Chapter VIII. The Choosing Of The Apostles.
In treating of the calling of the Apostles, we encounter the questions, “What led our Lord to surround Himself with a constituted body of this kind?” and, “In virtue of what qualities were its members chosen?” I am led to conclude that our Lord presaged that which actually came about, and provided for future needs which he foresaw; so precisely do the measures he takes meet what subsequent occasions required. The choice of the agents, moreover, is singularly happy with respect to the extraordinary part which was put into their hands; and it must be noted that this part was one which Jesus alone, and, if He had only been what some of His biographers represent, not even He could have contemplated: while for the parts, which, from the obvious prospects of the case it was likely they would have to play, they were not calculated at all. The apostles were not suited to advance a social or a political cause or to spread doctrinal views; but they were specially fitted, as I shall shew, to gain credence for facts which they could declare had passed before their eyes.
Before choosing the Apostles our Lord spent the night alone on the mountain in prayer; on one [pg 229] other occasion only did He do the same.[154] If we regard only the duties expressly laid upon the Twelve at their call,[155] and the immediate services expected from them, our Lord's concern about them may seem more intense than the circumstances explain. But if we regard them as the heirs of His work, as those by whom the fire kindled by Him on earth was to be kept alive and spread, then our Lord's keen anxiety about them is accounted for. He looked to an early death, and when this death came it would depend on their constancy to carry the cause through the moment of dismay; and it would depend on the trust they commanded among men, whether it should be believed or not, that He had risen in triumph from the dead.
If we should find that the Apostles were, as a body, specially qualified to fulfil particular functions, and that these very functions it fell afterwards to them to discharge; then, surely, it is not unreasonable to suppose that our Lord, in choosing the Twelve, was guided by His foreknowledge of the situation in which they would be placed, and of the particular kind of work which they would be wanted to perform.
It will be shewn that the Apostles were qualified [pg 230] to be trustworthy witnesses of fact. If the course of events had been such that there had been no fact to witness, this capacity of theirs would have found no sphere; it would have been provided and never employed; but, as it was, the transcendent Fact that Christ died and rose again took place before their eyes.
The knowledge of this Fact was to be the most precious possession of the human race. How then was it to be preserved and transmitted? A fact only subsists for a future time in the relation of witnesses. So the greatest care is taken to provide for this Fact witnesses who would command belief. Some hearers will soonest trust one kind of witness and some another; witnesses therefore of different kinds are provided, that every man might be likely to find one in whom he could confide: but all these witnesses have this in common—they are all convinced of the reality of what they relate, and are not men to be easily carried away by their fancy or their feelings. If the religion had depended on the promulgating of theological doctrines which needed subtle expositors, then the Apostles would not have been the right men for the work; but being founded as it was upon the facts of Christ's life and death, what was wanted was, that credible witnesses should be present when these facts occurred and should remain to tell the tale. This want was supplied with a completeness which to my mind testifies of design.
To proceed with the history. During this winter of a.d. 28-29, our Lord, keeping Capernaum for his place of abode, made excursions to the neighbouring towns, preaching as he went, and shewing by His miraculous cures that the Divine power was working through His hands.
After the call of the fishermen on the Lakeside, He was constantly accompanied by His disciples, and from that time forth the education of His followers was always in His mind. This education went on like the quiet processes of nature; the subjects of it never felt that they were being educated at all, but those who were of the right natures slowly changed in the direction of what He would have them be. He did not make them all copies after one pattern. That which was native to the man, and which marked him off from all other men, was lovingly preserved. He intensified in each man his proper life, which grew with all the greater vigour through being let to follow its own bent. As yet we hear of no lessons given to the disciples by themselves, they only shared what was said to the crowd: this may have been as much as they could then receive, and possibly their greatest profit came from what was not given in the way of lessons at all, from words dropt in daily intercourse and from watching their master's doings in the thousand little occurrences of their wayfaring daily life.
It is worth noting that during all this time of [pg 232] their earliest spiritual education all was prosperity. From the autumn, in which, as I believe, our Lord called the fisher brethren, to the springtime which we have now reached in the narrative, His renown had steadily grown. Wherever He went, men were grateful for His coming, and drew close to hear; all seemed eager to press into the kingdom of Heaven, and to clutch at it as at treasure trove.[156] First from the neighbouring towns, then from Judæa and Samaria, and, at the time when this chapter opens, even from Idumea and Tyre and Sidon, men came to listen to one who was said to have the words of Eternal life.
Those who took their early impressions of Christ's service from those days, would retain a glowing recollection of it all their lives long. Their minds would be strung to hopeful confidence. When persecution came they would regard it as something permitted by their Master for reasons into which they did not inquire: the allegiance of mankind belonged, they would say, to their Master of right; He might for a moment waive his claim, but He could always resume it when He chose.
Our Lord sets a high value on the personal trust and devotion of his disciples, both for its own sake and because it was the bud which was to [pg 233] blossom into the new and transforming quality of Faith: this was forwarded in its early growth by the sunshine of success. The general who would win the young soldier's heart must lead him to glory in his first campaign; he will cling to him through all disasters after his heart is won.
I take up the narrative at the beginning of the third chapter of St Mark's Gospel.
“And the Pharisees went out, and straightway with the Herodians took counsel against him, how they might destroy him. And Jesus with his disciples withdrew to the sea: and a great multitude from Galilee followed: and from Judæa.”[157]
The Evangelists seldom speak of our Lord's motives, but here the collocation indicates that it was this confederacy of Pharisees and Herodians which caused our Lord to leave Capernaum. The Herodians were more formidable than the Pharisees. The latter would only set the law in motion, but the former did not scruple to employ violence; and the Macedonian guards of the Tetrarch were at Tiberias within call. Our Lord never, until His time was come, exposed Himself unnecessarily to danger; and at this particular moment His freedom and safety were of vital importance. All that He had done would, humanly speaking, be lost or have to be done over again if He were cast into prison or slain: the pressure of [pg 234] this danger may have hastened the appointment of the Twelve. The body of disciples following our Lord had as yet no corporate life of its own; it was only held together by gravitation to Him and would fall to pieces if He were taken away; at this juncture then, there was no time to be lost in giving the body organic life. As soon as the Twelve received their commission this body became possessed of a vital centre, and the continuous existence of the Church was secured, even though its Master should be removed from earth.
This plot of the Pharisees was probably known but to few—people when they take counsel together do not publish their design on the house-tops—and the absence of excitement among the crowd favours the view that the danger of the prophet of Nazareth was not suspected by them. Whatever may have been His motive, our Lord left Capernaum, together with His followers, and took, it seems, the road along the sea shore towards the north.
Some words of our Lord, belonging probably to this place, are recorded by St Matthew.
“But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.”[158]
St Matthew probably found in this need of labourers a sufficient reason for the call of the Apostles. More hands were wanted for ministering to the multitude, and it was desirable that some should be set apart for the work. But our Lord's great earnestness in the matter points, as I have just said,[159] to something more than this, as though this calling of the Twelve was of vital concern for the great work that was being done for the world.
It would only have bewildered the disciples if our Lord had explained to them the meaning and motive of the commissioning of the Twelve. They could not be told that Christ's Kingdom on earth was being vested in the Twelve as an undying body in order that it might not be shattered by His death. They could not yet be told of the coming Resurrection, or that they were being trained to bear witness of Christ's spiritual presence with His own. Our Lord's talk with His disciples was primarily suited to their wants and to their minds, and not to those of the people of after times: we must not therefore expect to find in it answers to the questions we want to put. But we have one advantage which the disciples had not; they, as actors in the drama, were taken up with their parts for the moment, while we contemplate it as spectators from beginning to end; and even if we cannot quite follow the action, yet we can make out enough of sequence to see that this action forms a whole: [pg 236] we mark the drift of the earlier incidents when we see the goal for which all was making, and our Lord's purposes are sometimes made more apparent by the course of His acts than by His words.
Without pretending to enter into our Lord's mind, we cannot help imagining the considerations which the situation must have inspired. The danger to the cause from allowing it to hang upon a single life was becoming more pressing day by day. Though our Lord in passing through the country, had kindled men's hearts as He went along, yet He had left no working agency behind. There was no rallying point, no minister, no constituted body in any district or town. It may be asked, “Why did not our Lord do as St Paul did?” Why did He not “ordain elders in every city,” and establish His religion territorially step by step, just as an advancing army occupies the ground it has won? This is part of the wider question, “Why did not our Lord found a Church Himself?” to which an answer has been given before. His business was to “kindle the fire” and only to kindle it. What has been said of ritual (p. [222]) applies to Church government as well. Church polities, like forms of secular government, were to be formed by men of each age for themselves; and to lay down a system, for which a Divine authority would inevitably be claimed, would bar all human intervention in matters ecclesiastical, and hamper men's minds in ways that I have glanced at before. If a system [pg 237] of Christian communities had been spread over Galilee by our Lord as it was spread over Asia Minor by St Paul, the forms of ecclesiastical government so sanctioned, and all that related to outer worship would have been regarded as a part of revealed truth. A visible Church framed by our Lord would have afforded a model, from any line in the construction of which it would have been a heresy to swerve. Men would not only have consecrated the principles of its polity but they would have seized on the visible constitution and points of practice and have battled for these to the death. We should have had an institution, Divinely authorised, and which therefore could not in the smallest particular be changed, imposed on races inheriting different temperaments, and one ecclesiastical rule would have been fixed for all time.
In all matters of procedure the one question asked would have been, “What was the practice of the Lord?” Church polity would have depended wholly on conclusions drawn from antiquarian study and, what would have been worse than all, people having outgrown the institutions regarded as Divine would have lulled their consciences by being studiously regardful of the form after the meaning had disappeared, and they would have stretched the formulæ to make them fit the times. In doing this they would have played fast and loose with their honesty of mind. Moreover it seems to me an incongruity that the Redeemer of [pg 238] the World should also be the founder of a local Church; the disproportion is so vast between the two terms.
A way was perfected in that night of prayer upon the hills, whereby an organic life was imparted to the little community without setting up a Church, from the pattern of which no deviation could be allowed. The Twelve formed a centre round which the disciples might cluster, and this rudiment of organisation was enough for the time. Christ gave only such a germ of external polity as the immediate need required. The commissioning of the Twelve imposed no particular form of rule; but it taught the lesson that organisation and order and the distribution of duty were essential in things spiritual as well as in things temporal, and that it was well for the children of light to be as “wise in their generation” as the children of the world.
When a danger or perplexity offers itself to men, they seek counsel one of another, but our Lord takes counsel of the Father alone, there is with Him no hesitancy, no balancing of this course against that. In this case, when the morning comes His resolve is distinct, and it is forthwith carried out. The constitution and proper functions of the body that He should create, as well as the persons who were to be the first members, all were determined on.
We read:
“He went out into the mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God;”[160]
again, we have
“He goeth up into the mountain, and calleth unto him whom he himself would: and they went unto him. And he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have authority to cast out devils.”[161]
This is all we are told of the planting of that germ, of which the upgrowth is the Church of Christ. The organisation thus introduced was just enough to make of the disciples one body. Henceforth they could speak of themselves as “we;” but as yet, they were only pupils, chosen to be about their master's person, intrusted with special powers for the good of those among whom they ministered, but with no authority over the rest of the disciples.
The hour to which our Lord had looked forward, the time “when the bridegroom should be taken away,” arrived at last, and our Lord's timely measures in finding the right men and training them in the right way proved of signal service then. When the critical moment came the men proper for the work were found upon the spot. When our Lord at Gethsemane, declining all superhuman aid, resigned Himself into His captors' hands, consternation and bewilderment for a moment overcame the Twelve—“they all left Him, [pg 240] and fled.”[162] The recollection of this moment's failure may have been of service to them in after days; it may have made them more lenient to the lapses of others, and, like the “thorn in the flesh” given to St Paul, might prevent their being “exalted overmuch.” The situation in which the Apostles found themselves called out the qualities desired. As soon as their Master had suffered there came upon them the sense of responsibility, and they rose to the circumstances as men with depth of character do. The cause did not die down even for a moment, it was kept alive in that upper chamber where the eleven met. To them, from the first, the other disciples looked for direction, and to them they brought their news. The women never doubted about where they were to go with the news that the sepulchre was empty, and late in the Resurrection Day the disciples from Emmaus proceeded straight to the upper chamber, knowing that the eleven would be there.
Hardly had the two who returned from Emmaus told their tale, when
“He himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.”[163]
The eleven had taken the helm quietly, as a matter of course, when the ship seemed to be disabled. They had been faithful in a little and straightway they are called unto much, they are [pg 241] chosen for witnesses of the Supreme Event in the history of Man, of the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
It is this character of witnesses which distinguishes the Apostles from all other depositaries of a Master's cause. This was the charge that governed the disposition of their lives. Other men might organise churches and set forth the teaching of the Lord, but in the character of appointed witnesses of the Resurrection they stood alone. Before the Resurrection they are told
“And ye also bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning,”[164]
and afterwards it is as witnesses that they are singled out by our Lord, “And ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judæa and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”[165] In this distinctive light too they regard themselves. When a successor to Judas has to be appointed, St Peter says, “of these must one become a witness with us of his resurrection”[166] and Peter and all the Apostles say, before the Sanhedrin, “We are witnesses of these things.” Peter again, speaking to the brethren from Joppa calls the Apostles “witnesses chosen before of God.”[167]
I find in the Twelve a special fitness for the particular work which it fell to them to perform. [pg 242] They brought to the attestation of the Resurrection the concurring evidence of eleven eyewitnesses, simple, truthloving, matter-of-fact men, of different types of mind.
The unanimity of the eleven, both as to their testimony and as to their adoption of a particular course of conduct has been less dwelt on by Apologists than I should have expected. If one or two could have been gained over by the Scribes to dissent from the account of the rest, the moral force of the evidence would have been lost. The chances against the agreement of the entire body in an illusion or a misrepresentation are enormous. But an event so transcendent as to wipe out of the minds of the witnesses everything else—“all trivial, fond records” would efface small subjective differences by the overwhelming force of the objective impression; and the occurrence of such an event would account for that perfect agreement in action among men who had not uniformly agreed before, which is among the many striking phenomena which the book of the Acts of the Apostles discloses to our own view.
The chosen witnesses have exactly the qualities which a judge would point out to a jury, as grounds for giving particular weight to their evidence on questions of fact coming within their view. I must say something more on this point.
Nothing carries more weight with a jury than the impression that the witness has an intense [pg 243] belief in the truth of what he says. Such an impression the Apostles conveyed; the possibility that they should themselves doubt in the slightest about any fact to which they speak never occurs to their mind; all through the Acts and the Epistles the atmosphere is one of certainty, settled and serene. The Apostles had not been always so assured; we find them in the Gospels impatient for clearer statements and more decisive signs: “Now speakest thou plainly and speakest no parable” they regard as high praise. But after the Resurrection all this is changed, they are then quite certain of the fact that Christ is Divine, and they have given up trying to understand the ways and forms in which the Divine power might show itself. They had probably, once thought, like Naaman, that it must operate something after the fashion which absolute power uses upon earth. They have got past this when we meet with them in the Acts.
I have spoken of the difference of character among the Apostles for this reason. That eleven men, and a particular eleven, should all have agreed in an account of what they said they had seen, when by so doing they gained none of the objects of human desire, is hard to explain unless we suppose that they were convinced of the truth of their report. If, however, these men had but one mind among them, either because one or two master spirits controlled the rest, or because they had been so carefully drilled into uniformity that [pg 244] they could not help judging alike, then the value of this unanimity would disappear, for the eleven would become, virtually, only one or two. Now that the Apostles were men of independent minds is clear from what we hear of their disputings by the way, and from the offence taken at James and John when they ask for seats on the right and left at their Master's side; and, indeed, the Gospel portraiture of all the Apostles leaves on us the impression that they were of different types of character and had personalities that were strongly marked.
Certainly St Peter had a turn of mind which was specially his own. He arrived at steadfast conviction not by reasoning from step to step—this was a mental process rarely practised by Galilean fishers—but by inward intuition, after his own strong Hebrew sort. When an impulse seized on him it must have its way, and when his heart was full of a matter he must pour it out.
Of Matthew what I said (p. [215]) may stand in place of a notice here. His Gospel shews us from what side he looked on the work then being set afoot.
James and John the “Sons of Thunder” may be set down as representing energy and vehemence. They were not likely to follow a lead, or to fall in with a fantasy started by anyone else. Our notices of Thomas and Philip and Bartholomew, remind us of sketches, in which a few spirited pen-strokes present a figure which we can fancy we have seen. [pg 245] Though Thomas so loved our Lord that he was the first to propose to go with Him to Jerusalem that “they might die with Him,”[168] yet he will not take it on hearsay that Christ is risen. He knew how dearly the disciples longed to have their Master back, and he mistrusted their report because he feared that their impression might come of their strong desire. His doubts however like those of Nathanael, are those of an investigator, not of an assailant; like him he is “without guile” and is glad to accept the offer “Come and see.” Of Philip I have often spoken. His words, “Shew us the Father and it sufficeth us” lay his mind bare before us.
These three men last named were all inclined to be incredulous, they were matter of fact persons, looking without rather than within, and such are the most trustworthy witnesses to external fact. Of one Apostle, Simon, it is true we learn that he had been a “zealot,” that is, that he had once belonged to a band of men fired with fanatical devotion. But, when we hear of him, he had caught sight of a different kind of Divine Kingdom from any that he had thought of bringing about, and he was by degrees learning that “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”[169] Not one of these men had sufficient imagination—sufficient creative faculty—to embody his longings, even if he had such, in a vision so unexampled as that [pg 246] we have. That some of the eleven should have had one illusive fancy and some another would not have been improbable, but that all should have had the same would have been inordinately so. As a matter of fact the portraiture of the risen Lord given in our different memoirs is a conception singularly consistent, and one which the writers could not have drawn except from concurring traditions or personal knowledge of the facts.
There was one Apostle who did not witness the resurrection—Judas Iscariot. With all that has been written about him, the problems of his call and of the purpose of his treason remain unsolved. If, as many suppose, Judas came from some place in Judæa, Kerioth by name, he was, among the Apostles, the only one who was not a Galilæan. It is possible that he may have been one of those who attached themselves to our Lord at Jerusalem before His active ministry began. Our Lord did not “trust Himself”[170] with these as a body but one or two may have gone with Him through Samaria into Galilee. Judas may have been of a mind less simply receptive than the rest of the twelve. Perhaps he had aims for Israel, perhaps also for himself, the patriotic element may sometimes have been uppermost and sometimes the selfish one, and perhaps he wanted to hasten the Divine scheme and help it forward in His own way.
His presence among the disciples shews that [pg 247] our Lord did not confine his choice to those who were of one type, and that a man who had in him great possibilities, attracted his sympathy, although these possibilities might be turned to evil, and the things meant for his good might become an occasion of falling.
But while each individual of the Apostolic body had a specific character of his own, yet beneath this lay a generic condition common to them all. They all belonged to the lower middle class, living by labour but above want; they were able to read and write and some could probably talk Greek with the neighbouring Hellenists in the country to the north. The Apostles were plain and homely in their minds and in their talk. In what they heard they saw little beyond the meaning that lay on the surface of the words. This literal mindedness does not belong to one Apostle or two, but characterizes them all, and it appears in St John's Gospel as frequently as in the other three. The Evangelists relate these displays of simplicity without ever dreaming that they throw thereby any disparagement on the Apostles: such they expected them to be, and such they note that they were.
When men have the wants of the day full in view every morning of their lives, and must supply these wants by the labour of their hands, their thoughts naturally take a practical turn. Now this we note as a signal trait in the behaviour of the Apostles and it is exactly what would characterize [pg 248] men brought up as they had been. They always look first to what under the circumstances has to be done; like seafaring men, they are prompt in resource. When the five thousand stay till nightfall on the mountain side far from any place where food could be got, the thought of the Apostles is, “How are they to be fed?” They take it on them to advise that the crowd be sent away while there was still daylight enough for them to reach the villages. In the little daily business of common life they act as if matters of service fell within their own sphere and on them they had a right to speak. I have already spoken of their pressing our Lord to take food on the journey through Samaria. Again, when the three Apostles are with our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter evidently supposes that they have entered a new and heavenly country where they are to stay, and his first thought is to be of service. People, he supposes, will want abiding places in the new country as well as in the old land they had left, so he proposes to build huts as if they had been camping in the hills. An Alpine guide would have spoken much in the same way. These little distinctive characteristics are carefully preserved, and the instinctive thought of the attendant Apostles for their Master in their little acts of personal service is true to nature in a rare and delicate way.
Such men are good witnesses for they have eyes for everything. I contend then, first that the [pg 249] Apostles were singularly adapted for affording the testimony required, and next, that, if men were especially picked out on account of their qualifications as witnesses, then our Lord must have had in view some great event for which witnesses were required. In the selection of these plain men to found the church we light upon the first hint of the distinctive feature of the Christian revelation mentioned above, viz. that it was to be centred, not in notions but in a stupendous Fact (p. [230]).
When the gospel had to be preached to Greeks who sought after a methodical system, and the need came for doctrine, the work was given to St Paul. But twelve St Pauls as witnesses to fact would not have carried as much weight as the Apostles did; for though the most truthful of men, yet the world of his own thoughts was nearly as present to him as the world without, and it was not always perfectly clear when he was speaking of one and when of the other. The minds of the Apostles, on the other hand, were quite limpid; they received all “as little children,” registering truly what came from without, and declaring it just as their five senses set it before them.
I have said (l.c.) that the Apostles were not the men whom the Founder of a policy or a school would have chosen to win men over to his views. Our Lord does not choose his successors for their power of attracting crowds. He does not teach them to argue or to preach. They prevailed by [pg 250] what they were and what they did, more than by what they said. They had not the art of kindling enthusiasm and leading captive the minds of men. They do not possess the magic which masters the will. Their success comes of what they had to say, not of the way in which they said it. They were indeed to be the promulgators of the religion which was to grow up around the person of Christ, they were to “teach all nations,”[171] but they are not to dominate men and bear them down by impetuous oratory. This is too near akin to delusion and tyranny for teachers of the freemen whom “the truth makes free.” Nor were they to rate their success by the multitude of those they baptized. The truths revealed in Christ's life and death were given to the world to be part of its possessions through all time, and whether they were generally accepted a little sooner or a little later was of small account.
It may be remarked here what a small part in the Divine economy, the gift of eloquence plays. Moses had no utterance, the speech of Paul was contemptible, and the Apostles can, indeed, say what needs saying, but have not the gift, so infinitely valued by the Greek, of leading men captive by persuasive words.
But though to have been witnesses of the Resurrection was the great glory of the Apostles, yet they were something more than witnesses; they were also the first guardians and propagators of [pg 251] the Faith that transformed the world. They were the depositories of the leaven which gradually set up its working through the minds of men.
For this other function of their office they were also singularly qualified in various external ways.
The social position of the Apostles was advantageous for the promulgating of a Faith which was to become universal. They belonged to the stratum in which the Centre of Gravity of Humanity lay. The small land owners and handicraftsmen in Galilee were in contact with people in different stations of life; they could talk with the rich and they could feel with the poor; they were on the border land between the learned and the ignorant, and had just enough knowledge to be able to get more when they wanted it. There was one truth, essential and vital to a Faith which was to exalt and dignify all mankind, which in the class from which the Apostles came was found growing with especial vigour as on its native soil. This truth was the surpassing value of a man as man,—the sanctity which clothes a human being who is made in the image of God. The sense of this truth is much keener among the poor than among the rich; it is the poor who are most scandalised if a human being is treated like a brute. The rich have wealth, dignities and the like, on which their thoughts rest with satisfaction. But when the poor man takes account of his condition he finds but one item on the credit side, and he makes the most of it: it is [pg 252] that “He too is a Man.” The upper class in Palestine had little mind for anything wider than a philosophical or political sect, and they treated the poor as if they had no souls. Christianity therefore could not have made its cradle with them, and the lowest class had little intelligence and no power of combination and would have been at once trodden under foot. Unless the Church had taken root in the lower middle class, it could hardly have spread as it did. That its earliest promulgators belonged to this class I will not suppose to have been a matter of mere chance.
To proceed with the course of events. Our Lord having called to Him “whom He Himself would” and chosen the twelve, assigns to them their name. They are “Apostles,” men sent forth to preach. But it was not till the risen Christ appeared to the eleven in that upper chamber and said, “Peace be unto you; as my Father hath sent me even so send I you,” that they saw all that was meant by this name; viz. that Christ was the Apostle of His Father and that they were the Apostles of Christ.
Our Lord on coming down with the Twelve from the mountain found a great gathering of people waiting for Him on a spot of level ground.
St Luke's account is this.
“And he came down with them, and stood on a level place, and a great multitude of his disciples, and a great number of the people from all Judæa and Jerusalem, and the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear [pg 253] him, and to be healed of their diseases; and they that were troubled with unclean spirits were healed. And all the multitude sought to touch him: for power came forth from him, and healed them all.”[172]
The address to the newly chosen Apostles which follows this passage in St Luke's gospel has been incorporated by St Matthew with the Sermon on the Mount. The portions belonging to it may there be recognised by the absence both of allusions to the Law and of the opposed phrases, “It was said to those of old time” and “But I say unto you,” phrases which point the contrast which forms the main theme of the earlier address.
The multitudes who awaited our Lord “in the level place” were made up of Apostles, disciples, and people “who came to hear him and be healed.” In some passages of this discourse our Lord had the disciples, and in others the rest of the people, particularly in view.
It was to the disciples that He turned when He began to speak.
“And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed are ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.”[173]
The four beatitudes are, to my mind, expressly addressed to those who are about to take service on Christ's side. It was only to a disciple that our Lord could say that He would be hated, and cut [pg 254] off and vilified “for the son of man's sake,” and it was only disciples, and disciples too who were active in spreading the word, who could be brought into comparison with prophets either true or false. The interpretation also of these beatitudes depends on the fact that our Lord is speaking to the disciples. Blessing did not belong to the poor as an appanage of their poverty but because they were His disciples and theirs was the Kingdom of God; it was easier for the poor than the rich to enter this Kingdom, and then their earthly poverty brought out by contrast the greatness of their spiritual wealth. There is this difference between the lessons taught here and those delivered in the Sermon on the Mount; here all is personal while there it is general. Here, our Lord is speaking to His disciples and says, “for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven,” and “ye shall be filled.” In the Sermon on the Mount the corresponding pronouns are theirs and they.
A special lesson is conveyed to the Twelve is the last of these beatitudes.
“Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy: for behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the same manner did their fathers unto the prophets.”[174]
Although the enthusiastic reception of their [pg 255] Master must have cheered the Apostles and set them forward in good heart, yet they were not to think that they were called to share in a triumph that was already won. They were not to be over-elated by this passing favour of men. The danger was, lest they should be too sanguine and be carried away by the fascination of popular goodwill. Well might they be lifted up. Their Master had just entrusted them with superhuman powers, and multitudes had come from miles around and had waited for them all night at the foot of the hills. So, in the midst of the flush of success, our Lord tells them that the criterion of their being true soldiers of God is their winning, not the world's praise but its hate. There is in the world an enmity to God as God. There are many who will readily enough acknowledge a Deity so long as He is not real and actual and is not brought too near; they find in the abstract idea a serviceable support for their social institutions; but from the notion of a living God close by them they shrink in dismay, and along with their terror goes hate.
Parallel with these beatitudes run the denunciations of woe.
“But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you, ye that are full now! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you, ye that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for in the same manner did their fathers to the false prophets.”[175]
These denunciations are not found in the Sermon on the Mount. That discourse was addressed to people mostly of the same class and in the same posture of mind. When our Lord first spoke to the crowds on the hillside people had not begun to take sides; but, at the period of the history now before us, they had already clustered into parties; some had declared for the word and some against it, while many remained indifferent or in doubt, and to these several parties our Lord speaks in turn.
I think that when our Lord began to utter “Woe,” he turned to the men of station and substance in whom curiosity was mixed with considerations of prudence. They are not denounced for being rich any more than the poor are blessed for being poor; but their calamity is this, that in riches they find enough consolation to prevent their striving heartily after anything better. They do not “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” they do not “seek a country;” they do not steadily seek anything; but, if they feel for a moment uneasy, they clutch their possessions and say, “At any rate I have thus much comfort secure here.” This it was which made it next to impossible for them to enter the kingdom of God, and our Lord cries unto them, “Woe.”
In the last denunciation our Lord comes back to the disciples again. The ills that men's hatred brought with it were patent enough, but men's favour was an insidious snare; for it might lead [pg 257] them unawares to love “the praise of men more than the praise of God.” The more kindly the young preacher is received, the more distressing it is to him to incur dislike; and consequently the greater is the temptation to soften down Christ's sternness and to meet the world halfway. Our Lord warns his new helpers by the example of those who in old times had prophesied smooth things, and had gone the way of the world while the world had made believe it was going theirs.
The beatitudes and warnings of woe form the prelude, and when this was over our Lord may be supposed to have lifted up his eyes from those who stood nearest—probably the Apostles and most notable persons—and to have addressed the whole multitude; for, His words, “But I say unto you which hear,”[176] I take to imply, “all you which hear.” The twelve verses which follow form a sermon of general application of which “Love your enemies” is taken as the text.
On this sermon being ended we read
“And he spake also a parable unto them, Can the blind guide the blind? shall they not both fall into a pit? The disciple is not above his master: but every one when he is perfected shall be as his master.”[177]
This parable is addressed to the newly appointed Twelve. It bears on the temptations of young teachers. They are in danger of being elated [pg 258] at finding themselves teachers when they had so lately been learners; they might lean to correction, and might incline to be over busy in giving directions and in finding fault; they might persuade themselves too that they thought only of the learners' good, when in reality there was, mixed with this, a good spice of the love of exercising superiority. They are told that if they are to act as guides they must see their own way first; the light within them must not be darkness.
The last verse of the last quotation, refers, not to Christ and His disciples—there is no suggestion that these should reach His perfection—but to the disciples and their scholars. The especial point of the verse is the responsibility laid upon the teacher, by the pupils taking him as their ideal. The pupils of the disciples would copy the disciples themselves, and they could not excel their pattern. The learner could not be above his master, what is cast in a mould cannot be better shaped than the mould itself; but the perfected work that is turned out exactly represents the mould. The disciples therefore must watch against every defect, for their pupils would copy them faults and all.
The text has another application besides this, the pupil when perfected would stand on a level with His master; the latter had no indefeasible superiority. When they had lighted the lamps of others the light of the rest would be as bright as their own. If they were to glory it should be, not [pg 259] in their superiority to their pupils, but in their pupils having become as good as themselves. They were not to be like those teachers who keep back from their prentices some special secret of their art.
Next comes the verse, “For there is no good tree that bringeth forth corrupt fruit.”[178] This applies both to those who teach and to those who learn. If the master's scholars mostly turn out ill it may be inferred that he is a bad master; and if the master be self-seeking at bottom, whatever disguise he may put on, the evil will come to light: selfishness always generates counter-selfishness, and false pretension detected in one case may lead a young man into general mistrust.
In another view of the verse, the behaviour of the man is the fruit and his nature is the tree. This fruit is not without value in itself, but is of more value still as an evidence of the condition of the tree. This falls in with the constant burden of Christ's teaching, “God looks to what you are as well as to what you do, and part of the importance of what you do comes from its shewing what you are, or from its helping by way of practice to confirm you in your ways whether good or bad.”
In the last four verses of the address our Lord again speaks to the whole company of hearers. He takes one of His familiar topics, viz., that good is not only to be admired, it must also be done. This is expressed by the illustration of the [pg 260] house on the rock and that on the earth. Many who followed Him counted themselves His disciples because they carried away his commands in their heads and talked about them. He tells them that they can only get firm hold of them by putting them into practice. There were many hearers who would put our Lord's precepts away somewhere in their memory, and be satisfied with possessing right and beautiful thoughts without carrying them into practice, keeping them like curios in a drawer. These were like men building on the earth, who do only just what the moment requires. But the habit formed by steady obedience effects a structural change in the man's own mind. This is a lasting possession—it has taken time and pains to acquire, but it is storm proof like the house upon the rock.
When speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, I touched on the form in which our Lord delivers what He says. The remarks there made apply to the discourse before us and, in addition, it may be said, that this address is admirably adapted to be carried away by the hearers as a whole. It is strongly marked by its characteristic style, so that an addition or alteration by another hand would strike even an unpractised ear, as not having the true ring. There are four beatitudes and four denunciations, corresponding each to each; this numerical symmetry assists recollection. Then comes the sermon, made up of sayings so short and [pg 261] terse that the most unlettered may carry the whole away; and finally all ends with a parable, which is so well suited to the popular mind that it is now perhaps the best known of all pieces of Bible imagery. Those who like may trace in this a certain prevision, a designed fashioning of the garb of the word to suit it for that oral transmission on which, at one period, its preservation would depend.
When our Lord had finished His discourse He returned to Capernaum.
“And he cometh into a house. And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his friends heard it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.”[179]
There were occasions in our Lord's life in which the Divine nature seemed to glow through the human receptacle. It was so when He came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, so too, when he went forward, apart from the rest, at the outset of His final journey to Jerusalem; and so I believe it was when He came back to Capernaum bringing with Him the Twelve whom He had chosen to form the nucleus of His everlasting Church. Something in His air seems to have amazed His friends, “they said he is beside himself.”
The Scribes, marking the temper of the crowd, thought it wise to drop their schemes of violence, but they set afoot the notion that He was possessed [pg 262] by the Prince of the Devils and ruled the spirits of evil in his name. Our Lord made no long stay at Capernaum, but took the Twelve with Him on a journey to the cities in Galilee that they might see how He preached and taught, and, what was more, that they might learn to put complete trust in His wise guidance and sheltering love. This was the first practical lesson they collectively received.
It was in the interval between the calling of the Twelve and the despatching of them, two and two, on their missions, or possibly while they were gone, that the messengers sent by the Baptist came up with our Lord and His party.
As the next chapter will be taken up with the lessons belonging to this mission of the Twelve, I shall deal with this incident in this chapter, although, chronologically, it might fall in the next. It is related by St Matthew as follows:
“Now when John heard in the prison the works of the Christ, he sent by his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Go your way and tell John the things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me.”[180]
The question asked by the Baptist shews us his condition of mind. A voice in his heart had told the Baptist that he was born to be the forerunner of one mightier than himself, and the sign at the Baptism had shewn him who that Person was. He had recognised in Him “the Lamb of God who was to take away the sins of the world,” the Son in whom the Father was well pleased. This conveys the impression that John regarded our Lord as the Jewish Messiah, but the Baptist's notions about the Messiah may have been vague, like those which the people and even the Scribes entertained; although he was a prophet and more than a prophet, he would not know more than other people, except on matters directly revealed to him. The Divine light is indeed a “lantern to a man's path,” but it is a lantern that throws its light only in the direction in which he who carries it has to go. I believe that John sent to our Lord because he was bewildered by what he heard. That the Messiah should preach and heal was agreeable to what he had expected: but, “Was this to be all?” Was He going to restore the kingdom Himself, or was another to come and take up that portion of the work?
Our Lord, it would appear, wished to give John as nearly as might be the same advantages as His disciples had. The emissaries are accordingly made witnesses of the Signs. They are told to relate what they saw and He adds the significant words, “And [pg 264] blessed is he whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me.”[181] Our Lord could not say that He was the Messiah without letting loose all the divers erroneous imaginations which hovered round the name. Our Lord, after His fashion, gives the Baptist a suggestive hint, leaving it to him whether He should follow out the clue rightly or not. As soon as John's messengers, who for a while had witnessed the works that He did, had turned back home, our Lord addressed himself to the company who were with him, people, disciples and all, and spoke to them of John. This discourse contained lessons of tolerance which helped to widen the disciples' minds, and I shall therefore discuss it at some length. It has a bearing extending beyond those to whom it was addressed.
I shall take St Luke's version of this discourse because in that of St Matthew it is, I think, mixed with matter spoken on other occasions.
It is our Lord's way to point the drift of a whole discourse by a pregnant sentence at the end, in which the expositor finds the key to the whole. Such a saying we have here, in the closing words,
“And wisdom is[182] justified of all her children.”[183]
The meaning of the passage turns on the sense given to the word “justified.” It is employed, near the beginning of the discourse, in the same sense which it has here at the end, and this helps us to [pg 265] understand its particular meaning in this place. I refer to the passage:
“And all the people when they heard, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected for themselves the counsel of God, being not baptized of him.”[184]
The word “justified” is used in this passage in the sense it has when we say “my son has justified all my outlay,” or “the event justified all my precautions.”
The publicans by accepting the baptism of John shewed that God's good offices in their behalf were not thrown away, that they had not been regarded with excessive hopefulness or a too indulgent eye; but the Scribes and Pharisees frustrated God's good purpose in their behalf. So far as they were concerned his measures were of no effect. They would have none of them. The fact was, that, though they talked about God, they were in fact God-blind, and when asked to follow His teachers they found special reasons for declining in each particular case. John renewed an ideal which had passed out of sight; he appeared in the ascetic garb of the prophets of old; his strict life and his outspoken words disturbed their consciences and they put him aside by the readiest of expedients, they declared that he was mad. Then came our Lord declaring Himself the Son of Man, living as other men did, [pg 266] and consecrating thereby the ordinary course and usages of human life. In His case also the Scribes had an objection to make. A messenger from God, they thought, would come upon the earth in a different way from other men, and all his doings would be of an exceptional kind: whereas Christ lived to all appearance just as they did themselves. In the same way that courtiers surround a prince by a wall of etiquette in order to elevate him and hold him apart from the people, so would the Scribes have encompassed God's messenger with hallowed observances. They were not likely to understand that the closer Jesus kept to the ordinary and universal ways of men which were of natural growth, the more He was at home in the Kingdom of His Father who had made the world and ordered the ways of men.
Christ goes to the root of both these objections. He takes an image drawn from what was always under their eyes. He supposes a crowd of children playing in the market place, while others are sitting somewhat sullenly by. They play at a wedding, and they pretend to pipe and dance, but those who sit by will not stir; and then they change to a funeral, and imitate the wailing of the relatives and of the train of hired mourners, but those whom they wish to gain for playmates will not have this either; they do not want to play at all. The people would learn from this image as much as was within their comprehension. They could see that when [pg 267] the Pharisees objected on opposite grounds to two courses, their aversion was really not to either course but to that to which both courses tended. But the last verse, “wisdom is justified of all her children,” goes beyond what the people would see at the time; and, indeed, as St Matthew in his version omits the important word all, it looks as if he had himself missed the full sense.
The text conveys a lesson of ample tolerance which even in these days, all minds are not stretched wide enough to receive. The point is this. God has children of more types than one, and all these, in their own different ways, justify God's thought for them by taking advantage of His help. The ways of Jesus and the ways of John differ widely, but men may reach God coming round by either way. Some may gain access to the Kingdom through John and others by Jesus; but all who are God's will get there by some way or other. If the Scribes and Pharisees were winnowed away by this trial it was because the germs of a Divine nature within them had been suffered to perish. They were God's children no longer, and God's ways for His children would not succeed with them.
That wisdom is justified of all her children, is a truth carrying to different generations the precise lesson of tolerance it needs. It was not long before the Apostles themselves had occasion to call this very lesson to mind. An exclusive spirit, and the desire to have their privileges all to themselves led [pg 268] them to forbid a man who followed not with them to cast out devils in their Master's name. They are very gently set right. Our Lord is never hard upon errors arising from mistaken notions; he gently checks them at the time and takes early occasion, by a parable, or some lesson of circumstance, to suggest the proper counter view.
But though the Apostles might profit by this apophthegm, yet it was aimed directly at the Scribes who held that in all questions there must be one right view, all others being wrong; so that toleration of anything that deviated from the accepted view, implied indifference to truth. But it is only “truth absolute” which is one and exclusive and this, in spiritual matters, can only be attained by an unmistakeable dictum of revelation. In a geometrical investigation, we have an infallible logic dealing with definite notions; we therefore get one precise result, and all that differ from this are worthless. But in matters spiritual an element of infinity must be present; notions enter which cannot be defined; men may use the same words in stating their views, but whether these words convey the same conceptions to them all, no one can possibly say. In things spiritual, therefore, no one answer completely excludes all other answers because we never get a perfect solution at all; we only get approximations. In like manner there are insoluble problems in Mathematical Physics to which we can only get answers approximately [pg 269] correct. These being points in a circle round the unattainable centre may be infinite in number.
These hard sayings shew that Christ, when he spoke, looked beyond his hearers into infinite space and saw there “other sheep who were not of this fold.”[185] He must also have felt sure that these words of His would be preserved for after times; for certainly, it was not merely for Galilean hearers that our Lord uttered pregnant words like those I have just discussed.[186] The candle was not lighted to be put in a cupboard. The hard sayings of our Lord as well as many of His passing words, which called forth no notice at the time, are to me part of the witness, everywhere peeping out, of our Lord's prospective view in what He said and did. He must have had in view persons or bodies of men, who would find, some in one of these utterances and some in another, what answered to a want or a question rising in their hearts; and, as a fact, men have in every age lighted on words of our Lord which seemed to be a revelation directed to their own case, the key to the special riddle which vexed their souls. There are herbs and simples growing on the earth, which men for ages have passed carelessly by, but some new form of malady has one day appeared, and in the disregarded plant has the needful help been found.