The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses.
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Title: The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses.
Author: Frederick Denison Maurice
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN: A SERIES OF DISCOURSES. ***
THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
[Illustration: Publisher's Mark]
THE
GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
A Series of Discourses.
By
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A.,
PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
"Johannes redet schlecht und einfältig wie ein Kind, und lauten seine
Worte (wie die Weltweisen sie ansehen) recht kindisch. Es ist aber
eine solche Majestät drunter verborgen, die kein Mensch, so hoch er
auch erleuchtet ist, erforschen noch ausreden kann."--LUTHER,
_Auslegung des Evangel_. _Johannis_, 1, 5.
NEW EDITION.
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1882.
[_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved._]
London: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
A valued friend, to whose judgment on a critical question I shall
always defer, has sent me the following observations upon certain
passages in the 11th and 16th Discourses of this volume. I have made
no alterations in the text.
_John_ v. 3, 4.
It is implied at page 143 that certain "honest and earnest men" are
unwilling to believe that St. John wrote the verse relating to angelic
interposition in the cures wrought by the pool of Bethesda, merely
because they consider the doctrine unworthy of him. It may be so: but
it is at least possible to assent fully to the doctrine, and yet
reject the verse, along with the last clause of the preceding verse,
on purely outward and critical grounds. Of the six most important
Greek MSS. two (and those, perhaps, the best) omit the whole
passage, ἐκδεχομένων--νοσήματι, two the clause,
ἐκδεχομένων--κίνησιν, and two the verse,
ἄγγελος--νοσηματι: not more than one or two
tolerable Greek MSS. support the received reading. Of important early
versions three omit the whole passage (including the recently
discovered "Curetonian" Syriac, probably the earliest and most
important of all), another (and two MSS. of a second) omits the verse,
and two others omit or obelize part of the verse. Of early patristic
evidence there is hardly any either way. Origen's commentary between
iv. 54 and viii. 19 is unfortunately lost. Tertullian in one place
shows an acquaintance with the belief about the angel, and probably
with the whole passage. With this exception, the passage appears to be
known in either form to no Father previous to St. Ambrose, no Greek
Father previous to St. Chrysostom: they and their successors follow
the common text. The only important early authority in its favour is
the Old Latin version, (with which must be taken Tertullian;) and yet
_its_ MSS. differ surprisingly in the details of the verse, presenting
it for the most part in a shorter form than the Greek MSS., which
likewise differ considerably among themselves. In short, all the
familiar phenomena of interpolation are present in the most flagrant
shape. In all probability the passage was added by degrees in the
second century in the Western Church, and passed over to the East in
the fourth century.
_John_ vii. 53-viii. 11.
At page 229 "some of the Fathers" are said to have "disliked the moral
of" the story of the woman taken in adultery, and therefore to have
been "glad to believe it not genuine." It is needless to go into the
overwhelming critical evidence against its genuineness,--a matter
quite distinct from its truth and authority. But surely the charge
here made is founded on an oversight. The earlier Fathers (with the
doubtful exception of Eusebius, who has been reasonably supposed to
allude to the same incident, as recorded by Papias, and in the Gospel
according to the Hebrews) nowhere refer to the narrative, apparently
for the simple reason that it was entirely unknown to them. Origen's
commentary on this part of the chapter is lost; but in a minute
recapitulation, included in his remarks on verse 22, he passes at once
without observation from vii. 52 to viii. 12. St. Chrysostom and St.
Cyril ignore the passage in the same manner. There is really no reason
whatever to suspect fraud here. St. Ambrose warns his readers of the
danger of reading the story carelessly (_otiosis auribus_), but does
not appear to doubt its genuineness. St. Augustine, arguing against an
excessive rigour on the part of injured husbands, rebukes certain
persons (_modicæ fidei vel potius inimicis veræ fidei_), who, as he
fancied, banished it from their MSS. because it seemed to be more
lenient to women than to their guilty selves. St. Jerome states that
it was found in many Greek and Latin MSS., and proceeds to rest an
argument upon it. Surely these three Fathers, if any, would have been
"glad to believe it not genuine."
Both passages are pretty fully discussed by Dr. Tregelles (_Account of
the printed Text of the Greek New Testament_, pp. 236-246), with the
help of some evidence not before accessible.
PREFACE.
I made many attempts to write a commentary on the Gospel of St. John.
All of them proved abortive; though each of them made me more alive to
the duty of endeavouring to impart to others some of the lessons which
I had received from it. At length I was convinced that unless I
studied the Gospel first of all with reference to my own congregation,
and used it as a lesson-book for them, I never should be able to
express what was in my mind to men whom I did not know. Critics, I
doubt not, will know excellent reasons why a book of Scripture cannot
be satisfactorily expounded in pulpit discourses. I certainly shall
not dispute their opinion. No one is more aware than myself that I
have not satisfactorily expounded _this_ book of Scripture. I have not
hoped to do that. But I believe I may have given my hearers and my
readers some encouragement to seek a better Expositor of it than I or
any much wiser teacher can be. If a few have been led by my words to
hope for that guidance, and to place themselves under it, I trust they
will ask for themselves and for me, that we may never desert it for
any other, least of all for our own.
CONTENTS.
DISCOURSE I.
PAGE
ST. JOHN I. 1.--_In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God._
The Ages of the Church--St. John the Theologian--Accounts of him
in the first Three Evangelists--His Jewish feelings--The opening
Sentence of the Gospel--What Psalmists and Prophets mean when
they speak of the Word of God--How Alexandrian Jews spoke of
the Living Word--Confused opinions at the end of the First Century--
How the opening of this Gospel meets them 1
DISCOURSE II.
ST. JOHN I. 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._
The same subject continued--How the Living Word was implied in
all the teaching of the Old Testament--The Word, the Creator of
the World--The Word enlightening human beings--The testimony
of John to Him in this character 15
DISCOURSE III.
ST. JOHN I. 29.--_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 the Baptist an Old Testament teacher--How St. John the Evangelist
learnt his wisdom from him--His dialogue with the Pharisees--Wherein
the Jews were wrong in their apprehension of the Christ--How John's
message concerning Him that was before him met these confusions--His
testimony to his own disciples concerning the Lamb of God 28
DISCOURSE IV.
ST. JOHN I. 46.--_And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any
good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and
see._
The same subject continued--The Scape-Goat and the Lamb--Why
the last is a more satisfactory image than the first--The Lamb
identified with the Man--The Spirit and the Dove--John's Disciples
following Jesus--Nathanael confessing the Man of Nazareth to
be the Son of God--What was promised him hereafter 43
DISCOURSE V.
ST. JOHN II. 11.-_This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of
Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed
on Him._
Miracles and Signs--The change from the desert to the feast--The
dialogue between Mary and her Son--Effects of the Sign upon those
who had not, and those who had, believed Jesus to be the Christ--
Christ giving His blessing to Marriage--Christ the spring of Life
and Joy--The beginning of Signs--Object of St. John in recording
them--Their message to us 57
DISCOURSE VI.
ST. JOHN II. 16.-_Take these things hence; make not my Father's
house an house of merchandise._
Difference between St. John and the other Evangelists in reference
to Galilee and Jerusalem--The Two Purifications of the Temple--
Jewish feelings respecting the Temple, easily understood by
Englishmen--The Temple-Market--The impression of our Lord's Zeal on
the minds of the Disciples--The Words '_My Father's House_'--The
Temple raised in three days--Double senses 72
DISCOURSE VII.
ST. JOHN III. 3.--_Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily,
I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God._
Effects of the signs at the Passover on the crowd--Their impression
on Nicodemus the Pharisee--Seeing the Kingdom of God--The New
Birth--The perplexity of the Pharisee--The Spirit and the Wind--
Earthly Things and Heavenly Things--The Son of Man from Heaven
and in Heaven--The Brazen Serpent--Consciousness not the basis
of God's Kingdom--The Will of God 85
DISCOURSE VIII.
ST. JOHN III. 30.--_He must increase; I must decrease._
Return to John the Baptist--What John's Disciples say of the new
Teacher--John's answer--The Gift from above--The Royal Bridegroom--
The friend of the Bridegroom--The joy of John in his insignificance--
The Earthly and the Heavenly Speech--How the Divine Testimony is
received--The Difficulty of believing in God--The new Revelation
of the Father and the Son--The Wrath of God 101
DISCOURSE IX.
ST. JOHN IV. 10.--_Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou
knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give
me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have
given thee living water._
Water a Sign of Purification and a Sign of Life--Jesus in Samaria--
The Gift of God--The Well of Life within--The woman revealed
to herself--The Place of Worship and the Object of Worship--
Spiritual and superstitious tendencies of the Samaritans--Christ
declaring Himself to the woman 115
DISCOURSE X.
ST. JOHN IV. 48.--_Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs
and wonders, ye will not believe._
The woman's Message to her countrymen--'_Is not this the Christ?_'--
Wonder of the disciples--The Reapers and the Harvest--What
rewards Christ promises--The Samaritan Faith--The Galilæan
Faith--How the Nobleman's Faith was affected by the Cure of his
Son 128
DISCOURSE XI.
ST. JOHN V. 16-18.--_And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus,
because He had done these things on the sabbath-day. But Jesus
answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore
the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He had not only broken
the sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making Himself
equal with God._
Jesus at Jerusalem--The Pool--The Angel--Whether the story interferes
with Science--Records of Angels in the Old Testament--How
the cure of the Man concerned the doctrine respecting Angels--The
Sabbath-day--How the Pharisee regarded all the commandments--Reasons
of their conflict with Jesus respecting this commandment--'_My
Father worketh hitherto, and I work_' 141
DISCOURSE XII.
ST. JOHN V. 43.--_I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive
me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive._
The charge against Jesus of making Himself equal with God--How
Jesus refuses to exalt Himself--How He discovers the true Idea of
Godhead--The Son quickening the dead--All judgment committed
to the Son--The Light which that Language throws upon our
Experiences--The Son ruling and judging in the unseen World--The
Testimony of John--The Testimony of the Father--The Scriptures
and the Word 156
DISCOURSE XIII.
ST. JOHN VI. 35.--_And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life:
he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me
shall never thirst._
Jesus feeding the multitude--The Prophet and the King--Jesus
walking on the Sea--Use of that Sign--The crowd seeking Jesus--The
Bread of Life--The Son of Man and the Father--The Manna
falling from Heaven--'_My Father giveth you the Bread_'--The Will
of the Father--Christ promised to the Race and to each Man 172
DISCOURSE XIV.
ST. JOHN VI. 62.--_What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend
up where He was before?_
How to give thanks for a Peace--How the Nation of Israel was taught
that it did not live by Bread alone--How Jesus interpreted that
Language--The Teaching of the Father--'_The Bread that I will give
is my Flesh_'--Whether St. John was speaking of the Lord's Supper--
Spiritual Eating not metaphorical Eating--How the History of
the Church explains the Words, '_Except ye eat the Flesh of the
Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no Life in you_'--How
the Ascension is connected with these words--The Faith of Peter--The
Unbelief of Judas--How connected with this subject--Its
relation to modern events--Christianity and Mahometanism 186
DISCOURSE XV.
ST. JOHN VII. 37-39.--_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. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said,
out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake
He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for
the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet
glorified._)
Meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles--Why the brethren of our Lord
wished Him to go to Jerusalem--The Jewish World--Christ teaching
in the Temple--Doing God's Will and knowing His Doctrine--The
Sabbath-day and Circumcision--In what Sense Christ's Life was
mysterious, in what Sense open--'_Ye shall seek me, and not find
me_'--The Gift of the Holy Ghost 209
DISCOURSE XVI.
ST. JOHN VIII. 29.--_And He that sent me is with me: the Father
hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please
Him._
Bethlehem and Nazareth--The division in the Sanhedrim--The Story
of the Woman taken in Adultery--Jesus declaring Himself the Light
of the World--The Two Witnesses--The Descent and the Ascent--The
Answer to the Question, '_Who art Thou?_'--The Son of Man
lifted up--How St. John preaches the Trinity 226
DISCOURSE XVII.
ST. JOHN VIII. 43.--_Why do ye not understand my speech? even
because ye cannot hear my word._
The repelling and attracting Power of Christ's Words concerning
His Father--The Promise of Truth--The Promise of Freedom--The
Servant in the House and the Son--Abraham's Seed--The Desire to
murder the Prince of Life--The claim of God as a Father--The
charge of being children of the Devil--The Speech and the Word--The
Temporal and the Eternal--'_Before Abraham was, I am_' 240
DISCOURSE XVIII.
ST. JOHN IX. 39.--_And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into
this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which
see might be made blind._
How the story of the Blind Man is connected with the previous
discourse--Final causes of bodily disease--The obligation upon Jesus
to work--Process of the cure--The debates in the Synagogue--The
Doctors and the Beggar--His arguments and their answer--What
his blindness had done for him--The Revelation of the Son of God 259
DISCOURSE XIX.
ST. JOHN X. 27-29.--_My sheep hear my voice, and I know them,
and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my
and. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no
man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand._
The Mount of Olives--The sight of the Sheepfold--The Wicket-Gate--
Why the Pharisees could not understand the symbol--St. John's
Parables--The robbers and murderers who claimed to be Christs
in the Old Time--Application to Modern Times--How is it true
that the Sheep did not hear them--The Good Shepherd and the
Hirelings--Communion between the Shepherd and the Sheep--Communion
between Christ and His Father--The other Sheep--Why Jesus did not
say, 'I am the Christ'--'_My Father is greater than all_'--'_I and
my Father are one_'--'_I have said, Ye are gods_' 274
DISCOURSE XX.
ST. JOHN XI. 25.--_Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and
the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live._
Jesus and the Disciples again in the Wilderness--The common feeling
respecting the Resurrection of Lazarus, the true one--The Sisters
and the Brother--The Message concerning Lazarus--The hours of
Night and Day--Our Friend sleepeth--How the Two Sisters endure
their Comforters--The Resurrection in the Last Day--'_I am the
Resurrection, and the Life_'--The Groaning of Jesus--The Glory of
God--Lazarus returning to his Home--Resurrection not a Break in
a Man's History--The Renewal of Family Bonds--Deliverance from
Unbelief 300
DISCOURSE XXI.
ST. JOHN XI. 49, 50.--_And one of them, named Caiaphas, being
the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing a
all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should
die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not._
Why the Sadducees did not wish to stone Jesus--The Prophecy of
Caiaphas--The Romans and the Cross--The Feast at Bethany--The
Box of Ointment--Its Effect on Judas--Jerusalem during the
Passover--When the Disciples learnt the meaning of Christ's
Entry into the City--The Greeks at the Feast--The Seed falling
into the Ground and dying--The Moment of Agony--The Son of Man
drawing all Men to Him--'_Who is this Son of Man?_'--How that
Question is asked and answered in our day 321
DISCOURSE XXII.
ST. JOHN XII. 44-50, and XIII. 1.--_Jesus cried and said, He that
believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me. And
he that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me. I am come a light into the
world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not; for
I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that
rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him:
the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last
day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me,
He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should
speak. And I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever
I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak. Now
before the feast of the passover, 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._
The last Signs to the Jewish people--How Isaiah had explained their
inefficacy--The Glory of Men and the Glory of God--The Words
which closed Christ's public Ministry--The Last Supper--The
Washing of the Feet--What had to be washed away--Why the feet
only had to be washed--Christ's Example--How one Man can purify
another--The Disciple not above his Master--'_He that receiveth
you receiveth Me_'--The trouble of Spirit--The Disciple whom Jesus
loved--'_That thou doest, do quickly_'--The Son of Man glorified--
The New Commandment--The prophecy of denial 341
DISCOURSE XXIII.
ST. JOHN XIV. 25, 26.--_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._
The two causes of Trouble--The double support under them--Why
Jesus did not speak of dying--The message concerning a Father's
House--Jesus the Way--To what the Way leads--'_Have I been
so long time with you, and hast thou not known me?_'--The greater
Works--Praying in the Name of Jesus--The promise of the Comforter--
Loving and obeying--How the Disciples learnt their need
of a Spirit--The gift of the Spirit the gift of Peace--The Prince
of this World--The love of the Father to the World 365
DISCOURSE XXIV.
ST. JOHN XV. 1.--_I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman._
Allusions to vines in the old Scripture--The interpretation of them
here--'_Abide in me_'--Ground of the union of the Disciples to
Christ--The gift of Joy--Servants and friends--The command to
love--The world's hatred a hatred of God 383
DISCOURSE XXV.
ST. JOHN XVI. 1.--_These things have I spoken unto you, that ye
should not be offended._
Effect of Christ's words upon His Disciples when they met with
persecutions--Method of His education--The conviction of the world
by the Spirit--The Spirit not speaking of Himself, but of the Son
and the Father--'_A little while and ye shall not see me_'--The
birth of the Man into the world--The Apostles' belief--The world
overcome 396
DISCOURSE XXVI.
ST. JOHN XVII. 1.--_These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His
eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy
Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee._
Words, their power and their weakness--How to connect Christ's
prayer with other prayers--'_Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may
glorify thee_'--The gift of eternal life--The order of the
prayer--The part of it which refers to the Disciples--'_I pray
not for the world_'--The son of perdition--Truth and sanctity--
'_That they all may be one_'--The world which has not known
the Father 411
DISCOURSE XXVII.
ST. JOHN XIX. 37.--_And again another scripture saith, They shall
look on Him whom they have pierced._
Arrangement of our services in Passion Week--Agreement of St.
John with the other Evangelists--Why all dwell upon the arraignment
of Jesus--Peculiarities of St. John--The night-scene with the
officers--Jesus before the High Priest--The dread of defilement--Jesus
before Pilate--'_Art thou a king?_'--'_Behold the man!_'--'_Whence
art thou?_'--'_We have no king but Cæsar_'--The title on the cross--
Rending the garment--The Son and the Mother--'_A bone shall not
be broken_'--'_They shall look on Him whom they have pierced_'--
Nicodemus at the sepulchre 424
DISCOURSE XXVIII.
ST. JOHN XX. 30, 31.--_And many other signs truly did Jesus in
the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book:
but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life
through His name._
Reasons why St. John should record the history of the Resurrection
carefully--How far he or the other Evangelists cared to produce
evidences--Peter and John at the sepulchre--How John could find
in the Scripture that Jesus should rise again--Appearance of the
angels--Differences of the Evangelists--Jesus speaking to Mary--'_I
am not yet ascended_'--'_Peace be unto you_'--The commission to bind
and loose--Thomas the Doubter--The conclusion of the narrative--The
resumption of it--The Apostles returning to their nets--Jesus
on the shore--The fish and the bread--'_Simon, lovest thou
me?_'--The two Apostles--John tarrying till Christ came--The
things which Jesus did, and is doing, and will do 443
NOTES.
NOTE I.--On Barn's theory of the Gospels 469
NOTE II.--On the construing of the 3d, 4th, and 9th verses of the
1st chapter 475
NOTE III.--On Origen's notion of St. John's Gospel in connexion
with the knowledge attributed to John the Baptist 477
NOTE IV.--On the relation of the words, '_The Lamb of God_,' to
the Passover, and to the passage in the 53d chapter of Isaiah 479
NOTE V.--On the objections to a revision of the Scriptures 481
NOTE VI.--Extract from Gregory of Nyssa 484
NOTE VII.--On the resurrection of the body and the judgment-day 484
NOTE VIII.--Comparison of the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount
with that in the 8th chapter of St. John 488
NOTE IX.--On the doctrine of Atonement--Scotch and English
divinity 492
NOTE X.--On corporate holiness 498
NOTE XI.--A translation of John viii. 2 501
DISCOURSE I.
THE JEWISH FISHERMAN, THE CHRISTIAN DIVINE.
[Lincoln's Inn, Septuagesima Sunday, January 20, 1856.]
ST. JOHN I. 1.
_In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God._
An eminent man, who died not long since in Germany, was wont to divide
the life of the Church into three periods. That before the Reformation
he called the Petrine; the three centuries since the Reformation, the
Pauline; one he maintained was at hand, which would last to the end of
this dispensation--that he named the Johannine. The classification is
perhaps too ingenious to be true; and there are many reasons why we
ought not to treat all the years before the sixteenth century as
belonging to the same division. Nevertheless, there is something in
the observation concerning St. John which has commended itself to
minds of a very different order from his who put it into this shape.
Some have supposed that St. John is to displace the earlier writers of
the New Testament, because his teaching is more profound, or more
charitable, or more simple than theirs. Some suppose that he was
especially appointed to explain, unfold, bring out into their fullest
light, all that previous Prophets and Apostles had presented under
different aspects, in forms suitable to their own times and
circumstances. Wide as this difference is, both may agree that the
writings of St. John, much as they may have been studied hitherto,
deserve a fresh and a more earnest study. Both may hope that if they
have been intended for the illumination of our days, the meaning of
them may come forth to us with greater clearness than it did to our
forefathers; not because we are wiser than they, but because a larger
experience, perhaps an experience of more intense doubt and ignorance,
may make us more ready to welcome the divine interpreter, and less
eager to anticipate his discoveries by the conclusions which ask to be
corrected by them.
There are three books in our canon which we attribute to St. John,
besides the two short letters to Gaius and the Elect Lady. Of these,
his Gospel appears to me a perfect summary of _Christian Theology_,
his First Epistle of _Christian Ethics_, his Apocalypse of _Christian
Politics_. I do not despair of seeing even this last book come forth,
out of the hands of soothsayers and prognosticators, as a real
lesson-book respecting the dealings of God with the nations,
respecting the method and the issues of His righteous government. The
craving there is in the minds of men for a faithful history of the
past, which shall be also a faithful guide to the future, will surely
be satisfied some day; this book may teach us how it shall be
satisfied. It requires even less faith to expect that when we are
tired of speculations about the maxims and principles of morality,
which do not make our morality better, while yet their very failure
convinces us that there are principles which we did not create and
which must bind us, we may turn to an old and simple document, which
sets forth the commandment that has life--which tells us what the end
of our existence is, what has deranged it, how each man may recover
all that he has lost, and be what he was created to be.
I had thought at first that these Bible ethics might be more suitable
to a congregation of men, busy in the world and valuing higher maxims
only as they can test them by their application to its daily
occasions, than what I have called by the more imposing name of
Theology. I should have acted upon that thought if I had believed that
St. John's theology was of that stamp which has made the word
agreeable to schoolmen, offensive to those who would turn words into
acts. If theology is a collection of dry husks, the granaries which
contain those husks will be set on fire, and nothing will quench the
fire till they be consumed. It is just because I find in St. John the
grain which those husks sometimes conceal, for which they are
sometimes a substitute; it is just because theology in his Gospel
offers itself to us as a living root, out of which all living powers,
living thoughts, living acts may develop themselves; it is just
because there is nothing in him that is abstract, because that which
is deep and eternal proves itself to be deep and eternal by entering
into all the relations of time, by manifesting itself in all the
common doings of men; it is therefore, I believe, that he makes his
appeal, not to the man of technicalities, not to the school doctor,
but to the simple wayfarer, and at the same time to the man of science
who does not forget that he is a man and who expects to ascertain
principles only by the honest method of experiment.
To all such, I am sure, the careful study of the fourth Gospel will
prove of unspeakable worth and interest. A preacher may do much to
hinder such study; he may also do something to promote it. He will
hinder it if he seeks to make texts give out a sense which he has
first put into them. He will hinder it if he seeks to stifle any
doubts which the words themselves may excite; any that are suggested
by the contradictions of the world, and the perplexities of the
reader's own mind. He will hinder it if he breaks the continuity of
the narration by taking a passage here and there to inculcate a
particular moral, without considering how it is related to the
passages that precede and that follow it and to the general scope of
the Evangelist. He may promote it so far as he believes that he is a
fellow-learner with those whom he is teaching; so far as he is
convinced that the words of the Evangelist are clearer and diviner
than any which he, of his own wit or by the help of inferior books,
can put in their place; so far as he desires that his own eyes, and
those of all students, may be purged that they may see what is
actually in the words; so far as he believes that there is One who is
above the words, above the writer of them, to whom they point, and
from whom all the wisdom that is in them comes; so far as he trusts
for himself, and encourages all to trust, that this Teacher wills us
to come to the knowledge of His truth, and will withhold no help that
we need in the pursuit of it. Beseeching the Holy Spirit of God to
keep alive this temper in your minds and in mine, I would begin the
examination of St. John's Gospel to-day, desiring, if God permit, that
we may go through with it to the end.
When I talk of St. John as a Theologian, I adopt the title which was
given to him at a very early time. In our own day that title has
awakened a suspicion about the genuineness of this Gospel. He is
spoken of by the other Evangelists as a fisherman mending his father's
nets; as one of two Apostles whom our Lord called Sons of Thunder; as
giving some warrant for that designation by desiring to call fire from
heaven upon a Samaritan village; as showing signs of a special
ambition by his prayer that he himself and his brother might sit one
on Christ's right hand and one on His left in His kingdom; as
exhibiting the sectarian and exclusive temper of his nation, by
forbidding a man to cast out devils in Christ's name who did not
follow with His Apostles. Was there anything in these early
characteristics to prepare one for expecting that he would be the
divine, not of a Jewish synagogue but of a Christian Church? True, he
is spoken of as being present on the Mount of Transfiguration, and in
the Garden of Gethsemane. On both occasions his eyes were heavy, like
those of the other disciples, with the sight of glory and the sight of
suffering. When others forsook and fled, he did so likewise. In the
Acts of the Apostles he appears, no doubt, in a conspicuous position,
but it is still expressly as a Jewish Apostle. If he is joined with
St. Peter in healing the sick man, it is when they are going up to the
Temple at the hour of prayer. He endures the reproaches and the
scourges of the Sanhedrim. But after the preaching of the Gospel to
the Gentiles, we hear no more of him; he vanishes out of sight. St.
Paul calls him one of the Apostles of the Circumcision, but alludes to
him no further. When we meet with him again, not in the sacred record
but in the mist of ecclesiastical traditions, there are reports of him
as adhering to the Jewish observance of the Passover, as in some sense
representing the dignity of the high-priest. How could we suppose from
such intimations that he would open a Gospel with the words I read to
you in the text, words which seem to intimate an acquaintance with
heathen speculation, even with a high philosophy? Does that language
belong at all to the simplicity of the first century? Is it not much
more in accordance with the spirit of the next age, when plain
narratives were combining themselves with curious speculations, and
Christian teachers were introducing what they had learnt in the porch
or the academy among the doctrines and the exhortations which had been
uttered to fishermen on the lake of Tiberias or to the crowds who were
gathered round the mount?
From what I said of my reasons for selecting this Gospel as a subject
for discourses in the pulpit, you will anticipate part of the answer
which I should give to these suggestions. If the Gospel is what those
who make them, say that it is, they are right. If its theology is of
an abstract, artificial character, compounded of elements drawn from
all heterogeneous sources, let it be attributed to an age--I do not
determine whether the second century was or was not such an age--in
which an artificial habit of mind prevailed, in which system-building
had become a profession. If there are _no_ traces of such a
disposition in the fourth Gospel,--if it is, in its language, in the
construction of its sentences, in the style of its narrative, the
simplest of all the Gospels,--then we may have good cause to think
that it savours more of the fisherman to whom it has been for so many
ages ascribed, than of the learned convert from some Gentile school,
the ingenious blender of Jewish and Gentile dogmas, whom critics of
this age have imagined to be its manufacturer.
I do not, however, desire to avoid a part of the inquiry which these
remarks may not seem at first to meet. All the accounts of St. John
in the New Testament, all that we can guess of him from other sources,
certainly lead us to think of him as one whose mind had been cast in
the Hebrew mould, who had learnt the lore of a child of Abraham, who
had not, in the same sense that St. Paul did, thrown himself among the
inhabitants of the Greek cities, and become as '_one without law, that
he might gain those that are without law_.' St. John's position in the
city of Ephesus, during his latter years, does not affect the opinion
that he was essentially a Jew. Jerusalem had fallen, or was about to
fall; nowhere, perhaps, would he be more likely to find a colony of
men attached to the customs of his forefathers than in that city.
Confessedly, he had no part in founding its Church or converting its
Gentile inhabitants; that had been St. Paul's work. And we may admit
without scruple the evidence, imperfect though it be, that St. John in
that city did preserve some of the characteristics of his childhood
and of his education, even when the world to which those strictly
belonged was passing away.
How do these admissions affect our belief that he was the writer of
the sentences which introduce the Gospel that bears his name? I
believe they strengthen that belief exceedingly. I can conceive
nothing more thoroughly Hebrew than these sentences. I pass over the
resemblance, which will strike you all upon this day,[1] between these
verses and those at the commencement of the Book of Genesis; though
the correspondence between their style and the style of Moses, is one
of those internal correspondences which we feel the more strongly the
more we reflect. But I would beg you to notice the essential
_difference_ between this kind of writing and that of any person who
had been brought up in any school of philosophy whatsoever, whether
one purely Greek, or where Greek and Hebrew elements were mixed as
they were at Alexandria. Would you expect in such a person the broad,
simple, assertive tone, '_In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God_'? Would not the _true_ philosopher
try to vindicate his name by proving that he was a _seeker_ after
wisdom? Would not the _false_ philosopher, if he were ever so much
inclined to dogmatise, at least produce some plausible arguments in
support of any statements which he advanced? Where, but in the
writings of the Old and New Testament, do you meet with such an
adventurous proclamation as this? Where, even in the Books of the Old
and New Testament, do you meet with one that is quite a parallel to
it?
[1] Septuagesima Sunday, when the first chapter of Genesis is read.
Schleiermacher, who is not likely to exaggerate the resemblance of the
New Testament to the Old, dwells on this point. See "Homilien über das
Evangelium Johannis;" edited after his death by Sydow.
And then look at the contents of the sentence. What have you been
hearing of, all through the Psalms and the Prophets, but of God's
word, which was to give Joshua courage, which David delighted in and
fed upon, which was a fire in the heart of Jeremiah? On the surface of
the Bible this language encounters you. I mean, that your eye cannot
wander over a page without being arrested by expressions of the kind;
you become so familiar with it that you forget the peculiarity of it.
But if you stop for a moment to think, you will perceive that whenever
the word of God is spoken of, something most vital and most inward is
intended. It is a quick, penetrating power, entering into the man,
affecting his heart and his reins, standing out in the sharpest
contrast to the idols which speak to the eye. The 'word of God' is the
favourite expression in the writers of the Old Testament, because they
are testifying of an invisible Lord who speaks to man's spirit;
because they are denouncing all attempts to make the objects of men's
senses into their lords. How frightful, then, to an old Prophet would
have been the thought of confounding the mere letters of a book, which
could be seen, handled, copied out, with the words of the Lord! No
doubt these words might have characters found for them; they might be
handed down in these characters from age to age: it would be a
glorious witness of their enduring quality if they were so. But it
would remain unalterably true, that as words coming forth from the
mouth of God, and not to return to Him void, they addressed themselves
to the wills, hearts, consciences of men; into these only could they
enter.
Whence did they proceed? Solomon, the wise king, had spoken of a
divine Wisdom, from which his was derived. He had spoken of that
Wisdom as brought up with God--as His counsellor--as an object to be
sought for, embraced, loved by men. The Prophets had spoken of the
Word of God coming to them. The Word ruled them, searched them, judged
them. They were not the speakers; the Word was the speaker. Could such
language be uttered continually in the ears of earnest men and be
disregarded? It was not disregarded; it moulded the very heart of all
true Israelites. But soon it was forced upon them in another way.
After the Babylonian captivity, they were brought into contact with
heathens; they were obliged to learn what heathens had been thinking
of. Elsewhere they heard of great mythological conceptions, of the
Lion, the Eagle, the Ox, the Man, which represent different aspects of
the Divinity. But in the city of Alexandria they heard how Greek
sages, in their struggle to get rid of mythological fancies, had
spoken of a Logos or Reason in themselves, which lifted them above
themselves. It was strangely connected with the power of speech; it
pointed to the very source of speech and thought. It was often
described as an eye, blinded in most, and yet of which those in whom
it was open could only say, 'It makes us know what the privilege is of
being men, what the responsibility. Now we are sure that man has
something to do with the Divinity, as all the traditions of our
fathers tell us that he has. But what he has to do with the Divinity,
who can inform us? for the traditions only bewilder us when they try
to explain.' Was it strange that a Jew should say to himself, 'Why, my
oracles have been telling me from the very first of a Word that speaks
to men, a Word of God; a Word that withdraws them from the idolatry of
sense, and the pursuit of sensible things; a Word that has taught them
how to rule themselves; a Word that has taught them how they may seek
after their Creator, and hold converse with Him.' Men of cultivation
as well as of honesty might be easily overwhelmed by this twofold
discovery; they might vacillate between their Gentile lore and their
Jewish; they might mix them sometimes confusedly together; they might
resort to allegories for the sake of explaining the connexion, which
the simpler student of either would reject as unsatisfactory and
frivolous.
These descriptions apply, in some measure, to those commentaries on
the Old Testament which are contained in the Apocryphal books called
'The Wisdom of Solomon,' and 'Ecclesiasticus.' The characteristic of
these books is their recognition of a divine Wisdom, which the
writers sometimes speak of as if it were abstract, quite as often as
if it were personal and substantial. These modes of speech are
confessedly derived from the Scriptures. They speak of no history but
the Hebrew history; probably they were acquainted with no other. Still
it is probable that they were holding intercourse with Gentiles,
perhaps were explaining the Hebrew books to them. But all the
peculiarities I have mentioned became far more marked and definite in
Philo the Alexandrian, who was an old man when he went on an embassy
from the Alexandrian Jews to Caligula. In him the idea of a divine
Word, who unites God and man, and holds converse with the spirit of
man, becomes the ground of all his thoughts. Every book in the Bible
speaks to him of such a Being. The belief in Him alone explains to him
the life of patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets. Yet he admits that such a
Being must also have been the source of all wisdom to Gentile
philosophers. It is his privilege, as a Jew, to explain to them their
own conceptions of such a Being. Moses could declare that that was
which Plato felt must be.
All must see, if we had not positive evidence of the fact, how much
such thoughts, coming forth at such a time, must have affected Jews,
may have affected Gentiles. Yet Philo wrote avowedly for the learned.
He wished to put himself at a distance from all others. It was a
satisfaction to him that he could, by the use of dark allegories, keep
the profane vulgar at a distance. How, then, could his thoughts blend
with those of the men who came preaching that One who was called a
carpenter's son, One who had chosen fishermen as His disciples, was
the King of men and the Son of God? '_To the poor the gospel is_
_preached_,' was the maxim which they were to exhibit in their lessons
and their lives. How could such doctrines as Philo's be addressed to
the poor?
And yet the disciples were obliged to speak of Jesus as the Son of Man
who sowed the word in men's hearts, which sprang up and bore fruit,
thirty and sixty and an hundredfold. They were obliged to speak of
Jesus, the Son of Man, as opening a kingdom of heaven which was within
men. They were obliged to speak of that kingdom as the kingdom of His
Father. They were obliged to say that the Son of Man had opened it to
all, because He was also the Son of God. They were obliged to say that
they could only testify of this kingdom because He had given them the
Spirit of His Father. And when St. Paul learnt that he, the Hebrew of
the Hebrews, was called to be the Apostle of the Gentiles, it was '_by
a revelation of the Son of God in him_' Whom he was '_to preach to the
Gentiles_.' To the Corinthians, among whom he had determined to know
nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, he still spoke of Jesus
Christ as the '_Wisdom of God_' and the '_Power of God_.' To the
Ephesians he spoke of their having '_been chosen in Him before the
foundation of the world, that they might be holy, and without blame
before Him in love_.'
What was the consequence? Jews said, 'You are exalting a man into the
place of God; you are denying the words which you were taught on your
mother's knee, "_The Lord our God is one Lord_."' Gentiles said, 'You
are robbing us of the belief we have had of friendly beings of another
world, who have sympathised with ours, who have had loving converse
with sages and heroes, who have mixed with us as men among men.'
Philosophers said, 'What has your teaching to do with all those
glimpses of light in the reason which wise men have spoken of, which
they have been sure that they received?' Disciples of Philo asked,
'What has this human Teacher of yours to do with that Word of God whom
our master discovered in all the history of the Old Testament?'
Disciples of John the Baptist (still numerous, and probably much
connected with the Alexandrian teachers, as in the instance of
Apollos) said, 'Our master preached repentance and turning to the
living God. You say he spoke also of a Teacher who was to come after
him. Do you mean that he wished us to turn away from the living God to
this future Teacher?' Christian men began to ask themselves whether
Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, _because_ He was born in a
wonderful manner of the Virgin? They began to dream of Him as a
demigod, or a superior angel, half human, half divine. Other
Christians began to boast that they were sons of God _only_ because
they were baptized men, and that their sonship was a sentence upon all
the world before them and around them. A cloud of opinions--vapours
gathered from all quarters--was floating about in the world; was
nowhere, perhaps, denser than in the great emporium of Ephesus. A
great convulsion was at hand. St. Paul had said a great _apostasy_ was
at hand.
Then, if we may believe the tradition of centuries, spoke out the old
man of Ephesus, the Galilean fisherman, the Son of Thunder,--he whose
brother had been taken by an early death to the right hand of his
Master,--he who was himself to linger till the end of the age,--the
passionate Jew, who had desired fire to come from heaven;--then spake
he who had been on the Mount, and in the Garden, and at the Last
Supper: '_In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All
things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that
was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the
light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There
was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a
witness, to bear witness of the light. He was not that light, but was
sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world,
and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came
unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received
Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God; which were born
not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God._'
Except at the close of the first century, when the Old Testament age
was passing into the New, I conceive these verses could not have been
written. Except by the most earnest of Jews, the most simple of
Christian Apostles, I believe they could not have been written. But if
they are, as they are sometimes supposed to be, merely a doctrinal
proem to an actual Gospel, I admit they must have proceeded from some
one else. I hope to show you hereafter that they explain every
narrative which follows, as every narrative which follows illustrates
them. I hope you will find that the whole Gospel is a Theology just as
much as these verses; because it is a Gospel to mankind, a Gospel to
the conscience of each man, from God and concerning God.
DISCOURSE II.
THE WORD THE LIGHT OF MEN.
[Lincoln's Inn, 1st Sunday in Lent, February 10, 1856.]
ST. JOHN I. 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._
When I spoke to you last, I proposed to examine St. John's Gospel
carefully and in order. It was impossible not to pause earnestly upon
the opening sentence, '_In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God_.' What does that text say to us?
'It declares,' some will answer eagerly and decisively, 'the divinity
of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Be it so; but the name _Jesus Christ_ is
not introduced till the seventeenth verse of the chapter. If we are
sitting at the feet of an Apostle or Evangelist, we cannot change his
method for a method of our own. The writers of the other Gospels start
from the birth of Jesus, or from the preaching of John the Baptist. We
cannot understand them unless we go with them to Bethlehem or to the
wilderness. St. John leads us back to the beginning of all things. We
cannot understand him, if we assume events that were to take place in
the fulness of the time.
Acting upon this principle, I reminded you that the expression 'word
of God' is one of continual recurrence as well as of most solemn
import in the books of the Old Testament. I could not find that, in
its lowest sense, it ever meant less than a message from the invisible
God to the mind and spirit of man. The assertion that God speaks to
men by His word, and that men are capable of hearing that word, was
the great testimony for the truth which was implied in heathen
superstitions, the great testimony against these superstitions.
Idolaters were not mistaken in thinking that they needed intercourse
with that which was higher than themselves; they _were_ mistaken in
seeking, in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water
under the earth, for Him who was nearer to them than He was to all the
things He had made, who was the Lord of their hearts and reins. The
more you study the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, the more you
meditate the earliest and simplest book of the Bible--that which tells
of the Voice which spoke to Adam in the garden, of the Voice which
called Abram to go forth whither he knew not--the more, I am
persuaded, you will feel that this is the most characteristic
peculiarity of these records, that which connects them with each
other, that which has given them their power over mankind.
Nevertheless, the life of the men who were said to receive these
communications was eminently practical and manly. They did not pore
over their own thoughts; they went forth and did the work which was
given them to do, feeding flocks, bringing up children, fighting
enemies. It is evident that their belief in the invisible did not in
the least interfere with their business in this visible world. That
they were to till and subdue by the same charter which assured them
that they were God's servants, and that His word was directing them.
While they kept their faith in the unseen Teacher, the firmament over
their heads became a clear daily and nightly witness respecting Him
and themselves. The stars told them what their seed should be; the
sun, going forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, carried the
message of _their_ God into all lands. It was when the faith in the
invisible grew weak, that they bowed their heads and worshipped the
forms which once testified to them of their greater nobleness and
sublimer origin. And with this came another idolatry, in its essence
grander, in its results baser. The man felt that beings of his own
kind had more power over him than all the hosts of heaven. He did
homage to their goodness, their wisdom, their beneficence, their
strength. He confessed the king, and was raised to a higher sense of
his own freedom and kingship. The king became a giant and a tyrant;
_he_ became a dwarf and a slave. What should raise men out of either
oppression? What should set them free from the yoke which creatures
below their own kind and of their own kind had imposed upon them? The
Jew was taught that the Lord God was his King; that He broke the yoke
of the Pharaoh and of the Pharaoh's gods; that He claimed the most
abject slaves as His servants. The Israelite was brought under an
order which had this foundation. In the strength of it, kings were to
reign and decree judgment; they were to preserve the people from
lapsing into the idolatry which would destroy their obedience and
their freedom. They were to reign by the word of the Lord.
But what was this word of God which held men back who had fierce
inclinations in their hearts, and who had swords to execute them in
their hands? It could not be a statute; that had no such power. It
could not be a set of moral maxims; they had no such power. It could
not be a promise, or a threat, about the world that is, or the world
to come; neither had such power. The Prophet, living amidst the signs
of decay and ruin in his own polity, amidst the earthquakes which were
shaking all nations, under the overwhelming power of empires that
sought to put out the life of nations, began to attach another and
deeper sense to the word of God, not incompatible with the older use,
but involved in it; not a metaphor or allegory deduced from it, but a
higher truth lying behind it. The Word of God came to him, spoke to
him in the very depths of his heart. He spoke to it, sympathised with
it. But dared he say _it_ any longer? No; in some wonderful manner
this Word must be a Friend, a Person; One who could work with him,
reprove him, illuminate him. This Word must be the Teacher, the
Friend, the King of Israel. This Word must one day prove Himself to be
the Lord of the whole earth. Awful discovery! which makes him tremble,
and yet which makes him bold; which sometimes draws forth from him the
cry, '_Woe is me! for I am an unclean man, and I dwell among a people
of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
Hosts_;' which again gives him all his hope both for himself and for
his people. At every step of his own experience and of his nation's
experience, new visions unfolded themselves out of this vision. It
must be that all those various objects in nature which men were
worshipping, that all the living order of nature in which those things
were comprehended, proceeded from this living Word. It must be that
all the races of men, all their politics, were under His guidance and
government. It must be that all the light that had entered into any
man's heart had come from Him. It must be that the darkness which was
in any man's heart had come from rebellion against Him.
In various ways and in different measures this truth was unveiling
itself to the Prophets of old: I have had other opportunities of
pointing out to you the steps of its manifestation. When I quoted the
first fourteen verses of St. John's Gospel, at the close of my last
sermon, I wished to show you that he had gathered up into one distinct
statement, one full revelation, that which it had taken ages to spell
out. I wished you to feel that there was, in one sense, no novelty in
his proclamation, because he was saying that which was implied in all
the past history and literature of his people; yet that there was, in
another sense, the most important novelty, because that which had been
implied could now for the first time be expressed. I hinted to you
that in this case, as in every case, the expression did not come, till
all the doubts which called for the expression had been awakened, and
had become clamorous. In fact, these doubts were leading Jews,
heathens, disciples of Jesus, very near indeed to the gulf of atheism.
Was there an absolute Being dwelling in His own perfection? Was there
a Word who uttered His mind? How was this duality compatible with the
unity of the divine nature? Here was the first grand difficulty, one
which did not more exercise the Jew, who had lived to proclaim that
unity as the primary truth of the universe, than the Gentile
philosopher who had arrived at it as a final result, as an escape from
the polytheism which the vulgar must still be left to believe in. St.
John uses no such phrases as unity or duality. We have the broad, old,
simple Hebrew language, the language for human beings, not for
speculators. We hear of a living God, not of a notion. And this God
is, as the old record had said, a Creator. Men had been asking in all
countries how is the world related to God? Did He make it as an
artificer makes a dead instrument? Did it flow from Him as a thought
flows from the meditative man? Or is it self-made? Is God Himself a
part of it, merely the spring of its movements? St. John answers,
'_The world was made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made
that was made. In Him was life._' It was no dead instrument turned
forth by a mechanist. It was no part of Himself. It was no order
moving by itself without Him. It was a world of living, productive
forces, governed by a Person. His own life was quickening the
movements of His creatures; His own wisdom was directing them. The
philosophical puzzle is met by words which, I think, you will find are
adapted to the physical science of the nineteenth century, as much as
they were to the theological doubts of the first century; which show
where theology and physical science meet, how they are distinguished,
how they are reconciled. And yet the language is still the child's
language, the fisherman's language. It is Moses, not Plato, who is
revived in the Ephesian teacher.
Then come verses which meet the troubles of the heart and conscience
of man, as those meet the troubles of his intellect,--which speak to
him of himself, as those speak of the world. How simple they are! How
entirely they accord with what I have been showing you were the
thoughts of old Patriarchs and Prophets! And yet what worlds of
speculation they encounter! what theories about the conscience they
come in contact with! what webs of mythology they unravel! Above all,
how they explain the thoughts of those who cannot reason, and yet are
subject to those laws about which all reasoning is conversant! '_In
Him was life, and the life was the light of men: and the light shineth
in darkness, and the darkness does not take it down into itself._'
What have not those words been to men, who have been for years trying
to reconcile the contradictory phenomena of their own spirits! 'Word
of God, thy light has been shining in me, flashing into my heart,
discovering the dark places and passages there! The darkness tries to
comprehend, to hide, to quench thy light! Thanks be to Thee, it
cannot.'
The transition appears great from this sentence--so general, yet so
individual,--concerning the beginning of the world and the latest days
of it--to the words, '_There was a man sent from God, whose name was
John_.' No doubt we are reminded by the change that the writer
belonged to a particular age--to an age in which there were many
disciples of John the Baptist still alive, who were inclined to claim
for him the very highest honour that could belong to a divine
messenger.[2] The Apostle was especially likely to know what followers
of the Baptist would say and feel respecting him, since he had
probably been one of them. But he does not forget the subject with
which he was occupied before, when he turns to his old master and to
those who were paying him an extravagant homage. He introduces John
that he may declare what every man sent from God in the former times
had done,--what every such man in that time, in all time to come, must
do: '_The same came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the
Light, that all men through him might believe_.' 'You who listened to
John, if there are any of you yet on earth, what was the effect of
his speech, his look, his baptism upon you? I will tell you what it
was upon me. As he said "_Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand_," my darkness was revealed to me. That darkness was discovered
by the divine light of which he spoke. He came to bear witness of this
light, that you and I might believe in it.' Here was one mighty,
unspeakable cause of gratitude to him. But, '_He was not that Light,
but was sent that he might witness of the Light_.' So was it with John
preaching by the side of Jordan. Was the saying less true of Jeremiah
preaching beside the temple that was to be desolate, of Ezekiel
preaching by the river Chebar? Was it less true of St. Peter on the
day of Pentecost, of St. Paul at Antioch? Was it less true of Bernard,
of Francis of Assisi, of Luther, of any man who in later days has
awakened men out of a slumber of death? What can be said of each
except this: '_The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the
Light_'? What would each have said of himself but this: '_I am not
that Light, but am come that I may bear witness of that Light_'?
[2] There could be few, if any, such left in the century to which the
Gospel is assigned by those who deny it to St. John.
The Apostle says this; but he has something greater and deeper to say.
He says, '_That was the true Light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world_.' 'We may have felt, when we heard the preacher
in the wilderness, as if there were some new light shining then for
the first time into our hearts. We may have supposed it was kindled by
the speaker. But no star arose in the firmament at his bidding; that
which struck us with such wonder had been with us from our birth. When
any man comes into this order of ours, he finds the Word there.' '_He
was in the world, and the world was made by Him and the world knew Him
not._' Think of all the strange dreams of immortality that have
visited human beings; their sense of a law of right and wrong; their
acknowledgment of powers which assert the right and avenge the wrong!
Think how these great facts of humanity have affected the condition of
men in every region of the world,--how politics, legislation, civil
society, have been shaped by them! Think of the confusions respecting
immortality, respecting the boundaries of right and wrong, respecting
the justice and injustice of the invisible kings and judges whose
power has been confessed and feared! Think of the superstitions,
oppressions, slaveries, that have grown out of these confusions! And
then read once again this sentence, '_He was in the world_'--He from
whom light came--'_and the world was made by Him, and the world knew
Him not_.' See if you have not there the clear, scientific explanation
of these strange facts; the universal law which tells you how they
could exist together. See if that scientific explanation, that
universal law, is not brought to an experimental test; so that every
man, every child may know, from that which has passed in himself, what
it means. '_He came unto His own, and His own received Him not._' The
light came into men's hearts, as into its proper native
dwelling-place. The Word from whom that light issued asserted His
right over all the feelings, instincts, impulses, determinations of
these hearts, as over His own rightful domestics and subjects. But the
light was repelled; the rightful Ruler was treated as an intruder by
these domestics and subjects. There was anarchy and rebellion, where
there should have been subordination and harmony. A usurper had
reduced those into slavery who would not have the service which is
freedom. '_But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to_
_become sons of God; which were born, not of flesh, nor of blood, nor
of the will of man, but of God._' The last words seemed to speak of an
order subverted, of a creation which had lost its centre. These
declare that the order was preserved; that the centre still proved its
power to attract, and to retain in their orbits, the bodies which were
intended to move around it. There were those that confessed the Light;
there were those that entertained it, that sought to walk in it. There
were those who submitted themselves to the government of their true
Ruler. And they attained the stature of men; they learnt themselves,
they manifested to others whence they had come, what was their
parentage. '_To them gave He power to become sons of God._' They were
sons of men, born to the same condition as others of their kind; but
He made them know that in their inmost being they were not born of
earthly or human seed, but had their life from above, from Him who
liveth and abideth for ever.
Up to this point, I conceive, the Evangelist has not even touched upon
any principle or fact specially belonging to the Christian theology,
to the new dispensation. He has been unfolding the principle of the
old. He has been discoursing of that law and government under which
all had lived, whether they were prophets or people, whether they were
true prophets or false, whether they were Gentiles or Jews. He has
claimed the high prerogative of a Jew, the prerogative of interpreting
the condition of mankind; of declaring in what relation those stood to
God who had been ignorant of their relation, or who had seen it dimly,
or had denied it. Even when he speaks of John, it is as the Prophet of
the old world; as winding up the witness which previous Prophets had
borne to the Word, from which all the light that was in them had
streamed out. He says nothing yet of any future Teacher to whom John
pointed. And, as we shall see hereafter, when he does come, in due
order, to the part of John's teaching in which he spoke of One whose
shoe's latchet he was not worthy to unloose, it is that he may quote
the memorable language, '_He that cometh after me is preferred before
me; for He was before me. And of His fulness have all we received, and
grace answering to grace._' You cannot hear that fragment of a divine
discourse without perceiving that the object of the Evangelist is to
carry us into the past before he speaks of the future; that he regards
the especial grandeur of the new time as this, that it reveals that
which had been of old, that which had been from the beginning. But it
was absolutely necessary to the coherency and continuity of the
Apostle's statement that he should not introduce these words of the
Baptist--wonderfully as they illustrate the account of his mission
which had been given previously--till he had first made that
announcement which is contained in the text: '_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_.'
This, my brethren, I regard not as the text of my sermon, but of St.
John's Gospel. I conceive that Gospel is nothing more nor less than
the setting forth how Jesus Christ proved Himself in human flesh to be
that Word of God in whom was life, and whose life was the light of
men, who had been in the world, and by whom the world was made, and
whom the world knew not; how in that flesh He manifested forth the
glory as of the only-begotten of the Father; how He manifested the
fulness of grace and truth. It is because the theology of St. John
comes forth in these human facts that I affirmed it to be a theology
not merely different from the systematic school theology, but the
great deliverance from it. I should, therefore, be departing from my
object and belying my professions, if instead of waiting for the
gradual discovery of the meaning of these words in St. John's story, I
began with thrusting my own meaning into them. All I ought to do,--and
this I must do, for the very purpose of showing you how strict and
beautiful the Apostle's method is, and how much wrong we do to
ourselves and him when we forsake it,--is to point out, very shortly,
the connexion which I trace between this verse and the one that
immediately precedes it.
The Evangelist had said of those who received the Word, '_to them,
gave He power to become the sons of God_.' A new expression--to a
certain extent, a new thought--is brought before us here. We had heard
of the Word as One in whom is life; we had heard that His life was the
light of men. All the language concerning Him had been such as
applies--not to an abstraction, not to an essence, but--to a Person.
But now it is said that those who accept His government, who are
penetrated by His light, acquire a _power_ which they had not before.
They discover a _relation_ which had been hidden from them. It was the
greatest of all their earthly blessings that they had fathers
according to the flesh. A higher blessing is conferred upon them now;
they can act as if they had a heavenly Father. _As if_ they had a
heavenly Father! But are they never to know certainly whether they
have or not? Is the power of becoming sons not to be associated with
the clear consciousness that this is their proper and original state?
'_The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us._' He became a man among
men. We beheld Him, and we know that He was--what He told us that He
was--not an independent Being, but a Son. He was not merely a Light of
lights. We are sure that He was the ground of all human sonship; that
He was the only-begotten of a Father. That higher, more blessed, more
perfect name thenceforth mingled itself with all our thoughts of that
God whom no man hath seen or can see; it turned our thoughts into
trust and worship. The Absolute Truth and Goodness shone forth through
Him. The only-Begotten revealed Him who had been from the beginning.
He opened a new dispensation, because He made us know that God who had
been speaking to us in the old.
DISCOURSE III.
THE TEACHING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
[Lincoln's Inn, 2d Sunday in Lent, February 17, 1856.]
ST. JOHN I. 29.
_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 the Baptist is represented throughout this chapter as speaking of
One who had been before him, though He was coming after him. This is
the burden of his discourse. It has been asked by the bold critics of
another country, whether such language does not presume a belief in
the preexistence of our Lord, which might belong to one of his
apostles, but could scarcely belong to his forerunner. English divines
ordinarily reply, that the question is one which cannot be
entertained. 'How can we dispute the right of the Divine Wisdom to
make a special revelation of this doctrine to one person or to
another?'
This may be the right method of treating such an objection; but if the
remarks which I made in my two last sermons were true, we are not
under any necessity of resorting to it. I endeavoured to show you that
the principle which St. John asserts in the opening verses of his
Gospel, was far from being characteristically a doctrine of the New
Testament. It belongs to the Old. It is involved in the words, acts,
lives of the Jewish Prophets. It could not indeed be enunciated by
them as it is enunciated by the beloved disciple. There is a largeness
in it which could not be fully realized till the barrier between Jews
and Gentiles had been broken down. Still it was as a Jew--as an
interpreter of the Jewish records--that the writer of the fourth
Gospel spoke of the Word of God. He was not using new language, which
would have startled his hearers. He was expressing, in simple and
familiar language, what others of his countrymen had hidden from the
vulgar under learned phrases and dark conceits. Why is it difficult to
believe that, in doing so, he was recording some of the lessons which
he had first received from the preacher in the wilderness? Was it
strange that he, the last of the Prophets, should utter in more
distinct terms that which all the Prophets before him had been
imperfectly uttering? External evidence would be in favour of such a
supposition. The Baptist was a contemporary of teachers who
notoriously spoke of the light in men's hearts and of the Word from
whom it issued. Many of _his_ disciples became, we know, afterwards
blended with _their_ disciples. There was, however, one all-important
distinction between him and them. He spoke to the hearts of the
multitude,--to the publicans and the soldiers; they spoke to students.
He appealed to those who were conscious of folly and sin; they spoke
of the illumination which was granted to the righteous and the wise.
And that is just the difference which we have recognised between the
statements of the Apostle, the disciple of the Baptist, and those
Alexandrian teachers whom some suppose him to have imitated. It is not
only that his style is simple and childlike. Throughout he speaks of
the light as making men aware of the _darkness_ that is in them.
Throughout he speaks of the light as lightening _all_ men.
Are these reports of the Baptist inconsistent with those which we
derive from the other Evangelists? Are we not told that he came to
level the hills, and exalt the valleys? Are we not told that he bade
his countrymen not say within themselves that they had Abraham to
their father, because God was able of the stones to raise up children
to Abraham? What finer commentary can we find on these announcements
than the words, '_He testified of the true Light, which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world_'?
Still the reader of St. John's Gospel will continue to ask himself,
'Is not the lesson which I am taught here, in some sense or other, a
more advanced lesson than that which was imparted even by the first
Evangelists,--_à fortiori_, than that which was imparted before the
day of Pentecost, before the resurrection, the death, even the
preaching, of Jesus Christ?' I think, my brethren, that there is a
confusion latent in this word '_advanced_'--a confusion which besets
other studies as well as theological. We speak of Bacon's discovery of
the true method of physical investigation, as the greatest step in
advance which it was possible for the man of science to take. But in
another sense that discovery involved a retrogression. The schoolman,
who had proceeded with the greatest satisfaction to himself in
building a tower of speculations respecting nature, is stopped in his
work and bidden to look back to his foundations. Classifications and
generalizations, which had appeared convenient and indispensable, are
disallowed, because they hinder direct intercourse with the facts.
And the laborious collector of facts, though he is commended for his
diligence, is told that every one of them must be submitted to tests
before we can know what it is worth. Is it not true, in this and in
all similar instances, that the greatest progress consists in the
assertion and elucidation of first principles; that when they are
asserted and elucidated, all faithful effort is seen to have been
directed to the search for them,--all unfaithful, self-seeking
efforts, to the construction of systems on hypothetical sand?
Applying this remark to the case before us, I conceive we may freely
say, as some of the early Fathers said, that St. John's Gospel is the
most spiritual and divine of all the Gospels. And we may maintain its
claim to that honour, by showing that it leads us to a grand primary
truth, affecting all human beings, capable of being apprehended by
those who have least of what is called culture, capable of making
itself manifest to the consciences of the most guilty. Does not his
Gospel, _for this reason_, establish the truth of the other Gospels
and Epistles, which had been unfolding the ways of God to men? May it
not, for the same reason, have brought a number of false gospels to
the test, and have scattered a number of windy theories and popular
systems, which, under philosophical or theological pretences, were
separating God from His creatures? Nor can I find anything
inconsistent with reason and probability--or with the doctrine of
Scripture that the Spirit of God brings back to the remembrance of
those whom He is teaching the lessons they received, the states of
mind they passed through in days long past--in the supposition that
the Apostle owed his clear perception of this universal truth, in a
great measure, to the vividness with which the experiences of his
youth were revived in him; the sixty or seventy wonderful years which
had passed over his head since he stood by the Jordan, and saw the
shaggy form and awful eye of him who first spoke to him of a kingdom
of heaven, helping him to take in the meaning of the words which
seized and possessed him then, though he was not able to seize and
possess them.
I have been anxious to make these observations, because it seems to me
that the passage of St. John's Gospel of which I am to speak to-day
will be utterly obscure to us--nay, that the whole Gospel will be
obscure--if we forget them. St. John can in nowise separate the idea
of the Baptist from that of a witness concerning the Light, a
messenger to declare the divine Word that in Him all men might
believe. This he considers the fundamental, radical meaning of his
mission, apart from which his baptism of repentance had no sense or
purpose whatever. But to identify _a man_ as connected with this
teaching--as the subject of it--this was the difficulty. To do this
the Baptist needed a special, formal revelation, accompanied by an
outward sign. The baptism of Jesus, and the visible token that the
Spirit was given Him, are said to have been the assurance which was
required. While he was without it, he was a preacher of the Word who
was with God and was God. He was a preacher of a light of men. He was
announcing, as the prophets of old had announced, that a day of the
Lord was at hand; that there would be a manifestation of the light.
Thenceforth he began to mingle his previous message with announcements
concerning _the Word made flesh_. These announcements are not repeated
as if they were parts of a continuous discourse, like his words to the
crowds that had flocked to him from every part of Palestine. They
come forth as if they were the effect of sudden intuitions--lightning
flashes which must often have been followed by periods of dimness and
darkness. John knew that a crisis was at hand which would try the
hearts of all men. He knew that he was sent by God to speak to their
hearts of Him, as being the same now that He had been in the days of
their fathers. He knew that whatever good was awaiting his countrymen
must come from a fuller revelation of God. This was the preparation,
the only possible preparation in his own mind, for the recognition of
Jesus as the Christ,--the only way in which he could prepare his
countrymen for _such_ a Christ.
We are all aware--we dwell upon the assertion--that the Jews were at
this time expecting a Christ, but that their expectations were of a
wrong kind; that they pointed to a deliverer different in most
respects from the One who had been promised them. We cannot, perhaps,
exaggerate this error, but we may make considerable mistakes when we
try to state in what it consisted. We sometimes say that the Jews were
looking for a great _Prince_. Undoubtedly they were. If they read the
Prophets, they must have looked for a king. The other Evangelists say
that Jesus proved Himself to be a King, and so fulfilled the words of
the Prophets. We shall find that St John says the same. 'Yes,' we go
on, 'a King in a certain sense, but not a _temporal_ king' What! is
not our Lord said to have been born in the days of Herod--to have been
baptized when He was about thirty years old--to have been tempted
forty days--to have kept annual feasts--to have risen the third
day--to have tarried forty days among His disciples after the
resurrection? All the acts which are recorded of Him in the Gospels
were acts done in time. 'Yes,' we resume, 'if you define temporal in
this exact manner. But the Jews thought He was to be an "_earthly_"
king.' And were not all the powers by which He showed Himself to be a
king, exercised upon earth for the sons of earth, for the removal of
the plagues and diseases to which earth is liable? We make another
experiment. We say, they supposed that He was to be a _Jewish_ king.
Could they suppose otherwise? Was not David to have an heir to his
throne? Do not the Evangelists take pains to speak of their Master as
the Son of David?
The Jews of that time cannot be fairly condemned on these grounds; and
yet our conviction that they were under some grievous mistake, gains
strength from all we read of them--nay, from our very failures to
define the quality of it. May not St. John himself explain the error
which had caused him such unspeakable sorrow, better than we can? Have
we not the explanation here?
The Jews looked for one who was _coming_ to be a leader and deliverer.
He might come with the manifest tokens of royalty. He might come as
one of the old prophets had come. It was not impossible that he might
be born in some humble station, for David had been a shepherd. It was
probable that he would be born in a lowly _village_, for Bethlehem was
associated with the name of David. He _might_ be this John, for his
coarse food and raiment certainly did not show him not to be an
Elijah, or an Isaiah, or a Daniel. And John had given this proof of
power, that he was drawing multitudes to hear discourses that had no
apparent charm--that were stern and terrible. It was not at all
impossible, nay, it might be presumed, that when the Christ came, He
would introduce some new ordinance, or give a new force to one
already in use. The river of Jordan had a sacred historical
importance; to wash men in that might denote that he was preparing
Israelites for conquests like those of Joshua. No doubt, other signs
might be added to this in due time; there would probably be strange
appearances in the heavens,--some of the tokens which had accompanied
the rare visits of angels that are recorded in the Old Testament. For
who could tell whether the Christ might not _be_ an angel, the
visitant from another region? Who could tell whether He might not be
an old seer returning to the earth again? There were all these
possibilities. One was stronger in this mind, and one in that. Which
was the truest, the scribes hoped in due time to discover, by studying
the letter of the divine oracles, and ascertaining what particulars of
time and place were indicated in them as necessary conditions of the
deliverer.
What was there faulty in such speculations? What was there to complain
of in the test which was applied to ascertain their worth? St. John
suggests _this_ answer to us. They were expecting one that should come
after all prophets, not one that had been before all. They were
looking for a son of David, a prophet, an angel; they were not looking
for One who had been with God, and was God. They were looking for one
whom they should recognise with their eyes; they were not looking for
One whose light had been always shining in their hearts. They were
looking for a king who should reign over men; they did not think that
that King must be One who had from the beginning been the Light of
men. They thought of one who should be born into the world; they did
not think that He who was to be born into the world was One who was
in the world, and by whom the world was made, though the world knew
Him not.
It was precisely to bring this information, in the only way in which
it could be brought to any human being, that we are told the man John
was sent from God. And because the whole mind of the Prophet was
possessed with this conviction, he was able to receive the
communication which told him that a Man, without any signs of royalty,
without any signs of prophetical dignity, One who had apparently been
born and brought up in Galilee, One who had given no proof that He
possessed any power of commanding the services of multitudes or of
individuals,--was that Christ in whom all the characteristics of King
and Prophet were to meet. This Man, he says, this carpenter's son, was
He of whom I spake, '_He that cometh after me is preferred before me;
for He was before me_.' Possibly a better translation of the last
clause might be found, but the one we have is good enough; it conveys
the sense of the original, though it be a little diluted. The next
verse, as I said last Sunday, is naturally connected with this. Both,
I believe, must be taken as part of John's witness. Here is that
divine Word of God, out of whom all grace has issued. Each right and
true man has had some grace, denoting him to be of divine origin. In
Him dwelt that fulness of grace and glory, of which these were the
scattered rays. Then the Evangelist comments upon this witness, and
connects it with what he had said in the fifteenth verse. '_For the
law was given through Moses, but the grace and the truth became
through Jesus Christ._' Outward law, literal commands, tables of
stone, had been given through a mere man, a mere servant or messenger.
But all the grace and the truth, which were the essence of the law,
which could not be expressed in letters, but only in the lives and
acts of human beings,--these became parts of any man's character
through Jesus Christ. For these belonged to the nature of God
Himself,--these constituted His being. In Himself they could not be
seen: '_No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which
is in the bosom of the Father_.' He it is who in all ages has brought
forth the divine perfection, in distinct qualities, and has exhibited
them to men, and in men.
So far we have the testimony of John, originally addressed, it would
appear, to his own disciples--now illustrated and expounded by the
matured wisdom of one of them. Next we have the record of John, '_when
the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask Him, Who art
thou_?' They had a right to know. A new pretender had started up.
Slight as his credentials seemed to be, the people were crowding about
him. He was baptizing, not Gentiles, but Jews; he was treating the
most religious and exalted as if they were impure, as if they needed
the same cleansing as those needed who had not been born in the
covenant. What did it all mean? The messengers must get some clear
distinct satisfaction on this point before they returned to their
masters. '_And he confessed, and denied not, but confessed, I am not
the Christ._' The questioners must have been surprised. If he did not
actually claim a title which so many had claimed, they might have
expected a little hesitation. He might have left the point open; he
might have allowed his scholars to assert the dignity for him. There
was another possibility. Malachi had said that an Elijah would come.
John certainly had few marks of grandeur about him; but he dwelt in a
desert; he did not fear the face of kings; he could have denounced
Ahab and Jezebel, as he afterwards denounced Herod and Herodias. He
evidently understood the question literally, for the messengers
intended it literally. They supposed that Elijah had been carried away
into some invisible region, and that from thence he himself would
descend. Seeing, therefore, that John was not one who trafficked with
words in a double sense, or who would convey a falsehood in the terms
of truth, he answered to this demand also, '_I am not_.' But Isaiah,
Jeremiah, all the Jewish seers, had not only spoken of a great
Conqueror,--they had spoken also of a Sufferer. A few might try to
identify the characters. The prevailing opinion among the Jews was of
course then, as it is now, that they were separated,--one description
denoted a King, the other a Prophet. If he was not a King, was he that
Prophet? And again he answered, '_No_.'
The messengers have exhausted their guesses; they begin to be
provoked. It will not do to go back merely with a set of negatives.
'_Then said they, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them
that sent us: What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as
said the prophet Esaias._' You see how carefully he associates his
message with that of the old prophets; how confident he is that he is
preparing a way just as they were; how sure he is that it is the way
of the Lord--that wonderful road between the unseen Being and the
heart of His creatures, of which they had one and all spoken. So far
he was using language which belongs to every psalmist and every
prophet. In adopting the words in the 40th chapter of Isaiah, as the
description of his calling and his work, he proved more distinctly
that he was '_sent to bear_ _witness of the Light, that all men
through Him might believe_.' For the burden of that chapter is, that
Jerusalem should lift up her voice, and say to the cities of Judah,
'_Behold your God_;' and it is the beginning of a series of
prophetical inspirations, in which the Jew is represented as holding
up the true image of God to all nations, that the images which they
had made of Him might be confounded. John was preparing the way, then,
for a declaration or manifestation of God; he was clearing away the
thorns and briers which blocked up the path between the Word of God
and the conscience of man.
St. John significantly intimates how little language of this kind
could be intelligible to the Jewish emissaries, for he adds, '_They
that were sent were of the Pharisees_.' Very characteristically they
relieved themselves of the embarrassment which the Scripture always
caused them, when it could not be measured by lines and rules, when it
appealed to the hearts of living men, by asking, '_Why baptizest thou,
then, if thou art not the Christ, neither Elias, neither that
Prophet_?' They had an excuse for urging that demand. It was an
audacious thing for a man to practise such a rite, to press it upon
all, to speak of it as a baptism for repentance and the sending away
of sins, if he had not some divine authority for what he was doing.
Yet he had produced none. And now he refused all the titles which
would seem to have been the warrants for such an innovation. Nor does
he tell the Pharisees when or how he received his commission. His
answer is, '_I baptize with water: but in the midst of you there
standeth One whom ye know not; He it is who, coming after me, was
preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy that I
should unloose_.' More is not said here. The messengers are not told
what this Person who is in the midst of them would do, which John
could not do; that announcement is reserved for another occasion. The
thought which he still dwells upon is, that there is a mysterious
Being in the midst of them, their Lord and his; One who has power to
command, One whom he is bound to obey. By speaking of the latchet of
the sandal, he clearly intimates that this Person is among them in a
visible form. But neither in that form, nor in His own proper nature,
do they know Him. They would know Him as little if they were told His
name, if He stood out before them, even if He exhibited His power to
them, as they did then. I am warranted in believing that _this_ is the
sense of the words; for we shall find how continually our Lord resorts
to the same phrase in His conversations with the Jews, and assures
them that though they saw Him, they _knew_ Him not.
We have now reached the words of the text. They are carefully
separated by the Evangelist from the discourse with the Pharisees.
'_These things_,' he says, '_were done, in Bethabara, beyond Jordan,
where John was baptizing_. _The next day John seeth Jesus coming to
him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of
the world._' But though the sentence formed no part of that discourse,
it is immediately joined to the words which have recurred so often:
'_This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a Man which is preferred
before me; for He was before me._'
It is evident, then, I think, that we shall never enter into the force
of this wonderful sentence, which has exercised more power over
eighteen centuries, than perhaps any which was ever spoken or written,
if we take it apart from the context of John the Baptist's life and of
his preaching. All have felt that the preacher must have meant those
to behold the Taker-away of sin, who had come confessing their sins,
and to whom he had spoken of the remission of sins; that upon others
the words must have fallen as dull, dead words, in which they had no
interest. Is it not equally true that the words, '_sin of the world_,'
must have been connected by them with what they had heard of One who
was in the world, and whom the world knew not? and with what they had
heard of a light which lighteneth every man who came into the world,
and of a darkness that had not comprehended it? I do not mean that
this discovery to each man of his own darkness, this perception of a
light near him which he had resisted, this conviction in each man that
his sin _was_ the sin of the world, were of themselves sufficient to
unfold the infinite mystery which lay in the Baptist's words. I say of
them, what I said of the verse, '_The Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us, (and we beheld his glory, as of the only-begotten of the
Father) full of grace and truth_;' all this Gospel is written to
expound them. We must decipher them by degrees, as the Apostle and
Evangelist himself deciphered them; he will lead us along with him, if
we are content to follow. And do not let us be chary and timid in the
demands we make upon him. Let us endure no half explanations that rob
us of any portion of the meaning which must be hid in such an
utterance. Let us have no imperfect substitute for any syllable of it.
For the sake of our own inmost being, for the sake of our brethren, we
want the whole meaning in its fullest strength. If we are told that
there is One who takes away _sin_, we must not be content that He
should be shown to take away some accident or consequence of sin. If
He is said to take away the sin of the _world_, we must not be told
that the world is a metaphor for a few individuals. We must ask why
He who takes away sin is called a _Lamb_,--why he is called the Lamb
of _God_? If a lamb is associated in our minds with innocence and
purity, we must learn how that idea is fulfilled in _this_ Lamb. If it
was connected in the mind of every Jew with the sacrifice of the
Paschal feast, we must ask how this Lamb includes whatever is
expressed in that sacrifice and that feast? I do not anticipate St.
John's answers to these demands; but as he has himself excited them, I
am sure he will prove himself to be an honest and a God-inspired man,
by telling us how they were satisfied for him, how they may be for us.
One thing more he must tell us also, and may God open our hearts to
receive his instruction! John the Baptist says, that he had come
baptizing with water, in order that He might be manifested to Israel
who would baptize with the Spirit. Here is evidently the turning-point
of the two dispensations; here the teaching of John melts away into
the teaching of Jesus; here the witness of the servant is changed for
the witness of the Son. Seeing, then, that St. John takes so much
pains to mark this transition; seeing that the office of Christ, as
the Baptizer with the Spirit, is evidently that which he will
especially dwell upon in the after portions of his Gospel,--let us not
doubt, but earnestly believe, that what we have heard respecting the
Word will be a preparation for this more especially Christian lore,
provided we have not only heard with our outward ear, but have
suffered the light which is shining now, as it shone of old, to
penetrate our consciences and hearts, and to turn them from their own
darkness to the God who dwelleth in perfect light, in whom is no
darkness at all.
DISCOURSE IV.
THE LAMB OF GOD AND THE SON OF GOD.
[Lincoln's Inn, 3d Sunday in Lent, February 24, 1856.]
ST. JOHN I. 46.
_And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of
Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see._
I made no attempt to explain the verse which I took for my text last
Sunday. I merely endeavoured to show you how it was connected with
those which preceded it. I was sure that it would receive abundance of
light from those which come after it. A series of ages, I said, had
confessed the force of the words. We must take care that we do not
allow the strength of any one of them to evaporate in our hands.
Some have been surprised that John should speak of a _Lamb_ who
beareth or taketh away the sin of the world. Was there not another
image which would present itself more naturally to a subject and a
student of the law of Moses? Might not the scapegoat, upon whose head
the priest's hands were laid, over whose head the sins of the people
were confessed, be said more strictly to bear away sins than the
Paschal Lamb? Did not the scenery by which John was surrounded far
more naturally recal the animal who went away into a land not
inhabited? Why should the man whose food was locusts and wild honey go
to a feast for his emblem? Why should the preacher in the wilderness
think of the _Paschal_ feast, which belonged to the city and the
family?
A modern preacher would attach great weight to these considerations.
As a rhetorician, he would be careful to choose the topics which are
most likely to impress his immediate audience. There can be little
doubt that among (what he would call) the types of the Old Testament,
the scapegoat would seem to him far the most impressive. I am not
drawing too much upon your reverence for the man who was 'more than a
prophet,' if I ask you to believe that he may have had reasons, almost
as good, for his course. Some of these we may see more clearly
hereafter; one of them, I think, we may divine now. The disciples whom
John was addressing had heard his call to repentance, had received his
baptism of repentance. They had the sense of a sin close to
themselves, _in_ themselves. To men who have this awakened
consciousness, sin presents itself as a present burden; as such, the
most ignorant, the most simple, feel it and speak of it. We often
fancy that the conscience of poor men only responds to palpable
pictures of future torments. Multitudes of religious tracts and books,
Romish and Protestant, are composed upon this calculation; they are
written _for_ the people. There is one English religious book written
_by_ a man of the people, by one who had endured all possible
anticipations of future misery himself, the habits of whose school
would have led him to press them as the most powerful motives upon
others. The genius of the book has been confessed of late years by
scholars; its power has been felt by peasants in this land, and in
all lands into the language of which it has been translated, almost
since it issued from the writer's gaol. To what is the _Pilgrims
Progress_ indebted for this influence? Certainly to the strength with
which the feeling of evil, as an actual load too heavy to be borne, is
brought home to its readers. It is the man groaning with the burden
upon his back, whom rich and poor sympathise with, whom each
recognises as of his own kindred, who is suffering something which is
incommunicable, and yet which every other man is suffering from, or
has suffered from, or should suffer from. So it is with the tinkers
and ploughmen of England, when they are aroused out of their sensual
sleep; so it was with the fishermen and publicans who were gathered
about the Jordan. They knew they had a burden, an actual burden, upon
them. John's baptism had given them a pledge and witness that it might
be taken from them. Already it seemed to be lightened; sometimes they
could think they were free from it. How could they be delivered from
it altogether? To confess themselves to God was an infinite relief;
they rose up happier men. But did the confession really ascend to God?
Was it possible in deed and truth to approach Him? Was there nothing
to intercept the communion? Was there any one who could interpret them
to Him, and Him to them? Was there any one who knew what they were
feeling? Was there any one who could bear the burden that was crushing
them, not into an uninhabited land, but into the very presence of God?
For was not this burden, after all, a sense of separation from a Being
to whom they ought to be united, apart from whom they could not live?
Had not the light which had come from Him into their hearts brought
this discovery with it? The scapegoat contained, no doubt, a deep
lesson to those who pondered it well; but it was not _this_ lesson--it
was not one which those could take in who were feeling sin as an
inward torment pressing upon their hearts. The Paschal _Lamb_ spoke of
a deliverance from bondage; it spoke of a deliverance as coming from
God; it spoke of an offering to God. The thoughts which the name
suggested might not be distinct; they might be hard to reconcile with
each other. But the cravings which it met, though importunate, were
also apparently contradictory. It awakened hopes; the satisfaction of
them might come hereafter.
But if John had merely spoken of an animal, let it have what
associations with Jewish or with human feeling it might--let it be the
aptest symbol in the world--the impression upon disciples who had been
stirred in the inmost depths of their souls as his had been, would
have been a very faint one. It was because he pointed to an actual
Man, and said of Him, '_Behold the Lamb of God_,' that he spoke with
power. Those who were suffering from a burden might desire to cast it
upon God, might doubt if any one but He could sustain it. But who
could understand their grief, who could feel its pressure, except a
Man? All their sympathies and wishes pointed to a Man. Yet hitherto
John had discoursed of a Light and of a Word. To that message their
hearts had replied. It was that which had effected all the change
within them. Was he now altering the tone of his preaching? Was he
beginning to tell them of some one of whom they had not heard before?
He removes that suspicion at once. The old sentence recurs again, but
with a variation: '_This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a_ MAN
_which is preferred before me; for He was before me_.' He goes on:
'_And I knew Him not_.' This assurance jars with some of the
thoughts which pictures that are dear to us have awakened in our
minds. We can hardly separate the infant Christ from the infant
Baptist. We feel as if the reverence expressed in the words, '_His
shoe's latchet I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose_,' had begun
in the earliest years of their sojourn upon earth, and had been
maturing ever since. I rather fancy we weaken the effect which we
might derive from the artist's symbols, by endeavouring to give them
an historical value to which they can certainly make no pretension. It
is not that these pictorial traditions are based upon passages in the
other Evangelists, and that they are only at variance with St. John.
St. Luke speaks of Jesus as being taken by His parents into Galilee
after His circumcision. He speaks of John being in the deserts until
the day of his showing to Israel. St. Matthew interposes the flight
into Egypt between our Lord's nativity and His dwelling at Nazareth.
Both surely favour, rather than contradict, the strictest
interpretation of the saying, '_I knew Him not_.' I do not say that we
are absolutely obliged to adopt that strictest interpretation. But we
are, I conceive, obliged to conclude that no external acquaintance or
relationship had the least effect upon John's knowledge of Jesus, in
that character in which He was revealed to him at His baptism. The
Apostle is evidently very anxious to impress us with _this_
conviction. Few as are the words of his old Master which he reports,
these are emphatically repeated. It belongs, I think, to the very
design of this Gospel, to show us that John came to testify, first, of
the Light of the world, then of that Light as manifested. '_That He
should be manifested to Israel_,' he says in the next verse,
'_therefore am I come baptizing with water_.' That He might be
revealed as what He is; that through His flesh the glory as of the
only-begotten of the Father might shine forth; that the inward eye of
men might be purged to behold Him in His true character and in His
true relation to them,--this has been the end of my preaching, and of
the outward rite that accompanied it.
'_And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from
heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him. And I knew Him not: but He
that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom
thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same
is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record
that this is the Son of God._' That there should be an outward sign
visible to the eye, a Dove lighting upon the head of a Man,--that
there should be a Voice speaking to Him,--this is a great scandal to
many readers and critics in our day. 'Are not these,' they say, 'the
ordinary tokens of mythical narratives? Are they not what always
awaken our suspicion in the records of the Old World or of the Middle
Ages?' Yes, brethren, in the Old World and in the Middle Ages, men
alike felt the need of outward signs to testify of inward realities.
They felt it because they _were_ men, separated from each other by
place, by customs, by language, by religion,--but alike in being men;
alike in their conviction that there must be an outward world which
they could see, and an inward world which they could not see. It is
equally true that in the Old World and in the Middle Ages, the
sensible thing was confounded with the spiritual, the sign was
substituted for the thing signified; and that hence arose all kinds of
superstition and idolatry. It is true, also, that in those days and in
later days--in _these_ days most especially--people create for
themselves a middle world, neither sensible nor spiritual, in which
there are no signs, because there is nothing to be signified; in which
there are only forms and abstractions of the intellect, some of which
are distinguished as religious forms, some as ethical or
philosophical, pleasant to the vanity of those who have need of
nothing, and can keep themselves alive by talking and disputing, but
vague, unreal, utterly tormenting to men who are seeking a home and a
father. St. John does not dwell in this limbo of vanity. He is _like_
the writers of legends, in so far as he assumes that there are signs,
and that there are realities which correspond to the signs. He tells
us that when God was about to reveal the greatest of all realities to
the spirits of men, He vouchsafed a sign of it which was discernible
by the eye. He is _unlike_ the writers of those legends, in so far
forth as they rested in signs, or forgot in the signs that which they
denoted. The Dove is to him the sign of a Spirit, which would enable
Him in whom it dwelt without measure, to rule his own senses and the
world of sense. The Voice was a witness that a Man who had flesh and
blood was really and actually the Son of God.
John the Baptist has still more to declare concerning signs, and that
which they signify. He had baptized with _water_. The water had spoken
in language clearer than any which can be put into letters, of
cleansing, of purification. Those who had received it had come to it
because they were sure that they needed the blessing of which it
testified. They had come because they believed, more or less clearly,
that God had ordained the rite, and that He alone could bestow the
blessing. But the preaching of repentance for the remission of sins
had made them aware that the evil was in a region which the water
could not reach. Had it, then, been all a delusion? Was this rite, new
at least for Jews, a mere phantasy, less powerful even than the rite
of circumcision which had not prevented them from being treacherous to
each other, and from blaspheming the name of God? Was the stern
speaker of truth a mere mocker, trifling with the consciences which he
had himself aroused? If his baptism was from himself, he was. If it
was bearing witness of One who had come to men in past days, and given
them power to become sons of God, the baptism was good because it was
His sign and instrument. But the sign of what? Surely the sign of some
process that was taking place in the spirits of men. And if so, would
not that process be declared whensoever He was declared? Would not the
baptism thenceforth be the assurance that a power adequate to the
purification of that which was defiled, to the restoration of that
which was decayed--adequate to the renewal of the whole man--was
bestowed by Him who had in all times given those who received Him
power to become sons of God? '_Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit
descending, the same is He which shall baptize with the Holy Ghost._'
'_Again, the next day after, John stood, and two of his disciples, and
looking upon Jesus as He walked, he said, Behold the Lamb of God._'
The words, '_which taketh away the sin of the world_,' are not
repeated, at least not in the best manuscripts. They had been spoken
once. Now the Lamb of God had been connected with a new and higher
name. John had borne record that this was the _Son_ of God. All the
dignity and wonder of the former title were attached to Him still.
There was an awe about _this_ which must have made the disciples
wonder, but yet which attracted them. '_They heard him speak, and
they followed Jesus._' The story of their intercourse is most simple.
There is no mysterious concealment; there are no surprising incidents.
'_Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek
ye? They said unto Him, Rabbi, (which is, being interpreted, Master,)
where dwellest Thou? 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._' What is there in such a record to detain us for an
instant? Only _this_, brethren; it is the beginning of the history of
Christendom, of the whole new world. This meeting of these two
men--one of whose names we do not know, the other whom we do know to
have been a Galilæan fisherman--with Jesus of Nazareth is the first
step in a movement which has in some way or other changed the life,
polity, relations of mankind. If it is so, we may consider with
ourselves, in some quiet hour, _why_ it is so? Perhaps we may find
some other explanation than that which St. John gives--that the Man to
whom these disciples came was the Light of men, and that He proved, by
contact with those who had least light of their own, that He was
_their_ Light. Or perhaps we may find that interpretation, on the
whole, the best: and then we shall not seek further, but lay that to
heart.
The three next verses bring us a step further in the history; they are
still of the same character. '_One of the two which heard John speak,
and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth
his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias,
which is, being interpreted, the Christ. 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._'
We found how hard it was for the Pharisees to make out a conception of
the Christ, though they pored continually over the Scriptures, and had
a series of interpreters to assist in divining the sense of them. And
here this unlettered fisherman--unlettered probably in the strictest
sense--boldly tells his brother that he has found the Christ. He is
sure that he has. He can bid him come and see whether it is a mistake.
'What fanatical confidence!' every scribe would have exclaimed--nay,
did exclaim--as soon as he learnt what these fishermen were believing.
Should not most of us say the same if we spoke our minds? For what had
Andrew to convince him? He had seen none of the miracles upon which we
say the evidence of Christ's mission rests. We may be sure that he had
not heard Jesus say that He was the Christ; for He scarcely ever did
say so. And on what, then, was his faith grounded, that faith which
England has accepted for somewhat more than a thousand years? I do not
know, unless the Light of the world made him feel that He was the
Light of the world--unless the King of men made him feel that He was
his King. But I also do not know, brethren, upon what your faith and
mine is founded--on what the faith of all the men that have believed
during the last eighteen hundred years has been founded--upon what the
order and civilization of all the earth has been founded, except it be
upon that same revelation of a Light and of a King, which made Andrew
say these words to his brother Simon.
And now He who has received this name from a disciple, bestows a name
upon a disciple: '_Thou art Simon; thou shalt be called a Stone_.' The
creatures were brought to the first Adam, that he might say what was
the name of each. If this was the second Adam, He could say to any
one of His human creatures, 'That is thy name; understand by it what
is the work I have given thee to do.' Simon Peter, after many
perplexities and falls, did learn fully the meaning and force of his
new name. He declared to the Jews at Pentecost, he declared to
Cornelius the heathen, that Jesus had been proved to be both Lord and
Christ. A society of Jews and Gentiles grew up which recognised Jesus
as its Corner-stone. Lest they should fancy that he or any mere man
could be a rock or resting-place for them, he wrote an Epistle
specially to show that his Master is the Corner-stone, elect,
precious, on which men are builded together a spiritual house; that
such a spiritual house cannot be overthrown; that any spiritual house
which is built on any weaker foundation, which has any other stone or
rock, must be destroyed.
'_The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth
Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida,
the city of Andrew and Peter. 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._' Philip does not go
in search of the Lamb of God, as those did who heard John speak. Jesus
is said to find him, and to speak the words, 'Follow me,' which he
obeys. The effect is the same as in the former case--only Philip is,
perhaps, a little more courageous: he speaks confidently of this as
the Person to whom all the holy men of old were pointing. He speaks so
even while he makes the offensive announcement, 'He is Jesus of
_Nazareth_, the son of Joseph.' From what place the new teacher came,
was nothing to the young disciple. He had proved Himself to him to be
the King over his heart. Whose son He was called was nothing. In the
most living sense He must be what John had called Him--the Son of God.
Hereafter doubts and questions might arise upon these points; the
Prophet's words respecting the city of David might have to be
reconciled with this apparently Galilæan origin of the new Teacher;
explanations might be given respecting His parentage. For Philip all
this was premature and unnecessary. The deepest knowledge must come
first; the other would follow when it was wanted.
The same truth forces itself upon us still more mightily in the answer
of Nathanael to his friend: '_Nathanael said to Philip, Can there any
good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see_.
_Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith of him, Behold an
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael saith unto Him,
Whence knowest thou me? Jesus saith unto Him, Before that Philip
called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael
answered and saith unto Him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art
the King of Israel._'
Nathanael, who was apparently a Galilæan, might not have the same
prejudice against Nazareth which would have been natural in an
inhabitant of Judæa. But there is another prejudice, often hinted at
by our Lord, which is quite as hard to overcome. Can a prophet appear
in _our_ neighbourhood, close to us? Must he not come upon us from
some more sacred region? The Galilæans, who were despised by others,
must have learnt to despise themselves. All their habits of mind must
have prepared them to expect that Jerusalem, or some place near it,
would be the seat and birthplace of the great King. There was,
therefore, at least as much ground for doubt and unbelief in this
man's mind as in that of any learned scribe. Nevertheless he comes,
and he is hailed a genuine Israelite, an Israelite without guile. The
first title might seem only to claim the dweller in any part of
Palestine as of the same stock, a true child of Jacob; but that which
is joined to it marks out the man himself as a wrestler with God--one
who had sought to purge his soul from deceptions--one who believed
that God desired truth in his inward parts, and would make him to know
wisdom secretly. It was a wonderful commendation; but what was the
warrant for it? Till then Nathanael supposed that his face had not
been known to the speaker; how much less his heart. _Had_ they met for
the first time? Had he never sat and kneeled beneath the fig-tree, the
favourite place of secret devotion to the pious Israelite? Had he
never wrestled for light to himself, for blessings to his country? for
the scattering of its worst enemies--which were also his
own--covetousness, pride, falsehood? for the revelation of its
promised Deliverer? '_There, before Philip called thee, I saw
thee_;--I had conversed with thee.' Nathanael heard and wondered;
there was no more debating within him about Galilee or Judæa, Nazareth
or Bethlehem. A flood of light was poured into his soul, not through
chinks and apertures in the prophetical oracles, but from the clear
heaven where God dwelt. 'Rabbi, Thou art He whom I have sought after
with cries and tears, that none but Thou hast known of. Thou hast
often been with me before. I behold Thee now. Thou art the Son of God;
thou art the King of Israel.'
And then came a promise and assurance of a mightier blessing, of a
fuller revelation hereafter to him, and to multitudes unborn,
'_Because I said, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou?
Thou shalt see greater things than these. 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_.'
'Faithful and true Israelite! the vision to thy progenitor who first
bore that name shall be substantiated for thee, and for those who
trust in me in lonely hours, through clouds and darkness, as thou hast
done. The ladder set upon earth and reaching to heaven,--the ladder
upon which the angels of God ascended and descended,--is a ladder for
thee and for all. For the Son of Man, who joins earth to heaven, the
seen to the unseen, God and Man in one, He is with you; through Him
your spirits may arise to God,--through Him God's Spirit shall come
down upon you.'
DISCOURSE V.
THE MARRIAGE FEAST.
[Lincoln's Inn, 4th Sunday in Lent, March 2, 1856.]
JOHN II. 11.
_This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him._
The word '_Miracles_,' which our translators have adopted in this
verse, gives little trouble to a reader. He thinks of some singular,
glaring effect, which makes men wonder, and which they can refer to no
known principle. That effect he calls a miracle. To produce
astonishment is the immediate object of him who works it; to convince
those who see it, and those who are told of it afterwards, that he is
not subject to ordinary laws, and has the power of setting laws aside,
is his ultimate object.
Such thoughts, I say, are suggested naturally enough by the word
Miracle. It is otherwise with the word '_Sign_' (Σημεῖον), which St.
John uses himself. That word is simpler in sound than the other, but
it gives rise to a longer and more troublesome inquiry. Outward
display, the excitement of wonder, departure from rule, have no
necessary or natural connexion with it. The name drives us to the
question, 'A sign of what?' And all these qualities--supposing they
were present in the sign--would not help us to answer the question. In
the case before us, the act of turning water into wine--in which the
miracle is supposed to consist--cannot be separated from the other
parts of the narrative: together they constitute the sign. And to find
the signification of the sign, we must have recourse to the first
chapter of the Gospel; we must ask St. John himself to tell us why he
has introduced it, and how it bears upon the subject of the history.
'_On the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the
mother of Jesus was there._' On the third day, no doubt, after the
events which we were speaking of last Sunday. What were those events?
A preacher who had drawn crowds by his word, who had attached to him
some devoted disciples, had spoken of One mightier than he, who was
coming after him, but had been before him. He had pointed to a certain
man. He had said of Him, '_Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away
the sin of the world_.' He had said that he came baptizing with water,
on purpose that this person might be manifested to Israel as the Son
of God, who would baptize with the Holy Ghost. Two of those who heard
these words, we are told, followed Jesus. They invited others, saying
that they had found the Christ. One or two more Jesus Himself called
to come after Him.
What expectations were these men likely to form of their new Master?
All their deepest impressions had been received from John. Would not
He whom John declared to be greater than himself exhibit all His
characteristics in a higher degree? They had first seen Jesus in the
desert. Might not that be His favourite home? Would not He be more of
a solitary, more of an ascetic, than His predecessor? Would not He,
whose origin was said to be heavenly, be more withdrawn from the
things of earth, than the man who said he was not worthy to unloose
the latchet of His sandal? This was a reasonable supposition. There
was another, which would strike many as even more reasonable. The
Christ was associated with thoughts of royalty. He might be the very
reverse of John; not one who could converse familiarly with disciples;
not one who could speak words of friendly admonition to publicans and
soldiers; but one who would walk aloft, asserting the dignity of His
descent, claiming to rule the people, impatient of even seeming to
belong to them.
On the third day came a sign which showed how far either of these
expectations corresponded to the truth. There was a marriage in Cana
of Galilee, and Jesus was sitting there beside His mother. This is the
appearance He made to those disciples who had heard Him described by
such magnificent titles,--to those disciples who had learnt to look
upon the desert life, the life that is withdrawn from all family
relations and sympathies, as the specially holy and prophetical life.
And yet it is clearly no august regal marriage which is taking place
at Cana. A homely, rustic wedding,--one in which there is feasting and
merriment, but no pomp. To this He is bidden; and those fishermen who
had joined Him are bidden too. They are called His disciples. They had
but lately seen Him or known Him, but they are already fast bound to
Him. As His disciples they go with Him, not into a far-off desert, but
to a wedding-feast in a little town.
Here is surely the sign of a change,--a change the very reverse,
perhaps, of what we were looking for. We are coming nearer to the
common earth, to those bonds which connect the inhabitants of earth
with each other, to those which touch all earthly feelings and earthly
interests. The next incident surely does not weaken this impression.
The wine at the feast is said to have failed. We might easily have
formed some vague notion of a festival that was different from all
others, marked by no vulgar events; at least we might have wished that
these should be kept out of sight--that we should not be informed of
them. St. John, the divine, the theologian, does not indulge us in
this wish. He is determined that we should understand it to have been
an ordinary wedding-feast, at which men drank as at others. '_The
mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine._' Whatever meaning
we may discover in the words when we know who spoke them and to whom
they were spoken, they are plain words, the announcement of the
plainest fact. Some interpreters suppose that Mary only intended to
say, 'Let us withdraw, that the deficiency may not be apparent.' I
like their honesty, their determination to find the simplest sense
they can; but if we consider what _must_ have been the intercourse
between Mary and her Son for so many years; if we remember that a
crisis had come in His life, which must have appeared to her the
fulfilment of all her expectations concerning Him; if we remember that
He was now gathering about Him a set of disciples; it surely is most
reasonable to suppose that these words expressed her desire that He
should, and her belief that He would, put forth some unwonted power
which had been latent in Him hitherto. The old Scriptures told how
Elisha had used his divine powers for the relief of ordinary
necessities,--to heal, for instance, the waters which might have
poisoned the sons of the prophets. Was it strange that a devout reader
of these Scriptures should think that her Son might prove He had
divine endowments in like manner? It belongs to the very nature of a
woman, to the finest part of her nature, to think that power is best
exerted in individual cases, for individual needs. What we are apt to
regard as too mean and minute occasions for a divine might, she
measures by a wiser and more loving rule. The distinctions of little
and large are forgotten, as they ought to be, when the Eternal is in
question. The most blessed of women ought to have exhibited this
tendency in its highest degree. In doing so, she was not degrading Him
whom she loved and reverenced most; she was judging rightly for what
ends His powers on earth would nearly always be put forth.
But yet there _was_ a weakness in this feminine eagerness. There was a
thought that a mere circumstance or necessity could determine the
exercise of an internal energy. And this is what He appears to rebuke
in the next sentence. '_Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour
is not yet come._' A comparison of this passage with one in the
seventh chapter of our Gospel, in which Jesus uses a similar
expression to His brethren when they urged Him to go up to the feast
at Jerusalem that He might make Himself known openly, shows that He
designed to tell His mother that no events or outward motives could
decide when it was right for Him to do a work,--that the Spirit which
He had received without measure was regulating His acts--that He must
be always doing His Father's business. Such an intimation, conveyed to
the one who in all this world knew Him best, who had most inward
sympathy with Him, was no discouragement to her faith,--rather was
certain to awaken it. The power would come forth, not in obedience to
her call, but to a more lofty, more divine, impulse. She could say,
therefore, to the servants, without hesitation or anxiety,
'_Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it_.'
I believe, my brethren, that all these passages in the story just as
much belong to the sign, are quite as essential elements of it, as
anything which follows. Nothing can be more simple or brief than the
passage which comes next. '_There were set there six water-pots of
stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two
or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the water-pots
with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And He saith unto
them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they
bare it. 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, 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._' It cannot have escaped you how
carefully St. John informs us that not even the ruler of the feast,
the taster of the wine himself, knew whence the wine came; he merely
makes an idle, merry observation about it. Most of those who sat round
him were probably just as ignorant and as little concerned about the
matter as he was. The servants may have wondered at what they saw; but
their wonder had so little to do with the intention of the act that
the Apostle does not stop to notice it. Very little, then, of the
notion which we affix--honestly and etymologically affix--to the word
_miracle_ has any application here. There was no effort to produce
surprise; if surprise was produced, it led to no conviction. Not one
of those who tasted the water that was made wine, _simply on that
ground_ believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.
What, then, was signified by this act? What force lay in it? I can
only beg St. John to tell us. He says, '_This beginning of signs did
Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His
disciples believed on Him_.' What glory did He manifest? In all
fairness and reason, we must again consult the writer of the words
about the sense which he puts upon them. He had said, '_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_.' I said, when we met with this passage in the last chapter,
that it was evidently the text of the whole Gospel. The Gospel would
either show how the Word made flesh manifested His glory to those
among whom He dwelt, and how that glory was as of the only-begotten
Son full of grace and truth, or it would fail of its purpose, it would
belie its name. Of the Word it has been said before, '_that all things
were made by Him: that in Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of
men_.' The manifestation of His glory, we might surely then expect,
would include a manifestation of Him as one who exercised creative
power, as one in whom the Life that quickens all things dwells
inexhaustibly. One might expect that this Life, if it was exhibited
upon _things_, would still be in some very remarkable sense an
illumination of _men_. But one would be certain that that illumination
_could_ not be outward to the eye. As life is internal, as all its
movements and operations are secret, though its effects are so
palpable; so the Light which proceeds from this Life--that which is
emphatically the Light of _men_, as distinguished from mere
animals--must be light penetrating into the inner being, filling the
heart, reason, and conscience, scattering darkness in _them_,
preparing _them_ hereafter,--since the Light is not put into any one
to be hid under a bushel, but to be set upon a candlestick,--to show
forth what had so marvellously affected and changed them, to the
world.
Now, if we consider the sign in Cana of Galilee with these thoughts in
our minds,--which we have not invented for ourselves, but derived
straight from the Evangelist,--I cannot doubt that all its different
aspects will come out very harmoniously before us.
The first aspect of it is that which is brought before us in our own
Marriage Service. Christ is said to have 'adorned and beautified the
holy estate of matrimony with His presence and first miracle that He
wrought in Cana of Galilee.' This has been the conclusion at which the
reason of the most thoughtful men has arrived, and to which the
instinctive feeling in all has responded. If Jesus was the Word made
flesh, if the order of the world was established by Him, then His acts
upon earth would be done for the purpose of vindicating this order. By
them He would claim it as His. By them He would say that it did not
belong to the evil one. Marriage, as one of the fundamental parts of
this order, as one of the earliest institutes of humanity, as one that
had suffered most from abuse, would be one of the first over which He
would assert His dominion. And because the ordinance is one in which
all are interested, we should look for the assertion to come in some
distinct and yet very general way; not, I mean, in a broad
proclamation, or in a maxim which is forgotten speedily or frittered
away in the application to each individual instance; not again in some
case clothed with circumstances that take it out of the common range
of cases, not the wedding of a king or of a saint, but one of which
every peasant as well as every king might say, 'This tells me to whom
_I_ must look to bless my wedlock, because He is the Author of it.'
Then, again, that part of the story which refers to the mother of
Jesus becomes, I think, clearer when we contemplate it in this light.
Romanists are puzzled by it, Protestants exult in it, because it seems
to put a kind of slight upon the Virgin. But Protestants and Romanists
agree that Jesus had a divine Father and a human mother. If this act
was one of the manifestations of Him as the Son of God, can anything
be more natural or consistent than that it should be introduced by
words which declare that He could not be in subjection to any earthly
authority, while yet the act itself was an act of ministry to even the
commonest necessities of the sons of earth? Is not this apparent
contradiction the accomplishment of His work, the exhibition of Him in
His complete character? He will _not_ be the servant of His creatures,
not even of His mother; He obeys the Will, which all are created to
obey. He _will_ be the servant of His creatures: He is come into the
world for that end. He is doing the will of His Father when He is
stooping to the lowest of all.
But if this be our judgment of two parts of the sign, it must, I
think, greatly modify, if not alter altogether, the apprehensions
which we have formed of the third part, that which concerns the
turning of the water into wine. We cannot regard the main
characteristic of the marriage and the marriage-feast as being their
commonness, their similarity to what is going on in every part of the
world--to what is going on among ourselves; and then make the essence
of that which our Lord did at the feast consist in its uncommonness,
in its unlikeness to everything that is done elsewhere--to everything
that is done among ourselves. We must abandon one habit of feeling or
the other. Which we shall abandon depends, it seems to me, upon the
strength or the weakness of our faith in St. John's assertion, that in
Him who sat at that feast was life and that all things were made by
Him. If we take those words literally, if we suppose the Evangelist to
mean what he says, then we must assume that what happened then was but
an instance of the working of a universal law. We shall conclude that
all living processes--be they slow or rapid, be they carried on in the
womb of nature or through the intervention of human art--have their
first power and principle in Him, that without Him nothing could
become that does become. Such a belief undoubtedly carries us into
great depths and heights. It increases the wonder with which we regard
every dynamical discovery. But it does not interfere with any
discovery. It gives solemnity and awfulness to the investigations of
science. It forbids trifling in them. It stimulates courage and hope
in them. It makes all superstitious dread of them sinful. The Word,
who is the Light of men, will Himself teach those who seek humbly and
diligently to enter into those operations of life of which He is the
first Mover.
But there are other thoughts connected with this word _Life_, which it
is impossible to sever from it in any case, and which suggest
themselves more directly than any others when the subject is a
wedding-feast and the turning of water into wine. Life has a relation
to joy, which is as close as the relation of death to sadness. Our
minds become confused upon this point. We talk of the burden of life.
We talk of death as delivering us from this burden. But these are
careless expressions, against which the conscience of man rebels. The
Scripture is in harmony with the conscience. It speaks of our carrying
about with us a burden of _death_ from which we need to be delivered.
If it ever speaks of the moment of departure from the world as a
moment of deliverance, it is because, as the poet says, 'Death itself
there dies.' In creating the wine, then, which is said in the old
Scriptures to make glad the heart of man, which had been a symbol of
joy as well as of life to the heathen--the symbol of high inspirations
even when it was actually acknowledged to be the cause of the lowest
animal degradation--the Son of Man was claiming to be the Giver of all
joy, to be the Redeemer of all joy, even in its humblest earthliest
forms, from that which had made it base and inhuman. In what sense the
Source of Joy was also the Man of Sorrows, St. John will tell us in
due time. There is something which binds this very story of the feast
at Cana to His deepest sorrow. Mary has not appeared before in this
Gospel; she never appears again till we meet her beside the cross. She
knew that a sword was to pierce through her soul, at the very time
when she was asking her Son to prove Himself the Lord of nature and
the Giver of delights to man. One work did not interfere with the
other. He could not be really the Word made flesh unless He fulfilled
both.
And now, then, we may understand why we are told so expressly in the
text that '_He manifested forth His glory, and that His disciples
believed on Him_.' Who were these disciples? One of them must have
been that Andrew who told his own brother Simon, '_We have found the
Christ_.' One would have been that Philip who said to Nathanael, '_We
have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and the Prophets, did
write_.' One would have been that Nathanael who said, '_Rabbi, thou
art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel_.' Not one of these
had received a sign or a miracle to impart to them these convictions.
The witness of John concerning the Light, met by the witness in their
own hearts, the manifestation to those hearts that Jesus was the Light
of whom they had heard,--this was their preparation for the
marriage-feast and for what passed there. Because they _had_
acknowledged Jesus and _had_ become His disciples, with a feeble,
imperfect, confused knowledge of course, but with a desire of the
knowledge which they should receive from continual converse with Him;
_therefore_ the sign of the water being made into wine had a meaning
for them which it had not for others; _therefore_ it was to them a
manifestation of His glory; _therefore_ it gave them a belief in Him,
as answering to John's testimony, which they had not had before. An
outward exercise of power strengthened their belief in a power which
lay entirely beyond the region of their senses. They were sure that a
sign had been given them that He who blesses marriage, He through whom
all things live, He from whom all men derive their light and joy, was
actually dwelling among them.
I have been the more careful in considering this subject, my brethren,
because St. John records it as the _beginning_ of the signs which
Jesus did. It is not recorded in the other Evangelists. It is told
here as if the whole scene had come back to the mind of the old
Apostle; as if he had been at that feast, and felt himself transported
there again from his chamber at Ephesus. I think there must have been
a reason why that day was brought again to his remembrance, why he was
enabled to describe it so briefly yet with such distinctness. People
in that age, as we know from St. Paul's Epistles, as we might have
guessed if we had not this decisive information, were prone to set
great store by the powers which had been bestowed upon the Church to
manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit within it. From magnifying
the powers, they had passed, by a natural process, to magnify the
outward effects of these powers; then, to exult in them because they
were strange and peculiar. St. Paul had urged the Corinthians to
remember that all gifts were bestowed for use, and not for show; that
it was better to speak five words which could be understood and might
be profitable, than to speak a thousand words in an unknown tongue,
unless it were interpreted. In spite of these exhortations, the _sign_
was no doubt gradually losing itself in the _miracle_. The unseen
Presence, which could not be recollected without a sense of awful
responsibility, was far less thought of than the display which could
be made in the eyes of the ignorant. Whenever such a temper begins to
prevail, we may be sure that tricks, impostures, lies in the name of
Christ and of God, will spread rapidly; the spirit of falsehood will
creep into the heart which has confessed its allegiance to the Spirit
of truth. Ephesus, we know from the Acts of the Apostles, had been a
favourite home of the magician and the enchanter. In the first fervour
of their belief in Him who is the way and the truth and the life, the
Christians had burnt their books and abjured their lying trade. But
St. Paul, as he told the elders of the city, dreaded that after his
departure grievous wolves might come in among them. There was no
sheep's clothing these wolves were more likely to wear than this.
Reverence for Christ's miracles might be made an excuse for practising
all old heathen arts and enchantments in His name. How suitable a work
for the aged disciple of Christ to lay his axe to the root of this
deception! How fitting a thing was it for him to say, 'You talk of the
miracles of the Christ. I remember the first of them all. I remember
what it taught me then, what it teaches me still. It was not an
enchantment; it was not a wonderment. It was a sign of His presence in
whom is all grace and truth, who was manifested that He might put down
all falsehoods whatsoever, and who will put them down at the last.'
It was the beginning of signs. I do not say that our examination of it
will save us from the trouble of examining each new sign as it comes
before us. By rigorously adhering to that name, as St. John does, we
assume that each has a signification of its own. We shall find them
all very different from this in their circumstances, in some of their
internal characteristics. But I believe that if we follow out the line
of thought into which I have endeavoured to lead you this afternoon,
and if we make St. John's first chapter the expounder of his object in
every subsequent narrative, we shall be delivered from innumerable
difficulties by which the study of miracles generally, and of each
particular miracle is beset. To those who tell us that a Church which
can work miracles is a true Church--to those who speak of miracles
done with a serious purpose in former days, or of miracles done for
the amusement of men that crave for some new thing in our days--we may
make the same answer. The Scriptures teach us to care for no miracles
except so far as they are signs. Of what are your miracles signs? Do
they signify that the Word who was made flesh is not continually
acting in the affairs of men now? If so, they contradict those signs
which we confess to be true signs, those which have signified to us
and to our forefathers that all life is in Him, that all light is from
Him. Or _do_ they say this? Then they say what every marriage is
saying just as clearly; what our ordinary food and wine, what the
growth of trees and flowers, what the plough of the husbandman and the
laboratory of the chemist are such pledges of as your miracles can
never be. God may perform wonders to break the chains of sense, to
make us aware that He is always at work. We are sure that He will not
enact wonders to rivet the chains of sense upon us, to turn away our
thoughts from Him to some low earthly agent. Only a wicked and
adulterous generation seeks for such wonders, for such signs. The
signs which will be given to it, if it does not repent, are signs of
fire and of blood, the slaughter of the first-born, the cry in the
Temple, 'Let us depart.' But if we receive the beginning of signs
which Christ gave us in Cana of Galilee, all common things will become
sacraments of His presence. The husband and the wife will confess that
He has united them. We shall receive the water and the wine both as
His gifts. He will drink the new wine with those who come at His
bidding to give thanks for the blood which He poured out for the
redemption of the world.
DISCOURSE VI.
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE.
[Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday in Lent, March 9, 1856.]
ST. JOHN II. 16.
_Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of
merchandise._
The first three Gospels have been sometimes called the _Galilæan_
Gospels; the fourth, the _Jerusalem_ Gospel. The distinction would be
a very false one, if it implied that our Lord's relation to Jerusalem
was not present to the minds of the earlier Evangelists, or that St.
John overlooked His relation to Galilee. In the ninth chapter of St.
Luke's Gospel, we are told that Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem.
All the chapters which follow refer to events which took place in that
journey, and contain discourses relating to the end of it, and to the
city itself. In the thirteenth, we hear of His sending a message to
Herod, that a prophet could not perish out of Jerusalem; in the
nineteenth, of His looking down upon Jerusalem and weeping over it.
The climax of the narrative, not only of St. Luke, but of St. Matthew
and of St. Mark, is the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, to be hailed as
a king, to die as a malefactor. On the other hand, St. John presents
his Master to us in the midst of Galilæan disciples. He carefully
omits any allusion to the birth at Bethlehem; he records the first
manifestation of His power and nature as given at Cana.
But though these observations show how easily the supposed difference
between these narratives may be exaggerated and perverted, they do not
prove it not to exist. We have no hint in the first three Evangelists
of Christ's presence at any of the Jerusalem feasts, between that in
His twelfth year and that which preceded His crucifixion. The scene of
the most memorable acts and discourses recorded in St. John, is laid
at Passover, Tabernacle, Dedication feasts, to which He had come up
from Galilee. The three Evangelists speak of Him continually as
teaching in the synagogues; only at the close of His ministry as
teaching in the Temple. The second manifestation of our Lord spoken of
by St. John is when He drove out of the Temple those who were selling
and buying in it.
This narrative is the most signal instance of discrepancy between St.
John and the other Evangelists which we shall meet with in our whole
course. An act similar, in nearly every particular, to that which our
Gospel appears to connect with the period immediately after Christ's
baptism--before the Baptist's imprisonment--is said in the others to
have been performed when He was about to keep the last passover. 'May
not these reports,' it has been asked, 'refer to the same transaction?
Need we suppose that St. John troubled himself about chronology? May
not his recollections of events at which he was present have been
united by some other thread than one of years or days? Oftentimes we
may have observed how a word evokes a train of slumbering thoughts.
Why may not he who had just been speaking of the first _sign_ which
Jesus did, have been led on by that name to the question of the Jews
in the eighteenth verse, "_What sign shewest Thou that Thou doest
these things?_"'
Such a method of removing a grave difficulty might be reasonable
enough. But is there a grave difficulty--is there any difficulty--to
be removed? There is no internal improbability in the supposition that
our Lord inaugurated His ministry by one act of purification, and
wound it up by another. If we accept the one Evangelist as an
authority for the first, the three for the second, we gain, I think,
what more than compensates us for an apparent repetition. We acquire a
deeper sense of the meaning of the Temple, of the relation in which it
stood to the Jews, to mankind, and to Christ. We understand better
what the three Evangelists mean when they say that the disciples
thought that the destruction of the Temple must be the end of the age,
of their world; what St. John means when he speaks of the temple which
would be destroyed and raised again.
Some commentators upon the Scriptures, who really wish to understand
them, but who feel entangled by the habits and notions of their own
time, lament that they cannot reproduce the state of feeling which
belonged to the Jew when he gazed upon his temple, or entered within
its precincts. 'What help,' they say, 'lies in the descriptions of the
most accurate and lively travellers? What should we gain by beholding
them with our own eyes? We need to annihilate time as well as space.
The mind of the people who gazed eighteen hundred years ago upon these
spots will not come back to us merely because we are able to receive a
tolerably correct impression of the spots themselves.'
I confess, my brethren, that I am quite unable to sympathise with
these complaints. I do not think it requires any effort of
imagination to realize the state of mind of an ordinary Jew, as he
walked through the city of David, or stood upon the holy hill, in the
days of Herod and of Pilate. If we realize the state of mind of an
ordinary citizen of London, walking in our streets, or entering the
Abbey which contains the sepulchres of our kings and poets, we shall
not need any other aid to bridge over the chasm which divides us.
Occupation with everything that is before us, with the news of the
hour, with the private business which we have most in hand,
indifference and torpidity about the past,--these would be our general
characteristics. They may be varied by our greater or less interest in
architecture--our desire to maintain or confute some architectural
theory--by national pride, if we should be making our buildings known
to foreigners--by a certain painful sense that we ought to put our
minds into a sentimental attitude. Do you suppose the case would have
been different with the Jews? Do you suppose there was any charm in
the outside of the Temple, which forced a sensual money-getting race
into a more elevated or more serene habit of feeling than that which
we drop into? Do you suppose that their sacred traditions, their
glorious history, their divine calling, must have broken the charm of
custom for them, or have lifted the incubus of the world from their
hearts? If you do, you adopt a notion which the Scriptures confute in
every line. They never tell us that the gravitation of the Jewish soul
to earth was less strong than that of other men. They never represent
the Jew as wanting one bad and base tendency which belongs to you and
me. The evidence which the Bible has produced of its veracity to
people of all conditions, in all countries, the most unlike outwardly
to those of whom it speaks, is this, that it shows us creatures in all
_inward_ respects like ourselves, as little capable of being moved by
present signs or by records of the past, out of chillness and death,
as we are.
Accordingly, what spectacle is it which the passage I am considering
brings before us? The spectacle of no appalling crime, of none of
those hideous and revolting acts which we know from the Jewish
historian were perpetrated at the time, and in which the religious
sect of the day had its full share. It is a spectacle which had become
familiar to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which every Pharisee had
continually before his eyes when he went into the Temple to
pray,--most glaringly, it is probable, during the most sacred
festivals. Within, the priests offered the regular sacrifices;
without, in another part of the house, there was a market for sheep
and oxen; there were seats for the money-dealer. The practice was so
regular, so sanctioned by prescription, that no one thought anything
of it. The pious Jew was no more scandalized by it than the pious
Englishman is scandalized by reading an advertisement for the sale of
a living. If we have distinctions which satisfy our consciences
between the disposing of an actual cure of souls and of the right to
endow another with such a cure,--if a line, sometimes invisible to the
naked eye, separates the sin of Simony from deeds which laymen may
lawfully do, and by which clergymen may lawfully benefit,--the people
of Jerusalem had distinctions just as recognised, quite as capable of
being defended in argument. The _holy_ place might not be approached
by any profane feet; that was sacred indeed to the Lord. But the outer
court--why might not that be left for ordinary traffic? Perhaps the
separation of the priests from the mere throng of worshippers--above
all, from the Gentile who might be found among them--was better marked
by the concession of this privilege. At all events, it was a privilege
guaranteed by usage to the trader. If it was disturbed, would he not
probably become disgusted with his country's sanctuary altogether?
Might he not betake himself to some Roman temple,--to a worship which
was more associated with amusement, if not with business?
I do not know that this calculation was altogether a wrong one. I do
not suppose that if the Sanhedrim had chosen or had been permitted by
its masters to prohibit these markets, any moral benefit would have
been gained for the nation. For what had made the Temple holy and dear
to any Jew of that day or of former days? Not its situation, not its
having been built by the wise king, not its having been restored after
the captivity, not the goodly stones with which Herod had adorned it.
No! but the sense of an invisible glory; the belief that God--whom no
man had seen at any time--had been pleased to meet His people there.
Could any Jewish laws restore this conviction when it had departed?
Could regulations to protect a certain enclosure from pollution give
rise to anything, except despicable subterfuges, except the vilest
hypocrisy, when the only ground and warrant for these regulations was
forgotten, when those who would have made them as little confessed the
Divine presence as those whom they would have excluded. For this--this
was the secret of the Jewish desecration of the Temple. The priests
who ministered at the inner shrine did not, for the most part, believe
in the Divine presence more than the people who sold sheep and oxen
without. A trade was going on in both places. There it was a traffic
with God; here it was a traffic among men. The awe of One who dwelt
with them, who revealed Himself to them, whose righteousness was their
strength, had been exchanged for the fear of One who might call them
to account for their treacheries to each other if they withheld their
customary and toilsome services from Him.
The preacher in the wilderness had been taught that, when a nation has
reached such a condition of rottenness as this, it is not enough to
lop off withered branches; the axe must be laid to the root. When the
Scribes and Pharisees came to him, he told them to bring forth fruits
of repentance, fruits which would show themselves in the Temple as
well as the market. But he did not visit either the Temple or the
market. Jesus concerned Himself with both. '_He went into the Temple,
and found them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of
money sitting. And when He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove
them all out of the Temple, and the sheep and the oxen; and poured out
the changers' money, and overthrew the tables._'
Some who read this story say, that it offends their notion of our
Lord's dignity. Could He, with His own hand, chastise these traders?
Some say, it offends their notion of His benignity. Could the
All-Merciful exhibit such wrath against a tolerated, perhaps an
unconscious, profaneness? Before we consider these opinions, it may be
well to hear what the disciples felt, when they saw Him with the
scourge by whom they had sat at the feast, whom they had hailed as the
Giver of the marriage blessing, as the Inspirer of joy. '_They
remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me
up._' These words came unbidden into their minds. His look, His
voice, expressed all that they had ever heard of the vehement
earnestness with which kings and prophets of old had felt the
pollutions of God's Temple, and had sought to purge it of them. Josiah
and Ezekiel revived in Him. He had forgotten Himself. He was possessed
by the spirit that possessed the men of old. There was a fire burning
in Him that could not be quenched, till it had consumed all the chaff
from the threshing-floor.
Such was their impression at the moment. Looking back upon it after
all later events had interpreted it, St. John felt that this was a
manifestation of grace and truth, as much as the making the water
wine, or the healing the sick. For he had learnt that a gracious Being
must be intolerant of that which is ungracious, that a true Being must
seek to destroy falsehood--that falsehood most which is nearest the
heart of a nation, the altar of God. He felt that this wrath must have
reached its highest point in the most gracious, most true Being, in
Him from whom all had received their portions of grace and truth. He
felt that this wrath must have been least restrained in Him by any
thoughts of what would look well in the eyes of men. What were all the
notions which he had formed about dignity or comeliness? The Word made
flesh was making it manifest that every punishment of every wrong doer
was administered by Him; that whatever agents He may employ to purify
his Church, to inflict vengeance upon those who have defiled it, the
rod is really in His hand,--that it is He who directs and measures
every blow.
But St. John saw more in the act than this. He had said in his former
chapter, not only, '_We beheld Him who was full of grace and truth,
Him of whose fulness we had all received_,' but '_We beheld His
glory, as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father_.' He teaches
us to recognise a manifestation of _this_ glory, also, in the driving
the money-changers out of the Temple. '_Jesus said to them that sold
doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of
merchandise._'
The zeal which devoured Jesus was surely a zeal for the house of that
God to whom Solomon had prayed, '_Lord, wilt thou in very deed dwell
upon earth?_' It was for the house of that God whom kings and prophets
had worshipped between the cherubim. But which of these had dared to
use the language which He used? Which of them had ever said, 'It is
the house of _my Father_'? It was a _new_ name,--a wonderful and awful
name. And yet the whole force of the testimony which Christ bore for
the old building--for the house in which their fathers worshipped--lay
in this name. If that house was not to be a house of merchandise--if
it was ever to be that again which holy men had believed and found it
to be--this new name must remove its debasement, this new revelation
must restore its greatness. No other could suffice to undo the
hypocrisy of the priests, because that hypocrisy came from their
thinking that the house was theirs--from not believing that there was
any relation between themselves and Him to whom they offered their
worship and their sacrifices. If there was a man who could call it 'my
Father's house,' heaven and earth were not at the distance they
thought and hoped,--their Judge was very near. On the other hand, no
revelation but this could have brought the outer court once more into
union with the inner court, could have made both parts of the house of
God. For the reason why the people traded in that court, and felt they
had no business anywhere else, was that they had no belief that God
cared for them, or that there was any fellowship between them and Him,
except through those priests who were the barriers to all fellowship.
If Jesus of Nazareth, the poor man, one of them, could say, 'It is my
Father's house,' the publican might feel then,--even the Gentile might
feel afterwards,--that there was a house for him; not a place for
selling sheep and oxen, and changing money, but a refuge from the
weariness of merchandise, from the haggling and lying of the world, in
the presence and heart of a Friend who giveth to all liberally, of One
who is altogether righteous and true.
In after days we shall find the Jews felt the boldness of this
language, and made it their principal charge against Jesus that He
dared to use it. On this occasion it seems to have fallen dead upon
their ears. Their question is not, '_What sign shewest thou seeing_'
thou sayest this, but '_seeing thou doest these things_?' They meant
nothing more, I suppose, than, 'Why dost thou, a mere Galilæan
stranger, take upon thee to drive out these oxen? A prophet might do
it--perhaps even a zealot, if he was a Levite, and claimed the honours
of his ancestor Phinehas, might do it--but what sign canst thou
produce that such an office belongs to thee?' I do not find more in
_their_ demand than this; but the answer of our Lord refers to His
previous words as well as to theirs. He could not give them a sign
that He had a right to cleanse the Temple, which would not also be a
sign that He had a right, in the strictest sense, to call the Temple
'His Father's house.' You must recollect that this was the claim He
had to make good, if you would understand Him when He says, '_Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up_.'
The sentence was, of course, enigmatical. The Jews regarded it simply
as the language of a fanatic or a madman. '_Forty and six years_,'
they said, '_was this Temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in
three days?_' St. John evidently indicates that it was not much more
intelligible to him and to his fellow-disciples, when they first heard
it, than to their countrymen. But he says a time came when they did
understand it. '_He spake of the temple of His body. When therefore He
was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said
this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word that
Jesus had said._'
Are we to suppose that the _third_ day of the resurrection was the key
which unlocked our Lord's meaning? No doubt that was an outward help
in the discovery of it; but it would have been a most imperfect help,
if they had not attached a meaning to the resurrection which had
nothing to do with days or years. By raising Jesus from the dead, God
declared Him to be His Son. This was St. Paul's language to the
Romans,--this was the very substance of his preaching. By raising Him
from the dead, He declared that in Him all the building fitly framed
together grew to be an holy temple in the Lord. This was his language
to those Ephesians among whom the son of Zebedee was now dwelling. It
was the resurrection, then, which taught the disciples that the body
of Christ was that real temple of God, of which all stone temples had
been the symbols,--that in this only the fulness of God dwelt,--that
in this the prayer of Solomon, that God, whom the heaven of heavens
could not contain, would dwell with men upon earth, could be actually
fulfilled. Some critics say there is an awkwardness in supposing that
our Lord pointed to His own body when He spoke of destroying the
Temple; and that if He did not, the Evangelist would seem to charge
Him with using words in a double sense,--so deceiving His hearers. I
do not see why we should imagine Him to have pointed to His body; why
His eyes may not have been fixed on the building which He had called
His 'Father's house.' He did mean, that, if they destroyed _that_
house,--if their money-worship, falsehood, hypocrisy, brought it to
utter ruin, and it was at last given up to Roman soldiers,--there was
a house not made with hands, which was all that Solomon's, in the very
best and noblest conception of it, had tried to be. He meant certainly
more than this. He meant that they might and would try to destroy the
outward fabric of _this_ more glorious temple; but that in three days
the dead body would come back from the tomb, and be proclaimed to the
world as God's own everlasting habitation. You may call this a double
sense of words, if you like; but by _such_ double senses deceptions
are not caused or promoted--they are cleared away. The Jew was
labouring under a terrible deception; he was practising a continual
equivocation. The Temple of the Lord was a sacred place to him,--he
gloried in possessing it; yet he did not in his heart believe that God
was meeting His creatures, holding any intercourse with them, caring
for them. The building itself, therefore, acquired a reverence in his
mind which was apart from reverence to God, nay, fatal to that
reverence. God was absorbed in the Temple. The inward thought of the
priest was, that if it perished God would perish. Hence arose infinite
contradictions in his practice, alternations of scrupulosity and
profaneness. Now the money-changer is permitted to sit within it,--now
a cry is raised that a Stephen speaks evil words against the holy
place, and must be stoned. There was but one way of breaking down
this habit of mind: it was to affirm and prove that the Temple was
not a fiction,--that the belief of the elder men respecting it was not
a fiction,--that God and man were not divided,--that the prophecy of
their complete fellowship was not an idle prophecy leading to
nothing,--that men might draw nigh to God, as to a father, on the holy
hill of Zion; because there was an only-begotten Son, whose body was
filled with that Spirit which would raise it out of the grave.
No; our Lord did not deceive the Jews when He gave them the fullest,
truest sense of their own Scriptures, of their own calling and
history. If any words, any acts could have undeceived them, they would
have been His. Alas! when money-worship has reached the vitals of a
nation, when it has entered into the house of God, the very words and
acts of the Son of God may not purge it of its delusions,--they may
take their shape and colour from these delusions. May God avert the
_omen_ from our land, from our Church! May He enable us to believe
that every building in which He permits us to worship Him, and to
present before Him the finished sacrifice of Christ, is indeed the
house of our Father, because of His Father! May every chastisement He
sends to us, individually or nationally, be viewed by us as a scourge
with which He is cleansing His temple of them that sell and them that
buy in it,--of our corrupt traffickings with our own consciences and
with Him! May He help us to believe in Christ's incarnation and
passion, that we may attain to the full glory of His resurrection, and
may find in it the proof that His body was the temple of the Holy
Ghost, and that ours are to be temples holy and acceptable unto Him!
DISCOURSE VII.
THE NEW BIRTH.
[Lincoln's Inn, Palm Sunday, March 16, 1856.]
ST. JOHN III. 3.
_Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God._
It is undoubtedly right to connect the beginning of this chapter with
the latter verses of the preceding one. '_Now when He was in Jerusalem
at the passover, in the feast, many believed in His name, when they
saw the miracles which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself unto
them, because He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify
of man: for He knew what was in man._' I must ask you here, as
everywhere else in St. John, to substitute the word _signs_ for
_miracles_. Our unfortunate adoption of this last word--which cannot
be referred, as some of our careless translations may be, to the
following of the Vulgate, for it has _signs_--has sadly weakened and
perplexed the Evangelist's statements. _Here_, for instance, he does
not tell us _what_ the acts of Christ were which were done at the
passover. He does not say whether He healed the sick, or cast out
devils. He fixes our attention on this point,--that the acts were
received by many of those who were gathered at the feast as signs.
'_They believed on His name._' The word _name_, in every part of
Scripture, expresses that which is invisible. It is the contrast to an
idol, or that which may be seen. Even idolaters recognised the _name_
of the god as that which was expressed by the outward image, as that
which only the mind could recognise. We cannot, then, give less force
to the phrase, '_They believed on His name_,' than this,--they
confessed a power within Him which put forth these outward
manifestations of itself. We should not try to be more definite when
we are describing the vague feelings of a people. One moment they
might think, '_Some_ divine power is at work in Him; He is _a_
Prophet.' At another, 'He is _the_ Deliverer, the King we are looking
for.' The passover was a time at which such opinions were most likely
to be discussed, when parties were most likely to be formed about any
new leader. The words which follow, '_But Jesus did not commit Himself
to them_,' indicate, I think, that such a party was ready to gather
itself round Him. He did not covet their support. He did not show the
least desire to make use of their services, as one claiming to be the
Christ might have done. But the language was capable of another sense.
It might denote the caution of a chieftain who was waiting till he had
sounded the dispositions of his followers, till he had assurance from
some competent witnesses of their fidelity. The notion of such
prudence in One who came to give His life for the world, of such need
of information in Him whose life was the light of men, was utterly
revolting. St. John adds, that the reason of His not committing
Himself to this party was, '_that He knew all men, and needed not that
any should testify concerning Man: for He knew what was in Man_.' They
were not to discern and choose Him; He was to discern and choose
them. He was not a King that a faction was to set up; He was the
original Lord of men--ruling them not as a stranger, not as one who is
separate from them, but as one possessing the most intimate knowledge
of that which is distinct and peculiar in each man, and of _the_ man
that is in all.
That there should be many in the crowd at the passover--many of the
ignorant expectants of a Christ--who thought that Jesus had given
sufficient signs of His right to the name, is not surprising. They
might be all the more willing to recognise Him, because He seemed to
be of their class. But these signs had affected some to whom the
thought of a Galilæan peasant must have been utterly scandalous.
'_There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the
Jews: 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
signs which thou doest, except God were with him._' The words express
more than an individual opinion. Nicodemus must have been conversing
with other members of the Sanhedrim. A suspicion that a new
_Teacher_--perhaps a Prophet--with some unusual powers, had appeared,
might be diffusing itself through the body. _Whence_ the powers were
derived, whether the prophet was true or false, were still questions
to be asked. It was a further question whether the Prophet had any
claim to be considered the Christ. The people might easily arrive at
that conclusion; a ruler would be disposed to reject it. Yet it might
be the true one. Nicodemus would evidently like to know. He could not
take the rash step of putting himself under the banner of one who
might lead him to rebellion; but he would ascertain the fact
privately, if he could.
The reply meets the thought in the heart of the speaker, not the words
he had uttered. 'You wish to know whether I am about to set up a
kingdom. "_Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God._"' The phrase 'kingdom of
God,' or 'kingdom of heaven,' is one which is continually recurring in
the first three Evangelists; it may be said to be nearly their most
characteristic phrase. It is not characteristic of St. John; he uses
it rarely. But if we want a commentary upon every passage in Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, in which it is to be found; if we want to know why we
hear of it in connexion with the parables,--why the Gospel which the
Apostles were to preach is called the Gospel of this kingdom,--I
should point you to this verse and to the conversation which follows
it. Nicodemus was expecting, in some way or other, to _see_ the
kingdom of God. Signs were to show who the divine King was; He would
present Himself in such wise to His people, that they should have no
doubt of Him and His authority. All this he thought would be granted
by God, if He fulfilled His promises, and raised up the Son of David
to sit upon David's throne. Was the hope a wrong one? Could less than
a clear demonstration be a warrant for accepting any being clothed in
human flesh as the divine Prince and Deliverer? Verily, nothing less.
They must see the kingdom of God. It must reveal itself to them with
an evidence which they could not gainsay. It must lay hold upon them
as its subjects, _de facto_ and _de jure_, with a compulsion not
weaker but mightier than that with which the Roman empire had laid
hold of them. The arguments of the Christ must be as decisive in their
own kind as the arguments of the Cæsar.
But were they of the same kind? Our Lord says, '_Verily, verily, I
say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God_.' This language does not occur for the first time in our
Gospel. We heard before that the divine Word '_came to His own, and
His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He
power to become the sons of God; which were born not of flesh, nor of
blood, nor of the will of man, but of God._' Here is the announcement
of another kind of birth from that which we call the natural birth.
And yet it is not a portentous, _un_natural birth. If the doctrine
which is the foundation of this Gospel is true; if the Word that was
with God and was God is Creator of men; if His life is the light of
men; those who entertained His light, those who did not refuse to be
penetrated by His life, became what they were meant to be: they
fulfilled the purpose of Him who called them into existence. The power
which He gave them to become sons of God was a power to become _men_,
in the true sense of that word--to rise above the condition of
animals.
When, therefore, our Lord tells Nicodemus that only those who were
born again, or born from above (there is a justification for each
rendering--ἄνωθεν, perhaps, unites the force of both), can see the
kingdom of God, He tells him that the vision of the true state of
man,--of that order which is intended for men,--is only given to those
who receive the Light which lighteneth all men. Theirs is the nobler,
better birth--the divine birth; and theirs is the power of perceiving
that kingdom which surrounds all men, to which all are subject, but
which, being the kingdom of God, and not the kingdom of the Cæsar,
does not act upon men through material armies, and tax-gatherers at
the receipt of custom,--does not manifest its power and majesty to
the outward eye. This kingdom is over the man himself, not over his
accidents and circumstances; he must be a man, not a creature of these
accidents and circumstances, in order to see it; and that capacity of
being a man he must derive not from flesh and blood, but from the
Father of his spirit.
This conversation by night must have been remembered and recorded by
Nicodemus himself. As he repeated it to St. John,--probably long after
that day when he came with spices to anoint the body of Jesus in the
tomb,--the words which had been spoken to him, and the words which he
had spoken, must have come fresh to his memory; the meaning of the
one, the deep ignorance of the other, seen by the light that fell upon
them from the experiences and the revelations of after years. As he
was an honest man, he did not suppress or soften his own answer to the
'_Verily, verily_,' of Christ. '_How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?_' In
truth, he had no cause to be ashamed of himself for having stated his
difficulty in that rough way. To veil it under seemly phrases would
have been no evidence of enlightenment.
The Jewish doctors, it is said, not uncommonly described the Gentile
as one who became a little child, who began his life anew, when he was
received by baptism into the privileges of their outer court. If so,
Nicodemus must have been familiar with the expression; but it must
have been to him, and to most who availed themselves of it, a mere
figure of rhetoric--one of those counters which pass among religious
people, which have a certain value at first, but which become at
length so depreciated that they serve no purpose but to impose on
those who take and those who give them. However little Nicodemus might
know of Jesus, he did know that He was not resorting to figures of
rhetoric--that if He spoke of a birth, He meant a birth; and he must
have perceived that what He said did not apply to sinners of the
Gentiles, but to him, the religious ruler of the Jews. It was,
therefore, a good and healthy sign, a proof of the power of the new
Teacher, that he forgot the conventionalisms of the Sanhedrim, and
spoke out coarsely and naturally, as a peasant might have done. Our
Lord, surely, passed this judgment upon him; for, instead of rebuking
him for his question, He meets it in the most direct manner possible:
'_Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be
born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God._' The object of Nicodemus in coming to ask Him about His kingdom,
is still kept prominently forward; but there is a noticeable change in
our Lord's words. He had spoken of _seeing_ the kingdom of God; He now
speaks of _entering_ into it. Each expression may, unquestionably
does, involve the other; still they are distinct. To _see_ a kingdom,
is to have an apprehension of its reality and of its nature; to
_enter_ into a kingdom, is to become a subject of it. And then the
thought forces itself upon us, 'How can any one choose to become a
subject of God's kingdom? _Is_ he not a subject of it necessarily? If
God is the King of kings and Lord of lords, can he escape out of His
kingdom? Is he not bound by the laws of it, whether he likes them or
no?' We cannot state this difficulty to ourselves too frequently; we
cannot meditate upon it too earnestly. Our consciences tell us that we
_are_ the subjects of God's kingdom; that its laws do bind us; that
they avenge themselves upon us when we break them. But our consciences
tell us, also, that there is rebellion in us against that which holds
us so fast, which executes its decrees so certainly. This is the
contradiction, it exists--it is a fact, _the_ fact, of our lives. No
theories can get rid of it. But who shall tell us _how_ to get rid of
it? Before we can understand what could remove it, before we can even
ask with any seriousness to have it removed, we must know and feel how
deep the contradiction is. Suppose the government of God should be a
government over our wills, rebellion in those very wills must be the
most fearful we can conceive of. And the entering into the kingdom of
God must import the return of the spirit of man to its allegiance,--the
claim of a voluntary spiritual being to be under the will with which
it is its misery to be at strife. John had come preaching, '_the
kingdom of God is at hand_,' calling men to repentance, baptizing with
water, proclaiming One who would baptize with the Holy Ghost. When
Jesus says to Nicodemus, '_Except a man be born of water and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God_,' He takes up the
teaching of his forerunner, He expounds his act, He announces the
fulfilment of his promise. The being baptized with water, He declares
to be the act of submission to the Father of spirits,--the sign which
a man gives that he accepts His government, that he surrenders himself
to it. It is a surrender,--that is the only word we can find,--a
confession by the human will of its impotency. It must be guided,
governed, inspired, or it can do nothing, it can only struggle against
its blessedness. The acceptance, therefore, of this water-sign, by a
creature conscious of his own irregular strivings, of his separation
from God, is the expression of a desire that God would act upon his
will, would raise it to its proper condition, would quicken it to the
acts and impulses which belong to it,--in other words, would baptize
it with the Spirit.
We see, then, how water and the Spirit are connected with the entrance
into the kingdom of God,--the kingdom over the spirit of man. Our Lord
goes on to explain that He had used the word _birth_ in its relation
to both, not carelessly, but strictly. '_That which is born of the
flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit._' One
is as true and actual a birth as the other. The coming forth of the
fleshly creature into light, its beginning to breathe, the voice which
accompanies that breathing, are not more undoubted facts--very
mysterious facts _they_ must appear to all who reflect upon them--than
the coming forth of a spirit out of its darkness, than the sense of
light which startles it, than its breathings, than its cry.
I have introduced this thought concerning breath and the voice of the
new-born child, because it seems to me to connect itself with the
words which follow, and to remove a confusion which our translation of
them has introduced into our minds: '_Marvel not that I said unto
thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and
thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh, or
whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit._' The
philological objections to this rendering of the words are very
numerous. In the first place, ἄνεμος, not πνεῦμα, is the
proper word for _wind_. But suppose, by reducing the wind to a faint
low breathing, we escape from that objection, there is the second,
that πνεῦμα is used twice in the same sentence in different senses.
Yet this is a slight fault compared with the next. We actually
attribute _will_ to the wind; it blows where it listeth, ὅπου
θέλει. After this flagrant departure from all scriptural and
spiritual analogy, it is scarcely necessary to mention another, which
is, nevertheless, not unimportant, and is of the same kind. Φωνὴ is
the articulate voice of a living being; it is here changed into a
natural sound. Now, wherever violence is done to the truth of
language, I believe more or less of violence is done to some higher
truth. What need have we to introduce the sighing and soughing of the
wind, in order to make our Lord's explanation more clear and forcible,
if we understand Him to say,--'All the breathings of God's Spirit are
free, not fixed and fettered by material or mechanical conditions. You
hear His voice continually; but whence the Spirit comes, whither it is
going, you know not. And so it is with him that is born of the Spirit.
The process of birth cannot be perceived by you; you hear the voice
which indicates birth, you see the signs and tokens of life; but how
the spiritual being came to be what he is, you know not.' If we take
this to be what our Lord told Nicodemus, and what He is telling us,
are we not to learn that, at every moment of the day, the Spirit of
the eternal God is moving around us, speaking to us, acting upon us;
but that His mightiest operation, that which alone fulfils His purpose
towards us, is when He enables us to become the willing servants and
children of our Father in heaven?
'_How can these things be?_' asked the doctor of the Sanhedrim, in a
bewilderment which many of us can well understand. It was, indeed, a
strange new world into which he was transported; it seemed to him a
world of dreams, because he had been himself so much amidst dreams,
because he had known so little of realities. '_Art thou a master of
Israel_,' was the rejoinder, '_and knowest not these things?_' 'What
hast thou been learning all thy life? what hast thou been teaching thy
countrymen? Hast thou not been reading of an unseen God, who holds
converse with men,--of a God of the spirits of all flesh? Hast thou
not believed that this God is a living God, as He was when He appeared
to Moses in the bush? when He touched the lips of Isaiah with fire in
the Temple? Hast thou not understood that He is thy God, as much as He
was the God of any Israelite to whom the commandments were spoken on
the Mount? Hast thou not bidden the people of Israel of this day to
believe that He is _their_ God?' '_Verily, I say unto you, That which
we have known, we speak; that which we have seen, we testify._' 'This
is the characteristic of every true teacher, of every called prophet.
This has been the characteristic of John; this is mine. We do not
speak things that we have learnt by report--things that have been
transmitted to us; we speak the truths with which we have been brought
face to face.' '_And ye receive not our testimony._' 'These things we
tell you of, because they are about you, because you are created to
know them, and have fellowship with them. And you turn away from them
in search of things that are at a distance from you--of formalities
and trifles which you call by lofty names, which give rise to endless
disputings, but which do not concern you as human beings in the
least.' '_And if I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not,
how shall ye believe if I tell you of the heavenly things?_' 'If these
things which have to do with your daily lives, which bear upon your
ordinary business, which you can test by the experience of your
failures and your sins,--if _these_ seem to you incredible, how will
it be if I speak to you of God Himself, of His purposes, of His
nature?'
His words imply that He has a right to speak of these things also,
that He is _able_ to speak of them. On what ground could a power so
amazing rest? He goes on to declare the ground of it: '_For no man
hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even
the Son of Man which is in heaven_.' Of all paradoxes, this appears to
be the greatest. And yet if the heart of this ruler--if the heart of
any man--has been delivered from the oppressive fears and
superstitions that connect themselves with the thoughts of a distant
heaven in _space_, which looks coldly and drearily down upon earth--of
a distant heaven in _time_, which stands aloof from all human
sympathies; if ever the belief in heaven has been regarded as a spring
of hope and energy to the sons of men; if ever they have learnt not to
think of earth as a place in which they were to cozen and lie for
threescore years and ten, and heaven as a place to which some might
escape, if they made compensations to the Ruler of it for the evils
which they had done in the other region of His government; that
deliverance, those better and nobler thoughts have come from the
paradox which is uttered in this verse. Poor people--utterly
bewildered by all they have heard from divines and masters in Israel
about heaven, and the way in which they are to obtain heaven--have
taken this sentence home to their hearts,--that the Son of Man, He who
suffered for them and with them on earth, is He who has ascended into
heaven, and who is always in heaven. They have entered into the
kingdom of heaven with those spirits which were born of the divine
Spirit, as they entered into the kingdom of earth when they were born
of the flesh; they have seen the kingdom with the spiritual eye which
God has opened, as clearly as they have seen the trees and flowers of
earth with the fleshly eye which He has opened.
How He opens that eye, and what He reveals to it when it is opened,
the next words will tell us. '_And as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world;
but that the world through Him might be saved._'
How can I introduce such a passage as this at the close of a sermon?
Because I would not allow my sense of the immense worth and importance
of every clause, of every word, of which it consists, to hinder you
from tracing the method of our Lord's discourse. The question about
the kingdom of God lay at the threshold of the dialogue. Here He
declares how He is to claim His kingdom, to what throne He is to be
raised, that all men might confess Him as their King. Jesus might have
spoken of the exaltation of David or of Solomon as the pattern of His
own. He goes back to an older and sublimer event in Jewish history.
The brazen serpent to which the eyes of those were turned who had been
bitten by the serpents in the wilderness, the common life-giving,
life-restoring object,--this was the sign which He chose of that
dominion which should stretch from sea to sea, which should reach to
the lowest depths, and work the mightiest deliverance. 'You would know
if I am a King. You will see me lifted upon a cross: there you may
learn what I am. Whoso sees the Son of Man, his Lord and King
there,--whoso believes and trusts Him there,--will rise up indeed a
new man, will be saved from the plague which is destroying him, will
awaken to health and freedom. He will not perish in his wretched,
selfish isolation; he will have that life which is the common life of
all.'
And why? He will see there the love of God to him and to the world.
The only-begotten Son upon that cross will declare Him as He has
always declared Him; but the revelation will be immeasurably fuller
and clearer than it has ever been. He from whom men have turned as
their enemy, as plotting _their_ destruction, as pledged to destroy
the world, will be manifested as their Saviour and its Saviour. That
which has been the curse and misery and death of man, his separation
from God, his hatred of God, will cease for those who believe that in
this Son of Man He is making known what He wills, what He is. They
will have that eternal life of trust and love which is His own life.
And therefore He goes on: '_He that believeth on Him is not condemned:
but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not
believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the
condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every
one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light,
lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to
the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought
in God._' The belief that Jesus does by His cross manifest the tender
love of God to mankind, that in Him God's whole will and mind and
purpose are revealed to men,--this takes away the condemnation from
their consciences; this restores them to trust and liberty and hope.
And therefore, conversely, _not_ to believe this, is to have a sense
of alienation and distance from God, to feel that there is an abyss
between us and Him which has never been closed--an abyss into which we
are casting our sacrifices and works of devotion, in the dream that it
may at last be filled up; while all our efforts, being efforts of
discontent and distrust, efforts to conciliate a foe, widen and deepen
it. Our Lord pronounces this unbelief to be its own all-sufficing
punishment. 'The light is there; you do not love it; you fly from it.
What worse state can there be than that? You hug the evil deeds from
which you might be delivered. You choose the evil which is contrary to
the being and nature of the blessed God in whose image you are made.
What torment can there be so great as that?'
I spoke of the new birth, or the birth from above, by which men are
made capable of seeing the kingdom of God, as one of which those may
become conscious who are conscious of a rebellious will, and who would
fain submit to their rightful Ruler. This latter part of the dialogue
confirms and enlarges that statement. He who is bitten with serpents
may turn to the brazen serpent; he who has been alienated from God may
become at peace with Him. But our Lord's words also discover to us
another truth, different from this, nowise inconsistent with it. They
show us that our consciousness is not in any sense the foundation of
God's kingdom, that His love is the foundation of it. They make us
understand that the revelation of that Love is in very deed the
reconciliation and regeneration of the world; that we may claim all as
included in that reconciliation and regeneration; that our baptism of
water and the Spirit, while it gives all warrant for conscious
repentance and faith, must comprehend the unconscious, must declare
upon what their consciousness is to stand. They _are_ sons of God.
God's Spirit is given them, that they may grow into the knowledge of
their sonship, that they may be able to live in conformity with it.
The conclusion of this memorable discourse also takes off all the edge
which has been given to those words, in the earlier part of it, in
which it is said, '_the Spirit breathes where He wills_.' I have
treated that language as expressing the entire freedom of His
operations, His independence on material agents as well as on the will
of the creature. But if any one concludes that the Spirit does not
will that all men should believe and come to the knowledge of the
truth, he must deny that He is the Spirit of that God who sent not His
Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be
saved.
DISCOURSE VIII.
THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE BRIDEGROOM'S FRIEND.
[Lincoln's Inn, Easter Sunday, March 23, 1856.]
ST. JOHN III. 30.
_He must increase; I must decrease._
We have seen, in the first chapter of this Gospel, how much the work
and office of John the Baptist are connected with all the deepest
thoughts and announcements of the Apostle. The more we study him, the
more probable, I think, the old tradition of the Church, that he was a
disciple of the Baptist, must appear to us,--the more we shall
understand the cause of his anxiety to point out the exact relation
between his two teachers.
I have endeavoured to show you that it is not the _superiority_ of the
Christ to the forerunner which he chiefly dwells upon. That difference
had been sufficiently brought out by the earlier evangelists. He
insists that the superiority of the Christ rested on His _priority_;
that the later in order of manifestation was the first in order of
being; that of His fulness John and all previous prophets had
received; that of Him, as the Word of God, as the Light of men, they
had all borne witness. Whether Jesus was or was not the Word made
flesh,--whether He did or did not prove that in Him was the Life of
all things, and that He was the Light of men,--are questions which the
Evangelist undertakes to resolve for us in the course of his
narrative. Upon that point the Baptist may at times have had a strong
conviction; at times he might be doubtful. But that there was such a
Word of God, such a Light of men, and that He would make Himself
manifest, this was the groundwork of his prophecy; by this
proclamation he proved himself to be of the same class with Isaiah and
Ezekiel; by this he showed that a kingdom of heaven must be at hand,
in which the least might be greater than he.
How our Lord spoke to a ruler of the Jews concerning that kingdom, and
the qualifications for entering into it and seeing it--how he
connected it with a birth by water and by the Spirit--we have heard in
the first part of this chapter. The narrative which occupies the
remainder of it carries us back to John. Not long after the passover
at which the conversation with Nicodemus took place, Jesus, we are
told, went with His disciples into the country part of Judæa--the land
of Judæa being here set in contrast, not with Galilee, but with the
city of Jerusalem, at which He had been during the feast. '_There He
tarried with them and baptized._' This expression is used loosely; it
is qualified in the next chapter. '
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