Outset of the Work.
We now come in sight of that part of our Lord's work which is the special subject of this book. We have been shewn something of what passed in His mind during the days in the desert; but we are not told what He intended to accomplish or by what practical steps He would proceed. We need not suppose that He came forth from the desert with His plan of action completely prepared. He may not have settled where He should lay the scene of His work or whom He should take for His helpers. All this would grow clear to Him as time went on. But though He may have been waiting for the guidance of inner voice and outward circumstance as to the way of executing His charge, yet that He had God's work to do and meant to do it is written unmistakeably in His air.
We are shown Him in St John's Gospel on His way to Galilee. A glimpse is given us across His path, and we see Him pass along with the assured tread of one whose part is taken and who knows [pg 148] whither His steps lead. On one point touching the form of His work He is already clear. He is not to come as a practical reformer or as a claimant of power; in these characters He would need active human aid, and the Spirit of the World would enter in: but though He is given functions beyond teaching, yet, in order to wear a garb familiar to the people, He will be in their eyes nothing more, at first, than “a teacher come from God;”[74] His followers are to be purely disciples and not adherents of any other kind. His concern was not with political or social forms of order,—these must be different in different times and different lands. His province was to waken into activity the capacity for knowing God which was practically dormant in the mass of mankind. Before laying down any plan or organising any society, He passes some months in exploring, so to say, the tempers, and minds and capacities of the different classes of persons in Jerusalem and Galilee. He is in search of the fittest receptacles for the word. He looks into the hearts of the disciples of John, and of those who like Nicodemus were “scribes instructed into the kingdom of heaven.” He turns His eye upon Samaritans and peasants of Galilee; and finally, as we know, decides to choose the quiet Lake shore for the cradle of the Faith. The peasants and fishers whose ways He knew—unsentimental, serviceable men—were taken as witnesses for the [pg 149] new revelation: they offered the new flasks wanted for the new wine.
A man who sets about regenerating society commonly begins by remodelling institutions; he trusts to good institutions to make men good: our Lord, as a Teacher, begins at the other end; He goes straight to the men themselves and tries to make them better; better men would bring about better ways of ordering their outward lives; but each generation must do this for itself. The success of His enterprise did not rest on its immediate acceptance; and so, He did not aim at drawing numbers round Him or at gaining influential proselytes or at consolidating a school or a sect. Christ's work was to go on for ever, and mankind would be redeemed equally, whether many followers or few attended Him while on earth.
It may be asked “Did our Lord from the first see all that lay before Him?” The conclusion from the facts of the history must be that, unless when it were specially summoned, His divine prescience remained in abeyance, and that He, as the Son of Man, was subject to those uncertainties as to the future which attend ordinary human action. He could not have worked together with men, as He did with the Apostles, if He had differed so essentially from them as to know perfectly every day what was going to happen on the next: he could not have experienced surprise; and surprise our Lord certainly shews at the dulness of the disciples [pg 150] in catching His meaning: “He marvelled” too at the unbelief of some districts. On occasion we know that He could search men's hearts; but they did not lie bare to His view. Neither can we suppose that, when He charged men not to publish their cures, He knew that He would be disobeyed; or that He chose Judas for an Apostle knowing that he would betray Him. The general drift of the purport of His coming, and His insight into it, grew clearer and clearer the nearer He came to the end; but we have no warrant for supposing that the details of all that would happen on the way lay before Him from the first.
He draws His disciples to Him at first with a cheerful hope: but towards the close of His career He has the air of one moving under a load; and once He gives utterance to what lies at His heart. The words in which He does this throw a light on the question of His purpose and His plan; they are spoken apparently to St Peter—
“I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if it is already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”[75]
It needed one sent from God to kindle this fire, and to bring home to men the truth that His Spirit worked within them to will and to do; but when the kindling was once effected, the rest might be left to human effort. Men could feed the flame [pg 151] and men could fan it; and so, following the law we have traced in operation so often, to men the flame was left, for them to feed and fan. “This being done,” our Lord might say, “this for which I came,—why do I linger here? what more do I want?” and yet He might add “My whole work is not done: the crowning act remains. Men will never understand my love at all unless I die for them.” Until He was baptised with this baptism of suffering, He was like one straitened on every side by an imperious task which claims his every thought.
Our Lord's movements from the Temptation on to the Ministry in Galilee are made known to us by the Gospel of St John. Jesus appears on the banks of the Jordan, where John was still baptising his disciples; He mixes with the throng; the Baptist points Him out to two young men, one of whom, Andrew, brings his brother to visit Him; the other was probably the Evangelist himself. Afterwards our Lord Himself finds Philip, and Philip finds Nathanael, and the little party travel on foot to Cana of Galilee. No writer, who did not confine himself to facts about which he was certain, would have given so homely a story of the beginning of so mighty a matter.
The Gospel of St John is manifestly written by one who is in the position of a disciple; he sees everything from the disciple's point of view: what the disciples thought of things that happened [pg 152] seems to be always uppermost in his mind. He is not a writer composing a continuous biography of our Lord, but a disciple drawing lessons from particular scenes of his Master's life; and he no more thinks of considering why our Lord took the course He did, than he would consider why the seasons change. An historian might have looked for reasons why our Lord did not appear in public life in Jerusalem; but John does not look on the matter with an historian's eye.
I will here summarise the occasions on which the disciples are mentioned, in the period of the history embraced in this chapter. We first hear of them in the account of the wedding at Cana. The Evangelist relates that “He manifested forth His glory, and His disciples believed on Him.”[76] Next we find the disciples spoken of, as if they stood in a kind of family relation to Him. “He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples.”[77] When we come to the account of the cleansing of the Temple, it is pointed out how that action struck the disciples. They talked it over among themselves; they recalled the verse in the Psalms, “The zeal of Thine house shall eat me up,”[78] and thought they saw a Messianic prophecy fulfilled: we are told too that after our Lord's death they recalled His words about building the Temple in three days. We hear also that they were numerous: “many believed [pg 153] on His name, beholding the signs which He did.”[79] Next comes a fact of great importance; it is that, though our Lord did not baptise adherents, yet that His disciples did so, and that finally more resorted to them than to the Baptist.[80] A few disciples attended our Lord in the journey through Samaria, and to them His first recorded discourse as a teacher is addressed: there is no further mention of them during the period embraced in this chapter. Such is the summary of the matter bearing on my subject; I proceed to discuss points of interest that arise out of it.
The advent of our Lord differed from that of other enlighteners of mankind in one very striking way. He had, in the Baptist, a special forerunner, who gave out, on all occasions, that the final cause of his own preaching was to prepare the way for one greater than himself. Events of national history, themselves part of that wide-spreading “Preparatio Evangelica” which, to my mind, underlies the history of the world, had raised a ferment in the minds of the inhabitants of Palestine. To this movement the Baptist gave a particular turn. He brought men to desire that the world should become better, and taught them that they must begin by becoming better themselves. Without this preparation, the germs of truth which our Lord scattered would more largely have failed to quicken: the Baptist had broken up the soil to [pg 154] receive the seed; his preaching put the people in an attitude of expectancy, and an expectant condition is a receptive one. The Old Testament prophecies had worked to this same end; they had made expectancy congenial to the nation's mind. The Israelites were like spectators waiting to see a great king come with a procession: the sight of a forerunner sets the crowd astir, and such a forerunner John was. I have observed before, that in carrying out His own work our Lord is careful to use preparation. The disciples are sent “to every place where He Himself would come.” Men were not to be repelled from the new movement by reason of its being strange to them. What this preparation did for the villages of Galilee the Baptist did on a grander scale for all Judæa.
We get but a glimpse of the nature of the relation between John and his disciples, and need only notice it briefly. Young men did not, like those who sat at the feet of a Rabbi, resort to him for definite instruction: the disciples of John did not look to be taught interpretations of the Law or of the Prophets, but they looked for a rule of life for themselves and a brighter future for their country or their race—they were ill-satisfied with the present and eagerly turned to one who represented both in aspect and in utterance the prophets of old. There was one feature in John's ministry, so distinctive that he drew his appellation [pg 155] from it.—He caused his disciples to be baptised. The doctrines implied in the rite do not now concern me; to some it symbolised the cleansing from sin, to others the rising into a new life; but the practical effect of it was to make those who received it feel that they had, in a way, pledged their allegiance to John by receiving baptism at his hands: they had assumed a badge, and were bound by ties of personal loyalty to their master and to one another.[81]
But John's disciples were not separated off from the outside mass by baptism alone. To the mind of his countrymen a religion was not a religion at all, unless it included a regimen, unless it parcelled out their days, according to hours of prayer and times of fasting. With such a distinctive rule John provided his followers. He taught them to pray,[82] he accustomed them to voluntary fasts;[83] and on some points of ceremonial, such as purification, he may have had tenets of his own.[84]
We will now trace the steps by which our Lord gathers disciples round Him. It is possible that even before our Lord left Galilee He had been the centre of a group of young men who looked up to Him, and the Galileans among John's disciples [pg 156] might therefore have heard of Him. It falls in also with this supposition, that our Lord seems to have been already acquainted with Philip of Bethsaida, and to have purposely sought him out. We read—“He findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.”[85] Philip hastens to Nathanael,[86] who came from Cana in Galilee, and tells him that the Messiah has been found in the person of “Jesus the son of Joseph, the man from Nazareth.”[87] The words in italics may imply “of whom we have all heard;” for Cana was not more than six miles from Nazareth, and Bethsaida was in the same district. The Baptist, we know, regarded Him, when He came to be baptised, as his equal or superior in the favour of God.
Five of the Apostles—John, Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathanael—were drawn to our Lord in the few days spent at Bethabara on His return from the desert; and probably all these went back with Him to Galilee. Among these five we find traces of a lasting tie. This is worth noting, because such a tie would naturally arise from comradeship in early years, and of this comradeship St John's Gospel speaks. These five had gone together from Galilee, in the zeal of their young days, to listen to the strange preacher in the desert of Judæa; they had lived together, faring alike, and baring their hearts each to the other in [pg 157] the confidence of youth. We can understand that this would bind men fast together, and that St John writing his Gospel at the end of his life, with possibly St Andrew at his side, should have been mindful of all the circumstances in which these old friends took part, and have gladly taken occasion to mention their names.[88]
Accordingly, we find mention made in the Gospel, without positive occasion, of these Apostles by name. We did not need to know that it was Andrew who said “There is a lad here who hath five barley-loaves and two small fishes.”[89] The Synoptists[90] all relate the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, but Andrew is named by St John alone: Philip, another of this little company, is close by; he is addressed by our Lord, and Andrew interposes. We find Philip and Andrew together at a later time. [pg 158] When the Greeks who came up and worshipped at the feast wished to see Jesus they applied to Philip;[91] then we have
“Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: Andrew cometh, and Philip, and they tell Jesus.”
St John here seems almost to go out of his way to speak of Andrew.
Philip also, who scarcely appears in the Synoptical Gospels, is mentioned six times by St John; and he is found in company, now with Andrew, now with Nathanael, as if the ties of old companionship still held. The particulars we have of Philip are instructive. Our Lord, as we have seen, “found him,” which I take to mean, not that He merely lighted upon him, but that He sought him. He thought him, therefore, a suitable companion for His coming journey to Jerusalem for the Passover. A point of fitness may have been that he knew Greek: his Greek name would not by itself go far to prove this; but, taking it along with the fact that when the Greeks come up to worship in Jerusalem they address themselves to Philip, it seems likely that he knew their language. Our Lord at the Passover would meet many Israelites who talked Greek more readily than Aramaic, and a Greek-speaking follower would be of service [pg 159] to Him. Again when Philip says, “Lord, shew us the Father and it sufficeth us,”[92] our Lord replies, Have I been so long with you and you have not known me? The words “so long” are particularly applicable to Philip, as he had been called a year before the twelve were formed into a body, and may have remained in constant attendance on our Lord when the other disciples quitted Him after the return through Samaria.
With Nathanael also there is much interest connected. He, in the last chapter of St John's Gospel, is called Nathanael of Cana of Galilee, and is named among others who are Apostles. He is identified, on good grounds, with the Bartholomew of the Synoptical Gospels.[93] We mark in Nathanael an aptitude for discerning spiritual greatness; but, with all this, he held stoutly to old prejudices in which he had been born and bred; and when Philip comes to him with his tidings, he breaks out with: “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” There is no reason to suppose that Nazareth was held generally in bad estimation. Natives of Jerusalem would look down on all villages in Galilee without distinction, but Nathanael belonged not to Jerusalem but to Cana. Cana and Nazareth were a few miles apart, each being the chief town in its own district; and the local jealousy and tendency [pg 160] to mutual disparagement between neighbours, which is not unknown among ourselves, and was rife in those times, will account for Nathanael's words.[94]
It was of no ill augury for his holding fast the Faith when he had found it, that he clung to the old traditionary feeling of his native town. He was not blinded by it; he is ready to “go and see.” Here our Lord exercises His singular gift of introspection, “Behold,” says He, “an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.”
“Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art King of Israel.”[95]
Probably Nathanael recalled what had passed in his mind when he had been under the fig-tree. Perhaps some mystery of existence had then [pg 161] weighed upon his soul, and on coming to Christ he found “the thoughts of his heart revealed.”[96]
In our Lord's reply to Nathanael we find His first recorded utterance as a Preacher of the Word; here He first speaks of Himself as the Son of Man, and here we have the first hint of the Law, “To him who hath shall be given,” a law which has been several times before us and will be so again before long. Nathanael had something already; he was enough in earnest to drop his prejudices; a slight token had enabled him to see in our Lord “the Son of God, the King of Israel:” he is told that he shall see greater things than these. Jacob had dreamed of old[97] that there was a ladder between earth and heaven, by which God's angels went and came; such a ladder Christ was, and he, the Israelite in whom there was no guile, should see “the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”[98]
So far I have followed the Gospel of St John. The Synoptists afford corroborative matter to shew that the little company, which had met at Bethabara, continued to hang together.
(1) In St Mark's[99] list of the Apostles—the names “and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew” come together in the enumeration. If we were asked for the names of a society of twelve men whom we knew—they would occur by the twos and threes [pg 162] who were most together. St Peter, whom we may regard here as St Mark's informant, gives the names as they came to mind. He recalls journeys in the hill country, when the disciples had walked in scattered groups, three or four together. In one of these little knots Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew may commonly have been found.
(2) From the way in which St Matthew's[100] list is given we may infer something of greater interest still. St Matthew gives the names of the Apostles in pairs: Simon and Andrew, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew—and so on. Immediately after the list of names we have the sending forth of the Apostles to the cities of Israel. I believe that the Apostles went on this mission in the pairs which are above-named. Why else should the names be coupled together? The Evangelist had in his eye the party as they had stood listening to their Master's words, with their staves in their hands, ready to start. He recollects their separating—two going one way, and two another,—and therefore, two by two, he puts them down in his list.[101] It is curious that though St Matthew couples the names, yet he does not say, [pg 163] as St Mark and St Luke do, that the Apostles were sent two and two together. The coupling in St Matthew is a kind of coincidence with that express direction which is preserved by St Mark and St Luke.
Not only, then, is there probable evidence to shew that, out of the little body of the earliest disciples, three clung together; but also that two of them—Philip and Bartholomew—formed one of the pairs that went forth declaring to the villages of Galilee that the Kingdom of God was at hand. At all events the Synoptists testify to a special intimacy between two disciples; and circumstances, which are disclosed by St John alone, shew how this intimacy naturally arose. Thus we have, what is always worth noting, a corroboration by the Synoptists of the narrative of the fourth Evangelist.
To return to the history in the Gospel of St John. Our Lord sets out on His return to Galilee, and may have been Nathanael's guest at Cana for the night preceding the wedding. It does not fall within my scope to say more about the miracle than has been said already. The statement important for my purpose is, that our Lord manifested His glory, “and His disciples believed on Him.”[102] The fact that a new teacher worked wonders and drew disciples round him made a stir in the district; and this may throw light upon the passage which follows.
“After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and there they abode not many days.”[103]
This event leads to no consequences in the history. It would only have been mentioned by one who, having the sequence of occurrences in his head, detailed them all. Still, there must have been some motive for this removal of the whole family to Capernaum. I will hazard a conjecture, which if correct will help to explain the following text which occurs later on:
“And after the two days he went forth from thence into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. So when he came into Galilee, the Galilæans received him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast: for they also went unto the feast.”[104]
Why does the Evangelist say that our Lord was Himself an instance of the rejection of a prophet in his own country, at the very time when he is about to say that the Galileans did receive Him because they had seen what He did at the feast? There must have been some previous occasion on which He had not been received. I believe that the last quoted passage, fully expressed, might run thus: “He went forth from thence into Galilee but not to Nazareth, for Jesus Himself testified that a prophet hath no honour in his own country,” and therefore He passed by Nazareth and went on to [pg 165] Cana, a few miles further north. Now, at what time could our Lord have experienced this ill reception? I find no occasion on which such disparagement of His claims can have been shewn, excepting in the short interval between the miracle at Cana and this withdrawal of the whole family to Capernaum. I would therefore conjecture that on leaving Cana, after the miracle, our Lord had returned with His mother to Nazareth, and that the inhabitants had then in some way shown ill-will.[105] He probably brought with Him some disciples belonging to Cana—a place of which they were jealous—hailing Him as Rabbi, and proclaiming Him their Master. The people of Nazareth resented this assumption of superiority on the part of a townsman whom they had known from His birth. The whole family are involved in the unpopularity, and remove to Capernaum, to wait the time for going up to the Passover.
Though St John makes no mention, in its proper place, of the animosity of the people of Nazareth, yet the recollection of it remains in his mind; so that, when he says that our Lord went into Galilee on His return from Samaria, this seems to him noticeable, as though it were strange He should go where He had been ill received before; and he tells us why He is well received on this occasion; namely, because some had brought back word of His vigorous action in cleansing the [pg 166] Temple. Our Lord does not go to Nazareth, but again makes His stay at Cana.
To return to this short stay at Capernaum. The point I am most concerned with is, that it is here that the disciples are first mentioned as attached to our Lord in His movements; they form, as it were, part of His family. If our Lord had already met with opposition, as I have conjectured, this would have helped to bind the little company closer together. We hear of no preaching or working of Signs during the short stay at Capernaum. We are not positively told that the disciples went with our Lord to Jerusalem;[106] but I imagine that the five of whom we have read went up to the Passover, though some may have returned to Galilee soon after the feast.[107]
The narrative of the cleansing of the Temple shews how burning was our Lord's indignation at practices that degraded men's notions of God. [pg 167] Personal attacks He bore with meekness, “when He was reviled He reviled not again, when He suffered He threatened not;”[108] but He gives free vent to a godly wrath when He finds men driving a traffic in holy things.
A personal characteristic of our Lord, shewn again and again, comes for the first time before us here: He carried authority in His air, an authority that needed no assertion, but to which men bowed. The owners of the oxen yield without resistance to the determination He shews. It is only the Hierarchy who ask, “What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?”[109] I need not say that on demand He will work no Sign at all: this is His invariable rule.
St John says nothing of the nature of the miracles wrought by our Lord at this time; we only hear that they induced people “to believe in His name.”[110] They may have been chiefly miracles of introspection, like the recognition of Peter, the seeing of Nathanael under the fig-tree, and the divining of His mother's meaning when she said “they have no wine;” for St John assiduously keeps before his hearers this insight of our Lord into men's minds. In particular he says, in reference to the disciples who gathered round Him in Judæa,
“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man: for he himself knew what was in man.”[111]
When our Lord drove out the money-changers and those who sold doves, people thronged to Him in Jerusalem, thinking that the leader whom they sought had come. But these were not disciples after His own heart, not such as should receive the kingdom of God as little children. These were men who had both notions and a purpose of their own; men who would follow Him as long as He went their way; and who, when He did not, would “go back and walk no more with Him.”[112] The relation of our Lord to these early Judæan disciples was very different from that in which He stood, either to the five who had gone with Him from Bethabara to Cana and Capernaum, or to those who afterwards thronged to His preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. To these Judæan disciples our Lord as far as we know delivers no lessons and issues no directions; we do not hear that they were especially chosen for witnesses of the Signs in Jerusalem, or that they formed an organised body in any way. It seems rather as if a body of men ranged themselves round our Lord and, from their admiration for Him, took the name of His disciples, but did not hold themselves to be under orders, and came and went as they pleased.
Our Lord had not yet begun His real Ministry; He was probing the capacities and natures both of individual men and of different classes in the community, with a view to testing their fitness for taking part in His great work.
Something inclined Him, we may suppose, to take Galilee for the cradle of the new movement; and the circumstance that those who first adhered were all Galilæans pointed along the same way. It would appear to be a method of Divine guidance, to speak by a whisper within, and, at the same time, so to order circumstances without, that one should fall in with the other: sometimes this coincidence will be perceived and will strike the beholder with a kind of awe, and sometimes it will operate on him without his being aware.
There was much that made Galilee suitable: its position was at once central and retired, and its inhabitants were, according to Josephus, sturdy and independent, and, of course, free from the pedantry of Rabbinical schools. Jerusalem however claimed a trial from our Lord. He desired to know what was passing there in the minds of those who were seeking truth. It was possible that a cradle for the infant church might be found among the followers of the Baptist, or among Scribes like Nicodemus. Our Lord gauges the fitness of both these bodies of men. We know what conclusion settled itself in His mind during those early days: He must not put new wine into old bottles. The enlightened party among those in authority were more after the type of Erasmus than of Luther, they lacked force: they had been trained to pick their way through difficulties of interpretation, but not to grasp great principles, still less to act; and though they divined that there was a truth dawning from afar, [pg 170] yet their feeling for it was not so much a passion as a taste.
After the discourse with Nicodemus the Evangelist returns to narration, and tells us of a visit of our Lord and His disciples to the district where the Baptist was carrying on his work. It may have been that he meant to represent our Lord as turning from Nicodemus to John's disciples; as if, when He found the former unequal to the need, He would try how the latter might serve. The words are
“After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judæa; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Ænon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.”[113]
It is not said that our Lord actually went to the spot where John was; but the narrative favours the view that the two companies were not far from one another. We are told that followers were drawn in large numbers to our Lord and that His disciples baptised them. This adoption of the rite which, though not unknown before, had been brought into special prominence by the Baptist, excited jealousy in John's disciples—
“And they came unto John, and said to him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou hast borne witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him.”[114]
One reason of the anxiety of the disciples to baptise may possibly have been this; they saw how that outward rite supplied John's disciples with a badge that marked them out and made one body of them; they were all bound together to the same master by having received baptism at his hands,—bound together not merely by holding the same opinions and honouring the same man, but by something that had been done, by a work wrought upon them. Some might interpret this “outward and visible sign” in one way and some in another, but all could see the value of such a sign or symbol for giving coherence and permanency to their new community.
In the fourth chapter we find that the Pharisees at Jerusalem,—they who constituted the religious world of the place,—had come to the knowledge that the resort to Jesus was greater than that to St John—
“When therefore the Lord knew how that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples), he left Judæa and departed again into Galilee.”[115]
I make out St John's meaning to be, that our Lord quitted Judæa because He found Himself thrust into apparent rivalry with John the Baptist. The Judæan disciples wanted a sect of their own; and the Pharisees regarded our Lord's following as [pg 172] an offshoot from the movement of John, an offshoot which was likely to out-top the parent tree.
It seems to me that our Lord was taking a survey of the different religious sections in Judæa and examining their fitness to furnish helpers for His work. Scholars who like Nicodemus were quick to ask “How can these things be?” were not of the right order for setting a great movement afoot. If men were fully possessed with the momentous nature of God's spiritual working in the world, the idea of this as a fact would take up all their minds leaving no room for the question of mode. If Nicodemus had been capable of seeing how sublime was the future presented to him, he would never have expected to understand how it could come to pass. Next our Lord tried the disciples of John; these may have been too full of the spirit of partizanship, and too much taken up with questions of purifying and the like, to be fit foster parents for the new Faith. Whatsoever were the cause, in neither of these classes did our Lord find a cradle for the faith. He required men plastic and receptive, capable of devoted self-surrender and possessed of self-transforming and expanding powers. These did not grow freely in the social climate of Judæa; our Lord's thoughts then, we may suppose, went back to His own people and His own country, and He preached the Kingdom first in Galilee.
Our Lord's leaving Judæa was precipitated by [pg 173] the rivalry which was threatening between His adherents and those of John; more especially as that rivalry was taking the form of a competition in point of numbers. For the spirit which this would engender was to our Lord abhorrent in the extreme. When sect strives with sect, and they would decide the contest for superiority by counting heads, they are both in a way to fall down and worship the Spirit of the world.
Our Lord was not founding or setting up a form of religion to which He personally would convert mankind; but He and His work were part of the subject-matter of all religion—the relations of God to man. The apostles are never encouraged to exult in the number of their converts. Even when they were sent through the cities, on what we might regard as a missionary errand, they are not directed to win men over by strong entreaty—they are not then bidden, as men afterwards were by St Paul, to “be instant in season and out of season;”[116] they are only to proclaim the Kingdom of God: those who have ears to hear will hear, and the rest will go their way.
Any competition with John the Baptist was above all to be shunned. Our Lord and the Baptist were bound together by early ties. Jesus had sought and received Baptism at his hand, and we always see a delicate and unswerving fidelity in His behaviour towards him. It might be that He was [pg 174] to increase and John was to decrease, but it should not be by any action of His that that change of relative position should be brought about. The Gospel itself, then, discloses grounds for our Lord's sudden departure into Galilee. Thus early, among the hearers of our Lord and the Baptist, appeared an insidious tendency to form parties, a tendency which broke out disastrously in later times; when some said, “I am of Paul” and others “I am of Apollos.”[117]
There is no valid reason for supposing that our Lord left Judæa from fear of persecution. The Pharisees may have been in commotion when they heard that Jesus baptised more disciples than John; and there may have been some stir in sacerdotal circles at Jerusalem, but there is no appearance of violence having been threatened. Neither do I connect our Lord's journey with the captivity of the Baptist. I believe that John was not thrown into prison till three or four months after this journey through Samaria; but supposing that the imprisonment had already taken place and it had seemed likely that Herod's jealousy of John would extend to Jesus, our Lord would not have left Judæa, which was not under Herod's jurisdiction, and have gone into Galilee which was so.
At any rate our Lord quits Judæa and the Judæan disciples, or all but a few of them, and travels back to Galilee with a little company who [pg 175] were bound to Him, and who tended Him, it would seem, with affectionate solicitude.[118]
It does not come into my plan to discuss the discourses of our Lord except so far as they bear on the training of the apostles, and so I pass by the discourse with the woman of Samaria, as I have done that with Nicodemus. I believe that only three or four disciples attended our Lord on His journey: if they had been numerous, they would not all have left Him, wearied and alone at the fountain. But in visiting a strange town in Samaria, it might be unwise to enter with a smaller party than three or four; so that if the disciples numbered no more than this, we can account for our Lord being left by Himself.
This journey through Samaria has an important bearing on my subject. Here, for the first time, we have a conversation of our Lord with His disciples; and, what is more, we get a glimpse of an office in store for them, of a work that is to give a meaning to their lives. The disciples of the Baptist had been learners and listeners only; but our Lord's disciples were not to be mere passive recipients of teaching. They were to be taught by doing as well as by hearing; they were to take part with Him in the great work that was to be wrought in the world. They were not servants—“for the servant knoweth [pg 176] not what his lord doeth,”[119] but they were friends joining in the common cause. We may wonder why no earlier converse of our Lord with His disciples is preserved. Possibly, before this, there were in the company some of those to whom He “did not commit Himself.”[120] While these were present, our Lord may have maintained a reserve, and said nothing bearing on His work which it was important for the Evangelist to record. But, when our Lord set out through the semi-hostile country of Samaria in the midst of the early summer heat, those only followed who were in earnest, and on whom He could rely.
I pass on at once to that address to the disciples to which I have alluded. Our Lord had been cheered by the Samaritan woman's openness to the truth. On leaving the well He comes on a scene, than which few are more gladdening—a great expanse of corn growing luxuriantly, swaying with the wind and glistening in the sun. We mark that He was always keenly alive to external impression, and in all He saw espied matter that fitted what He taught. Our Lord is struck by the sight, He sees in it something that answers to His thoughts, and which seems to convey a promise which rejoices His soul—not for Himself but for His disciples. The discourse is as follows:
“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your [pg 177] eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. For herein is the saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not laboured: others have laboured, and ye are entered into their labour.”[121]
The work before the disciples is only to reap: others had ploughed and sown. Prophets and teachers, and also rulers and judges, all who had helped to bring the Israelites into the condition of being ripe for better things—these past teachers of men, as well as all the impersonal workings of the unseen hand which had smoothed the way—all these answered to the ploughers and sowers of the crop which the apostles were now to reap. This “Præparatio Evangelica,” so often before us, had been the combined result of many sorts of action, and into the fruits of this labour the disciples were now to enter. They, along with all those who had sowed and tended, should one day rejoice together, when the grain was garnered in heaven, and when those accounted worthy of the Resurrection to Eternal Life should enter on their reward.
Gleams of gladness in our Lord's career come rarely, and His joy is always for others' sake. It is not for Himself, not even for the cause that He rejoices—that cause would surely triumph in its own time—but His joy is, that He beholds a successful [pg 178] and glorious career opening before His fellow-labourers, the few friends at His side. On the return of the seventy recorded by St Luke, this same joy for His disciples' sake is especially spoken of.
“In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.”[122]
It would seem that such happiness as our Lord found on earth came from marking the affectionate fidelity of the Apostles and their growth in favour with God. “Ye are they,” says He to them, “who have continued with me in my temptations”[123] and He speaks of the “joy in heaven” and again of the “joy in the presence of the angels of God,” “over one sinner that repenteth;”[124] every one who turned to Him with a single heart brought Him gladness. This joyousness, we may believe, spread a gleam over the life of our Lord and of His disciples, until when near the end the shadow came. The disciples were always slow to understand His hints of coming sorrow; they could not conceive that the spiritual triumph was to be emphasised by being contrasted with bodily [pg 179] suffering; and He had no more the heart to break the whole sad truth to them, than He had to waken the sleepers at Gethsemane. Circumstances would teach the apostles all the truth in time, but even His plain words on the last journey[125] do not seem to have been taken literally.
For reasons given in the chronological appendix I place the return of our Lord through Samaria early in May a.d. 28.
Between the return through Samaria and the journey up to “the feast of the Jews,”[126] some months have to be accounted for. St John relates but a single incident, the cure of the nobleman's son at Capernaum, as belonging to this time; but I would also place here the preaching in the synagogues in Galilee mentioned by St Luke. His words are—
“And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.”[127]
This is parallel with St John's statement, before discussed, “The Galilæans received Him, having seen all the things that He did at Jerusalem at the feast.”[128]
I also refer to this period the preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth. The tone of this discourse as I have already observed (pp. [164], [165]) tallies with the notion before advanced of a previous ill [pg 180] reception of our Lord at Nazareth. There is no mention of our Lord's mother or brethren, they had left Nazareth (John ii. 12) and we do not hear of their return. At other places in Galilee, our Lord had been received with enthusiasm, but at Nazareth petty jealousies prevailed. He does not, in this sermon, speak like one returning with renown to a warm welcome in his own town. He has an air of expecting opposition, as if He had met with it before. He condemns the narrow localising spirit of His hearers, and goes so far as to impugn the exclusive claim of the people of Israel to be the recipients of the favour of God.
It is to be remarked that no mention is made of disciples being in attendance upon our Lord, from the time of His reaching Galilee by way of Samaria to that of His presenting Himself to the four Apostles by the Lake shore—that is, as I take it, from May to October a.d. 28.[129] The little company that came through Samaria probably broke up on reaching Galilee. They had their bread to earn and for the most part went back to their callings; while our Lord during the summer of a.d. 28 was preaching in various synagogues, and went, almost [pg 181] unattended, to Jerusalem. The absence of His followers would account for the scantiness of our information as to this period.
I suppose that the feast spoken of in St John's Gospel (chap. v. 1), took place early in the autumn of the same year a.d. 28. It was, I conceive, about the close of this feast that the Baptist was thrown into prison; upon this, our Lord returned into Galilee, and His official ministry began.[130]
We cannot suppose Him to have been quite alone at this feast at Jerusalem, because some one must have been there to report what took place. I do not think that John was with our Lord at the feast, because, if he had been so, he could only have been absent from Him a few days before our Lord rejoined him on the Lake shore, and the incidents of this call give the impression that the separation had been of much greater length. I incline to think that our Lord was attended by Philip, who alone, at that time, had received the [pg 182] order “Follow Me.”[131] If John drew some of his information from Philip, this will help to account for his frequent mention of him.[132]
It was on our Lord's visit to this feast that He first incurred the active enmity of the Scribes. It followed from His miracle at the pool of Bethesda, which took place on the Sabbath day. Since the cure was wrought by a word there was no breach of the law; but “the Jews” (by which word St John indicates the hierarchy) were shocked that He should tell the man to carry his bed on the Sabbath day.
“The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole. And for this cause did the Jews persecute Jesus, because he did these things on the sabbath. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh even until now, and I work. For this cause therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only brake the sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”[133]
The hostility of the Scribes, we see, is very deadly. The Pharisees are often scandalised at infractions of their sabbath notions, but they do not seek our Lord's death as the Scribes do. The latter were probably Sadducees, tinged with [pg 183] western philosophy, and they were actuated by other motives beside zeal for the Law.
For one thing, they were in reality made uneasy by our Lord's assertion that a living God was working among them and close by. Ministers of state who have possessed themselves of sovereign power are startled and infuriated if their nominal monarch personally asserts his power: and, something in the same way, a priesthood occupied in promulgating ecclesiastical laws and carrying on the externals of worship were frightened at the announcement that God, instead of leaving matters for them to manage, had Himself come to reign and rule upon the earth.
But what was more effective than even spiritual awe was their personal alarm. The dread which one of their body afterwards expressed—“The Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation”[134]—was always over their heads. They were a sacerdotal oligarchy trembling for their existence. The people hated the Romans, and the Scribes were bound to stand well with both: an outbreak might bring to an end whatever ecclesiastical independence they still possessed. The priesthood saw something in our Lord which might lead the people to take Him and make Him a king.
The reply, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work,”[135] is characteristic of our Lord's way. He does not meet the charge by contesting the interpretation [pg 184] of the Law. He ignores all quibbles of legality and goes to the root of the matter. It is by the working of God that the world is maintained. His Father worketh hitherto, on Sabbath days and all, and He, the Son, follows in His Father's ways. The same test of Sonship—that the child takes after the Father—is applied in the Sermon on the mount.[136]
I must notice another verse of this discourse,
“I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”[137]
Our Lord here lays bare the reason why so few would follow Him. He touches the very centre of the matter. To kindle enthusiasm among a mass of men, you must have a person or a name. A cause is best embodied in an actual claimant standing before men's eyes; but failing this they will often rally to a name that they know. Our Lord used only His Father's name; this did not move their human sympathies for “The Father” had no personality for them. It was reserved for the Apostles to draw men over to the Faith, and they were given the advantage which Jesus was content to forego. They could put forward a personal claimant for the loyalty of men: they had Christ's story to tell and Christ's name for a watchword and they won men for the kingdom of [pg 185] God by gaining their homage for the Son of Man.
The temporary separation of the Apostles from our Lord during the summer of a.d. 28 may have answered higher ends than merely enabling them to earn their livelihood. It gave them time to think over the events of the last six months.
It is a feature of our Lord's way in His course of teaching, not to suffer one set of ideas or influences to be disturbed before they have had time to take root. After a period of stress, or when new impressions had been stamped on the minds of his disciples, He provides for them an interval of calm. When the disciples return exulting from their mission through the cities, He says, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.” When crowds thronged them and courted them for access to their Master, He carried them away, that the impressions He wanted to preserve might not be effaced in the turmoil. It may have been in pursuance of this treatment that, after the resurrection, they were sent for a time into Galilee, there to wait and to watch.
All teachers know that the time of rest that follows a period in which new matter has been taken into the mind is precious for good mental growth: conceptions then become more clear and complete, and effect a sure lodgement in the mind: but this, like many processes in education, helps to widen the distance between the weak and the strong. For it is only with the more thoughtful that this [pg 186] half unconscious brain-process goes on; the active minded mature their acquirements during rest, while the unthinking let them fade away. It argued well, in consequence, for Peter and Andrew and John, that Christ's influence had lost nothing through (as I believe) weeks of separation, but that as soon as they were called they sprang to their feet at once,—“they straightway left the nets and followed Him.”[138]
Reverence for great men whom we have known, and the power of appreciating them, grow during absence. We may have been living so familiarly with one far above the common standard, that we may almost lose thought of his greatness; the little matters of common life, which come before us everyday, take more than their share of notice; and, as regards these, great men and smaller ones must be much alike. But when we are away from our guide, our recollections turn to what is distinctive of him—to the points in which he contrasts with everyday men: what he had in common with such disappears, and our mental portrait preserves what is characteristic, and gives us the individual more forcibly than our nearer view had done. We often first become aware of the true proportions of greatness, when we look back on it from a little way off. Out of a range of mountains, all, when seen from the valley, appearing much of a height, one is found to vastly out-top the rest when we mount the opposite hill-side.
We may suppose that some process like this was going on in the minds of Peter and Andrew and James and John during that summer spent in their fishers' work by the Sea of Galilee. Our Lord's image would, all the more, be kept alive in their minds because when they chanced to meet their talk would be of Him; and their Master's form would seem to rise before them when they sat beside one another, with their boats drawn up on the beach. We need not suppose that they saw into their Master's plans, far less into His nature; we do not know that they had heard from Him about the Kingdom of Heaven which the Baptist had told them was at hand; but the foundation for Faith was being laid in a capacity for intense personal devotion. First they learnt to love the Master whom they saw by their side; next, by thinking of Him while He was away, they learned how much they loved Him, and became aware that their affection for Him had in it something different from the common affections they knew. Shortly, as we shall presently see, a sense of shelter and of fostering protection mingled with this love, and grew into a trust, first in the Master who was with them, and afterwards in the Lord in Heaven. It is hardly too much to say that the germ of the new quality, which was to order the world afresh, was planted in men's hearts by the side of the Sea of Galilee in that summer of a.d. 28, and that then Faith—Faith as our Lord speaks of it—dawned upon the world.