the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He.' And so at the
beginning, in the middle, and at the end of His career the same idea is
cast into the same words, a witness of the hold that it had upon Him,
and the continual presence of it to His consciousness.

I do not need to refer here to other illustrations and proofs of the
same thing, only I desire to say, as plainly and strongly as I can,
that modern ideas that Jesus Christ only recognised the necessity of
His death at a late stage of His work, and that like other reformers,
He began with buoyant hope, and thought that He had but to speak and
the world would hear, and, like other reformers, was disenchanted by
degrees, are, in my poor judgment, utterly baseless, and bluntly
contradicted by the Gospel narratives. And so, dear brethren, this is
the image that rises before us, and that ought to appeal to us all very
plainly; a Christ who, from the first moment of His consciousness of
Messiahship—and how early that consciousness was I am not here to
inquire—was conscious likewise of the death that was to close it. 'He
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,' and likewise for
_this_ end, 'to give His life a ransom for the many.' That gracious,
gentle life, full of all charities, and long-suffering, and sweet
goodness, and patience, was not the life of a Man whose heart was at
leisure from all anxiety about Himself, but the life of a Man before
whom there stood, ever grim and distinct away on the horizon, the Cross
and _Himself_ upon it. You all remember a well-known picture that
suggests the 'Shadow of Death,' the shadow of the Cross falling, unseen
by Him, but seen with open eyes of horror by His mother. But the
reality is a far more pathetic one than that; it is this, that He came
on purpose to die.

But now there is another point suggested by these remarkable words, and
that is that our Lord regarded the Cross of shame as exaltation or
'lifting up.' I do not believe that the use of this remarkable phrase
in our text finds its explanation in the few inches of elevation above
the surface of the ground to which the crucified victims were usually
raised. That is there, of course, but there is something far deeper and
more wonderful than that in the background, and it is this in part,
that that Cross, to Christ's eyes, bore a double aspect. So far as the
inflicters or the externals of it were concerned, it was ignominy,
shame, agony, the very lowest point of humiliation. But there was
another side to it. What in one aspect is the _nadir_, the lowest point
beneath men's feet, is in another aspect the _zenith_, the very highest
point in the bending heaven above us. So throughout this Gospel, and
very emphatically in the text, we find that we have the complement of
the Pauline view of the Cross, which is, that it was shame and agony.
For our Lord says, 'Now the hour is come when the Son of Man shall be
glorified.' Whether it is glory or shame depends on what it was that
bound Him there. The reason for His enduring it makes it the very
climax and flaming summit of His flaming love. And, therefore, He is
lifted up not merely because the Cross is elevated above the ground on
the little elevation of Calvary, but that Cross is His throne, because
there, in highest and sovereign fashion, are set forth His glories, the
glories of His love, and of the 'grace and truth' of which He was
'full.'

So let us not forget this double aspect, and whilst we bow before Him
who 'endured the Cross, despising the shame,' let us also try to
understand and to feel what He means when, in the vision of it, He
said, 'the hour is come that the Son of Man shall be glorified.' It was
meant for mockery, but mockery veiled unsuspected truth when they
twined round His pale brows the crown of thorns, thereby setting forth
unconsciously the everlasting truth that sovereignty is won by
suffering; and placed in His unresisting hand the sceptre of reed,
thereby setting forth the deep truth of His kingdom, that dominion is
exercised in gentleness. Mightier than all rods of iron, or sharp
swords which conquerors wield, and more lustrous and splendid than
tiaras of gold glistening with diamonds, are the sceptre of reed in the
hands, and the crown of thorns on the head, of the exalted, because
crucified, Man of Sorrows.

But there is still another aspect of Christ's vision of His Cross, for
the 'lifting up' on it necessarily draws after it the lifting up to the
dominion of the heavens. And so the Apostle, using a word kindred with
that of my text, but intensifying it by addition, says, 'He became
obedient even unto the death of the Cross, wherefore God also hath
highly lifted Him up.'

So here we have Christ's own conception of His death, that it was
inevitable, that it was exaltation even in the act of dying, and that
it drew after it, of inevitable necessity, dominion exercised from the
heavens over all the earth. He was lifted up on Calvary, and because He
was lifted up He has carried our manhood into the place of glory, and
sitteth at the right hand of the Majesty on high. So much for the first
point to which I would desire to turn your attention.

II. Now we have here our Lord disclosing the secret of His attractive
power.

'I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.' That
'if' expresses no doubt, it only sets forth the condition. The Christ
lifted up on the Cross is the Christ that draws men. Now I would have
you notice the fact that our Lord thus unveils, as it were, where His
power to influence individuals and humanity chiefly resides. He speaks
about His death in altogether a different fashion from that of other
men, for He does not merely say, 'If I be lifted up from the earth,
this story of the Cross will draw men,' but He says, 'I will' do it;
and thus contemplates, as I shall have to say in a moment, continuous
personal influence all through the ages.

Now that is not how other people have to speak about their deaths, for
all other men who have influenced the world for good or for evil,
thinkers and benefactors, and reformers, social and religious, all of
them come under the one law that their death is no part of their
activity, but terminates their work, and that thereafter, with few
exceptions, and for brief periods, their influence is a diminishing
quantity. So one Apostle had to say, 'To abide in the flesh is more
needful for you,' and another had to say, 'I will endeavour that after
my decease ye may keep in mind the things that I have told you'; and
all thinkers and teachers and helpers glide away further and further,
and are wrapped about with thicker and thicker mists of oblivion, and
their influence becomes less and less.

The best that history can say about any of them is, 'This man, having
served his generation by the will of God, fell on sleep.' But that
other Man who was lifted on the Cross saw no corruption, and the death
which puts a period to all other men's work was planted right in the
centre of His, and was itself part of that work, and was followed by a
new form of it which is to endure for ever.

The Cross is the magnet of Christianity. Jesus Christ draws men, but it
is by His Cross mainly, and that He felt this profoundly is plain
enough, not only from such utterances as this of my text, but, to go no
further, from the fact that He has asked us to remember only one thing
about Him, and has established that ordinance of the Communion or the
Lord's Supper, which is to remind us always, and to bear witness to the
world, of where is the centre of His work, and the fact which He most
desires that men should keep in mind, not the graciousness of His
words, not their wisdom, not the good deeds that He did, but 'This is
My body broken for you … this cup is the New Testament in My blood.' A
religion which has for its chief rite the symbol of a death, must
enshrine that death in the very heart of the forces to which it trusts
to renew the world, and to bless individual souls.

If, then, that is true, if Jesus Christ was not all wrong when He spoke
as He did in my text, then the question arises, what is it about His
death that makes it the magnet that will draw all men? Men are drawn by
cords of love. They may be driven by other means, but they are drawn
only by love. And what is it that makes Christ's death the highest and
noblest and most wonderful and transcendent manifestation of love that
the world has ever seen, or ever can see? No doubt you will think me
very narrow and old-fashioned when I answer the question, with the
profoundest conviction of my own mind, and, I hope, the trust of my own
heart. The one thing that entitles men to interpret Christ's death as
the supreme manifestation of love is that it was a death voluntarily
undertaken for a world's sins.

If you do not believe that, will you tell me what claim on your heart
Christ has because He died? Has Socrates any claim on your heart? And
are there not hundreds and thousands of martyrs who have just as much
right to be regarded with reverence and affection as this Galilean
carpenter's Son has, unless, when He died, He died as the Sacrifice for
the sins of the whole world, and for yours and mine? I know all the
pathetic beauty of the story. I know how many men's hearts are moved in
some degree by the life and death of our Lord, who yet would hesitate
to adopt the full-toned utterance which I have now been giving. But I
would beseech you, dear friends, to lay this question seriously to
heart, whether there is any legitimate reason for the reverence, the
love, the worship, which the world is giving to this Galilean young
man, if you strike out the thought that it was because He loved the
world that He chose to die to loose it from the bands of its sin. It
may be, it is, a most pathetic and lovely story, but it has not power
to draw all men, unless it deals with that which all men need, and
unless it is the self-surrender of the Son of God for the whole world.

III. And now, lastly, we have here our Lord anticipating continuous and
universal influence.

I have already drawn attention to the peculiar fullness of the form of
expression in my text, which, fairly interpreted, does certainly imply
that our Lord at that supreme moment looked forward, as I have already
said, to His death, not as putting a period to His work, but as being
the transition from one form of influence operating upon a very narrow
circle, to another form of influence which would one day flood the
world. I do not need to dwell upon that thought, beyond seeking to
emphasise this truth, that one ought to feel that Jesus Christ has a
living connection now with each of us. It is not merely that the story
of the Cross is left to work its results, but, as I for my part
believe, that the dear Lord, who, before He became Man, was the Light
of the World, and enlightened every man that came into it, after His
death is yet more the Light of the World, and is exercising influence
all over the earth, not only by conscience and the light that is within
us, nor only through the effects of the record of His past, but by the
continuous operations of His Spirit. I do not dwell upon that thought
further than to say that I beseech you to think of Jesus Christ, not as
One who died for our sins only, but as one who lives to-day, and
to-day, in no rhetorical exaggeration but in simple and profound truth,
is ready to help and to bless and to be with every one of us. 'It is
Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the
right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.'

But, beyond that, mark His confidence of universal influence: 'I _will_
draw all men.' I need not dwell upon the distinct adaptation of
Christian truth, and of that sacrifice on the Cross, to the needs of
all men. It is the universal remedy, for it goes direct to the
universal epidemic. The thing that men and women want most, the thing
that _you_ want most, is that your relation with God shall be set
right, and that you shall be delivered from the guilt of past sin, from
the exposure to its power in the present and in the future. Whatever
diversities of climate, civilisation, culture, character the world
holds, every man is like every other man in this, that he has 'sinned
and come short of the glory of God.' And it is because Christ's Cross
goes direct to deal with that condition of things that the preaching of
it is a gospel, not for this phase of society or that type of men or
the other stage of culture, but that it is meant for, and is able to
deliver and to bless, every man.

So, brethren, a universal attraction is raying out from Christ's Cross,
and from Himself to each of us. But that universal attraction can be
resisted. If a man plants his feet firmly and wide apart, and holds on
with both hands to some staple or holdfast, then the drawing cannot
draw. There is the attraction, but he is not attracted. You demagnetise
Christianity, as all history shows, if you strike out the death on the
Cross for a world's sin. What is left is not a magnet, but a bit of
scrap iron. And you can take yourself away from the influence of the
attraction if you will, some of us by active resistance, some of us by
mere negligence, as a cord cast over some slippery body with the
purpose of drawing it, may slip off, and the thing lie there unmoved.

And so I come to you now, dear friends, with the plain question, What
are you doing in response to Christ's drawing of you? He has died for
you on the Cross; does that not draw? He lives to bless you; does that
not draw? He loves you with love changeless as a God, with love warm
and emotional as a man; does that not draw? He speaks to you, I venture
to say, through my poor words, and says, 'Come unto Me, and I will give
you rest'; does that not draw? We are all in the bog. He stands on firm
ground, and puts out a hand. If you like to clutch it, by the pledge of
the nail-prints on the palm, He will lift you from 'the horrible pit
and the miry clay, and set your feet upon a rock.' God grant that all
of us may say, 'Draw us, and we will run after Thee'!




THE SON OF MAN


'… Who is this Son of Man?'—JOHN xii. 34.

I have thought that a useful sermon may be devoted to the consideration
of the remarkable name which our Lord gives to Himself—'the Son of
Man.' And I have selected this instance of its occurrence, rather than
any other, because it brings out a point which is too frequently
overlooked, viz. that the name was an entirely strange and enigmatical
one to the people who heard it. This question of utter bewilderment
distinctly shows us that, and negatives, as it seems to me, the
supposition which is often made, that the name 'Son of Man,' upon the
lips of Jesus Christ, was equivalent to Messiah. Obviously there is no
such significance attached to it by those who put this question. As
obviously, for another reason, the two names do not cover the same
ground; for our Lord sedulously avoided calling Himself the Christ, and
habitually called Himself the Son of Man.

Now one thing to observe about this name is that it is never found upon
the lips of any but Jesus Christ. No man ever called him the Son of Man
whilst He was upon earth, and only once do we find it applied to Him in
the rest of Scripture, and that is on the occasion on which the first
martyr, Stephen, dying at the foot of the old wall, saw 'the heavens
opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' Two
other apparent instances of the use of the expression occur, both of
them in the Book of Revelation, both of them quotations from the Old
Testament, and in both the more probable reading gives 'a Son of Man,'
not '_the_ Son of Man.'

One more preliminary remark and I will pass to the title itself. The
name has been often supposed to be taken from the remarkable prophecy
in the Book of Daniel, of one 'like a son of man,' who receives from
the Ancient of Days an everlasting kingdom which triumphs over those
kingdoms of brute force which the prophet had seen. No doubt there is a
connection between the prophecy and our Lord's use of the name, but it
is to be observed that what the prophet speaks of is not 'the Son,' but
'one _like_ a son of man'; or in other words, that what the prophecy
dwells upon is simply the manhood of the future King in
contradistinction to the bestial forms of Lion and Leopard and Bear,
whose kingdoms go down before him. Of course Christ fulfils that
prediction, and is the 'One like a son of man,' but we cannot say that
the title is derived from the prophecy, in which, strictly speaking, it
does not occur.

What, then, is the force of this name, as applied to Himself by our
Lord?

First, we have in it Christ putting out His hand, if I may say so, to
draw us to Himself—identifying Himself with us. Then we have, just as
distinctly, Christ, by the use of this name, in a very real sense
distinguishing Himself from us, and claiming to hold a unique and
solitary relation to mankind. And then we have Christ, by the use of
this name in its connection with the ancient prophecy, pointing us
onward to a wonderful future.

I. First then, Christ thereby identifies Himself with us.

The name Son of Man, whatever more it means, declares the historical
fact of His Incarnation, and the reality and genuineness, the
completeness and fullness, of His assumption of humanity. And so it is
significant to notice that the name is employed continually in the
places in the Gospels where especial emphasis is to be placed, for some
reason or other, upon our Lord's manhood, as, for instance, when He
would bring into view the depth of His humiliation. It is this name
that He uses when He says: 'Foxes have holes and the birds of the air
have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.' The use
of the term there is very significant and profound; He contrasts His
homelessness, not with the homes of men that dwell in palaces, but with
the homes of the inferior creatures. As if He would say, 'Not merely am
I individually homeless and shelterless, but I am so because I am truly
a man, the only creature that builds houses, and the only creature that
has not a home. Foxes have holes, anywhere they can rest, the birds of
the air have,' not as our Bible gives it, 'nests,' but
'roosting-places, any bough will do for them. All living creatures are
at home in this material universe; I, as a Representative of humanity,
wander a pilgrim and a sojourner.' We are all restless and homeless;
the creatures correspond to their environment. We have desires and
longings, wild yearnings, and deep-seated needs, that 'wander through
eternity'; the Son of Man, the representative of manhood, 'hath not
where to lay His head.'

Then the same expression is employed on occasions when our Lord desires
to emphasise the completeness of His participation in all our
conditions. As, for instance, 'the Son of Man came eating and
drinking,' knowing the ordinary limitations and necessities of
corporeal humanity; having the ordinary dependence upon external
things; nor unwilling to taste, with pure and thankful lip, whatever
gladness may be found in man's path through the supply of natural
appetites.

And the name is employed habitually on occasions when He desires to
emphasise His manhood as having truly taken upon itself the whole
weight and weariness of man's sin, and the whole burden of man's guilt,
and the whole tragicalness of the penalties thereof, as in the familiar
passages, so numerous that I need only refer to them and need not
attempt to quote them, in which we read of the Son of Man being
'betrayed into the hands of sinners'; or in those words, for instance,
which so marvellously blend the lowliness of the Man and the lofty
consciousness of the mysterious relation which He bears to the whole
world; 'The Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give His life a ransom for the many.'

Now if we gather all these instances together (and they are only
specimens culled almost at random), and meditate for a moment on the
Name as illuminated by such words as these, they suggest to us, first,
how truly and how blessedly He is 'bone of our bone, and flesh of our
flesh.' All our human joys were His. He knew all human sorrow. The
ordinary wants of human nature belonged to Him; He hungered, He
thirsted, and was weary; He ate and drank and slept. The ordinary wants
of the human heart He knew; He was hurt by hatred, stung by
ingratitude, yearned for love; His spirit expanded amongst friends, and
was pained when they fell away. He fought and toiled, and sorrowed and
enjoyed. He had to pray, to trust, and to weep. He was a Son of Man, a
true man among men. His life was brief; we have but fragmentary records
of it for three short years. In outward form it covers but a narrow
area of human experience, and large tracts of human life seem to be
unrepresented in it. Yet all ages and classes of men, in all
circumstances, however unlike those of the peasant Rabbi who died when
he was just entering mature manhood, may feel that this man comes
closer to them than all beside. Whether for stimulus for duty, or for
grace and patience in sorrow, or for restraint in enjoyment, or for the
hallowing of all circumstances and all tasks, the presence and example
of the Son of Man are sufficient. Wherever we go, we may track His
footsteps by the drops of His blood upon the sharp flints that we have
to tread. In all narrow passes, where the briars tear the wool of the
flock, we may see, left there on the thorns, what they rent from the
pure fleece of the Lamb of God that went before. The Son of Man is our
Brother and our Example.

And is it not beautiful, and does it not speak to us touchingly and
sweetly of our Lord's earnest desire to get very near us and to bring
us very near to Him, that this name, which emphasises humiliation and
weakness and the likeness to ourselves, should be the name that is
always upon His lips? Just as, if I may compare great things with
small, some teacher or philanthropist, that went away from civilised
into savage life, might leave behind him the name by which he was known
in Europe, and adopt some barbarous designation that was significant in
the language of the savage tribe to whom he was sent, and say to them:
'That is my name now, call me by that,' so this great Leader of our
souls, who has landed upon our coasts with His hands full of blessings,
His heart full of love, has taken a name that makes Him one of
ourselves, and is never wearied of speaking to our hearts, and telling
us that it is that by which He chooses to be known. It is a touch of
the same infinite condescension which prompted His coming, that makes
Him choose as His favourite and habitual designation the name of
weakness and identification, the name 'Son of Man.'

II. But now turn to what is equally distinct and clear in this title.
Here we have our Lord distinguishing Himself from us, and plainly
claiming a unique relationship to the whole world.

Just fancy how absurd it would be for one of us to be perpetually
insisting on the fact that he was a man, to be taking that as his
continual description of himself, and pressing it upon people's
attention as if there was something strange about it. The idea is
preposterous; and the very frequency and emphasis with which the name
comes from our Lord's lips, lead one to suspect that there is something
lying behind it more than appears on the surface. That impression is
confirmed and made a conviction, if you mark the article which is
prefixed, _the_ Son of Man. A Son of man is a very different idea. When
He says '_the_ Son of Man' He seems to declare that in Himself there
are gathered up all the qualities that constitute humanity; that He is,
to use modern language, the realised Ideal of manhood, the typical Man,
in whom is everything that belongs to manhood, and who stands forth as
complete and perfect. Appropriately, then, the name is continually used
with suggestions of authority and dignity contrasting with those of
humiliation. 'The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,' 'The Son of Man
hath power on earth to forgive sins' and the like. So that you cannot
get away from this, that this Man whom the whole world has conspired to
profess to admire for His gentleness, and His meekness, and His
lowliness, and His religious sanity, stood forward and said: 'I am
complete and perfect, and everything that belongs to manhood you will
find in Me.'

And it is very significant in this connection that the designation
occurs more frequently in the first three Gospels than in the fourth;
which is alleged to present higher notions of the nature and
personality of Jesus Christ than are found in the other three. There
are more instances in Matthew's Gospel in which our Lord calls Himself
the Son of Man, with all the implication of uniqueness and completeness
which that name carries; there are more even in the Gospel of the
Servant, the Gospel according to Mark, than in the Gospel of the Word
of God, the Gospel according to John. And so I think we are entitled to
say that by this name, which the testimony of all our four Gospels
makes it certain, even to the most suspicious reader, that Christ
applied to Himself, He declared His humanity, His absolutely perfect
and complete humanity.

In substance He is claiming the same thing for Himself that Paul
claimed for Him when he called Him 'the second Adam.' There have been
two men in the world, says Paul, the fallen Adam, with his infantile
and undeveloped perfections, and the Christ, with His full and complete
humanity. All other men are fragments, He is the 'entire and perfect
chrysolite.' As one of our epigrammatic seventeenth-century divines has
it, 'Aristotle is but the rubbish of an Adam,' and Adam is but the dim
outline sketch of a Jesus. Between these two there has been none. The
one Man as God meant him, the type of man, the perfect humanity, the
realised ideal, the home of all the powers of manhood, is He who
Himself claimed that place for Himself, and stepped into it with the
strange words upon His lips, 'I am meek and lowly of heart.'

'Who is this Son of Man?' Ah, brethren! 'who can bring a clean thing
out of an unclean? Not one.' A perfect Son of Man, born of a woman,
'bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh,' must be more than a Son of
Man. And that moral completeness and that ideal perfection in all the
faculties and parts of His nature which drove the betrayer to clash
down the thirty pieces of silver in the sanctuary in despair that 'he
had betrayed innocent blood'; which made Pilate wash his hands 'of the
blood of this just person'; which stopped the mouths of the adversaries
when He challenged them to convince Him of sin, and which all the world
ever since has recognised and honoured, ought surely to lead us to ask
the question, 'Who is this Son of Man?' and to answer it, as I pray we
all may answer it, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!'

This fact of His absolute completeness invests His work with an
altogether unique relationship to the rest of mankind. And so we find
the name employed upon His own lips in connections in which He desires
to set Himself forth as the single and solitary medium of all blessing
and salvation to the world—as, for instance, 'The Son of Man came to
give His life a ransom for the many'; 'Ye shall see the heavens opened,
and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.' He
is what the ladder was in the vision to the patriarch, with his head
upon the stone and the Syrian sky over him—the Medium of all
communication between earth and heaven. And that ladder which joins
heaven to earth, and brings all angels down on the solitary watchers,
comes straight down, as the sunbeams do, to every man wherever he is.
Each of us sees the shortest line from his own standing-place to the
central light, and its beams come straight to the apple of each man's
eye. So because Christ is more than a man, because He is _the_ Man, His
blessings come to each of us direct and straight, as if they had been
launched from the throne with a purpose and a message to us alone. Thus
He who is in Himself perfect manhood touches all men, and all men touch
Him, and the Son of Man, whom God hath sealed, will give to every one
of us the bread from heaven. The unique relationship which brings Him
into connection with every soul of man upon earth, and makes Him the
Saviour, Helper, and Friend of us all, is expressed when He calls
Himself the Son of Man.

III. And now one last word in regard to the predictive character of
this designation.

Even if we cannot regard it as being actually a quotation of the
prophecy in the Book of Daniel, there is an evident allusion to that
prophecy, and to the whole circle of ideas presented by it, of an
everlasting dominion, which shall destroy all antagonistic power, and
of a solemn coming for judgment of One like a Son of Man.

We find, then, the name occurring on our Lord's lips very frequently in
that class of passages with which we are so familiar, and which are so
numerous that I need not quote them to you; in which He speaks of the
second coming of the Son of Man; as, for instance, that one which
connects itself most distinctly with the Book of Daniel, the words of
high solemn import before the tribunal of the High Priest. 'Hereafter
shall ye see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and
coming in the glories of heaven'; or as when He says, 'He hath given
Him authority to execute judgment also because He is the Son of Man';
or as when the proto-martyr, with his last words, declared in sudden
burst of surprise and thrill of gladness, 'I see the heavens opened,
and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.'

Two thoughts are all that I can touch on here. The name carries with it
a blessed message of the present activity and perpetual manhood of the
risen Lord. Stephen does not see Him as all the rest of Scripture
paints Him, _sitting_ at the right hand of God, but _standing_ there.
The emblem of His sitting at the right hand of God represents
triumphant calmness in the undisturbed confidence of victory. It
declares the completeness of the work that He has done upon earth, and
that all the history of the future is but the unfolding of the
consequences of that work which by His own testimony waa finished when
He bowed His head and died. But the dying martyr sees him _standing_,
as if He had sprung to His feet in response to the cry of faith from
the first of the long train of sufferers. It is as if the Emperor upon
His seat, looking down upon the arena where the gladiators are
contending to the death, could not sit quiet amongst the flashing axes
of the lictors and the purple curtains of His throne, and see their
death-struggles, but must spring to His feet to help them, or at least
bend down with the look and with the reality of sympathy. So Christ,
the Son of Man, bearing His manhood with Him,

  'Still bends on earth a Brother's eye,'

and is the ever-present Helper of all struggling souls that put their
trust in Him.

Then as to the other and main thought here in view—the second coming of
that perfect Manhood to be our Judge. It is too solemn a subject for
human lips to say much about. It has been vulgarised, and the power
taken out of it by many well-meant attempts to impress it upon men's
hearts. But that coming is _certain_. That manhood could not end its
relationship to us with the Cross, nor yet with the slow, solemn,
upward progress which bore Him, pouring down blessings, up into the
same bright cloud that had dwelt between the cherubim and had received
Him into its mysterious recesses at the Transfiguration. That He should
come again is the only possible completion of His work.

That Judge is our Brother. So in the deepest sense we are tried by our
Peer. Man's knowledge at its highest cannot tell the moral desert of
anything that any man does. You may judge action, you may sentence for
breaches of law, you may declare a man clear of any blame for such, but
for any one to read the secrets of another heart is beyond human power;
and if He that is the Judge were only a man there would be wild work,
and many a blunder in the sentences that were given. But when we think
that it is the Son of Man that is our Judge, then we know that the
Omniscience of divinity, that ponders the hearts and reads the motives,
will be all blended with the tenderness and sympathy of humanity; that
we shall be judged by One who knows all our frame, not only with the
knowledge of a Maker, if I may so say, as from outside, but with the
knowledge of a possessor, as from within; that we shall be judged by
One who has fought and conquered in all temptations; and most blessed
of all, that we shall be judged by One with whom we have only to plead
His own work and His own love and His Cross that we may stand acquitted
before His throne.

So, brethren, in that one mighty Name all the past, present, and future
are gathered and blended together. In the past His Cross fills the
retrospect: for the future there rises up, white and solemn, His
judgment throne. 'The Son of Man _is_ come to give His life a ransom
for the many'; that is the centre point of all history. The Son of Man
_shall_ come to judge the world; that is the one thought that fills the
future. Let us lay hold by true faith on the mighty work which He has
done on the Cross, then we shall rejoice to see our Brother on the
throne, when the 'judgment is set and the books are opened.' Oh,
friends, cleave to Him ever in trust and love, in communion and
imitation, in obedience and confession, that ye may be accounted worthy
'to stand before the Son of Man' in that day!




A PARTING WARNING


'Jesus therefore said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among
you. Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not: and
he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye
have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of
light.'—JOHN xii. 35,36 (R.V.).

These are the last words of our Lord's public ministry. He afterwards
spoke only to His followers in the sweet seclusion of the sympathetic
home at Bethany, and amid the sanctities of the upper chamber. 'Yet a
little while am I with you';—the sun had all but set. Two days more,
and the Cross was reared on Calvary, but there was yet time to turn to
the light. And so His divine charity 'hoped all things,' and continued
to plead with those who had so long rejected Him. As befits a last
appeal, the words unveil the heart of Christ. They are solemn with
warning, radiant with promise, almost beseeching in their earnestness.
He loves too well not to warn, but He will not leave the bitterness of
threatening as a last savour on the palate, and so the lips, into which
grace is poured, bade farewell to His enemies with the promise and the
hope that even they may become 'the sons of light.'

The solemnity of the occasion, then, gives great force to the words;
and the remembrance of it sets us on the right track for estimating
their significance. Let us see what lessons for us there may be in
Christ's last words to the world.

I. There is, first, a self-revelation.

It is no mere grammatical pedantry that draws attention to the fact
that four times in this text does our Lord employ the definite article,
and speak of 'the light.' And that that is no mere accident is obvious
from the fact that, in the last clause of our text, where the general
idea of light is all that is meant to be emphatic, the article is
omitted. 'Yet a little while is _the_ light with you; walk while ye
have _the_ light…. While ye have _the_ light, believe in _the_ light,
that ye may be the children of light.'

So then, most distinctly here, in His final appeal to the world, He
draws back the curtain, as it were, takes away the shade that had
covered the lamp, and lets one full beam stream out for the last
impression that He leaves. Is it not profoundly significant and
impressive that then, of all times, over and over again, in the compass
of these short verses, this Galilean peasant makes the tremendous
assertion that He is what none other can be, in a solitary and
transcendent sense, _the_ Light of Mankind? Undismayed by universal
rejection, unfaltering in spite of the curling lips of incredulity and
scorn, unbroken by the near approach of certain martyrdom, He presents
Himself before the world as its Light. Nothing in the history of mad,
fanatical claims to inspiration and divine authority is to be compared
with these assertions of our Lord. He is the fontal Source, He says, of
all illumination; He stands before the whole race, and claims to be
'the Master-Light of all our seeing.' Whatsoever ideas of clearness of
knowledge, of rapture of joy, of whiteness of purity, are symbolised by
that great emblem, He declares that He manifests them all to men.
Others may shine; but they are, as He said, 'lights kindled,' and
therefore 'burning.' Others may shine, but they have caught their
radiance from Him. All teachers, all helpers, all thinkers draw their
inspiration, if they have any, from Him, in whom was life, and the Life
was the Light of men.

There has been blazing in the heavens of late a new star, that burst
upon astonished astronomers in a void spot; but its brilliancy, though
far transcending that of our sun, soon began to wane, and before long,
apparently, there will be blackness again where there was blackness
before. So all lights but His are temporary as well as derived, and men
'willing for a season to rejoice' in the fleeting splendours, and to
listen to the teacher of a day, lose the illumination of his presence
and guidance of his thoughts as the ages roll on. But _the_ Light is
'not for an age, but for all time.'

Now, brethren, this is Christ's estimate of Himself. I dwell not on it
for the purpose of seeking to exhaust its depth of significance. In it
there lies the assertion that He, and He only, is the source of all
valid knowledge of the deepest sort concerning God and men, and their
mutual relations. In it lie the assertion that He, and He only, is the
source of all true gladness that may blend with our else darkened
lives, and the further assertion that from Him, and from Him alone, can
flow to us the purity that shall make us pure. We have to turn to that
Man close by His Cross, on whom while He spoke the penumbra of the
eclipse of death was beginning to show itself, and to say to Him what
the Psalmist said of old to the Jehovah whom he knew, and whom we
recognise as indwelling in Jesus: 'With Thee is the fountain of life.
Thou makest us to drink of the river of Thy pleasures. In Thy light
shall we see light.'

So Christ thought of Himself; so Christ would have as to think of Him.
And it becomes a question for us how, if we refuse to accept that claim
of a solitary, underived, eternal, and universal power of illuminating
mankind, we can save His character for the veneration of the world. We
cannot go picking and choosing amongst the Master's words, and say
'This is historical, and that mythical.' We cannot select some of them,
and leave others on one side. You must take the whole Christ if you
take any Christ. And the whole Christ is He who, within sight of
Calvary, and in the face of all but universal rejection, lifted up His
voice, and, as His valediction to the world, declared, 'I am the Light
of the world.' So He says to us. Oh that we all might cast ourselves
before Him, with the cry, 'Lighten our darkness, O Lord, we beseech
Thee!'

II. Secondly, we have here a double exhortation.

'Walk in the light; believe in the light.' These two sum up all our
duties; or rather, unveil for us the whole fullness of the possible
privileges and blessings of which our relation to that light is
capable. It is obvious that the latter of them is the deeper in idea,
and the prior in order of sequence. There must be the 'belief' in the
light before there is the 'walk' in the light. Walking includes the
ideas of external activity and of progress. And so, putting these two
exhortations together, we get the whole of Christianity considered as
subjective. 'Believe in the light; trust in the light,' and then 'walk'
in it. A word, then, about each of these branches of this double
exhortation.

'Trust in the light.' The figure seems to be dropped at first sight;
for it wants little faith to believe in the sunshine at midday; and
when the light is pouring out, how can a man but see it? But the
apparent incongruity of the metaphor points to something very deep in
regard to the spiritual side. We cannot but believe in the light that
meets the eye when it meets it, but it is possible for a man to blind
himself to the shining of this light. Therefore the exhortation is
needed—'Believe in the light,' for only by believing it can you see it.
Just as the eye is the organ of sight, just as its nerves are sensitive
to the mysterious finger of the beam, just as on its mirroring surface
impinges the gentle but mighty force that has winged its way across all
the space between us and the sun, and yet falls without hurting, so
faith, the 'inward eye which makes the bliss' of the solitary soul, is
the one organ by which you and I can see the light. 'Seeing is
believing,' says the old proverb. That is true in regard to the
physical. Believing is seeing, is much rather the way to put it in
regard to the spiritual and divine.

Only as we trust the light do we see the light. Unless you and I put
our confidence in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, we have
no adequate knowledge of Him and no clear vision of Him. We must know
that we may love; but we must love that we may know. We must believe
that we may see. True, we must see that we may believe, but the
preliminary vision which precedes belief is slight and dim as compared
with the solidity and the depth of assurance with which we apprehend
the reality and know the lustre of Him whom our faith has grasped. You
will never know the glory of the light, nor the sweetness with which it
falls upon the gazing eye, until you turn your face to that Master, and
so receive on your susceptible and waiting heart the warmth and the
radiance which He only can bestow. 'Believe in the light.' Trust it; or
rather, trust Him who is it. He cannot deceive. This light from heaven
can never lead astray. Absolutely we may rely upon it; unconditionally
we must follow it. Lean upon Him—to take another metaphor—with all your
weight. His arm is strong to bear the burden of our weaknesses,
sorrows, and, above all, our sins. 'While ye have light, trust the
light.'

But then that is not enough. Man, with his double relations, must have
an active and external as well as an inward and contemplative life. And
so our Lord, side by side with the exhortation on which I have been
touching, puts the other one, 'Walk in the light.' Our inward emotions,
however deep and precious, however real the affiance, however
whole-hearted the love, are maimed and stunted, and not what the light
requires, unless there follows upon them the activity of the walk. What
do we get the daylight for? To sit and gaze at it? By no means; but
that it may guide us upon our path and help us in all our work. And so
all Christian people need ever to remember that Jesus Christ has
indissolubly bound together these two phases of our relation to Him as
the light of life-inward and blessed contemplation by faith and outward
practical activity. To walk is, of course, the familiar metaphor for
the external life of man, and all our deeds are to be in conformity
with the Light, and in communion with Him. This is the deepest
designation, perhaps, of the true character of a Christian life in its
external aspect—that it walks in Christ, doing nothing but as His light
shines, and ever bearing along with it conscious fellowship with Him
who is thus the guiding and irradiating and gladdening and sanctifying
life of our lives, '_Walk_ in the light as He _is_ in the light.' Our
days fleet and change; His are stable and the same. For, although these
words which I have quoted, in their original application refer to God
the Father, they are no less true about Him who rests at the right hand
of God, and is one light with Him. He _is_ in the light. We may
approximate to that stable and calm radiance, even though our lives are
passed through changing scenes, and effort and struggle are their
characteristics. And oh! how blessed, brother, such a life will be, all
gladdened by the unsetting and unclouded sunshine that even in the
shadiest places shines, and turns the darkness of the valley of the
shadow of death into solemn light; teaching gloom to glow with a hidden
sun!

But there is not only the idea of activity here, there is the further
notion of progress. Unless Christian people to their faith add work,
and have both their faith and their consequent work in a continual
condition of progress and growth, there is little reason to believe
that they apprehend the light at all. If you trust the light you will
walk in it; and if your days are not in conformity nor in communion
with Him, and are not advancing nearer and nearer to the central blaze,
then it becomes you to ask yourselves whether you have verily seen at
all, or trusted at all, 'the Light of life.'

III. Thirdly, there is here a warning.

'Walk whilst ye have the light, lest the darkness come upon you.' That
is the summing up of the whole history of that stiff-necked and
marvellous people. For what has all the history of Israel been since
that day but groping in the wilderness without any pillar of fire? But
there is more than that in it. Christ gives us this one solemn warning
of what falls on us if we turn away from Him. Rejected light is the
parent of the densest darkness, and the man who, having the light, does
not trust it, piles around himself thick clouds of obscurity and gloom,
far more doleful and impenetrable than the twilight that glimmers round
the men who have never known the daylight of revelation. The history of
un-Christian and anti-Christian Christendom is a terrible commentary
upon these words of the Master, and the cries that we hear all round us
to-day from men who will not follow the light of Christ, and moan or
boast that they dwell in agnostic darkness, tell us that, of all the
eclipses that can fall upon heart and mind, there is none so dismal or
thunderously dark as that of the men who, having seen the light of
Christ in the sky, have turned from it and said, 'It is no light, it is
only a mock sun.' Brethren, tempt not that fate.

And if Christian men and women do not advance in their knowledge and
their conformity, like clouds of darkness will fall upon them. None is
so hopeless as the unprogressive Christian, none so far away as those
who have been brought nigh and have never come any nigher. If you
believe the light, see that you growingly trust and walk in it, else
darkness will come upon you, and you will not know whither you go.

IV. And lastly, there is here a hope and a promise.

'That ye may be the sons of light.'

Faith and obedience turn a man into the likeness of that in which he
trusts. If we trust Jesus we open our hearts to Him; and if we open our
hearts to Him He will come in. If you are in a darkened room, what have
you to do in order to have it filled with glad sunshine? Open the
shutters and pull up the blinds, and the light will do all the rest. If
you trust the light, it will rush in and fill every crevice and cranny
of your hearts. Faith and obedience will mould us, by their natural
effect, into the resemblance of that on which we lean. As one of the
old German mystics said, 'What thou lovest, that thou dost become.' And
it is blessedly true. The same principle makes Christians like Christ,
and makes idolaters like their gods. 'They that make them are like unto
them; so is every one that trusteth in them,' says one of the Psalms.
'They followed after vanity and are become vain,' says the chronicler
of Israel's defections. 'We with unveiled faces beholding'—or
mirroring—'the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.'
Trust the light and you become 'sons of the light.'

And so, dear friends, all of us may hope that by degrees, as the reward
of faith and of walking, we still may bear the image of the heavenly,
even here on earth. While as yet we only believe in the light, we may
participate in its transforming power, like some far-off planet on the
utmost bounds of some solar system, that receives faint and small
supplies of light and warmth, through a thick atmosphere of vapour, and
across immeasurable spaces. But we have the assurance that we shall be
carried nearer our centre, and then, like the planets that are closer
to the sun than our earth is, we shall feel the fuller power of the
heat, and be saturated with the glory of the light. 'We shall see Him
as He is'; and then we too 'shall blaze forth like the sun in the
kingdom of our Father.'




THE LOVE OF THE DEPARTING CHRIST


'… When Jesus knew 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.'—JOHN xiii. 1.

The latter half of St. John's Gospel, which begins with these words, is
the Holy of Holies of the New Testament. Nowhere else do the blended
lights of our Lord's superhuman dignity and human tenderness shine with
such lambent brightness. Nowhere else is His speech at once so simple
and so deep. Nowhere else have we the heart of God so unveiled to us.
On no other page, even of the Bible, have so many eyes, glistening with
tears, looked and had the tears dried. The immortal words which Christ
spoke in that upper chamber are His highest self-revelation in speech,
even as the Cross to which they led up is His most perfect
self-revelation in act.

To this most sacred part of the New Testament my text is the
introduction. It unveils to us gleams of Christ's heart, and does what
the Evangelists very seldom venture to do, viz. gives us some sort of
analysis of the influences which then determined the flow and the shape
of our Lord's love.

Many good commentators prefer to read the last words of my text, 'He
loved them unto the _uttermost_' rather than 'unto the _end_'—so taking
them to express the depth and degree rather than the permanence and
perpetuity of our Lord's love. And that seems to me to be by far the
worthier and the nobler meaning, as well as the one which is borne out
by the usual signification of the expression in other Greek authors. It
is much to know that the emotions of these last moments did not
interrupt Christ's love. It is even more to know that in some sense
they perfected it, giving even a greater vitality to its tenderness,
and a more precious sweetness to its manifestations. So understood, the
words explain for us why it was that in the sanctity of the upper
chamber there ensued the marvellous act of the foot-washing, the
marvellous discourses which follow, and the climax of all, that
High-priestly prayer. They give utterance to a love which Christ's
consciousness at that solemn hour tended to shapen and to deepen.

So, under the Evangelist's guidance, we may venture to gaze at least a
little way into these depths, and with all reverence to try and see
something at all events of the fringe and surface of the love 'which
passeth knowledge.' 'Jesus, knowing that His hour was come, that He
should depart out of the world unto the Father, having loved His own
which were in the world, loved them then unto the uttermost.'

My object will be best accomplished by simply following the guidance of
the words before us, and asking you to look first at that love as a
love which was not interrupted, but perfected by the prospect of
separation.

I. It would take us much too far away, however interesting the
contemplation might be, to dwell with any particularity upon our Lord's
consciousness as it is here set forth in that 'He knew that His hour
was come, that He should depart out of the world unto the Father.' But
I can scarcely avoid noticing, though only in a few sentences, the
salient points of that Christ-consciousness as it is set forth here.

'He knew that His hour was come.' All His life was passed under the
consciousness of a divine necessity laid upon Him, to which He lovingly
and cheerfully yielded Himself. On His lips there are no words more
significant, and few more frequent, than that divine 'I must!' 'It
behoves the Son of Man' to do this, that, and the other—yielding to the
necessity imposed by the Father's will, and sealed by His own loving
resolve to be the Saviour of the world. And in like manner, all through
His life He declares Himself conscious of the hours which mark the
several crises and stages of His mission. They come to Him and He
discerns them. No external power can coerce Him to any act till the
hour come. No external power can hinder Him from the act when it comes.
When the hour strikes He hears the phantom sound of the bell; and,
hearing, He obeys. And thus, at the last and supreme moment, to Him it
dawned unquestionable and irrevocable. How did He meet it? Whilst on
the one hand there was the shrinking of which we have such pathetic
testimony in the broken prayer that He Himself amended—'Father! save Me
from this hour…. Yet for this cause came I unto this hour,'—there is a
strange, triumphant joy, blending with the shrinking, that the decisive
hour is at last come.

Mark, too, the form which the consciousness took—not that now the hour
had come for suffering or death or bearing the sins of the world—all
which aspects of it were nevertheless present to Him, as we know; but
that now He was soon to leave all the world beneath Him and to return
to the Father.

The terror, the agony, the shame, the mysterious burden of a world's
sins were now to be laid upon Him—all these elements are submerged, as
it were, and become less conspicuous than the one thought of leaving
behind all the limitations, and the humiliations, and the compelled
association with evil which, like a burning brand laid upon a tender
skin, was an hourly and momentary agony to Him, and soaring above them
all, unto His own calm home, His habitation from eternity with the
Father, as He had been before the world was. How strange this blending
of shrinking and of eagerness, of sorrow and of joy, of human trembling
consciousness of impending death, and of triumphant consciousness of
the approach of the hour when the Son of Man, even in His bitterest
agony and deepest humiliation, should, paradoxically, be glorified, and
should 'leave the world to go unto the Father'!

We cannot enter with any particularity or depth into this marvellous
and unique consciousness, but it is set forth here—and that is the
point to which especially I desire to turn your attention—as the basis
and the reason for a special tenderness softening His voice, and taking
possession of His heart, as He thought of the impending separation.

And is that not beautiful? And does it not help us to realise how truly
'bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh,' and bearing a heart
thrilling with all innocent human emotions that divine Saviour was? We,
too, have known what it is to feel, because of approaching separation
from dear ones, the need for a tenderer tenderness. At such moments the
masks of use and wont drop away, and we are eager to find some word, to
put our whole souls into some look, our whole strength into one
clinging embrace that may express all our love, and may be a joy to two
hearts for ever after to remember. The Master knew that longing, and
felt the pain of separation; and He, too, yielded to the human impulse
which makes the thought of parting the key to unlock the hidden
chambers of the most jealously guarded heart, and let the shyest of its
emotions come out for once into the daylight. So, 'knowing that His
hour was come, He loved them unto the uttermost.'

But there is not only in this a wonderful expression of the true
humanity of the Christ, but along with that a suggestion of something
more sacred and deeper still. For surely amidst all the parting scenes
that the world's literature has enshrined, amidst all the examples of
self-oblivion at the last moment, when a martyr has been the comforter
of his weeping friends, there are none that without degradation to this
can be set by the side of this supreme and unique instance of
self-oblivion. Did not Christ, for the sake of that handful of poor
people, first and directly, and for the rest of us afterwards, of
course, secondarily and indirectly, so suppress all the natural
emotions of these last moments as that their absolute absence is unique
and singular, and points onwards to something more, viz. that this Man
who was susceptible of all human affections, and loved us with a love
which is not merely high above our grasp, absolute, perfect, changeless
and divine, but with a love like our own human affection, had also more
than a man's heart to give us, and gave us more, when, that He might
comfort and sustain, He crushed down Himself and went to the Cross with
words of tenderness and consolation and encouragement for others upon
His lips? Knowing all that was lying before Him, He was neither
absorbed nor confounded, but carried a heart at leisure to love even
then 'unto the uttermost.'

And if the prospect only sharpened and perfected, nor interrupted for
one instant the flow of His love, the reality has no power to do aught
else. In the glory, when He reached it, He poured out the same loving
heart; and to-day He looks down upon us with the same Face that bent
over the table in the upper room, and the same tenderness flows to us.
When John saw his Master next, after His Ascension, amidst the glories
of the vision in his rocky Patmos, though His face was as the sun
shineth in his strength, it was the old face. Though His hand bore the
stars in a cluster, it was the hand that had been pierced with the
nails. Though the breast was girded with the golden girdle of
sovereignty and of priesthood, it was the breast on which John's happy
head had lain; and though the 'Voice was as the sound of many waters,'
it soothed itself to a murmur, gentle as that with which the tideless
sea about him rippled upon the silvery sand when He said, 'Fear not … I
am the First and the Last.' Knowing that He goes to the Father, He
loves to the uttermost, and being with the Father, He still so loves.

II. And now I must, with somewhat less of detail, dwell upon the other
points which this text brings out for us. It suggests to us next that
we have in the love of Jesus Christ a love which is faithful to the
obligations of its own past.

Having loved, He loves. Because He had been a certain thing, therefore
He is and He shall be that same. That is an argument that implies
divinity. About nothing human can we say that because it has been
therefore it shall be. Alas! about much that is human we have to say
the converse, that because it has been, therefore it will cease to be.
And though, blessed be God! they are few and they are poor who have had
no experience in their lives of human hearts whose love in the past has
been such that it manifestly is for ever, yet we cannot with the same
absolute confidence say about one another, even about the dearest,
'Having loved, he loves.' But we can say so about Christ. There is no
exhaustion in that great stream that pours out from His heart; no
diminution in its flow.

They tell us that the central light of our system, that great sun
itself, pouring out its rays exhausts its warmth, and were it not
continually replenished, must gradually, and even though continually
replenished, will ultimately cease to blaze, and be a dead, cold mass
of ashes. But this central Light, this heart of Christ, which is the
Sun of the World, will endure like the sun, and after the sun is cold,
His love will last for ever. He pours it out and has none the less to
give. There is no bankruptcy in His expenditure, no exhaustion in His
effort, no diminution in His stores. 'Thy mercy endureth for ever';
'Thou hast loved, therefore Thou wilt love' is an inference for time
and for eternity, on which we may build and rest secure.

III. Then, still further, we have here this love suggested as being a
love which has special tenderness towards its own. 'Having loved His
own, He loved them to the uttermost.'

These poor men who, with all their errors, did cleave to Him; who, in
some dim way, understood somewhat of His greatness and His
sweetness—and do you and I do more?—who, with all their sins, yet were
true to Him in the main; who had surrendered very much to follow Him,
and had identified themselves with Him, were they to have no special
place in His heart because in that heart the whole world lay? Is there
any reason why we should be afraid of saying that the universal love of
Jesus Christ, which gathers into His bosom all mankind, does fall with
special tenderness and sweetness upon those who have made Him theirs
and have surrendered themselves to be His? Surely it must be that He
has special nearness to those who love Him; surely it is reasonable
that He should have special delight in those who try to resemble Him;
surely it is only what one might expect of Him that He should in a
special manner honour the drafts, so to speak, of those who have
confidence in Him, and are building their whole lives upon Him. Surely,
because the sun shines down upon dunghills and all impurities, that is
no reason why it should not lie with special brightness on the polished
mirror that reflects its lustre. Surely, because Jesus Christ
loves—Blessed be His name!—the publicans and the harlots and the
outcasts and the sinners, that is no reason why He should not bend with
special tenderness over those who, loving Him, try to serve Him, and
have set their whole hopes upon Him. The rainbow strides across the
sky, but there is a rainbow in every little dewdrop that hangs
glistening on the blades of grass. There is nothing limited, nothing
sectional, nothing narrow in the proclamation of a special tenderness
of Christ towards His own, when you accompany with that truth this
other, that all men are besought by Him to come into that circle of
'His own,' and that only they themselves shut any out therefrom.
Blessed be His name! the whole world dwells in His love, but there is
an inner chamber in which He discovers all His heart to those who find
in that heart their Heaven and their all. 'He came to His own,' in the
wider sense of the word, and 'His own received Him not'; but also,
'having loved His own He loved them unto the end.' There are textures
and lives which can only absorb some of the rays of light in the
spectrum; some that are only capable of taking, so to speak, the violet
rays of judgment and of wrath, and some who open their hearts for the
ruddy brightness at the other end of the line. Do you see to it,
brethren, that you are of that inner circle who receive the whole
Christ into their hearts, and to whom He can unfold the fullness of His
love.

IV. And, lastly, my text suggests that love of Christ as being made
specially tender by the necessities and the dangers of His friends. 'He
loved His own which were in the world,' and so loving them, 'loved them
to the uttermost.'

We have, running through these precious discourses which follow my
text, many allusions to the separation which was to ensue, and to His
leaving His followers in circumstances of peculiar peril, defenceless
and solitary. 'I come unto Thee, and am no more in the world,' says He
in the final High-priestly prayer, 'but these are in the world. Holy
Father, keep them through Thine own name.' The same contrast between
the certain security of the Shepherd and the troubled perils of the
scattered flock seems to be in the words of my text, and suggests a
sweet and blessed reason for the special tenderness with which He
looked upon them. As a dying father on his deathbed may yearn over
orphans that he is leaving defenceless, so Christ is here represented
as conscious of an accession even to the tender longings of His heart,
when He thought of the loneliness and the dangers to which His
followers were to be exposed.

Ah! It seems a harsh contrast between the Emperor, sitting throned
there between the purple curtains, and the poor athletes wrestling in
the arena below. It seems strange to think that a loving Master has
gone up into the mountain, and has left His disciples to toil in rowing
on the stormy sea of life; but the contrast is only apparent. For you
and I, if we love and trust Him, are with Him 'in the heavenly places'
even whilst we toil here, and He is with us, working with us, even
whilst He 'sitteth at the right hand of God.'

We may be sure of this, brethren, that that love ever increases its
manifestations according to our deepening necessities. The darker the
night the more lustrous the stars. The deeper, the narrower, the
savager, the Alpine gorge, usually the fuller and the swifter the
stream that runs through it. And the more that enemies and fears gather
round about us, the sweeter will be the accents of our Comforter's
voice, and the fuller will be the gifts of tenderness and grace with
which He draws near to us. Our sorrows, dangers, necessities, are doors
through which His love can come nigh.

So, dear friends, we have had experience of sweet and transient human
love; we have had experience of changeful and ineffectual love; turn
away from them all to this immortal, deep heart of Christ's, welling
over with a love which no change can affect, which no separation can
diminish, which no sin can provoke, which becomes greater and tenderer
as our necessities increase, and ask Him to fill your hearts with that,
that you may 'know the length and breadth and depth and height of that
love which passeth knowledge,' and so 'be filled with all the fullness
of God.'




THE SERVANT-MASTER


'Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and
that He was come from God, and went to God; He riseth from supper, and
laid aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself. After
that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples'
feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.'—JOHN
xiii. 3-5.

It has been suggested that the dispute as to 'which was the greatest,'
which broke the sanctities of the upper chamber, was connected with the
unwillingness of each of the Apostles to perform the menial office of
washing the feet of his companions. They had come in from Bethany, and
needed the service. But apparently it was omitted, and although we can
scarcely suppose that the transcendent act which is recorded in my text
was performed at the beginning of the meal, yet I think we shall not be
wrong if we see in it a reference to the neglected service.

The Evangelist who tells us of the dispute, and does not tell us of the
foot-washing, preserves a sentence which finds its true meaning only in
this incident, 'I am among you as He that serveth.' And although John
is the only recorder of this pathetic incident, there are allusions in
other parts of Scripture which seem to hint at it. As, for instance,
when Paul speaks of 'taking upon Him the form of a servant'; and still
more strikingly when Peter employs the remarkable word, which he does
employ in his exhortation, 'Be ye clothed with humility.' For the word
rendered there 'clothed' occurs only in that one place in Scripture,
and means literally the putting on of a slave's costume. One can
scarcely help, then, seeing in these three passages to which I have
referred echoes of this incident which John alone preserves to us. And
so we get at once a hint of the harmony and of the incompleteness of
the Gospel records.

I. Consider the motives of this act.

Now that is ground upon which the Evangelists very seldom enter. They
tell us what Christ did, but very rarely do they give us any glimpses
into why He did it. But this section of the Gospel is remarkable for
its full and careful analysis of what Christ's impelling motives were
in the final acts of His life. How did John find out why Christ did
this deed? Perhaps he who had 'leaned upon His bosom at supper,' and
was evidently very closely associated with Him, may, in some unrecorded
hour of intimate communion during the forty days between the
Resurrection and the Ascension, have heard from the Master the
exposition of His motives. But more probably, I think, the long years
of growing likeness to his Lord, and of meditation upon the depth of
meaning in the smallest events that his faithful memory recalled,
taught him to understand Christ's purpose and motives. 'The secret of
the Lord is with them that fear Him,' and the liker we get to our
Master and the more we are filled with His Spirit, the more easy will
it be for us to divine the purpose and the motives of His actions,
whether as they are recorded in the Scripture or as they come to us in
the experience of daily life.

But, passing that point, I desire for a moment to fix your attention on
the twofold key to our Lord's action which is given in this context.
There is, first of all, in the first verse of the chapter, a general
exposition of what was uppermost in His mind and heart during the whole
of the period in the upper room. The act in our text, and the wonderful
words which follow in the subsequent chapters, crowned by that great
intercessory prayer, seem to me to be all explained for us by this
first unveiling of His motives. 'When Jesus knew 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 then the words of my text, which apply more specifically to the
single incident with which they are brought into connection, tell us in
addition why this one manifestation of Christ's love was given.
'Knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that
He was come from God, and went to God.' There, then, are two
explanations of motive, the one covering a wider area than the other,
but both converging on the incident before us.

The first of these is just this—the consciousness of impending
separation moved Christ to a more than ordinarily tender manifestation
of His love. For the rendering which you will find in the margin of the
Revised Version, 'He loved them _to the uttermost_,' seems to me to be
truer to the Evangelist's meaning than the other, 'He loved them unto
the end.' For it was more to John's purpose to tell us that the shadow
of the Cross only brought to the surface in more blessed and wonderful
representation the deep love of His heart, than simply to tell us that
that shadow did not stop its flow. It is much to know that all through
His sorrow He continued to love; it is far more to know that the sorrow
sharpened its poignancy, and deepened its depth, and made more tender
its tenderness.

How near to the man Christ that thought brings us! Do we not all know
the impulse to make parting moments tender moments? The masks of use
and wont drop off; the reticence which we, perhaps wisely, ordinarily
cultivate in regard to our deepest feelings melts away. We yearn to
condense all our unspoken love into some one word, act, look, or
embrace, which it may afterwards be life to two hearts to remember. And
Jesus Christ felt this. Because He was going away He could not but pour
out Himself yet more completely than in the ordinary tenor of His life.
The earthquake lays bare hidden veins of gold, and the heart opens
itself out when separation impends. We shall never understand the works
of Jesus Christ if we do as we are all apt to do, think of them as
having only a didactic and doctrinal purpose. We must remember that
there is in Him the true play of a human heart, and that it was to
relieve His own love, as well as to teach these men their duty, that he
rose from the supper, and prepared Himself to wash the disciples' feet.

Then, on the other hand, the other motive which is brought by the
Evangelists more immediately into connection with this incident is,
'knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that
He was come from God, and went to God.'

The consciousness of the highest dignity impels to the lowliest
submission. 'All things given into His hands,' means universal and
absolute dominion. 'That He was come from God,' means pre-existence,
voluntary incarnation, an eternal divine nature, and unbroken communion
with the Father. 'That He went to God,' means a voluntary departure
from this low world, and a return to 'His own calm home, His habitation
from eternity.'

And, gathered all together, the phrases imply His absolute
consciousness of His divine nature. It was that that sent Him with the
towel round His loins to wash the foul feet of the pedestrians who had
come by the dusty and hot way from Bethany, and through all the
abominations of an Eastern city, into the upper chamber.

This was He who from the beginning 'was with God, and was God.' This
was He who was the Lord of Death, Victor over the grave. This was He
who by His own power ascended up on high, and reigns on the throne of
the universe to-day. This was He whose breast the same Evangelist had
seen before he wrote his Gospel, 'girded with the golden girdle' of
priesthood and of sovereignty; and holding, in the hands that had laid
the towel on the disciples' feet, the seven stars.

Oh, brethren! if we believed our creeds, how our hearts would melt with
wonder and awe that He who was so high stooped so low! 'Knowing that He
came from God, and went to God,' and that even when He was kneeling
there before these men, 'the Father had given all things into His
hands,' what did He do? Triumph? Show His majesty? Flash His power?
Demand service? 'Girded Himself with a towel and washed His disciples'
feet'!

The consciousness of loftiness does not alone avail to explain the
transcendent lowliness. You need the former motive to be joined with
it, because it is only love which bends loftiness to service, and turns
the consciousness of superiority into yearning to divest oneself of the
superiorities that separate, and to emphasise the emotions which unite.

II. The detailed completeness of the act.

The remarkable particularity of the account of the stages of the
humiliation suggests the eye-witness. John carried them all in his mind
ineffaceably, and long, long years after that memorable hour we hear
him recalling each detail of the scene. We can see the little group
startled by the disturbance of the order of the meal as He rose from
the table, and the hushed wonder and the open-lipped expectation with
which they watched to see what the next step would be. He rises from
the table and divests Himself of the upper garments which impeded
movement. 'What will He do next?' He takes the basin, standing there to
be ready for washing the apostles' feet, but unused, and not even
filled with water. He fills it Himself, asking none to help Him. He
girds the towel round Him; and then, perhaps, begins with the betrayer;
at any rate, not with Peter.

Cannot you see them, as they look? Do not you feel the solemnity of the
detailed particular account of each step?

And may we not also say that all is a parable, or illustration, on a
lower level, of the very same principles which were at work in the
mightier fact of the greater condescension of His 'becoming flesh and
dwelling among us'? He 'rose from the table,' as He rose from His place
in 'the bosom of the Father.' He disturbed the meal as He broke the
festivities of the heavens. He divested Himself of His garments, as 'He
thought not equality with God a thing to be worn eagerly'; and 'He
girded Himself with the towel,' as He put on the weakness of flesh.
Himself He filled the basin, by His own work providing the means of
cleansing; and Himself applied the cleansing to the feet of those who
were with Him. It is all a working out of the same double motive which
drew Him downwards to our earth. The reason why He stooped, with His
hands to wash the disciples' feet, is the same as the reason why He had
hands to wash with—viz., that knowing Himself to be high over all, and
loving all, He chose to become one with us, that we might become like
unto Him. So the details of the act are a parable of His incarnation
and death.

III. And then, still further, note the purpose of the deed.

Now although I have said that we never rightly understand our Lord's
actions if we are always looking for dogmatic or doctrinal purposes,
and thinking of them rather as being lectures, and sometimes rebukes in
act, than as being the outgush of His emotions and His human-divine
nature, yet we have also to take into account their moral and spiritual
lessons. His acts are words and His words are acts. And although the
main and primary purpose of this incident, in so far as it had any
other purpose than to relieve Christ's own love by manifesting itself,
and to comfort the disciples' hearts by the tender manifestation, was
to teach them their duty, as we shall presently see, yet the special
aspect of cleansing, which comes out so emphatically and prominently in
the episode of Peter's refusal, is to be carried all along through the
interpretation of the incident. This was the reason why Jesus Christ
came from heaven and assumed flesh, and this was the reason why Jesus
Christ, assuming flesh, bowed Himself to this menial office—to make men
clean.

I venture to say that we never understand Jesus Christ and His work
until we recognise this as its prominent purpose, to cleanse us from
sin. An inadequate conception of what we need, shallow, superficial
views of the gravity and universality and obstinacy of the fact of sin,
are an impenetrable veil between us and all real understanding of Jesus
Christ. There is no adequate motive for such an astounding fact as the
incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of God, except the purpose of
redeeming the world. If you do not believe that you—you individually,
and all of us your brethren—need to be cleansed, you will find it hard
to believe in the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ. If you have
been down into the depths of your own heart, and found out what
tremendous, diabolic power your own evil nature and sin have upon you,
then you will not be content with anything less than the incarnate God
who stoops from heaven to bear the burden of your sin, and to take it
all away. If you want to understand why He laid aside His garments and
took the servile form of our manhood, the appeal of man's sin to His
love and the answer of His Divine condescension are the only
explanation.

Again, let me remind you that there is no cleansing without Christ. Can
you do it for yourselves, do you think? There is an old proverb, 'One
hand washes the other.' That is true about stains on the flesh. It is
not true about stains on our spirits. Nobody can do it for us but Jesus
Christ alone. He kneels before us, having the right and the power to
wash us because He has died for us. Kings of England used to touch for
'the king's evil,' and lay their pure fingers upon feculent masses of
corruption. Our King's touch is sovereign for the corruption and
incipient putrefaction of our sin; and there is no power in heaven or
earth that will make a man clean except the power of Jesus Christ. It
is either Jesus Christ or filthiness.

If I might pass from my text for one moment, I would remind you of the
episode which immediately follows, and suggest that if Jesus Christ is
not cleansing us He is nothing to us. 'If I wash thee not, thou hast no
part in Me.' I know, of course, that it is possible to have partial,
rudimentary, and sometimes reverent conceptions of that Lord without
recognising in Him the great 'Fountain opened for sin and for
uncleanness.' But I am sure of this, that there is no real, living
possession of Jesus Christ such as men's souls need, and such as will
outlast the disintegrating influences of death, unless it be such a
possession of Him as appropriates for its own, primarily, His cleansing
power. First of all He must cleanse, and then all other aspects of His
glory, and gifts of His grace, will pour into our hearts.

No understanding of Christ, then, without the recognition that
cleansing is the purpose and the vindication of His incarnation and
sacrifice; no cleansing without Christ; no Christ worth calling by the
name without cleansing.

IV. And so, lastly, note the pattern in this act.

You will remember that it is followed by solemn words spoken after He
had taken His garments and resumed His place at the table, in which
there blended, in the most wonderful fashion, the consciousness of
authority, both as Teacher of truth and as Guide of life, and the
sweetest and most loving lowliness. In them Jesus prescribed the
wonderful act of His condescending love and cleansing power as the law
of the Christian life. There are too many of us who profess to be quite
willing to trust to Jesus Christ as the Cleanser of our souls who are
not nearly so willing to accept His Example as the pattern for our
lives; and I would have you note, as an extremely remarkable point,
that all the New Testament references to our Lord as being our Example
are given in immediate connection with His passion. The very part of
His life which we generally regard as being most absolutely unique and
inimitable is the fact in His life which Apostles and Evangelists
select as the one to set before us for our example.

Do you ask if any man can copy the sufferings of Jesus Christ? In
regard to their virtue and efficacy, No. In regard to their motive—in
one aspect, No; in another aspect, Yes. In regard to the spirit that
impelled Him we may copy Him. The smallest trickle of water down a city
gutter will carve out of the mud at its side little banks and cliffs,
and exhibit all the phenomena of erosion on the largest scale, as the
Mississippi does over half a continent, and the tiniest little wave in
a basin will fall into the same curves as the billows of mid-ocean. You
and I, in our little lives, may even aspire to 'do as I have done to
you.'

The true use of superiority is service. _Noblesse oblige_! Bank,
wealth, capacity, talents, all things are given to us that we may use
them to the last particle for our fellows. Only when the world and
society have awakened to that great truth which the towel-girded,
kneeling Christ has taught us, will society be organised on the
principles that God meant.

But, further, the highest form of service is to cleanse. Cleansing is
always dirty work for the cleaners, as every housemaid knows. You
cannot make people clean by scolding them, by lecturing them, by
patronising them. You have to go down into the filth if you mean to
lift them out of it; and leave your smelling-bottles behind; and think
nothing repulsive if your stooping to it may save a brother.

The only way by which we can imitate that example is by, first of all,
participating in it for ourselves. We must, first of all, have the
Cross as our trust, before it can become our pattern and our law. We
must first say, 'Lord! not my feet only, but also my hands and my
head,' and then, in the measure in which we ourselves have received the
cleansing benediction, we shall be impelled and able to lay our gentle
hands on foulness and leprosy; and to say to all the impure, 'Jesus
Christ, who hath cleansed _me_, makes _thee_ clean.'




THE DISMISSAL OF JUDAS


'… Then said Jesus unto Judas, That thou doest, do quickly.'—JOHN xiii.
27.

When our Lord gave the morsel, dipped in the dish, to Judas, only John
knew the significance of the act. But if we supplement the narrative
here with that given by Matthew, we shall find that, accompanying the
gift of the sop, was a brief dialogue in which the betrayer, with
unabashed front, hypocritically said, 'Lord! Is it I?' and heard the
solemn, sad answer, 'Thou sayest!' Two things, then, appealed to him at
the moment: one, the conviction that he was discovered; the other, the
wonderful assurance that he was still loved, for the gift of the morsel
was a token of friendliness. He shut his heart against them both; and
as he shut his heart against Christ he opened it to the devil. So
'after the sop Satan entered into him.' At that moment a soul committed
suicide; and none of those that sat by, with the exception of Christ
and the 'disciple whom He loved,' so much as dreamed of the tragedy
going on before their eyes.

I know not that there are anywhere words more weighty and wonderful
than those of our text. And I desire to try if I can at all make you
feel as I feel, their solemn signification and force. 'That thou doest,
do quickly.'

I. I hear in them, first, the voice of despairing love abandoning the
conflict.

If I have rightly construed the meaning of the incident, this is the
plain meaning of it. And you will observe that the Revised Version,
more accurately and closely rendering the words of our text, begins
with a '_Therefore_.' 'Therefore said Jesus unto him,' because the die
was cast; because the will of Judas had conclusively welcomed Satan,
and conclusively rejected Christ; therefore, knowing that remonstrance
was vain, knowing that the deed was, in effect, done, Jesus Christ,
that Incarnate Charity which 'believeth all things, and hopeth all
things,' abandoned the man to himself, and said, 'There, then, if thou
wilt thou must. I have done all I can; my last arrow is shot, and it
has missed the target. That then doest, do quickly.'

There is a world of solemn meaning in that one little word 'doest.' It
teaches us the old lesson, which sense is so apt to forget, that the
true actor in man's deeds is 'the hidden man of the heart,' and that
when it has acted, it matters comparatively little whether the mere
tool and instrument of the hands or of the other organs have carried
out the behest. The thing is done before it is done when the man has
resolved, with a fixed will, to do it. The betrayal was as good as in
process, though no step beyond the introductory ones, which could
easily have been cancelled, had yet been accomplished. Because there
was a fixed purpose which could not be altered by anything now,
therefore Jesus Christ regards the act as completed. It is what we
think in our hearts that we are; and our fixed determinations, our
inclinations of will, are far more truly our doings than the mere
consequences of these, embodied in actuality. It is but a poor estimate
of a man that judges him by the test of what he has done. What he has
wanted to do is the true man; what he has attempted to do. 'It was well
that it was in thine heart!' saith God to the king who thought of
building the Temple which he was never allowed to rear. 'It is ill that
is in thine heart,' says He by whom actions are weighed, to the sinner
in purpose, though his clean hands lie idly in his lap. These hidden
movements of desire and will that never come to the surface are our
true selves. Look after them, and the deeds will take care of
themselves. Serpent's eggs have serpents in them. And he that has
determined upon a sin has done the sin, whether his hands have been put
to it or no.

But, then, turn for a moment to the other thought that is suggested
here—that solemn picture of a soul left to do as it will, because
divine love has no other restraints which it can impose, and is
bankrupt of motives that it can adduce to prevent it from its madness.
Now I do not believe, for my part, that any man in this world is so
all-round 'sold unto sin' as that the seeking love of God gives him up
as irreclaimable. I do not believe that there are any people concerning
whom it is true that it is impossible for the grace of God to find some
chink and cranny in their souls through which it can enter and change
them. There are no hopeless cases as long as men are here. But, then,
though there may not be so, in regard to the whole sweep of the man's
nature, yet every one of us, over and over again, has known what it is
to come exactly into that position in regard to some single evil or
other, concerning which we have so set our teeth and planted our feet
at such an angle of resistance as that God gives up dealing with us and
leaves us, as He did with Balaam when He opposed his covetous
inclinations to all the remonstrances of Heaven. God said at last to
him 'Go!' because it was the best way to teach him what a fool he had
been in wanting to go. Thus, when we determine to set ourselves against
the pleadings and the beseechings of divine love, the truest kindness
is to fling the reins upon our necks, and let us gallop ourselves into
a sweat and weariness, and then we shall be more amenable to the touch
of the rein thereafter.

Are there any people whom God is teaching obedience to His light touch,
by letting them run their course after some one specific sin? Perhaps
there are. At all events, let us remember that that position of being
allowed to do as we like is one to which we all tend, in the measure in
which we indulge our inclinations, and shut our hearts against God's
pleadings. There is such a thing as a conscience seared as with a hot
iron. They used to say that there were witches' marks on the body,
places where, if you stuck a pin in, there was no feeling. Men cover
themselves all over with marks of that sort, which are not sensitive
even to the prick of a divine remonstrance, rebuke, or retribution.
They 'wipe their mouths and say I have done no harm.' You can tie up
the clapper of the bell that swings on the black rock, on which, if you
drift, you go to pieces. You can silence the Voice by the simple
process of neglecting it. Judas set his teeth against two things, the
solemn conviction that Jesus Christ knew his sin, and the saving
assurance that Jesus Christ loved him still. And whosoever resists
either of these two is getting perilously near to the point where, not
in petulance but in pity, God will say, 'Very well, I have called and
ye have refused. Now go, and do what you want to do, and see how you
like it when it is done. What thou doest, do quickly.' Do you remember
the other word, 'If '_twere_ done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it
were done quickly'? But since consequences last when deeds are past,
perhaps you had better halt before you determine to do them.

II. Now, secondly, I hear in these words the voice of strangely blended
majesty and humiliation.

'What thou doest, do!' Judas thought he had got possession of Christ's
person, and was His master in a very real sense. When lo! all at once
the victim assumes the position of the Lord and commands, showing the
traitor that instead of thwarting and counterworking, he was but
carrying out the designs of his fancied victim; and that he was an
instrument in Christ's hands for the execution of His will. And these
two thoughts, how, in effect, all antagonism, all malicious hatred, all
violent opposition of every sort but work in with Christ's purpose, and
carry out His intention; and how, at the moments of deepest apparent
degradation, He towers, in manifest Majesty and Masterhood, seem to me
to be plainly taught in the word before us.

He uses his foes for the furtherance of His purpose. That has been the
history of the world ever since. 'The floods, O Lord, have lifted up
their voice.' And what have they done? Smashing against the breakwater,
they but consolidate its mighty blocks, and prove that 'the Lord on
high is mightier than the noise of many waters.' It has been so in the
past, it is so to-day; it will be so till the end. Every Judas is
unconsciously the servant of Him whom he seeks to betray; and finds out
to his bewilderment that what he meant for a death-blow is fulfilling
the very purpose and will of the Lord against whom he has turned.

Again, the combination here, in such remarkable juxtaposition, of the
two things, a willing submission to the utmost extremity of shame,
which the treasonous heart can froth out in its malice and, at the same
time, a rising up in conscious majesty and lordship, are suggested to
us by the words before us. That combination of utter lowliness and
transcendent loftiness runs through the whole life and history of our
Lord. Did you ever think how strong an argument that strange
combination, brought out so inartificially throughout the whole of the
Gospels, is for their historical veracity? Suppose the problem had been
given to poets to create and to set in a series of appropriate scenes a
character with these two opposites stamped equally upon it, neither of
them impinging upon the domain of the other—viz., utter humility and
humiliation in circumstance, and majestic sovereignty and elevation
above all circumstances—do you think that any of them could have solved
the problem, though—Aeschylus and Shakespeare had been amongst them, as
these four men that wrote these four little tracts that we call Gospels
have done? How comes it that this most difficult of literary problems
has been so triumphantly solved by these men? I think there is only one
answer, 'Because they were reporters, and imagined nothing, but
observed everything, and repeated what had happened.' He reconciled
these opposites who was the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief,
and yet the Eternal Son of the Father; and the Gospels have solved the
problem only because they are simple records of its solution by Him.

Wherever in His history there is some trait of lowliness there is by
the side of it a flash of majesty. Wherever in His history there is
some gleaming out from the veil of flesh of the hidden glory of
divinity, there is immediately some drawing of the veil across the
glory. And the two things do not contradict nor confuse, but we stand
before that double picture of a Christ betrayed and of a Christ
commanding His betrayer, and using his treason, and we say, 'The Word
was made flesh, and dwelt among us.'

III. Again, I hear the voice of instinctive human weakness.

'That thou doest, do quickly.' It may be doubtful, and some of you
perhaps may not be disposed to follow me in my remark, but to my ear
that sounds just like the utterance of that instinctive dislike of
suspense and of the long hanging over us of the sword by a hair, which
we all know so well. Better to suffer than to wait for suffering. The
loudest thunder-crash is not so awe-inspiring as the dread silence of
nature when the sky is black before the peal rolls through the clouds.
Many a martyr has prayed for a swift ending of his troubles. Many a
sorrowing heart, that has been sitting cowering under the anticipation
of coming evils, has wished that the string could be pulled, as it
were, and they could all come down in one cold flood, and be done with,
rather than trickle drop by drop. They tell us that the bravest
soldiers dislike the five minutes when they stand in rank before the
first shot is fired. And with all reverence I venture to think that He
who knew all our weaknesses in so far as weakness was not sin, is here
letting us see how He, too, desired that the evil which was coming
might come quickly, and that the painful tension of expectation might
be as brief as possible. That may be doubtful; I do not dwell upon it,
but I suggest it for your consideration.

IV. And then I pass on to the last of the tones that I hear in these
utterances—the voice of the willing Sacrifice for the sins of the
world.

'That thou doest, do quickly.' There is nothing more obvious throughout
the whole of the latter portion of the Gospel narrative than the way in
which, increasingly towards its close, Jesus seemed to hasten to the
Cross. You remember His own sayings: 'I have a baptism to be baptized
with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished. I am come to
cast fire on the earth; would it were already kindled!' You remember
with what a strange air—I was going to use an inappropriate word, and
say, of alacrity; but, at all events, of fixed resolve—He journeyed
from Galilee, in that last solemn march to Jerusalem, and how the
disciples followed, astonished at the unwonted look of decision and
absorption that was printed upon His countenance. If we consider His
doings in that last week in Jerusalem, how he courted publicity, how He
avoided no encounter with His official enemies, how He sharpened His
tones, not exactly so as to provoke, but certainly so as by no means to
conciliate, we shall see, I think, in it all, His consciousness that
the hour had come, and His absolute readiness and willingness to be
offered for the world's sin. He stretches out His hands, as it were, to
draw the Cross nearer to Himself, not with any share in the weakness of
a fanatical aspiration after martyrdom, but under a far deeper and more
wonderful impulse.

Why was Christ so willing, so eager, if I may use the word, that His
death should be accomplished? Two reasons, which at the bottom are one,
answer the question. He thus hastened to His Cross because He would
obey the Father's will, and because He loved the whole world—you and me
and all our fellows. We were each in His heart. It was because He
wanted to save thee that He said to Judas, 'Do it quickly, that the
world's salvation and that man's salvation may be accomplished.' These
were the cords that bound Him to the altar. Let us never forget that
Judas with his treachery, and rulers with their hostility, and Pilate
with his authority, and the soldiers with their nails, and centurions
with their lances, and the grim figure of Death itself with its shaft,
would have been all equally powerless against Christ if it had not been
his loving will to die on the Cross for each of us.

Therefore, brethren, as we hear this voice, let us discern in it the
tones which warn us of the danger of yielding to inclination and
stifling His rebukes, till He abandons us for the moment in despair;
let us hear in it the pathetic voice of a Brother, who knows all our
weaknesses and has felt our emotions; let us hear the voice of
Sovereign Authority which uses its enemies for its purposes, and is
never loftier than when it is most lowly, whose Cross is His throne of
glory, whose exaltation is His deepest humiliation, and let us hear a
love which, discerning each of us through all the ages and the crowds,
went willingly to the Cross because He willed that He should be our
Saviour.

And seeing that time is short, and the future precarious, and delay may
darken into loss and rejection, let us take these words as spoken to us
in another sense, and hear in them the warning that 'to-day, if we will
hear His voice, we harden not our hearts,' and when He says to us, in
regard to repentance and faith, and Christian consecration and service,
'That thou doest, do quickly,' let us answer, 'I made haste and delayed
not, but made haste to keep Thy commandments.'




THE GLORY OF THE CROSS


'Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of Man
glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God
shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify
Him.'—JOHN xiii. 31, 32.

There is something very weird and awful in the brief note of time with
which the Evangelist sends Judas on his dark errand. 'He … went
immediately out, and it was night.' Into the darkness that dark soul
went. That hour was 'the power of darkness,' the very keystone of the
black arch of man's sin, and some shadow of it fell upon the soul of
Christ Himself.

In immediate connection with the departure of the traitor comes this
singular burst of triumph in our text. The Evangelist emphasises the
connection by that: '_Therefore_, when he was gone out, Jesus said.'
There is a wonderful touch of truth and naturalness in that connection.
The traitor was gone. His presence had been a restraint; and now that
that 'spot in their feast of charity' had disappeared, the Master felt
at ease; and like some stream, out of the bed of which a black rock has
been taken, His words flow more freely. How intensely real and human
the narrative becomes when we see that Christ, too, felt the oppression
of an uncongenial presence, and was relieved and glad at its removal!
The departure of the traitor evoked these words of triumph in another
way, too. At his going away, we may say, the match was lit that was to
be applied to the train. He had gone out on his dark errand, and that
brought the Cross within measurable distance of our Lord. Out of a new
sense of its nearness He speaks here. So the note of time not only
explains to us why our Lord spoke, but puts us on the right track for
understanding His words, and makes any other interpretation of them
than one impossible. What Judas went to do was the beginning of
Christ's glorifying. We have here, then, a triple glorification—the Son
of Man glorified in His Cross; God glorified in the Son of Man; and the
Son of Man glorified in God. Let us look at these three thoughts for a
few moments now.

I. First, we have here the Son of Man glorified in His Cross.

The words are a paradox. Strange, that at such a moment, when there
rose up before Christ all the vision of the shame and the suffering,
the pain and the death, and the mysterious sense of abandonment, which
was worse than them all, He should seem to stretch out His hands to
bring the Cross nearer to Himself, and that His soul should fill with
triumph!

There is a double aspect under which our Lord regarded His sufferings.
On the one hand we mark in Him an unmistakable shrinking from the
Cross, the innocent shrinking of His manhood expressed in such words as
'I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it
be accomplished'; and in such incidents as the agony in Gethsemane. And
yet, side by side with that, not overcome by it, but not overcoming it,
there is the opposite feeling, the reaching out almost with eagerness
to bring the Cross nearer to Himself. These two lie close by each other
in His heart. Like the pellucid waters of the Rhine and the turbid
stream of the Moselle, that flow side by side over a long space,
neither of them blending discernibly with the other, so the shrinking
and the desire were contemporaneous in Christ's mind. Here we have the
triumphant anticipation rising to the surface, and conquering for a
time the shrinking.

Why did Christ think of His Cross as a glorifying? The New Testament
generally represents it as the very lowest point of His degradation;
John's Gospel always represents it as the very highest point of His
glory. And the two things are both true; just as the zenith of our sky
is the nadir of the sky for those on the other side of the world. The
same fact which in one aspect sounds the very lowest depth of Christ's
humiliation, in another aspect is the very highest culminating point of
His glory.

How did the Cross glorify Christ? In two ways. It was the revelation of
His heart; it was the throne of His sovereign power.

It was the revelation of His heart. All his life long He had been
trying to tell the world how much He loved it. His love had been, as it
were, filtered by drops through His words, through His deeds, through
His whole demeanour and bearing; but in His death it comes in a flood,
and pours itself upon the world. All His life long he had been
revealing His heart, through the narrow rifts of His deeds, like some
slender lancet windows; but in His death all the barriers are thrown
down, and the brightness blazes out upon men. All through His life He
had been trying to communicate His love to the world, and the fragrance
came from the box of ointment exceeding precious, but when the box was
broken the house was filled with the odour.

For Him to be known was to be glorified. So pure and perfect was He,
that revelation of His character and glorification of Himself were one
and the same thing. Because His Cross reveals to the world for all
time, and for eternity, too, a love which shrinks from no sacrifice, a
love which is capable of the most entire abandonment, a love which is
diffused over the whole surface of humanity and through all the ages, a
love which comes laden with the richest and the highest gifts, even the
turning of selfish and sinful hearts into its own pure and perfect
likeness, therefore does He say, in contemplation of that Cross which
was to reveal Him for what He was to the world, and to bring His love
to every one of us, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified.'

We can fancy a mother, for instance, in the anticipation of shame, and
ignominy, and suffering, and sorrow, and death which she encounters for
the sake of some prodigal child, forgetting all the ignominy, and the
shame, and the suffering, and the sorrow, and the death, because all
these are absorbed in the one thought: 'If I bear them, my poor,
wandering, rebellious child will know at last how much I loved him.' So
Christ yearns to impart the knowledge of Himself to us, because by that
knowledge we may be won to His love and service; and hence when He
looks forward to the agony, and contumely, and sorrow of the close,
every other thought is swallowed up in this one: 'They will be the
means by which the whole world will find out how deep my heart of love
to it was.' Therefore does He triumph and say, 'Now is the Son of Man
glorified.'

Still further, He regards His Cross as the means of His glorifying,
because it is His throne of saving power. The paradoxical words of our
text rest upon His profound conviction that in His death He was about
to put forth a mightier and diviner power than ever He had manifested
in His life. They are the same in effect and in tone as the great
words: 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' Now I want
you to ask yourselves one question: In what sense is Christ's Cross
Christ's glorifying, unless His Cross bears an altogether different
relation to His life from what the death of a great teacher or
benefactor ordinarily bears to his? It is impossible that Christ could
have spoken such words as these of my text if He had simply thought of
His death as a Plato or a John Howard might have thought of his, as
being the close of his activity for the welfare of his fellows. Unless
Christ's death has in it some substantive value, unless it is something
more than the mere termination of His work for the world, I see not how
the words before us can be interpreted. If His death is His glorifying,
it must be because in that death something is done which was not
completed by the life, however fair; by the words, however wise and
tender; by the works of power, however restorative and healing. Here is
something more than these present. What more? This more, that His Cross
is the 'propitiation for the sins of the whole world.' He is glorified
therein, not as a Socrates might be glorified by his calm and noble
death; not because nothing in His life became Him better than the
leaving of it; not because the page that tells the story of His passion
is turned to by us as the tenderest and most sacred in the world's
records; but because in that death He wrestled with and overcame our
foes, and because, like the Jewish hero of old, dying, He pulled down
the house which our tyrants had built, and overwhelmed them in its
ruins. 'Now is the Son of Man glorified.'

And so, brethren, there blend, in that last act of our Lord's—for His
death was His act—in strange fashion, the two contradictory ideas of
glory and shame; like some sky, all full of dark thunderclouds, and yet
between them the brightest blue and the blazing sunshine. In the Cross,
Death crowns Him the Prince of Life, and His Cross is His throne. All
His life long He was the Light of the World, but the very noontide hour
of His glory was that hour when the shadow of eclipse lay over all the
land, and He hung on the Cross dying in the dark. At His 'eventide it
was light.' 'He endured the Cross, despising the shame'; and lo! the
shame flashed up into the very brightness of glory, and the ignominy
and the suffering became the jewels of His crown. 'Now is the Son of
Man glorified.'

II. Now let us turn for a moment to the second of the threefold
glorifications that are set forth here: God glorified in the Son of
Man.

The mystery deepens as we advance. That God should be glorified in a
man is not strange, but that He should be so glorified in the eminent
and special fashion which Jesus contemplates here, is strange; and
stranger still when we think that the act in which He was to be
glorified was the death of an innocent Man. If God, in any special and
eminent manner, is glorified in the Cross of Jesus Christ, that
implies, as it seems to me, two things at all events—many more which I
have not time to touch upon, but two things very plainly. One is that
'God was in Christ,' in some singular and eminent manner. If all His
life was a continual manifestation of the divine character, if Christ's
words were the divine wisdom, if Christ's compassion was the divine
pity, if Christ's lowliness was the divine gentleness, if His whole
human life and nature were the brightest and clearest manifestation to
the world of what God is, we can understand that the Cross was the
highest point of the revelation of the divine nature to the world, and
so was the glorifying of God in Him. But if we take any lower view of
the relation between God and Christ, I know not how we can acquit these
words of our Master of the charge of being a world too wide for the
facts of the case.

The words involve, as it seems to me, not only that idea of a close,
unique union and indwelling of God in Christ, but they involve also
this other: that these sufferings bore no relation to the deserts of
the person who endured them. If Christ, with His pure and perfect
character—the innocency and nobleness of which all that read the
Gospels admit—if Christ suffered so; if the highest virtue that was
ever seen in this world brought no better wages than shame and spitting
and the Cross; if Christ's life and Christ's death are simply a typical
example of the world's treatment of its greatest benefactors; then, if
they have any bearing at all on the character of God, they cast a
shadow rather than a light upon the divine government, and become not
the least formidable of the difficulties and knots that will have to be
untied hereafter before it shall be clear that God did everything well.
But if we can say, 'He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows';
if we can say, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself'; if
we can say, that His death was the death of Him whom God had appointed
to live and die for us, and 'to bear our sins in His own body on the
tree,' then, though deep mysteries come with the thought, still we can
see that, in a very unique manner, God is glorified and exalted in His
death.

For if the dying Christ be the Son of God dying for us, then the Cross
glorifies God, because it teaches us that the glory of the divine
character is the divine love. Of wisdom, or of power, or of any of the
more 'majestic' attributes of the divine nature, that weak Man, hanging
dying on the Cross, was a strange embodiment; but if the very heart of
the divine brightness be the pure white fire of love; if there be
nothing diviner in God than His giving of Himself to His creatures; if
the highest glory of the divine nature be to pity and to bestow, then
the Cross upon which Christ died towers above all other revelations as
the most awful, the most sacred, the most tender, the most complete,
the most heart-touching, the most soul-subduing manifestation of the
divine nature; and stars and worlds, and angels and mighty creatures,
and things in the heights and things in the depths, to each of which
have been entrusted some broken syllables of the divine character to
make known to the world, dwindle and fade before the brightness, the
lambent, gentle brightness that beams out from the Cross of Christ,
which proclaims—God is love, is pity, is pardon.

And is it not so—is it not so? Is not the thought that has flowed from
Christ's Cross through Christendom of what our Father in Heaven is, the
highest and the most blessed that the world has ever had? Has it not
scattered doubts that lay like mountains of ice upon man's heart? Has
it not swept the heavens clear of clouds that wrapped it in darkness?
Has it not delivered men from the dreams of gods angry, gods
capricious, gods vengeful, gods indifferent, gods simply mighty and
vast and awful and unspeakable? Has it not taught us that love is God,
and God is love; and so brought to the whole world the true Gospel, the
Gospel of the grace of God? In that Cross the Father is glorified.

III. Now, lastly, we have here the Son of Man glorified in the Father.

The mysteries and the paradoxes seem to deepen as we advance. 'If God
be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall
straightway glorify Him.' Do these words sound to you as if they
expressed no more than the confidence of a good man, who, when he was
dying, believed that he would be accepted of a loving Father, and would
be at rest from his sufferings? To me they seem to say infinitely more
than that. 'He shall also glorify Him in Himself.' Mark that 'in
Himself.' That is the obvious antithesis to what has been spoken about
in the previous clause, a glorifying which consisted in a manifestation
to the external universe, whereas this is a glorifying within the
depths of the divine nature. And the best commentary upon it is our
Lord's own words: 'Father! glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had
with Thee before the world was.' We get a glimpse, as it were, into the
very centre of the brightness of God; and there, walking in that
beneficent furnace, we see 'One like unto the Son of Man.' Christ
anticipates that, in some profound and unspeakable sense, He shall, as
it were, be caught up into the divinity, and shall dwell, as indeed He
did dwell from the beginning, 'in the bosom of the Father.' 'He shall
glorify Him in Himself.'

But then mark, still further, that this reception into the bosom of the
Father is given to the Son of Man. That is to say, the Man Christ
Jesus, the Son of Mary, the Brother of us all, 'bone of our bone and
flesh of our flesh,' the very Person that walked upon earth and dwelt
amongst us is taken up into the heart of God, and in His manhood enters
into that same glory, which, from the beginning, the Eternal Word had
with God.

And still further, not only have we here set forth, in most wondrous
language, the reception and incorporation, if we may use such words,
into the very centre of divinity, as granted to the Son of Man, but we
have that glorifying set forth as commencing immediately upon the
completion of God's glorifying by Christ upon the Cross. 'He shall
straightway glorify Him.' At the instant then, that He said, 'It is
finished,' and all that the Cross could do to glorify God was done, at
that instant there began, with not a pin-point of interval between
them, God's glorifying of the Son in Himself. It began in that Paradise
into which we know that upon that day He entered. It was manifested to
the world when He 'raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory.' It
reached a still higher point when 'they brought Him near unto the
Ancient of Days,' and ascending up on high, a dominion and a throne and
a glory were given to Him which last now, whilst the Son of Man sits in
the heavens on the throne of His glory, wielding the attributes of
divinity, and administering the laws of the universe and the mysteries
of providence. It shall rise to its highest manifestation before an
assembled world, when He 'shall come in His glory, and before Him shall
be gathered all nations.'

This, then, was the vision that lay before the Christ in that upper
room, the vision of Himself glorified in His extreme shame, because His
Cross manifested His love and His saving power; of God glorified in Him
above all other of His acts of manifestation when He died on the Cross,
and revealed the very heart of God; and of Himself glorified in the
Father when, exalted high above all creatures, He sitteth upon the
Father's throne and rules the Father's realm.

And yet from that high, and, to us, inaccessible and all but
inconceivable summit of His elevation, He looks down ready to bless
each poor creature here, toiling and moiling amidst sufferings, and
meannesses, and commonplaces, and monotony, if we will only put our
trust in Him, and love Him, and see the brightness of the Father's face
in Him. He cares for us all; and if we will but take Him as our
Saviour, His all-prevalent prayer, presented within the veil for us,
will certainly be fulfilled at last: 'Father, I will that they also
whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold
My glory.'




CANNOT AND CAN


'Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek Me:
and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come; so now I say
to you.'—JOHN xiii. 33.

The preceding context shows how large and black the Cross loomed before
Jesus now, and how radiant the glory beyond shone out to Him. But it
was only for a moment that either of these two absorbed His thoughts;
and with wonderful self-forgetfulness and self-command, He turned away
at once from the consideration of how the near future was to affect
Him, to the thought of how it was to affect the handful of helpless
disciples who had to be left alone. Impending separation breaks up the
fountains of the heart, and we all know the instinct that desires to
crowd all the often hidden love into some one last token. So here our
Lord addresses His disciples by a name that is never used except this
once, 'little children,' a fond diminutive that not only reveals an
unusual depth of tender emotion, but also breathes a pitying sense of
their defencelessness when they are to be left alone. So might a dying
mother look at her little ones.

But the words that follow, at first sight, are dark with the sense of a
final and complete separation. 'Ye shall seek Me'—and not only so, but
He seems to put back His humble friends into the same place as had been
occupied by His bitter foes—'as I said to the Jews, whither I go ye
cannot come; so now I say to you.' There was something that prevented
both classes alike from keeping Him company; and He had to walk His
path both into the darkness and into the glory, alone.

The words apply in their fullness only to the parenthesis of time
whilst He lay in the grave, and the disciples despairingly thought that
all was ended. It was a brief period: it was a revolutionary moment;
and though it was soon to end, they needed to be guarded against it.
But though the words do not apply to the permanent relation between the
glorified Christ and us, His disciples, yet partly by similarity, and
still more by contrast, they do suggest great Christian blessedness and
imperative Christian duties. These gather themselves mainly round two
contrasts, a transitory 'cannot' soon to be changed into a permanent
'can'; and a momentary seeking, soon to be converted into a blessed
seeking which finds. I now deal only with the former.

We have here a transitory 'cannot' soon to be changed into a permanent
'can.'

'Whither I go ye cannot come.' Does not one hear a tone of personal
sorrow in that saying? Jesus had always hungered for understanding and
sympathetic companions, and one of His lifelong sorrows had been His
utter loneliness; but He had never, in all the time that He had been
with them, so put out His hand, feeling for some warm clasp of a human
hand to help Him in His struggle, as He did during the hours
terminating with Gethsemane. And perhaps we may venture to say that we
hear in this utterance an expression of Christ's sorrow for Himself
that He had to tread the dark way, and to pass into the brightness
beyond, all alone. He yearned for the impossible human companionship,
as well as sorrowed for the imperfections which made it impossible.

Why was it that they could not 'follow Him now'? The answer to that
question is found in the consideration of whither it was that He went.
When that bright Shekinah-cloud at the Ascension received Him into its
radiant folds, it showed why they could not follow Him, because it
revealed that He went unto the Father, when He left the world. So we
are brought face to face with the old, solemn thought that character
makes capacity for heaven. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord,
or who shall stand in His holy place?' asked the Psalmist; and a
prophet put the question in a still sharper form, and by the very form
of the question suggested a negative answer—'Who among us shall dwell
with the devouring fire; who among us shall dwell with everlasting
burnings?' Who can pass into that Presence, and stand near God, without
being, like the maiden in the old legend, shrivelled into ashes by the
contact of the celestial fire? 'Holiness' is that 'without which no man
shall see the Lord.' And we, all of us, in the depths of our own
hearts, if we rightly understand the voices that ever echo there, must
feel that the condition which is, obviously and without any need for
arguing it, required for abiding with God, and so going into the glory
where Christ is, is a condition which none of us can fulfil. In that
respect the imperfect and immature friends, the little children, the
babes who loved and yet knew not Him whom they loved, and the scowling
enemies, were at one. For they had all of them the one human heart, and
in that heart the deep-lying alienation and contrariety to God.
Therefore Christ trod the winepress alone, and alone 'ascended up where
He was before.'

But let us remember that this 'cannot' was only a transitory cannot.
For we must underscore very deeply that word in my text 'so _now_ I say
to you,' and a moment afterwards, when one of the Apostles puts the
question: 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' the answer is: 'Thou canst
not follow Me now; but thou shalt follow Me afterwards.' The text, too,
is succeeded immediately by the wonderful parting consolations and
counsels spoken to the disciples, through all of which there gleams the
promise that they will be with Him where He is, and behold His glory.
Set side by side with these sad words of our Lord in the text, by which
He unloosed their clasping hands from Him, and turned His face to His
solitary path, the triumphant language in which habitually the rest of
the New Testament speaks of the Christian man's relation to Christ.
Think of that great passage: 'Ye are come unto the city of the living
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, … and to God the Judge of all, … and to
Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant.' What has become of the
impossibility? Vanished. Where is the 'cannot'? Turned into a blessed
'can.' And so Apostles have no scruple in saying, 'Our citizenship is
in Heaven,' nor in saying, 'We sit together with Him in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus.' The path that was blocked is open. The impossibility
that towered up like a great black wall has melted away; and the path
into the Holiest of all is made patent by the blood of Christ. For in
that death there lies the power that sweeps away all the impediments of
man's sin, and in that life of the risen, glorified, indwelling Christ
there lies the power which cleanses the inmost heart from 'all
filthiness of flesh and spirit,' and makes it possible for our mortal
feet to walk on the immortal path, and for us, with all our
unworthiness, with all our shrinking, to stand in His presence and not
be ashamed or consumed. 'Ye cannot come' was true for a few days. 'Ye
can come' is true for ever; and for all Christian men.

But let us not forget that the one attitude of heart and mind, by which
a poor, sinful man, who dare not draw near to God, receives into
himself the merit and power of the death, and the indwelling power of
the life, of Jesus Christ, is personal faith in Jesus Christ. To trust
Him is to come to Him, and it is represented in Scripture as conferring
an instantaneous fitness for access to God. People pray sometimes that
they may be made 'meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,' and
the prayer is, in a sense, wise and true. But they too often forget
that the Apostle says, in the original connection of the words which
they so quote: 'He _hath_ translated us from the tyranny of the
darkness, and _hath_ made us meet for the inheritance of the saints in
light.' That is to say, whenever a poor soul, compassed and laden with
its infirmity and sin, turns itself to that Lord whose Cross conquers
sin, and whose blood infused into our veins—the Spirit of whose life
granted to us—gives us to partake of His own righteousness, that moment
that soul can tread the path that brings into the presence of God, and
'has access with confidence by the faith of Him.' So, brethren, seeing
that thus the incapacity may all be swept away, and that instead of a
'cannot,' which relegates us to darkness, we may receive a 'can' which
leads us into the light, let us see to it that this communion, which is
possible for all Christian men, is real in our cases, and that we use
the access which is given to us, and dwell for ever in, and with, the
Lord.

I have said that the act of faith, by associating a man with Jesus
Christ in the power of His death and of His life, makes any who
exercise it capable of passing into the presence of God. But I would
remind you, too, that to make us more fit for more full and habitual
communion is the very purpose for which all the discipline of our
earthly life, its sorrows and its joys, its tasks and its repose, is
exercised upon us—'He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His
holiness.' Surely if we habitually took that point of view in reference
to our work, in reference to our joys, in reference to our trials,
everything would be different. We are being prepared with sedulous
love, with patient reiteration of 'line upon line, precept upon
precept,' with singularly varied methods but a uniform purpose, by all
that meets us in life, to be more capable of treading the eternal path
into the eternal light. Is that how we daily think of our own
circumstances? Do we bring that great thought to bear upon all that we,
sometimes faithlessly, call mysterious or murmuringly think of—if we
dare not speak our thought—as being cruel and hard? What does it matter
if some precious things be lifted off our shoulders, and out of our
hearts, if their being taken away makes it more possible for us to
tread with a lighter step the path of peace? What matters it though
many things that we would fain keep are withdrawn from us, if by the
withdrawal we are sent a little further forward on the road that leads
to God? As George Herbert says, sorrows and joys are like battledores
that drive a shuttlecock, and they may all 'toss us to His breast.' In
faith, however infantile it may be, there is an undeveloped capacity, a
germ of fitness, for dwelling with God. But that capacity is meant to
be increased, and the little children are meant to be helped to grow up
into full-grown men, 'the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ,' by all that comes here to them on earth. Do you not think we
should understand life better, do you not think it would all be flashed
up into new radiance, do you not think we should more seldom stand
bewildered at what we choose to call the inscrutable dispensations of
Providence, if this were the point of view from which we looked at them
all—that they were fitting us for perpetual abiding with our Father
God?

Nor let us forget that there was a transient 'cannot' of another sort.
For 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.' So, as life is
changed when we think of it as helping us toward Him, death is changed
when we think of it as being, if I may so say, the usher in attendance
on the Presence-chamber, who draws back the thin curtain that separates
us from the throne, and takes us by the hands and leads us into the
Presence. Surely if we habitually thought thus of that otherwise grim
chamberlain, we should be willing to put our hands into His, as a
little child will, when straying, into the hands of a stranger who
says, 'Come with me and I will take you home to your father.' 'As I
said unto the Jews … so now I say to you, whither I go, ye cannot
come.'

Let us press on you and on myself the one thought that comes out of all
that I have been saying, the blessed possibility, which, because it is
a possibility, is an obligation, to use far more than most of us do,
the right of access to the King who is our Father. There are nobles and
corporate bodies, who regard it as one of their chief distinctions that
they have always the right of _entree_ to the court of the sovereign.
Every Christian man has that. And in old days, when a baron did not
show himself at court, suspicion naturally arose, and he was in danger
of being thought disaffected, if not traitorous. Ah! if you and I were
judged according to that law, what would become of us? We can go when
we like. How seldom we do go! We can live in the heavens whilst our
work lies down here. We prefer the low earth to the lofty sky. 'We are
come'—ideally, and in the depths of our nature, our affinities are
there—'unto God, the Judge of all, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new
Covenant.' Are we come? Are we day by day, in all the pettiness of our
ordinary lives, when compassed by hard duties, weighed upon by sore
distress—still keeping our hearts in heaven, and our feet familiar with
the path that leads us to God? 'Set your affection on things above,
where Jesus is, sitting at the right hand of God.' For there is no
'cannot' for His servants in regard to their access to any place where
He is.




SEEKING JESUS


'… Ye shall seek Me.'—JOHN xiii. 33.

In the former sermon on this verse I pointed out that it, in its
fullness, applies only to the brief period between the crucifixion and
the resurrection, but that, partly by contrast and partly by analogy,
it suggests permanent relations between Christ and His disciples. These
relations were mainly—as I pointed out then—two: there was that one
expressed by the subsequent words of the verse, 'Whither I go, ye
cannot come'—a brief 'cannot,' soon to be changed into a permanent
'can'; and there was a second, a brief, sad, and vain seeking, soon to
be changed into a seeking which finds. It is to the latter that I wish
to turn now.

'Ye shall seek Me' fell, like the clods on a coffin-lid, with a hollow
sound on the hearts of the Apostles. It comes to us as a permission and
a command and a promise. I do not dwell on that sad seeking, which was
so brief but so bitter. We all know what it is to put out an empty hand
into the darkness and the void, and to grope for a touch which we know,
whilst we grope, that we shall not find. And these poor, helpless
disciples, by their forlorn sense of separation, by their yearning that
brought no satisfaction, by their very listless despair, were saying,
during these hours of agony into which an eternity of pain was
condensed, 'Oh! that He were beside us again!'

That sad seeking ended when He came to them, and 'then were the
disciples glad when they saw the Lord.' But another kind of seeking
began, when 'the cloud received Him out of their sight'; as joyful as
the other was laden with sorrow, as sure to find the object of its
quest as the other was certain to be disappointed. What He said in the
darkness to them, He says in the light to us: What 'I say unto you I
say unto all,' _Seek!_ So now we have to deal with that joyful search
which is sure of finding its object, and is only a little, if at all,
less blessed than the finding itself.

I. Every Christian is, by his very name, a seeker after Christ.

There are two kinds of seeking, one like that of a bird whose young
have been stolen away, which flutters here and there, because it knows
not where that is which it seeks; another, like the flight of the same
bird, when the migrating instinct rises in its little breast, and
straight as an arrow it goes, not because it knows not its goal, but
because it knows it, yonder where the sun is warm and the sky is blue,
and winter is left behind in the cold north. 'Ye shall seek Me' is the
word of promise, which changes the vain search that is ignorant of
where the object of its quest is, into a blessed going out of the heart
towards that which it knows to be the home of its homelessness. Thus
the text brings out the very central blessedness and peculiarity of the
Christian life, that it has no uncertainty in its aims, and that,
instead of seeking for things which may or may not be found, or if
found may or may not prove to be what we dreamt them to be. It seeks
for a Person whom it knows where to find, and of whom it knows that all
its desires will be met in Him. We have, then, on the one side the
multifarious, divergent searchings of man; and on the other side the
one quest in which all these others are gathered up, and translated
into blessedness—the seeking after Jesus Christ.

Men know that they need, if I may so put it, four things: truth for the
understanding, love round which the heart may coil, authority for the
will which may direct and restrain, and energy for the practical life.
But, apart from the quest after Christ, men for the most part seek
these necessary goods in divers objects, and fragmentarily look for the
completion of their desires. But fragments will never satisfy a man's
soul, and they who have to go to one place for truth, and to another
for love, and to another for authority, and to another for energy, are
wofully likely never to find what they search for. They are seeking in
the manifold what can be found only in the One. It is as if some
vessel, full of precious stones, were thrown down before men, and
whilst they are racing after the diamonds, they lose the emeralds and
the sapphires. But the wise concentrate their seekings on the 'one
Pearl of great price,' in whom is truth for the brain, love for the
heart, authority for the will, power for the life, and all summed in
that which is more blessed than all, the Person of the Brother who died
for us, the Christ who lives to fill our hearts for ever. One sun dims
all the stars; and the 'one entire and perfect Chrysolite' beggars and
reduces to fragments 'all the precious things that thou canst desire.'

To seek Him is the very hall-mark of a Christian, and that seeking
comes to be an earnest desire and effort after more conscious communion
with Him, and a more entire possession of His imparted life which is
righteousness and peace and joy and power. According to the Rabbis, the
manna tasted to each man what each man most desired. The manifoldness
of the one Christ is far more manifold than the manifoldness of the
multiplicity of fragmentary and partial aims which foolish men
perceive.

The ways of seeking are very plain. First of all, we seek if, and in
proportion as, we make the effort to occupy our thoughts and minds, not
with theological dogmas, but with the living Christ Himself. Ah!
brethren, it is hard to do, and I daresay a great many of you are
thinking that it is far harder for you, in the distractions and rush
and conflict of business and daily life, than it is for people like me,
whom you imagine as sitting in a study, with nothing to distract us. I
do not know about that; I fancy it is about equally hard for us all;
but it is possible. I have been in Alpine villages where, at the end of
every squalid alley, there towered up a great, pure, silent, white
peak. That is what our lives may be; however noisome, crowded, petty
the little lane in which we live, the Alp is at the end of it there, if
we only choose to lift our eyes and look. It is possible that not only
'into the sessions of sweet silent thought,' but into the rush and
bustle of the workshop or the exchange, there may come, like 'some
sweet, beguiling melody, so sweet we know not we are listening to it,'
the thought that changes pettiness into greatness, that makes all
things go smoothly and easily, that is a test and a charm to discover
and to destroy temptation, the thought of a present Christ, the Lover
of my soul, and the Helper of my life.

Again, we seek Him when, by aspiration and desire, we bring Him—as He
is always brought thereby—into our hearts and into our lives. The
measure of our desire is the measure of our possession. Wishing is the
opening of our hearts, but, alas, often we wish and desire, and the
heart opens and nothing enters. Wishes are like the tentacles of some
marine organism waving about in a waste ocean, feeling for the food
that they do not find. But if we open our hearts for Him, that is
simultaneous with the coming of Him to us. 'Ye have not, because ye ask
not.' Do not forget, dear friends, that desire, if it is genuine, will
take a very concrete form and will be prayer. And it is prayer—by which
I do not mean the utterance of words without desire, any more than I
mean desire without the direct casting of it into the form of
supplication—it is prayer that brings Christ into any, and it is prayer
that will bring Him into every, life.

Nor let us forget that there is another way of seeking besides these
two, of looking up to Him through, and in the midst of, all the shows
and trifles of this low life, and the reaching out of our desires
towards Him, as the roots of a tree beneath the soil go straight for
the river. That other way is imitation and obedience. It is vain to
think of Him, and it is unreal to pretend to desire Him, if we are not
seeking Him by treading in the path that He has trod, and which leads
to Him. Imitation and obedience—these are the steps by which we go
straight through all the trivialities of life into the presence of the
Lord Himself. The smallest deflection from the path that leads to Him
will carry us away into doleful wastes. The least invisible cloud that
steals across the sky will blot out half a hemisphere of stars; and we
seek not Christ unless, thinking of Him, and desiring Him, we also walk
in the path in which He has walked, and so come where He is. He Himself
has said that if His servant follows Him, where He is there shall also
His servant be. These things make up the seeking which ought to mark us
all.

I note that—

II. The Christian seeker always finds.

I pointed out in my last sermon the strange identity of our Lord's
words to His humble friends, with those which on another occasion He
used to His bitter enemies. He reminds the disciples of that identity
in the verse from which my text comes: 'As I said to the Jews … so now
I say to you.' But there was one thing that He said to the Jews that He
did not say to them. To the former He said, 'Ye shall seek Me, and
shall not find Me'; and He did not say that—even for the sad hours it
was not quite true—He did not say that to His followers, and He does
not say it to us.

If we seek we shall find. There is no disappointment in the Christian
life. Anything is possible rather than that a man should desire Christ
and not have Him. That has never been the experience of any seeking
soul. And so I urge upon you what has already been suggested, that
inasmuch as, by reason of His infinite longing to give truth and love
and guidance and energy and His whole Self, to all of us, the amount of
our possession of the power and life of Jesus Christ depends on
ourselves. If you take to the fountain a tiny cup, you will only bring
away a tiny cupful. If you take a great vessel you will bring _it_ away
full. As long as the woman in the old story held out her vessels to the
miraculous flow of the oil, the flow continued. When she had no more
vessels to take, the flow stopped. If a man holds a flagon beneath a
spigot with an unsteady hand, half of the precious liquor will be spilt
on the ground. Those who fulfil the conditions, of which I have already
been speaking, may make quite sure that according to their faith will
it be unto them. And if you, dear friend, have not in your experience
the conscious presence of a Christ who is all that you need, there is
no one in heaven or earth or hell to blame for it but only your own
self. 'I have never said to any of the seed of Jacob, Seek ye My face
in vain'; and when the Lord said, 'Ye shall seek Me,' He was implicitly
binding Himself to meet the seeking soul, and give Himself to the
desiring heart.

Remember, too, that this seeking, which is always crowned with finding,
is the only search in which failure is impossible. There is only one
course of life that has no disappointments. We all know how frequently
we are foiled in our quests; we all know how often a prize won is a
bitterer disappointment than a prize unattained. Like a jelly-fish in
the water, as long as it is there its tenuous substance is lovely,
expanded, tinged with delicate violets and blues, and its long
filaments float in lines of beauty. Lay it on the beach, and it is a
shapeless lump, and it poisons and stings. You fish your prize out of
the great ocean, and when you have it, does it disappoint, or does it
fulfil, the raised expectations of the quest? There is One who does not
disappoint. There is one gold mine that comes up to the prospectus.
There is one spring that never runs dry. The more deep our Christian
experience is, the more we shall take the rapturous exclamation of the
Arabian queen to ourselves: 'The half was not told us!'

And so, lastly, I suggest that—

III. The finding impels to fresh seeking.

The object of the Christian man's quest is Jesus Christ. He is
Incarnate Infinitude; and that cannot be exhausted. The seeker after
Jesus Christ is the Christian soul. That soul is the incarnate
possibility of indefinite expansion and approximation and assimilation;
and that cannot be exhausted. And so, with a Christ who is infinite,
and a seeker whose capacities may be indefinitely expanded, there can
be no satiety, there can be no limit, there can be no end to the
process. This wine-skin will not burst when the new wine is put into
it. Rather like some elastic vessel, as you pour it will fill out and
expand. Possession enlarges, and the more of Christ's fullness is
poured into a human heart, the more is that heart widened out to
receive a greater blessing.

Dear brethren, there is one course of life, and I believe but one, on
which we may all enter with the sure confidence that in the nature of
things, in the nature of Christ, and in the nature of ourselves, there
is no end to growth and progress. Think of the freshness and
blessedness and energy that puts into a life. To have an unattained and
unattainable object, a goal to which we can never come, but to which we
may ever be approximating, seems to me to be the secret of perpetual
joy and of perpetual youthfulness. To say, 'forgetting the things that
are behind, I reach forward unto the things that are before,' is a
charm and an amulet that repels monotony and weariness, and goes with a
man to the very end, and when all other aims and objects have died down
into grey ashes, that flame, like the fabled lamp in Virgil's tomb,
burns clear in the grave, and lights us to the eternity beyond.

For certainly, if there be neither satiety nor limit to Christian
progress here, there can be no better and stronger evidence that
Christian progress here is but the first 'lap' of the race, the first
_stadium_ of the course, and that beyond that narrow, dark line which
lies across the path, it runs on, rising higher, and will run on for
ever.

  'On earth the broken arc; in heaven the perfect round.'

Seek for what you are sure to find; seek for what will never disappoint
you; seek for what will abide with you for ever. The very first word of
Christ's recorded in Scripture is a question which He puts to us all:
'_What_ seek ye?' Well for us, if like the two to whom it was
originally addressed, we answer, 'We are not seeking a What; we are
seeking a Whom.—Master, where dwellest Thou?' And if we have that
answer in our hearts, we shall receive the invitation which they
received, 'Come and see,'—come and seek. 'Ye shall seek Me' is a
gracious invitation, an imperative command, and a faithful promise that
if we seek we shall find. 'Whoso findeth _Him_ findeth life; whoso
misseth _Him_'—whatever else he has sought and found—'wrongeth his own
soul.'




'AS I HAVE LOVED'


'A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another: as I have
loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know
that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.'—JOHN xiii.
34, 35.

Wishes from dying lips are sacred. They sink deep into memories and
mould faithful lives. The sense of impending separation had added an
unwonted tenderness to our Lord's address, and He had designated His
disciples by the fond name of 'little children.' The same sense here
gives authority to His words, and moulds them into the shape of a
command. The disciples had held together because He was in their midst.
Will the arch stand when the keystone is struck out? Will not the
spokes fall asunder when the nave of the wheel is taken away? He would
guard them from the disintegrating tendencies that were sure to set in
when He was gone; and He would point them to a solace for His absence,
and to a kind of substitute for His presence. For to love the brethren
whom they see would be, in some sense, a continuing to love the Christ
whom they had ceased to see. And so, immediately after He said:
'Whither I go ye cannot come,' He goes on to say: 'Love one another as
I have loved you.'

He called this a 'new commandment,' though to love one's neighbour as
one's self was a familiar commonplace amongst the Jews, and had a
recognised position in Rabbinical teaching. But His commandment
proposed a new object of love, it set forth a new measure of love, so
greatly different from all that had preceded it as to become almost a
new kind of love, and it suggested and supplied a new motive power for
love. This commandment 'could give life' and fulfil itself. Therefore
it comes to us as a 'new commandment'—even to us—and, unlike the words
which preceded it, which we were considering in former sermons, it is
wholly and freshly applicable to-day as in the ages that are passed. I
ask you, first, to consider—

I. The new scope of the new commandment.

'Love one another.' The newness of the precept is realised, if we think
for a moment of the new phenomenon which obedience to it produced. When
the words were spoken, the then-known civilised Western world was cleft
by great, deep gulfs of separation, like the crevasses in a glacier, by
the side of which our racial animosities and class differences are
merely superficial cracks on the surface. Language, religion, national
animosities, differences of condition, and saddest of all, difference
of sex, split the world up into alien fragments. A 'stranger' and an
'enemy' were expressed in one language, by the same word. The learned
and the unlearned, the slave and his master, the barbarian and the
Greek, the man and the woman, stood on opposite sides of the gulfs,
flinging hostility across. A Jewish peasant wandered up and down for
three years in His own little country, which was the very focus of
narrowness and separation and hostility, as the Roman historian felt
when he called the Jews the 'haters of the human race'; He gathered a
few disciples, and He was crucified by a contemptuous Roman governor,
who thought that the life of one fanatical Jew was a small price to pay
for popularity with his troublesome subjects, and in a generation
after, the clefts were being bridged and all over the Empire a strange
new sense of unity was being breathed, and 'Barbarian, Scythian, bond
and free,' male and female, Jew and Greek, learned and ignorant,
clasped hands and sat down at one table, and felt themselves 'all one
in Christ Jesus.' They were ready to break all other bonds, and to
yield to the uniting forces that streamed out from His Cross. There
never had been anything like it. No wonder that the world began to
babble about sorcery, and conspiracies, and complicity in unnameable
vices. It was only that the disciples were obeying the 'new
commandment,' and a new thing had come into the world—a community held
together by love and not by geographical accidents or linguistic
affinities, or the iron fetters of the conqueror. You sow the seed in
furrows separated by ridges, and the ground is seamed, but when the
seed springs the ridges are hidden, no division appears, and as far as
the eye can reach, the cornfield stretches, rippling in unbroken waves
of gold. The new commandment made a new thing, and the world wondered.

Now then, brethren, do not let us forget that, although to obey this
commandment is in some respects a great deal harder to-day than it was
then, the diverse circumstances in which Christian individuals and
Christian communities are this day placed may modify the form of our
obedience, but do not in the smallest degree weaken the obligation, for
the individual Christian and for societies of Christians, to follow
this commandment. The multiplication of numbers, the cessation of the
armed hostility of the world, the great varieties in intellectual
position in regard to the truths of Christianity, divergencies of
culture, and many other things, are separating forces, But our
Christianity is worth very little, if it cannot master these separating
tendencies, even as in the early days of freshness, the Christianity
that sprang in these new converts' minds mastered the far more powerful
separating tendencies with which they had to contend.

Every Christian man is under the obligation to recognise his kindred
with every other Christian man—his kindred in the deep foundations of
his spiritual being, which are far deeper, and ought to be far more
operative in drawing together, than the superficial differences of
culture or opinion or the like, which may part us. The bond that holds
Christian men together is their common relation to the one Lord, and
that ought to influence their attitude to one another. You say I am
talking commonplaces. Yes; and the condition of Christianity this day
is the sad and tragical sign that the commonplaces need to be talked
about, till they are rubbed into the conscience of the Church as they
never have been before.

Do not let us suppose that Christian love is mere sentiment. I shall
have to speak a word or two about that presently, but I would fain lift
the whole subject, if I can, out of the region of mere unctuous words
and gush of half-feigned emotion, which mean nothing, and would make
you feel that it is a very practical commandment, gripping us hard,
when our Lord says to us, 'Love one another.'

I have spoken about the accidental conditions which make obedience to
this commandment difficult. The real reason which makes the obedience
to it difficult is the slackness of our own hold on the Centre. In the
measure in which we are filled with Jesus Christ, in that measure will
that expression of His spirit and His life become natural to us. Every
Christian has affinities with every other Christian, in the depths of
his being, so as that he is a great deal more like his brother, who is
possessor of 'like precious faith,' however unlike the two may be in
outlook, in idiosyncrasy, and culture and in creed, than he is to
another man with whom he may have a far closer sympathy in all these
matters than he has with the brother in question, but from whom he is
parted by this, that the one trusts and loves and obeys Jesus Christ,
and the other does not. So, for individuals and for churches, the
commandment takes this shape—Go down to the depths and you will find
that you are closer to the Christian man or community which seems
furthest from you, than you are to the non-Christian who seems nearest
to you. Therefore, let your love follow your kinship, and your heart
recognise the oneness that knits you together. That is a revolutionary
commandment; what would become of our present organisations of
Christianity if it were obeyed? That is a revolutionary commandment;
what would become of our individual relations to the whole family who,
in every place, and in many tongues, and with many creeds, call on
Jesus as on their Lord, their Lord and ours, if it were obeyed? I leave
you to answer the question. Only I say the commandment has for its
first scope all who, in every place, love the Lord Jesus Christ.

But there is more than that involved in it. The very same principle
which makes this love to one another imperative upon all disciples,
makes it equally imperative upon every follower of Jesus Christ to
embrace in a real affection all whom Jesus so loved as to die for them.
If I am to love a Christian man because he and I love Christ, I am to
love everybody, because Christ loves me and everybody, and because He
died on the Cross for me and for all men. And so one of the other
Apostles, or, at least, the letter which goes by his name, laid hold on
the true connection when, instead of concentrating Christian affection
on the Church, and letting the world go to the devil as an alien thing,
he said: 'Add to your faith,' this, that, and the other, and 'brotherly
kindness, and to brotherly kindness, charity.' The particular does not
exclude the general, it leads to the general. The fire kindled upon the
hearth gives warmth to all the chamber. The circles are concentric, and
the widest sweep is struck from the same middle point as the narrow. So
the new commandment does not cut humanity into two halves, but gathers
all diversity into one, and spreads the great reconciling of Christian
love over all the antagonisms and oppositions of earth. Let me ask you
to notice—

II. The example of the new commandment, 'As I have loved you.'

That solemn 'as' lifts itself up before us, shines far ahead of us,
ought to draw us to itself in hope, and not to repel us from itself in
despair. 'As I have loved'—what a tremendous thing for a man to stand
up before his fellows, and say, 'Take Me as the perfect example of
perfect love; and let My example—un-dimmed by the mists of gathering
centuries, and un-weakened by the change of condition, and
circumstance, fresh as ever after ages have passed, and closely-fitting
as ever all varieties of human character and condition—stand before
you; the ideal that I have realised, and you will be blessed in the
proportion in which you seek, though you fail, to realise it!' There
is, I venture to believe, only one aspect of Jesus Christ in which such
a setting forth of Himself as the perfect Incarnation of perfect love
is warrantable; and that is found in the old belief that His very birth
was the result of His love, and that His death was the climax of that
love. And if so, we have to turn to Bethlehem, and the whole life, and
the Cross at its end, as being the Christ-given example and model for
our love to our brethren.

What do we see there? I have said that there is too much of mere sickly
sentimentality about the ordinary treatment of this great commandment,
and that I desired to lift it out of that region into a far nobler,
more strenuous, and difficult one. This is what we see in that life and
in that death:—First of all—the activity of love—'Let _us_ not love in
words, but in deed and in truth'; then we see the self-forgetfulness of
love—'Even Christ pleased not Himself'; then we see the self-sacrifice
of love—'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friends.' And in these three points, on which I would fain
enlarge if I might, active love, self-oblivious love, self-sacrificing
love, you have the pattern set for us all. Christian love is no mere
sickly maiden, full of sentimental emotions and honeyed words. She is a
strenuous virgin, girt for service, a heroine ready for dangers, and
prepared to be a martyr if it be needful. Love's language is sacrifice.
'I give thee myself,' is its motto. And that is the pattern that is set
before us all—'as I have loved you.'

I have tried to show you how the commandment was new in many
particulars, and it is for ever new in this particular, that it is for
ever before us, unattained, and drawing faithful hearts to itself, and
ever opening out into new heroisms and, therefore, blessedness, of
self-sacrifice, and ever leading us to confess the differences, deep,
tragic, sinful, between us and Him who—we sometimes think too
presumptuously—we venture to say is our Lord and Master.

Did you ever see in some great picture gallery a copyist sitting in
front of a Raffaelle, and comparing his poor feeble daub, all out of
drawing, and with little of the divine beauty that the master had
breathed over his canvas, even if it preserved the mere mechanical
outline? That is what you and I should do with our lives: take them and
put them down side by side with the original. We shall have to do it
some day. Had we better not do it now, and try to bring the copy a
little nearer to the masterpiece; and let that 'as I have loved you'
shine before us and draw us on to unattainable heights?

And now, lastly, we have here—

III. The motive power for obedience to the commandment.

That is as new as all the rest. That 'as' expresses the manner of the
love, but it also expresses the motive and the power. It might be
translated into the equivalent 'in the fashion in which,' or it might
be translated into the equivalent 'since—' 'I have loved you.' The
original might bear the rendering, 'that ye also may love one another.'
That is to say, what keeps men from obeying this commandment is the
instinctive self-regard which is natural to us all. There are muscles
in the body which are so constructed that they close tightly; and the
heart is something like one of these sphincter muscles—it shuts by
nature, especially if there has been anything put inside it over which
it can shut and keep it all to itself. But there is one thing that
dethrones Self, and enthrones the angel Love in a heart, and that is,
that into that heart there shall come surging the sense of the great
love 'wherewith I have loved you.' That melts the iceberg; nothing else
will.

That love of Christ to us, received into our hearts, and there
producing an answering love to Him, will make us, in the measure in
which we live in it and let it rule us, love everything and every
person that He loves. That love of Jesus Christ, stealing into our
hearts and there sweetening the ever-springing 'issues of life,' will
make them flow out in glad obedience to any commandment of His. That
love of Jesus Christ, received into our hearts, and responded to by our
answering love, will work, as love always does, a magical
transformation. A great monastic teacher wrote his precious book about
_The Imitation of Christ_. 'Imitation' is a great word,
'Transformation' is a greater. 'We all,' receiving on the mirror of our
loving hearts the love of Jesus Christ, 'are changed into the same
likeness.' Thus, then, the love, which is our pattern, is also our
motive and our power for obedience, and the more we bring ourselves
under its influences, the more we shall love all those who are beloved
by, and lovers of, Jesus.

That is the one foundation for a world knit together in the bonds of
amity and concord. There have been attempts at brotherhood, and the
guillotine has ended what was begun in the name of 'fraternity.' Men
build towers, but there is no cement between the bricks, unless the
love of Christ holds them together, and therefore Babel after Babel
comes down about the ears of its builders. But notwithstanding all that
is dark to-day, and though the war-clouds are lowering, and the hearts
of men are inflamed with fierce passions, Christ's commandment is
Christ's promise; and though the vision tarry, it will surely come. So
even to-day Christian men ought to stand for Christ's peace, and for
Christ's love. The old commandment which we have had from the
beginning, is the new commandment that fits to-day as it fits all the
ages. It is a dream, say some. Yes, a dream; but a morning dream which
comes true. Let us do the little we can to make it true, and to bring
about the day when the flock of men will gather round the one Shepherd,
who loved them to the death, and who has bid them and helped them to
'love one another as'—and since—'He has loved them.'




QUO VADIS?


'Peter said unto Him, Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now! I will lay
down my life for Thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy
life for My sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not
crow, till thou hast denied Me thrice.'—JOHN xiii. 37, 38.

Peter's main characteristics are all in operation here; his eagerness
to be in the front, his habit of blurting out his thoughts and
feelings, his passionate love for his Master, and withal his inability
to understand Him, and his self-confident arrogance. He has broken in
upon Christ's solemn words, entirely deaf to their deep meaning, but
blindly and blunderingly laying hold of one thought only, that Jesus is
departing, and that he is to be left alone. So he asks the question,
'Lord! thither goest Thou?'—not so much caring about that, as meaning
by his question—'tell me where, and then I will come too'; pledging
himself to follow faithfully, as a dog behind his master, wherever He
went.

Our Lord answered the underlying meaning of the words, repeating with a
personal application what He had just before said as a general
principle—'Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shall
follow Me afterwards.' Then followed this noteworthy dialogue.

The whole significance of the incident is preserved for us in the
beautiful legend which tells us how, near the city of Rome, on the
Appian Way, as Peter was flying for his life, he met the Lord, and
again said to Him: 'Lord, whither goest Thou?' The words of the
question, as given in the Vulgate, are the name of the site of the
supposed interview, and of the little church which stands on it. The
Master answered: 'I go to Rome, to be crucified again.' The answer
smote the heart of the Apostle, and turned the cowardly fugitive into a
hero; and he followed his Lord, and went gladly to his death. For it
was that death which had to be accomplished before Peter was able to
follow his Lord.

Now, as to the words before us, I think we shall best gather their
significance, and lay it upon our own hearts, if we simply follow the
windings of the dialogue. There are three points: the audacious
question, the rash vow, and the sad forecast.

I. The audacious question.

As Peter's first question, 'Lord, whither goest Thou?' meant not so
much what it said, as 'I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest;
tell me, that I may'; so the second question, in like manner, is really
not so much a question, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' as the nearest
possible approach to a flat contradiction of our Lord. Peter puts his
words into the shape of an interrogation; what he means is, 'Yes, I can
follow Thee; and in proof thereof, I will lay down my life for Thy
sake.' The man's persistence, the man's love leading him to lack of
reverence, came out in this (as I have ventured to call it) audacious
question. Its underlying meaning was a refusal to believe the Master's
word. But yet there was in it a nobility of resolution—broken
afterwards, but never mind about that—to endure anything rather than to
be separate from the Lord. Yet, though it was noble in its motive, but
lacking in reverence in its form, there was a deeper error than that in
it. Peter did not know what 'following' meant, and he had to be taught
that first. One of the main reasons why he could not follow was because
he did not understand what was involved. It was something more than
marching behind his Master, even to a Cross. There was a deeper
discipline and a more strenuous effort needed than would have availed
for such a kind of following.

Let us look a little onwards into his life. Recall that scene on the
morning of the day by the banks of the lake, when he waded through the
shallow water, and cast himself, dripping, at his Master's feet, and,
having by his threefold confession obliterated his threefold denial,
was taken back to his Lord's love, and received the permission for
which he had hungered, and which he had been told, in the upper room,
could not 'now' be given: 'Jesus said to him, Follow thou Me.' What a
flood of remembrances must then have rushed over the penitent Peter!
how he must have thought to himself, 'So soon, so soon is the "canst
not" changed into a _canst_! So soon has the "afterwards" come to be
the present!'

And long years after that, when he was an old man, and experience had
taught him what _following_ meant, he shared his privilege with all the
dispersed strangers to whom he wrote, and said to them, with a definite
reference to this incident, and to the other after the Resurrection,
'leaving us an example, that we (not only, as I used to think, in my
exuberant days of ignorance) should follow in His steps.'

So, brethren, this blundering, loving, audacious question suggests to
us that to follow Jesus Christ is the supreme direction for all
conduct. Men of all creeds, men of no creed, admit that. The

  'Loveliness of perfect deeds,
  More strong than all poetic thought,'

which is set forth in that life constitutes the living law to which all
conduct is to be conformed, and will be noble in proportion as it is
conformed.

_There_ is the great blessing, and solemn obligation, and lofty
prerogative of Christian morality, that for obedience to a precept it
substitutes following a Person, and instead of saying to men 'Be good'
it says to them 'Be Christlike.' It brings the conception of duty out
of the region of abstractions into the region of living realities. For
the cold statuesque ideal of perfection it substitutes a living Man,
with a heart to love, and a hand to help us. Thereby the whole aspect
of striving after the right is changed; for the work is made easier,
and companionship comes in to aid morality, when Jesus Christ says to
us, 'Be like Me; and then you will be good and blessed.' Effort will be
all but as blessed as attainment, and the sense of pressing hard after
Him will be only less restful than the consciousness of having
attained. To follow Him is bliss, to reach Him is heaven.

But in order that this following should be possible, there must be
something done that had not been done when Peter asked, 'Why cannot I
follow Thee now?' One reason why he could not was, as I said, because
he did not know yet what 'following' meant, and because he was yet
unfit for this assimilation of his character and of his conduct to the
likeness of his Lord. And another reason was because the Cross still
lay before the Lord, and until that death of infinite love and utter
self-sacrifice for others had been accomplished, the pattern was not
yet complete, nor the highest ideal of human life realised in life.
Therefore the 'following' was impossible. Christ must die before He has
completed the example that we are to follow, and Christ must die before
the impulse shall be given to us, which shall make us able to tread,
however falteringly and far behind, in His footsteps.

The essence of His life and of His death lies in the two things, entire
suppression of personal will in obedience to the will of the Father,
and entire self-sacrifice for the sake of humanity. And however there
is—and God forbid that I should ever forget in my preaching that there
is—a uniqueness in that sacrifice, in that life, and in that death,
which beggars all imitation, and needs and tolerates no repetition
whilst the world lasts, still along with this, there is that which is
imitable in the life and imitable in the death of the Master. To follow
Jesus is to live denying self for God, and to live sacrificing self for
men. Nothing less than these are included in the solemn words, 'leaving
us'—even in the act and article of death when He 'suffered for us'—'an
example that we should follow His steps.'

The word rendered 'example' refers to the headline which the
writing-master gives his pupils to copy, line by line. We all know how
clumsy the pothooks and hangers are, how blurred the page with many a
blot. And yet there, at the top of it, stands the Master's fair
writing, and though even the last line on the page will be blotted and
blurred, when we turn it over and begin on the new leaf, the copy will
be like the original, 'and we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him
as He is.' 'Thou shalt follow Me afterwards' is a commandment; blessed
be God, it is also a promise. For let us not forget that the
'following' ends in an attaining; even as the Lord Himself has said in
another connection, when He spake: 'If any man serve Me, let him follow
Me, and where I am, there shall also My servant be.' Of course, if we
follow, we shall come to the same place one day. And so the great
promise will be fulfilled; 'they shall follow the Lamb,' in that higher
life, 'whithersoever He goeth'; and not as here imperfectly, and far
behind, but close beside Him, and keeping step for step, being with Him
first, and following Him afterwards.

But let us remember that with regard to that future following and its
completeness, the same present incapacity applies, as clogs and mars
the 'following,' which is conforming our lives to His. For, as He
Himself has said to us, 'I go to prepare a place for you,' and until He
had passed through death and into His glory, there was no
standing-ground for human feet on the golden pavements, and heaven was
inaccessible to man until Christ had died. Thus, as all life is changed
when it is looked upon as being a following of Jesus, so death becomes
altogether other when it is so regarded. The first martyr outside the
city wall, bruised and battered by the cruel stones, remembered his
Master's death, and shaped his own to be like it. As Jesus, when He
died, had said: 'Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit,' Stephen,
dying, said: 'Lord Jesus, receive My spirit.' As the Master had given
His last breath to the prayer, 'Father, forgive them; they know not
what they do,' so Stephen shaped his last utterance to a conformity
with his Lord's, in which the difference is as significant as the
likeness, and said, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.' And then,
as the record beautifully says, amidst all that wild hubbub and cruel
assault, 'he fell on sleep,' as a child on its mother's breast. Death
is changed when it becomes the following of Christ.

II. We have here a rash vow.

'I will lay down my life for Thy sake.' What a strange inversion of
parts is here! 'Lay down thy life for My sake'—with Calvary less than
four-and-twenty hours off, when Christ laid down His life for Peter's
sake. Peter was guilty of an anachronism in the words, for the time did
not come for the disciple to die for his Lord till after the Lord had
died for His disciple. But he was right in feeling, though he felt it
only in regard to an external and physical act, that to follow Jesus,
it was necessary to be ready to die for Him. And that is the great
truth which underlies and half redeems the rashness of this vow, and
needs to be laid upon our hearts, if we are ever to be the true
followers of the Master. Death for Christ is necessary if we are to
follow Him. There is nothing that a man can do deeply and truly, in a
manner worthy of a Christian, which has not underlying it, either the
death of self-will and all the godless nature, or if need be the actual
physical death, which is a much smaller matter. You cannot follow
Christ except you die daily. No man has ever yet trodden in His
footsteps except on condition of, moment by moment, slaying self,
suppressing self, abjuring self, breaking the connection of self with
the material world, and yielding up himself as a living sacrifice, in a
living death, to the Lord of life and death. Do not think that
'following Christ' is a mere sentimental expression for so much
morality as we can conveniently get into our daily life. But remember
that here, with all his rashness, with all his ignorance, with all his
superficiality, the Apostle has laid hold upon the great permanent, but
alas! much-forgotten principle, that to die is essential to following
Jesus.

This daily dying, which is a far harder thing to do than to go to a
cross once, and have done with it—was impossible for Peter then, though
he did not know it. His vow was a rash one, because the laying down of
Christ's life, for Peter's sake and for ours, had not yet been
accomplished. _There_ is the motive-power by which, and by which alone,
drawn in gratitude, and melted down from all our selfishness, we, too,
in our measure and our turn, are able to yield ourselves, in daily
crucifixion of our evil, and daily abnegation of self-trust, and
self-pleasing, and self-will, to the Lord that has died for us. He must
lay down His life for our sakes, and we must know He has done it, and
rest upon Him as our great Sacrifice and our atoning Priest, or else we
shall never be so loosed from the tyranny of self as to be ready to
live by dying, and to die that we may live for His sake. 'I go to Rome
to be crucified again' were the words in which the old legend braced
the fugitive and made a hero of him, and sent him back to be crucified
like his Lord and to offer up his physical life, as he had long since
offered up his self-will and his arrogance to the Lord that had died
for him.

O Lord our Father! help us, we beseech Thee, that we may be of the
sheep that hear the Shepherd's voice and follow Him. Strengthen our
faith in that dear Lord who has laid down His life for us, that we may
daily, by self-denial and self-sacrifice, lay down our lives for Him,
and follow Him here in all the footsteps of His love.




A RASH VOW


'Jesus answered him, Wilt them lay down thy life for My sake? Verily,
verily I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied
Me thrice.'—JOHN xiii. 38.

In the last sermon I partly considered the dialogue of which this is
the concluding portion, and found that it consisted of an audacious
question: 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' which really meant a
contradiction of our Lord; of a rash vow; 'I will lay down my life for
Thy sake'—and of a sad forecast: 'The cock shall not crow till thou
hast denied Me thrice.' I paused in the middle of considering the
second of these three stages, the rash vow. I then pointed out that,
however ignorant the Apostle was of what 'following Christ' meant, he
had hit the mark, and stumbled unknowingly upon the very essence of the
Christian life, and an eternal truth, when he recognised that, somehow
or other, to 'follow Christ' meant to die for Him. That is so, and is
so always, for there is no following Christ which is not a 'dying
daily,' by self-immolation and detachment from the world, and from the
life of sense and self. But this rash vow has to be looked at from a
somewhat different point of view, and we have to consider not only the
strangely blended right and wrong, error and deep truth, that lie in
its substance, but the strangely blended right and wrong in the state
of feeling and thought, on the part of the Apostle, which it
represents. And taking up the dropped thread, I first deal with that,
and then with the sad forecast which follows.

So then, looking at these words as being like all our words, even the
best of them, strangely mingled of right and wrong, good and evil, I
find in them—

I. A noble, sincere, but transient emotion and impulse.

'I will lay down my life for Thy sake.' Peter meant it, every word of
it; and he would have done it too, if only a gibbet or cross could have
been set up then and there in the upper room. But unfortunately the
moments of elevation and high-wrought enthusiasm, and the calls to
martyrdom, do not always coincide. In the upper room, with its sacred
atmosphere, it was easy to feel, and would have been easy to do, nobly.
But it was not so easy, lying drowsily in Gethsemane, in the cold
spring night, waiting for the Master's coming out from beneath the
trembling shadows of the olive trees, or huddled up by the fire at the
lower end of the hall in the grey morning, when vitality is at its
lowest.

So the sincere, noble utterance was but the expression of impulse and
emotion which lifted Peter for a moment, and did him good, but which
likewise, running through him, left him dry, and all the weaker because
of the gush of feeling which had foamed itself away in empty words. For
let us never forget that however high, noble, or divinely inspired
emotion may be, in its nature it is transient and is sure to be
followed by reaction. Like the winter torrents in some parched land,
the more they foam, the more speedily does the bed of them dry up
again, and the more they carry down the very soil in which growth and
fertility would be possible. A rush of feeling is apt to leave behind
hard, insensitive rock. There is a close connection between a
predominantly emotional Christianity and a very imperfect life. Feeling
is apt to be a substitute for action. Is it not a very remarkable thing
that the word 'benevolence,' which means 'kindly feeling,' has come to
take on the meaning rightly belonging to 'beneficence,' which means
'kindly doing'? The emotional man blinds and hoodwinks himself, by
thinking that his quick sensibility and lofty enthusiasm and warmth of
emotion are action or as good as action. 'Be thou warmed and filled,'
he says to his brother, and, in a lazy expansion of heart, forgets that
he has never lifted a finger to help.

God forbid that I should seem to deprecate emotional religion or
religious emotion! that is the last thing that needs to be done in this
generation. If the Churches want one thing more than another, it is
that their Christianity should become far more emotional than it is,
and their impulses stronger, swifter, more spontaneous, more
overmastering, and that they should be urged by these, and not merely
by the reluctant recognition that such and such a piece of sacrifice or
effort is a debt that they are obliged to clear off. Their service will
be glad service, only when it is impulsive service and emotional
service. Dear brethren, a Christian man whose life is not influenced by
the deepest and most fervid emotion of love to the great Love that died
for him, is a monster. 'The Lord's fire is in Jerusalem, and His
furnace in Zion'—is that a description of the fervour of this Church,
or of any Church in Christendom? A furnace? An ice-house! Think of some
deserted cottage, with the roof fallen in, and in the cold
chimney-place a rusty grate with some dead embers in it, and the snow
lying upon the top of it—that is a truer description of a great many of
our churches than 'the Lord's furnace.'

But the lesson to be taken from this incident before us is not the
danger of emotion; it is rather the necessity of emotion, but with two
provisoes, that it shall be emotion based upon a clear recognition of
the great truth that He has laid down His life for me; and that it
shall be emotion harnessed to work, and not wasted in words. The
mightier the plunge of the fall, the more electrical energy you can get
out of it, and set that to work to drive the wheels of life. Do not be
afraid of emotion; you will make little of your Christianity unless you
have it. But be sure that it is under the guidance of a clear
perception of the truth that evokes it, and that it is all used to turn
the wheels of life. 'Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than
that thou shouldest vow and not pay.' Better is it that emotion should
be reticent and active than that it should be voluble and idle. It is a
good servant, but a bad master. A man that trusts to impulse and
emotion to further his Christian course, is like a ship in that belt of
variable winds that lies near the Equator, where there will be a fine
ten-knot breeze for an hour or two, and then a sickly, stagnating calm.
Push further south, and get into the steady 'trades,' where the wind
blows with equable and persistent force all the year round in the same
direction. Convert impulses and emotions into steadfast principle,
warmed by emotion and borne on by impulse.

II. Again, this rash vow is an illustration of a confidence, also
strangely blended of good and evil.

'I will lay down my life for Thy sake.' As I have said, Peter meant it.
His words are paralleled by other words, in which two of the Lord's
disciples answered His solemn question: 'Are ye able to drink of the
cup that I drink of?' with the unhesitating answer, 'We are able.' A
great teacher has regarded that saying as one of 'the ventures of
faith.' Perhaps it was. Perhaps there was as much self-confidence as
faith in it. Certainly there was more self-confidence than faith in
Peter's answer, and his self-confidence collapsed when the trial came.

The world and the Church hold entirely antagonistic notions about the
value of self-reliance. The world says that it is a condition of power.
The Church says that it is the root of weakness. Self-confidence shuts
a man out from the help of God, and so shuts him out from the source of
power. For if you will think for a moment, you will see that the faith
which the New Testament, in conformity with all wise knowledge of one's
self, preaches as the one secret of power, has for its obverse—its
other side—diffidence and self-distrust. No man trusts God as God ought
to be trusted, who does not distrust himself as himself ought to be
distrusted. To level a mountain is the only way to carry the water
across where it stood. You can, by mechanism and locks, take a canal up
to the top of a hill, but you cannot take a river up to the top, and
the river of God's help flows through the valley and seeks the lowest
levels. Faith and self-despair are the upper and the under sides of the
same thing, like some cunningly-woven cloth, the one side bearing a
different pattern from the other, and yet made of the same yarn, and
the same threads passing from the upper to the under sides. So faith
and self-distrust are but two names for one composite whole.

I was once shown an old Jewish coin which had on the one side the words
'sackcloth and ashes,' and on the other side the words 'a crown of
gold.' The coin meant to contrast what Israel had been with what Israel
then was. The crown had come first; the sackcloth and ashes last. But
we may use it for illustrating this point, on which I am now dwelling.
Wherever, and only where, there are the sackcloth and ashes of
self-despair there will be the crown of gold of an answering faith.
When thus, as Wesley has it, in his great hymn: 'Confident in
self-despair,' we cling to God, then we can say: 'When I am weak then
am I strong,' 'Behold! we have no might, but our eyes are upon Thee.'
If Peter had only said, 'By Thy help I will lay down my life for Thy
sake,' his confidence would have been reasonable and blessed
self-confidence, because it would have been confidence in a self
inspired by divine power.

And so, brethren, whilst utter diffidence is right for us, and is the
condition of all our reception of energy according to our need, the
most absolute confidence—a confidence which, to the eye of the man that
measures only visible things, will seem sheer insanity—is sobriety for
a Christian. The world is perfectly right when it says: 'If you believe
you can do a thing, you have gone a long way towards doing it.' The
expectation of success has often the knack of fulfilling itself. But
the world does not know our secret, and our secret is that our humble
faith brings into the field the reserves with the Captain of our
salvation at their head. Therefore a self-distrusting Christian can
say, and say without exaggeration or presumption, 'I can do all things
in Christ, strengthening me from within.'

The Church's ideals are possibilities, when you bring God into the
account, and they look like insanity when you do not. Take, for
instance, missions. What an absurdity to talk about a handful of
Christian people—for we are only a handful as compared with the whole
world—carrying their Gospel into every corner of the earth, and finding
everywhere a response to it. Yes; it is absurd; but, wise Mr.
Calculator, counter of heads, you have forgotten God in your estimate
of whether it is reasonable or unreasonable. Again, take the Christian
ideal of absolute perfection of character. 'What nonsense to talk as if
any man could ever come to that.' Yes!—as if any _man_ could come to
that, I grant you. But if God is with him, the nonsense is to suppose
that he will not come to it. Here is a row of cyphers as long as your
arm. They mean nothing. Put a 1 at the left-hand end of the row; and
what does it mean then? So the faith that brings Christ into the life,
and into the Church, makes 'nobodies' into mighty men—'laughs at
impossibilities, and cries, It shall be done!'

Still further, here, in this rash vow, we have an underestimate of
difficulties. There was another incident in the life of the Apostle, a
strange replica of this one, into which he pushed himself, just as he
did into the high priest's hall, partly out of curiosity and a wish to
be prominent; partly out of love to his Master. Without a moment's
consideration of the peril into which he was thrusting himself, he sat
in the boat, and said, 'Bid me come to Thee on the water.' He forgot
that He was heavy, and that water was not solid, and that the wind was
high and the lake rough, and when he put his foot over the side and
felt the cold waves creeping up his knees, his courage ebbed out with
his faith, and he began to sink. Then he cried, 'Lord! help me!' If he
had thought for a moment of the reality of the case, he would have sat
still in the boat. If he had thought of what would be in his way in
following Jesus to death, he would have hesitated to vow. But it is so
much easier to resolve heroisms in a quiet corner than to do them when
the strain comes, and it is so much easier to do some one great thing
that has in it enthusiasm and nobility, and conspicuousness of
sacrifice, especially if it can be got over in a moment, like having
one's head cut off with an axe, than it is to 'die daily.' Ah!
brethren, it is the little difficulties that make _the_ difficulty. You
read in the newspapers in the autumn, every now and then, of trains, in
that wonderful country across the water, being stopped by caterpillars.
The Christian train is stopped by an army of caterpillars, far oftener
than it is by some solid and towering barrier. Our Christian lives are
a great deal likelier to come to failure, because we do not take into
account the multiplied small antagonisms than because we are not ready
to face the greater ones. What would you think of a bridge builder, who
built a bridge across some mountain torrent and made no allowance for
freshets and floods when the ice melted? His bridge and his piers would
be gone the first winter. You remember who it was that said that he
went into the Franco-German War 'with a light heart,' and in seven
weeks came Sedan and the dethronement of an Emperor, and the surrender
of an army. 'Blessed is he that feareth always.' There is no more fatal
error than an underestimate of our difficulties.

III. Let me say a word about the sad forecast here.

'Thou shalt deny me thrice.'

We cannot say that poor Peter's fall was at all an anomalous or
uncommon thing. He did exactly what a great many of us are doing. He
could—and I have no doubt he would—have gone to the death for Jesus
Christ; but he could not stand being laughed at for Him. He would have
been ready to meet the executioner's sharp sword, but the
servant-girl's sharp tongue was more than he could bear. And so he
denied Jesus, not because he was afraid of his skin—for I do not
suppose that the servants had any notion of doing anything more than
amusing themselves with a few clumsy gibes at his expense—but because
he could not bear to be made sport of.

Now, dear brethren, I suppose we are all of us more or less movers in
circles in which it sometimes is not considered 'good form' to show
that we are Christian people. You young men in your warehouses, you
students at the University, where it is a sign of being 'fossils' and
'behind the times' and 'not up to date' to say 'I am a Christian,' and
all of us in our several places have sometimes to gather our courage
together, and not be afraid to declare whose we are. No doubt life is a
better witness than words, but no doubt also life is not so good a
witness as it might be, unless it sometimes has the commentary of words
as well. Thus, to confess Christ means two things; to say sometimes—in
the face of a smile of scorn, which is often harder to bear than
something much more dangerous—'I am His,' and to live Christ, and to
say by conduct 'I am His,' 'Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him
will I also confess before My Father, and whosoever shall deny Me, him
will I also deny.' Do not button your coats over your uniform. Do not
take the cockade out of your hats when you go amongst 'the other side.'
Live Jesus, and, when advisable, preach Jesus.

But Peter's fall, which is typical of what we are all tempted to do,
has in it a gracious message; for it proclaims the possibility of
recovery from any depth of descent, and of coming back again from any
distance of wandering. Did you ever notice how Peter's fall was burnt
in upon his memory, so as that when he began to preach after Pentecost,
the shape that his indictment of his hearers takes is, 'Ye denied the
Holy One and the Just,' and how, long after—if the second Epistle which
goes by his name is his—in summing up the crimes of the heretics whom
he is branding, he speaks of their 'denying the Lord that bought them.'
He never forgot his denial, and it remained with him as the expression
for all that was wrong in a man's relation to Jesus Christ. And I
suppose not only was it burnt in upon his memory, but it burnt out all
his self-confidence.

It is beautiful to see how, in his letter, he speaks over and over
again of 'fear' as being a wise temper of mind for a Christian. As
George Herbert has it, 'A sad, wise valour is the true complexion.'
Thus the man that had been so confident in himself learned to say 'Be
ready to give to every man that asketh you a reason for the hope that
is in you, with meekness and fear.'

And do you not think that his fall drew him closer to Jesus Christ than
ever he had been before, as he learned more of His pardoning love and
mercy? Was he not nearer the Lord on that morning when the two
together, alone, talked after the Resurrection? Was he not nearer Him
when he struggled to his feet from the boat on the lake, on that
morning when he was received back into his office as Christ's Apostle?
Did he ever forget how he had sinned? Did he ever forget how Christ had
pardoned? Did he ever forget how Christ loved and would keep him? Ah,
no! The rope that is broken is strongest where it is spliced, not
because it was broken, but because a cunning hand has strengthened it.
We may be the stronger for our sins, not because sin strengthens, for
it weakens, but because God restores. It is possible that we may build
a fairer structure on the ruins of our old selves. It is possible that
we may turn every field of defeat into a field of victory. It is
possible that we may

    'Fall to rise; be beaten, to fight better.'

If only we cling to the Lord our Strength, the promise shall be
ours—whatever our failures, denials, backslidings,
inconsistencies—'though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down, for
the Lord upholdeth him with His hand.'




FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST


'Let not your heart be troubled … believe in God, believe also in
Me.'—JOHN xiv. 1.

The twelve were sitting in the upper chamber, stupefied with the
dreary, half-understood prospect of Christ's departure. He, forgetting
His own burden, turns to comfort and encourage them. These sweet and
great words most singularly blend gentleness and dignity. Who can
reproduce the cadence of soothing tenderness, soft as a mother's hand,
in that 'Let not your heart be troubled'? And who can fail to feel the
tone of majesty in that 'Believe in God, believe also in Me'?

The Greek presents an ambiguity in the latter half of the verse, for
the verb may be either indicative or imperative, and so we may read
four different ways, according as we render each of the two 'believes'
in either of these two fashions. Our Authorised and Revised Versions
concur in adopting the indicative 'Ye believe' in the former clause and
the imperative in the latter. But I venture to think that we get a more
true and appropriate meaning if we keep both clauses in the same mood,
and read them both as imperatives: 'Believe in God, believe also in
Me.' It would be harsh, I think, to take one as an affirmation and the
other as a command. It would be irrelevant, I think, to remind the
disciples of their belief in God. It would break the unity of the verse
and destroy the relation of the latter half to the former, the former
being a negative precept: 'Let not your heart be troubled'; and the
latter being a positive one: 'Instead of being troubled, believe in
God, and believe in Me.' So, for all these reasons, I venture to adopt
the reading I have indicated.

I. Now in these words the first thing that strikes me is that Christ
here points to Himself as the object of precisely the same religious
trust which is to be given to God.

It is only our familiarity with these words that blinds us to their
wonderfulness and their greatness. Try to hear them for the first time,
and to bring into remembrance the circumstances in which they were
spoken. Here is a man sitting among a handful of His friends, who is
within four-and-twenty hours of a shameful death, which to all
appearance was the utter annihilation of all His claims and hopes, and
He says, 'Trust in God, and trust in Me'! I think that if we had heard
that for the first time, we should have understood a little better than
some of us do the depth of its meaning.

What is it that Christ asks for here? Or rather let me say, What is it
that Christ offers to us here? For we must not look at the words as a
demand or as a command, but rather as a merciful invitation to do what
it is life and blessing to do. It is a very low and inadequate
interpretation of these words which takes them as meaning little more
than 'Believe in God, believe that He is; believe in Me, believe that I
am.' But it is scarcely less so to suppose that the mere assent of the
understanding to His teaching is all that Christ is asking for here. By
no means; what He invites us to goes a great deal deeper than that. The
essence of it is an act of the will and of the heart, not of the
understanding at all. A man may believe in Him as a historical person,
may accept all that is said about Him here, and yet not be within sight
of the trust in Him of which He here speaks. For the essence of the
whole is not the intellectual process of assent to a proposition, but
the intensely personal act of yielding up will and heart to a living
person. Faith does not grasp a doctrine, but a heart. The trust which
Christ requires is the bond that unites souls with Him; and the very
life of it is entire committal of myself to Him in all my relations and
for all my needs, and absolute utter confidence in Him as
all-sufficient for everything that I can require. Let us get away from
the cold intellectualism of 'belief' into the warm atmosphere of
'trust,' and we shall understand better than by many volumes what
Christ here means and the sphere and the power and the blessedness of
that faith which Christ requires.

Further, note that, whatever may be this believing in Him which He asks
from us or invites us to render, it is precisely the same thing which
He bids us render to God. The two clauses in the original bring out
that idea even more vividly than in our version, because the order of
the words in the latter clause is inverted; and they read literally
thus: 'Believe in God, in Me also believe.' The purpose of the
inversion is to put these two, God and Christ, as close together as
possible; and to put the two identical emotions at the beginning and at
the end, at the two extremes and outsides of the whole sentence. Could
language be more deliberately adopted and moulded, even in its
consecution and arrangement, to enforce this thought, that whatever it
is that we give to Christ, it is the very same thing that we give to
God? And so He here proposes Himself as the worthy and adequate
recipient of all these emotions of confidence, submission, resignation,
which make up religion in its deepest sense.

That tone is by no means singular in this place. It is the uniform tone
and characteristic of our Lord's teaching. Let me remind you just in a
sentence of one or two instances. What did He think of Himself who
stood up before the world and, with arms outstretched, like that great
white Christ in Thorwaldsen's lovely statue, said to all the troop of
languid and burdened and fatigued ones crowding at His feet: 'Come unto
Me all ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest'? That surely is a divine prerogative. What did He think of
Himself who said, 'All men should honour the Son even as they honour
the Father'? What did He think of Himself who, in that very Sermon on
the Mount (to which the advocates of a maimed and mutilated
Christianity tell us they pin their faith, instead of to mystical
doctrines) declared that He Himself was the Judge of humanity, and that
all men should stand at His bar and receive from Him 'according to the
deeds done in their body'? Upon any honest principle of interpreting
these Gospels, and unless you avowedly go picking and choosing amongst
His words, accepting this and rejecting that, you cannot eliminate from
the scriptural representation of Jesus Christ the fact that He claimed
as His own the emotions of the heart to which only God has a right and
only God can satisfy.

I do not dwell upon that point, but I say, in one sentence, we have to
take that into account if we would estimate the character of Jesus
Christ as a Teacher and as a Man. I would not turn away from Him any
imperfect conceptions, as they seem to me, of His nature and His
work—rather would I foster them, and lead them on to a fuller
recognition of the full Christ—but this I am bound to say, that for my
part I believe that nothing but the wildest caprice, dealing with the
Gospels according to one's own subjective fancies, irrespective
altogether of the evidence, can strike out from the teaching of Christ
this its characteristic difference. What signalises Him, and separates
Him from all other religious teachers, is not the clearness or the
tenderness with which He reiterated the truths about the divine
Father's love, or about morality, and justice, and truth, and goodness;
but _the_ peculiarity of His call to the world is, 'Believe in Me.' And
if He said that, or anything like it, and if the representations of His
teaching in these four Gospels, which are the only source from which we
get any notion of Him at all, are to be accepted, why, then, one of two
things follows. Either He was wrong, and then He was a crazy
enthusiast, only acquitted of blasphemy because convicted of insanity;
or else—or else—He was 'God, manifest in the flesh.' It is vain to bow
down before a fancy portrait of a bit of Christ, and to exalt the
humble sage of Nazareth, and to leave out the very thing that makes the
difference between Him and all others, namely, these either audacious
or most true claims to be the Son of God, the worthy Recipient and the
adequate Object of man's religious emotions. 'Believe in God, in Me
also believe.'

II. Now, secondly, notice that faith in Christ and faith in God are not
two, but one.

These two clauses on the surface present juxtaposition. Looked at more
closely they present interpenetration and identity. Jesus Christ does
not merely set Himself up by the side of God, nor are we worshippers of
two Gods when we bow before Jesus and bow before the Father; but faith
in Christ is faith in God, and faith in God which is not faith in
Christ is imperfect, incomplete, and will not long last. To trust in
Him is to trust in the Father; to trust in the Father is to trust in
Him.

What is the underlying truth that is here? How comes it that these two
objects blend into one, like two figures in a stereoscope; and that the
faith which flows to Jesus Christ rests upon God? This is the
underlying truth, that Jesus Christ, Himself divine, is the divine
Revealer of God. I need not dwell upon the latter of these two
thoughts: how there is no real knowledge of the real God in the depth
of His love, the tenderness of His nature or the lustrousness of His
holiness; how there is no certitude; how the God that we see outside of
Jesus Christ is sometimes doubt, sometimes hope, sometimes fear, always
far-off and vague, an abstraction rather than a person, 'a stream of
tendency' without us, that which is unnameable, and the like. I need
not dwell upon the thought that Jesus Christ has showed us a Father,
has brought a God to our hearts whom we can love, whom we can know
really though not fully, of whom we can be sure with a certitude which
is as deep as the certitude of our own personal being; that He has
brought to us a God before whom we do not need to crouch far off, that
He has brought to us a God whom we can trust. Very significant is it
that Christianity alone puts the very heart of religion in the act of
trust. Other religions put it in dread, worship, service, and the like.
Jesus Christ alone says, the bond between men and God is that blessed
one of trust. And He says so because He alone brings us a God whom it
is not ridiculous to tell men to trust.

And, on the other hand, the truth that underlies this is not only that
Jesus Christ is the Revealer of God, but that He Himself is divine.
Light shines through a window, but the light and the glass that makes
it visible have nothing in common with one another. The Godhead shines
through Christ, but _He_ is not a mere transparent medium. It is
Himself that He is showing us when He is showing us God. 'He that hath
seen Me hath seen'—not the light that streams through Me—but 'hath
seen,' in Me, 'the Father.' And because He is Himself divine and the
divine Revealer, therefore the faith that grasps Him is inseparably one
with the faith that grasps God. Men could look upon a Moses, an Isaiah,
or a Paul, and in them recognise the eradiation of the divinity that
imparted itself through them, but the medium was forgotten in
proportion as that which it revealed was beheld. You cannot forget
Christ in order to see God more clearly, but to behold Him is to behold
God.

And if that be true, these two things follow. One is that all imperfect
revelation of God is prophetic of, and leads up towards, the perfect
revelation in Jesus Christ. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
gives that truth in a very striking fashion. He compares all other
means of knowing God to fragmentary syllables of a great word, of which
one was given to one man and another to another. God 'spoke at sundry
times and in manifold portions to the fathers by the prophets'; but the
whole word is articulately uttered by the Son, in whom He has 'spoken
unto us in these last times.' The imperfect revelation, by means of
those who were merely mediums for the revelation leads up to Him who is
Himself the Revelation, the Revealer, and the Revealed.

And in like manner, all the imperfect faith that, laying hold of other
fragmentary means of knowing God, has tremulously tried to trust Him,
finds its climax and consummate flower in the full-blossomed faith that
lays hold upon Jesus Christ. The unconscious prophecies of heathendom;
the trust that select souls up and down the world have put in One whom
they dimly apprehended; the faith of the Old Testament saints; the
rudimentary beginnings of a knowledge of God and of a trust in Him
which are found in men to-day, and amongst us, outside of the circle of
Christianity—all these things are as manifestly incomplete as a
building reared half its height, and waiting for the corner-stone to be
brought forth, the full revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and the
intelligent and full acceptance of Him and faith in Him.

And another thing is true, that without faith in Christ such faith in
God as is possible is feeble, incomplete, and will not long last.
Historically a pure theism is all but impotent. There is only one
example of it on a large scale in the world, and that is a kind of
bastard Christianity—Mohammedanism; and we all know what good that is
as a religion. There are plenty of people amongst us nowadays who claim
to be very advanced thinkers, and who call themselves Theists, and not
Christians. Well, I venture to say that that is a phase that will not
last. There is little substance in it. The God whom men know outside of
Jesus Christ is a poor, nebulous thing; an idea, not a reality. He, or
rather It, is a film of cloud shaped into a vague form, through which
you can see the stars. It has little power to restrain. It has less to
inspire and impel. It has still less to comfort; it has least of all to
satisfy the heart. You will have to get something more substantial than
the far-off god of an unchristian Theism if you mean to sway the world
and to satisfy men's hearts.

And so, dear brethren, I come to this—perhaps the word may be fitting
for some that listen to me—'Believe in God,' and that you may, 'believe
also in Christ.' For sure I am that when the stress comes, and you
_want_ a god, unless your god is the God revealed in Jesus Christ, he
will be a powerless deity. If you have not faith in Christ, you will
not long have faith in God that is vital and worth anything.

III. Lastly, this trust in Christ is the secret of a quiet heart.

It is of no use to say to men, 'Let not your hearts be troubled,'
unless you finish the verse and say, 'Believe in God, believe also in
Christ.' For unless we trust we shall certainly be troubled. The state
of man in this world is like that of some of those sunny islands in
southern seas, around which there often rave the wildest cyclones, and
which carry in their bosoms, beneath all their riotous luxuriance of
verdant beauty, hidden fires, which ever and anon shake the solid earth
and spread destruction. Storms without and earthquakes within—that is
the condition of humanity. And where is the 'rest' to come from? All
other defences are weak and poor. We have heard about 'pills against
earthquakes.' That is what the comforts and tranquillising which the
world supplies may fairly be likened to. Unless we trust we are, and we
shall be, and should be, 'troubled.'

If we trust we may be quiet. Trust is always tranquillity. To cast a
burden off myself on others' shoulders is always a rest. But trust in
Jesus Christ brings infinitude on my side. Submission is repose. When
we cease to kick against the pricks they cease to prick and wound us.
Trust opens the heart, like the windows of the Ark tossing upon the
black and fatal flood, for the entrance of the peaceful dove with the
olive branch in its mouth. Trust brings Christ to my side in all His
tenderness and greatness and sweetness. If I trust, 'all is right that
seems most wrong.' If I trust, conscience is quiet. If I trust, life
becomes 'a solemn scorn of ills.' If I trust, inward unrest is changed
into tranquillity, and mad passions are cast out from him that sits
'clothed and in his right mind' at the feet of Jesus.

'The wicked is like the troubled sea which cannot rest.' But if I
trust, my soul will become like the glassy ocean when all the storms
sleep, and 'birds of peace sit brooding on the charmed wave.' 'Peace I
leave with you.' 'Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust
also in Me.'

Help us, O Lord! to yield our hearts to Thy dear Son, and in Him to
find Thyself and eternal rest.




'MANY MANSIONS'


'In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would
have told you.'—JOHN xiv. 2.

Sorrow needs simple words for its consolation; and simple words are the
best clothing for the largest truths. These eleven poor men were
crushed and desolate at the thought of Christ's going; they fancied
that if He left them they lost Him. And so, in simple, childlike words,
which the weakest could grasp, and in which the most troubled could
find peace, He said to them, after having encouraged their trust in
Him, 'There is plenty of room for you as well as for Me where I am
going; and the frankness of our intercourse in the past might make you
sure that if I were going to leave you I would have told you all about
it. Did I ever hide from you anything that was painful? Did I ever
allure you to follow Me by false promises? Should I have kept silence
about it if our separation was to be eternal?' So, simply, as a mother
might hush her babe upon her breast, He soothes their sorrow. And yet,
in the quiet words, so level to the lowest apprehension, there lie
great truths, far deeper than we yet have appreciated, and which will
enfold themselves in their majesty and their greatness through
eternity. 'In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I
would have told you.'

I. Now note in these words, first, the 'Father's house,' and its ample
room.

There is only one other occasion recorded in which our Lord used this
expression, and it occurs in this same Gospel near the beginning; where
in the narrative of the first cleansing of the Temple we read that He
said, 'Make not My Father's house a house of merchandise.' The earlier
use of the words may help to throw light upon one aspect of this latter
employment of it, for there blend in the image the two ideas of what I
may call domestic familiarity, and of that great future as being the
reality of which the earthly Temple was intended to be the dim prophecy
and shadow. Its courts, its many chambers, its ample porches with room
for thronging worshippers, represented in some poor way the wide sweep
and space of that higher house; and the sense of Sonship, which drew
the Boy to His Father's house in the earliest hours of conscious
childhood, speaks here.

Think for a moment of how sweet and familiar the conception of heaven
as the Father's house makes it to us. There is something awful, even to
the best and holiest souls, in the thought of even the glories beyond.
The circumstances of death, which is its portal, our utter
unacquaintance with all that lies behind the veil, the terrible silence
and distance which falls upon our dearest ones as they are sucked into
the cloud, all tend to make us feel that there is much that is solemn
and awful even in the thought of eternal future blessedness. But how it
is all softened when we say, 'My Father's house.' Most of us have long
since left behind us the sweet security, the sense of the absence of
all responsibility, the assurance of defence and provision, which used
to be ours when we lived as children in a father's house here. But we
may all look forward to the renewal, in far nobler form, of these early
days, when the father's house meant the inexpugnable fortress where no
evil could befall us, the abundant home where all wants were supplied,
and where the shyest and timidest child could feel at ease and secure.
It is all coming again, brother, and amidst the august and unimaginable
glories of that future the old feeling of being little children,
nestling safe in the Father's house, will fill our quiet hearts once
more.

And then consider how the conception of that Future as the Father's
house suggests answers to so many of our questions about the
relationship of the inmates to one another. Are they to dwell isolated
in their several mansions? Is that the way in which children in a home
dwell with each other? Surely if He be the Father, and heaven be His
house, the relation of the redeemed to one another must have in it more
than all the sweet familiarity and unrestrained frankness which
subsists in the families of earth. A solitary heaven would be but half
a heaven, and would ill correspond with the hopes that inevitably
spring from the representation of it as 'my Father's house.'

But consider further that this great and tender name for heaven has its
deepest meaning in the conception of it as a spiritual state of which
the essential elements are the loving manifestation and presence of God
as Father, the perfect consciousness of sonship, the happy union of all
the children in one great family, and the derivation of all their
blessedness from their Elder Brother.

The earthly Temple, to which there is some allusion in this great
metaphor, was the place in which the divine glory was manifested to
seeking souls, though in symbol, yet also in reality, and the
representation of our text blends the two ideas of the free, frank
intercourse of the home and of the magnificent revelations of the Holy
of holies. Under either aspect of the phrase, whether we think of 'my
Father's house' as temple or as home, it sets before us, as the main
blessedness and glory of heaven, the vision of the Father, the
consciousness of sonship, and the complete union with Him. There are
many subsidiary and more outward blessednesses and glories which shine
dimly through the haze of metaphors and negations, by which alone a
state of which we have no experience can be revealed to us; but these
are secondary. The heaven of heaven is the possession of God the Father
through the Son in the expanding spirits of His sons. The sovereign and
filial position which Jesus Christ in His manhood occupies in that
higher house, and which He shares with all those who by Him have
received the adoption of sons, is the very heart and nerve of this
great metaphor.

But I think we must go a step further than that, and recognise that in
the image there is inherent the teaching that that glorious future is
not merely a state, but also a place. Local associations are not to be
divorced from the words; and although we can say but little about such
a matter, yet everything in the teaching of Scripture points to the
thought that howsoever true it may be that the essence of heaven is
condition, yet that also heaven has a local habitation, and is a place
in the great universe of God. Jesus Christ has at this moment a human
body, glorified. That body, as Scripture teaches us, is somewhere, and
where He is there shall also His servant be. In the context He goes on
to tell us that 'He goes to prepare a place for us,' and though I would
not insist upon the literal interpretation of such words, yet
distinctly the drift of the representation is in the direction of
localising, though not of materialising, the abode of the blessed. So I
think we can say, not merely that _what_ He is that shall also His
servants be, but that _where_ He is there shall also His servants be.
And from the representation of my text, though we cannot fathom all its
depths, we can at least grasp this, which gives solidity and reality to
our contemplations of the future, that heaven is a place, full of all
sweet security and homelike repose, where God is made known in every
heart and to every consciousness as a loving Father, and of which all
the inhabitants are knit together in the frankest fraternal
intercourse, conscious of the Father's love, and rejoicing in the
abundant provisions of His royal House.

And then there is a second thought to be suggested from these words,
and that is of the ample room in this great house. The original purpose
of the words of my text, as I have already reminded you, was simply to
soothe the fears of a handful of disciples.

There was room where Christ went for eleven poor men. Yes, room enough
for them! but Christ's prescient eye looked down the ages, and saw all
the unborn millions that would yet be drawn to Him uplifted on the
Cross, and some glow of satisfaction flitted across His sorrow, as He
saw from afar the result of the impending travail of His soul in the
multitudes by whom God's heavenly house should yet be filled. 'Many
mansions!' the thought widens out far beyond our grasp. Perhaps that
upper room, like most of the roof-chambers in Jewish houses, was open
to the skies, and whilst He spoke, the innumerable lights that blaze in
that clear heaven shone down upon them, and He may have pointed to
these. The better Abraham perhaps looked forth, like His prototype, on
the starry heavens, and saw in the vision of the future those who
through Him should receive the 'adoption of sons' and dwell for ever in
the house of the Lord, 'so many as the stars of the sky in multitude,
and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable.'

Ah! brethren, if we could only widen our measurement of the walls of
the New Jerusalem to the measurement of that 'golden rod which the man,
that is the angel,' as John says, applied to it, we should understand
how much bigger it is than any of these poor sects and communities of
ours here on earth. If we would lay to heart, as we ought to do, the
deep meaning of that indefinite 'many' in my text, it would rebuke our
narrowness. There will be a great many occupants of the mansions in
heaven that Christian men here on earth—the most Catholic of them—will
be very much surprised to see there, and thousands will find their
entrance there that never found their entrance into any communities of
so-called Christians here on earth.

That one word 'many' should deepen our confidence in the triumphs of
Christ's Cross, and it may be used to heighten our own confidence as to
our own poor selves. A chamber in the great Temple waits for each of
us, and the question is, Shall we occupy it, or shall we not? The old
Rabbis had a tradition which, like a great many of their apparently
foolish sayings, covers in picturesque guise a very deep truth. They
said that, however many the throngs of worshippers who came up to
Jerusalem at the passover, the streets of the city and the courts of
the sanctuary were never crowded. And so it is with that great city.
There is room for all. There are throngs, but no crowds. Each finds a
place in the ample sweep of the Father's house, like some of the great
palaces that barbaric Eastern kings used to build, in whose courts
armies might encamp, and the chambers of which were counted by the
thousand. And surely in all that ample accommodation, you and I may
find some corner where we, if we will, may lodge for evermore.

I do not dwell upon subsidiary ideas that may be drawn from the
expressions. 'Mansions' means places of permanent abode, and suggests
the two thoughts, so sweet to travellers and toilers in this fleeting,
labouring life, of unchangeableness and of repose. Some have supposed
that the variety in the attainments of the redeemed, which is
reasonable and scriptural, might be deduced from our text, but that
does not seem to be relevant to our Lord's purpose.

One other suggestion may be made without enlarging upon it. There is
only one other occasion in this Gospel in which the word here
translated 'mansions' is employed, and it is this: 'We will come and
make our abode with him.' Our mansion is in God; God's dwelling-place
is in us. So ask yourselves, Have you a place in that heavenly home?
When prodigal children go away from the father's house, sometimes a
broken-hearted parent will keep the boy's room just as it used to be
when he was young and pure, and will hope and weary through long days
for him to come back and occupy it again. God is keeping a room for you
in His house; do you see that you fill it.

II. In the next place, note here the sufficiency of Christ's revelation
for our needs.

'If it were not so I would have told you.' He sets Himself forward in
very august fashion as being the Revealer and Opener of that house for
us. There is a singular tone about all our Lord's few references to the
future—a tone of decisiveness; not as if He were speaking, as a man
might do, that which he had thought out, or which had come to him, but
as if He was speaking of what he had Himself beheld, 'We speak that we
do know, and testify that we have seen.' He stands like one on a
mountain top, looking down into the valleys beyond, and telling His
comrades in the plain behind Him what He sees. He speaks of that unseen
world always as One who had been in it, and who was reporting
experiences, and not giving forth opinions. His knowledge was the
knowledge of One who dwelt with the Father, and left the house in order
to find and bring back His wandering brethren. It was 'His own calm
home, His habitation from eternity,' and therefore He could tell us
with decisiveness, with simplicity, with assurance, all which we need
to know about the geography of that unknown land—the plan of that, by
us unvisited, house. Very remarkable, therefore, is it, that with this
tone there should be such reticence in Christ's references to the
future. The text implies the _rationale_ of such reticence. 'If it were
not so I would have told you.' I tell you all that you need, though I
tell you a great deal less than you sometimes wish.

The gaps in our knowledge of the future, seeing that we have such a
Revealer as we have in Christ, are remarkable. But my text suggests
this to us—we have as much as we need. _I_ know, and many of _you_
know, by bitter experience, how many questions, the answers to which
would seem to us to be such a lightening of our burdens, our desolated
and troubled hearts suggest about that future, and how vainly we ply
heaven with questions and interrogate the unreplying Oracle. But we
know as much as we need. We know that God is there. We know that it is
the Father's house. We know that Christ is in it. We know that the
dwellers there are a family. We know that sweet security and ample
provision are there; and, for the rest, if we I needed to have heard
more, He would have told us.

    'My knowledge of that life is small,
    The eye of faith is dim;
    But 'tis enough that Christ knows all;
    And I shall be with Him.'

Let the gaps remain. The gaps are part of the revelation, and we know
enough for faith and hope.

May we not widen the application of that thought to other matters than
to our bounded and fragmentary conceptions of a future life? In times
like the present, of doubt and unrest, it is a great piece of Christian
wisdom to recognise the limitations of our knowledge and the
sufficiency of the fragments that we have. What do we get a revelation
for? To solve theological puzzles and dogmatic difficulties? to inflate
us with the pride of _quasi_-omniscience? or to present to us God in
Christ for faith, for love, for obedience, for imitation? Surely the
latter, and for such purposes we have enough.

So let us recognise that our knowledge is very partial. A great stretch
of wall is blank, and there is not a window in it. If there had been
need for one, it would have been struck out. He has been pleased to
leave many things obscure, not arbitrarily, so as to try our faith—for
the implication of the words before us is that the relation between Him
and us binds Him to the utmost possible frankness, and that all which
we need and He can tell us He does tell—but for high reasons, and
because of the very conditions of our present environment, which forbid
the more complete and all-round knowledge.

So let us recognise our limitations. We know in part, and we are wise
if we affirm in part. Hold by the Central Light, which is Jesus Christ.
'Many things did Jesus which are not written in this book,' and many
gaps and deficiencies from a human point of view exist in the
contexture of revelation. 'But these are written that ye may believe
that Jesus is the Christ,' for which enough has been told us, 'and
that, believing, ye may have life in His name.' If that purpose be
accomplished in us, God will not have spoken, nor we have heard, in
vain. Let us hold by the Central Light, and then the circumference of
darkness will gradually retreat, and a wider sphere of illumination be
ours, until the day when we enter our mansion in the Father's house,
and then 'in Thy Light shall we see light'; and we shall 'know even as
we are known.'

Let your Elder Brother lead you back, dear friend, to the Father's
bosom, and be sure that if you trust Him and listen to Him, you will
know enough on earth to turn earth into a foretaste of Heaven, and will
find at last your place in the Father's house beside the Brother who
has prepared it for you.




THE FORERUNNER


'… I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am,
there ye may be also.'—JOHN xiv. 2, 3.

What divine simplicity and depth are in these words! They carry us up
into the unseen world, and beyond time; and yet a little child can lay
hold on them, and mourning hearts and dying men find peace and
sweetness in them. A very familiar image underlies them. It was
customary for travellers in those old days to send some of their party
on in advance, to find lodging and make arrangements for them in some
great city. Many a time one or other of the disciples had been 'sent
before His face into every place where He Himself should come.' On that
very morning two of them had gone in, at His bidding, from Bethany to
make ready the table at which they were sitting. Christ here takes that
office upon Himself. The emblem is homely, the thing meant is
transcendent.

Not less wonderful is the blending of majesty and lowliness. The office
which He takes upon Himself is that of an inferior and a servant. And
yet the discharge of it, in the present case, implies His authority
over every corner of the universe, His immortal life, and the
sufficiency of His presence to make a heaven. Nor can we fail to notice
the blending of another pair of opposites: His certainty of His
impending death, and His certainty, notwithstanding and thereby, of His
continual work and His final return, are inseparably interlaced here.
How comes it that, in all His premonitions of His death, Jesus Christ
never spoke about it as failure or as the interruption or end of His
activity, but always as the transition to, and the condition of, His
wider work? 'I go, and if I go I return, and take you to Myself.'

So, then, there are three things here, the departure with its purpose,
the return, and the perfected union.

I. The Departure.

Our Lord's going away from that little group was a journey in two
stages. Calvary was the first; Olivet was the second. He means by the
phrase the whole continuous process which begins with His death and
ends in His ascension. Both are embraced in His words, and each
co-operates to the attainment of the great purpose.

He prepares a place for us by His death. The High Priest, in the
ancient ritual, once a year was privileged to lift the heavy veil and
pass into the darkened chamber, where only the light between the
cherubim was visible, because he bore in his hand the blood of the
sacrifice. But in our New Testament system the path into 'the holiest
of all,' the realisation of the most intimate fellowship with heavenly
things and communion with God Himself, are made possible, and the way
patent for every foot, because Jesus has died. And as the communion
upon earth, so the perfecting of the communion in the heavens. Who of
us could step within those awful sanctities, or stand serene amidst the
region of eternal light and stainless purity, unless, in His death, He
had borne the sins of the world, and, having 'overcome' its 'sharpness'
by enduring its blow, had 'opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all
believers'?

Old legends tell us of magic gates that resisted all attempts to force
them, but upon which, if one drop of a certain blood fell, they flew
open. And so, by His death, Christ has opened the gates and made the
heaven of perfect purity a dwelling-place for sinful men.

But the second stage of His departure is that which more eminently is
in Christ's mind here. He prepares a place for us by His entrance into
and His dwelling in the heavenly places. The words are obscure because
we have but few others with which to compare them, and no experience by
which to interpret them. We know so little about the matter that it is
not wise to say much; but though there be vast tracts of darkness round
the little spot of light, this should only make the spot of light more
vivid and more precious. We know little, but we know enough for mind
and heart to rest upon. Our ignorance of the ways in which Christ by
His ascension prepares a heaven for His followers should neither breed
doubt nor disregard of His assurance that He does.

If Christ had not ascended, would there have been 'a place' at all? He
has gone with a human body, which, glorified as it is, still has
relations to space, and must be somewhere. And we may even say that His
ascending up on high has made a place where His servants are. But apart
from that suggestion, which, perhaps, is going beyond our limits, we
may see that Christ's presence in heaven is needful to make it a heaven
for poor human souls. There, as here (Scripture assures us), and
throughout eternity as to-day, Jesus Christ is the Mediator of all
human knowledge and possession of God. It is from Him and through Him
that there come to men, whether they be men on earth or men in the
heavens, all that they know, all that they hope, all that they enjoy,
of the wisdom, love, beauty, peace, power, which flow from God. Take
away from the heaven of the Christian expectation that which comes to
the spirit through Jesus Christ, and you have nothing left. He and His
mediation and ministration alone make the brightness and the
blessedness of that high state. The very glories of all that lies
beyond the veil would have an aspect appalling and bewildering to us,
unless our Brother were there. Like some poor savages brought into a
great city, or rustics into the presence of a king and his court, we
should be ill at ease amidst the glories and solemnities of that future
life unless we saw standing there our Kinsman, to whom we can turn, and
who makes it possible for us to feel that it is home. Christ's presence
makes heaven the home of our hearts.

Not only did He go to prepare a place, but He is continuously preparing
it for us all through the ages. We have to think of a double form of
the work of Christ, His past work in His earthly life, and His present
in His exaltation. We have to think of a double form of His present
activity—His work with and in us here on earth, and His work for us
there in the heavens. We have to think of a double form of His work in
the heavens—that which the Scripture represents in a metaphor, the full
comprehension of which surpasses our present powers and experiences, as
being His priestly intercession; and that which my text represents in a
metaphor, perhaps a little more level to our apprehension, as being His
preparing a place for us. Behind the veil there is a working Christ,
who, in the heavens, is preparing a place for all that love Him.

II. In the next place, note the Return.

The purpose of our Lord's departure, as set forth by Himself here,
guarantees for us His coming back again. That is the force of the
simple argumentation of my text, and of the pathetic and soothing
repetition of the sweet words, 'I go to prepare a place for you; and if
I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto
Myself.' Because the departure had for its purpose the preparing of the
place, therefore it is necessarily followed by a return. He who went
away as the Forerunner has not done His work until He comes back, and,
as Guide, leads those for whom He had prepared the place to the place
which He had prepared for them.

Now that return of our Lord, like His departure, may be considered as
having two stages. Unquestionably the main meaning and application of
the words is to that final and personal coming which stands at the end
of history, and to which the hopes of every Christian soul ought to be
steadfastly directed. He will 'so come in like manner as' He has gone.
We are not to water down such words as these into anything short of a
return precisely corresponding in its method to the departure; and as
the departure was visible, corporeal, literal, personal, and local, so
the return is to be visible, corporeal, literal, personal, local too.
He is to come as He went, a visible Manhood, only throned amongst the
clouds of heaven with power and great glory. This is the aim that He
sets before Him in His departure. He leaves in order that He may come
back again.

And, oh, dear friends! remember—and let us live in the strength of the
remembrance—that this return ought to be the prominent subject of
Christian aspiration and desire. There is much about the conception of
that solemn return, with all the convulsions that attend it, and the
judgment of which it is preliminary, that may well make men's hearts
chill within them. But for you and me, if we have any love in our
hearts and loyalty in our spirits to that King, 'His coming' should be
'prepared as the _morning_,' and we should join in the great burst of
rapture of many a psalm, which calls upon rocks and hills to break
forth into singing, and trees of the field to clap their hands, because
He cometh as the King to judge the earth. His own parable tells us how
we ought to regard His coming. When the fig-tree's branch begins to
supple, and the little leaves to push their way through the polished
stem, then we know that summer is at hand. His coming should be as the
approach of that glorious, fervid time, in which the sunshine has
tenfold brilliancy and power, the time of ripened harvests and matured
fruits, the time of joy for all creatures that love the sun. It should
be the glad hope of all His servants.

We have a double witness to bear in the midst of this as of every
generation. One half of the witness stretches backwards to the Cross,
and proclaims 'Christ has come'; the other reaches onwards to the
Throne, and proclaims 'Christ will come.' Between these two high
uplifted piers swings the chain of the world's history, which closes
with the return, to judge and to save, of the Lord who came to die and
has gone to prepare a place for us.

But do not let us forget that we may well take another point of view
than this. Scripture knows of many comings of the Lord preliminary to,
and in principle one with, His last coming. For nations all great
crises of their history are 'comings of the Lord,' the Judge, and we
are strictly in the line of Scripture analogy when, in reference to
individuals, we see in each single death a true coming of the Lord.

That is the point of view in which we ought to look upon a Christian's
death-bed. 'The Master _is come_, and calleth for thee.' Beyond all
secondary causes, deeper than disease or accident, lies the loving will
of Him who is the Lord of life and of death. Death is Christ's
minister, 'mighty and beauteous, though his face be dark,' and he, too,
stands amidst the ranks of the 'ministering spirits sent forth to
minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation.' It is Christ that
says of one, 'I will that this man tarry,' and to another, 'Go!' and he
goeth. But whensoever a Christian man lies down to die, Christ says,
'Come!' and he comes. How that thought should hallow the death-chamber
as with the print of the Master's feet! How it should quiet our hearts
and dry our tears! How it should change the whole aspect of that
'shadow feared of man'! With Him for our companion, the lonely road
will not be dreary; and though in its anticipation, our timid hearts
may often be ready to say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me,' if we
have Him by our sides, 'even the night shall be light about us.' The
dying martyr beneath the city wall lifted up his face to the heavens,
and said, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!' It was the echo of the
Master's promise, 'I will come again, and receive you to Myself.'

III. Lastly, notice the Perfected Union.

The departure for such a purpose necessarily involved the return again.
Both are stages in the process, which is perfected by complete
union—'That where I am there ye may be also.'

Christ, as I have been saying, is Heaven. His presence is all that we
need for peace, for joy, for purity, for rest, for love, for growth. To
be 'with Him,' as He tells us in another part of these wonderful last
words in the upper chamber, is to 'behold His glory.' And to behold His
glory, as John tells us in his Epistle, is to be like Him. So Christ's
presence means the communication to us of all the lustre of His
radiance, of all the whiteness of His purity, of all the depth of His
blessedness, and of a share in His wondrous dominion. His glorified
manhood will pass into ours, and they that are with Him where He is
will rest as in the centre and home of their spirits, and find Him
all-sufficient. His presence is my Heaven.

That is almost all we know. Oh! it is more than all we need to know.
The curtain is the picture. It is because what is there transcends in
glory all our present experience that Scripture can only hint at it and
describe it by negations—such as 'no night,' 'no sorrow,' 'no tears,'
'former things passed away'; and by symbols of glory and lustre
gathered from all that is loftiest and noblest in human buildings and
society. But all these are but secondary and poor. The living heart of
the hope, and the lambent centre of the brightness, is, 'So shall we
ever be with the Lord.'

And it is enough. It is enough to make the bond of union between us in
the outer court and them in the holy place. Parted friends will fix to
look at the same star at the same moment of the night and feel some
union; and if we from amidst the clouds of earth, and they from amidst
the pure radiance of their heaven, turn our eyes to the same Christ, we
are not far apart. If He be the companion of each of us, He reaches a
hand to each, and, clasping it, the parted ones are united; and
'whether we wake or sleep we live _together_,' because we both live
with Him.

Brother! Is Jesus Christ so much to you that a heaven which consists in
nearness and likeness to Him has any attraction for you? Let Him be
your Saviour, your Sacrifice, your Helper, your Companion. Obey Him as
your King, love Him as your Friend, trust Him as your All. And be sure
that then the darkness will be but the shadow of His hand, and instead
of dreading death as that which separates you from life and love and
action and joy, you will be able to meet it peacefully, as that which
rends the thin veil, and unites you with Him who is the Heaven of
heavens.

He has gone to prepare a place for us. And if we will let Him, He will
prepare us for the place, and then come and lead us thither. 'Thou wilt
show me the path of life' which leads through death. 'In Thy presence
is fullness of joy, and at Thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore.'




THE WAY


'And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto Him,
Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?
Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man
cometh unto the Father, but by Me. If ye had known Me, ye should have
known My Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen
Him.'—JOHN xiv. 4-7.

Our Lord has been speaking of His departure, of its purpose, of His
return as guaranteed by that purpose, and of His servants' eternal and
perfect reunion with Him. But even these cheering and calming thoughts
do not exhaust His consolations, as they did not satisfy all the
disciples' needs. They might still have said, 'Yes; we believe that You
will come back again, and we believe that we shall be together; but
what about the parenthesis of absence?' And here is the answer, or at
least part of it: 'Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know'; or, if
we adopt the shortened form which the Revised Version gives us,
'Whither I go ye know the way.'

When you say to a man, 'You know the way,' you mean 'Come.' And in
these words there lie, as it seems to me, a veiled invitation to the
disciples to come to Him before He came back for them, and the
assurance that they, though separated, might still find and tread the
road to the Father's house, and so be with Him still. They are not left
desolate. The Christ who is absent is present as the path to Himself.
And so the parenthesis is bridged across. Now in these verses we have
several large and important lessons which I think may best be drawn by
simply seeking to follow their course.

I. Observe the disciples' unconscious knowledge.

Jesus Christ says: 'Ye know the way and ye know the goal.' One of them
ventures flatly to contradict Him, and to traverse both assertions with
a brusque and thorough-going negative. 'We do _not_ know whither Thou
goest,' says Thomas; 'how can we know the way?' He is the same man in
this conversation that we find him in the interview before our Lord's
journey to raise Lazarus, and in the interview after our Lord's
resurrection. In all three cases he appears as mainly under the
dominion of sense, as slow to apprehend anything beyond its limits, as
morbidly melancholy and disposed to take the blackest possible view of
things—a practical pessimist—and yet with a certain kind of frank
outspokenness which half redeems the other characteristics from blame.
He could not understand all the Lord's deep words just spoken. His mind
was befogged and dimmed, and he blurts out his ignorance, knowing that
the best place to carry it to is to the Illuminator who can make it
light.

'We know not whither Thou goest, and how can we know the way?' Was
Jesus right? was Thomas right? or were they both right? The fact is
that Thomas and all his fellows knew, after a fashion, but they did not
know that they knew. They had heard much in the past as to where Christ
was going. Plainly enough it had been rung in their ears over and over
again. It had made some kind of lodgment in their heads, and, in that
sense, they did know. It is this unused and unconscious knowledge of
theirs to which Christ appeals, and which He tries to draw out into
consciousness and power when He says, 'You know whither I am going, and
you know the road.' Is not that exactly what a patient teacher will do
with some flustered child when he says to it: 'Take time! You know it
well enough if you will only think'? So the Master says here: 'Do not
be agitated and troubled in heart. Reflect, remember, overhaul your
stores, and think what I have told you over and over again, and you
will find that you _do_ know whither I am going, and that you _do_ know
the way.'

The patient gentleness of the Master with the slowness of the scholars
is beautifully exemplified here, as is also the method, which He
lovingly and patiently adopts, of sending men back to consult their own
consciousness as illuminated by His teaching, and to see whether there
is not lying somewhere, unrecked of and unemployed in some dusty corner
of their mind, a truth that only needs to be dragged out and cleaned in
order to show itself for what it is, the all-sufficient light and
strength for the moment's need.

The dialogue is an instance of what is true about us all, that we have
in our possession truths given to us by Jesus Christ, the whole sweep
and bearing of which, the whole majesty and power and illuminating
capacity of which, we do not dream of yet. How much in our creeds lies
dim and undeveloped! Time and circumstances and some sore agony of
spirit are needed in order to make us realise the riches that we
possess, and the certitudes to which our troubled spirits may cling;
and the practice of far more patient, honest, profound meditation and
reflection than finds favour with the average Christian man is needed,
too, in order that the truths possessed may be possessed, and that we
may know what we know, and understand 'the things that are given to us
of God.'

In all your creeds, there are large tracts that you, in some kind of a
fashion, do believe; and yet they have no vitality in your
consciousness nor power in your lives. And the Master here does with
these disciples exactly what He is trying to do day by day with us,
namely, fling us back on ourselves, or rather upon His revelation in
us, and get us to fathom its depths and to walk round about its
magnitudes, and so to understand the things that we say we believe.

All our knowledge is ignorance. Ignorance that confesses itself to Him
is in the way of becoming knowledge. His light will touch the smoke and
change it into red spires of flame. If you do not know, go to Him and
say, 'Lord! I do not.' An accurate understanding of where the darkness
lies is the first step to the light. We are meant to carry all our
inadequate and superficial realisations of His truth into His presence,
that, from Him, we may gain deeper knowledge, a firmer faith, and a
more joyous certitude in His inexhaustible lessons. In every article
and item of the Christian faith there is a transcendent element which
surpasses our present comprehension. Let us be confident that the light
will break; and let us welcome the new illumination when it comes, sure
that it comes from God. Be not puffed up with the conceit that you know
all. Be sure of this, that, according to the good old metaphor, we are
but as children on the shore of the great ocean, gathering a few of the
shells that it has washed to our feet, itself stretching boundless,
and, thank God, sunlit, before us. 'Ye know the way.' 'Master, we know
not the way.'

II. Observe here, in the second place, our Lord's great self-revelation
which meets this unconscious knowledge.

'Jesus saith unto him: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man
cometh unto the Father but by Me.' Now it is quite plain, I think, from
the whole strain of the context and the purpose of these words that the
main idea in them is the first—'I am the Way.' And that is made more
certain because of the last words of the verse, which, summing up the
force of the three preceding assertions, dwell only upon the metaphor
of the Way; 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.' So that of these
three great words, the Way, the Truth, the Life, we are to regard the
second and the third as explanatory of the first. They are not
co-ordinate, but the first is the more general, and the other two show
how the first comes to be true. 'I am the Way' because 'I am the Truth
and the Life.'

There are no words of the Master, perhaps, to which my previous remarks
are more necessary to be applied than these. We know; and yet oh! what
an overplus of glory and of depth is here that we do not know and never
can know. The most fragmentary and inadequate grasp of them with heart
and mind will bring light to the mind and quietness and peace to the
heart; but the whole meaning of them goes beyond men and angels. We can
only skim the surface and seek to shift back the boundaries of our
knowledge a little further, and to embrace within its limits a little
more of the broad land into which the words bring us. So just take a
thought or two which may tend in that direction.

Note, then, as belonging to all three of these clauses that remarkable
'_I am_.' We show a way, Christ _is_ it. We speak truth, Christ _is_
it. Parents impart life, which they have received, Christ _is_ Life. He
separates Himself from all men by that representation that He is not
merely the communicator or the teacher or the guide, but that He
Himself is, in His own personal Being, Way, Truth, Life. He said that,
when Calvary was within arm's-length. What did He think about Himself,
and what should we think of Him?

And then note, further, that He sets forth His unique relation to the
truth as being one ground on which He is the Way to God. He _is_ the
Truth in reference to the divine nature. That Truth, then, is not a
mere matter of words. It is not only His speech that teaches us, but
Himself that shows us God. His whole life and character, His
personality, are the true representation within human conditions of the
Invisible God; and when He says, 'I am the Way and the Truth,' He is
saying substantially the same thing as the great prologue of this
Gospel says when it calls Him the Word and the Light of men, and as
Paul says when he names Him 'the Image of the Invisible God.' There is
all the difference between talking about God and showing Him. Men
reveal God by their words; Christ reveals Him by Himself and the facts
of His life. The truest and highest representation of the divine nature
that men can ever have is in the face of Jesus Christ.

I need only remind you in a sentence about other and lower applications
of this great saying, which do not, as I think, enter into the purpose
of the context. He is the Truth, inasmuch as, in the life and
historical manifestation of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Scriptures,
men find foundation truths of a moral and spiritual sort. 'Whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are noble, whatsoever things are
lovely and of good report,' He is these, and all true ethics is but the
formulating into principles of all the facts of the life and character
of Jesus Christ.

Further, my text says He is the Way because He is the Life. On the one
side God is brought to all hearts, and in some real sense to our
comprehension, by the life of Jesus Christ, and so He is the Way. But
that is not enough. There must be an action upon us as well as an
action having reference to the divine nature. God is brought to men by
the manifestation in Christ; and we, the dead, are quickened by the
communication of the Life. The one phrase points to all His work as a
Revealer, the other points to all His work upon us as life-giving
Spirit, a Quickener and an Inspirer. Dead men cannot walk a road. It is
of no use to make a path if it starts from a cemetery. Christ taught
that men apart from Him are dead, and that the only life that they can
have by which they can be knit to God is the divine life which was in
Himself, and of which He is the source and the principle for the whole
world. He does not tell us here what yet is true, and what He
abundantly tells in other parts of this great conversation, that the
only way by which the life which He brings can be diffused and
communicated is by His death. 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone.' He is the Life, and—paradox of
mystery and yet fact which is the very heart and centre of His
Gospel—His only way of giving His life to us is by giving up His
physical life for us. He must die that He may be the life-spring for
the world. The alabaster box must be broken if the ointment and its
fragrance are to be poured out; and 'death is the gate of life' in a
deeper than the ordinary sense of the saying, inasmuch as the death of
the Life which is Christ is the life of the death which we are.

And so, because, on the one hand, He brings a God to our hearts that we
can love and trust, and because, on the other, He communicates to our
spirits, dead in the only true death which is the separation from God
by sin, the life by which we are knit to God, He is the Way to the
Father.

And what about people that never heard of Him, to whom that Way has
been closed, to whom that Truth has never been manifested, to whom that
Life has never been brought? Ah! Christ has other ways of working than
through His historical manifestation, for there is no truth more
plainly taught in this great fourth Gospel than this, that that Light
'lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' The eternal Word works
through all the earth, in ways beyond our ken, and wherever any man
has, however imperfectly, felt after and grasped the thought of a
Father in the heavens, there the Word, which is the Light of men, has
wrought.

But for us to whom this Book has come, for what people call in bitter
irony 'Christendom,' the law of my text rigidly applies, and it is
being worked out all round us to-day. 'No man cometh unto the Father
but by Me.' And here we are, in this England of ours, and in our sister
nations on the continent of Europe and in America, face to face as I
believe with this alternative—either Jesus Christ the Revealer of God
and the Life of men, or an empty Heaven. And for you, individually, it
is either—take Christ for the Way, or wander in the wilderness and
forget your Father. It is either—take Christ for the Truth, or be given
over to the insufficiencies of mere natural, political, and
intellectual truths, and the shows and illusions of time and sense. It
is either—take Christ for your Life, or remain in your deadness,
separate from God.

III. Lastly, we have here the disciples' ignorance and the new vision
which dispels it.

'If ye had known Me, ye should have known My Father also, and from
henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.' Our Lord accepts for the
moment Thomas's standpoint. He supplements His former allegation of the
disciples' knowledge with the admission of the ignorance which went
with it as its shadow, and was only too sadly and plainly shown by
their failure to discern in Him the manifestation of the Father. He has
just told them that they did know what they thought they knew not; He
now tells them that they did not know what they thought they knew so
well, after so many years of companionship—even Himself. The proof that
they did not is that they did not know the Father as revealed in Him,
nor Him as revealing the Father. If they missed that, they missed
everything; and for all they had known of His graciousness, were
strangers to His truest Self. Their ignorance would turn out knowledge,
if they would think, and their supposed knowledge would turn out
ignorance.

The lesson for us is that the true test of the completeness and worth
of our knowledge of Christ lies in its being knowledge of God the
Father, brought near to us by Him. This saying puts a finger on the
radical deficiency of all merely humanitarian views of Christ's person,
however clearly they may see and admiringly extol the beauty of His
character and the 'sweet reasonableness' of His wisdom. They all break
down here, and are arraigned as so shallow and incomplete that they do
not deserve to be called knowledge of Him at all. If you know anything
about Jesus Christ rightly, this is what you know about Him, that in
Him you see God. If you have not seen God in Him, you have not got to
the heart of the mystery. The knowledge of Christ which stops with the
Man and the Martyr, and the Teacher and the beautiful, gentle Brother,
is knowledge so partial that even He cannot venture to call it other
than ignorance. Oh! brethren, do our conceptions of Him meet this test
which He Himself has laid down, and can we say that, seeing Him, we see
in Him God?

And then our Lord passes on to another thought, the new vision which at
the moment was being granted to this unconscious ignorance that was
passing into conscious knowledge. 'From henceforth ye know Him and have
seen Him.' We must give that 'from henceforth,' as a note of time, a
somewhat liberal interpretation, and apply it to the whole series of
utterances and deeds of which the words of our text are but a portion.
And, if so, we come to this—it was in the wisdom, and the gentleness,
and the deep truths of that upper chamber; it was in the agony and
submission of Gethsemane; it was in the meek patience before the
judges, and the silent acceptance of ignominy and shame; it was in the
willing, loving endurance of the long hours upon the Cross, that Christ
inaugurated the new stage in His revelation of God and in His
life-giving to the world. And it is from thenceforth and thereby that
in the man Jesus, men know and see 'the Father' as they never did
before. The Cross and the Passion of Christ are the unveiling to the
world of the heart of God; and by the side of that new vision the
fairest and the loftiest and the sweetest of Christ's former
manifestations and utterances sink into comparative insignificance. It
is the dying Christ that reveals the living God.

So, dear friends, He is your way to God. See that ye seek the Father by
Him alone. He is your Truth; grapple Him to your hearts, and by patient
meditation and continual faithfulness enrich yourselves with all the
communicated treasures that you have already received in Him. He is
your Life; cleave to Him, that the quick Spirit that was in Him may
pass into you and make you victors over all deaths, temporal and
eternal. Know Him as a Friend, not as a mere historical person, or with
mere head-knowledge, for to know a friend is something far deeper than
to know a truth. 'Acquaint thyself with Him and be at peace.' 'This is
life eternal, to know,' with the knowledge which is life and
possession, 'Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast
sent.'




THE TRUE VISION OF GOD


'Philip saith unto Jesus, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth
us. 9. Jesus saith unto Him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet
hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou
not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I
speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father, that dwelleth in
Me, He doeth the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the
Father in Me: or else believe Me for the very works' sake.'—JOHN xiv.
8-11.

The vehement burst with which Philip interrupts the calm flow of our
Lord's discourse is not the product of mere frivolity or curiosity. One
hears the ring of earnestness in it, and the yearnings of many years
find voice. Philip had felt out of his depth, no doubt, in the profound
teachings which our Lord had been giving, but His last words about
seeing God set a familiar chord vibrating. As an Old Testament believer
he knew that Moses had once led the elders of Israel up to the mount
where 'they saw the God of Israel,' and that to many others had been
granted sensible manifestations of the divine presence. As a disciple
he longed for some similar sign to confirm his faith. As a man he was
conscious of the deep need which all of us have, whether we are
conscious of it or not, for something more real and tangible than an
unseeable and unknowable God. The peculiarities of Philip's temperament
strengthened the desire. The first appearance that he makes in the
Gospels is characteristically like this his last. To all Nathanael's
objections he had only the reply, 'Come and see.' And here he says:
'Oh! if we could _see_ the Father it would be enough.' He was one of
the men to whom seeing is believing, and so he speaks.

His petition is childlike in its simplicity, beautiful in its trust,
noble and true in its estimate of what men need. He longs to see God.
He believes that Christ can show God; he is sure that the sight of God
will satisfy the heart. These are errors, or truths, according to what
is meant by 'seeing.' Philip meant a palpable manifestation, and so far
he was wrong. Give the word its highest and its truest meaning, and
Philip's error becomes grand truth. Our Lord gently, lovingly, and with
only a hint of rebuke, answers the request, and seeks to disengage the
error from the truth. His answer lies in the verses that we have read.
Let us try to follow them, and, as we may, to skim their surface, for
their depths are beyond us.

First of all, then, we have the sight of God in Christ as enough to
answer men's longings. There is a world of sadness and tenderness, of
suppressed pain and of grieved affection, in the first words of our
Lord's reply. 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not
known Me, Philip?' He seldom names His disciples. When He does, there
is a deep cadence of affection in the designation. This man was one of
the first disciples, the little original band called by Christ Himself,
and thus had been with Him all the time of His ministry, and the Master
wonders with a gentle wonder that, before eyes that loved Him as much
as Philip's did, His continual self-revelation had been made to so
little purpose. In the answer, in its first portion, there lies the
reiteration of the thoughts that I was trying to dwell upon in the last
sermon, which, therefore, I may lightly touch now—viz., that the sight
of Christ is the sight of God—'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father'—and that not to know Christ as thus showing God is not to know
Him at all—'Thou hast not known Me, Philip.' Further, there is the
thought that the sight of God in Christ is sufficient, 'How sayest
thou, Shew us the Father?' From all this we may gather some thoughts on
which I lightly touch.

I. The first is, that we all do need to have God made visible to us.

The history of heathendom shows us that, in every land men have said,
'The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men.' And the highest
cultivation of this highly cultivated and self-conscious twentieth
century has not removed us from the same necessity that the rudest
savage has, to have some kind of manifestation of the divine nature
other than the dim and vague ones which are possible apart from the
revelation of God in Christ. A God who is only the product of
inferences from creation, or providence, or the mysteries of history,
or the wonders of my own inner life, the creature of logic or of
reflection, is very powerless to sway and influence men. The
limitations of our faculties and the boundlessness of our hearts both
cry out for a God who is nearer to us than that, and whom we can see
and love and be sure of. The whole world wants the making visible of
divinity as its deepest want. And _your_ heart and mind require it.
Nothing else will ever stay our hunger, will ever answer our
questioning minds.

Christ meets this need. How can you make wisdom visible? How can a man
see love or purity? How do I see your spirit? By the deeds of your
body. And the only way by which God can ever come near enough to men to
be a constant power and a constant motive in their lives is by their
seeing Him at work in a Man, who amongst them is His image and
revelation. Christ's whole life is the making visible of the invisible
God. He is the manifestation to the world of the unseen Father.

That vision is enough—enough for mind, enough for heart, enough for
will. There is none else that is sufficient, but this is. 'How sayest
thou, Shew us the Father?' If we can see God it suffices us. Then the
mind settles down upon the thought of Him as the basis of all being,
and of all change, and the heart can twine itself round Him, and the
seeking soul folds its wings and is at rest, and the troubled spirit is
quiet, and the accusing conscience is silent, and the rebellious will
is subdued, and the stormy passions are quieted, and in the inner
kingdom is a great peace. The sight of God in Christ brings rest to
every heart, and, Oh! the absence of the vision is the true secret of
all disquiet. We are troubled and careful, and tossed from one stormy
billow to another, and swept over by all the winds that blow, because
we see not God, our Father, in the face of Jesus. 'Show us the Father,
and it sufficeth us,' is either a puerile petition, or the deepest and
noblest prayer of the human heart. Blessed are they who have learned
what it is to see, and know where that great sight is to be seen!

Our present knowledge and vision are far higher than that mere external
symbol of God which this man wanted. The elders of Israel saw the God
of Israel, but what they saw was but some symbolical manifestation of
that which in itself is unseen and unattainable. But we who see God in
Christ see no symbol but the Reality, and there is nothing more
possible or to be hoped for here. Our present manifestation and sight
of God in Christ does fall, in some ways unknown to us, beneath the
bright hopes that we are entitled to cherish. But howsoever imperfect
it may be, as measured against the perfection of the vision when we
shall see face to face, and know even as we are known, it is enough,
and more than enough, for all the questionings and desires of our
hungering spirits.

II. Our Lord goes on to a further answer, and points to the divine and
mutual indwelling by which this sight is made possible.

'Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The
words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father that
dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.' There are here, mainly, two
things, Christ's claim to the oneness of unbroken communion, and
Christ's claim, consequently, to the oneness of complete co-operation.
'I am in the Father' indicates the suppression of all independent and
therefore rebellious will, consciousness, thought and action; 'And the
Father in Me' indicates the influx into that perfectly filial Manhood
of the whole fullness of God in unbroken, continuous, gentle, deep
flow. These are the two sides of this great mystery on which neither
wisdom nor reverence lead us to dilate; and they combine to express the
closest and most uninterrupted blending, interpenetration, and
communion.

And then follows the other claim, that because of this continuous
mutual indwelling there is perfect cooperation. This is also stated in
terms corresponding to the preceding double representation. 'The words
that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself,' corresponds to, 'I am in
the Father.' 'The Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works,'
corresponds to 'The Father in Me.' The two put together teach us this,
that by reason of that mysterious and ineffable union of communion,
Jesus Christ in all His words and in all His works is the perfect
instrument of the divine will, so that His words are God's words, and
His works are God's works; so that, when He speaks, His gentle wisdom,
His loving sympathy, His melting tenderness, His authoritative
commands, His prophetic threatenings, are the speech of God, and that
when He acts, whether it be by miracle or in the ordinary deeds of His
life, what we see is God working before our eyes as we never see Him in
any human being.

And from all this follow just two or three considerations which I name.
Note the absolute absence of any consciousness on Christ's part of the
smallest deflection or disharmony between Himself and the Father. Two
triangles laid on each other are in every line, point, and angle
absolutely coincident. That humanity is capable of receiving the whole
inflow of God, and that indwelling God is perfectly expressed in the
humanity. There is no trace of a consciousness of sin. Everything that
Jesus Christ said He knew to be God's speaking; everything that He did
He knew to be God's acting. There were no barriers between the two.
Jesus Christ was conscious of no separation—not the thinnest film of
air between these Two who adhered and inhered so closely and so
continuously. It is an awful assertion.

Now I pray you to ask yourselves the question: If this was what Christ
said, what did He think of Himself? And is this a Man, like the rest of
us, with blotches and sins, with failures to embody His own ideas, and
still more to carry out in life the will that He knows to be God's
will? Is this a man like other men who thus speaks to us? If Jesus had
this consciousness, either He was ludicrously, tragically,
blasphemously, utterly mistaken and untrustworthy, or He is what the
Church in all ages has confessed Him to be, 'the Everlasting Son of the
Father.'

III. Lastly, our Lord further sets before us the faith to which He
invites us on the ground of His union with, and revelation of, God.

'Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me, or else
believe Me for the very works' sake.' Observe that the verb at the
beginning of this last verse of our text passes into a plural form. Our
Lord has done with Philip especially, and speaks now to all who hear
Him, and to us amongst the rest of His auditors. He bids us _believe_
Him, and believe something about Him on the strength of His own
testimony, or, in default of that, and as second best, believe Him on
the testimony of His works. I gather together what I have to say about
this point into three remarks.

The true bond of union between men and Jesus Christ is faith. We have
to trust, and that is better than sight. We have to trust _Him_. He is
the personal Object of our faith. In all faith there is what I may call
a moral and a voluntary element. A man believes a proposition because
it is forced upon him, and his intelligence is obliged to accept it. A
man trusts Christ because he _will_ trust Him, and the moral and
voluntary element carries us far beyond the mere intellectual
conception of faith as the assent to a set of theological propositions.
Faith really is the outgoing of the whole man—heart, will, intellect,
and all—to a person whom it grasps. But the Christ that you and I have
to trust is the Christ as He Himself has declared Himself to us.
'Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' There is a
bastard, mutilated kind of thing that calls itself Christian faith,
that goes about the world in this generation, which believes in Jesus
Christ in all sorts of beautiful ways, but it will not believe in Him
as the Personal Revelation and making visible of the unseen God. Jesus
Christ Himself tells us here that that is not the kind of faith which
He invites us to put forth. If we put forth that only, we have not yet
come to understand Him. Oh, dear friends! Christ as here declared to us
by Himself is the only Christ to whom it is right to give our trust. If
He be not God manifest in the flesh, I ought not to trust Him. I may
admire Him as a historical personage; I may reverence Him for His
wisdom and beauty; I may even in some vague way have a kind of love to
Him. But what in the name of common sense shall I trust Him for? And
why should He call upon me to exercise faith in Him unless He stand
before me as the adequate Object of a man's trust—namely, the manifest
God?

And then, further, note that believing in the sense of trusting is
seeing and knowing. Philip said, 'Shew us the Father.' Christ answers,
'Believe, and thou dost see.' If you look back upon the previous verses
of this chapter, you will find that in the earlier portion of them the
key-word is 'know'; that in the second portion of them the key-word is
'see'; that in this portion of them the key-word is 'believe.' The
world says, 'Ah! seeing is believing.' The Gospel says, 'Believing is
seeing.' The true way to knowledge, and to a better vision than the
uncertain vision of the eye, is faith. In certitude and in directness,
the knowledge of God that we have through faith in the Christ whom our
eyes have never seen is far ahead of the certitude and the directness
that attach to our mere bodily sight; and so the key to all divine
knowledge, and the sure road to the truest vision of God, is faith.

Further, faith, even if based upon lower than the highest grounds, is
still faith, and acceptable to Him: 'Or else believe Me for the very
works' sake.' The 'works' are mainly, I suppose, though not
exclusively, His miracles. And if so, we are here taught that, if a man
has not come to that point of spiritual susceptibility in which the
image of Jesus Christ lays hold upon His heart and obliges him to trust
Him and to love Him, there are yet the miracles to look at; and the
faith that grasps them, and by help of that ladder climbs to Him,
though it be second best, is yet real. The evidence of miracles is
subordinate, and yet it is valid and true. So our Lord contradicts both
the exaggerations of past generations and the exaggerations of this,
and neither asserts that the great reason for faith is miracles, nor
that miracles are of no use at all. Former centuries in the Christian
Church reiterated the former exaggeration, and thus partly provoked the
exaggeration of this day. Let us keep the middle course: there is a
better way of coming to Christ than through the gate of miracles, and
that is that He should stamp His own divine sweetness and elevation
upon our minds and hearts. But if we have not reached that point, do
not let us kick away the ladder that may help us to it. 'Believe Him
for the very works' sake.' Imperfect faith may be the highway to
perfection. Let us follow the light, if it be but a far-off glimmer,
sure that it will bring us into noontide day if we are faithful to its
leading.

On the other hand, dear friends, let us remember that no faith avails
itself of all the treasures laid up for it, which does not lay hold
upon Christ in the character in which He presents Himself. The only
adequate, worthy trust in Him is the trust which grasps Him as the
Incarnate God and Saviour. Only such a faith does justice to His own
claim. Only such a faith is the sure path to vision and to knowledge.
Only such a faith draws down the blessing of a questioning intellect
answered, a hungry heart satisfied, a conscience, accusing and
prophetic of a judgment to come, cleansed and purified.

To each of us Christ addresses His merciful invitation, 'Believe Me
that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' May we all answer, 'We
believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!'




CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS


'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works
that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do;
because I go unto My Father. 13. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My
name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14.
If ye shall ask any thing in My name, I will do it.'—JOHN xiv. 12-14.

I have already pointed out in a previous sermon that the key-word of
this context is 'Believe!' In three successive verses we find it, each
time widening in its application. We have first the question to the
single disciple: 'Philip! believest thou not?' We have then the
invitation addressed to the whole group: 'Believe Me!' And here we have
a wholly general expression referring to all who, in every generation
and corner of the world, put their trust in Christ, and extending the
sunshine of this great promise to whosoever believeth in Him. Our Lord
has pointed to _believing_ as the great antidote to a troubled heart,
as the sure way of knowing the Father, as the better substitute for
sight; and now here He opens before us still more wonderful
prerogatives and effects of faith. His words carry us up into lofty and
misty regions, where we can neither breathe freely nor see clearly,
except as we hold to His words. Therefore He prefaces them with His
'Verily, verily!' bidding us listen to them with sharpened attention as
the disclosure of something wonderful, and receive them with
unfaltering confidence, on His authority, however marvellous and
otherwise undiscoverable they may be.

What is it, then, that He thus commends to our acceptance? If I may
venture a paraphrase which may at least have the advantage of being
cast into less familiar words, it is just this, that because of, and
after, Christ's departure from earth, He will, in response to prayer,
work upon faithful souls in such a fashion as that they will do what He
did, and in some sense will do even more.

I. We have here the continuous work of the exalted Lord for and through
His servants.

These disciples, of course, were trembling and oppressed with the
thought that the departure of Jesus would be the end of His ceaseless
activity for them, on which they had depended implicitly for so long.
Henceforward, whatever distress or need might come, that Voice would be
silent, and that Hand motionless, and they would be left to face every
storm, uncompanioned and uncounselled. Some of us know how dreary such
experience makes life, and we can understand how these men shrank from
the prospect. Christ's words give strength to meet that trial, and not
only tell them that after He is gone they will be able to do what they
cannot do now, and what He used to do for them, but that in them He
will work as well as for them, and be the power of their action, after
He has departed.

For, notice the remarkable connection of the words with which we are
dealing. 'He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall _he_ do,'
and the ground of that is 'because I go to My Father,' and whatsoever
the believer 'shall ask, _I_ will do.'

So, then, there are here two very distinct paths on which Christ
represents to us that His future activity will travel; the one, that of
doing for us, in response to our prayers; the other that of working on
us and in us, so that our acts are His and His acts are ours. We may
look at these two for a moment separately.

Here, then, there is clearly stated this great thought, that Christ's
removal from the world is not the end of His activity in the world and
on material things, but that, absent, He still is a present power, and
having passed through death, and been removed from sense, He can still
operate upon the things round us, and move these according to His will.
We are not to water down such words as these into any such thought as
that the continuous influence of the memory and history of His past
will be a present power in all ages.

That is true, gloriously and uniquely true, but that is not the truth
which He speaks here. Over and above that perpetual influence of past
recorded work, there is the present influence of His present work, and
to-day He is working as truly as He wrought when on earth. One form of
His work was finished on Calvary, as His dying breath proclaimed; but
there is another work of Christ in the midst of the ages, moving the
pawns on the chessboard of the world, and presiding over the fortunes
of the solemn conflict, which will not be ended until that day when the
angel voices shall chant, 'It is done! The kingdoms of the world are
the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.' The living Christ works by
a true forth-putting of His own present power upon material things, and
amidst the providences of life. And therefore these disciples were not
to be cast down as if His work for them were ended.

Now it is clear, of course, that such words as these do demand for
their vindication something perfectly unique and solitary in the nature
and person of Jesus Christ. All other men's work is cut in twain by
death. 'This man, having served his generation by the will of God, fell
on sleep and was gathered to his fathers, and saw corruption,' that is
the epitaph over the greatest thinkers, statesmen, heroes, poets, the
epitaph for the tenderest and most hopeful. Father, mother, husband,
wife, child, friend, all cease to act when they die, and though
thunders should break, they are silent and can help no more. But Christ
is living to-day, and working all around us.

Now, brethren, it is of the last importance for the joyousness of our
Christian lives, and for the courage of our conflict with sorrow and
sin, that we should give a very prominent place in our creeds, and our
hearts, to this great truth of a living Christ. What a joyful sense of
companionship it brings to the solitary, what calmness of vision in
contemplating the complications and calamities of the world's history,
if we grasp firmly the assurance that the living Christ is actually
working by the present forth-putting of His power in the world to-day!

But that is not all. There is another path on which our Lord shows us
here a glimpse of His working, not only for us, but on and in and
therefore through us, so that the deeds that we do in faith that rests
upon Him are in one aspect His, and in another ours.

'The works that I do shall He do also'; because 'whatsoever ye shall
ask I will do it.'

We have not to think only of a Lord whose activity for us, beneficent
and marvellous as it is, was finished in the misty past upon the Cross,
nor have we only to think of a Lord whose activity for us, mighty and
comforting as it is to all the solitary and struggling, is wrought as
from the heights of the heavens, but we have to think of One who is
beside us and in us and knows the hidden paths that no eye sees, and no
foot but His can tread, into the inmost recesses of our souls, and
there can enter as King and righteousness, as life and strength. This
is the deepest of the lessons that He would teach us here. 'I live, yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me,' and through me, if I keep close to
Him, will work mightily in forms that my poor manhood could never have
reached. The emblem of the vine and the branches, and the other emblem
of the house and its inhabitants, and the other of the head and the
members, all point to this one same thing which shallow and unspiritual
men call 'mystical,' but which is the very heart of the Christian
prerogative and the anchor of the Christian hope. Christ in us is our
present righteousness and our hope of a future glory.

And now mark that a still more solemn and mysterious aspect of this
union of Jesus Christ and the believer is given, since it is set forth
as resulting in our doing Christ's works, and Christ doing ours; and
therein is paralleled with the yet more wonderful and ineffable union
between the Father and the Son. It is no accident that in one clause He
says, 'I am in the Father, and the Father in Me. The words that I speak
unto you I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He
doeth the works'; and that in the next He says, 'The works that I do
shall he do also'; and so bids us see in that union between the Father
and the Son, and in that consequent union of co-operation between Him
and His Father, a pattern after which our union with Him is to be
moulded, both as regards the closeness of its intimacy and as regards
the resulting manifestations in life. Christ is in us and we in Christ
in some measure as the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son.
And the works that we do He does in some fashion that faintly echoes
and shadows the perfect co-operation of the Father and the Son in the
works that the Christ did upon the earth.

All the doings of a Christian man, if done in faith, and holding by
Christ, are Christ's doings, inasmuch as He is the life and the power
which does them all. And Christ's deeds are reproduced and perpetuated
in His humble follower, inasmuch as the life which is imparted will
unfold itself according to its own kind; and he that loves Christ will
be changed into His likeness, and become a partaker of His Spirit. So
let us curb all self-dependence and self-will, that that mighty tide
may flow into us; and let us cast from us all timidity, distrust, and
gloom, and be strong in the assurance that we have a Christ living in
the heavens to work for us, and living within us to work through us.

There is no record of the Ascension in John's Gospel, but these words
of my text unveil to us the inmost meaning of that Ascension, and are
in full accord with the great picture which one of the Evangelists has
drawn—a picture in two halves, which yet are knit together into one.
'So then, after He had spoken unto them, He was received up into
heaven, and sat at the right hand of God; and they went forth and
preached everywhere.' What a contrast between the two—the repose above,
the toil below! Yes! But the next words knit them together—'The Lord
also working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.'

II. Note, in the next place, the greater work of the servants on and
for whom the Lord works. 'Greater works than these shall he do.' Is,
then, the servant greater than his Lord, and he that is sent greater
than He that sent him? Not so, for whatsoever the servant does is done
because the Lord is with and in him, and the contrast that is drawn
between the works that Christ does on earth and the greater works that
the servant is to do hereafter is, properly and at bottom, the contrast
between Christ's manifestations in the time of His earthly limitation
and humiliation, and His manifestations in the time of His Ascension
and celestial glory.

We need not be afraid that such great words as these in any measure
trench on the unique and unapproachable character of the earthly work
of Christ in its two aspects, which are one—of Revelation and
Redemption. These are finished, and need no copy, no repetition, no
perpetuation, until the end of time. But the work of objective
Revelation, which was completed when He ascended, and the work of
Redemption which was finished when He rose—these require to be applied
through the ages. And it is in regard to the application of the
finished work of Christ to the actual accomplishment of its
contemplated consequences, that the comparison is drawn between the
limited sphere and the small results of Christ's work upon earth, and
the worldwide sweep and majestic magnitude of the results of the
application of that work by His servants' witnessing work. The wider
and more complete spiritual results achieved by the ministration of the
servants than by the ministration of the Lord is the point of
comparison here. And I need only remind you that the poorest Christian
who can go to a brother soul, and by word or life can draw that soul to
a Christ whom it apprehends as dying for its sins and raised for its
glorifying, does a mightier thing than it was possible for the Master
to do by life or lip whilst He was here upon earth. For the Redemption
had to be completed in act before it could be proclaimed in word; and
Christ had no such weapon in His hands with which to draw men's souls,
and cast down the high places of evil, as we have when we can say, 'We
testify unto you that the Son of God hath died for our sins, and is
raised again according to the Scriptures.' Nor need I do more than
remind you of the comparison, so exalting for His humility and so
humbling for our self-exaltation, between the narrow sphere in which
His earthly ministrations had to operate and the worldwide scope which
is given to His servants. 'He laid His hands on a few sick folk, and
healed them'; and at the end of His life there were one hundred and
twenty disciples in Jerusalem and five hundred in Galilee, and you
might have put them all into this chapel and had ample room to spare.
That was all that Jesus Christ had done; while to-day and now the world
is being leavened and the kingdoms of the earth are beginning to
recognise His name. 'Greater works than these shall he do' who lets
Christ in him do all His works.

III. Lastly, notice the conditions on which the exalted Lord works for
and on His servants.

These are two, faith and prayer.

'He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also.' Faith,
the simple act of loving trust in Jesus Christ, opens the door of our
hearts and natures for the entrance of all His solemn Omnipotence, and
makes us possessors of it. It is the condition, and the only condition,
and plainly the indispensable condition, of possessing this divine
Christ's power, that we should trust ourselves to Him that gives it.
And if we do, then we shall not trust in vain, but to us there will
come power that will surpass our desire, and fill us with its own
rejoicing and pure energy. Faith will make us like Christ. Faith is
intensely practical. 'He that believeth shall _do_.' It is no mere cold
assent to a creed which is utterly impotent to operate upon men's acts,
no mere hysterical emotion which is utterly impotent to energise into
nobilities of service and miracles of consecration, but it is the
affiance of the whole nature which spreads itself before Him and prays,
'Fill my emptiness and vitalise me with Thine own Spirit.' That is the
faith which is ever answered by the inrush of the divine power, and the
measure of our capacity of receiving is the measure of His gift to us.

So if Christian individuals and Christian communities are impotent, or
all but impotent, there is no difficulty in understanding why. They
have cut the connection, they have shut the tap. They lack faith; and
so their power is weakness. 'Why could we not cast him out?' said they,
perplexed when they had no need to be. 'Why could you not cast him out?
Because you do not believe that I, working in you, can cast him out.
That is why; and the only why.' Let us learn that the secret of
Christians' weakness is the weakness of their Christian faith.

And the other condition is prayer. 'Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name
I will do it,' and He repeats it, for confirmation and for greater
emphasis. 'If ye shall ask anything in My name,' or, as perhaps that
clause ought to be read with some versions, 'If ye shall ask Me
anything in My name I will do it.'

Three points may be named here. Our power depends upon our prayer.
God's and Christ's fullness and willingness to communicate do not
depend upon our prayer. But our capacity to receive of that fullness,
and so the possibility of its communication to us, do depend upon our
prayer. 'We have not because we ask not.'

The power of our prayer depends upon our conscious oneness with the
revealed Christ. 'If ye shall ask in My name,' says He. And people
think they have fulfilled the condition when, in a mechanical and
external manner, they say, as a formula at the end of petitions that
have been all stuffed full of self-will and selfishness, 'for Christ's
sake. Amen!' and then they wonder they do not get them answered! Is
that asking in Christ's name?

Christ's name is the revelation of Christ's character, and to do a
thing in the name of another person is to do it as His representative,
and as realising that in some deep and real sense—for the present
purpose at all events—we are one with Him. And it is when we know
ourselves to be united to Christ and one with Him, and representative
in a true fashion of Himself, as well as when, in humble reliance on
His work for us and His loving heart, we draw near, that our prayer has
power, as the old divines used to say, 'to move the Hand that moves the
world,' and to bring down a rush of blessing upon our heads. Prayer in
the name of Christ is hard to offer. It needs much discipline and
watchfulness; it excludes all self-will and selfishness. And if, as my
text tells us, the end of the Son's working is the glory of the Father,
that same end, and not our own ease or comfort, must be the end and
object of all prayer which is offered in His name. When we so pray we
get an answer. And the reason why such multitudes of prayers never
travel higher than the roof, and bring no blessings to him who prays,
is because they are not prayers in Christ's name.

Prayer in His name will pass into prayer to Him. As He not obscurely
teaches us here (if we adopt the reading to which I have already
referred), He has an ear to hear such requests, and He wields divine
power to answer. Surely it was not blasphemy nor any diversion of the
worship due to God alone, when the dying martyr outside the city wall
cried and said, 'Lord Jesus! receive my spirit.' Nor is it any
departure from the solemnest obligations laid upon us by the unity of
the divine nature, nor are we bringing idolatrous petitions to another
than the Father, when we draw near to Christ and ask Him to give us
that which He gives as the Father's gift, and to work on us that which
the Father that dwelleth in Him works through Him for us.

Trust yourselves to Christ, and let your desires be stilled, to listen
to His voice in you, and let that voice speak. And then, dear brethren,
we shall be lifted above ourselves, and strength will flow into us, and
we shall be able to say, 'I can do all things, through the Christ that
dwells in me and makes me strong.' And just as the glad, sunny waters
of the incoming tide fill the empty places of some oozy harbour, where
all the ships are lying as if dead, and the mud is festering in the
sunshine, so into the slimy emptiness of our corrupt hearts there will
pour the flashing sunlit wave, the ever fresh rush of His power; and
'everything will live whithersoever it cometh,' and we shall be able to
say in all humility, and yet in glad recognition of Christ's
faithfulness to this, His transcendent promise, 'I live, yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me,' 'because the life which I live in the flesh I
live by faith of the Son of God.'




LOVE AND OBEDIENCE


'If ye love Me, keep My commandments.'—JOHN xiv, 15.

As we have seen in former sermons, the keyword of the preceding context
is 'Believe!' and that word passes now into 'Love.' The order here is
the order of experience. There is first the believing gaze upon the
Christ as He is revealed—the image of the invisible God. That kindles
love, and prompts to obedience.

There is another very beautiful and subtle link of connection between
these words and the preceding. Our Lord has just been saying,
'Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do.' Is the parallel
wholly accidental or fanciful between the Lord who does as the servant
asks and the servant who is to do as the Lord commands? On both sides
there is love delighting to be set in motion by a message from the
other side. On the one part there is love supreme which commands and
delights to be asked, on the other part there is love dependent, which
asks and delights to be commanded; and though the gulf between the two
is great, and the difference between Christ's law and our petitions is
infinite, yet there is an analogy.

I pause on these words, though they are introduced here only as the
basis of the great promise which follows, because they open out into
such wide fields. They contain the all-sufficient law of Christian
conduct. They contain the one motive adequate to bring that law into
realisation. They disclose the very roots of Christian morality, and
part of the secret of Christ's unique power and influence amongst men.
They come with a message of encouragement to all souls despairing of
being able to do that which they would, and of freedom to all men
burdened with a crowd of minute and external regulations. 'If ye love
Me, keep My commandments'—there are three points to be dwelt upon
here—namely, the all-sufficient ideal or guide of life, the
all-powerful motive which Christ brings to bear, and the all-subduing
gaze of faith by which that motive is brought into action.

I. We have here the all-sufficient ideal or guide for life.

Jesus Christ is not speaking merely to that little handful of men in
the upper chamber, but to all generations and to all lands, to the end
of time and round the world. The authoritative tone which He assumes
here is very noteworthy. He speaks as Jehovah spoke from Sinai, and
quotes the very words of the old law when He speaks of 'keeping My
commandments.' There are distinctly involved in this quite incidental
utterance of Christ's two startling things—one the assumption of His
right to impose His will upon every human being, and the other His
assumption that His will contains the all-sufficient directory for
human conduct.

What, then, are His commandments? Those which He spoke are plain and
simple; and people who wish to pick holes in the greatness of Christ's
work in the world tell us that you can match almost all His precepts up
and down amongst moralists and philosophers, and they crow very loud
if, scratching amongst Rabbinical dust-heaps, they find something that
looks like anything that He once said. Be it so! What does that matter?
Christ's 'commandments' are Christ Himself. This is the originality and
uniqueness of Christ as a moral Teacher, that He says, not 'Do this,
that, and the other thing,' but 'Copy Me.' 'Take My yoke upon you and
learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.' His commandments are
Himself; and the sum of them all is this—a character perfectly
self-oblivious, and wholly penetrated and saturated with joyful, filial
submission to the Father, and uttermost and entire giving Himself away
to His brethren. That is Christ's commandment which He bids us keep,
and His law is to be found in His life.

And then, if that be so, what a change passes on the aspect of law,
when we take Christ as being our living embodiment of it! Everything
that was hard, repellent, far-off, cold, vanishes. We have no longer
'tables of stone,' but 'fleshy tables of the heart'; and the Law stands
before us, a Being to be loved, to be clung to, to be trusted, and whom
it is blessedness to know and perfection to resemble. The rails upon
which the train travels may be rigid, but they mean safety, and they
carry men smoothly into otherwise inaccessible lands. So the life of
Jesus Christ brought to us is the firm and plain track along which we
are to travel; and all that was difficult and hard in the cold thought
of _duty_ becomes changed into the attraction of a living Pattern and
Example. This living and breathing and loving commandment is
all-sufficient for every detail and complexity of human life. It is so
by the confession of believers and of unbelievers, by the joyful
confession of the one, and by the frank acknowledgment of many of the
others. Listen to one of them. 'Whatever else may be taken away from us
by rational criticism, Christ is still left, a unique Figure, not more
unlike all His predecessors than all His followers…. Religion cannot be
said to have made a bad choice in selecting this Man as the ideal
Representative and Guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy,
even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of
virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavour so to live
that Christ would approve our life.'

It is enough for conduct, it is enough for character, it is enough in
all perplexities of conflicting duties, that we listen to and obey the
voice that says, 'Keep My commandments.'

II. Now note, secondly, the all-powerful motive.

Probably my text is best understood as the Revised Version understands
it, which reads, 'If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments,' making
it an assurance and not an injunction. Christ speaks with the calm
confidence that love to Him will have power enough to sway the life.
His utterance here is not the addition of another commandment to the
list, but rather the pointing out of how they may all be kept.

The principle that underlies these words, then, is this, that love is
the foundation of obedience, and obedience is the sure outcome and
result of love. That is true in regard to those lower forms of love,
which may teach us something of the operation of the higher. We all
know that love which is real, and not simply passion and selfishness
with a mask on, delights most chiefly in knowing and conforming to the
will of the beloved, and that there is nothing sweeter than to be
commanded by the dear voice and to obey for dear love's sake. And you
have only to take that which is the experience of every true heart, in
a thousand sweet ways in daily life, and to lift it into the higher
region, and to transfer it to the bond that unites us with Jesus
Christ, to see that He has invoked no illusory, but an omnipotent power
when He has rested the whole force of His transforming and sanctifying
energy upon this one principle, 'If ye love Me, the Lawgiver, ye will
keep the commandments of My Law.'

That is exactly what distinguishes and lifts the morality of the Gospel
above all other systems. The worst man in the world knows a great deal
more of his duty than the best man does. It is not for want of
knowledge that men go to the devil, but it is for want of power or will
to live their knowledge. And what morality fails to do, with its
clearest utterances of human duty, Christ comes and does. The one law
is like the useless proclamations posted up in some rebellious
district, where there is no army to back them, and the king's authority
from whom they come is flouted. The other law gets itself obeyed. Such
is the difference between the powerless morality of the world and the
commandment of Jesus Christ. Here is the road plain and straight. What
matters that, if there is no force to draw the cart along it? There
might as well be no road at all. Here stand all your looms, polished
and in perfect order, but there is no steam in the boilers; and so
there is no motion, and nothing is woven. What we want is not law, but
power, and what the Gospel gives us, and stands alone in giving us, is
not merely the knowledge of the will of God, and the clear revelation
of what we ought to be, but the power to become it.

Love does that, and love alone. That strong force brought into action
in our hearts will drive out from thence all rivals, all false and low
things. The true way to cleanse the Augean stables, as the old myth has
it, was to turn the river into them. It would have been endless work to
wheel out the filth in wheelbarrows loaded by spades: turn the stream
in, and it will sweep away all the foulness. When the Ark comes into
the Temple, Dagon lies, a mutilated stump, upon the threshold. When
Christ comes into my heart, then all the obscene and twilight-loving
shapes that lurked there, and defiled it, will vanish like ghosts at
cock-crowing before His calm and pure Presence. He, and He alone,
entering my heart by the portals of my love, will coerce my evil and
stimulate my good. And if I love Him, I shall keep His commandments.

Now, brethren, here is a plain test and a double-barrelled one, which
tries both our love and our obedience with a sharp touchstone. 'If ye
love Me, ye will keep My commandments.' That implies, first, that there
is no love worth calling so which does not keep the commandment. All
the emotional and the mystic, and the so-called higher parts of
Christian experience, have to be content to submit to this plain
test—do they help us to live as Christ would have us, and that because
He would have us? Love to Him that does not keep His commandments is
either spurious or dangerously feeble. The true sign of its presence in
the heart and the noblest of its operations is not to be found in
high-pitched expressions of fervid emotion, nor even in the sacred joys
of solitary communion, but in its making us, while in the rough
struggle of daily life, and surrounded by trivial tasks, live near Him,
and by Him, and for Him, and like Him. If I live so, I love Him; if
not, not. Not that I mean to say that in regard to each individual
action of a Christian man's life there must be the conscious presence
of reference to the supreme love, but that each individual action of
the life ought to come from a character of which that reference to the
supreme love is the very formative principle and foundation. The
colouring matter put in at the fountain will dye every drop of the
stream; and they whose inmost hearts are tinged and tinctured with the
sweet love of Jesus Christ, from their hearts will go forth issues of
life all coloured and moulded thereby. Test your Christian love by your
practical obedience.

And, on the other hand, there is no obedience worth calling so which is
not the child of love; and all the multitude of right things which
Christians do without that motive are made short work of by that
consideration. Obedience which is formal, mechanical, matter-of-course,
without the presence in it of a loving submission of the will;
obedience which is reluctant, calculated, forced upon us by dread,
imitated from others—all that is nothing; and Jesus Christ does not
count it as obedience at all. This is a sieve with very small meshes,
and there will be a great deal of rubbish left in it after the shaking.
'If ye love Me, keep My commandments.' The 'keeping of My commandments'
which has not 'love to Me' underlying it is no keeping at all.

III. And so, lastly, notice the all-subduing gaze.

That is not included in my text, but it is necessary in order to
complete the view of the forces to which Jesus Christ here entrusts the
hallowing of life and the sanctifying of our nature; and we are led to
refer to it by what I have already pointed out; the connection between
the 'love' of my text and the 'believe' of the preceding verses. I can
fancy a man saying, 'Keep His commandments? Woe is me! How am I to
keep?' The answer is 'Love.' And I can fancy him saying 'Love?' Yes!
'And how am I to love? I cannot get up love at the word of command, or
by any voluntary effort.' And the answer comes again, 'Believe!' Trust
Christ, and you will love Him. Love Him and you will do His will. And
then the question comes again, 'Believe what?' And the answer comes,
'Believe that He is the Son of God who died for you.'

Nothing else will kindle a man's love than the faithful contemplation
and grasp of Christ in that character and aspect. Only the redeeming
Christ affords a reasonable ground for our love to Him. Here is a dead
man, dead for nineteen centuries, expecting you and me to have towards
Him a vivid personal affection which will influence our conduct and our
character. What right has He to expect that? There is only one
reasonable ground upon which I may be called to love Jesus Christ, and
that is that He died for me, and such a love towards such a Christ is
the only thing which will wield power sufficient to guide, to coerce,
to restrain, to constrain, and to sustain my weak, wayward, rebellious,
and sluggish will. All other emotions of so-called admiration and
worship and reverence and affection for Jesus Christ are apt to be
tepid; but this one has power and warmth in it.

Here is a unique fact in the history of the world, that not only did He
make this astounding claim upon all subsequent generations; but that
all subsequent generations have responded to it, and that to-day there
are millions of men who love Jesus Christ with a love warm, personal,
deep, powerful—the spring of all their goodness and the Lord of their
lives. Why do they? For one reason only. Because they believe that He
died for them individually, and that He lives an ascended yet
ever-present Helper and Lover of their souls.

My brethren, that conviction, and that conviction only, as I venture to
affirm, has power to send a glow of love into the heart which will move
all the limbs in swift and happy obedience. That conviction, and that
conviction alone, will melt the thick-ribbed ice of our spirits and
will make it flow down in sweet waters. The love that has looked upon
the Cross will be the fulfilling of the law of Him that speaks from the
Throne. When our faith has grasped Him, as enduring that cross for us,
then our love will be awakened to hear and to do His commandments.

'We love Him because He first loved us,' and such love will flower and
fruit in obedience. I shall keep His commandments when I love Him. I
shall love Him with a love that makes my will plastic and my life a
glad service, when by faith I grasp Him as the Incarnate Lord, 'who
loved me and gave Himself for me.'




THE COMFORTER GIVEN


'And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter,
that He may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of Truth; whom the
world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him:
but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.'—JOHN
xiv. 16,17.

The 'and' at the beginning of these words shows us that they are
continuous with and the consequence of what precedes. 'If ye love Me,
_ye_ will _keep_ My commandments, and _I_ will _pray_ … and _He_ will
_send_.' Such is the series; but we must also remember that, as we have
seen in previous sermons, the obedience spoken of in the clause before
my text is itself treated as a consequence of some preceding steps. The
ladder that is fixed upon earth and has its summit in heaven has for
its rungs, first and lowest, 'believe'; second, 'love'; third, 'obey.'
And thus the context carries us from the very basis of the Christian
life up into its highest reward, even the larger gift to an obedient
spirit of that Great Spirit, who is the Comforter and the Teacher.

And there is another very striking link of connection between these
words and the preceding. There are, if I may so say, two telephones
across the abyss that separates the ascended Christ and us. One of them
is contained in His words, 'If ye ask anything in My name I will do
it'; the other is contained in these words, 'If ye keep My commandments
I will ask.' Love on this side of the great cleft sets love on the
other side of it in motion in a twofold fashion. If we ask, He does; if
we do, He asks. His action is the answer to our prayers, and His
prayers are the answer to our obedient action. So we have here these
points—the praying Christ and the giving Father; the abiding Gift; the
blind world and the recipient disciples.

I. Note, then, first, the praying Christ and the giving Father.

'I will ask and He will give' seems a strange drop from the lofty
claims with which we have become familiar in the earlier verses of this
chapter. 'Believe in God, believe also in Me'; 'He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father'; 'If ye shall ask anything in My name I will do
it'; 'Keep My commandments.' All these distinctly express, or
necessarily imply, divine nature, prerogatives, and authority. But here
the voice that spake the perfect revelation of God, and gave utterance
authoritatively to the perfect law of life, softens and lowers its
tones in petition; and Jesus Christ joins the rank of the suppliants.
Now common sense tells us that apparently diverse views lying so close
together in one continuous stream of speech cannot have seemed to the
utterer of them to be contradictory; and I venture to affirm that there
is no explanation which does justice to these two sides of Christ's
consciousness—the one all divine and authoritative and lofty, and the
other all lowly and identifying Himself with petitioners and suppliants
everywhere—except the old-fashioned and to-day discredited belief that
He is 'God manifest in the flesh,' who prays in His Manhood and hears
prayer in His Divinity. The bare humanistic view which emphasises such
utterances as these of my text does not, for the life of it, know what
to do with the other ones, and cannot manage to unite these two images
into a stereoscopic solid. That is reserved for the faith which
believes in the Manhood and in the Deity of our Lord and Saviour.

His intercession is the great hope of the Christian heart. His
intercession is the great activity of His present exalted and glorious
state. His intercession is no mere verbal utterance, nor the
representation to the Father of an alien or a diverse will, but His
intercession, mysterious as it is, and unfathomable to our poor, short
lines and light plummets, must mean this at all events—His continual
activity in presenting before the divine Father, as the motive and
condition of His petition being granted, His own great work upon the
Cross. The High Priest passes within the veil, bearing in His hand the
offering which He has made, and by reason of that offering, and of His
powerful presence before the mercy-seat, all the spiritual gifts which
redeem and regenerate and sanctify humanity are for ever coming forth.
'I will pray, and He will give,' is but one way of saying, 'Seeing
then, that we have a great High Priest over the House of God who is
entered within the veil, let us draw near.'

But I would have you notice how, as is always the case in all
utterances of Jesus Christ which express the lowest humiliation and
completest identification of Himself with humanity, there is ever
present some touch of obscured glory, some all but suppressed flash of
brightness which will not be wholly concealed. Note two things in this
great utterance; one, Christ's quiet assumption that all through the
ages, and today, nineteen centuries after He died, He knows, at the
moment of their being done, His servants' deeds. 'Keep my commandments,
and, knowing that you keep them, I will then and there pray for you.'
He claims in the lowly words an altogether supernatural, abnormal,
divine cognisance of all the acts of men down the ages and across the
gulf between earth and heaven.

And the other signature of divinity stamped on the prayer of Christ is
His certitude of the answer. 'I will ask and He will give': He puts, as
it were, the Father's act in pledge to us, and assures us, in a tone of
certainty, which is not merely the assurance of faith, but the
certitude of One who is 'one with the Father,' that His prayer brings
ever its answer. 'Father! I will that they whom Thou hast given Me be
with Me.' How strange! How far beyond the warrantable language of man!
And how impossible for a fisherman of Bethsaida to imagine, if he had
not heard, that strange blending of submission and of authority which
speaks in such words!

Then, remember what I have already said, that, according to the
teaching of this verse, taken in connection with its context, that
which put in motion Christ's Intercessory activity, as represented in
my text, is the obedience of a Christian man. If you obey He will pray,
and the Father will send. So the reward of imperfect obedience is the
larger measure given to us of that divine Spirit by whose indwelling
obedience becomes possible, and self-surrender a joy and a power. And
that is not merely because of the natural operation by which any kind
of conduct tends to repeat itself in more complete measure, nor is it
merely a case of 'to him that hath shall be given'; as a man's arm is
strengthened by exercise, and any faculty becomes more assured, and
swift, and at the command of its owner, by use. But there is a distinct
supernatural impartation to every obedient heart of divine gifts which
come straight through Jesus Christ to it. He Himself, in this immediate
context, says, 'If I depart I will send Him unto you,' and the true
conception is that in that Spirit's gift, which is a reality waiting as
its crown and reward upon our poor stained obedience, the whole Godhead
is present; the Father the Source, the Son the Channel, the Spirit the
Gift.

II. And so, secondly, note what our text tells us of that abiding gift.

'He will send another Comforter,' 'that He may abide with you for ever,
even the Spirit of Truth.' I suppose I may take it for granted that
most of my audience know all that need be said as to the meaning of
this word 'Comforter.' In our present modern English it has a very much
narrower range of meaning than its etymology would give it, and than
probably it had when it was first used in an English translation.
'Comforter' means a great deal more than 'consoler,' though we have
narrowed it to that signification almost exclusively. It means not only
one who administers sweet whispers of consolation in sorrow, but one
who, in any circumstances, by his presence makes strong. And the
original Greek word, of which it is the translation here, has a
precisely analogous meaning; its original signification being that of
'one who is called to the aid of another,' primarily as an advocate in
a court of law, but more widely as a helper in any form whatsoever. And
that is the idea which is to be attached to the word here:—a Comforter
who makes strong by His presence; the Paraclete, who is our Advocate,
Helper, Guide, and Instructor. Need I dwell upon the great thoughts
that spring from that metaphor; how we have to look for a Person, and
not merely a vague influence; a divine Person who will be by our sides
on condition of our faith, love, and obedience, to be our Strength in
all weakness, our Peace in all trouble, our Wisdom in all darkness, our
Guide in every perplexity, our Comforter and Cherisher, our
Righteousness when sin is strong, the Victor over our temptations, and
the Companion and Sweetener of our solitude? The metaphors with which
Scripture represents this great personal Influence are full of
instruction and beauty. He comes as 'the Fire,' which melts, which
warms, which cleanses, which quickens. He comes as the 'rushing, mighty
Wind,' which bears health upon its wings, and sometimes breathes softly
as an infant's breath, and sometimes sweeps with irresistible power. He
comes as the 'Oil,' gently flowing, lubricating, making every joint
supple, nourishing. He comes as the 'Water of Life,' refreshing,
vitalising, quickening all growth. He comes fluttering down as the Dove
of God, the bird of peace that will brood upon our hearts. The
predicates which Scripture attaches to that great Name are equally
various, and are full of teaching as to the manner in which He is the
Comforter and the Advocate. He is the Spirit of Holiness, the Spirit of
Truth, the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Power, the Spirit of Love,
the Spirit of a sound Mind, the Spirit of Sonship, the Spirit of
Supplication, and of many great things besides. And this sweet, strong,
all-sufficient Person is offered to each of us, and waits to enter our
hearts.

And, says Christ, this Strengthener and Advocate is to replace Me and
to carry on My work. 'He will send _another_ Comforter.' Who was the
other but the Master who was speaking? So all that that handful of men
had found of sweetness and shelter and assured guidance, and stay for
their weakness, and enlightenment for their darkness, and companionship
for their solitude, and a breast on which to rest their heads, and love
in which to bathe their hearts, all _these_ this divine Spirit will
bring to each of us if we will.

And further, our Lord tells us that this strong continuer of His
presence will be a permanent Companion. 'He will abide with you for
ever.' He was comforting the disciples who were trembling at the
thought of His departure, and knowing that all the sweetness of these
three short years had come to an end; and He says to them, and through
them to all the ages to the end of time: 'Here is the abiding Guest,
that nothing but your own sin will ever cast out from your hearts.'

And Christ tells us how this great Spirit will do His work. He is the
'Spirit of Truth,' not as if He brought new truth. To suppose that He
does so, opens the door to all manner of fanaticism, but the truth, the
revelation of which is all summed and finished in the person and work
of Jesus Christ, is the weapon by which the divine Spirit works all His
conquests, the staff on which He makes us lean and be strong. He is the
Spirit by whom the truth passes into our personal possession, by no
mere imperfect form of outward teaching which is always confused and
insufficient, but by the inward teaching that deals with our hearts and
our spirits.

But Christ speaks, too, of the blind world. There is a tone of deep
sadness in His words. The thought of the immense multitude of men who
were incapacitated to receive this Strengthener steals across and casts
a momentary shadow upon even the brightness and greatness of His
promise. 'The world cannot receive because it seeth Him not, neither
knoweth Him.' The 'world' is the mass of man, considered as godless and
separate from Him, and there is a bit of the world in us all; but there
are men who are wholly under its influence and dominion. And these men,
says Christ, are perfectly incapable of receiving the teaching of this
divine Comforter. Of course there are other operations of that Great
Spirit of which we shall have to hear as we go on further in this
context, in which His work 'convicts the world of sin and of
righteousness and of judgment.' But what our Lord is speaking of here
is the work of that Spirit who comes in response to His prayer which
rises in consequence of our obedience, and who, coming, brings with Him
strength and purity and peace and wisdom; and that aspect of His
operations a heart that is all full and seething with the world is
unfit to receive. It cannot see Him. Embruted natures are altogether
incapacitated for high thoughts, for the perception of natural beauty,
for the appreciation of art; and worldly men, by the very same law, are
incapable of receiving this divine Spirit. A savage stares at the
sunshine and sees nothing but a glare. And worldly men—that is to say,
men whose tastes, inclinations, desires, hopes, purposes, strivings,
are all bound by this visible diurnal round—lack the organ that enables
them to see that divine Spirit moving round about them. Whether you
have put your eyes out by fleshly lusts, or, as many men in this
generation have done, by intellectual self-sufficiency and conceit, if
the world, in its grosser or in its most refined forms, is your master,
you are stone blind to all the best realities of the universe, and you
cannot see the things that are. If you look out upon the history of the
Church, or upon the present condition of Christendom, and say, 'I see
no divine Spirit working there'; well, then, the only thing that is to
be said to you is, 'Go to an oculist; your sight is bad. Perhaps there
is solid land, as some of us see it, where you see only mist.' This
generation needs the preaching of a supernatural power at work beside
us, and among us, and until we come to believe _that_, we do not
understand the fullness of Christ's gift.

III. Then, lastly, note the recipient disciples.

Observe that the order of clauses is reversed in the last part of the
text. The world cannot receive, because it does not know. The disciple
knows, because he receives. Possession and knowledge reciprocally
interchange places, and may be regarded as cause and effect of one
another. That is to say, at bottom they are one and the same thing.
Knowledge is possession, and possession is the only knowledge. These
disciples knew Christ in a fashion. He had just been telling them that
they did not know Him; but so far as they did dimly grasp Him, they saw
the Spirit—in another form, indeed, than they would hereafter see—but
still truly, though imperfectly. Beholding the Spirit, though 'through
a glass darkly,' and cherishing their partial possession of Him, they
will come to more, and steadfastly increase from the morning's twilight
to the midday glory. So He says: 'He dwelleth with you' now, and 'He
shall be _in_ you' hereafter. There is a better form of possession
opening before them, which came at Pentecost, and has lasted ever
since. From thenceforward we have a Spirit that not only stands by our
sides and holds fellowship with us (for the two 'withs' of our text are
two different words, expressing respectively proximity and communion),
but who actually dwells in the central depths of our natures, and whom
we thus possess more perfectly and blessedly than is possible to even
the closest outward proximity, and the sweetest outward fellowship.

That possession of an abiding and indwelling Spirit is the gift of
Christ to every Christian soul, and is to be found by us all upon the
path so plainly marked out in our text and its connections—'believe,'
'love,' 'obey.' Then the Dove of God will flutter down upon our heads
and nestle in our hearts, and brooding over the solemn and solitary sea
of our chaotic spirits, will bring up from it a new world glistening in
fresh order and beauty, and 'very good' in its Maker's eyes.




THE ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST


'I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you. Yet a little
while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me: because I live,
ye shall live also.'—JOHN xiv. 18,19.

The sweet and gracious comfortings with which Christ had been soothing
the disciples' fears went very deep, but hitherto they had not gone
deep enough. It was much that they should know the purpose of His
going, whither He went, and that they had an interest in His departure.
It was much that they should have before them the prospect of reunion;
much that they should know that all through His absence He would be
working in them, and that they should be assured that, absent, He would
send them a great gift. But reunion, influence from afar, and gifts
from the other side of the gulf were not all that their hearts needed.
And so here our Lord gives yet more, in the paradoxes that, absent He
will be present, unseen visible, and dying will be for them for ever,
living and life-giving. These great thoughts go to the centre of their
needs and of ours; and on them I now touch briefly.

There are then in the words I have read, though they be but a fragment
of a closely-linked-together context, these three great thoughts: the
absent Christ the present Christ; the unseen Christ the seen Christ;
the Christ who dies the living and life-giving Christ. Let us look at
these as they stand.

I. First, then, the absent Christ is the present Christ.

'I will not leave you comfortless,' or, as the Revised Version has it,
'desolate—I come to you.' Now, most of us know, I suppose, that the
literal meaning of the word rendered 'comfortless,' or 'desolate,' is
'_orphans_.' But that is rather an unusual form in which to represent
the relation between our Lord and His disciples, and so, possibly, our
versions are accurate in giving the general idea of desolation rather
than the specific idea conveyed directly by the word. But still it is
to be remembered that this whole conversation begins with 'Little
children'; and there seems to be no strong reason for suppressing the
literal meaning of the word, if only it be remembered that it is
employed not so much to define Christ's relation to his brethren as to
describe the comfortless and helpless condition of that little group
when left by Him. They would be like fatherless and motherless children
in a cold world. And what is to hinder that? One thing only. 'I come to
you.' 'Then, and only then, will you cease to be desolate and orphans.
My presence will change everything and turn winter into glorious
summer.'

Now, what is this 'coming'? It is to be observed that our Lord says,
not 'I will,' as a future, but 'I come,' or 'I am coming,' as an
immediately impending, and, we may almost say, present, thing. There
can be no reference in the word to that final coming to judgment which
lies so far ahead; because, if there were, then there would follow from
the text, that, until that period, all that love Him here upon earth
are to wander about as orphans, desolate and forsaken; and that
certainly can never be. So that we have to recognise here the promise
of a coming which is contemporaneous with His absence, and which is, in
fact, but the reverse side of His bodily absence.

It is true about Him that He 'departs from' His people in bodily form
'for a season, that they may receive Him' in a better form 'for ever.'
This, then, is the heart and centre of the consolation here, that
howsoever the external presence may be withdrawn, and the 'foolish
senses' may have to speak of an absent Christ, we may rejoice in the
certainty that He is with all those that love Him, and all the more
with them because of the very withdrawal of the earthly manifestation
which has served its purpose, and now is laid aside as an impediment
rather than as a help to the full communion. We confound _bodily_ with
_real_. The bodily presence is at an end; the real presence lasts for
ever.

I do not need to insist, I suppose, upon the manifest implication of
absolute divinity which lies in such words as these. 'I come.' 'Being
absent, I am present in all generations. I am present with every single
heart.' That is equivalent to the Omnipresence of deity; that is
equivalent to or implies the undying existence of the divine nature,
and He that says, when He is leaving earth and withdrawing the
sweetness of His visible form from the eyes of men, 'I come,' in the
very act of going, 'and I am with you always, with all of you to the
end of the ages,' can be no less than God, manifest in the flesh for a
time, and present in the Spirit with His children for ever.

I cannot but think that the average Christian life of this day wofully
fails in the simple, conscious realisation of this great truth, and
that we are all far too little living in the calm, happy, strengthening
assurance that we are never alone, but have Jesus Christ with each of
us more closely, more truly, in a more available fashion, and with more
omnipotence of influence, than they had who were nearest Him during the
days that He lived upon earth.

Oh, brethren! if we really believed, not as an article of our creed
which has become so familiar to us that it produces little impression
upon us, but as a vital and ever-present conviction of our souls, that
with us there was ever the real presence of the real Christ, how all
burdens and cares would be lightened, how all perplexities would begin
to smooth themselves out and be straightened, how all the force would
be sucked out of temptations, and how sorrows and joys and all things
would be changed in their aspect by that one conviction intensely
realised and constantly with us! A present Christ is the Strength, the
Righteousness, the Peace, the Joy, and as we shall see, in the most
literal sense, the Life of every Christian soul.

Then, note, further, that this coming of our Lord is identified with
that of His divine Spirit. He has been speaking of sending that 'other
Comforter,' but though He be Another, He is yet so indissolubly united
with Him who sends as that the coming of the Spirit is the coming of
Jesus. He is no gift wafted to us as from the other side of a gulf, but
by reason of the unity of the Godhead and the divinity of the sent
Spirit, Jesus Christ and the Spirit whom He sends are inseparable
though separate, and so indissolubly united that where the Spirit is,
there is Christ, and where Christ is, there is the Spirit. These are
amongst the deep things which the disciples were 'not able to carry' at
that stage of their development, and which waited for a further
explanation. Enough for them and enough for us, to know that we have
Christ in the Spirit and the Spirit in Christ; and to remember 'that if
any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.'

We stand here on the margin of a shoreless and fathomless sea; and for
my part I venture to think that the men who talk about the
incredibilities and the contradictions of the orthodox faith would show
themselves a little wiser if they were more conscious of the limitation
of human faculty, and remembered that to pronounce upon contradictions
in the doctrine of the divine Nature implies that the pronouncer stands
above and goes round about the whole of that nature. So, for my part,
abjuring omniscience and the comprehension of Deity, I accept the
statement that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come together
and dwell in the heart.

Then, note, further, that this present Christ is the only Remedy for
the orphanhood of the world. The words had a tender and pathetic
reference to that little, bewildered group of followers, deprived of
their Guide, their Teacher, and their Companion. He who had been as
eyes to their weak vision, and Counsellor and Inspirer and everything
for three blessed years, was going away to leave them unsheltered to
the storm, and we can understand how forlorn and terrified they were,
when they looked forward to fronting the things that must come to them,
without His presence. Therefore He cheers them with the assurance that
they will not be left without Him, but that, present still, just
because He is absent, He will be all that He ever had been to them.

And the promise was fulfilled. How did that dis-spirited group of
cowardly men ever pluck up courage to hold together at all after the
Crucifixion? Why was it that they did not follow the example of John's
disciples, and dissolve and disappear; and say, 'The game is up. It is
no use holding together any longer'? The process of separation began on
the very day of the Crucifixion. Only one thing could have stopped it,
and that is the Resurrection and the presence with His Church of the
risen Christ in His power and in all the fullness of His gifts. If it
had not been that He came to them, they would have disappeared, and
Christianity would have been one more of the abortive sects forgotten
in Judaism. But, as it is, the whole of the New Testament after
Pentecost is aflame with the consciousness of a present Christ, working
amongst His people. And although it be true that, in one aspect, we are
absent from the Lord when we are present with the body, in another
aspect, and an infinitely higher one, it is true that the strength of
the Christian life of Apostles and martyrs was this, the assurance that
Christ Himself—no mere rhetorical metaphor for His influence or His
example, or His memory lingering in their imaginations, but the
veritable Christ Himself—was present with them, to strengthen and to
bless.

That same conviction you and I must have, if the world is not to be a
desert and a dreary place for us. In a very profound sense it is true
that if you take away Jesus Christ, the elder Brother, who alone
reveals to men the Father, we are all orphans, fatherless children, who
look up into an empty heaven and see nothing there. It is only Christ
who reveals to us the Father and makes our happy hearts feel that we
are of His children. And in the wider sense of the word 'orphans,' is
not life a desolation without Him? Hollow joys, fleeting blessednesses,
roses whose thorns last long after the petals have dropped, real
sorrows, shows and shams, bitternesses and disappointments—are not
these our life, in so far as Christ has been driven out of it? Oh!
there is only one thing that saves us from being as desolate,
fatherless children, groping in the dark for the lost Father's hand,
and dying for want of it, and that is that the Christ Himself shall
come to us and be with us.

II. The unseen Christ is a seen Christ.

It is clear that the period referred to in the second clause of our
text is the same as that referred to in the first, that 'yet a little
while' covers the whole space up to His Ascension; and that if there be
any reference at all to the forty days of His earthly life, during
which literally, the work 'saw Him no more,' but the Apostles 'saw
Him,' that reference is only secondary. These transitory appearances
are not of sufficient moment or duration to bear the weight of so great
a promise as this. The vision, which is the consequence of the coming,
has the same extension in time as the coming—that is to say, it is
continuous and permanent. We must read here the great promise of a
perpetual vision of the present Christ.

It is clear, too, that the word 'see' is employed in these two clauses
in two different senses. In the former it refers only to bodily sight,
in the latter to spiritual perception. For a few short hours still, the
ungodly mass of men were to have that outward vision which might have
been so much to them, but which they had used so badly that 'they
seeing saw not.' It was to cease, and they who loved Him would not miss
it when it did; but the withdrawal which hid Him from sense and
sense-bound souls would reveal Him more clearly to His friends. They,
too, had but dimly seen Him while He stood by them; they would gaze on
Him with truer insight when He was present though absent.

So this is what every Christian life may and should be—the continual
sight of a continually-present Christ. It is His part to come. It is
ours to see, to be conscious of Him who does come.

Faith is the sight of the soul, and it is far better than the sight of
the senses. It is more direct. My eye does not touch what I look at.
Gulfs of millions of miles may lie between me and it. But my faith is
not only eye, but hand, and not only beholds, but grasps, and comes
into contact with that to which it is directed. It is far more clear.
Sense may deceive; faith, built upon His Word, cannot deceive. Its
information is far more certain, far more valid. I have better reason
for believing in Jesus Christ than I have for believing in the things
that I touch and handle. So that there is no need for men to say, 'Oh,
if we had only seen Him with our eyes!' You would very likely not have
known Him if you had. There is no reason for thinking that the Church
has retrograded in its privileges, because it has to love instead of
beholding, and to believe instead of touching. That is advance, and we
are better than they, inasmuch as the blessing of those 'who have not
seen, and yet have believed,' comes down upon our heads. The vision of
Christ which is granted to the faithful soul is better and not worse,
more and not less, other in kind indeed, but loftier in degree too,
than that which was granted to the men who saw Him upon earth. Sense
disturbs, faith alone beholds.

'The world seeth Me no more.' Why? Because it is a world. 'Ye see Me.'
Why? Because, and in the measure in which you have turned away your
eyes from seeing vanity. If you want the eye of the soul to be opened,
you must shut the eye of sense. And the more we turn away from looking
at the dazzling lies with which time and the material universe befool
and bewilder us, the more shall we see Him whom to see is to live for
ever.

Oh, brethren! does that strong word 'see' in any measure express the
vividness, the directness, the certainty of our realisation of our
Master's presence? Is Jesus Christ as clear, as perceptible, as sure to
us as the men round us are? Which are the shadows and which are the
realities to us? The things which are seen, which the senses crown as
'real,' or the things which cannot be seen because they are so great,
and tower above us, invisible in their eternity? Which world are our
eyes most open to, the world where Christ is, or the world here? Our
happy eyes may behold and our blessed hands may handle the Word of Life
which was manifested to us. Let us beware that we turn not away from
the one thing worthy to be looked at, to gaze upon a desolate and
dreary world.

III. Lastly, the present and seen Christ is living and life-giving.

The last words of my text may be connected with the preceding, as the
marginal rendering of the Revised Version shows. But it is probably
better to take them as standing independently, and presenting another
and co-ordinate element of the blessedness arising from the coming of
the Christ. Because He comes, His life passes into the hearts of the
men to whom He comes, and who gaze upon Him.

Time forbids me to dwell upon that majestic proclamation of His own
absolute and divine life, from lips that were so soon to be paled with
death. Mark the grand 'I live'—the timeless present tense, which
expresses unbroken, underived, undying, and, as I believe, divine life.
It is all but a quotation of the great Old Testament name 'Jehovah.'
The depth and sweep of its meaning are given to us in this Apostle's
Apocalypse, where Christ is called 'the living One,' who lived whilst
He died, and having died 'is alive for evermore.'

And this Christ, coming to all His friends, possessor of the fullness
of life in Himself, and proclaiming His absolute possession of that
life, even whilst He stands within arm's-length of Calvary, is
Life-giver to all that love Him and trust Him.

We live _because_ He lives. In all senses of the word 'life,' as I
believe, the life of men is derived from the Christ who is the Agent of
creation, the channel from whom life passes from the Godhead into the
creatures, and who is also the one means by whom any of us can ever
hope to live the better life which is the only true one, and consists
in fellowship with God and union to Him.

We shall live _as long as_ He lives, and His being is the pledge and
the guarantee of the immortal being of all who love Him. Anything is
possible, rather than that it should be credible that a soul, which has
drawn spiritual life from Jesus Christ here upon earth, should ever be
rent apart from Him by such a miserable and external trifle as the mere
dissolution of the bodily frame. As long as Christ lives our life is
secure. If the Head has life, the members 'cannot see corruption,'
'Take _me_ not away in the midst of my days: _Thy_ years are throughout
all generations' was the prayer of a saint of old, deeply feeling the
contrast of the worshipper's transiency and God's eternity, and dimly
hoping that the contrast might be changed into likeness. The great
promise of our text answers the prayer, and assures us that the
worshipper is to live as long as does He whom He adores.

We shall live as He lives, nor ever cease the appropriation of His
being until all His life we know, and all its fullness has expanded our
natures—and that will be never. Therefore we shall not die.

Men's lives have been prolonged by the transfusion of blood from
vigorous frames. Jesus Christ passes His own blood into our veins and
makes us immortal. The Church chose for one of its ancient emblems of
the Saviour the pelican, which fed its young, according to the fable,
with blood from its own breast. So Christ vitalises us. He in us is our
Life.

Brethren, without Jesus Christ we are orphans in a fatherless world.
Without Him, our wearied and yet unsatisfied eyes have only trifles and
trials and trash to look at. Without Him, we are 'dead whilst we live.'
He and He only can give us back a Father, and renew in us the spirit of
sons. He and only He can satisfy our eyes with the sight which is
purity and restfulness and joy. He and He only can breathe life into
our death. Oh! let Him do it for you. He comes to us with all these
gifts in His hands, for He comes to give us Himself, and in Himself, as
'in a box where sweets compacted lie,' are all that lonely hearts and
wearied eyes and dead souls can ever need. All are yours if you are
Christ's. All are yours if He is yours. And He is yours if by faith and
love you make yourself His and Him your own.




THE GIFTS OF THE PRESENT CHRIST


'At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I
in you. He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that
loveth Me; and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I
will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.'—JOHN xiv. 20, 21.

We have heard our Lord in the previous verse unveiling His deepest and
strongest encouragements to His downcast followers. These were: His
presence with them, their true sight of Him, and their participation in
His life. The first part of our present text is closely connected with
these, for it gives us their upshot and consequence. Because Christ's
true disciple is conscious of Christ's presence, sees Him with the eyes
of his spirit, and draws life from Him, therefore he will know by
experience the deep truths of Christ's indwelling at once in the Father
and in His servant, and of His servant's indwelling in Him. Our Lord
had just previously been exhorting His disciples to _believe_ that He
was in the Father and the Father in Him; and had been gently wondering
at the slowness of their faith. Now He tells them that, when He is
gone, their spiritual stature will be so increased as that they shall
_know_ the thing which, with Him by their side, they found it so hard
to believe.

The second part of our present text is the close of this whole section
of our Lord's discourse, and in it He urges the requirement of
practical obedience, as the sign and test of love, and as the condition
of receiving these high and wonderful things of which He has been
speaking. He has been unveiling spiritual blessings, which may seem
recondite and up in the clouds, and which, as a matter of fact, have
often been perverted into dreamy mysticisms of a most immoral and
unpractical kind. And so He brings us sharp back again here to very
plain truths, and would teach us that all these lofty and ineffable
gifts of which He has been dimly speaking are to be reached only by the
commonplace road of honest obedience and simple conformity to His
commandments. In these last words of my text, He administers the
antidote and the check to the possible abuses of the great things which
He has been saying.

I. Note, then, first, the knowledge that comes with the Christ who
comes.

'At that day' covers the whole period of which He has been speaking,
between His withdrawal from the disciples and His final corporeal
coming to judgment—that great day of which generations are but the
moments. In it the men who love Him are to have His presence, His
vision, His life, and because they have, 'Ye shall know that I am in My
Father, and ye in Me, and I in you,' The principle that underlies these
wonderful words is that Christian experience is the best teacher of
fundamental Christian truth. Observe with what decision, and with what
strange boldness, our Lord carries that principle into regions where we
might suppose at first sight that it was altogether inapplicable. 'Ye
shall know that I am in My Father.' How can such a thing as the
relation between Christ and God ever be a matter of consciousness to us
here upon earth? Must it not always be a truth that we must take on
trust and believe because we have been told it, without having any
verification in ourselves? Not so; remember what has gone before. If a
man has the consciousness of Christ's presence with Him, sees Him with
the true inward eye, which is the only real organ of real vision, and
is drawing from Him, moment by moment, His own high and immortal life,
then is it not true that this man's experiences are of such a sort as
to be utterly inexplicable, except on the ground that they come from a
divine source? If I have these experiences I know that it is Jesus
Christ who gives them, and I know that He could not give them, if He
did not dwell in God and were not divine. These new influences, this
revolution in my being, this healing, constraining, cleansing touch,
these calming, gladdening, elevating powers, these new hopes, these
reversed desires, loving all to which I was formerly indifferent, and
growing dead to all that formerly appealed most strongly to me; all
these things bear upon their very front the signature that they are
wrought by a divine hand, and as sure as I am of my own Christian
consciousness, so sure am I that all its experiences proclaim their
Author, and that Christ who gives me them is in God. 'Ye shall know
that I am in My Father.'

The New Testament, as I read it, is full at every point of the divinity
of Jesus Christ; and many profound and learned arguments on that
subject have been urged by theologians, and these are all well and
needful in their places, but the true way to be sure of it is to have
Him dwelling with us and working in us; and then what was an article of
belief becomes an article of knowledge, and we know Him to be our
Saviour and the Son of God.

In like manner, and yet more obviously, the other elements of this
knowledge which Christ promises here may be shown to flow naturally and
necessarily from Christian experiences. 'That ye are in Me, and I in
you,'—if a Christian man carries the consciousness of Christ's
presence, and has Him as a Sun in his darkness, and as a Life-source
feeding his deadness with life, then he knows with a consciousness
which is irrefragable that Jesus Christ is in him, for he feels His
touch; and he knows that he is in Christ, for he is aware of the power
that girdles him, and in which he has peace and righteousness and all.

So, dear brethren, let us learn what the Christian man's experience
ought to be and to do for him. It should change the articles of our
creed into elements of our consciousness. It should make all the
fundamentals of the Gospel vitally and vividly true; and certified by
what has passed within our own spirits We should be able to say: 'We
have the witness in ourselves.' And though there will remain much that
is uncertain, much in Christian doctrine which is not capable of that
clear and all-sufficing verification; much about which we must still
depend on the mere teaching of others, or on our own study, the central
facts which make the Gospel may all become, by this plain and short
path, elements of our very consciousness which stand undeniable to us,
whosoever denies them.

Such a direct way to knowledge is reasonable, is in full analogy with
the manner by which we attain to the knowledge of everything except the
mere external facts, the knowledge of which has arrogated to itself the
exclusive name of 'science,' How do you know anything about love? You
may read poems and tragedies to the end of time, and you will not
understand it until you come under its spell for yourself; and then all
the things that men said about it cease to be mere words, because you
yourself have experienced the emotion.

  'He must be loved, ere that to you
  He will seem worthy of your love,'

and the only way to be sure, with a vital certitude, of Christ, is to
take Christ for your very own, and then He comes into your very being,
and dwells there quickening, the Sun and the Life.

So, dear brethren, though such certitude arising from experience, which
in its nature is the very highest, is not available for other people,
the fact that so many millions of men allege that in varying degrees
they possess this certitude is available for other people, and there is
nothing to be said by the unbeliever to this, the attestation of the
Christian consciousness to the truth of the truths which it has tried.
'Whether this man be a sinner or no, I know not.' You may jangle as
much as you like about the questionable and controversial points that
surround the Christian revelation, I do not care in the present
connection what answer you give to them. 'Whether this man be a sinner
or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I
see.' And we may push the war into the enemy's quarters, and say: 'Why!
herein is a marvellous thing, that you that know everything do not know
whence this man is, and yet He has opened mine eyes. You want facts;
there are some. You want verification; we have verified by experience,
and we set to our seals that God is true.'

'Oh but,' you say, 'this is not a fair account of the way in which
Christian men and women generally feel about this matter.' Well, all
that I can say about that is, so much the worse for the so-called
Christian men and women. And if they are Christians, and do not know by
this inward experience that Christ is divine and their Saviour, then
there is only one of two reasons to be given for it; either their
experience is so wretchedly superficial and fragmentary, so rudimentary
as to be scarcely worth calling by the name or, having the facts, they
have failed to appreciate their significance, and to make their own by
reflection the certitudes which are their own.

Brethren, it becomes every Christian man and woman to be able to say,
'Because I have Christ with me, and see Him, and derive my life from
Him, I know that He is in the Father, and I in Him, and He in me.' And
if you cannot say that, it is your own grasp of Him, or your meditation
upon what you have got by your grasp, that is painfully and sinfully
defective.

II. My text speaks of the obedience which is the sign and test of love.

The words here are substantially equivalent to former words in the
chapter which we have already considered, where our Lord says: 'If ye
love Me, ye will keep My commandments.'

There is, however, a slight difference in the point of view in the two
sayings; the former begins with the root and traces it upwards and
outwards to its fruits, love blossoming into obedience. Our text
reverses the process, and takes the thing by the other end; begins with
the fruits and traces them downwards and inwards to the root. 'He that
hath and keepeth My commandments, he it is that loveth Me.' The two
sayings substantially mean the same thing; but in the one love is put
first as the cause of obedience, and in the other obedience is put
first, as the certain fruit and sure sign of love. The connection
between these and the preceding words is, as I have already pointed
out, that our Lord here brings all His lofty promises down to the
sharp, practical requirement of obedience, as the only condition on
which they can be fulfilled.

So note, and very briefly about this matter, how remarkably our Lord
here declares the _possession_ of His commandments to be a sign of love
to Him. 'He that _hath_,' a word which is generally passed over in our
reading—'He that hath My commandments, He it is that loveth Me.' Of
course there are two ways of having His commandments; there is having
them in the Bible, and there is having them in the heart;—present
before my eye, as a law that I ought to obey, or present within my
will, as a power that shapes it. And the latter is the only kind of
'having' that Christ regards as real and valid. The rest is only
preparatory and superficial. Love possesses the knowledge of the loved
one's will. Is not that true? Do we not all know how strange is the
power of divining desires that goes along with true affection, and how
the power, not only of divining, but of treasuring, these desires is
the test and the thermometer of our true love? Some of us, perhaps,
keep laid away in sacred, secret places tattered, yellow, old bits of
paper with the words of a dear one on them, that we would not part
with. 'He that hath My commandments' laid up in lavender in the deepest
recesses of his faithful heart, he it is 'that loveth Me.'

In like manner, our Lord says, the practical obedience to His
commandments is the sure sign and test of love. I need not dwell upon
that. There are two motives for keeping commandments—one because they
are commanded, and one because we love Him that commands. The one is
slavery, the other is liberty. The one is like the Arctic regions, cold
and barren, the other is like tropical lands, full of warmth and
sunshine, glorious and glad fertility.

The form of the sentence suggests how easy it is for people to delude
themselves about their love to Jesus Christ. That emphatic 'he,' and
the putting first of the character before its root is pointed out, are
directed against false pretensions to love. The love that Christ stamps
with His hall-mark, and passes as genuine, is no mere emotion, however
passionate, however sweet; no mere sentiment, however pure, however
deep. The tiniest little rivulet that drives a mill is better than a
Niagara that rushes and foams and tumbles idly. And there is much
so-called love to Jesus Christ that goes masquerading up and down the
world, from which the paint is stripped by the sharp application of the
words of my text. Character and conduct are the true demonstrations of
Christian love, and it is only love so attested that He accepts.

III. Lastly, notice the further and sweeter gifts of divine love and
manifestation which reward our love and obedience.

'He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him,
and will manifest Myself to him.' Two things, then, He tells us, are
the rich rewards and sparkling crowns with which He crowns our poor
love to Him—the love of the Father and the love of the Christ, separate
and yet united, and the further manifestation of Christ's sweetness to
the waiting heart.

Note, as to the first, the extraordinary boldness of that majestic
saying: 'If a man loves _Me_, My Father will love _him_.' God regards
our love to Jesus Christ as the fulfilling of the law, as equivalent to
our supreme love to Himself, as containing in it the germ of all that
is pleasing in His sight. And so, upon our hearts, if we love Christ,
there falls the benediction of the Father's love. Of course I need not
remind you that our Lord here is not beginning at the very beginning of
everything; for prior to all men's love to Christ is Christ's love to
men, and ours to Him is but the reflection and the echo called forth by
His to us. 'We love Him because He first loved us' digs a story deeper
down in the building than the words of my text, which is speaking, not
of the process by which a man comes to receive the love of God for the
first time, but of the process by which a Christian man grows in his
possession of it. That being understood, here is a great lesson. It is
not all the same to God whether a man is a scoundrel or a saint. The
divine love is over all its works, and embraces every variety of
humanity, the most degraded, alien, hostile. But in this generation, as
it seems to me, there is great need for preaching that whilst that is
gloriously and blessedly true, the other thing is just as true, that to
know the deepest depth and to taste the sweetest sweetness of the love
of our Father God, there must be in our hearts love to Him whom He has
sent, which manifests itself by our obedience. God's love is a moral
love; and whilst the sunbeams play upon the ice and melt it sometimes,
they flash back from, and rest most graciously and fully on, the
rippling stream into which the ice has turned. God loves them that love
Him not, but the depths of His heart and the secret, sacred favours of
His grace can only be bestowed upon those who in some measure are
conformed, and are growingly being conformed, to His likeness in Jesus
Christ, and who love Him and obey Him.

And, in like manner, my text tells us that if we wish to know all that
it is possible for us here, amidst the clouds, and shadows, and
darknesses, to know of that dear Lord, the path to such knowledge is
plain. Walk in the way of obedience, and Christ will meet you with the
unveiling of more and more of His love. To live what we believe is the
sure way to increase its amount. To be faithful to the little is the
certain way to inherit the much. And Christ manifests Himself, in all
deep and recondite sweetness, gentleness, constraining power, to the
men who treasure the partial knowledge as yet possessed, in their
loving hearts and obedient wills, and who make a conscience of
translating all their knowledge into conduct, and of basing all their
conduct on knowledge of Him. He gives us His whole self at the first,
but we traverse the breadth of the gift by degrees. He puts Himself
into our hands and into our hearts when we humbly trust Him and
imperfectly try to love Him. But the flower is but a bud when we get
it, and, as we hold it, it opens its petals to the light.

So, if 'any man wills to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine';
and if, touched by His divine love and infinite sacrifice for me, I
cast my poor self upon Him, and try to love Him back again, and to keep
His commandments because I love, then day by day I shall realise more
and more of His strong, immortal, all-satisfying love, and see more and
more deeply into that Saviour, whose infinite beauties remain
unrevealed after all revelation, and to know more and more of whom
shall be the Heaven of Heavens yonder, as it is the joy and life of the
soul here.




WHO BRING CHRIST


'Judas saith unto Him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that Thou wilt
manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and
said unto him, If a man love Me he will keep My words: and My Father
will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.
He that loveth Me not, keepeth not My sayings: and the word which ye
hear is not Mine, but the Father's which sent Me.'—JOHN xiv. 22-24.

This Judas held but a low place amongst the Apostles. In all the lists
he is one of the last of the groups of fours, into which they are
divided, and which were evidently arranged according to their spiritual
nearness to the Master. His question is exactly that which a listener,
with some dim, confused glimmer of Christ's meaning, might be expected
to ask. He grasps at His last words about manifesting Himself to
certain persons; he rightly feels that he and his brethren possess the
qualification of love. He rightly understands that our Lord
contemplates no public showing of Himself, and that disappoints him. It
was only a day or two ago that Jesus seemed to them to have begun to do
what they had always wanted Him to do, manifest Himself to the world.
And now, as he thinks, something unknown to them must have happened in
order to make Him change His course, and go back to the old plan of a
secret communication. And so he says, 'Lord! what has come to pass to
induce you to abandon and falter upon the course on which we entered,
when you rode into Jerusalem with the shouting crowd?'

His question is no better in intelligence, though it is a great deal
better in spirit, than the taunt of Christ's brethren, 'If Thou do
these things, show Thyself to the world.' Judas, too, thought of the
simple flashing of His Messianic glory, in some visible, vulgar form,
before else blind eyes.

How sad and chilling such a question must have been to Jesus! Slow
scholars we all are; and with what wonderful patience, without a word
of pain, or of rebuke, He reiterates His lesson, here a little and
there a little, and once more unfolds the conditions of His
self-revelation, and the fullness of the blessings that He brings. He
moulds His words so as to meet both the clauses of Judas's foolish
question—'To us, not to the world'; and quietly tells them the positive
conditions and the negative disqualifications for His self-revelation.
So my text deals with two things, the crown of loving obedience in the
possession of a fuller Christ, and the impassable barrier to His
manifestation which unloving disobedience makes. Or to put it into
briefer words, we have in one of the verses—first, what brings Christ
and what Christ brings; and, in the other, second, what keeps away
Christ and all His gifts. Now let us look at these two things.

I. We have what brings Christ and what Christ brings.

'If a man love Me, He will keep My word' (not 'words,' as our
Authorised Version has it), 'and My Father will love him, and We will
come unto him, and make Our abode with him.' Now notice how here, in
the first part of this verse, our Lord subtly and significantly alters
the form of the statement which He has already made. He had formerly
said, 'If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments,' but now He casts
it into a purely impersonal form, and says, 'If a man,' anybody, not
'you' only, but anybody—'If a man love Me, he,' anybody, 'will keep My
word.' And why the change? Why, I suppose, in order to strike full and
square against that complacent assumption of Judas that it was 'to us
and not to the world' that the showing was to take place. Our Lord, by
the studiously impersonal form into which He casts the promise,
proclaims its universality, and says this to His ignorant questioner,
'Do not suppose that you Apostles have the monopoly. You may not even
have a share in My self-manifestation. Anybody may have it. And there
is no "world," as you suppose, to which I do not show Myself. Anybody
may have the vision if he observes the conditions.'

Now I need not dwell at any length upon the earlier words of this text,
because we have had to consider them in previous sermons on the former
verses of this chapter. I need only remark that here, as there, our
Lord brings out the thought that the very life-blood of love is the
treasuring of the word of the beloved One; and that there is no joy
comparable to the joy of the loving heart that yields itself to the
Beloved's will. That is true about earth, and it makes the sweetest and
selectest blessedness of our ordinary existence. And it is true about
heaven, and it makes the liberty and the gladness of the bond that
knits us to Him.

But I would like just to notice, before I come to the more immediate
subject of my discourse, that remarkable expression, 'He will keep My
_word_.' That is more than a 'commandment' is it not? Christ's 'word'
is wider than _precept_. It includes all His sayings, and it includes
them all as in one vital unity and organic whole. We are not to go
picking and choosing among them; they are one. And it includes this
other thought, that every word of Christ, be it revelation of the deep
things of God, or be it a promise of the great shower of blessings
which, out of His full hand, He will drop upon our heads, enshrines
within itself a commandment. He utters no revelations, simply that we
may know. He utters no comforting words, simply that our sore hearts
may be healed, but in all His utterances there is a practical bearing;
and every word of His teaching, every word of His sweet, whispered
assurances of love and favour to the waiting heart, has in it the
imperativeness of His manifested will, and has a direct bearing upon
duty. All His _words_ are gathered into one word, and all the variety
of His sayings is, in their unity, the law of our lives. So much by way
of observation on the mere language of my text. And now let us look at
what, as He says to us here, are the rewards and crown of loving
obedience.

Christ will show Himself to the loving heart. That is true on the very
lowest level. Every act of obedience to any moral truth is rewarded by
additional insight. Every act of submission to His will cleanses the
lenses of the telescope from some film that has gathered upon them, and
so the stars look brighter and larger and nearer. All duty done opens
out into a loftier conception of duty, and a clearer vision of Him. 'To
him that hath shall be given.' As we climb the hill we get a wider
view. Obedience is in all things the parent of insight.

But in reference to our relation to Him, we have to do not with truths
only, but with a Person. How do we learn to know people? There is only
one way—that is, by loving them. Sympathy is the parent of all true
knowledge of one another. They tell us in the foolish old proverb that
'love is blind.' No! There is not such a pair of clear eyes anywhere as
the eyes of love; and if we want to see into a man, the first condition
is that we feel kindly towards him. Sympathy is the parent of insight
into persons, as Obedience is the parent of insight into duty.

But both of these illustrations are only imperfect preparations for the
great truth here, which is that our loving obedience to the discerned
will of Jesus Christ has not only an operation inwards upon us, but has
an effect outwards upon Him. I am afraid that Christian people in this
generation have but a very imperfect belief in the actual,
supernatural, and, if you like to call it so, miraculous manifestation
of Jesus Christ, His very Self, to men that love Him and cleave to Him.
Do you believe as a simple revealed truth, plain as a sunbeam in such
words as these, that Jesus Christ Himself will do something on you, and
in you, and for you, if you love Him and trust Him; that His hand will
be laid on your eyes as it was laid of old; that He will indeed, in no
metaphor, but in reality, show Himself to you? I may be mistaken, but I
think that too commonly it is the case, that even good Christian people
have a far more vivid and realising and real faith in the past work of
Christ on earth than in the present work of Christ in themselves. They
think the one a plain truth, and the other something like a metaphor,
whereas the New Testament teaches us, as plainly as it can teach us
anything, that, far above all the natural operations of truth upon our
understandings, hearts, and wills, there is an actual, supernatural,
continuous communication of Christ to hearts that love Him, which leads
day by day, if they be faithful, to a fuller knowledge, a sweeter love,
a larger possession, of a fuller Christ. And it is this that He tells
us of, to fire our ambition to attain, in such words as these.

Brethren, one piece of honest, loving obedience is worth all the study
and speculation of an unloving heart when the question is, 'How are we
to see Christ?'

Again, Jesus shows Himself to the obedient heart in indissoluble union
with the Father. Look at the majesty, and, except upon one hypothesis,
the insane presumption, of such words as these: 'If a man love Me, My
Father will love _him_'; as if identifying love to Christ with love to
Himself. And look at that wondrous union, the consciousness of which
speaks in '_We_ will come.' Think of a _man_ saying that. It is
blasphemous insanity; or else the speech of Him who is conscious of
union with the Father, close and indissoluble and transcending all
analogies. '_We_ will come,' together, hand-in-hand, if I may so say;
or rather, His coming is the Father's coming. Just as in heaven so
closely are they represented as united, that there is but one throne
'for God and the Lamb,' so on earth so closely are they represented as
united, that there is but one coming of the Father in the Son.

And this is the only belief, as it seems to me, that will keep this
generation from despair and moral suicide. The question for this
generation is, Is it possible for men to know God? Science, both of
material things and of inward experiences, is more and more unanimous
in its proclamation; 'Behold! we know not anything'; and the only
attitude to take before that great black vault above us is to say, 'We
know nothing.' The world has learned half of a great verse of the
Gospel: 'No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him.' If the
world is not to go mad, if hearts are not to be tortured into despair,
if morality and enthusiasm and poetry and everything higher and nobler
than the knowledge of material phenomena and their sequences is not to
perish from the earth, the world must learn the next half of the verse,
and say, 'The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He
hath declared Him.' Christ shows Himself in indissoluble union with the
Father.

Lastly about this matter, Christ shows Himself to obedient love by a
true coming. 'We will come and make our mansion with him.' And that
coming is a fact of a higher order, and not to be confounded either
with the mere divine Omnipresence, by which God is everywhere, nor to
be reduced to a figment of our own imaginations, or a strong way of
promising increased perception on our part of Christ's fullness. That
great central Sun, if I might use so violent a figure, draws nearer and
nearer and nearer to the planets that move about it, and having once
been far off on an almost infinitely distant horizon, approaches until
planet and Sun unite.

Dear brethren, if we could only get to the attitude of simple
acceptance of this as a literal truth, and believe that, in prose
reality, Christ comes to every heart that loves Him, would not all the
world be different to us?

That coming is a permanent residence: 'We will make our abode with
him.' Very beautiful is it to notice that our Lord here employs that
same sweet and significant word, with which He began this wonderful
series of encouragements, when He said, 'In My Father's house are many
mansions.' Yonder they dwell for ever with God; here God in Christ for
ever dwells with the loving heart. It is a permanent abode so long as
the conditions are fulfilled, but only so long. If self-will, rising in
the Christian heart from its torpor and apparent death, reasserts
itself and shakes off Christ's yoke, Christ's presence vanishes. In the
last hours of the Holy City there was heard by the trembling priests
amidst the midnight darkness the motion of departing Deity, and a great
voice said: 'Let us depart hence'; and to-morrow the shrine was empty,
and the day after it was in flames. Brethren, if you would keep the
Christ in whom is God, remember that He cannot be kept but by the act
of loving obedience.

II. Now, in the next place, my text gives us the negative side, and
shows us what keeps away Christ and all His blessings.

An unloving disobedience closes the eyes to the vision, and the heart
against the entrance, of that dear Lord. Our Master lays down for us
two principles, and leaves us to draw the conclusion for ourselves.

The first is, 'He that loveth Me not, keepeth not My sayings.' No love,
no obedience. That is plainly true, because the heart of all the
commandments is love, and where that is not, disobedience to their very
spirit is. It is plainly true, because there is no power that will lead
men to true obedience to Christ's yoke except the power of love. His
commandments are too alien from our nature ever to be kept, unless by
the might of love. It was only the rising sunbeam that could draw music
from the stony lips of Memnon, as he gazed out across the desert, and
it is only when Christ's love shines on our faces that we open our lips
in praise, and move our hands in service. Those great rocking-stones
down in Cornwall stand unmoved by any tempest, but a child's finger,
laid on the right place, will set them vibrating. And so the heavy,
hard, stony bulk of our hearts lies torpid and immovable, until He lays
His loving finger upon them, and then they rock at His will. There is
no keeping of Christ's commandments without love. That makes short work
of a great deal that calls itself Christianity, does it not? Reluctant
obedience is no obedience; self-interested obedience is no obedience;
constrained obedience is no obedience; outward acts of service, if the
heart be wanting, are rubbish and dung. Morality without religion is
nought. The one thing that makes a good man is love to Jesus Christ;
and where that is, there, and only there, is obedience.

  'Talk they of morals? O Thou Bleeding Lamb!
   The grand morality is love of Thee.'

'If a man love Me not, he will not keep My words.'

Then the second principle is, disobedience to Christ is disobedience to
God. 'The Word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's.' Christ's
consciousness of union so speaks out here as that He is quite sure that
all His words are God's words, and that all God's words are spoken by
Him. Paul has to say, 'So speak I, not the Lord.' And you would not
think a man a very sound or safe religious teacher who said to you, to
begin with, 'Now, mind, everything that I say, God says.' There are no
errors then, no deterioration of the treasure by the vessel in which it
lies. The water does not taste of the vase in which it is carried. The
personality of Jesus Christ is never, through all His utterances, so
separated from God but that God speaks in Him; and, listening to His
voice, we hear the absolute utterance of the uncreated and eternal
Wisdom.

Therefore follows the conclusion, which our Lord does not state, but
leaves us to supply. If it be true that the absence of love of Him is
disobedience to Him, and if it be true that disobedience to Him is
disobedience to God, then it plainly follows that what keeps away
Christ and all His gifts, and God in Him, is unloving obedience. What
brings Him is the obedience of love; what repels Him is alienation and
rebellion. If the heart be full of confusion, of the world, of self, of
unbridled inclinations, of careless indifference to His bleeding love,
He 'can but listen at the gate and hear the household jar within.'

And so, dear friends, from all this there follow one or two points,
which I touch very briefly. One is, that it is possible for men not to
see Christ, though He stands there close before them. It is possible to
grope at noonday as at midnight, to see only 'bracken green and cold
grey stone' on the hillside, where another man sees the chariots of
fire and the horses of fire. It is possible for you—and, alas! it is
the condition of some of my hearers—to look upon Christ and to turn
away and say, 'I see no beauty in Him that I should desire Him,' whilst
the man beside yon, looking at the same facts and the same face, can
see in Him the 'Chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.'

Another thought is, that Christ's showing of Himself to men is in no
sense arbitrary. It is you that determine what you shall see. You can
hermetically seal your heart against Him, you can blind yourself to all
His beauty. The door of your hearts is hinged to open from within, and
if you do not open it, it remains shut, and Christ remains outside.

Another thought is, that you do not need to do anything to blind
yourselves. Simple negation is fatal. 'If a man love not'; that is all.
The absence of love is your ruin.

And the last thought is this, that my text does not begin at the
beginning. Jesus Christ has been speaking about manifestations of
Himself to the loving and obedient; but there are manifestations of
Himself made that we may _become_ loving and obedient. You can build a
barrier over which these sweeter revelations, of which loyal love and
docile submission are the conditions, cannot rise. But you cannot build
a barrier over which the prior revelations to the unthankful and
disobedient cannot rise. No mountains of sin and neglect and alienation
can be piled so high but that the flood of pardoning grace will rise
above their crests, and pour itself into your hearts. You ask, How can
I get the love and obedience of which you have been singing the praises
now? There is only one answer, brethren. We know that we love Him when
we know that He loves us; and we know that He loves us when we see Him
dying on His Cross. So here is the ladder, that is planted in the miry
clay of the horrible pit, and fastens its golden hooks on His throne.
The first round is, Behold the dying Christ and His love to me. The
second is, Let that love melt my heart into sweet responsive love. The
third is, Let my love mould my life into obedience. And then Christ,
and God in Him, will come to me and show Himself to me; and give me a
fuller knowledge and a deeper love, and make His dwelling with me. And
then there is only one round still to roach, and that will land us by
the Throne of God, in the many mansions of the Father's house, where we
shall make our abode with Him for evermore.




THE TEACHER SPIRIT


'These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But
the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My
name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.'—JOHN xiv. 25, 26.

This wonderful outpouring of consolation and instruction with which our
Lord sought to soothe the pain of parting is nearing its end. We have
to conceive of a slight pause here, whilst He looks back upon what He
has been saying and contrasts His teaching with that of the Comforter,
whom He has once already, though in a different connection, promised to
His followers. He speaks of His earthly residence with them as being
'an abiding,' distinctly therein referring to what He has just said,
that the Father and He will, in the future, 'make their abode' with His
disciples. He contrasts the outward and transitory presence which was
now nearing its end, with the inward and continuous presence, which its
end was to inaugurate.

And, in like manner, with, at first sight, startling humility, He
contrasts 'these things,' the partial and to a large extent
unintelligible utterances which He had given with His human lips, with
the complete, universal teaching of that divine Spirit, who was to
instruct in 'all things' pertaining to man's salvation. We have then,
here, sketched in broad outline, the great truths concerning the
ever-present, inward Teacher of God's Church who is to come, now that
the earthly manifestation of Christ, whom the twelve called their
'Teacher,' had reached a close. I think we may best gain the deep
instruction which lies in the words before us, if we look at three
points of view which they bring into prominence: the Teacher, His
lesson, and His scholars.

I. Now, as to the first, the promised Teacher.

I need not repeat what I have said in former sermons as to the wide
sweep of that word 'the Comforter,' beyond just reminding you that it
means literally one who is called to the side of another, primarily for
the purpose of being his representative in some legal process; and,
more widely, for any purpose of help, encouragement, and strength. That
being so, 'Comforter,' in its modern sense of _Consoler_, is far too
narrow for the full force of the word, which means much rather
'Comforter,' in its ancient and etymological sense of one who, in
company with another, makes Him strong and brave.

But the point to which I desire to turn attention now is this, that
this comforting and strengthening office of the divine Spirit is
brought into immediate connection here with the conception of Him as a
Teacher. That is to say, the best strength that God, by His Spirit, can
give us is by our firm grasp and growing clearness of understanding of
the truths which are wrapped up in Jesus Christ. All power for
endurance, for service, is there, and when the Spirit of God teaches a
man what God reveals in Christ, He therein and thereby most fully
discharges His office of Strengthener.

Then note still further the other designation of this divine Teacher
which is here given: 'The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost.' We might
have expected, as indeed we find in another context in this great final
discourse, the 'Spirit of _Truth_' as appropriate in connection with
the office of teaching. But is there not a profound lesson for us here
in this, that, side by side with the thought of illumination, there
lies the thought of purity built upon consecration, which is the
Scripture definition of holiness? That suggests that there is an
indissoluble connection between the real knowledge of God's truth and
practical holiness of life. That connection is of a double sort. There
is no holiness without such knowledge, and there is no such knowledge
without holiness.

There is no real knowledge of Christ and His truth without purity of
heart. The man who has no music in his soul can never be brought to
understand the deep harmonies of the great masters and magicians of
sound. The man who has no eye for beauty can never be brought to bow
his spirit before some of those embodiments of loveliness and sublimity
which the painter's brush has cast upon the canvas. And the man who has
no longings after purity, nor has attained to any degree of moral
conformity with the divine image, is not in possession of the sense
which is needed in order that he should understand the 'deep things of
God.'

The scholars in this school have to wash their hands before they go to
school, and come there with clean hands and clean hearts. Foulness and
the love of it are bars to all understanding of God's truth. And, on
the other hand, the truest inducements, motives, and powers for purity
are found in that great word which is all 'according to godliness,' and
is meant much rather to make us good than to make us wise.

So, in this designation of the teaching Spirit as holy, there lie
lessons for two classes of people. All fanatical professions of
possessing divine illumination, which are not warranted and sealed by
purity of life, are lies or self-delusion. And, on the other hand,
coldblooded intellectualism will never force the locks of the palace of
divine truth, but they that come there must have clean hands and a pure
heart; and only those who have the love and the longing for goodness
will be wise scholars in Christ's school. Your theology is nothing
unless its distinct outcome is morality, and you must be prepared to
accept the painful, the punitive, the purifying influences of that
divine Spirit on your moral natures if you want to have His
enlightening influences shining on the 'truth as it is in Jesus.' 'If
any man wills to do His will, he,' and only he, 'shall know of the
doctrine.' Knowledge and holiness are as inseparable in divine things
as light and heat.

And still further note that this great Teacher is 'sent by God' in
Christ's name. That pregnant phrase, 'In My name,' cannot be
represented by any one form of expression into which we may translate
it, but covers a larger space. God in Christ's name sends the Spirit.
That is to say, in some deep sense God acts as Christ's representative;
just as Christ comes in the Father's name and acts as His
representative. And, again, God sends in Christ's name; that is, the
historical manifestation of Christ is the basis on which the sending of
the Spirit is possible and rests. The revelation had to be complete
before He who came to unfold the meaning of the revelation had material
to work upon. The Spirit, which is sent in Christ's name, has, for the
basis of His mission, and the means by which He acts, the recorded
facts of Christ's life and death, these and none other.

And then note finally about this matter, the strong and unmistakable
declaration here, that that divine Spirit is a person: 'He shall teach
you all things.' They tell us that the doctrine of the Trinity is not
in the New Testament. The word is not, but the thing is. In this verse
we have the Father, the Son, and the Spirit brought into such close and
indissoluble union as is only vindicated from the charge of blasphemy
by the belief in the divinity of each. Just as the Apostolic
benediction, 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God
the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit' necessarily involves
the divinity of all who are thus invoked, so we stand here in the
presence of a truth which pierces into the deeps of Deity. That divine
Spirit is more than an influence. 'He shall teach,' and He can be
grieved by evil and sin. I do not enlarge upon these thoughts. My
purpose is mainly to bring them out clearly before you.

II. I pass in the second place to the consideration of the Lesson which
this promised Teacher gives.

Mark the words, 'He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to
your remembrance, whatsoever _I_ have said unto you.' Now as we have
seen in the exposition of the words 'in My name,' the whole
subject-matter of the divine Spirit's teaching is the life and work and
death and person of Jesus Christ. 'He shall teach you all things' is
wider than 'He shall bring all things which I have said to you to your
remembrance.' But whilst that is so, the clear implication of the words
before us is that Christ is the lesson book, of which the divine Spirit
is the Teacher. His weapon, to take another metaphor, with which He
plies men's hearts and minds and wills, convincing the world of sin and
of righteousness and of judgment, and leading those who are convinced
into deeper knowledge and larger wisdom, is the recorded facts
concerning the life and manifestation of Jesus Christ. The significance
of this lesson book, the history of our Lord, cannot be unfolded all at
once. There is something altogether unique in the incorruption and
germinant power of all His deeds and of all His words. This Carpenter
of Nazareth has reached the heights which the greatest thinkers and
poets of the past have never reached, or only in little snatches and
fragments of their words. _His_ words open out, generation after
generation, into undreamed-of wisdom, and there are found to be hived
in them stores of sweetness that were never suspected until the
occasion came that drew them forth. The world and the Church received
Christ, as it were, in the dark; and, as with some man receiving a
precious gift as the morning was dawning, each fresh moment revealed,
as the light grew, new beauties and new preciousness in the thing
possessed. So Christ, in His infinite significance, fresh and new for
all generations, was given at first, and ever since the Church and the
world have been learning the meaning of the gift which they received.
Christ's words are inexhaustible, and the Spirit's teaching is to
unveil more and more of the infinite significance that lies in the
apparently least significant of them.

Now, then, note that if this be our Lord's meaning here, Jesus Christ
plainly anticipated that, after His departure from earth, there should
be a development of Christian doctrine. We are often taunted with the
fact, which is exaggerated for the purpose of controversy, that a clear
and full statement of the central truths which orthodox Christianity
holds, is found rather in the Apostolic epistles than in the Master's
words, and the shallow axiom is often quoted with great approbation:
'Jesus Christ is our Master, and not Paul.' I do not grant that the
germs and the central truths of the Gospel are not to be found in
Christ's words, but I admit that the full, articulate statement of them
is to be found rather in the servant's letters, and I say that that is
exactly what Jesus Christ told us to expect, that after He was gone,
words that had been all obscure, and thoughts that had been only
fragmentarily intelligible, would come to be seen clearly, and would be
discerned for what they were. The earlier disciples had only a very
partial grasp of Christ's nature. They knew next to nothing of the
great doctrine of sacrifice; they knew nothing about His resurrection;
they did not in the least understand that He was going back to heaven;
they had but glimmering conceptions of the spirituality or universality
of His Kingdom. Whilst they were listening to Him at that table they
did not believe in the atonement; but they dimly believed in the
divinity of Jesus Christ; they did not believe in His resurrection;
they did not believe in His ascension; they did not believe that He was
founding a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom was to rule over all the world
till the end of time. None of these truths were in their mind. They had
all been in germ in His words. And after He was gone, there came over
them a breath of the teaching Spirit, and the unintelligible flashed up
into significance. The history of the Church is the proof of the truth
of this promise, and if anybody says to me, 'Where is the fulfilment of
the promise of a Spirit that will bring all things to your
remembrance?' I say—here in this Book! These four Gospels, these
Apostolic Epistles, show that the word which our Lord here speaks has
been gloriously fulfilled. Christ anticipated a development of
doctrine, and it casts no slur or suspicion on the truthfulness of the
apostolic representation of the Christian truths, that they are only
sparsely and fragmentarily to be found in the records of Christ's life,

Then there is another practical conclusion from the words before us, on
which I touch for a moment, and that is, that if Jesus Christ and the
deep understanding of Him be the true lesson of the divine, teaching
Spirit, then real progress consists, not in getting beyond Christ, but
in getting more fully into Him. We hear a great deal in these days
about advanced thought and progressive Christianity. I hope I believe
in the continuous advance of Christian thought as joyfully as any man,
but my notion of it—and I humbly venture to say Christ's notion of
it—is to get more and more into His heart, and to find within Him, and
not away from Him, 'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' We
leave all other great men behind. All other teachers' words become
feeble by age, as their persons become ghostly, wrapped in thickening
folds of oblivion; but the progress of the Church consists in absorbing
more and more of Christ, in understanding Him better, and becoming more
and more moulded by His influence. The Spirit's teaching brings out the
ever fresh significance of the ancient and perpetual revelation of God
in Jesus Christ.

III. And now, lastly, note the Scholars.

Primarily, of course, these are the Apostolic group but the Apostles,
in all these discourses, stand as the representatives of the Church,
and not as separated from it. And whilst the teaching Spirit could
'bring to the remembrance' of those only who first heard them 'the
words that He said unto them,' that Spirit's teaching function is not
limited to those who listened to the Lord Jesus. The fire that was
kindled on Pentecost has not died down into grey ashes, nor the river
that then broke forth been sucked up by thirsty sands of successive
generations, but the fire is still with us, and the river still flows
near our lips, and we, too, may be taught by that divine Spirit. For
this very Evangelist, in writing his Epistle, has at least two distinct
references to, and almost verbal quotations of, this promise, when he
says, addressing all his Asiatic brethren, 'Ye have an unction from the
Holy One, and know all things.' And again, 'The unction which ye have
of Him abideth with you, and ye need not that any man should teach
you.'

So, then, Christian men and women, every believing soul has this divine
Spirit for His Teacher, and the humblest of us may, if we will, learn
of Him and be led by Him into profounder knowledge of that great Lord.

Oh! dear brethren, the belief in the actual presence with the Church of
a Spirit that teaches all faithful members thereof, is far too much
hesitatingly held by the common Christianity of this day. We ought to
be the standing witnesses in the world of the reality of a supernatural
influence, and how can we be, if we do not believe it ourselves, and
never feel that we are under it?

But whilst a continuous inspiration from that self-same Spirit is the
prerogative of all believing souls, let us not forget that the early
teaching is the standard by which all such must be tried. As to the
first disciples the office of the divine Spirit was to bring before
them the deep significance of their Master's life and words, so to us
the office of the teaching Spirit is to bring to our minds the deep
significance of the record by these earliest scholars of what they
learned from Him. The authority of the New Testament over our faith is
based upon these words, and Paul's warning applies especially to this
generation, with its thoughts about a continuous inspiration and
outgrowing of the New Testament teaching: 'If a man think himself to be
spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you
are the commandments of the Lord.'

Now from all this take three counsels. Let this great promise fill us
with shame. Look at Christendom. Does it not contradict such words as
these? Disputatious sects, Christians scarcely agreed upon any one of
the great central doctrines, seem a strange fulfilment. The present
condition of Christendom does not prove that Jesus Christ did not send
the Spirit, but it does prove that Christ's followers have been wofully
remiss and negligent in their acceptance and use of the Spirit. What
slow scholars we are! How little we have learnt! How we have let
passion, prejudice, human voices, the babble of men's tongues, anybody
and everybody, take the office of teaching us God's truth, instead of
waiting before Him and letting His Spirit teach us! It is the shame of
us Christians that, with such a Teacher, we, 'when for the time we
ought to be teachers, have need that one teach us again which be the
first principles of the oracles of Christ!'

Let it fill us with desire and with diligence. Let it fill us with calm
hope. They tell us that Christianity is effete. Have we got all out of
Jesus Christ that is in Him? Is the process that has been going on for
all these centuries to stop now? No! Depend upon it that the new
problems of this generation will find their solution where the old
problems of past generations have found theirs, and the old commandment
of the old Christ will be the new commandment of the new Christ.

Foolish men, both on the Christian and on the anti-Christian side,
stand and point to the western sky and say, 'The Sun is setting.' But
there is a flush in the opposite horizon in an hour, as at midsummer;
and that which sank in the west rises fresh and bright in the east for
a new day. Jesus Christ is the Christ for all the ages and for every
soul, and the world will only learn more and more of His inexhaustible
fullness. So let us be ever quiet, patient, hopeful amidst the babble
of tongues and the surges of controversy, assured that all change will
but make more plain the inexhaustible significance of the infinite
Christ, and that humble and obedient hearts will ever possess the
promised Teacher, nor ever cry in vain, 'Teach me to do Thy will, for
Thou art my God. Thy Spirit is good, lead me into the land of
uprightness.'




CHRIST'S PEACE


'Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world
giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it
be afraid.'—JOHN xiv. 27.

'Peace be unto you!' was, and is, the common Eastern salutation, both
in meeting and in parting. It carries us back to a state of society in
which every stranger might be an enemy. It is a confession of the deep
unrest of the human heart. Christ was about closing His discourse, and
the common word of leave-taking came naturally to His lips; just as
when He first met His followers after the Resurrection, He soothed
their fears by the calm and familiar greeting, 'Peace be unto you!' But
common words deepen their force and meaning when He uses them. In Him
'all things become new,' and on His lips the conventional threadbare
salutation changes into a tender and mysterious communication of a real
gift. His words are deeds, and His wishes for His disciples fulfil
themselves.

I. So we have here, first, the greeting, which is a gift.

'Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you.' We have seen, in
former discourses on this chapter, how prominently and repeatedly our
Lord insists on the great truth of His dwelling with and in His
disciples. He gives His peace because He gives Himself; and in the
bestowal of His life He bestows, in so far as we possess the gift, the
qualities and attributes of that life. His peace is inseparable from
His presence. It comes with Him, like an atmosphere; it is never where
He is not. It was His peace inasmuch as, in His own experience, He
possessed it. His manhood was untroubled by perturbation or tumult, by
passions or contending desires, and no outward things could break His
calm. If we open our hearts by lowly faith, love, and aspiration for
His entrance, we too may be at rest; for His peace, like all which He
is and has, is His that it may be ours.

The first requisite for peace is consciousness of harmonious and loving
relations between me and God. The deepest secret of Christ's peace was
His unbroken consciousness of unbroken communion with the Father, in
which His will submitted and the whole being of the man hung in filial
dependence upon God. And the centre and foundation of all the
peace-giving power of Jesus Christ is this, that in His death, by His
one offering for sin for ever, He has swept away the occasion of
antagonism, and so made peace between the twain, the Father in the
heavens and the child, rebellious and prodigal, here below. Little as
these disciples dreamed of it, the death impending, which was already
beginning to cast its shadow over their souls, was the condition of
securing to them and to us the true beginning of all real peace, the
rectifying of our antagonistic relation to God, and the bringing Him
and us into perfect concord.

My brother, no man can be at rest down to the very roots of His being,
in the absence of the consciousness that he is at peace with God. There
may be tumults of gladness, there may be much of stormy brightness in
the life, but there cannot be the calm, still, impregnable,
all-pervading, and central tranquillity that our souls hunger for,
unless we know and feel that we are right with God, and that there is
nothing between us and Him. And it is because Jesus Christ, dying on
the Cross, has made it possible for you and me to feel this, that He Is
our peace, and that He can say, 'Peace I leave with you.'

Another requisite is that we must be at peace with ourselves. There
must be no stinging conscience, there must be no unsatisfied desires,
there must be no inner schism between inclination and duty, reason and
will, passion and judgment. There must be the quiet of a harmonised
nature which has one object, one aim, one love; which—to use a very
vulgar phrase—has 'all its eggs in one basket,' and has no
contradictions running through its inmost self. There is only one way
to get that peace—cleaving to Jesus Christ and making Him our Lord, our
righteousness, our aim, our all. Your consciences will sting, and that
destroys peace; or if they do not sting, they will be torpid, and that
destroys peace, for death is not peace. Unless we take Christ for our
love, for the light of our minds, for the Sovereign Arbiter and Lord of
our will, for the home of our desires, for the aim of our efforts, we
shall never know what it is to be at rest. Unsatisfied and hungry we
shall go through life, seeking what nothing short of an Infinite
Humanity can ever give us, and that is a heart to lean our heads upon,
an adequate object for all our faculties, and so a quiet satisfaction
of all our desires. 'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is
not bread?' A question that no man can answer without convicting
himself of folly! There is One, and only One, who is enough for me,
poor and weak and lowly and fleeting as I am, and as my earthly life
is. Take that One for your Treasure, and you are rich indeed. The world
without Christ is nought. Christ without the world is enough.

Nor is there any other way of healing the inner discord, schism, and
contradiction of our anarchic nature, except in bringing it all into
submission to His merciful rule. Look at that troubled kingdom that
each of us carries about within himself, passion dragging this way,
conscience that, a hundred desires all arrayed against one another,
inclination here, duty there, till we are torn in pieces like a man
drawn asunder by wild horses. And what is to be done with all that
rebellious self, over which the poor soul rules as it may, and rules so
poorly? Oh! there is an inner unrest, the necessary fate of every man
who does not take Christ for his King. But when He enters the heart
with His silken leash, the old fable comes true, and He binds the lions
and the ravenous beasts there with its slender tie and leads them
along, tamed, by the cord of love, and all harnessed to pull together
in the chariot that He guides. There is only one way for a man to be at
peace with himself through and through, and that is that he should put
the guidance of his life into the hands of Jesus Christ, and let Him do
with it as He will. There is one power, and only one, that can draw
after it all the multitudinous heaped waters of the weltering ocean,
and that is the quiet, silver moon in the heavens that pulls the tidal
wave, into which melt and merge all currents and small breakers, and
rolls it round the whole earth. And so Christ, shining down lambent,
and gentle, but changeless, from the darkest of our skies, will draw,
in one great surge of harmonised motion, all the else contradictory
currents of our stormy souls. 'My peace I give unto you.'

Another element in true tranquillity, which again is supplied only by
Jesus Christ, is peace with men. 'Whence come wars and fightings
amongst you? From your lusts.' Or to translate the old-fashioned
phraseology into modern English, the reason why men are in antagonism
with one another is the central selfishness of each, and there is only
one way by which men's relations can be thoroughly sweetened, and that
is, by the divine love of Jesus Christ pouring into their hearts, and
casting out the devil of selfishness, and so blending them all into one
harmonious whole.

The one basis of true, happy relations between man and man, without
which there is not the all-round tranquillity that we require, lies in
the common relation of all, if it may be, but certainly in the
individual relation of myself, to Him who is the Lover and the Friend
of all. And in the measure in which the law of the Spirit of life which
was in Jesus Christ is in me, in that measure do I find it possible to
reproduce His gentleness, sympathy, compassion, insight into men's
sorrows, patience with men's offences, and all which makes, in our
relations to one another, the harmony and the happiness of humanity.

Another of the elements or aspects of peace is peace with the outer
world. 'It is hard to kick against the pricks,' but if you do not kick
against them, they will not prick you. We beat ourselves all bruised
and bleeding against the bars of the prison-house in trying to escape
from it, but if we do not beat ourselves against them, they will not
hurt us. If we do not want to get out of prison, it does not matter
though we are locked in. And so it is not external calamities, but the
resistance of the will to these, that makes the disturbances of life.
Submission is peace, and when a man with Christ in his heart can say
what Christ said, 'Not My will, but Thine be done,' Oh! then, some
faint beginnings, at least, of tranquillity come to the most agitated
and buffeted; and even in the depths of our sorrow we may have a deeper
depth of calm. If we have yielded ourselves to the Father's will,
through that dear Son who has set the example and communicates the
power of filial obedience, then all winds blow us to our haven, and all
'things work together for good,' and nothing 'that is at enmity with
joy' can shake our settled peace. Storms may break upon the rocky shore
of our islanded lives, but deep in the centre there will be a secluded,
inland dell 'which heareth not the loud winds when they call,' and
where no tempest can ever reach. Peace may be ours in the midst of
warfare and of storms, for Christ with us reconciles us to God,
harmonises us with ourselves, brings us into amity with men, and makes
the world all good.

II. So, secondly, note here the world's gift, which is an illusion.

'Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.' Our Lord contrasts, as it
seems to me, primarily the manner of the world's bestowment, and then
passes insensibly into a contrast between the character of the world's
gifts and His own. That phrase 'the world' may have a double sense. It
may mean either mankind in general or the whole external and material
frame of things. I think we may use both significations in elucidating
the words before us.

Regarding it in the former of them, the thought is suggested—Christ
_gives_; men can only _wish_. 'Peace be unto you' comes from many a
lip, and is addressed to many an ear, unfulfilled. Christ says 'peace,'
and His word is a conveyance. How little we can do for one another's
tranquillity, how soon we come to the limits of human love and human
help! How awful and impassable is the isolation in which each human
soul lives! After all love and fellowship we dwell alone on our little
island in the deep, separated by 'the salt, unplumbed, estranging sea,'
and we can do little more than hoist signals of goodwill, and now and
then for a moment stretch our hands across the 'echoing straits
between.' But it is little after all that husband or wife can do for
one another's central peace, little that the dearest friend can give.
We have to depend upon ourselves and upon Christ for peace. That which
the world wishes Christ gives.

And then, if we take the other signification of the 'world,' and the
other application of the whole promise, we may say—Outward things can
give a man no real peace. The world is for excitement; Christ alone has
the secret of tranquillity. It is as if to a man in a fever a physician
should come and say: 'I cannot give you anything to soothe you; here is
a glass of brandy for you.' That would not help the fever, would it?
The world comes to us and says: 'I cannot give you rest: here is a
sharp excitement for you, more highly spiced and titillating for your
tongue than the last one, which has turned flat and stale.' That is
about the best that it can do.

Oh! what a confession of unrest are the rush and recklessness, the
fever and the fret of our modern life with its ever renewed and ever
disappointed quest after good! You go about our streets and look men in
the face, and you see how all manner of hungry desires and eager wishes
have imprinted themselves there. And now and then—how seldom!—you come
across a face out of which beams a deep and settled peace. How many of
you are there who dare not be quiet because then you are most troubled?
How many of you are there who dare not reflect because then you are
wretched? How many of you are uncomfortable when alone, either because
you are utterly vacuous, or because then you are surrounded by the
ghosts of ugly thoughts that murder sleep and stuff every pillow with
thorns? The world will bring you excitement; Christ, and Christ alone
will bring you rest.

The peace that earth gives is a poor affair at best. It is shallow; a
very thin plating over a depth of restlessness, like some skin of turf
on a volcano, where a foot below the surface sulphurous fumes roll, and
hellish turbulence seethes. That is the kind of rest that the world
brings.

Oh! dear friends, there is nothing in this world that will fill and
satisfy your hearts except only Jesus Christ. The world is for
excitement; and Christ is the only real Giver of real peace.

III. Lastly, note the duty of the recipients of that peace of Christ's:
'Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.'

The words that introduced this great discourse return again at its
close, somewhat enlarged and with a deepened soothing and tenderness.
There are two things referred to as the source of restlessness,
troubled agitation or disturbance of heart; and that mainly, I suppose,
because of terror in the outlook towards a dim and unknown future. The
disciples are warned to fight against these if they would keep the gift
of peace.

That is to say, casting the exhortation into a more general expression,
Christ's gift of peace does not dispense with the necessity for our own
effort after tranquillity. There is much in the outer world that will
disturb us to the very end, and there is much within ourselves that
will surge up and seek to shake our repose and break our peace; and we
have to coerce and keep down the temptations to anxiety, the
temptations to undue agitation of desire, the temptations to tumults of
sorrow, the temptations to cowardly fears of the unknown future. All
these will continue, even though we have Christ's peace in our hearts,
and it is for us to see to it that we treasure the peace, 'and in
everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let our
requests be made known unto God,' that nothing may break the calm which
we possess.

So, then, another thought arises from this final exhortation, and that
is, that it is useless to tell a man, 'Do not be troubled, and do not
be afraid,' unless he first has Christ's peace as his. Is that peace
yours, my brother, because Jesus Christ is yours? If so, then there is
no reason for your being troubled or dreading any future. If it is not,
you are mad not to be troubled, and you are insane if you are not
afraid. The word for you is, 'Be troubled, ye careless ones,' for there
is reason for it, and be afraid of that which is certainly coming. The
one thing that gives security and makes it possible to possess a calm
heart is the possession of Jesus Christ by faith. Without Him it is a
waste of breath to say to people, 'Do not be frightened,' and it is
wicked counsel to say to men, 'Be at ease.' They ought to be terrified,
and they ought to be troubled, and they will be some day, whether they
think so or not.

But then the last thought from this exhortation is—and now I speak to
Christian people—your imperfect possession of this peace is all your
own fault. Why, there are hundreds of professing Christian people who
have some kind of faint, rudimentary faith, and there are many of them,
I dare say, listening to me now, who have no assured possession of any
of those elements, of which I have been speaking, as the constituent
parts of Christ's peace. You are _not_ sure that you are right with
God. You do _not_ know what it is to possess satisfied desires. You
_do_ know what it is to have conflicting inclinations and impulses; you
have envy and malice and hostility against men; and the world's storms
and disasters do strike and disturb you. Why? Because you have not a
firm grasp of Jesus Christ. 'I have set the Lord always at my right
hand, therefore I shall not be moved'; there is the secret. Keep near
Him, my brother; and then all things are fair, and your heart is at
peace.

I remember once standing by the side of a little Highland loch on a
calm autumn day, when all the winds were still, and every birch-tree
stood unmoved, and every twig was reflected on the steadfast mirror,
into the depths of which Heaven's own blue seemed to have found its
way. That is what our hearts may be, if we let Christ put His guarding
hand round them to keep the storms off, and have Him within us for our
rest. But the man who does not trust Jesus 'is like the troubled sea
which cannot rest,' but goes moaning round half the world, homeless and
hungry, rolling and heaving, monotonous and yet changeful, salt and
barren—the true emblem of every soul that has not listened to the
merciful call, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.'




JOY AND FAITH, THE FRUITS OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE


'Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you.
If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father:
for My Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come
to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.'—JOHN xiv.
28, 29.

Our Lord here casts a glance backward on the course of His previous
words, and gathers together the substance and purpose of these. He
brings out the intention of His warnings and the true effect of the
departure, concerning which He had given them notice, as being twofold.
In the first verse of my text His words about that going away, and the
going away itself, are represented as the source of joy, which is an
advance on the peace that He had just previously been promising. In the
second of our verses these two things—His words, and the facts which
they revealed—are represented as being the very ground and nourishment
of faith.

So, then, we have these two thoughts to look at now, the departed Lord,
the fountain of joy to all who love Him; the departed Lord, the ground
and food of faith.

I. The departure of the Lord is a fountain of joy to those who love
Him.

In the first part of our text the going away of Jesus is contemplated
in two aspects.

The first is that with which we have already become familiar in
previous sermons on this chapter—viz., its bearing upon the disciples;
and in that respect it is declared that Christ's going is Christ's
coming.

But then we have a new aspect, one on which, in His sublime
self-repression, He very seldom touches—viz., its bearing upon Himself;
and in that aspect we are taught here to regard our Lord's going as
ministering to His exaltation and joy, and therefore as being a source
of joy to all His lovers.

So, then, we have these thoughts, Christ's going is Christ's coming,
and Christ's going is Christ's exaltation, and for both reasons that
departure ought to minister to His friends' gladness. Let us look at
these three things for a little while.

First of all, there comes a renewed utterance of that great thought
which runs through the whole chapter, that the departure of Jesus
Christ is in reality the coming of Christ. The word 'again' is a
supplement, and somewhat restricts and destroys the true flow of
thought and meaning of the words. For if we read, as our Authorised
Version does, 'I go away and come again unto you,' we are inevitably
led to think of a coming, separated by a considerable distance of time
from the departure, and for most of us that which is suggested is the
final coming and return, in bodily form, of the Lord Jesus.

Now great and glorious as that hope is, it is too far away to be in
itself a sufficient comfort to the mourning disciples, and too remote
to be for us, if taken alone, a sufficient ground of joy and of rest.
But if you strike out the intrusive word '_again_,' and read the
sentence as being what it is, a description of one continuous process,
of which the parts are so closely connected as to be all but
contemporaneous, you get the true idea. 'I go away, and I come to you.'
There is no gap, the thing runs on without a break. There is no moment
of absolute absence; there are not two motions, one from us and the
other back again towards us, but all is one. The 'going' is the
'coming'; the solemn series of events which began on Calvary, and ended
on Olivet, to the eye of sense were successive stages in the departure
of Jesus Christ. But looked at with a deeper understanding of their
true meaning, they are successive stages in His approach towards us.
His death, His resurrection, His ascension, were not steps in the
cessation of His presence, but they were simply steps in the transition
from a lower to a higher kind of that presence. He changed the
limitations and externalities of a mere bodily, local nearness for the
realities of a spiritual presence. To the eye of sense, the 'going
away' was the reality, and the 'coming' a metaphor. To the eye
enlightened to see things as they are, the dropping away of the visible
corporeal was but the inauguration of the higher and the more real. And
we need to reverse our notions of what is real and what is figurative
in Christ's presence, and to feel that that form of His presence which
we may all have to-day is far more real than the form which ceased when
the Shekinah cloud 'received Him out of their sight,' before we can
penetrate to the depth of His words, or grasp the whole fullness of
blessing and of consolation which lie in them here. In a very deep and
real sense, 'He therefore departed from us for a season that we might
receive Him for ever.'

The real presence of Jesus Christ to-day, and through the long ages
with every waiting heart, is the very keynote to the solemn music of
these chapters. And again I press upon you, and upon myself, the
question, Do we believe it? Do we live in the faith of it? Does it fill
the same place in the perspective of our Christian creed as it does in
the revelation of the Scripture, or have we refined it and watered it
down, until it comes to be little more than merely the continuous
influence of the record of His past, just as any great and sovereign
spirit that has influenced mankind may still 'rule the nations from his
urn'? Or do we take Him at His word, and believe that He meant what He
said, in something far other than a violent figure for the continuance
of His influence and of the inspiration drawn from Him, 'Lo! I am with
you alway, even unto the end of the world'? 'Say not in thine heart,
Who shall ascend up into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down from
above, the Word,' the Incarnate Word, 'is nigh thee, in thy heart,' if
thou lovest and trustest Him.

Then, again, the other aspect of our Lord's coming, which is emphasised
here, is that in which it is regarded as affecting Himself. Christ's
going is Christ's exaltation.

Now observe that, in the first clause of our verse, there is simply
specified the fact of departure, without any reference to the
'whither'; because all that was wanted was to contrast the going and
the coming. But, in the second clause, in which the emphasis rests not
so much upon the fact of departure as upon the goal to which He went,
we read: 'I go _to the Father_.' Hitherto we have been contemplating
Christ's departure simply in its bearing upon us, but here, with
exquisite tenderness, He unveils another aspect of it, and that in
order that He may change His disciples' sadness into joy; and says to
them, 'If ye were not so absorbed in yourselves, you would have a
thought to spare about Me, and you would feel that you should be glad
because I am about to be exalted.'

Very, very seldom does He open such a glimpse into His heart, and it is
all the more tender and impressive when He does. What a hint of the
continual self-sacrifice of the human life of Jesus Christ lies in this
thought, that He bids His disciples rejoice with Him, because the time
is getting nearer its end, and He goes back to the Father! And what
shall we say of the nature of Him to whom it was martyrdom to live, and
a supreme instance of self-sacrificing humiliation to be 'found in
fashion as a man'?

He tells His followers here that a reason for their joy in His
departure is to be found in this fact, that He goes to the Father, who
is greater than Himself.

Now mark, with regard to that remarkable utterance, that the whole
course of thought in the context requires, as it seems to me, that we
should suppose that for Christ to 'go to the Father' was to share in
the Father's greatness. Why else should the disciples be bidden to
rejoice in it? or why should He say anything at all about the greatness
of the Father? If so, then this follows, that the greatness to which He
here alludes is such as He enters by His ascension. Or, in other words,
that the inferiority, of whatever nature it may be, to which He here
alludes, falls away when He passes hence.

Now these words are often quoted triumphantly, as if they were dead
against what I venture to call the orthodox and Scriptural doctrine of
the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it may be worth while to
remark that that doctrine accepts this saying as fully as it does
Christ's other word, 'I and My Father are one,' I venture to think that
it is the only construction of Scripture phraseology which does full
justice to all the elements. But be that as it may, I wish to remind
you that the creed which confesses the unity of the Godhead and the
divinity of Jesus Christ is not to be overthrown by pelting this verse
at it; for this verse is part of that creed, which as fully declares
that the Father is greater than the Son, as it declares that the Son is
One with the Father. You may be satisfied with it or no, but as a
matter of simple honesty it must be recognised that the creed of the
Catholic Church does combine both the elements of these
representations.

Now we can only speak in this matter as Scripture guides us. The depths
of Deity are far too deep to be sounded by our plummets, and he is a
bold man who ventures to say that he knows what is impossible in
reference to the divine nature. He needs to have gone all round God,
and down to the depths, and up to the heights of a bottomless and
summitless infinitude, before he has a right to say that. But let me
remind you that we can dimly see that the very names 'Father' and 'Son'
do imply some sort of subordination, but that that subordination,
inasmuch as it is in the timeless and inward relations of divinity,
must be supposed to exist after the ascension, as it existed before the
incarnation; and, therefore, any such mysterious difference is not that
which is referred to here. What _is_ referred to is what dropped away
from the Man Jesus Christ, when He ascended up on high. As Luther has
it, in his strong, simple way, in one of his sermons, 'Here He was a
poor, sad, suffering Christ'; and that garb of lowliness falls from
Him, like the mantle that fell from the prophet as he went up in the
chariot of fire, when He passes behind the brightness of the Shekinah
cloud that hides Him from our sight. That in which the Father was
greater than He, in so far as our present purpose is concerned, was
that which He left behind when He ascended, even the pain, the
suffering, the sorrow, the restrictions, the humiliation, that made so
much of the burden of His life. Therefore we, as His followers, have to
rejoice in an ascended Christ, beneath whose feet are foes, and far
away from whose human personality are all the ills that flesh is heir
to. 'If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the
Father; for My Father is greater than I.'

So then the third thought, in this first part of our subject, is that
on both these grounds Christ's ascension and departure are a source of
joy. The two aspects of His departure, as affecting Him and as
affecting us, are inseparably welded together. There can be no presence
with us, man by man, through all the ages, and in every land, unless
He, whose presence it is, participates in the absolute glory of
divinity. For to be with you and me and all our suffering brethren,
through the centuries and over the world, involves something more than
belongs to mere humanity. Therefore, the two sources of gladness are
confluent—Christ's ascension as affecting us is inseparably woven in
with Christ's ascension as affecting Himself.

Love will delight to dwell upon that thought of its exalted Lover. We
may fairly apply the simplicity of human relationships and affections
to the elucidation of what ought to be our affection to Him, our Lord.
And surely if our dearest one were far away from us, in some lofty
position, our hearts and our thoughts would ever be going thither, and
we should live more there than here, where we are 'cribbed, cabined,
and confined.' And if we love Jesus Christ with any depth of
earnestness and fervour of affection, there will be no thought more
sweet to us, and none which will more naturally flow into our hearts,
whenever they are for a moment at leisure, than this, the thought of
Him, our Brother and Forerunner, who has ascended up on high; and in
the midst of the glory of the throne bears us in His heart, and uses
His glory for our blessing. Love will spring to where the beloved is;
and if we be Christians in any deep and real sense, our hearts will
have risen with Christ, and we shall be sitting with Him at the right
hand of God. My brother, measure your Christianity, and the reality of
your love to Jesus Christ, by this—is it to you natural, and a joy, to
turn to Him, and ever to make present to your mind the glories in which
He loves and lives, and intercedes, and reigns, for you? 'If ye love
Me, ye will rejoice, because I go unto the Father.'

II. And now I can deal with the second verse of our text very briefly.
For our purpose it is less important than the former one. In it we find
our Lord setting forth, secondly, His departure and His announcement of
His departure as the ground and food of faith.

He knew what a crash was coming, and with exquisite tenderness,
gentleness, knowledge of their necessities, and suppression of all His
own feelings and emotions, He gave Himself to prepare the disciples for
the storm, that, forewarned, they might be forearmed, and that when it
did burst upon them, it might not take them by surprise.

So He does still, about a great many other things, and tells us
beforehand of what is sure to come to us, that when we are caught in
the midst of the tempest we may not bate one jot of heart or hope.

  Why should I complain
  Of want or distress,
  Temptation or pain?
  He told me no less.'

And when my sorrows come to me, I may say about them what He says about
His departure—He has told us before, that when it comes we may believe.

But note how, in these final words of my text, Christ avows that the
great aim of His utterances and of His departure is to evoke our faith.
And what does He mean by faith? He means, first of all, a grasp of the
historic facts—His death, His resurrection, His ascension. He means,
next, the understanding of these as He Himself has explained them—a
death of sacrifice, a resurrection of victory over death and the grave,
and an ascension to rule and guide His Church and the world, and to
send His divine Spirit into men's hearts if they will receive it. And
He means, therefore, as the essence of the faith that He would produce
in all our hearts—a reliance upon Himself as thus revealed, Sacrifice
by His death, Victor by His resurrection, King and interceding Priest
by His ascension—a reliance upon Himself as absolute as the facts are
sure, as unfaltering as is His eternal sameness. The faith that grasps
the Christ, dead, risen, ascended, as its all in all, for time and for
eternity, is the faith which by all His work, and by all His words
about His work, He desires to kindle in our hearts. Has He kindled it
in yours?

Then there is a second thought—viz., that these facts, as interpreted
by Himself, are the ground and the nourishment of our faith. How
differently they looked when seen from the further side and when seen
from the hither side! Anticipated and dimly anticipated, they were all
doleful and full of dismay; remembered and looked back upon, they were
radiant and bright. The disciples felt, with shrinking hearts and
fainting spirits, that their whole reliance upon Jesus Christ was on
the point of being shattered, and that everything was going when He
died. 'We _trusted_,' said two of them, with such a sad use of the past
tense, 'we _trusted_ that this _had been_ He which should have redeemed
Israel. But we do not trust it any more, nor do we expect Him to be
Israel's Redeemer now.' But after the facts were all unveiled, there
came back the memory of His words, and they said to one another, 'Did
He not tell us that it was all to be so? How blind we were not to
understand Him!'

And so 'the Cross, the grave, the skies,' are the foundations of our
faith; and they who see Him dying, rising, ascended, henceforth will
find it impossible to doubt. Feed your faith upon these great facts,
and take Christ's own explanation of them, and your faith will be
strong.

Again, we learn here that faith is the condition of the true presence
of our absent Lord. Faith is that on our side which corresponds to His
spiritual coming to us. Whosoever trusts Him possesses Him, and He is
with and in every soul that, loving Him, relies upon Him, in a
closeness so close and a presence so real that heaven itself does not
bring the spirit of the believer and the Spirit of the Lord nearer one
another, though it takes away the bodily film that sometimes seems to
part their lives.

We, too, may and should be glad when we lift our eyes to that Throne
where our Brother reigns. We too, may be glad that He is there, because
His being there is the reason why He can be here; and we, too, may feed
our faith upon Him, and so bring Him in very deed to dwell in our
hearts. If we would have Christ within us, let us trust Him dying,
rising, living in the heavens; and then we shall learn how, by all
three apparent departures, He is drawing the closer to the souls that
love and trust.




CHRIST FORESEEING HIS PASSION


'Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the Prince of this world
cometh, and hath nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love
the Father; and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do. Arise,
Let us go hence.'—JOHN xiv. 30,31.

The summons to departure which closes these verses shows that we have
now reached the end of that sacred hour in the upper room. In obedience
to the summons, we have to fancy the little group leaving its safe
shelter, as sailors might put out from behind a breakwater into a
stormy sea. They pass from its seclusion and peace into the joyous stir
of the crowded streets, filled with feast-keeping multitudes, on whom
the full paschal moon looked down, pure and calming. Somewhere between
the upper chamber and the crossing of the brook Kedron, the divine
words of the following chapters were spoken, but this discourse,
closely connected as it is with them, reaches its fitting close in
these penetrating, solemn words of outlook into the near future, so
calm, so weighty, so resolute, so almost triumphant, with which Christ
seeks finally to impart to His timorous friends some of His own peace
and assurance of victory.

They lead us into a region seldom opened to our view, and never to be
looked upon but with reverent awe. For they tell us what Christ thought
about His sufferings, and how He felt as He went down to that cold,
black river, in which He was to be baptized. 'Put off thy shoes from
off thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground.' So,
reverently listening to the words, sacred because of the Speaker, the
theme, and the circumstances, we note in them these things: His calm
anticipation of the assailant, His unveiling of the secret and motive
of His apparent defeat, and His resolute advance to the conflict. Let
us look at these three points.

I. First, we have here our Lord's calm anticipation of the assailant.

'Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the Prince of this world
cometh, and hath nothing in Me.' One of the other Gospels tells us, in
finishing its account of our Lord's temptation in the wilderness, that
when Satan had ended all these temptations 'he departed from Him for a
season.' And now we have the second and the intenser form of that
assault. The first was addressed to desires, and sought to stimulate
ambition and ostentation and the animal appetites, and so, through the
cravings of human nature, to shake the Master's fixed faith. The second
used sharper and more fatal weapons, and appealed, not to desire of
enjoyment, or ease, or good, but to the natural human shrinking from
pain and suffering and shame and death. He that was impervious on the
side of natural necessities and more subtle spiritual desires might yet
be reached through terror. And so the second form of the assault,
instead of tempting the traveller by the sunshine to cast aside his
cloak, tempted him by storm and tempest to fling it aside; and the one,
as the other, was doomed to failure.

Note how the Master, with that clear eye which saw to the depths as
well as the heights, and before which men and things were but, as it
were, transparent media through which unseen spiritual powers wrought,
just as He discerns the Father's will as supreme and sovereign, sees
here—beneath Judas's treachery, and Pharisees' and priests' envy, and
the people's stolid indifference, and the Roman soldiers' impartial
scorn—the workings of a personal source and centre of all. The 'Prince
of this world,' who rules men and things when they are severed from
God, 'cometh.' Christ's sensitive nature apprehends the approach of the
evil thing, as some organisations can tell when a thunderstorm is about
to burst. His divine Omniscience, working as it did, even within the
limits of humanity, knows not only when the storm is about to burst
upon Him, but knows who it is that has raised the tempest. And so He
says, 'The Prince of this world cometh.'

But note, as yet more important, that tremendous and unique
consciousness of absolute invulnerability against the assaults. 'He
hath nothing in Me.' He is 'the Prince of the world,' but His dominion
stops outside My breast. He has no rule or authority there. His writs
do not run, nor is His dominion recognised, within that sacred realm.

Was there ever a man who could say that? Are there any of us, the
purest and the noblest, who, standing single-handed in front of the
antagonistic power of evil, and believing it to be consolidated and
consecrated in a person, dare to profess that there is not a thing in
us on which he can lay his black claw and say—'That is mine?' Is there
nothing inflammable within us which the 'fiery darts of the wicked' can
kindle? Are there any of us who bar our doors so tightly as that we can
say that none of his seductions will find their way therein, and that
nothing there will respond to them? Christ sets Himself here against
the whole embattled and embodied power of evil, and puts Himself in
contrast to the universal human experience, when He calmly declares 'He
hath nothing in Me.' It is an assertion of His absolute freedom from
sinfulness, and it involves, as I take it, the other assertion—that as
He is free from sin, so He is not subject to that consequence of sin,
which is death, as we know it. Another part of Scripture speaks to us
in strange language, which yet has in it a deep truth, of 'him that had
the power of death, that is, the devil.' Men fall under the rightful
dominion of the king of evil when they sin, and part of the proof of
his dominion is the fact of physical death, with its present
accompaniments. Thus, in His calm anticipation, Jesus stands waiting
for the enemy's charge, knowing that all its forces will be broken
against the serried ranks of His immaculate purity, and that He will
come from the dreadful close unwounded all, and triumphant for
evermore.

But do not let us suppose that because Christ, in His anticipation of
suffering and death, knew Himself invulnerable, with not even a spot on
His heel into which the arrow could go, therefore the conflict was an
unreal or shadowy one. It was a true fight, and it was a real struggle
that He was anticipating, thus calmly in these solemn words, as knowing
Himself the Victor ere He entered on the dreadful field.

II. So note, secondly, in these words, our Lord's unveiling of the
motive and aim of His apparent defeat.

'But that the world might know that I love the Father, and, as the
Father gave Me commandment, even so I do.' There may be some
uncertainty about the exact grammatical relation of these clauses to
one another, with which I need not trouble you, because it does not
affect their substantial meaning. However we solve the mere grammatical
questions, the fundamental significance of the whole remains
unaffected, and it is this: that Christ's sufferings and death were, in
one aspect, for the purpose that the world might know His love to the
Father, and, in another aspect, were obedience to the Father's
commandment. And if we consider these two aspects, I think we shall get
some thoughts worth considering as to the way in which the Master
Himself looks upon these sufferings and that death.

The first point I note in this division of my discourse is that Christ
would have us regard His sufferings and His death as His own act. Note
that remarkable phrase, 'thus I _do_.' A strange word to be used in
such a connection, but full of profound meaning. We speak, and rightly,
of the solemn events of these coming days as the passion of our Lord,
but they were His action quite as much as His passion. He was no mere
passive sufferer. In them all He acted, or, as He says here, we may
look upon them all, not as things inflicted upon Him from without by
any power, however it might seem to have the absolute control of His
fate, but as things which He did Himself.

There is one Man who died, not of physical necessity, but because of
free choice. There is one Man who chose to be born, and who chose to
die; who, in His choosing to be born, chose humiliation, and who, in
choosing to die, chose yet deeper humiliation. This sacrifice was a
voluntary sacrifice, or, to speak more accurately, He was both Priest
and Sacrifice, when 'through the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself
without spot unto God.' The living Christ is the Lord of Life, and
lives because He will; the dying Christ is the Lord of Death, and dies
because He chose. He would have us learn that all His bitter
sufferings, inflicted from without as they were, and traceable to a
deeper source than merely human antagonism, were also self-inflicted
and self-chosen, and further traceable to the Father's will in harmony
with His own. 'Thus I do,' and thus He did when He died.

Then, further, our Lord would have us regard these sufferings and that
death as being His crowning act of obedience to His Father's will. That
is in accordance with the whole tone of His self-consciousness,
especially as set before us in this precious Gospel of John, which
traces up everything to the submission of the divine Son to the divine
Father, a submission which is no mere external act, but results from,
and is the expression of, the absolute unity of will and the perfect
oneness of mutual love. And so, because He loved the Father, therefore
He came to do the Father's will, and the crowning act of His obedience
was this, that He was 'obedient unto death, even the death of the
Cross.' It was a voluntary sacrifice, but that voluntariness was not
self-will. It was a sacrifice in obedience to the Father's will, but
that obedience was not reluctant. Christ was the embodiment of the
divine purpose, formed before the ages and realised in time, when He
bowed His head and yielded up the ghost. The highest proof of His
filial obedience was the Cross. And to it He points us, if we would
know what it is to love and obey the Father.

Now it is to be noticed that this motive of our Lord's death is not the
usual one given in Scripture. And I can suppose the question being put,
'Why did not Jesus Christ say, in that supreme moment, that He went to
the Cross because of His love to us rather than because of His love to
the Father?' But I think the answer is not far to seek. There are
several satisfactory ones which may be given. One is that this making
prominent of His love to God rather than to us, as the motive for His
death, is in accordance with that comparative reticence on the part of
Jesus as to the atoning aspect of His death, which I have had frequent
occasion to point out, and which does not carry in it the implication
that that doctrine was a new thing in the Christian preaching after
Pentecost. Another reason may be drawn from the whole strain and tone
of this chapter, which, as I have already said, traces up everything to
the loving relations of obedience between the Father and Son. And yet
another reason may be given in that the very statement of Christ's love
to God, and loving obedience to the Father's commandment as the motive
of His death, includes in it necessarily the other thing—love to us.
For what was the Father's commandment which Christ with all His heart
accepted, and with His glad will obeyed unto death? It was that the Son
should come as the Ransom for the world. The Son of man was sent, 'not
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a Ransom
for many.' Or, as He Himself said, in one of His earliest discourses,
'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.' And for what He gave
that Son is clearly stated in the context itself of that passage—'As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of
Man be lifted up.'

To speak of Christ's acceptance of the Father's commandment, then, is
but another way of saying that Christ, in all the fullness of His
self-surrender, entered into and took as His own the great, eternal
divine purpose, that the world should be redeemed by His death upon the
Cross. The heavenward side of His love to man is His love to the
Father, God.

Now there is another aspect still in which our Lord would here have us
regard His sufferings and death, and that is that they are of worldwide
significance.

Think for a moment of the obscurity of the speaker, a Jewish peasant in
an upper room, with a handful of poor men around Him, all of them ready
to forsake Him, within a few hours of His ignominious death; and yet He
says, 'I am about to die, that the echo of it may reverberate through
the whole world.' He puts Himself forth as of worldwide significance,
and His death as adapted to move mankind, and as one day to be known
all over the world. There is nothing in history to approach to the
gigantic arrogance of Jesus Christ, and it is only explicable on the
ground of His divinity.

'This I do that _the world_ may know.' And what did it matter to the
world? Why should it be of any importance that the world should know?
For one plain reason, because true knowledge of the true nature and
motive of that death breaks the dominion of the Prince of this world,
and sets men free from his tyranny. Emancipation, hope, victory,
purity, the passing from the tyranny of the darkness into the blessed
kingdom of the light—all depend on the world's knowing that Christ's
death was His own voluntary act of submission to the infinite love and
will of the Father, which will and love He made His own, and therefore
died, the sacrifice for the world's sin.

The enemy was approaching. He was to be hoist with his own petard. 'He
digged a pit; he digged it deep,' and into the pit which he had digged
he himself fell. 'Oh, death! I will be thy plague' by entering into thy
realm. 'Oh, grave! I will be thy destruction' by dwelling for a moment
within thy dark portals and rending them irreparably as I pass from
them. The Prince of this world was defeated when he seemed to triumph,
and Christ's mighty words came true: 'Now shall the Prince of this
world be cast out.' He would have the world know—with the knowledge
which is of the heart as well as the head, which is life as well as
understanding, which is possession and appropriation—the mystery, the
meaning, the motive of His death, because the world thereby ceases to
be a world, and becomes the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

III. Lastly, notice here the resolute advance to the conflict.

'Arise, let us go hence'—a word of swift alacrity. Evidently He rose to
His feet whilst they lay round the table. He bids them rise with Him
and follow Him on the path.

But there is more in the words than the mere close of a conversation,
and a summons to change of place. They indicate a kind of divine
impatience to be in the fight, and to have it over. The same emotion is
plainly revealed in the whole of the latter days of our Lord's life.
You remember how His disciples followed amazed, as He strode up the
road from Jericho, hastening to His Cross. You remember His deliberate
purpose to draw upon Himself public notice during that dangerous and
explosive week before the Passover, as shown in the publicity of His
entry into Jerusalem, His sharp rebukes of the rulers in the Temple,
and in every other incident of those days. You remember His words to
the betrayer: 'That thou doest, do quickly.' These latter hours of the
Lord were strongly marked by the emotion to which He gave utterance in
His earlier words: 'I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished!' Perhaps that feeling indicated His
human shrinking; for we all know how we sometimes are glad to
precipitate an unwelcome thing, and how the more we dread it, the more
we are anxious to get it over. But there is far more than that in it.
There is the resolved determination to carry out the Father's purpose
for the world's salvation, which was His own purpose, and was none the
less His though He knew all the suffering which it involved.

Let us adore the steadfast will, which never faltered, though the
natural human weakness was there too, and which, as impelled by some
strong spring, kept persistently pressing towards the Cross that on it
He might die, the world's Redeemer.

And do not let us forget that He summoned His lovers and disciples to
follow Him on the road. 'Let us go hence.' It is ours to take up our
cross daily and follow the Master, to do with persistent resolve our
duty, whether it be welcome or unwelcome, and to see to it that we
plant no faltering and reluctant foot in our Master's footsteps. For
us, too, if we have learned to flee to the Cross for our redemption and
salvation, the resolve of our Redeemer and the very passion of the
Saviour itself become the pattern and law of our lives. We, too, have
to cast ourselves into the fight, and to take up our cross, 'that the
world may know that we love the Father, and as the Father hath given us
commandment.' And if we so live, then our death, too, in some humble
measure, may be like His—the crowning act of obedience to the Father's
will; in which we are neither passively nor resistingly dragged under
by a force that we cannot effectually resist, but in which we go down
willingly into the dark valley where death 'makes our sacrifice
complete.'





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