← catalogue

Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke

by Alexander Maclaren · English · Gutenberg #8200 · 1,417,749 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke

Author: Alexander Maclaren


        
Release date: May 1, 2005 [eBook #8200]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8200

Credits: Produced by Anne Folland, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE: ST. LUKE ***




Produced by Anne Folland, Charles Franks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team











EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ST. LUKE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.







VOLUME I: ST. LUKE _Chaps. I to XII_




CONTENTS


ELIJAH COME AGAIN (Luke i. 5-17)

TRUE GREATNESS (Luke i. 15)

THE MAGNIFICAT (Luke i. 46-55)

ZACHARIAS'S HYMN (Luke i. 67-80)

THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH (Luke i. 78,79)

SHEPHERDS AND ANGELS (Luke ii. 8-20)

WAS, IS, IS TO COME (Luke ii. 16; Luke xxiv. 51; Acts i. 11)

SIMEON'S SWAN-SONG (Luke ii. 29,30)

THE BOY IN THE TEMPLE (Luke ii. 49)

JOHN THE PREACHER OF REPENTANCE (Luke iii. 1-14)

JOHN'S WITNESS TO JESUS, AND GOD'S (Luke iii. 15-22)

THE TEMPTATION (Luke iv. 1-13)

PREACHING AT NAZARETH (Luke iv. 21)

A SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM (Luke iv. 33-44)

INSTRUCTIONS FOB FISHERMEN (Luke v. 4)

FEAR AND FAITH (Luke v. 8; John xxi. 7)

BLASPHEMER, OR--WHO? (Luke v. 17-26)

LAWS OP THE KINGDOM (Luke vi. 20-31)

THREE CONDENSED PARABLES (Luke vi. 41-49)

WORTHY--NOT WORTHY (Luke vii. 4, 6, 7)

JESUS AT THE BIER (Luke vii. 13-15)

JOHN'S DOUBTS AND CHRIST'S PRAISE (Luke vii. 18-28)

GREATNESS IN THE KINGDOM (Luke vii. 28)

THWARTING GOD'S PURPOSE (Luke vii. 30)

A GLUTTONOUS MAN AND A WINEBIBBER (Luke vii. 34)

THE TWO DEBTORS (Luke vii. 41-43)

LOVE AND FORGIVENESS (Luke vii. 47)

GO INTO PEACE (Luke vii. 50)

THE MINISTRY OP WOMEN (Luke viii 2,3)

ONE SEED AND DIVERSE SOILS (Luke viii. 4-15)

SEED AMONG THORNS (Luke viii. 14)

A MIRACLE WITHIN A MIRACLE (Luke viii. 43-48)

CHRIST TO JAIRUS (Luke viii. 50)

BREAD FROM HEAVEN (Luke ix. 10-17)

'THE LORD THAT HEALETH THEE' (Luke ix. 11)

CHRIST'S CROSS AND OURS (Luke ix. 18-27)

PRAYER AND TRANSFIGURATION (Luke ix. 29)

'IN THE HOLY MOUNT' (Luke ix. 30, 31)

CHRIST HASTENING TO THE CROSS (Luke ix. 51)

CHRIST'S MESSENGERS: THEIR EQUIPMENT AND WORK (Luke x. 1-11; 17-20)

NEIGHBOURS FAR OFF (Luke x. 25-37)

HOW TO PRAY (Luke xi. 1-13)

THE PRAYING CHRIST (Luke xi. 1)

THE RICH FOOL (Luke xii. 13-23)

ANXIOUS ABOUT EARTH, OR EARNEST ABOUT THE KINGDOM (Luke xii. 22-31)

STILLNESS IN STORM (Luke xii. 29)

THE EQUIPMENT OF THE SERVANTS (Luke xii. 35-36)

THE SERVANT-LORD (Luke xii. 37)

SERVANTS AND STEWARDS HERE AND HEREAFTER (Luke xii. 37, 43, 44)

FIRE ON EARTH (Luke xii. 49)




ELIJAH COME AGAIN


    'There was, in the days of Herod the king of Judea, a
    certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia:
    and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her
    name was Elisabeth. 6. And they were both righteous
    before God, walking in all the commandments and
    ordinances of the Lord blameless. 7. And they had no
    child, because that Elisabeth was barren; and they
    both were now well stricken in years. 8. And it came
    to pass, that, while he executed the priest's office
    before God in the order of his course, 9. According to
    the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn
    incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.
    10. And the whole multitude of the people were praying
    without at the time of incense. 11. And there appeared
    unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right
    side of the altar of incense. 12. And when Zacharias
    saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
    13. But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias:
    for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall
    bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.
    14. And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many
    shall rejoice at his birth. 15. For he shall be great
    in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine
    nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy
    Ghost, even from his mother's womb. 16. And many of
    the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their
    God. 17. And he shall go before Him in the spirit and
    power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to
    the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the
    just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.'
    --LUKE i. 5-17.

The difference between the style of Luke's preface (vs. 1-4) and the
subsequent chapters relating to the Nativity suggests that these are
drawn from some Hebrew source. They are saturated with Old Testament
phraseology and constructions, and are evidently translated by Luke.
It is impossible to say whence they came, but no one is more likely
to have been their original narrator than Mary herself. Elisabeth or
Zacharias must have communicated the facts in this chapter, for
there is no indication that those contained in this passage, at all
events, were known to any but these two.

If we were considering a fictitious story, we should note the
artistic skill which prepared for the appearance of the hero by the
introduction first of his satellite; but the order of the narrative
is due, not to artistic skill, but to the divinely ordered sequence
of events. It was fitting that John's office as Forerunner should
begin even before his birth. So the story of his entrance into the
world prepares for that of the birth which hallows all births.

I. We have first a beautiful outline picture of the quiet home in
the hill country. The husband and wife were both of priestly
descent, and in their modest lives, away among the hills, were
lovely types of Old Testament godliness. That they are pronounced
'blameless' militates against no doctrine of universal sinfulness.
It is not to be taken as dogma at all, but as the expression of
God's merciful estimate of His servants' characters. These two
simple saints lived, as all married believers should do, yoked
together in the sweet exercise of godliness, and helping each other
to all high and noble things. Hideous corruption of wedlock reigned
round them. Such profanations of it as were shown later by Herod and
Herodias, Agrippa and Bernice, were but too common; but in that
quiet nook these two dwelt 'as heirs together of the grace of life,'
and their prayers were not hindered.

The most of the priests who appear in the Gospels are heartless
formalists, if not worse; yet not only Annas and Caiaphas and their
spiritual kindred ministered at the altar, but there were some in
whose hearts the ancient fire burned. In times of religious
declension, the few who still are true are mostly in obscure
corners, and live quiet lives, like springs of fresh water rising in
the midst of a salt ocean. John thus sprang from parents in whom the
old system had done all that it could do. In his origin, as in
himself, he represented the consummate flower of Judaism, and
discharged its highest office in pointing to the coming One.

This 'blameless' pair had a crook in their lot. Childlessness was
then an especial sorrow, and many a prayer had gone up from both
that their solitary home might be gladdened by children's patter and
prattle. But their disappointed hope had not made them sour, nor
turned their hearts from God. If they prayed about it, they would
not murmur at it, and they were not thereby hindered from 'walking
in all God's commandments and ordinances blameless.' Let us learn
that unfulfilled wishes are not to clog our devotion, nor to silence
our prayers, nor to slacken our running the race set before us.

II. We are carried away from the home among the hills to the crowded
Temple courts. The devout priest has come up to the city, leaving
his aged wife in solitude, for his turn of service has arrived.
Details of the arrangements of the sacerdotal 'courses' need not
detain us. We need only note that the office of burning incense was
regarded as an honour, was determined by lot, and took place at the
morning and evening sacrifice. So Zacharias, with his censer in his
hand, went to the altar which stood in front of the veil, flanked on
the right hand by the table of shewbread, and on the left by the
great lamp-stand. The place, his occupation, the murmur of many
praying voices without, would all tend to raise his thoughts to God;
and the curling incense, as it ascended, would truly symbolise the
going up of his heart in aspiration, desire, and trust. Such a man
could not do his work heartlessly or formally.

Mark the manner of the angel's appearance. He was not seen as in the
act of coming, but was suddenly made visible standing by the altar,
as if he had been stationed there before; and what had happened was
not that he came, but that Zacharias's eyes were opened. So, when
Elisha's servant was terrified at the sight of the besiegers, the
prophet prayed that his eyes might be opened, and when they were, he
saw what had been there before, 'the mountain full of horses and
chariots of fire.' Not the Temple courts only, but all places are
full of divine messengers, and we should see them if our vision was
purged. But such considerations are not to weaken the supernatural
element in the appearance of this angel with his message. He was
sent, whatever that may mean in regard to beings whose relation to
place must be different from ours. He had an utterance of God's will
to impart.

It has often been objected to these chapters that they are full of
angelic appearances, which modern thought deems suspicious. But
surely if the birth of Jesus was what we hold it to have been, the
coming into human life of the Incarnate Son of God, it is not legend
that angel wings gleam in their whiteness all through the story, and
angel voices adore the Lord of men as well as angels, and angel eyes
gaze on His cradle, and learn new lessons there.

III. We have next the angel's message. The devoutest heart is
conscious of shrinking dread when brought face to face with
celestial brightness that has overflowed into our darkness. So 'Fear
not' is the first word on the messenger's lips, and one can fancy
the accent of sweetness and the calm of heart which followed. It has
often been thought that Zacharias had been praying for offspring
while he was burning incense; but the narrative does not say so, and
besides the fact that he had ceased to hope for children (as is
shown by his incredulity), surely it casts a slur on his religious
character to suppose that personal wishes were uppermost at so
sacred a moment. Prayers that he had long ago put aside as finally
refused, now started to life again. God delays often, but He does
not forget. Blessings may come to-day as the result of old prayers
which have almost passed from our memory and our hope.

Observe how brief is the announcement of the child's birth,
important as that was to the father's heart, and how the prophecy
lingers on the child's future work, which is important for the
world. His name, character, and work in general are first spoken,
and then his specific office as the Forerunner is delineated at the
close. The name is significant. 'John' means 'The Lord is gracious.'
It was an omen, a condensed prophecy, the fulfilment of which
stretched beyond its bearer to Him as whose precursor alone was John
a token of God's grace.

His character (ver. 15) puts first 'great in the sight of the Lord.'
Then there are some whom God recognises as great, small as we all
are before Him. And His estimate of greatness is not the world's
estimate. How Herod or Pilate or Caesar, or philosophers at Athens,
or rabbis in Jerusalem would have scoffed if they had been pointed
to the gaunt ascetic pouring out words which they would have thought
wild, to a crowd of Jews, and been told that that was the greatest
man in the world (except One)! The elements of greatness in the
estimate of God which is truth, are devotion to His service, burning
convictions, intense moral earnestness, superiority to sensuous
delights, clear recognition of Jesus, and humble self-abnegation
before Him. These are not the elements recognised in the world's
Pantheon. Let us take God's standard.

John was to be a Nazarite, living not for the senses, but the soul,
as all God's great ones have to be. The form may vary, but the
substance of the vow of abstinence remains for all Christians. To
put the heel on the animal within, and keep it well chained up, is
indispensable, if we are ever to know the buoyant inspiration which
comes from a sacreder source than the fumes of the wine-cup. Like
John, we must flee the one if we would have the other, and be
'filled with the Holy Ghost.'

The consequence of his character is seen in his work, as described
generally in verse 16. Only such a man can effect such a change, in
a time of religious decay, as to turn many to God. It needs a strong
arm to check the downward movement and to reverse it. No one who is
himself entangled in sense, and but partially filled with God's
Spirit, will wield great influence for good. It takes a Hercules to
stop the chariot racing down hill, and God's Herculeses are all made
on one pattern, in so far that they scorn delights, and empty
themselves of self and sense that they may be filled with the
Spirit.

John's specific office is described in verse 17, with allusion to
the closing prophecy of Malachi. That prophecy had kindled an
expectation that Elijah, in person, would precede Messias. John was
like a reincarnation of the stern prophet. He came in a similar
epoch. His characteristic, like Elijah's, was 'power,' not
gentleness. If the earlier prophet had to beard Ahab and Jezebel,
the second Elijah had Herod and Herodias. Both haunted the desert,
both pealed out thunders of rebuke. Both shook the nation, and
stirred conscience. No two figures in Scripture are truer brethren
in spirit than Elijah the Tishbite and John the Baptist.

His great work is to go before the Messiah, and to prepare Israel
for its King. Observe that the name of the coming One is not
mentioned in verse 17. 'Him' is enough. Zacharias knew who 'He' was.
But observe, too, that the same mysterious person is distinctly
called 'The Lord,' which in this connection, and having regard to
the original prophecy in Malachi, can only be the divine name. So,
in some fashion not yet made plain, Messiah's advent was to be the
Lord's coming to His people, and John was the Forerunner, in some
sense, of Jehovah Himself.

But the way in which Israel was to be prepared is further specified
in the middle clauses of the verse, which are also based on
Malachi's words. The interpretation of 'to turn the hearts of the
fathers to the children' is very doubtful; but the best explanation
seems to be that the phrase means to bring back to the descendants
of the ancient fathers of the nation the ancestral faith and
obedience. They are to be truly Abraham's seed, because they do the
works and cherish the faith of Abraham. The words imply the same
truth which John afterwards launched as a keen-edged dart, 'Think
not to say, We have Abraham to our father.' Descent after the flesh
should lead to kindred in spirit. If it does not, it is nought.

To turn 'the disobedient to the wisdom of the just' is practically
the same change, only regarded from another point of view. John was
sent to effect repentance, that change of mind and heart by which
the disobedient to the commands of God should be brought to possess
and exercise the moral and religious discernment which dwells only
in the spirits of the righteous. Disobedience is folly. True wisdom
cannot be divorced from rectitude. Real rectitude cannot live apart
from obedience to God.

Such was God's intention in sending John. How sadly the real effects
of his mission contrast with its design! So completely can men
thwart God, as Jesus said in reference to John's mission, 'The
Pharisees and lawyers frustrated the counsel of God against
themselves, being not baptized of him.' Let us take heed lest we
bring to nothing, so far as we are concerned, His gracious purpose
of redemption in Christ!




TRUE GREATNESS


    He shall be great in the sight of the Lord.'--LUKE i. 15.

So spake the angel who foretold the birth of John the Baptist. 'In
the sight of the Lord'--then men are not on a dead level in His
eyes. Though He is so high and we are so low, the country beneath
Him that He looks down upon is not flattened to Him, as it is to us
from an elevation, but there are greater and smaller men in His
sight, too. No epithet is more misused and misapplied than that of
'a great man.' It is flung about indiscriminately as ribbons and
orders are by some petty State. Every little man that makes a noise
for a while gets it hung round his neck. Think what a set they are
that are gathered in the world's Valhalla, and honoured as the
world's great men! The mass of people are so much on a level, and
that level is so low, that an inch above the average looks gigantic.
But the tallest blade of grass gets mown down by the scythe, and
withers as quickly as the rest of its green companions, and goes its
way into the oven as surely. There is the world's false estimate of
greatness and there is God's estimate. If we want to know what the
elements of true greatness are, we may well turn to the life of this
man, of whom the prophecy went before him that he should be 'great
in the sight of the Lord.' That is gold that will stand the test.

We may remember, too, that Jesus Christ, looking back on the career
to which the angel was looking forward, endorsed the prophecy and
declared that it had become a fact, and that 'of them that were born
of women there had not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.' With
the illumination of His eulogium we may turn to this life, then, and
gather some lessons for our own guidance.

I. First, we note in John unwavering and immovable firmness and
courage.

'What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with
the wind?' Nay! an iron pillar that stood firm whatsoever winds blew
against it. This, as I take it, is in some true sense the basis of
all moral greatness--that a man should have a grip which cannot be
loosened, like that of the cuttle-fish with all its tentacles round
its prey, upon the truths that dominate his being and make him a
hero. 'If you want me to weep,' said the old artist-poet, 'there must
be tears in your own eyes.' If you want me to believe, you yourself
must be aflame with conviction which has penetrated to the very
marrow of your bones. And so, as I take it, the first requisite
either for power with others, or for greatness in a man's own
development of character, is that there shall be this unwavering
firmness of grasp of clearly-apprehended truths, and unflinching
boldness of devotion to them.

I need not remind you how magnificently, all through the life of our
typical example, this quality was stamped upon every utterance and
every act. It reached its climax, no doubt, in his bearding Herod
and Herodias. But moral characteristics do not reach a climax unless
there has been much underground building to bear the lofty pinnacle;
and no man, when great occasions come to him, develops a courage and
an unwavering confidence which are strange to his habitual life.
There must be the underground building; and there must have been
many a fighting down of fears, many a curbing of tremors, many a
rebuke of hesitations and doubts in the gaunt, desert-loving
prophet, before he was man enough to stand before Herod and say, 'It
is not lawful for thee to have her.'

No doubt there is much to be laid to the account of temperament, but
whatever their temperament may be, the way to this unwavering
courage and firm, clear ring of indubitable certainty, is open to
every Christian man and woman; and it is our own fault, our own sin,
and our own weakness, if we do not possess these qualities.
Temperament! what on earth is the good of our religion if it is not
to modify and govern our temperament? Has a man a right to jib on
one side, and give up the attempt to clear the fence, because he
feels that in his own natural disposition there is little power to
take the leap? Surely not. Jesus Christ came here for the very
purpose of making our weakness strong, and if we have a firm hold
upon Him, then, in the measure in which His love has permeated our
whole nature, will be our unwavering courage, and out of weakness we
shall be made strong.

Of course the highest type of this undaunted boldness and unwavering
firmness of conviction is not in John and his like. He presented
strength in a lower form than did the Master from whom his strength
came. The willow has a beauty as well as the oak. Firmness is not
obstinacy; courage is not rudeness. It is possible to have the iron
hand in the velvet glove, not of etiquette-observing politeness, but
of a true considerateness and gentleness. They who are likest Him
that was 'meek and lowly in heart,' are surest to possess the
unflinching resolve which set His face like a flint, and enabled Him
to go unhesitatingly and unrecalcitrant to the Cross itself.

Do not let us forget, either, that John's unwavering firmness
wavered; that over the clear heaven of his convictions there did
steal a cloud; that he from whom no violence could wrench his faith
felt it slipping out of his grasp when his muscles were relaxed in
the dungeon; and that he sent 'from the prison'--which was the
excuse for the message--to ask the question, 'After all, art Thou He
that should come?'

Nor let us forget that it was that very moment of tremulousness
which Jesus Christ seized, in order to pour an unstinted flood of
praise for the firmness of his convictions, on the wavering head of
the Forerunner. So, if we feel that though the needle of our compass
points true to the pole, yet when the compass-frame is shaken, the
needle sometimes vibrates away from its true direction, do not let
us be cast down, but believe that a merciful allowance is made for
human weakness. This man was great; first, because he had such
dauntless courage and firmness that, over his headless corpse in the
dungeon at Machaerus, might have been spoken what the Regent Moray
said over John Knox's coffin, 'Here lies one that never feared the
face of man.'

II. Another element of true greatness that comes nobly out in the
life with which I am dealing is its clear elevation above worldly
good.

That was the second point that our Lord's eulogium signalised. 'What
went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A man clothed in soft
raiment?' But you would have gone to a palace, if you had wanted to
see that, not to the reed-beds of Jordan. As we all know, in his
life, in his dress, in his food, in the aims that he set before him,
he rose high above all regard for the debasing and perishable
sweetnesses that appeal to flesh, and are ended in time. He lived
conspicuously for the Unseen. His asceticism belonged to his age,
and was not the highest type of the virtue which it expressed. As I
have said about his courage, so I say about his self-denial--Christ's
is of a higher sort. As the might of gentleness is greater than the
might of such strength as John's, so the asceticism of John is lower
than the self-government of the Man that came eating and drinking.

But whilst that is true, I seek, dear brethren, to urge this old
threadbare lesson, always needed, never needed more than amidst the
senselessly luxurious habits of this generation, needed in few
places more than in a great commercial centre like that in which we
live, that one indispensable element of true greatness and elevation
of character is that, not the prophet and the preacher alone, but
every one of us, should live high above these temptations of gross
and perishable joys, should

  'Scorn delights and live laborious days.'

No man has a right to be called 'great' if his aims are small. And
the question is, not as modern idolatry of intellect, or, still
worse, modern idolatry of success, often makes it out to be, Has he
great capacities? or has he won great prizes? but has he greatly
used himself and his life? If your aims are small you will never be
great; and if your highest aims are but to get a good slice of this
world's pudding--no matter what powers God may have given you to
use--you are essentially a small man.

I remember a vigorous and contemptuous illustration of St. Bernard's,
who likens a man that lives for these perishable delights which John
spurned, to a spider spinning a web out of his own substance, and
catching in it nothing but a wretched prey of poor little flies.
Such a one has surely no right to be called a great man. Our aims
rather than our capacity determine our character, and they who
greatly aspire after the greatest things within the reach of men,
which are faith, hope, charity, and who, for the sake of effecting
these aspirations, put their heels upon the head of the serpent and
suppress the animal in their nature, these are the men 'great in the
sight of the Lord.'

III. Another element of true greatness, taught us by our type, is
fiery enthusiasm for righteousness.

You may think that that has little to do with greatness. I believe
it has everything to do with it, and that the difference between men
is very largely to be found here, whether they flame up into the
white heat of enthusiasm for the things that are right, or whether
the only things that can kindle them into anything like earnestness
and emotion are the poor, shabby things of personal advantage. I
need not remind you how, all through John's career, there burned,
unflickering and undying, that steadfast light; how he brought to
the service of the plainest teaching of morality a fervour of
passion and of zeal almost unexampled and magnificent. I need not
remind you how Jesus Christ Himself laid His hand upon this
characteristic, when He said of him that 'he was a light kindled and
shining.' But I would lay upon all our hearts the plain, practical
lesson that, if we keep in that tepid region of lukewarmness which
is the utmost approach to tropical heat that moral and religious
questions are capable of raising in many of us, good-bye to all
chance of being 'great in the sight of the Lord.' We hear a great
deal about the 'blessings of moderation,' the 'dangers of
fanaticism,' and the like. I venture to think that the last thing
which the moral consciousness of England wants today is a
refrigerator, and that what it needs a great deal more than that is,
that all Christian people should be brought face to face with this
plain truth--that their religion has, as an indispensable part of
it, 'a Spirit of burning,' and that if they have not been baptized
in fire, there is little reason to believe that they have been
baptized with the Holy Ghost.

I long that you and myself may be aflame for goodness, may be
enthusiastic over plain morality, and may show that we are so by our
daily life, by our rebuking the opposite, if need be, even if it
take us into Herod's chamber, and make Herodias our enemy for life.

IV. Lastly, observe the final element of greatness in this man-absolute
humility of self-abnegation before Jesus Christ.

There is nothing that I know in biography anywhere more beautiful,
more striking, than the contrast between the two halves of the
character and demeanour of the Baptist; how, on the one side, he
fronts all men undaunted and recognises no superior, and how neither
threats nor flatteries nor anything else will tempt him to step one
inch beyond the limitations of which he is aware, nor to abate one
inch of the claims which he urges; and on the other hand how, like
some tall cedar touched by the lightning's hand, he falls prone
before Jesus Christ and says, 'He must increase, and I must
decrease': 'A man can receive nothing except it be given him of
God.' He is all boldness on one side; all submission and dependence
on the other.

You remember how, in the face of many temptations, that attitude was
maintained. The very message which he had to carry was full of
temptations to a self-seeking man to assert himself. You remember
the almost rough 'No!' with which, reiteratedly, he met the
suggestions of the deputation from Jerusalem that sought to induce
him to say that he was more than he knew himself to be, and how he
stuck by that infinitely humble and beautiful saying, 'I am a
voice'--that is all. You remember how the whole nation was in a kind
of conspiracy to tempt him to assert himself, and was ready to break
into a flame if he had dropped a spark, for all men were musing in
their heart whether he was the Christ or not,' and all the lawless
and restless elements would have been only too glad to gather round
him, if he had declared himself the Messiah. Remember how his own
disciples came to him, and tried to play upon his jealousy and to
induce him to assert himself: 'Master, He whom thou didst baptize'--and
so didst give Him the first credentials that sent men on His
course--'has outstripped thee, and all men are coming to Him.' And
you remember the lovely answer that opened such depths of unexpected
tenderness in the rough nature: 'He that hath the bride is the
bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom heareth the voice; and that
is enough to fill my cup with joy to the very brim.' And what
conceptions of Jesus Christ had John, that he thus bowed his lofty
crest before Him, and softened his heart into submission almost
abject? He knew Him to be the coming Judge, with the fan in His
hand, who could baptize with fire, and he knew Him to be 'the Lamb
of God which taketh away the sin of the world.' Therefore he fell
before Him.

Brethren, we shall not be 'great in the sight of the Lord' unless we
copy that example of utter self-abnegation before Jesus Christ.
Thomas a Kempis says somewhere, 'He is truly great who is small in
his own sight, and thinks nothing of the giddy heights of worldly
honour.' You and I know far more of Jesus Christ than John the
Baptist did. Do we bow ourselves before Him as he did? The Source
from which he drew his greatness is open to us all. Let us begin
with the recognition of the Lamb of God that takes away the world's
sin, and with it ours. Let the thought of what He is, and what He
has done for us, bow us in unfeigned submission. Let it shatter all
dreams of our own importance or our own desert. The vision of the
Lamb of God, and it only, will crush in our hearts the serpent's
eggs of self-esteem and self-regard.

Then, let our closeness to Jesus Christ, and our experience of His
power, kindle in us the fiery enthusiasm with which He baptizes all
His true servants, and let it because we know the sweetnesses that
excel, take from us all liability to be tempted away by the vulgar
and coarse delights of earth and of sense. Let us keep ourselves
clear of the babble that is round about us, and be strong because we
grasp Christ's hand.

I have been speaking about no characteristic which may not be
attained by any man, woman, or child amongst us. 'The least in the
kingdom of heaven' may be greater than John. It is a poor ambition
to seek to be _called_ 'great.' It is a noble desire to _be_ 'great
in the sight of the Lord.' And if we will keep ourselves close to
Jesus Christ that will be attained. It will matter very little what
men think of us, if at last we have praise from the lips of Him who
poured such praise on His servant. We may, if we will. And then it will
not hurt us though our names on earth be dark and our memories perish
from among men.

  'Of so much fame in heaven expect the meed.'




THE MAGNIFICAT

    'And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, 47. And
    my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. 48. For He
    hath regarded the low estate of His hand-maiden: for,
    behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me
    blessed. 49. For He that is mighty hath done to me
    great things; and holy is His name, 50. And His mercy
    is on them that fear Him from generation to generation.
    51. He hath shewed strength with His arm: He hath
    scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
    52. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and
    exalted them of low degree. 53. He hath filled the
    hungry with good things; and the rich He hath sent
    empty away. 54. He hath holpen His servant Israel, in
    remembrance of His mercy; 55. As He spake to our
    fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.'
    --LUKE i. 46-55.

Birds sing at dawn and sunrise. It was fitting that the last strains
of Old Testament psalmody should prelude the birth of Jesus. To
disbelievers in the Incarnation the hymns of Mary and Zacharias are,
of course, forgeries; but if it be true nothing can be more
'natural' than these. The very features in this song, which are
appealed to as proof of its being the work of some unknown pious
liar or dishonest enthusiast, really confirm its genuineness.
Critics shake their heads over its many quotations and allusions to
Hannah's song and to other poetical parts of the Old Testament, and
declare that these are fatal to its being accepted as Mary's. Why?
must the simple village maiden be a poetess because she is the
mother of our Lord? What is more likely than that she should cast
her emotions into forms so familiar to her, and especially that
Hannah's hymn should colour hers? These old psalms provided the
mould into which her glowing emotions almost instinctively would
run, and the very absence of 'originality' in the song favours its
genuineness.

Another point may be noticed as having a similar bearing; namely,
the very general and almost vague outline of the consequences of the
birth, which is regarded as being the consummation to Israel of the
mercy promised to the fathers. Could such a hymn have been written
when sad experience showed how the nation would reject their
Messiah, and ruin themselves thereby? Surely the anticipations which
glow in it bear witness to the time when they were cherished, as
prior to the sad tragedy which history unfolded. Little does Mary as
yet know that 'a sword shall pierce through' her 'own soul also,'
and that not only will 'all generations' call her 'blessed,' but
that one of her names will be 'Our Lady of Sorrows.' For her and for
us, the future is mercifully veiled. Only one eye saw the shadow of
the Cross stretching black and grim athwart the earliest days of
Jesus, and that eye was His own. How wonderful the calmness with
which He pressed towards that 'mark' during all His earthly life!

The hymn is sometimes divided into four strophes or sections: first,
the expression of devout emotion (vs. 46-48a); second, the great
fact from which they arise (vs. 48b-50); third, the consequences of
the fact (vs. 51-53); fourth, its aspect to Israel as fulfilment of
promise. This division is, no doubt, in accordance with the course
of thought, but is perhaps somewhat too artificial for our purposes;
and we may rather simply note that in the earlier part the personal
element is present, and that in the later it fades entirely, and the
mighty deeds of God alone fill the meek singer's eye and lips. We
may consider the lessons of these two halves.

I. The more personal part extends to the end of verse 50. It
contains three turnings or strophes, the first two of which have two
clauses each, and the third three. The first is verses 46 and 47,
the purely personal expression of the glad emotions awakened by
Elisabeth's presence and salutation, which came to Mary as
confirmation of the angel's annunciation. Not when Gabriel spoke,
but when a woman like herself called her 'mother of my Lord,' did
she break into praise. There is a deep truth there. God's voice is
made more sure to our weakness when it is echoed by human lips, and
our inmost hopes attain substance when they are shared and spoken by
another. We need not attribute to the maiden from Nazareth
philosophical accuracy when she speaks of her 'soul' and 'spirit.'
Her first words are a burst of rapturous and wondering praise, in
which the full heart runs over. Silence is impossible, and speech a
relief. They are not to be construed with the microscopic accuracy
fit to be applied to a treatise on psychology. 'All that is within'
her praises and is glad. She does not think so much of the
stupendous fact as of her own meekly exultant heart, and of God, to
whom its outgoings turn. There are moods in which the devout soul
dwells on its own calm blessedness and on God, its source, more
directly than on the gift which brings it. Note the twofold
act--magnifying and rejoicing. We magnify God when we take into our
vision some fragment more of the complete circle of His essential
greatness, or when, by our means, our fellows are helped to do so.
The intended effect of all His dealings is that we should think more
nobly--that is, more worthily--of Him. The fuller knowledge of His
friendly greatness leads to joy in Him which makes the spirit bound
as in a dance--for such is the meaning of the word 'rejoice'--and
which yet is calm and deep. Note the double name of God--Lord and
Saviour. Mary bows in lowly obedience, and looks up in as lowly,
conscious need of deliverance, and beholding in God both His majesty
and His grace, magnifies and exults at once.

Verse 48 is the second turn of thought, containing, like the former,
two clauses. In it she gazes on her great gift, which, with maiden
reserve, she does not throughout the whole hymn once directly name.
Here the personal element comes out more strongly. But it is
beautiful to note that the 'lowliness' is in the foreground, and
precedes the assurance of the benedictions of all generations. The
whole is like a murmur of wonder that such honour should come to
her, so insignificant, and the 'behold' of the latter half verse is
an exclamation of surprise. In unshaken meekness of steadfast
obedience, she feels herself 'the handmaid of the Lord.' In
undisturbed humility, she thinks of her 'low estate,' and wonders
that God's eye should have fallen on her, the village damsel, poor
and hidden. A pure heart is humbled by honour, and is not so dazzled
by the vision of future fame as to lose sight of God as the source
of all. Think of that simple young girl in her obscurity having
flashed before her the certainty that her name would be repeated
with blessing till the world's end, and then thus meekly laying her
honours down at God's feet. What a lesson of how to receive all
distinctions and exaltations!

Verses 49 and 50 end this part, and contain three clauses, in which
the personal disappears, and only the thought of God's character as
manifested in His wonderful act remains. It connects indeed with the
preceding by the 'to me' of verse 49; but the main subject is the
new revelation, which is not confined to Mary, of the threefold
divine glory fused into one bright beam, in the Incarnation. Power,
holiness, eternal mercy, are all there, and that in deeper and more
wondrous fashion than Mary knew when she sang. The words are mostly
quotations from the Old Testament, but with new application and
meaning. But even Mary's anticipations fell far short of the reality
of that power in weakness, that holiness mildly blended with
tenderest pity and pardoning love; that mercy which for all
generations was to stretch not only to 'them that fear Him,' but to
rebels, whom it would make friends. She saw but dimly and in part.
We see more plainly all the rays of divine perfection meeting in,
and streaming out to, the whole world, from her Son 'the effulgence
of the Father's glory.'

II. The second part of the song is a lyric anticipation of the
historical consequences of the appearance of the Messiah, cast into
forms ready to the singer's hand, in the strains of Old Testament
prophecy. The characteristics of Hebrew poetry, its parallelism, its
antitheses, its exultant swing, are more conspicuous here than in
the earlier half. The main thought of verses 51 to 53 is that the
Messiah would bring about a revolution, in which the high would be
cast down and the humble exalted. This idea is wrought out in a
threefold antithesis, of which the first pair must have one member
supplied from the previous verse. Those who 'fear Him' are opposed
to 'the proud in the imagination of their hearts.' These are thought
of as an army of antagonists to God and His anointed, and thus the
word 'scattered' acquires great poetic force, and reminds us of many
a psalm, such as the Second and One hundred and tenth, where Messiah
is a warrior.

The next pair represent the antithesis as being that of social
degree, and in it there may be traced a glance at 'Herod the King'
and the depressed line of David, to which the singer belonged, while
the meaning must not be confined to that. The third pair represent
the same opposites under the guise of poverty and riches. Mary is
not to be credited with purely spiritual views in these contrasts,
nor to be discredited with purely material ones. She, no doubt,
thought of her own oppressed nation as mainly meant by the hungry
and lowly; but like all pious souls in Israel, she must have felt
that the lowliness and hunger which Messiah was to ennoble and
satisfy, meant a condition of spirit conscious of weakness and sin,
and eagerly desiring a higher good and food than earth could give.
So much she had learned from many a psalm and prophet. So much the
Spirit which inspired psalmist and prophet spoke in her lowly and
exultant heart now. But the future was only revealed to her in this
wide, general outline. Details of manner and time were all still
blank. The broad truth which she foretold remains one of the salient
historical results of Christ's coming, and is the universal
condition of partaking of His gifts. He has been, and is, the most
revolutionary force in history; for without Him society is
constituted on principles the reverse of the true, and as the world,
apart from Jesus, is down-side up, the mission of His gospel is to
turn it upside-down, and so bring the right side uppermost. The
condition of receiving anything from Him is the humble recognition
of emptiness and need. If princes on their thrones will come to Him
just in the same way as the beggar on the dunghill does, they will
very probably be allowed to stay on them; and if the rich man will
come to Him as poor and in need of all things, he will not be 'sent
empty away.' But Christ is a discriminating Christ, and as the
prophet said long before Mary, 'I ... will bind up that which was
broken, and will strengthen that which was sick; and the fat and the
strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.'

The last turn in the song celebrates the faithfulness of God to His
ancient promises, and His help by His Messiah to Israel. The
designation of Israel as 'His servant' recalls the familiar name in
Isaiah's later prophecies. Mary sees in the great wonder of her
Son's birth the accomplishment of the hopes of ages, and an
assurance of God's mercy as for ever the portion of the people. We
cannot tell how far she had learned that Israel was to be counted,
not by descent but disposition. But, in any case, her eyes could not
have embraced the solemn facts of her Son's rejection by His and her
people. No shadows are yet cast across the morning of which her song
is the herald. She knew not the dark clouds of thunder and
destruction that were to sweep over the sky. But the end has not yet
come, and we have to believe still that the evening will fulfil the
promise of the morning, and 'all Israel shall be saved,' and that
the mercy which was promised from of old to Abraham and the fathers,
shall be fulfilled at last and abide with their seed for ever.




ZACHARIAS'S HYMN


    'And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy
    Ghost, and prophesied, saying, 68. Blessed be the Lord
    God of Israel; for He hath visited and redeemed His
    people, 69. And hath raised up an horn of salvation
    for us in the house of His servant David; 70. As He
    spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have
    been since the world began; 71. That we should be
    saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that
    hate us; 72. To perform the mercy promised to our
    fathers, and to remember His holy covenant, 73. The
    oath which He sware to our father Abraham, 74. That He
    would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of
    the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear,
    75. In holiness and righteousness before Him, all the
    days of our life. 76. And thou, child, shalt be called
    the Prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before
    the face of the Lord to prepare His ways; 77. To give
    knowledge of salvation unto His people, by the
    remission of their sins, 78. Through the tender mercy
    of our God; whereby the day-spring from on high hath
    visited us, 79. To give light to them that sit in
    darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet
    into the way of peace. 80. And the child grew, and
    waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the
    day of his shewing unto Israel.'--LUKE i. 67-80.

Zacharias was dumb when he disbelieved. His lips were opened when he
believed. He is the last of the Old Testament prophets, [Footnote:
In the strictest sense, John the Baptist was a prophet of the Old
dispensation, even though he came to usher in the New. (See Matt.
xi. 9-11.) In the same sense, Zacharias was the last prophet of the
Old dispensation, before the coming of his son to link the Old with
the New.] and as standing nearest to the Messiah, his song takes up
the echoes of all the past, and melts them into a new outpouring of
exultant hope. The strain is more impassioned than Mary's, and
throbs with triumph over 'our enemies,' but rises above the mere
patriotic glow into a more spiritual region. The complete
subordination of the personal element is very remarkable, as shown
by the slight and almost parenthetical reference to John. The father
is forgotten in the devout Israelite. We may take the song as
divided into three portions: the first (vs. 68-75) celebrating the
coming of Messiah, with special reference to its effect in freeing
Israel from its foes; the second (vs. 76, 77), the highly dramatic
address to his unconscious 'child'; the third (vs. 78, 79) returns
to the absorbing thought of the Messiah, but now touches on higher
aspects of His coming as the Light to all who sit in darkness.

I. If we remember that four hundred dreary years, for the most part
of which Israel had been groaning under a foreign yoke, had passed
since the last of the prophets, and that during all that time devout
eyes had looked wearily for the promised Messiah, we shall be able
to form some faint conception of the surprise and rapture which
filled Zacharias's spirit, and leaps in his hymn at the thought that
now, at last, the hour had struck, and that the child would soon be
born who was to fulfil the divine promises and satisfy fainting
hopes. No wonder that its first words are a burst of blessing of
'the God of Israel.' The best expression of joy, when long-cherished
desires are at last on the eve of accomplishment, is thanks to God.
How short the time of waiting seems when it is past, and how
needless the impatience which marred the waiting! Zacharias speaks
of the fact as already realised. He must have known that the
Incarnation was accomplished; for we can scarcely suppose that the
emphatic tenses 'hath visited, hath redeemed, hath raised' are
prophetic, and merely imply the certainty of a future event. He must
have known, too, Mary's royal descent; for he speaks of 'the house
of David.'

'A horn' of salvation is an emblem taken from animals, and implies
strength. Here it recalls several prophecies, and as a designation
of the Messiah, shadows forth His conquering might, all to be used
for deliverance to His people. The vision before Zacharias is that
of a victor king of Davidic race, long foretold by prophets, who
will set Israel free from its foreign oppressors, whether Roman or
Idumean, and in whom God Himself 'visits and redeems His people.'
There are two kinds of divine visitations--one for mercy and one for
judgment. What an unconscious witness it is of men's evil
consciences that the use of the phrase has almost exclusively
settled down upon the latter meaning! In verses 71-75, the idea of
the Messianic salvation is expanded and raised. The word 'salvation'
is best construed, as in the Revised Version, as in apposition with
and explanatory of 'horn of salvation.' This salvation has issues,
which may also be regarded as God's purposes in sending it. These
are threefold: first, to show mercy to the dead fathers of the race.
That is a striking idea, and pictures the departed as, in their
solemn rest, sharing in the joy of Messiah's coming, and perhaps in
the blessings which He brings. We may not too closely press the
phrase, but it is more than poetry or imagination. The next issue is
God's remembrance of His promises, or in other words, His fulfilment
of these. The last is that the nation, being set free, should serve
God. The external deliverance was in the eyes of devout men like
Zacharias precious as a means to an end. Political freedom was
needful for God's service, and was valuable mainly as leading to
that.  The hymn rises far above the mere impatience of a foreign
yoke. 'Freedom to worship God,' and God worshipped by a ransomed
nation, are Zacharias's ideal of the Messianic times.

Note his use of the word for priestly 'service.' He, a priest, has
not forgotten that by original constitution all Israel was a nation
of priests; and he looks forward to the fulfilment at last of the
ideal which so soon became impracticable, and possibly to the
abrogation of his own order in the universal priesthood. He knew not
what deep truths he sang. The end of Christ's coming, and of the
deliverance which He works for us from the hand of our enemies,
cannot be better stated than in these words. We are redeemed that we
may be priests unto God. Our priestly service must be rendered in
'holiness and righteousness,' in consecration to God and discharge
of all obligations; and it is to be no interrupted or occasional
service, like Zacharias's, which occupied but two short weeks in the
year, and might never again lead him within the sanctuary, but is to
fill with reverent activity and thankful sacrifice all our days.
However this hymn may have begun with the mere external conception
of Messianic deliverance, it rises high above that here, and will
still further soar beyond it. We may learn from this priest-prophet,
who anticipated the wise men and brought his offerings to the unborn
Christ, what Christian salvation is, and for what it is given us.

II. There is something very vivid and striking in the abrupt address
to the infant, who lay, all unknowing, in his mother's arms. The
contrast between him as he was then and the work which waited him,
the paternal wonder and joy which yet can scarcely pause on the
child, and hurries on to fancy him in the years to come, going
herald-like before the face of the Lord, the profound prophetic
insight into John's work, are all noteworthy. The Baptist did
'prepare the way' by teaching that the true 'salvation' was not to
be found in mere deliverance from the Roman yoke, but in 'remission
of sin.' He thus not only gave 'knowledge of salvation,' in the
sense that he announced the fact that it would be given, but also in
the sense that he clearly taught in what it consisted. John was no
preacher of revolt, as the turbulent and impure patriots of the day
would have liked him to be, but of repentance. His work was to awake
the consciousness of sin, and so to kindle desires for a salvation
which was deliverance from sin, the only yoke which really enslaves.
Zacharias the 'blameless' saw what the true bondage of the nation
was, and what the work both of the Deliverer and of His herald must
be. We need to be perpetually reminded of the truth that the only
salvation and deliverance which can do us any good consist in
getting rid, by pardon and by holiness, of the cords of our sins.

III. The thoughts of the Forerunner and his office melt into that of
the Messianic blessings from which the singer cannot long turn away.
In these closing words, we have the source, the essential nature,
and the blessed results of the gift of Christ set forth in a noble
figure, and freed from the national limitations of the earlier part
of the hymn. All comes from the 'bowels of mercy of our God,' as
Zacharias, in accordance with Old Testament metaphor, speaks,
allocating the seat of the emotions which we attribute to the heart.
Conventional notions of delicacy think the Hebrew idea coarse, but
the one allocation is just as delicate as the other. We can get no
deeper down or farther back into the secret springs of things than
this--that the root cause of all, and most especially of the mission
of Christ, is the pitying love of God's heart. If we hold fast by
that, the pain of the riddle of the world is past, and the riddle
itself more than half solved. Jesus Christ is the greatest gift of
that love, in which all its tenderness and all its power are
gathered up for our blessing.

The modern civilised world owes most of its activity to the
quickening influence of Christianity. The dayspring visits us that
it may shine on us, and it shines that it may guide us into 'the way
of peace.' There can be no wider and more accurate description of
the end of Christ's mission than this--that all His visitation and
enlightenment are meant to lead us into the path where we shall find
peace with God, and therefore with ourselves and with all mankind.
The word  'peace,' in the Old Testament, is used to include the sum
of all that men require for their conscious well-being. We are at
rest only when all our relations with God and the outer world are
right, and when our inner being is harmonised with itself, and
supplied with appropriate objects. To know God for our friend, to
have our being fixed on and satisfied in Him, and so to be
reconciled to all circumstances, and a friend of all men--this is
peace; and the path to such a blessed condition is shown us only by
that Sun of Righteousness whom the loving heart of God has sent into
the darkness and torpor of the benighted wanderers in the desert.
The national reference has faded from the song, and though it still
speaks of 'us' and 'our,' we cannot doubt that Zacharias both saw
more deeply into the salvation which Christ would bring than to
limit it to breaking an earthly yoke, and deemed more worthily and
widely of its sweep, than to confine it within narrower bounds than
the whole extent of the dreary darkness which it came to banish from
all the world.




THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH


    'The day-spring from on high hath visited us, 79. To
    give light to them that sit in darkness and in the
    shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of
    peace.'--LUKE i. 78, 79.

As the dawn is ushered in by the notes of birds, so the rising of
the Sun of Righteousness was heralded by song, Mary and Zacharias
brought their praises and welcome to the unborn Christ, the angels
hovered with heavenly music over His cradle, and Simeon took the
child in his arms and blessed it. The human members of this choir
may be regarded as the last of the psalmists and prophets, and the
first of Christian singers. The song of Zacharias, from which my
text is taken, is steeped in Old Testament allusions, and redolent
of the ancient spirit, but it transcends that. Its early part is
purely national, and hails the coming of the Messiah chiefly as the
deliverer of Israel from foreign oppressors, though even in it their
deliverance is regarded mostly as the means to an end, and the end
one very appropriate on the lips of a priestly prophet---viz.
sacerdotal service by the whole nation 'in holiness and
righteousness all their days.'

But in this latter portion, which is separated from the former by
the pathetic, incidental, and slight reference to the singer's own
child, the national limits are far surpassed. The song soars above
them, and pierces to the very heart and kernel of Christ's work.
'The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them
that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into
the way of peace.' Nothing deeper, nothing wider, nothing truer
about the mission and issue of Christ's coming could be spoken. And
thus we have to look at the three things that lie in this text, as
bearing upon our conceptions of Christ and His work--the darkness,
the dawn, and the directing light.

I. The darkness.

Zacharias, as becomes the last of the prophets, and a man whose
whole religious life was nourished upon the ancient Scriptures,
speaks almost entirely in Old Testament phraseology in this song.
And his description of 'them that sit in darkness and the shadow of
death' is taken almost verbally from the great words from the Book
of the Prophet Isaiah, who speaks, in immediate connection with his
prophecy of the coming of the Christ, of 'the people that walk in
darkness and them that dwell,' or sit, 'in the shadow of death, upon
whom the light hath shined.'

The picture that rises before us is that of a group of travellers
benighted, bewildered, huddled together in the dark, afraid to move
for fear of pitfalls, precipices, wild beasts, and enemies; and so
sighing for the day and compelled to be inactive till it comes. That
is the picture of humanity apart from Jesus Christ, a darkness so
intense, so tragic, that it is, as it were, the very shadow of the
ultimate and essential darkness which is death, and in it men are
sitting torpid, unable to find their way and afraid to move.

Now darkness, all the world over, is the emblem of three
things--ignorance, impurity, sorrow. And all men who are rent
away from Jesus Christ, or on whom His beams have not yet fallen,
this text tells us, have that triple curse lying upon them.

Ignorance. Think of what, without Jesus Christ, the world has deemed
of the unseen, and of the God, if there be a God, that may inhabit
there. He has been to them a great Peradventure, a great Terror, a
great Inscrutable, a stone-eyed Fate, a thin, nebulous Nothing, with
no emotion, no attributes, no heart, no ear to hear, the nearest
approach to nonentity, according to the despairing saying of a
master of philosophy, that 'pure Being is equal to pure Nothing.'
And if all men do not rise to such heights of melancholy abstraction
as that, still how little there is of blessed certainty, how little
clearness of conception of a Divine Person that turns to us with
love and tenderness in His heart, apart from Christ and His
teaching! If you take away from civilised men all the knowledge of
God that they owe to Jesus Christ, what have you left? The ladder by
which they climbed is kicked away by a great many people nowadays,
but it is to Him that they owe the very conceptions in the name of
which some of them turn round and deny Him.

Ignorance of God, ignorance of one's own self and of one's deepest
duties, and ignorance of that solemn future, the fact of which is
plain to most men, but the how of which is such a blank mystery but
for Jesus Christ--these things are elements of the darkness that
wraps the world. Go to heathendom if you want to see the problem
worked out, as to what men know outside of the revelation which
culminates in Jesus Christ. And take your own hearts, dear friends
who stand aside from that sweet Lord and light of our lives, and ask
yourselves, What do I know, with a certainty which is to me as
valid, as--yea! more valid than that given by sense and outward
perceptions? What do I know of God that I do not owe to Jesus
Christ? Nothing. You may guess much, you may hope a little, you may
dread a great deal, you may question more than all, but you will
_know_ nothing.

Well, then, further, this solemn emblem stands for impurity. And we
have only to consult our own hearts to feel how true it is about us
all, that we dwell in a region all darkened, if not by the coarse
transgressions which men consent to call sins, yet darkened more
subtly and oftentimes more hopelessly by the obscuration of pure
selfishness and living to myself and by myself. Wherever that comes,
it is like the mists that steal up from some poisonous marsh, and
shut out stars and sky, and drape the whole country in a melancholy
veil. It is white but it is poisonous, it is white but it is
darkness all the same. There are other kinds of sin than the sins
that break the Ten Commandments; there are other kinds of sin than
the sins that the world takes cognisance of. The worst poisons are
the tasteless ones, and colourless gases are laden with fatal power.
We may walk in a darkness that may be felt, though there be nothing
in our lives that men call sin, and little there of which our
consciences are as yet educated enough to be ashamed. Rent from God,
man lives to himself, and so is sunk in darkness.

And what shall I say about the third of the doleful triad of which
this pregnant emblem is the recognised symbol all the world over?
Surely, though earth be full of blessing, and life of possibilities
of joy, no man travels very far along the road without feeling that
the burden of sorrow is a burden that we all have to carry. There
are blessings in plenty, there is mirth more than enough. There is
'the laughter' which is 'the crackling of thorns' under a pot. There
are plenty of distractions and amusements, 'blessings more plentiful
than hope'; but yet the ground tone of every human life, when the
first flush of inexperience and novelty has worn off, apart from
God, is sadness, conscious of itself sometimes, and driven to all
manner of foolish attempts at forgetfulness, unconscious of itself
sometimes, and knowing not what is the disease of which it
languishes. There it is, like some persistent minor in a great piece
of music, wailing on through all the embroidery and lightsomeness of
the cheerfuller and loftier notes. 'Every heart knoweth its own
bitterness,' and every heart _has_ a bitterness of its own to
know.

I do not understand how it is that men who have no religion in them
can bear their own sorrows and see their neighbours' and not go mad.
Sometimes the world seems to me to be moving round its central sun
with a doleful atmosphere of sighs wherever it goes, and all the
mirth and stir and bustle are but like a thin crust of grass with
flowers upon it, cast across the sulphurous depths of some volcano
that may slumber for a while, but is there all the same.

Brother! you and I, away from Jesus Christ, have to face the
certainties of ignorance, of sin, of sorrow--ignorance unenlightened,
sin unconquered, sorrow uncomforted.

And then comes the other tragic, and yet most picturesque emblem in
the representation here: 'They _sit_ in darkness.' Yes! what
can they do, poor creatures? They know not where to go. The light
has left them, inactivity is a necessity. And so, with folded hands,
they wish for the day, or try to forget the night by lighting some
little torch of their own that only serves to make darkness visible,
and dies all too soon, leaving them to lie down in sorrow.

But, you say, 'What nonsense! Inactivity! look at the fierce energy
of life in our Western lands.' Well, grant it all, there may be
plenty of material activity attendant upon inward stagnation and
torpor. But, again, I would like to ask how much of the most
godless, commercial, artistic, intellectual activity of so-called
civilised and Christian countries is owing to the stimulus and
ferment that Jesus Christ brought. If you want to see how true it is
that men without Him _sit_ in the darkness, go to heathen
lands, and see the stagnation, the torpor, there.

Now, dear brethren, all this is true about us, in the measure in
which we do not participate by faith and love, welcoming Him into
our hearts in the illumination that Jesus Christ brings. And what I
want to do is to lay upon the hearts and consciences of each of us
here this thought, that the solemn, tragic picture of my text is the
picture of me, separate from Christ, however I may try to conceal it
from myself, and to mask it from other people by busying myself with
inferior knowledges, by avoiding to listen to the answer that
conscience gives to the question as to my moral character, and by
befooling myself with noisy joys and tumultuous pleasures, in which
there is no pleasure.

II. Now, note secondly, the dayspring, or dawn.

My text, in the part on which I have just been speaking, links
itself with ancient Messianic prophecy, and this expression, 'the
dayspring from on high.' also links itself with other prophecies of
the same sort. Almost the last word of prophecy before the four
centuries of silence which Mary and Zacharias broke, was, 'Unto you
that fear His name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing
in His beams.' There can be little doubt, I think, that the allusion
of my text is to these all but the last words of the prophet
Malachi. For that final chapter of the Old Testament colours the
song both of Mary and of Zacharias. And it is to be observed that
the Greek translation of the Hebrew uses the same verb, of which the
cognate noun is here employed, for the rising of the Sun of
Righteousness. The picturesque old English word 'dayspring' means
neither more nor less than _sunrising_. And it is here used
practically as a name for Jesus Christ, who is Himself the Sun,
represented as rising over a darkened earth, and yet, with a
singular neglect of the propriety of the metaphor, as descending
from on high, not to shine on us from the sky, but to 'visit us' on
earth.

Jesus Christ Himself, over and over again, said by implication, and
more than once by direct claim, 'I am the Light of the world.' And
my text is the anticipation, perhaps from lips that did not fully
understand the whole significance of the prophecy which they spoke,
of these later declarations. I have said that the darkness is the
emblem of three baleful things, of the converse of which light is
the symbol. As the darkness speaks to us of ignorance, so Christ, as
the Sun illumines us with the light of 'the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' For doubt we have blessed
certainty, for a far-off God we have the knowledge of God close at
hand. For an impassive will or a stony-eyed fate we have the
knowledge (and not only the wistful yearning after the knowledge) of
a loving heart, warm and throbbing. Our God is no unemotional
abstraction, but a living Person who can love, who can pity, and we
are speaking more than poetry when we say, God is compassion, and
compassion is God. This we know because 'He that hath seen Me hath
seen the Father.' And the solid certainty of a loving God, tender,
pitying, mighty to help, quick to hear, ready to forgive, waiting to
bless, is borne into our hearts, and comes there, sweet as the
sunshine, when we turn ourselves to the light of Christ.

In like manner the darkness, born of our own sin, which wraps our
hearts, and shuts out so much that is fair and sweet and strong,
will pass away if we turn ourselves to Him. His light pouring into
our souls will hurt the eye at first, but it will hurt to cure. The
darkness of sin and alienation will pass, and the true light will
shine.

The darkness of sorrow--well! it will not cease, but He will 'smooth
the raven down of darkness till it smiles,' and He will bring into
our griefs such a spirit of quiet submission as that they shall
change into a solemn scorn of ills, and be almost like gladnesses.
Peace, which is better than exuberant delight, will come to quiet
the sorrow of the soul that trusts in Jesus Christ. The day which is
knowledge, purity, gladsomeness, the cheerful day will be ours if we
hold by Him. We 'are all the children of the light and of the day';
we 'are not of the night nor of darkness.'

Brother, it is possible to grope at noontide as in the dark, and in
all the blaze of Christ's revelation still to be left in the
Cimmerian folds of midnight gloom. You can shut your eyes to the
sunshine; have you opened your hearts to its coming?

I cannot dwell (your time will not allow of it) upon the other
points connected with this description of the day spring, except
just to point out in passing the singular force and depth of the
words--which I suppose are more forcible and deep than he who spoke
them understood at the time that visitation was described. The
dayspring is 'from on high.' This Sun has come down on to the earth.
It has not risen on a far-off horizon, but it has come down and
visited us, and walks among us. This Sun, our life-star, 'hath had
elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar.' For He that rises upon
us as the Light of life, hath descended from the heavens, and was,
before He appeared amongst men.

And His coming is a divine visitation. The word here 'hath
_visited_ us' (or 'shall visit us,' as the Revised Version
varies it), is chiefly employed in the Old Testament to describe the
divine acts of self-revelation, and these, mostly redemptive acts.
Zacharias employs it in that sense in the earlier portion of the
song, where he says that 'God hath visited and redeemed His people.'
And so from the use of this word we gather these two thoughts--God
comes to us when Christ comes to us, and His coming is wondrous,
blessed nearness, and nearness to each of us. 'What is man that Thou
shouldst be mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou shouldst
visit him?' said the old Psalmist. We say 'What is man that the
Dayspring from on high should come down upon earth, and round His
immortal beams, should, as it were, cast the veil and obscuration of
a human form; and so walk amongst us, the embodied Light and the
Incarnate God?' 'The dayspring from on high hath visited us.'

III. Lastly, note the directing by the light.

'To guide our feet into the way of peace.' This Sun stoops to the
office of the star that moved before the wise men and hovered over
His cradle, and becomes to each individual soul a guide and
director. The picture of my text, I suppose, carries us on to the
morning, when the benighted travellers catch the first gleams of the
rising sun and resume their activity, and there is a cheerful stir
through the encampment and the way is open before them once more,
and they are ready to walk in it. The force of the metaphor,
however, implies more than that, for it speaks to us of the wonder
that this universal Light should become the special guide of each
individual soul, and should not merely hang in the heavens, to cast
the broad radiance of its beams over the whole surface of the earth,
but should move before each man, a light unto _his_ feet and a
lamp to _his_ path, in special manifestation to him of his duty
and his life's pilgrimage.

There is only one way of peace, and that is to follow His beams and
to be directed by His preceding us. Then we shall realise the most
indispensable of all the conditions of peace--Christ brings you and
me the reconciliation which puts us at peace with God, which is the
foundation of all other tranquillity. And He will guide docile feet
into the way of peace in yet another fashion--in that the following
of His example, the cleaving to Him, the holding by His skirts or by
His hand, and the treading in His footsteps, is the only way by
which the heart can receive the solid satisfaction in which it
rests, and the conscience can cease from accusing and stinging. The
way of wisdom is a path of pleasantness and a way of peace. Only
they who walk in Christ's footsteps have quiet hearts and are at
amity with God, in concord with themselves, friends of mankind, and
at peace with circumstances. There is no strife within, no strained
relations or hostile alienation to God, no gnawing unrest of
unsatisfied desires, no pricks of accusing conscience; for the man
who puts his hand into Christ's hand, and says, 'Order Thou my
footsteps by Thy word'; 'Where Thou goest I will go, and what Thou
commandest I will do.'

Brother, put thy hand out from the darkness and clasp His, and 'the
darkness shall be light about thee'; and He will fulfil His own
promise when He said, 'I am the Light of the world. He that
followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of
life.




SHEPHERDS AND ANGELS


    'And there were in the same country shepherds abiding
    in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
    9. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and
    the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they
    were sore afraid. 10. And the angel said unto them,
    Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of
    great joy, which shall be to all people. 11. For unto
    you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour,
    which is Christ the Lord. 12. And this shall be a sign
    unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling
    clothes, lying in a manger. 13. And suddenly there was
    with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising
    God, and saying, 14. Glory to God in the highest, and
    on earth peace, good will toward men. 15. And it came
    to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into
    heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now
    go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is
    come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
    16. And they came with haste, and found Mary and
    Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. 17. And when
    they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying
    which was told them concerning this child. 18. And all
    they that heard it wondered at those things which were
    told them by the shepherds. 19. But Mary kept all
    these things, and pondered them in her heart. 20. And
    the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God
    for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it
    was told unto them.'--LUKE ii. 8-20.

The central portion of this passage is, of course, the angels'
message and song, the former of which proclaims the transcendent
fact of the Incarnation, and the latter hymns its blessed results.
But, subsidiary to these, the silent vision which preceded them and
the visit to Bethlehem which followed are to be noted. Taken
together, they cast varying gleams on the great fact of the birth of
Jesus Christ.

Why should there be a miraculous announcement at all, and why should
it be to these shepherds? It seems to have had no effect beyond a
narrow circle and for a time. It was apparently utterly forgotten
when, thirty years after, the carpenter's Son began His ministry.
Could such an event have passed from memory, and left no ripple on
the surface? Does not the resultlessness cast suspicion on the
truthfulness of the narrative? Not if we duly give weight to the few
who knew of the wonder; to the length of time that elapsed, during
which the shepherds and their auditors probably died; to their
humble position, and to the short remembrance of extraordinary
events which have no immediate consequences. Joseph and Mary were
strangers in Bethlehem. Christ never visited it, so far as we know.
The fading of the impression cannot be called strange, for it
accords with natural tendencies; but the record of so great an
event, which was entirely ineffectual as regards future acceptance
of Christ's claims, is so unlike legend that it vouches for the
truth of the narrative. An apparent stumbling-block is left, because
the story is true.

Why then, the announcement at all, since it was of so little use?
Because it was of some; but still more, because it was fitting that
such angel voices should attend such an event, whether men gave heed
to them or not; and because, recorded, their song has helped a world
to understand the nature and meaning of that birth. The glory died
off the hillside quickly, and the music of the song scarcely
lingered longer in the ears of its first hearers; but its notes echo
still in all lands, and every generation turns to them with wonder
and hope.

The selection of two or three peasants as receivers of the message,
the time at which it was given, and the place, are all significant.
It was no unmeaning fact that the 'glory of the Lord' shone lambent
round the shepherds, and held them and the angel standing beside
them in its circle of light. No longer within the secret shrine, but
out in the open field, the symbol of the Divine Presence glowed
through the darkness; for that birth hallowed common life, and
brought the glory of God into familiar intercourse with its
secularities and smallnesses. The appearance to these humble men as
they 'sat simply chatting in a rustic row 'symbolised the
destination of the Gospel for all ranks and classes.

The angel speaks by the side of the shepherds, not from above. His
gentle encouragement 'Fear not!' not only soothes their present
terror, but has a wider meaning. The dread of the Unseen, which lies
coiled like a sleeping snake in all hearts, is utterly taken away by
the Incarnation. All messages from that realm are thenceforward
'tidings of great joy,' and love and desire may pass into it, as all
men shall one day pass, and both enterings may be peaceful and
confident. Nothing harmful can come out of the darkness, from which
Jesus has come, into which He has passed, and which He fills.

The great announcement, the mightiest, most wonderful word that had
ever passed angels' immortal lips, is characterised as 'great joy'
to 'all the people,' in which designation two things are to be
noted--the nature and the limitation of the message. In how many
ways the Incarnation was to be the fountain of purest gladness was
but little discerned, either by the heavenly messenger or the
shepherds. The ages since have been partially learning it, but not
till the 'glorified joy' of heaven swells redeemed hearts will all
its sorrow-dispelling power be experimentally known. Base joys may
be basely sought, but His creatures' gladness is dear to God, and if
sought in God's way, is a worthy object of their efforts.

The world-wide sweep of the Incarnation does not appear here, but
only its first destination for Israel. This is manifest in the
phrase 'all the people,' in the mention of 'the city of David' and
in the emphatic 'you,' in contradistinction both from the messenger,
who announced what he did not share, and Gentiles, to whom the
blessing was not to pass till Israel had determined its attitude to
it.

The titles of the Infant tell something of the wonder of the birth,
but do not unfold its overwhelming mystery. Magnificent as they are,
they fall far short of 'The Word was made flesh.' They keep within
the circle of Jewish expectation, and announce that the hopes of
centuries are fulfilled. There is something very grand in the
accumulation of titles, each greater than the preceding, and all
culminating in that final 'Lord.' Handel has gloriously given the
spirit of it in the crash of triumph with which that last word is
pealed out in his oratorio. 'Saviour' means far more than the
shepherds knew; for it declares the Child to be the deliverer from
all evil, both of sin and sorrow, and the endower with all good,
both of righteousness and blessedness. The 'Christ' claims that He
is the fulfiller of prophecy, perfectly endowed by divine anointing
for His office of prophet, priest, and king--the consummate flower
of ancient revelation, greater than Moses the law-giver, than
Solomon the king, than Jonah the prophet. 'The Lord' is scarcely to
be taken as the ascription of divinity, but rather as a prophecy of
authority and dominion, implying reverence, but not unveiling the
deepest secret of the entrance of the divine Son into humanity. That
remained unrevealed, for the time was not yet ripe.

There would be few children of a day old in a little place like
Bethlehem, and none but one lying in a manger. The fact of the
birth, which could be verified by sight, would confirm the message
in its outward aspect, and thereby lead to belief in the angel's
disclosure of its inward character. The 'sign' attested the veracity
of the messenger, and therefore the truth of all his word--both of
that part of it capable of verification by sight and that part
apprehensible by faith.

No wonder that the sudden light and music of the multitude of the
heavenly host' flashed and echoed round the group on the hillside.
The true picture is not given when we think of that angel choir as
floating in heaven. They stood in their serried ranks round the
shepherds and their fellows on the solid earth, and 'the night was
filled with music,' not from overhead, but from every side. Crowding
forms became all at once visible within the encircling 'glory,' on
every face wondering gladness and eager sympathy with men, from
every lip praise. Angels can speak with the tongues of men when
their theme is their Lord become man, and their auditors are men.
They hymn the blessed results of that birth, the mystery of which
they knew more completely than they were yet allowed to tell.

As was natural for them, their praise is first evoked by the result
of the Incarnation in the highest heavens. It will bring 'glory to
God' there; for by it new aspects of His nature are revealed to
those clear-eyed and immortal spirits who for unnumbered ages have
known His power, His holiness, His benignity to unfallen creatures,
but now experience the wonder which more properly belongs to more
limited intelligences, when they behold that depth of condescending
Love stooping to be born. Even they think more loftily of God, and
more of man's possibilities and worth, when they cluster round the
manger, and see who lies there.

'On earth peace.' The song drops from the contemplation of the
heavenly consequences to celebrate the results on earth, and gathers
them all into one pregnant word, 'Peace.' What a scene of strife,
discord, and unrest earth must seem to those calm spirits! And how
vain and petty the struggles must look, like the bustle of an ant-hill!
Christ's work is to bring peace into all human relations, those with
God, with men, with circumstances, and to calm the discords of souls
at war with themselves. Every one of these relations is marred by sin,
and nothing less thorough than a power which removes it can rectify
them. That birth was the coming into humanity of Him who brings peace
with God, with ourselves, with one another. Shame on Christendom that
nineteen centuries have passed, and men yet think the cessation of
war is only a 'pious imagination'! The ringing music of that angel
chant has died away, but its promise abides.

The symmetry of the song is best preserved, as I humbly venture to
think, by the old reading as in the Authorised Version. The other,
represented by the Revised Version, seems to make the second clause
drag somewhat, with two designations of the region of peace. The
Incarnation brings God's 'good will' to dwell among men. In Christ,
God is well pleased; and from Him incarnate, streams of divine
complacent love pour out to freshen and fertilise the earth.

The disappearance of the heavenly choristers does not seem to have
been so sudden as their appearance. They 'went away from them into
heaven,' as if leisurely, and so that their ascending brightness was
long visible as they rose, and attestation was thereby given to the
reality of the vision. The sleeping village was close by, and as
soon as the last gleam of the departing light had faded in the
depths of heaven, the shepherds went 'with haste,' untimely as was
the hour. They would not have much difficulty in finding the inn and
the manger. Note that they do not tell their story till the sight
has confirmed the angel message. Their silence was not from doubt;
for they say, before they had seen the child, that 'this thing' is
'come to pass,' and are quite sure that the Lord has told it them.
But they wait for the evidence which shall assure others of their
truthfulness.

There are three attitudes of mind towards God's revelation set forth
in living examples in the closing verses of the passage. Note the
conduct of the shepherds, as a type of the natural impulse and
imperative duty of all possessors of God's truth. Such a story as
they had to tell would burn its way to utterance in the most
reticent and shyest. But have Christians a less wonderful message to
deliver, or a less needful one? If the spectators of the cradle
could not be silent, how impossible it ought to be for the witnesses
of the Cross to lock their lips!

The hearers of the story did what, alas! too many of us do with the
Gospel. 'They wondered,' and stopped there. A feeble ripple of
astonishment ruffled the surface of their souls for a moment; but
like the streaks on the sea made by a catspaw of wind, it soon died
out, and the depths were unaffected by it.

The antithesis to this barren wonder is the beautiful picture of the
Virgin's demeanour. She 'kept all these sayings, and pondered them
in her heart.' What deep thoughts the mother of the Lord had, were
hers alone. But we have the same duty to the truth, and it will
never disclose its inmost sweetness to us, nor take so sovereign a
grip of our very selves as to mould our lives, unless we too
treasure it in our hearts, and by patient brooding on it understand
its hidden harmonies, and spread our souls out to receive its
transforming power. A non-meditative religion is a shallow religion.
But if we hide His word in our hearts, and often in secret draw out
our treasure to count and weigh it, we shall be able to speak out of
a full heart, and like these shepherds, to rejoice that we have seen
even as it was spoken unto us.




WAS, IS, IS TO COME


    '... The babe lying in a manger...'--LUKE ii. 16.

    '... While He blessed them, He was parted from them,
    and carried up into heaven...'--LUKE xxiv. 51.

    'This same Jesus... shall so come in like manner as
    ye have seen Him go...'--ACTS I. 11.

These three fragments, which I have ventured to isolate and bring
together, are all found in one author's writings. Luke's biography
of Jesus stretches from the cradle in Bethlehem to the Ascension
from Olivet. He narrates the Ascension twice, because it has two
aspects. In one it looks backward, and is necessary as the
completion of what was begun in the birth. In one it looks forward,
and makes necessary, as its completion, that coming which still lies
in the future. These three stand up, like linked summits in a
mountain. We can understand none of them unless we embrace them all.
If the story of the birth is true, a life so begun cannot end in an
undistinguished death like that of all men. And if the Ascension
from Olivet is true, that cannot close the history of His relations
to men. The creed which proclaims He was 'born of the Virgin Mary'
must go on to say '... He ascended up into heaven'; and cannot pause
till it adds '...From thence He shall come to judge the quick and
the dead.' So we have then three points to consider in this sermon.

I. Note first, the three great moments.

The thing that befell at Bethlehem, in the stable of the inn, was a
commonplace and insignificant enough event looked at from the
outside: the birth of a child to a young mother. It had its elements
of pathos in its occurring at a distance from home, among the
publicity and discomforts of an inn stable, and with some cloud of
suspicion over the mother's fair fame. But the outside of a fact is
the least part of it. A little film of sea-weed floats upon the
surface, but there are fathoms of it below the water. Men said, 'A
child is born.' Angels said, and bowed their faces in adoration,
'The Word has become flesh'. The eternal, self-communicating
personality in the Godhead, passed voluntarily into the condition of
humanity. Jesus was born, the Son of God came. Only when we hold
fast by that great truth do we pierce to the centre of what was done
in that poor stable, and possess the key to all the wonders of His
life and death.

From the manger we pass to the mountain. A life begun by such a
birth cannot be ended, as I have said, by a mere ordinary death. The
Alpha and the Omega of that alphabet must belong to the same fount
of type. A divine conformity forbids that He who was born of the
Virgin Mary should have His body laid to rest in an undistinguished
grave. And so what Bethlehem began, Olivet carries on.

Note the circumstances of this second of these great moments. The
place is significant. Almost within sight of the city, a stone's
throw probably from the home where He had lodged, and where He had
conquered death in the person of Lazurus; not far from the turn of the
road where the tears had come into His eyes amidst the shouting of the
rustic procession, as He had looked across the valley; just above
Gethsemane, where He had agonised on that bare hillside to which He
had often gone for communion with the Father in heaven. There, in some
dimple of the hill, and unseen but by the little group that surrounded
Him, He passed from their midst. The manner of the departure is yet
more significant than the place. Here were no whirlwind, no chariots
and horses of fire, no sudden rapture; but, as the narrative makes
emphatic, a slow, leisurely, self-originated floating upwards. He was
borne up from them, and no outward vehicle or help was needed; but by
His own volition and power He rose towards the heavens. 'And a cloud
received Him out of their sight'--the Shechinah cloud, the bright
symbol of the Divine Presence which had shone round the shepherds on
the pastures of Bethlehem, and enwrapped Him and the three disciples
on the Mount of Transfiguration. It came not to lift Him on its soft
folds to the heavens, but in order that, first, He might be plainly
seen till the moment that He ceased to be seen, and might not dwindle
into a speck by reason of distance; and secondly, that it might teach
the truth, that, as His body was received into the cloud, so He entered
into the glory which He 'had with the Father before the world was.'
Such was the second of these moments.

The third great moment corresponds to these, is required by them,
and crowns them. The Ascension was not only the close of Christ's
earthly life which would preserve congruity with its beginning, but
it was also the clear manifestation that, as He came of His own
will, so He departed by His own volition. 'I came forth from the
Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go
unto the Father.' Thus the earthly life is, as it were, islanded in
a sea of glory, and that which stretches away beyond the last moment
of visibility, is like that which stretched away beyond the first
moment of corporeity; the eternal union with the eternal Father. But
such an entrance on and departure from earth, and such a career on
earth, can only end in that coming again of which the angels spoke
to the gazing eleven.

Mark the emphasis of their words. 'This same Jesus,' the same in His
manhood, 'shall so come, in like manner, as ye have seen Him go.'
How much the 'in like manner' may mean we can scarcely dogmatically
affirm. But this, at least, is clear, that it cannot mean less than
corporeally visible, locally surrounded by angel-guards, and
perhaps, according to a mysterious prophecy, to the same spot from
which He ascended. But, at all events, there are the three moments
in the manifestation of the Son of God.

II. Look, in the second place, at the threefold phases of our Lord's
activity which are thus suggested.

I need not dwell, in more than a sentence or two, on the first of
these. Each of these three moments is the inauguration of a form of
activity which lasts till the emergence of the next of the triad.

The birth at Bethlehem had, for its consequence and purpose, a
threefold end: the revelation of God in humanity, the manifestation
of perfect manhood to men, and the rendering of the great sacrifice
for the sins of the world. These three--showing us God; showing
ourselves as we are and as we may be; as we ought to be, and,
blessed be His name, as we shall be, if we observe the conditions;
and the making reconciliation for the sins of the whole world--these
are the things for which the Babe lying in the manger was born and
came under the limitations of humanity.

Turn to the second of the three, and what shall we say of it? That
Ascension has for its great purpose the application to men of the
results of the Incarnation. He was born that He might show us God
and ourselves, and that He might die for us. He ascended up on high
in order that the benefits of that Revelation and Atonement might be
extended through, and appropriated by, the whole world.

One chief thought which is enforced by the narrative of the
Ascension is the permanence, the eternity of the humanity of Jesus
Christ. He ascended up where He was before, but He who ascended is
not altogether the same as He who had been there before, for He has
taken up with Him our nature to the centre of the universe and the
throne of God, and there, 'bone of our bone, and flesh of our
flesh,' a true man in body, soul, and spirit, He lives and reigns.
The cradle at Bethlehem assumes even greater solemnity when we think
of it as the beginning of a humanity that is never laid aside. So we
can look confidently to all that blaze of light where He sits, and
feel that, howsoever the body of His humiliation may have been
changed into the body of His glory, He still remains corporeally and
spiritually a true Son of man. Thus the face that looks down from
amidst the blaze, though it be 'as the sun shineth in his strength,'
is the old face; and the breast which is girded with the golden
girdle is the same breast on which the seer had leaned his happy
head; and the hand that holds the sceptre is the hand that was
pierced with the nails; and the Christ that is ascended up on high
is the Christ that loved and pitied adulteresses and publicans, and
took the little child in His gracious arms--'The same yesterday, and
to-day, and for ever.'

Christ's Ascension is as the broad seal of heaven attesting the
completeness of His work on earth. It inaugurates His repose which
is not the sign of His weariness, but of His having finished all
which He was born to do. But that repose is not idleness. Rather it
is full of activity.

On the Cross He shouted with a great voice ere He died, 'It is
finished.' But centuries, perhaps millenniums, yet will have to
elapse before the choirs of angels shall be able to chant, 'It is
done: the kingdoms of the world are the kingdoms of God and of His
Christ.' All the interval is filled by the working of that ascended
Lord whose session at the right hand of God is not only symbolical
of perfect repose and a completed sacrifice, but also of perfect
activity in and with His servants.

He has gone--to rest, to reign, to work, to intercede, and to
prepare a place for us. For if our Brother be indeed at the right
hand of God, then our faltering feet may travel to the Throne, and
our sinful selves may be at home there. The living Christ, working
to-day, is that of which the Ascension from Olivet gives us the
guarantee.

The third great moment will inaugurate yet another form of activity
as necessary and certain as either of the two preceding. For if His
cradle was what we believe it to have been, and if His sacrifice was
what Scripture tells us it is, and if through all the ages He,
crowned and regnant, is working for the diffusion of the powers of
His Cross and the benefits of His Incarnation, there can be no end
to that course except the one which is expressed for us by the
angels' message to the gazing disciples: He shall so come in like
manner as ye have seen Him go. He will come to manifest Himself as
the King of the world and its Lord and Redeemer. He will come to
inaugurate the great act of Judgment, which His great act of
Redemption necessarily draws after it, and Himself be the Arbiter of
the fates of men, the determining factor in whose fates has been
their relation to Him. No doubt many who never heard His name upon
earth will, in that day be, by His clear eye and perfect judgment,
discerned to have visited the sick and the imprisoned, and to have
done many acts for His sake. And for us who know Him, and have heard
His name, the way in which we stand affected in heart and will to
Christ reveals and settles our whole character, shapes our whole
being, and will determine our whole destiny. He comes, not only to
manifest Himself so as that 'every eye shall see Him,' and to divide
the sheep from the goats, but also in order that He may reign for
ever and gather into the fellowship of His love and the community of
His joys all who love and trust Him here. These are the triple
phases of our Lord's activity suggested by the three great moments.

III. Lastly, notice the triple attitude which we should assume to
Him and to them.

For the first, the cradle, with its consequence of the Cross, our
response is clinging faith, grateful memory, earnest following, and
close conformity. For the second, the Ascension, with its
consequence of a Christ that lives and labours for us, and is with
us, our attitude ought to be an intense realisation of the fact of
His present working and of His present abode with us. The centre of
Christian doctrine has, amongst average Christians, been far too
exclusively fixed within the limits of the earthly life, and in the
interests of a true and comprehensive grasp of all the blessedness
that Christianity is capable of bringing to men, I would protest
against that type of thought, earnest and true as it may be within
its narrow limits, which is always pointing men to the past fact of
a Cross, and slurs over and obscures the present fact of a living
Christ who is with us, and in us. One difference between Him and all
other benefactors and teachers and helpers is this, that, as ages go
on, thicker and ever-thickening folds of misty oblivion wrap them,
and their influence diminishes as new circumstances emerge, but this
Christ's power laughs at the centuries, and is untinged by oblivion,
and is never out of date. For all others we have to say--'having
served his generation,' or a generation or two more, 'according to
the will of God, he fell on sleep.' But Christ knows no corruption,
and is for ever more the Leader, and the Companion, and the Friend,
of each new age.

Brethren! the Cross is incomplete without the throne. We are told to
go back to the historical Christ. Yes, Amen, I say! But do not let
that make us lose our grasp of the living Christ who is with us to-day.
Whilst we rejoice over the 'Christ that died,' let us go on with Paul
to say, 'Yea! rather, that is risen again, and is even at the right
hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.'

For that future, discredited as the thought of the second corporeal
coming of the Lord Jesus in visible fashion and to a locality has
been by the fancies and the vagaries of so-called Apocalyptic
expositors, let us not forget that it is the hope of Christ's
Church, and that 'they who love His appearing' is, by the Apostle,
used as the description and definition of the Christian character.
We have to look forwards as well as backwards and upwards, and to
rejoice in the sure and certain confidence that the Christ who has
come is the Christ who will come.

For us the past should be full of Him, and memory and faith should
cling to His Incarnation and His Cross. The present should be full
of Him, and our hearts should commune with Him amidst the toils of
earth. The future should be full of Him, and our hopes should be
based upon no vague anticipations of a perfectibility of humanity,
nor upon any dim dreams of what may lie beyond the grave; but upon
the concrete fact that Jesus Christ has risen, and that Jesus Christ
is glorified. Does my faith grasp the Christ that was--who died for
me? Does my heart cling to the Christ who is--who lives and reigns,
and with whom my life is hid in God? Do my hopes crystallise round,
and anchor upon, the Christ that is to come, and pierce the dimness
of the future and the gloom of the grave, looking onwards to that
day of days when He, who is our life, shall appear, and we shall
appear also with Him in glory?




SIMEON'S SWAN-SONG


    'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,
    according to Thy word: 30. For mine eyes have seen Thy
    salvation.'--LUKE ii. 29,30.

That scene, when the old man took the Infant in his withered arms,
is one of the most picturesque and striking in the Gospel narrative.
Simeon's whole life appears, in its later years, to have been under
the immediate direction of the Spirit of God. It is very remarkable
to notice how, in the course of three consecutive verses, the
operation of that divine Spirit upon him is noted. 'It was revealed
unto him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he
had seen the Lord's Christ.' 'And he came by the Spirit into the
Temple.' I suppose that means that some inward monition, which he
recognised to be of God, sent him there, in the expectation that at
last he was to 'see the Lord's Christ.' He was there before the
Child was brought by His parents, for we read 'He came by the Spirit
into the Temple, and when the parents brought in the Child Jesus ...
he took Him in his arms.' Think of the old man, waiting there in the
Sanctuary, told by God that he was thus about to have the fulfilment
of his life-long desire, and yet probably not knowing what kind of a
shape the fulfilment would take. There is no reason to believe that
he knew he was to see an infant; and he waits. And presently a
peasant woman comes in with a child in her arms, and there arises in
his soul the voice 'Anoint Him! for this is He!' And so, whether he
expected such a vision or no, he takes the Child in his arms, and
says, 'Lord! Now, now !--after all these years of waiting--lettest
Thou Thy servant depart in peace.'

Now, it seems to me that there are two or three very interesting
thoughts deducible from this incident, and from these words. I take
three of them. Here we have the Old recognising and embracing the
New; the slave recognising and submitting to his Owner; and the
saint recognising and welcoming the approach of death.

I. The Old recognising and embracing the New.

It is striking to observe how the description of Simeon's character
expresses the aim of the whole Old Testament Revelation. All that
was meant by the preceding long series of manifestations through all
these years was accomplished in this man. For hearken how he is
described--'just and devout,' that is the perfection of moral
character, stated in the terms of the Old Testament; 'waiting for
the Consolation of Israel,' that is the ideal attitude which the
whole of the gradual manifestation of God's increasing purpose
running through the ages was intended to make the attitude of every
true Israelite--an expectant, eager look forwards, and in the
present, the discharge of all duties to God and man. 'And the Holy
Ghost was upon him'; that, too, in a measure, was the ultimate aim
of the whole Revelation of Israel. So this man stands as a bright,
consummate flower which had at last effloresced from the roots; and
in his own person, an embodiment of the very results which God had
patiently sought through millenniums of providential dealing and
inspiration. Therefore in this man's arms was laid the Christ for
whom he had so long been waiting.

And he exhibits, still further, what God intended to secure by the
whole previous processes of Revelation, in that he recognises that
they were transcended and done with, that all that they pointed to
was accomplished when a devout Israelite took into his arms the
Incarnate Messiah, that all the past had now answered its purpose,
and like the scaffolding when the top stone of a building is brought
forth with shouting, might be swept away and the world be none the
poorer. And so he rejoices in the Christ that he receives, and sings
the swan-song of the departing Israel, the Israel according to the
Spirit. And that is what Judaism was meant to do, and how it was
meant to end, in an _euthanasia_, in a passing into the nobler
form of the Christian Church and the Christian citizenship.

I do not need to remind you how terribly unlike this ideal the
reality was, but I may, though only in a sentence or two, point out
that that relation of the New to the Old is one that recurs, though
in lees sharp and decisive forms, in every generation, and in our
generation in a very special manner. It is well for the New when it
consents to be taken in the arms of the Old, and it is ill for the
Old when, instead of welcoming, it frowns upon the New, and instead
of playing the part of Simeon, and embracing and blessing the
Infant, plays the part of a Herod, and seeks to destroy the Child
that seems to threaten its sovereignty. We old people who are
conservative, if not by nature, by years, and you young people who
are revolutionary and innovating by reason of your youth, may both
find a lesson in that picture in the Temple, of Simeon with the
Infant Christ in his arms.

II. Further, we have here the slave recognising and submitting to
his Owner.

Now the word which is here employed for 'Lord' is one that very
seldom occurs in the New Testament in reference to God; only some
four or five times in all. And it is the harshest and hardest word
that can be picked out. If you clip the Greek termination off it, it
is the English word 'despot,' and it conveys all that that word
conveys to us, not only a lord in the sense of a constitutional
monarch, not only a lord in the polite sense of a superior in
dignity, but a despot in the sense of being the absolute owner of a
man who has no rights against the owner, and is a slave. For the
word 'slave' is what logicians call the correlative of this word
'despot,' and as the latter asserts absolute ownership and
authority, the former declares abject submission. So Simeon takes
these two words to express his relation and feeling towards God.
'Thou art the Owner, the Despot, and I am Thy slave.' That relation
of owner and slave, wicked as it is, when subsisting between two
men--an atrocious crime, 'the sum of all villainies,' as the good
old English emancipators used to call it--is the sum of all
blessings when regarded as existing between man and God. For what
does it imply? The right to command and the duty to obey, the
sovereign will that is supreme over all, and the blessed attitude of
yielding up one's will wholly, without reserve, without reluctance,
to that infinitely mighty, and--blessed be God!--infinitely loving
Will Absolute authority calls for abject submission.

And again, the despot has the unquestioned right of life and death
over his slave, and if he chooses, can smite him down where he
stands, and no man have a word to say. Thus, absolutely, we hang
upon God, and because He has the power of life and death, every
moment of our lives is a gift from His hands, and we should not
subsist for an instant unless, by continual effluence from Him, and
influx into us, of the life which flows from Him, the Fountain of
life.

Again, the slave-owner has entire possession of all the slave's
possessions, and can take them and do what he likes with them. And
so, all that I call mine is His. It was His before it became mine;
it remains His whilst it is mine, because I am His, and so what
seems to belong to me belongs to Him, no less truly. What, then, do
you do with your possessions? Use them for yourselves? Dispute His
ownership? Forget His claims? Grudge that He should take them away
sometimes, and grudge still more to yield them to Him in daily
obedience, and when necessary, surrender them? Is such a temper what
becomes the slave? What reason has he to grumble if the master comes
to him and says, 'This little bit of ground that I have given you to
grow a few sugar-canes and melons on, I am going to take back
again.' What reason have we to set up our puny wills against Him, if
He exercises His authority over us and demands that we should regard
ourselves not only as sons but also as slaves to whom the owner of
it and us has given a talent to be used for Him?

Now, all that sounds very harsh, does it not? Let in one thought
into it, and it all becomes very gracious. The Apostle Peter, who
also once uses this word 'despot,' does so in a very remarkable
connection. He speaks about men's 'denying the despot that bought
them.' Ah, Peter! you were getting on very thin ice when you talked
about denial. Perhaps it was just because he remembered his sin in
the judgment hall that he used that word to express the very utmost
degree of degeneration and departure from Jesus. But be that as it
may, he bases the slave-owner's right on purchase. And Jesus Christ
has bought us by His own precious blood; and so all that sounds
harsh in the metaphor, worked out as I have been trying to do,
changes its aspect when we think of the method by which He has
acquired His rights and the purpose for which He exercises them. As
the Psalmist said, 'Oh, Lord! truly I am Thy slave. Thou hast loosed
my bonds.'

III. So, lastly, we have here the saint recognising and welcoming
the approach of death.

Now, it is a very singular thing, but I suppose it is true, that
somehow or other, most people read these words, 'Lord! now lettest
Thou Thy servant depart in peace,' as being a petition; 'Lord! now
_let_ Thy servant depart.' But they are not that at all. We
have here not a petition or an aspiration, but a statement of the
fact that Simeon recognises the appointed token that his days were
drawing to an end, and it is the glad recognition of that fact.
'Lord! I see now that the time has come when I may put aside all
this coil of weary waiting and burdened mortality, and go to rest.'
Look how he regards approaching death. 'Thou lettest Thy servant
depart' is but a feeble translation of the original, which is better
given in the version that has become very familiar to us all by its
use in a musical service, the _Nunc Dimittis_; 'Now Thou
_dost send away_' It is the technical word for relieving a
sentry from his post. It conveys the idea of the hour having come
when the slave who has been on the watch through all the long, weary
night, or toiling through all the hot, dusty day, may extinguish his
lantern, or fling down his mattock, and go home to his little hut.
'Lord! Thou dost dismiss me now, and I take the dismission as the
end of the long watch, as the end of the long toil.'

But notice, still further, how Simeon not only recognises, but
welcomes the approach of death. 'Thou lettest Thy servant depart in
peace.' Yes, there speaks a calm voice tranquilly accepting the
permission. He feels no agitation, no fluster of any kind, but
quietly slips away from his post. And the reason for that peaceful
welcome of the end is 'for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.' That
sight is the reason, first of all, for his being sure that the
curfew had rung for him, and that the day's work was done. But it is
also the reason for the peacefulness of his departure. He went 'in
peace,' because of what? Because the weary, blurred, old eyes had
seen all that any man needs to see to be satisfied and blessed. Life
could yield nothing more, though its length were doubled to this old
man, than the sight of God's salvation.

Can it yield anything more to us, brethren? And may we not say, if
we have seen that sight, what an unbelieving author said, with a
touch of self-complacency not admirable, 'I have warmed both hands
at the fire of life, and I am ready to depart.' We may go in peace,
if our eyes have seen Him who satisfies our vision, whose bright
presence will go with us into the darkness, and whom we shall see
more perfectly when we have passed from the sentry-box to the home
above, and have ceased to be slaves in the far-off plantation, and
are taken to be sons in the Father's house. 'Thou lettest Thy
servant depart in peace.'




THE BOY IN THE TEMPLE


    'And He said unto them, How is it that ye sought Me!
    wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?'
    --LUKE ii. 49.

A number of spurious gospels have come down to us, which are full of
stories, most of them absurd and some of them worse, about the
infancy of Jesus Christ. Their puerilities bring out more distinctly
the simplicity, the nobleness, the worthiness of this one solitary
incident of His early days, which has been preserved for us. How has
it been preserved? If you will look over the narratives there will
be very little difficulty, I think, in answering that question.
Observing the prominence that is given to the parents, and how the
story enlarges upon what they thought and felt, we shall not have
much doubt in accepting the hypothesis that it was none other than
Mary from whom Luke received such intimate details. Notice, for
instance, 'Joseph and His mother knew not of it.' 'They supposed Him
to have been in the company.' 'And when they,' i.e. Joseph and Mary,
'saw Him, they were astonished'; and then that final touch, 'He was
subject to them,' as if His mother would not have Luke or us think
that this one act of independence meant that He had shaken off
parental authority. And is it not a mother's voice that says, 'His
mother kept all these things in her heart,' and pondered all the
traits of boyhood? Now it seems to me that, in these words of the
twelve-year-old boy, there are two or three points full of interest
and of teaching for us. There is--

I. That consciousness of Sonship.

I am not going to plunge into a subject on which certainly a great
deal has been very confidently affirmed, and about which the less is
dogmatised by us, who must know next to nothing about it, the
better; viz. the inter-connection of the human and the divine
elements in the person of Jesus Christ. But the context leads us
straight to this thought--that there was in Jesus distinct growth in
wisdom as well as in stature, and in favour with God and man. And
now, suppose the peasant boy brought up to Jerusalem, seeing it for
the first time, and for the first time entering the sacred courts of
the Temple. Remember, that to a Jewish boy, his reaching the age of
twelve made an epoch, because he then became 'a son of the Law,' and
took upon himself the religious responsibilities which had hitherto
devolved upon his parents. If we will take that into account, and
remember that it was a true manhood which was growing up in the boy
Jesus, then we shall not feel it to be irreverent if we venture to
say, not that here and then, there began His consciousness of His
Divine Sonship, but that that visit made an epoch and a stage in the
development of that consciousness, just because it furthered the
growth of His manhood.

Further, our Lord in these words, in the gentlest possible way, and
yet most decisively, does what He did in all His intercourse with
Mary, so far as it is recorded for us in Scripture--relegated her
back within limits beyond which she tended to advance. For she said,
'Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing,' no doubt thus
preserving what had been the usual form of speech in the household
for all the previous years; and there is an emphasis that would fall
upon her heart, as it fell upon none other, when He answered: 'Wist
ye not that I must be about My Father's business?' We are not
warranted in affirming that the Child meant all which the Man
afterwards meant by the claim to be the Son of God; nor are we any
more warranted in denying that He did. We know too little about the
mysteries of His growth to venture on definite statements of either
kind. Our sounding-lines are not long enough to touch bottom in this
great word from the lips of a boy of twelve; but this is clear, that
as He grew into self-consciousness, there came with it the growing
consciousness of His Sonship to His Father in heaven.

Now, dear brethren, whilst all that is unique, and parts Him off
from us, do not let us forget that that same sense of Sonship and
Fatherhood must be the very deepest thing in us, if we are Christian
people after Christ's pattern. We, too, can be sons through Him, and
only through Him. I believe with all my heart in what we hear so
much about now--'the universal Fatherhood of God.' But I believe
that there is also a special relation of Fatherhood and Sonship,
which is constituted only, according to Scripture teaching in my
apprehension, through faith in Jesus Christ, and the reception of
His life as a supernatural life into our souls. God is Father of all
men--thank God for it! And that means, that He gives life to all
men; that in a very deep and precious sense the life which He gives
to every man is not only derived from, but is kindred with, His own;
and it means that His love reaches to all men, and that His
authority extends over them. But there is an inner sanctuary, there
is a better life than the life of nature, and the Fatherhood into
which Christ introduces us means, that through faith in Him, and the
entrance into our spirits of the Spirit of adoption, we receive a
life derived from, and kindred with, the life of the Giver, and that
we are bound to Him not only by the cords of love, but to obey the
parental authority. Sonship is the deepest thought about the
Christian life.

It was an entirely new thought when Jesus spoke to His disciples of
their Father in heaven. It was a thrilling novelty when Paul bade
servile worshippers realise that they were no longer slaves, but
sons, and as such, heirs of God. It was the rapture of pointing to a
new star flaming out, as it were, that swelled in John's
exclamation: 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God!' For even though
in the Old Testament there are a few occasional references to
Israel's King or to Israel itself as being 'God's son,' as far as I
remember, there is only one reference in all the Old Testament to
parental love towards each of us on the part of God, and that is the
great saying in the 103rd Psalm: 'Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.' For the most part
the idea connected in the Old Testament with the Fatherhood of God
is authority: 'If I be a Father, where is Mine honour?' says the
last of the prophets. But when we pass into the New, on the very
threshold, here we get the germ, in these words, of the blessed
thought that, as His disciples, we, too, may claim sonship to God
through Him, and penetrate beyond the awe of Divine Majesty into the
love of our Father God. Brethren, notwithstanding all that was
unique in the Sonship of Jesus Christ, He welcomes us to a place
beside Himself, and if we are the children of God by faith in Him,
then are we 'heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.'

Now the second thought that I would suggest from these words is--

II. The sweet 'must' of filial duty.

'How is it that ye sought Me?' That means: 'Did you not know where I
should be sure to be? What need was there to go up and down
Jerusalem looking for Me? You might have known there was only one
place where you would find Me. Wist ye not that I _must_ be
about My Father's business?' Now, the last words of this question
are in the Greek literally, as the margin of the Revised Version
tells us, 'in the things of My Father'; and that idiomatic form of
speech may either be taken to mean, as the Authorised Version does,
'about My Father's business,' or, with the Revised Version, 'in My
Father's house.' The latter seems the rendering most relevant in
this connection, where the folly of seeking is emphasised--the
certainty of His place is more to the point than that of His
occupation. But the locality carried the occupation with it, for why
must He be in the Father's house but to be about the Father's
business, 'to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His
Temple'?

Do people know where to find us? Is it unnecessary to go hunting for
us? Is there a place where it is certain that we shall be? It was so
with this child Jesus, and it should be so with all of us who
profess to be His followers.

All through Christ's life there runs, and occasionally there comes
into utterance, that sense of a divine necessity laid upon Him; and
here is its beginning, the very first time that the word occurs on
His lips, 'I must.' There is as divine and as real a necessity
shaping our lives because it lies upon and moulds our wills, if we
have the child's heart, and stand in the child's position. In Jesus
Christ the 'must' was not an external one, but He 'must be about His
Father's business,' because His whole inclination and will were
submitted to the Father's authority. And that is what will make any
life sweet, calm, noble. 'The love of Christ constraineth us.' There
is a necessity which presses upon men like iron fetters; there is a
necessity which wells up within a man as a fountain of life, and
does not so much drive as sweetly incline the will, so that it is
impossible for him to be other than a loving, obedient child.

Dear friend, have we felt the joyful grip of that necessity? Is it
impossible for me not to be doing God's will? Do I feel myself laid
hold of by a strong, loving hand that propels me, not unwillingly,
along the path? Does inclination coincide with obligation? If it
does, then no words can tell the freedom, the enlargement, the
calmness, the deep blessedness of such a life. But when these pull
in two different ways, as, alas! they often do, and I have to say,
'I must be about my Father's business, and I had rather be about my
own if I durst,' which is the condition of a great many so-called
Christian people--then the necessity is miserable; and slavery, not
freedom, is the characteristic of such Christianity. And there is a
great deal of such to-day.

And now one last word. On this sweet 'must,' and blessed compulsion
to be about the Father's business, there follows:

III. The meek acceptance of the lowliest duties.

'He went down to Nazareth, and was subject to them.' That is all
that is told us about eighteen years, by far the largest part of the
earthly life of Christ. Legend comes in, and for once not
inappropriately, and tells us, what is probably quite true, that
during these years, Jesus worked in the carpenter's shop, and as one
story says, 'made yokes,' or as another tells, made light implements
of husbandry for the peasants round Nazareth. Be that as it may, 'He
was subject unto them,' and that was doing the Father's will, and
being 'about the Father's business,' quite as much as when He was
amongst the doctors, and learning by asking questions as well as by
hearkening to their instructions. Everything depends on the motive.
The commonest duty may be 'the Father's business,' when we are doing
manfully the work of daily life. Only we do not turn common duty
into the Father's business, unless we remember Him in the doing of
it. But if we carry the hallowing and quickening influence of that
great 'must' into all the pettinesses, and paltrinesses, and
wearinesses, and sorrows of our daily trivial lives, then we shall
find, as Jesus Christ found, that the carpenter's shop is as sacred
as the courts of the Temple, and that to obey Mary was to do the
will of the Father in heaven.

What a blessed transformation that would make of all lives! The
psalmist long ago said: 'One thing have I desired of the Lord, and
that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life.' We may dwell in the house of the Lord all
the days of our lives. We may be in one or other of the many
mansions of the Father's house where-ever we go, and may be doing
the will of the Father in heaven in all that we do. Then we shall be
at rest; then we shall be strong; then we shall be pure; then we
shall have deep in our hearts the joyous consciousness, undisturbed
by rebellious wills, that now 'we are the sons of God,' and the
still more joyous hope, undimmed by doubts or mists, that 'it doth
not yet appear what we shall be'; but that wherever we go, it will
be but passing from one room of the great home into another more
glorious still. 'I must be about my Father's business'; let us make
that the motto for earth, and He will say to us in His own good time
'Come home from the field, and sit down beside Me in My house,' and
so we 'shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.'




JOHN THE PREACHER OF REPENTANCE


    'Now, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius
    Cesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and
    Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip
    tetrarch of Iturea and of the region of Trachonitis,
    and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, 2. Annas and
    Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came
    unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.
    3. And he came into all the country about Jordan,
    preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission
    of sins; 4. As it is written in the book of the words
    of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying
    in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make
    His paths straight. 6. Every valley shall be filled,
    and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and
    the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways
    shall be made smooth; 6. And all flesh shall see the
    salvation of God. 7. Then said he to the multitude that
    came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of
    vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to
    come! 8. Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of
    repentance; and begin not to say within yourselves, We
    have Abraham to our Father: for I say unto you, That
    God is able of these stones to raise up children unto
    Abraham. 9. And now also the axe is laid unto the root
    of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not
    forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
    10. And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do
    then? 11. He answereth and saith unto them, He that
    hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none;
    and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. 12. Then
    came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him,
    Master, what shall we do? 13. And he said unto them,
    Exact no more than that which is appointed you. 14. And
    the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what
    shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no
    man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with
    your wages.'--LUKE iii. 144.

Why does Luke enumerate so carefully the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities in verses 1 and 2? Not only to fix the date, but, in
accordance with the world-wide aspect of his Gospel, to set his
narrative in relation with secular history; and, further, to focus
into one vivid beam of light the various facts which witnessed to
the sunken civil and darkened moral and religious condition of the
Jews. What more needed to be said to prove how the ancient glory had
faded, than that they were under the rule of such a delegate as
Pilate, of such an emperor as Tiberius, and that the bad brood of
Herod's descendants divided the sacred land between them, and that
the very high-priesthood was illegally administered, so that such a
pair as Annas and Caiaphas held it in some irregular fashion between
them? It was clearly high time for John to come, and for the word of
God to come to him.

The wilderness had nourished the stern, solitary spirit of the
Baptist, and there the consciousness of his mission and his message
'came to him'--a phrase which at once declares his affinity with the
old prophets. Out of the desert he burst on the nation, sudden as
lightning, and cleaving like it. Luke says nothing as to his garb or
food, but goes straight to the heart of his message, 'The baptism of
repentance unto remission of sins,' in which expression the
'remission' depends neither on 'baptism' alone, nor on 'repentance'
alone. The outward act was vain if unaccompanied by the state of
mind and will; the state of mind was proved genuine by submitting to
the act.

In verses 7 to 14 John's teaching as the preacher of repentance is
summarised. Why did he meet the crowds that streamed out to him with
such vehement rebuke? One would have expected him to welcome them,
instead of calling them 'offspring of vipers,' and seeming to be
unwilling that they should flee from the wrath to come. But Luke
tells why. They wished to be baptized, but there is no word of their
repentance. Rather, they were trusting to their descent as exempting
them from the approaching storm, so that their baptism would not
have been the baptism which John required, being devoid of
repentance. Just because they thought themselves safe as being
'children of Abraham,' they deserved John's rough name, 'ye
offspring of vipers.'

Rabbinical theology has much to say about 'the merits of the
fathers.' John, like every prophet who had ever spoken to the nation
of judgments impending, felt that the sharp edge of his words was
turned by the obstinate belief that judgments were for the Gentile,
and never would touch the Jew. Do we not see the same unbelief that
God can ever visit England with national destruction in full force
among ourselves?  Not the virtues of past generations, but the
righteousness of the present one, is the guarantee of national
exaltation.

John's crowds were eager to be baptized as an additional security,
but were slow to repent. If heaven could be secured by submitting to
a rite, 'multitudes' would come for it, but the crowd thins quickly
when the administrator of the rite becomes the vehement preacher of
repentance. That is so to-day as truly as it was so by the fords of
Jordan. John demanded not only repentance, but its 'fruits,' for
there is no virtue in a repentance which does not change the life,
were such possible.

Repentance is more than sorrow for sin. Many a man has that, and yet
rushes again into the old mire. To change the mind and will is not
enough, unless the change is certified to be real by deeds
corresponding. So John preached the true nature of repentance when
he called for its fruits. And he preached the greatest motive for it
which he knew, when he pressed home on sluggish consciences the
close approach of a judgment for which everything was ready, the axe
ground to a fine edge, and lying at the root of the trees. If it lay
there, there was no time to lose; if it still lay, there was time to
repent before it was swinging round the woodman's head. We have a
higher motive for repentance in 'the goodness of God' leading to it.
But there is danger that modern Christianity should think too little
of 'the terror of the Lord,' and so should throw away one of the
strongest means of persuading men. John's advice to the various
classes of hearers illustrates the truth that the commonest field of
duty and the homeliest acts may become sacred. Not high-flying,
singular modes of life, abandoning the vulgar tasks, but the
plainest prose of jog-trot duty will follow and attest real
repentance. Every calling has its temptations--that is to say, every
one has its opportunities of serving God by resisting the Devil.




JOHN'S WITNESS TO JESUS, AND GOD'S


    'And as the people were in expectation, and all men
    mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the
    Christ, or not; 16. John answered, saying unto them
    all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier
    than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not
    worthy to unloose: He shall baptize you with the Holy
    Ghost, and with fire: 17. Whose fan is in His hand,
    and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather
    the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn
    with fire unquenchable. 18. And many other things, in
    his exhortation, preached he unto the people. 19. But
    Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias
    his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which
    Herod had done, 20. Added yet this above all, that he
    shut up John in prison. 21. Now, when all the people
    were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being
    baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 22. And
    the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape, like a
    dove, upon Him; and a voice came from heaven, which
    said, Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well
    pleased.'--LUKE iii. 15-22.

This passage falls into three parts: John's witness to the coming
Messiah (vs. 15-17); John's undaunted rebuke of sin in high places,
and its penalty (vs. 18-20); and God's witness to Jesus (vs. 21,
22).

I. Luke sharply parts off the Baptist's work as a preacher of
repentance and plain morality from his work as the herald who
preceded the king. The former is delineated in verses 7-14, and its
effect was to set light to the always smouldering expectation of the
Messiah. The people were ready to rally round him if he would say
that he was the coming deliverer. It was a real temptation, but his
unmoved humility, which lay side by side with his boldness, brushed
it aside, and poured an effectual stream of cold water on the
excitement. 'John answered' the popular questionings, of which he
was fully aware, and his answer crushed them.

In less acute fashion, the same temptation comes to all who move the
general conscience. Disciples always seek to hoist their teacher
higher than is fitting. Adherence to him takes the place of
obedience to his message, and, if he is a true man, he has to damp
down misdirected enthusiasm.

Mark John's clear apprehension of the limitations of his work. He
baptized with water, the symbol and means of outward cleansing. He
does not depreciate his position or the importance of his baptism,
but his whole soul bows in reverence before the coming Messiah,
whose great office was to transcend his, as the wide Mediterranean
surpassed the little lake of Galilee. His outline of that work is
grand, though incomplete. It is largely based upon Malachi's closing
prophecy, and the connection witnesses to John's consciousness that
he was the Elijah foretold there. He saw that the Messiah would
surpass him in his special endowment. Strong as he was, that other
was to be stronger. Probably he did not dream that that other was to
wield the divine might, nor that His perfect strength was to be
manifested in weakness, and to work its wonders by the might of
gentle, self-sacrificing love. But, though he dimly saw, he
perfectly adored. He felt himself unworthy (literally, insufficient)
to be the slave who untied (or, according to Matthew, 'bore') his
lord's sandals. How beautiful is the lowliness of that strong
nature! He stood erect in the face of priests and tetrarchs, and
furious women, and the headsman with his sword, but he lay prostrate
before his King.

Strength and royal authority were not all that he had to proclaim of
Messiah. 'He shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire.' We
observe that the construction here is different from that in verse
16 ('with water'), inasmuch as the preposition 'in' is inserted,
which, though it is often used 'instrumentaly,' is here, therefore,
more probably to be taken as meaning simply 'in.' The two nouns are
coupled under one preposition, which suggests that they are fused
together in the speaker's mind as reality and symbol.

Fire is a frequently recurrent emblem of the Holy Spirit, both in
the Old and New Testament. It is not the destructive, but the
vitalising, glowing, transforming, energy of fire, which is
expressed. The fervour of holy enthusiasm, the warmth of ardent
love, the melting of hard hearts, the change of cold, damp material
into its own ruddy likeness, are all set forth in this great symbol.
John's water baptism was poor beside Messiah's immersion into that
cleansing fire. Fire turns what it touches into kindred flame. The
refiner's fire melts metal, and the scum carries away impurities.
Water washes the surface, fire pierces to the centre.

But while that cleansing by the Spirit's fire was to be Messiah's
primary office, man's freedom to accept or reject such blessing
necessarily made His work selective, even while its destination was
universal. So John saw that His coming would part men into two
classes, according as they submitted to His baptism of fire or not.
The homely image of the threshing-floor, on some exposed, windy
height, carries a solemn truth. The Lord of the harvest has an
instrument in His hand, which sets up a current of air, and the
wheat falls in one heap, while the husks are blown farther, and lie
at the edge of the floor. Mark the majestic emphasis on the Christ's
ownership in the two phrases, '_His_ floor' and '_His_ garner.'

Notice, too, the fact which determines whether a man is chaff or
wheat--namely, his yielding to or rejecting the fiery baptism which
Christ offers. Ponder that awful emblem of an empty, rootless,
fruitless, worthless life, which John caught up from Psalm I.
Thankfully think of the care and safe keeping and calm repose
shadowed in that picture of the wheat stored in the garner after the
separating act. And let us lay on awed hearts the terrible doom of
the chaff. There are two fires, to one or other of which we must be
delivered. Either we shall gladly accept the purging fire of the
Spirit which burns sin out of us, or we shall have to meet the
punitive fire which burns up us and our sins together. To be
cleansed by the one or to be consumed by the other is the choice
before each of us.

II. Verses 18-20 show John as the preacher and martyr of
righteousness. Luke tells his fate out of its proper place, in order
to finish with him, and, as it were, clear the stage for Jesus.
Similarly the Baptist's desert life is told by anticipation in
chapter i. 80. That treatment of his story marks his subordination.
His martyrdom is not narrated by Luke, though he knew of it (Luke
ix. 7-9), and this brief summary is all that is said of his heroic
vehemence of rebuke to sin in high places, and of his suffering for
righteousness' sake. John's message had two sides to it, as every
gospel of God's has. To the people he spoke good tidings and
exhortations; to lordly sinners he pealed out stern rebukes.

It needs some courage to tell a prince to his face that he is foul
with corruption, and, still more, to put a finger on his actual
sins. But he is no prophet who does not lift up his voice like a
trumpet, and speak to hardened consciences. King Demos is quite as
impatient of close dealing with his immorality as Herod was. London
and New York get as angry with the Christian men who fight against
their lust and drunkenness as ever he did, and would not be sorry if
they could silence these persistent 'fanatics' as conveniently as he
could. The need for courage like John's, and plain speech like his,
is not past yet. The 'good tidings' has rebuke as part of its
substance. The sword is two-edged.

III. The narrative now turns to Jesus, and does not even name John
as having baptized Him. The peculiarities of Luke's account of the
baptism are instructive. He omits the conversation between Jesus and
John, and the fact of John's seeing the dove and hearing the voice.
Like Mark, he makes the divine voice speak directly to Jesus,
whereas Matthew represents it as spoken _concerning_ Him. The
baptism itself is disposed of in an incidental clause (_having
been baptized_). The general result of these characteristics is
that this account lays emphasis on the bearing of the divine witness
as borne to Jesus Himself. It does not deny, but simply ignores, its
aspect as a witness borne to John.

Another striking point is Luke's mention of Christ's prayer, which
is thus represented as answered by the opened heavens, the
descending dove, and the attesting voice. We owe most of our
knowledge of Christ's prayers to this Evangelist, whose mission was
to tell of the Son of man. Mysteries beyond our plummets are
contained in this story; but however unique it is, it has this which
may be reproduced, that prayer unveiled heaven, and brought down the
dove to abide on the bowed head, and the divine attestation of
sonship to fill the waiting heart.

We need not dwell on the beautiful significance of the emblem of the
dove. It symbolised both the nature of that gracious, gentle Spirit,
and the perpetuity and completeness of its abode on Jesus. Others
receive portions of that celestial fullness, but itself, as if
embodied in visible form, settled down on Him, and, with meekly
folded wings, tarried there unscared. 'God giveth not the Spirit by
measure unto Him.'

Our Evangelist does not venture into the deep waters, nor attempt to
tell what was the relation between the Incarnate Word, as it dwelt
in Jesus before that descent, and the Spirit which came upon Him. We
shall be wise if we refrain from speculating on such points, and
content ourselves with knowing that there has been one manhood
capable of receiving and retaining uninterruptedly the whole Spirit
of God; and that He will fill us with the Spirit which dwelt in Him,
in measure and manner corresponding to our need and our faith.

The heavenly voice spoke to the heart of the man Jesus. What was His
need of it, and what were its effects on Him, we do not presume to
affirm. But probably it originated an increased certitude of the
consciousness which dawned, in His answer to Mary, of His unique
divine sonship. To us it declares that He stands in an altogether
unexampled relation of kindred to the Father, and that His whole
nature and acts are the objects of God's complacency. But He has
nothing for Himself alone, and in Him we may become God's beloved
sons, well pleasing to the Father.




THE TEMPTATION


    4 And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned
    from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the
    wilderness, 2. Being forty days tempted of the devil.
    And in those days He did eat nothing: and when they
    were ended, He afterward hungered. 3. And the devil
    said unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, command this
    stone that it be made bread, 4. And Jesus answered him,
    saying, It is written, That man shall not live by
    bread alone, but by every word of God. 5. And the
    devil, taking Him up into an high mountain, showed
    unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of
    time. 6. And the devil said unto Him, All this power
    will I give Thee, and the glory of them: for that is
    delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
    7. If Thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be
    Thine. 8. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get
    thee behind Me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt
    worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou
    serve. 9. And he brought Him to Jerusalem and set Him
    on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto Him, If
    Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence:
    10. For it is written, He shall give His angels charge
    over Thee, to keep Thee; 11. And in their hands they
    shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy
    foot against a stone. 12. And Jesus answering, said
    unto Him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord
    Thy God. 13. And when the devil had ended all the
    temptation, he departed from Him for a season.'
    --LUKE iv. 1-13.

If we adopt the Revised Version's reading and rendering, the whole
of the forty days in the desert were one long assault of Jesus by
Satan, during which the consciousness of bodily needs was suspended
by the intensity of spiritual conflict. Exhaustion followed this
terrible tension, and the enemy chose that moment of physical
weakness to bring up his strongest battalions. What a contrast these
days made with the hour of the baptism! And yet both the opened
heavens and the grim fight were needful parts of Christ's
preparation. As true man, He could be truly tempted; as perfect man,
suggestions of evil could not arise within, but must be presented
from without. He must know our temptations if He is to help us in
them, and He must 'first bind the strong man' if He is afterwards
'to spoil his house.' It is useless to discuss whether the tempter
appeared in visible form, or carried Jesus from place to place. The
presence and voice were real, though probably if any eye had looked
on, nothing would have been seen but the solitary Jesus, sitting
still in the wilderness.

I. The first temptation is that of the Son of man tempted to
distrust God. Long experience had taught the tempter that his most
taking baits were those which appealed to the appetites and needs of
the body, and so he tries these first. The run of men are drawn to
sin by some form or other of these, and the hunger of Jesus laid Him
open to their power--if not on the side of delights of sense, yet on
the side of wants. The tempter quotes the divine voice at the
baptism with almost a sneer, as if the hungry, fainting Man before
him were a strange 'Son of God.' The suggestion sounds innocent
enough; for there would have been no necessary harm in working a
miracle to feed Himself. But its evil is betrayed by the words, 'If
Thou art the Son of God,' and the answer of our Lord, which begins
emphatically with 'man,' puts us on the right track to understand
why He repelled the insidious proposal even while He was faint with
hunger. To yield to it would have been to shake off for His own sake
the human conditions which He had taken for our sakes, and to seek
to cease to be Son of man in acting as Son of God. He takes no
notice of the title given by Satan, but falls back on His
brotherhood with man, and accepts the laws under which they live as
His conditions.

The quotation from Deuteronomy, which Luke gives in a less complete
form than Matthew, implies, even in that incomplete form, that bread
is not the only means of keeping a man in life, but that God can
feed Him, as He did Israel in its desert life, with manna; or, if
manna fails, by the bare exercise of His divine will. Therefore
Jesus will not use His power as Son of God, because to do so would
at once take Him out of His fellowship with man, and would betray
His distrust of God's power to feed Him there in the desert. How
soon His confidence was vindicated Matthew tells us. As soon as the
devil departed from Him, 'angels came and ministered unto Him.' The
soft rush of their wings brought solace to His spirit, wearied with
struggle, and once again 'man did eat angels' food.'

This first temptation teaches us much. It makes the manhood of our
Lord pathetically true, as showing Him bearing the prosaic but
terrible pinch of hunger, carried almost to its fatal point. It
teaches us how innocent and necessary wants may be the devil's
levers to overturn our souls. It warns us against severing ourselves
from our fellows by the use of distinctive powers for our own
behoof. It sets forth humble reliance on God's sustaining will as
best for us, even if we are in the desert, where, according to
sense, we must starve; and it magnifies the Brother's love, who for
our sakes waived the prerogatives of the Son of God, that He might
be the brother of the poor and needy.

II. The second temptation is that of the Messiah, tempted to grasp
His dominion by false means. The devil finds that he must try a
subtler way. Foiled on the side of the physical nature, he begins to
apprehend that he has to deal with One loftier than the mass of men;
and so he brings out the glittering bait, which catches the more
finely organised natures. Where sense fails, ambition may succeed.
There is nothing said now about 'Son of God.' The relation of Jesus
to God is not now the point of attack, but His hoped--for relation
to the world. Did Satan actually transport the body of Jesus to some
eminence? Probably not. It would not have made the vision of all the
kingdoms any more natural if he had. The remarkable language 'showed
... all ... in a moment of time' describes a physical impossibility,
and most likely is meant to indicate some sort of diabolic
phantasmagoria, flashed before Christ's consciousness, while His
eyes were fixed on the silent, sandy waste.

There is much in Scripture that seems to bear out the boast that the
kingdoms are at Satan's disposal. But he is 'the father of lies' as
well as the 'prince of this world,' and we may be very sure that his
authority loses nothing in his telling. If we think how many thrones
have been built on violence and sustained by crime, how seldom in
the world's history the right has been uppermost, and how little of
the fear of God goes to the organisation of society, even to-day, in
so-called Christian countries, we shall be ready to feel that in
this boast the devil told more truth than we like to believe. Note
that he acknowledges that the power has been 'given,' and on the
fact of the delegation of it rests the temptation to worship. He
knew that Jesus looked forward to becoming the world's King, and he
offers easy terms of winning the dignity. Very cunning he thought
himself, but he had made one mistake. He did not know what kind of
kingdom Jesus wished to establish. If it had been one of the bad old
pattern, like Nebuchadnezzar's or Caesar's, his offer would have
been tempting, but it had no bearing on One who meant to reign by
love, and to win love by loving to the death.

Worshipping the devil could only help to set up a devil's kingdom.
Jesus wanted nothing of the 'glory' which had been 'given' him. His
answer, again taken from Deuteronomy, is His declaration that His
kingdom is a kingdom of obedience, and that He will only reign as
God's representative. It defines His own position and the genius of
His dominion. It would come to the tempter's ears as the broken law,
which makes his misery and turns all his 'glory' into ashes. This is
our Lord's decisive choice, at the outset of His public work, of the
path of suffering and death. He renounces all aid from such arts and
methods as have built up the kingdoms of earth, and presents Himself
as the antagonist of Satan and his dominion. Henceforth it is war to
the knife.

For us the lessons are plain. We have to learn what sort of kingdom
Jesus sets up. We have to beware, in our own little lives, of ever
seeking to accomplish good things by questionable means, of trying
to carry on Christ's work with the devil's weapons. When churches
lower the standard of Christian morality, because keeping it up
would alienate wealthy or powerful men, when they wink hard at sin
which pays, when they enlist envy, jealousy, emulation of the baser
sort in the service of religious movements, are they not worshipping
Satan? And will not their gains be such as he can give, and not such
as Christ's kingdom grows by? Let us learn, too, to adore and be
thankful for the calm and fixed decisiveness with which Jesus chose
from the beginning, and trod until the end, with bleeding but
unreluctant feet, the path of suffering on His road to His throne.

III. The third temptation tempts the worshipping Son to tempt God.
Luke arranges the temptations partly from a consideration of
locality, the desert and the mountain being near each other, and
partly in order to bring out a certain sequence in them. First comes
the appeal to the physical nature, then that to the finer desires of
the mind; and these having been repelled, and the resolve to worship
God having been spoken by Jesus, Luke's third temptation is
addressed to the devout soul, as it looks to the cunning but shallow
eyes of the tempter. Matthew, on the other hand, in accordance with
his point of view, puts the specially Messianic temptation last. The
actual order is as undiscoverable as unimportant. In Luke's order
there is substantially but one change of place--from the solitude of
the wilderness to the Temple. As we have said, the change was
probably not one of the Lord's body, but only of the scenes flashed
before His mind's eye. 'The pinnacle of the Temple' may have been
the summit that looked down into the deep valley where the enormous
stones of the lofty wall still stand, and which must have been at a
dizzy height above the narrow glen on the one side and the Temple
courts on the other. There is immense, suppressed rage and malignity
in the recurrence of the sneer, 'If Thou art the Son of God' and in
the use of Christ's own weapon of defence, the quotation of
Scripture.

What was wrong in the act suggested? There is no reference to the
effect on the beholders, as has often been supposed; and if we are
correct in supposing that the whole temptation was transacted in the
desert, there could be none. But plainly the point of it was the
suggestion that Jesus should, of His own accord and needlessly, put
Himself in danger, expecting God to deliver Him. It looked like
devout confidence; it was really 'tempting God'. It looked like the
very perfection of the trust with which, in the first round of this
duel, Christ had conquered; it was really distrust, as putting God
to proof whether He would keep His promises or no. It looked like
the very perfection of that worship with which He had overcome in
the second round of the fight; it wag really self-will in the mask
of devoutness. It tempted God, because it sought to draw Him to
fulfil to a man on self-chosen paths His promises to those who walk
in ways which He has appointed.

We trust God when we look to Him to deliver us in perils met in meek
acceptance of His will. We tempt Him when we expect Him to save us
from those encountered on roads that we have picked oat for
ourselves. Such presumption disguised as filial trust is the
temptation besetting the higher regions of experience, to which the
fumes of animal passions and the less gross but more dangerous airs
from the desires of the mind do not ascend. Religious men who have
conquered these have still this foe to meet. Spiritual pride, the
belief that we may venture into dangers either to our natural or to
our religious life, where no call of duty takes us, the thrusting
ourselves, unbidden, into circumstances where nothing but a miracle
can save us-these are the snares which Satan lays for souls that
have broken his coarser nets. The three answers with which Jesus
overcame are the mottoes by which we shall conquer. Trust God, by
whose will we live. Worship God, in whose service we get all of this
world that is good for us. Tempt not God, whose angels keep us in
our ways, when they are His ways, and who reckons trust that is not
submission to His ways to be tempting God, and not trusting Him.

'All the temptation' was ended. So these three made
a complete whole, and the quiver of the enemy was for
the time empty. He departed 'for a season,' or rather,
until an opportunity. He was foiled when he tried
to tempt by addressing desires. His next assault will
be at Gethsemane and Calvary, when dread and the
shrinking from pain and death will be assailed as
vainly.




PREACHING AT NAZARETH


    'And He began to say unto them, This day is this
    scripture fulfilled In your ears.'--LUKE iv. 21.

This first appearance of our Lord, in His public work at Nazareth,
the home of His childhood, was preceded, as we learn from John's
Gospel, by a somewhat extended ministry in Jerusalem. In the course
of it, He cast the money-changers out of the Temple, did many
miracles, had His conversation with Nicodemus, and on His return
towards Galilee met the woman of Samaria at the well. The report of
these things, no doubt, had preceded Him, and kindled the Nazarenes'
curiosity to see their old companion who had suddenly shot up into a
person of importance, and had even made a sensation in the
metropolis. A great man's neighbours are keen critics of, and slow
believers in, his greatness. So it was natural and very prudent that
Jesus should not begin His ministry in Nazareth.

We can easily imagine the scene that morning in the little village,
nestling among the hills. How many memories would occupy Christ as
He entered the synagogue, where He had so often sat a silent
worshipper! How Mary's eyes would fill with tears if she was there,
and how the companions of His boyhood, who used to play with Him,
would watch Him; all curious, some sympathetic, some jealous, some
contemptuous!

The synagogue service began with prayer and praise. Then followed
two readings, one from the Law, one from the Prophets. When the
latter point was reached, in accordance with usage, Jesus rose,
thereby signifying His desire to be reader of the Prophetic portion.
We can understand how there would be a movement of quickened
attention as the roll was handed to Him and He turned its sheets. He
'found the place'; that looks as if He sought for it; that is to
say, that it was not the appointed lesson for the day--if there was
such--but that it was a passage selected by Himself.

I need not enter upon the divergences between Luke's quotation as
given in our English version and the Hebrew. They are partly due to
the fact that he is quoting from memory the Greek version of the
LXX. He inserts, for instance, one clause which is not found in that
place in Isaiah, but in another part of the same prophet. Having
read standing, as was the usage, in token of reverence for the
Scripture, Jesus resumed His seat, not as having finished, but, as
was the usage, taking the attitude of the teacher, which signified
authority. And then, His very first sentence was the most unlimited
assertion that the great words which He had been reading had reached
their full accomplishment in Himself. They are very familiar to our
ears. If we would understand their startling audacity we must listen
to them with the ears of the Nazarenes, who had known Him ever since
He was a child. 'This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.'
Now, it seems to me that this first sermon of our Lord's to His old
fellow-townsmen brings into striking prominence some characteristics
of His whole teaching, to which I desire briefly to direct
attention.

I. I note Christ's self-assertion.

To begin in Nazareth with such words as these in my text was
startling enough, but it is in full accord with the whole tone of
our Lord's teaching. If you will carefully search for the most
essential characteristics and outstanding differentia of the words
of Jesus Christ, even if you make all allowance that some make
for the non-historical character of the Gospels, you have this left
as the residuum, that the impression which He made upon the men that
were nearest to Him, and that caught up most fully the spirit of His
teaching, was that the great thing that differentiated it from all
other was His unhesitating persistence in pushing into the very
forefront, His testimony about Himself. I do not think that there is
anything parallel to that anywhere else amongst the men whom the
world recognises as being great religious geniuses or great moral
teachers. What characterises as perfectly unique our Lord's teaching
is not only the blessed things that He said about God or the deep
truths that He said about men and their duty, or the sad things that
He said about men and their destiny, or the radiant hopes that He
unveiled as to men and their possibility, but what He said about
Himself. His message was not so much 'Believe in God and do right,'
as it was 'Believe in Me and follow Me.'

I need only point you to the Sermon on the Mount, which is popularly
supposed to contain very little of Christ's reference to Himself, and to
remind you how there, in that authoritative proclamation of the laws of
the new kingdom, He calmly puts His own utterances as co-ordinate
with--nay! as superior to--the utterances of the ancient law, and sweeps
aside Moses--though recognising Moses' divine mission--with an 'I say
unto you.' I need only remind you, further, how, at the end of that
'compendium of reasonable morality,' He lays down this principle--that
these sayings of 'Mine' are a rock-foundation, on which whoever builds
shall never be put to confusion. This is but a specimen of the golden
thread, if I may call it so, of self-assertion which runs through the
whole of our Lord's teaching.

Now, I venture to say that this undeniable characteristic is only
warranted on the supposition that He is the Son of God, and His work
the salvation of the world. If He is so, if 'He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father,' if the revelation of Himself which He makes
is the Revelation of God, if His death is for the life of the world;
and if, when we honour Him, we honour God; when we trust Him, we
trust God; when we obey Him we obey God; then I can understand His
persistent self-assertion. But otherwise does He not deliberately
intercept emotions which are only rightly directed to God? Does He
not claim prerogatives, such as forgiveness of sins, bestowal of
life, answering of prayer, which are only possessed by the Divine
Being?

I know that many who will not go with me in my intellectual
formularising of the truth about Christ's nature do bow to Him with
unfeigned reverence. But it seems to me, I humbly confess, that
there is no logical basis for such reverence except the full-toned
recognition that the mystery of His self-assertion is explained by
the mystery of His nature, God manifest in the flesh. I, for my
part, do not see how the moral perfectness of Jesus Christ is to be
saved, in view of that unmistakable strand in His teaching, unless
by such admission. Rather, I feel that the recognition of it brings
us face to face with the tremendous alternative, and that the people
who were moved to indignation by His self-assertion because they
recognised not His divine origin, and said 'This man blasphemeth';
'This deceiver said,' have more to say in defence of their
conclusion than those who bow before Him with reverence, and declare
Him to be the pattern of all human perfectness, and yet falter when
they are asked to join in the great confession, 'Thou are the
Christ, the Son of the living God.'

II. Secondly, note here our Lord's sad conception of humanity.

There are, as it were, two strands running through the prophetic
passage which He quotes, one in reference to Himself, one in
reference to those whom He came to help. To the latter I now turn,
to get our Lord's point of view when He looked upon the facts of
human life.

No man will ever do much for the world whose ears have not been
opened to hear its sad music. An inadequate conception of its
miseries is sure to lead to inadequate prescriptions for their
remedy. We must bear upon our own hearts the burdens that we seek to
lift off our brothers' shoulders. There is nothing about the
Master's words concerning mankind more pathetic and more plain than
the sad, stern, and yet pitying view which He always took concerning
them and their condition.

In the passage on which Jesus based His claims, as given by Luke,
one of the clauses is probably not in this place genuine, for 'the
healing of the brokenhearted' should be struck out of the true text.
There are then four symbols employed: the poor, the captives, the
blind, the bruised. And these four are representations of the result
of one fell cause, and that is--sin.

Sin impoverishes. Our true wealth is God. No man that possesses Him,
by love, and trust, and conformity of will and effort to His
discerned will, is poor, whatever else he has, whatever else he
lacks. And no man who has lost this one durable treasure, the loving
communion with, and possession of, God, in mind and heart and will
and effort, but is a pauper whatever else he possesses. Wherever a
man has sold himself to his own will, and has made himself and his
own inclinations and misread good his centre and his aim, which is
the definition of sin, there bankruptcy and poverty have come.
Thieves sometimes beset travellers from the gold mines, as they are
bringing down their dust or their nuggets to market, and empty the
pockets of the gold, and fill them up with sand. That is what sin
does for us; it takes away our true treasure, and befools us by
giving us what seems to be solid till we come to open the bag; and
then there is no power in it to buy anything for us. 'Why will ye
spend your labour for that which satisfieth not?' The one poverty is
the impoverishment that lays hold of every soul that wrenches
itself, in self-will, apart from God. Sin makes poor.

Sin not only impoverishes, but imprisons 'the captives.' Ah! you
have only to think of your own experience to find out what that
means. Is there nothing in the set of your affections, in the
mastery that your passion has over you, in the habits of your lives,
which you know as well as God knows it, to be wrong and ruinous, and
of which you have tried to get rid? I know the answer, and every one
of us, if we will look into our own hearts, knows it: we are 'tied
and bound by the chains of our sin.' You do not need to go to
inebriate homes, where there are people that would cut their right
hands off if they could get rid of the craving, and cannot, to find
instances of this bondage. We have only to be honest with ourselves,
and to try to pull the boat against the stream instead of letting it
drift with it, to know the force with which the current runs. A tiny
thread like a spider's draws after it a bit of cotton a little
thicker, and knotted to that there is a piece of pack-thread, and
after that a two-stranded cord, and then a cable that might hold an
ironclad at anchor. That is a parable of how we draw to ourselves,
by imperceptible degrees, an ever-thickening set of manacles that
bind our wills and make us the servants of sin. 'His slaves ye are
whom ye obey.' Sin imprisons. That is, your sin--do not let us
befool ourselves with abstractions--_your_ sin imprisons you.

Sin blinds. Wherever there comes over a soul the mist of self-will
and self-regard, sight fails; and all the greatest things are
blurred and blotted. The man that is immersed in his own evil is
like one plunged in the ocean. The cold, salt waters are about him,
and above him; and to him the glories of the sky, and the brightness
of the sun, the tenderness of the colouring, are all blotted out. He
who goes through life as some of us do, never seeing God, never
seeing the loftiest beauty of goodness, never beholding with any
clearness of vision the radiant possibilities of the future and its
awful threatenings, may indeed see the things an inch from the point
of his nose; but he is blind and cannot see afar off, and can only
behold, and that darkly, the insignificances that are around him.
Sin blinds.

And sin bruises. It takes all the health out of us, and makes us,
from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, masses of
'wounds and bruises and putrifying sores.'

The enchantress having worked all this havoc, then gives us a cup of
illusion which, when we drink, we know not that there is anything
the matter with us. We are like a lunatic in a cell, who thinks
himself a prince in a palace, and though living on porridge and
milk, fancies that he is partaking of all the dainties of a
luxurious table. The deceitfulness of sin is not the least of its
tragical consequences.

III. Lastly, we have here our Lord's conception of Himself and of
His own work.

Your time will not allow of my dwelling upon this as I would fain
have done, but let me point out one or two of the salient features
of this initial programme of His. He claims to be the theme and the
fulfilment of prophecy. Now, whatever influences modern notions
about the genesis of the Old Testament, and the characteristics of
its prophetic utterances may have done, they have not touched, and
they never will touch, this one central characteristic of all that
old system, that embedded in it there was an onward-looking gaze,
anticipatory of a higher fulfilment and a further development of all
that it taught. To those of us to whom Christ's words are the end of
all strife I need only point out that, here, He endorses the belief
that prophetic utterances, however they may have had, and did have,
a lower and immediate meaning, were only realised in the whole sweep
and significance in Himself. So He presents Himself before His
acquaintances in the little synagogue at Nazareth, and before the
whole world to all time, as the centre-point and pivot on which the
history of the world, so to speak, revolves; all that was before
converging to Him, all that was after flowing down from Him. 'They
that went before, and they that followed after, cried, Hosanna!
blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.'

He claims to possess the whole fullness of the divine Spirit: 'The
Spirit of the Lord is upon Me.' That is a reminiscence, no doubt, of
the experience by the fords of the Jordan, at the Baptism. But it
also opens up a wondrous consciousness, on His part, of a complete
and uninterrupted possession of the divine life in all its fullness,
which involves an entire separation from the miseries and needs of
men. He claims to be the Messiah of the Old Covenant, with all the
fullness of meaning, and loftiness of dignity which clustered round
that word and that thought. He claims not only to proclaim, but to
bestow, the blessings of which He speaks. For He not only comes to
'preach good tidings to the poor,' but 'to heal the broken-hearted,'
and 'to set at liberty all them that are bound.' He is the Gospel
which He utters. He not merely proclaims the favour of heaven, but
He brings 'the acceptable year of the Lord.'

This, in barest outline--which is all that your time will admit--is
the summary of what Jesus Christ, in that first sermon in the
synagogue at Nazareth, asserted Himself to be.

He does not detail the means by which He is about to bring the
golden year, the year of Jubilee, 'the acceptable year of the Lord.'
But I venture to say that it is hard to find, in the life of Jesus
Christ, that which fulfils Christ's own programme, as thus
announced, unless you bring in His death on the Cross for the
abolition of sin, His Resurrection for the abolition of death; His
reign in glory for the bestowment on all sinful and bruised souls of
the Spirit of healing and of righteousness.

These Nazarenes listened. Their hearts and consciences attested the
magnetic power of His personality, and the truth of His word. So do
the hearts and consciences of most of us. They wondered at the 'words
of grace'--whose matter was grace, whose manner was gracious--that
proceeded from His mouth. So do most of us. But they let the incipient
movement of their hearts be arrested by the cold, carping question,
'Is not this Joseph's son?' and all the enthusiasm chilled into
indifference; 'indignation' followed, and some of those who had
almost been drawn to Him, in an hour's time had their hands on His
robe, to cast Him from the brow of the hill on which their village
was built. Every man who comes to the point of feeling some emotions
towards Christ as his Redeemer, as his King, is at a fork of the
road. He may either take to the right, which will lead him to full
communion and acceptance; or he may go to the left, which will carry
him away out into the desert. The critical hour in the alchemist's
laboratory was when the lead in his crucible began to melt. If a
cold current got at it, it resumed its dead solidity, and no gold
could be made.

Brother! do not let the world's cold currents get at your heart and
freeze it again, if you feel that in any measure it is beginning to
melt into penitence, and to flow with faith. The same voice that in
the synagogue of Nazareth said, 'He hath anointed Me to preach the
Gospel to the poor' speaks to us to-day from heaven, saying, 'I
counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest
be rich ... and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest
see.'


***

A SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM


    'And in the synagogue there was a man which had a
    spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud
    voice, 34. Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do
    with Thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art Thou come to
    destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art; the Holy One of
    God. 35. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy
    peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had
    thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt
    him not. 36. And they were all amazed, and spake among
    themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with
    authority and power He commandeth the unclean spirits,
    and they come out. 37. And the fame of Him went out
    into every place of the country round about. 38. And
    He arose out of the synagogue, and entered into
    Simon's house: and Simon's wife's mother was taken
    with a great fever; and they besought Him for her.
    39. And He stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and
    it left her: and immediately she arose and ministered
    unto them. 40. Now, when the sun was setting, all they
    that had any sick with divers diseases brought them
    unto Him; and He laid His hands on every one of them,
    and healed them. 41. And devils also came out of many,
    crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ, the Son of
    God. And He, rebuking them, suffered them not to speak:
    for they knew that He was Christ. 42. And when it was
    day, He departed, and went into a desert place; and the
    people sought Him, and came unto Him, and stayed Him,
    that He should not depart from them. 43. And He said
    unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other
    cities also: for therefore am I sent. 44. And He
    preached in the synagogues of Galilee.'--LUKE iv.33-44.

There are seven references to Christ's preaching in the synagogues
in this chapter, and only two in the rest of this Gospel. Probably
our Lord somewhat changed His method, and Luke, as the Evangelist of
the gospel for Gentile as well as Jew, emphasises the change, as
foreshadowing and warranting the similar procedure in Paul's
preaching. This lesson takes us down from the synagogue at Nazareth,
among its hills, to that at Capernaum, on the lakeside, where Jesus
was already known as a worker of miracles. The two Sabbaths are in
sharp contrast. The issue of the one is a tumult of fury and hate;
that of the other, a crowd of suppliants and an eager desire to keep
Him with them. The story is in four paragraphs, each showing a new
phase of Christ's power and pity.

I. Verses 33-37 present Christ as the Lord of that dark world of
evil. The hushed silence of the synagogue, listening to His gentle
voice, was suddenly broken by shrieks of rage and fear, coming from
a man who had been sitting quietly among the others. Possibly his
condition had not been suspected until Christ's presence roused his
dreadful tyrant. The man's voice is at the demon's service, and only
Jesus recognises who speaks through the wretched victim. We take for
granted the reality of demoniacal possession, as certified for all
who believe Jesus, by His words and acts in reference to it, as well
as forced on us, by the phenomena themselves, which are clearly
distinguishable from disease, madness, or sin. The modern aversion
to the supernatural is quite as much an unreasonable prejudice as
any old woman's belief in witchcraft  and Professor Huxley, making
clumsy fun of the 'pigs at Gadara,' is holding opinions in the same
sublime indifference  to evidence of facts as the most superstitious
object of his narrow-visioned scorn.

Napoleon called 'impossible' a 'beast of a word.' So it is in
practical life,--and no less so when glibly used to discredit
well-attested facts. We neither aspire to the omniscience which
pronounces that there can be no possession by evil spirits, nor
venture to brush aside the testimony of the Gospels and the words of
Christ, in order to make out such a contention.

Note the rage and terror of the demon. The presence  of purity is a
sharp pain to impurity, and an evil spirit is stirred to its depths
when in contact with Jesus. Monstrous growths that love the dark
shrivel and die in sunshine. The same presence which is joy to some
may be a very hell to others. We may approach even here that state
of feeling which broke out in these shrieks of malignity, hatred,
and dread. It is an awful thing when the only relief is to get away
from Jesus, and when the clearest recognition of His holiness only
makes us the more eager to disclaim any connection with Him. That is
the hell of hells. In its completeness, it makes the anguish of the
demon; in its rudiments, it is the misery of some men.

Observe too, the unclean spirit's knowledge, not only of the
birthplace and name, but of the character and divine relationship of
Jesus. That is one of the features of demoniacal possession which
distinguish it from disease or insanity, and is quite incapable of
explanation on any other ground. It gives a glimpse into a dim
region, and suggests that the counsels of Heaven, as effected on
earth, are keenly watched and understood by eyes whose gleam is
unsoftened by any touch of pity or submission. It is most natural,
if there are such spirits, that they should know Jesus while men
knew Him not, and that their hatred should keep pace with their
knowledge, even while by the knowledge the hatred was seen to be
vain.

Observe Christ's tone of authority and sternness. He had pity for
men, who were capable of redemption, but His words and demeanour to
the spirits are always severe. He accepts the most imperfect
recognition from men, and often seems as if labouring to evoke it,
but He silences the spirits' clear recognition. The confession which
is 'unto salvation' comes from a heart that loves, not merely from a
head that perceives; and Jesus accepts nothing else. He will not
have His name soiled by such lips.

Note, still further, Christ's absolute control of the demon. His
bare word is sovereign, and secures outward obedience, though from
an unsubdued and disobedient will. He cannot make the foul creature
love, but He can make him act. Surely Omnipotence speaks, if demons
hear and obey. Their king had been conquered, and they knew their
Master. The strong man had been bound, and this is the spoiling of
his house. The question of the wondering worshippers in the
synagogue goes to the root of the matter, when they ask what they
must think of the whole message of One whose word gives law to the
unclean spirits; for the command to them is a revelation to us, and
we learn His Godhead by the power of His simple word, which is but
the forth-putting of His will.

We cannot but notice the lurid light thrown by the existence of such
spirits on the possibility of undying and responsible beings
reaching, by continued alienation of heart and will from God, a
stage in which they are beyond the capacity of improvement, and
outside the sweep of Christ's pity.

II. Verses 38 and 39 show us Christ in the gentleness of His healing
power, and the immediate service of gratitude to Him. The scene in
the synagogue manifested 'authority and power,' and was prompted by
abhorrence of the demon even more than by pity for his victim; but
now the Lord's tenderness shines unmingled with sternness. Mark
gives details of this cure, which, no doubt, came from Peter--such
as his joint ownership of the house with his brother, the names of
the companions of Jesus, and the infinitely tender action of taking
the sick woman by the hand and helping her to rise. But Luke, the
physician, is more precise in his description of the case: 'holden
by a great fever.' He traces the cure to the word of rebuke, which,
no doubt, accompanied the clasp of the hand.

Here again Christ puts forth divine power in producing effects in
the material sphere by His naked word. 'He spake and it was done.'
That truly divine prerogative was put forth at the bidding of His
own pity, and that pity which wielded Omnipotence was kindled by the
beseechings of sorrowing hearts. Is not this miracle, which shines
so lustrously by the side of that terrible scene with the demon, a
picture in one case, and that the sickness of one poor and probably
aged woman, of the great truth that heartens all our appeals to Him?
He who moves the forces of Deity still from His throne lets us move
His heart by our cry.

Luke is especially struck with one feature in the case--the
immediate return of usual strength. The woman is lying, the one
minute, pinned down and helpless with 'great fever,' and the next is
bustling about her domestic duties. No wonder that a physician
should think so abnormal a case worthy of note. When Christ heals,
He heals thoroughly, and gives strength as well as healing. What
could a woman, with no house of her own, and probably a poor
dependant on her son-in-law, do for her healer? Not much. But she
did what she could, and that without delay. The natural impulse of
gratitude is to give its best, and the proper use of healing and new
strength is to minister to Him. Such a guest made humble household
cares worship; and all our poor powers or tasks, consecrated to His
praise and become the offerings of grateful hearts, are lifted into
greatness and dignity. He did not despise the modest fare hastily
dressed for Him; and He still delights in our gifts, though the
cattle on a thousand hills are His. 'I will sup with him,' says He,
and therein promises to become, as it were, a guest at our humble
tables.

III. Verses 40 and 41 show us the all-sufficiency of Christ's pity
and power. The synagogue worship would be in the early morning, and
the healing of the woman immediately after, and the meal she
prepared the midday repast. The news had time to spread; and as soon
as the sinking sun relaxed the Sabbatical restrictions, a motley
crowd came flocking round the house, carrying all the sick that
could be lifted, all eager to share in His healing. The same kind of
thing may be seen yet round many a traveller's tent. It did not
argue real faith in Him, but it was genuine sense of need, and
expectation of blessing from His hand; and the measure of faith was
the measure of blessing. They got what they believed He could give.
If their faith had been larger, the answers would have been greater.

But men are quite sure that they want to be well when they are ill,
and bodily healing will be sought with far more earnestness and
trouble than soul-healing. Crowds came to Jesus as Physician who
never cared to come to Him as Redeemer. Offer men the smaller gifts,
and they will run over one another in their scramble for them; but
offer them the highest, and they will scarcely hold out a languid
hand to take them.

But the point made prominent by Luke is the inexhaustible fullness
of pity and power, which met and satisfied all the petitioners. The
misery spoke to Christ's heart; and so as the level rays of the
setting sun cast a lengthening shadow among the sad groups, He moved
amidst them, and with gentle touch healed them all. To-day, as then,
the fountain of His pity and healing power is full, after thousands
have drawn from it, and no crowd of suppliants bars our way to His
heart or His hands. He has 'enough for all, enough for each, enough
for ever more.'

The reference to demoniacs adds nothing to the particulars in the
earlier verses except the evidence it gives of the frequency of
possession then.

IV. Verses 42-44 show us Jesus seeking seclusion, but willingly
sacrificing it at men's call. He withdraws in early morning, not
because His store of power was exhausted, or His pity had tired, but
to renew His communion with the Father. He needed solitude and
silence, and we need it still more. No work worth doing will ever be
done for Him unless we are familiar with some quiet place, where we
and God alone together can hold converse, and new strength be poured
into our hearts. Our Lord is here our pattern, also, of willingly
leaving the place of communion when duty calls and men implore. We
must not stay on the Mount of Transfiguration when demoniac boys are
writhing on the plain below, and heart-broken fathers wearying for
our coming. A great, solemn 'must' ruled His life, as it should do
ours, and the fulfilment of that for which He 'was sent' ever was
His aim, rather than even the blessedness of solitary communion or
repose of the silent hour of prayer.




INSTRUCTIONS FOR FISHERMEN


    'Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon,
    Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a
    draught.'--LUKE v. 4.

The day's work begins early in the East. So the sun, as it rose
above the hills on the other side of the lake, shone down upon a
busy scene, fresh with the dew and energy of the morning, on the
beach by the little village of Bethsaida. One group of fishermen was
washing their nets, their boats being hauled up on the strand. A
crowd of listeners was thus early gathered round the Teacher; but
the fishermen, who were His disciples, seem to have gone on with
their work, never minding Christ or the crowd. It is sometimes quite
as religious to be washing nets as to be listening to Christ's
teaching.

The incident which follows the words of my text, and which is called
the first miraculous draught of fishes, is stamped by our Lord
Himself with a symbolic purpose; for at the end of it He says: 'Fear
not! from henceforth thou shalt catch men.' And that flings back a
flood of light on the whole story; and not only warrants but obliges
us to take it as being by Him intended for the instruction in their
Christian work of these four whom He has chosen to be His workers.
However many of our Lord's miracles may not come under this category
of symbolism (and I, for my part, do not believe that there are any
of them which do not), this one clearly does. We have His own
commentary to compel us to interpret its features as meaning
something beyond what appears on the surface. I take it, then, that
we have here a first vivid code of instructions which our Lord gives
to all His servants who do work for Him; and I wish to look at the
various stages of this incident from that point of view.

If there are any of my hearers who think to themselves, 'Ah, well!
he is not going to say anything that I have anything to do with,' so
much the worse for you, if you are not a Christian; or, so much the
worse for you if, being a Christian, you are not an active servant.
Jesus Christ had four disciples who were fishermen, and out of them
He made four fishers of men. The obligation is universal.

I. The Law of Service.

'Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.'
Now there is nothing more remarkable in the whole narrative than the
matter-of-course fashion in which our Lord takes the disposal of
these men, and orders them about. It is not explicable unless we
fall back upon what Luke does not tell us, but John does, in his
Gospel, that this was by no means the first time that He had come
across Peter and Andrew his brother, or James and John his brother.
We do not need to trouble ourselves with the chronological question
how long before they had been drawn to Him at the fords of Jordan by
the witness of John the Baptist, and by the witness of some of them
to the others. The relationship had been then commenced which is
presupposed by our Lord's authoritative tone here. It leads in the
incident of my text to a closer discipleship, which did not admit of
Simon and John hauling or cleaning their nets any more. They had
been disciples before in a certain loose fashion, a fashion which
permitted them to go home and look after their ordinary avocations.
Hence-forward they were disciples in a much more stringent fashion.
It was because they had already said 'Rabbi! Thou art the Son of
God! Thou art the King of Israel,' that this strange imperative
command, inexplicable, except by the supplement of the last of the
four Gospels, came from Christ's lips and secured immediate
obedience.

If we thus understand that His authority follows on our
discipleship, and that the words of my text, first of all, insist
upon and assert His right to command and absolutely dispose of the
activities, resources, and persons of all His disciples, we have
learned something that we only need to practise in order to make our
lives noble with a strange nobility, and blessed and sweet with an
unearthly sanctity and blessedness.

Further, the words of my text not only declare for us thus the
absolute authority of Jesus Christ over all His disciples, but also
reveal His sweet promise and gracious assurance that He cares to
guide, to direct, to prescribe spheres, to determine methods, to
lead those who docilely look to Him and wait upon Him, in paths in
which their activity may most profitably be employed for Him and for
His Church. If there is anything that is declared to us plainly in
the Scriptures, with regard to the relationships between men and
Jesus Christ, it is this, that a docile heart will always be a
guided heart, partly by inward whispers, which only they disbelieve
who limit God in His relation to men, beyond what they have a right
to do; and partly by outward providences which only they disbelieve
who limit God in His power over the external world, beyond what they
have a right to do. He will guide, sometimes with His eye, to which
the loving eye flashes back response; sometimes with His whispered
word, when the noises of earth and the pulsations of self-will are
stilled; sometimes with His rod, which the less sensitive of His
sons do often need; sometimes by successes in paths that we venture
upon tentatively and timidly; and sometimes by failures in paths
into which we rush confidently and presumptuously; but always, the
waiting heart is a guided heart, and if we listen we shall hear
'This is the way, walk ye in it.' And sometimes it is God's will
that we should make mistakes, for these too help us to learn His
will.

But, further, and more particularly, I do not think that I am unduly
reading too much meaning into this story, if I ask you to put emphasis
upon one word, 'Launch out into the _deep_.' As long as you keep
pottering along, a boat's length from the shore, you will only catch
little fishes. The big ones, and the heavy takes are away out yonder.
Go out there, if you want to get them. Which, being translated, is
this--The same spirit of daring enterprise, which is a condition of
success in secular matters, is no less potent a factor in the success
of Christian men in their enterprises for Jesus Christ. As long as we
keep Him down, within the limits of use and wont, and are horribly
afraid of anything that our great-grandfathers did not use to do,
there will be very few fish in the bottom of the boat.

Oh, brethren! if one thinks of the world into which it has been
God's providence to put us, a world all seething with new
aspirations and unrest--if we think of the condition of the great
city in which we live, which is only a specimen of the cities of
England, and of the tragical insufficiency of Christian enterprise
and effort, as compared with the overwhelming masses of the
community, surely, surely, there is nothing more wanted to make
Christian people wake up from their old jog-trot habits, and cast
themselves with new earnestness, new daring and enterprise, into
forms of service which conscience and sober wisdom may approve. Of
course, I do not forget that any such new methods must each approve
themselves at the tribunal of the Christian consciousness. It is no
part of my business here to descend into details and particulars,
but I do want to lay on my own heart, and especially on the hearts
of the members of the church of which I have the honour to be the
pastor, and also upon all other Christian people whom my voice may
reach, the solemn responsibility which the conditions of life in our
generation lay upon Christian men and women, 'Launch out into the
deep and let down your nets.' I believe, for my part, that if all
the good, God-fearing, Christ-loving men and women in Manchester
were to hear this voice sounding in their ears, and to obey it, they
would change the face of the city.

II. The Response.

Peter, characteristically, speaks out, and says exactly what a
fisherman would be likely to say to a carpenter from Nazareth, that
came down to teach him his business. The landsman would not know
what the fisherman knew well enough, that it was useless to go
fishing in the morning if you had not caught anything all night.
There was very little chance of getting any better success when the
sun's rays were glinting on the surface of the water.

'We have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.' Experience
said, 'No! do not.' Christ said, 'Yes! do.' And so when Peter has
made a clean breast of his objection, founded on experience, he goes
on with the consent prompted by the devotion and consecration of
love, 'nevertheless.' A great word that. 'We have toiled all the
night, and have taken nothing; nevertheless at _Thy_ word we will
let down the net. So here goes.' And away they went, breakfastless
perhaps, with their nets half cleaned, and sleepy and tired with the
night's work.

Here, then, we see obedience that springs delighted to obey, because
it is impelled by love. That is the spirit which can be trusted to
go out into the deep, which does not ask whether things are
recognised and usual or not, but which, if once it is sure of the
Lord's will, takes no counsel of anything else. How should it,
seeing that there is nothing so delightsome to a heart that truly
loves as to know and do the will of its beloved? And that, dear
brethren, is the spirit that all we Christian people need--a deeper,
more vivid, more continual, soul-subduing, muscle-straining
consciousness that Jesus Christ 'loved me and gave Himself for me.'
Then His whisper will be like thunder, and the motto of our lives
will be 'At Thy word, I will!'

Further, here is obedience that was not in the least degree
depressed by the recognition of past failure. All night long they
had been dropping the net overboard, and drawing it in, and with
horny, wet hands seeking in its meshes, and finding nothing. Then
overboard with it again, and more pulling at the heavy sweeps, till
the dawn began to show, and all in vain. Now the weary task must be
done all over again, though in all the past hours though they were
the best, there has been only failure.

I think that our Christian courage and consecration would be
immensely increased, if we could learn the lesson of my text; and
feel that, however often in the past I may have broken down, the
word of Christ's command, which thrills into my will, is also the
word of Christ's promise which should stay my heart, and give me the
assurance that past defeat shall be converted into future victory.

There is an obedience which did not grudge fresh toil before the
effect of past toils had been quite got over. The nets, as I said,
were only half cleaned. It was a pity to begin and dirty them again.
The fishers had had a very hard night's toil. If they had been like
some of us they would have said, 'Oh! I have been working hard all
the night. I cannot possibly do any more this morning.' 'I am so
very busy with my business all the week, that it is perfectly absurd
to talk about my teaching in a Sunday-school.' That was not their
spirit at all. No matter how they had to rub their eyes to get the
sleep out of them, they just bundled the nets into the boat once
more, pushed her down the strand, and shoved her out into the blue
waters at Christ's bidding. And that is the sort of workmen that He
wants, and that you and I should be.

Further, we have here an obedience that kept the Master's word
sounding in its heart whilst it was at work. 'At Thy word will I let
down the net.'

Ah! we very often begin working with a very pure motive, and as we
go on, the motive gradually oozes away, and what was begun in the
spirit is continued in the flesh; and what was begun with a true
devotion to Jesus Christ is continued because we were doing it
yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and
because it is the custom to do it. So we go on. The heart having all
gone out of our service, the blessing is gone out of it too. But if
we will keep our hearts near that Lord and listen to His voice
calling us, wearied or not wearied, beaten before or not beaten
before, and do as He bids us, launch out into the deep, we shall not
toil in vain.

III. The result.

Christ's command ever includes His promise. Work done for Him is never
resultless. True, His most faithful servants have often to say, if
they look at their few sheaves with the eye of sense, 'I have spent
my strength for nought.' True, the Apostolic experience is, at the
best, but too exactly repeated, 'Some believed, and some believed not.'
Christ's Gospel always produces its twofold effect, being 'a savour of
life unto life, or of death unto death.' If the great Sower, when He
went forth to sow, expected but a fourth part of the seed to fall into
good ground, His servants need look for no larger results. But still
it remains true that honest, earnest work for Jesus, wisely planned
and prayerfully carried out with self-oblivion and self-surrender, will
not be unblessed. If our labour is 'in the Lord,' it will not be 'in
vain.' Just as pain is a danger signal, pointing to mischief at work
on the body, so failure in achieving the results of Christian service
is, for the most part, an indication of something wrong in method or
spirit.

But, if we are toiling in loving obedience to Christ's voice, and
seeking His direction as to sphere and manner of service, we may be
quite sure of this, that whether we get, immediately or no, the
outward and visible results which this incident promises to all who
fulfil the conditions, we shall get the results which were
symbolised in the second form of this miraculous draught of fishes.
For, if you remember, there was another incident at the end of
Christ's life, modelled upon this one, and equally significant,
though in a different fashion. On that occasion, when the disciples
had been toiling all the night, and saw, in the dim twilight of the
morning, the questionable figure standing on the shore there, they
were bidden to bring of the fish that they had caught, and when they
came to land they saw a fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and
bread; and His voice said, 'Come, and eat!' Blessed are the workers
that work for the Master, for living they shall not be left without
His blessing, and dying, 'they rest from their labours'--by the side
of that mysterious fire, and Christ-provided food--'and their works
do follow them, in that they bring of the fish which they have
caught.




FEAR AND FAITH


    'When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees,
    saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.'
    --LUKE v. 8.

    'Now, when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he
    girt his fisher's coat unto him,... and did cast
    himself into the sea.'--JOHN xxi. 7.

These two instances of the miraculous draught of fishes on the Lake
of Gennesareth are obviously intended to be taken in conjunction.
Their similarities and their differences are equally striking and
equally instructive. In the fragment of the incident which I have
selected for our consideration now, we have the same man, in the
same scene and circumstances, in the presence of the same Lord,
acting under the influences of the same motive, and doing two
exactly opposite things.

In the first case, the miracle at once struck him with the
consciousness that he was now, in some way, he knew not how,

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/8200