Use of Signs in the later Ministry.
Ever since the time when after the feeding of the five thousand, the people wanted to take Him and make Him a King, our Lord has been chary of working Signs and Wonders; and such as are wrought are no longer used for demonstration; Signs are now hardly if at all employed to attract attention and waken interest. They had already done in this way all the good they were likely to effect, and if they had been employed longer, some of those bye-effects, which potent agencies are almost sure to produce along with that which is intended, might have come into operation with injurious results.
Between the journey to the feast of Tabernacles and the week of the Passion, three only of the leading miracles are recorded; they are the giving of sight to one born blind in Jerusalem, the raising of Lazarus, and the opening of the eyes of the blind near Jericho. This last, of which I shall first speak, occurred on that final journey of our Lord to Jerusalem [pg 426] during which He seems to have resumed for a moment His earliest function, that of witness of the Kingdom of God to the people at large. We seem to see, once again, the same Jesus who lived at Capernaum and taught the people by the Lake side.
Whether our Lord, on His way to this last Passover, set out Himself from Galilee or joined on the road the great company travelling from the north is left uncertain, but we find our Lord among a throng of visitants to the feast, who are proud of having the Great Prophet of Nazareth among them; and men come to Him—some with real troubles of soul like the young ruler—and others, like the Pharisees, either curious to obtain His decision on some vexed question, or maliciously setting Him in a dilemma between the contravention of Moses' Law, and the retaining of a burden which men were loth to bear. One small event, preserved to us in the account of this journey, gives us the clearest glimpse of our Lord's air and general demeanour that we ever obtain. There was, about Him, that indefinable something which wins children's confidence at sight. The little ones, who swarmed in the hamlets of the Jordan valley, were drawn to Him by something in His look, and—after long gazing out of their dark eastern eyes, in childhood's own intent way—they made out that they would be safe with Him, and stole to His side.
The miracle of healing, worked on the way, that of the cure of the blind men in Jericho, is nearly after the old sort. As Jesus nears the end, He reverts to the ways with which His revelation began. Our Lord was touched no doubt by the affliction of these men and their urgent cry, and this was a miracle of beneficence, but He takes no pains now to withdraw the act from public view, He does not call them “aside from the multitude,”[322] and heal them in private as He had done on His way back from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon some months before. This miracle stirred the hearts of many beholders, and this emotion of theirs may have played no small part in the great drama to which this journey was the prelude; for the company that came with our Lord from Galilee formed the staple of that great concourse which shouted
“Blessed is the kingdom that cometh, the kingdom of our father David: Hosanna in the highest,”[323]
and this shout of the people not only roused in the priests that terror which “sits hard by hate,” but gave them the very thing they wanted—grounds for calling upon Pilate to prove himself Cæsar's friend.
It is not likely that any of our Lord's doings were without an ordered purpose, and that this cessation [pg 428] of Signs certainly was not so, is apparent from our Lord's words spoken probably soon after the performance of the first of those miracles mentioned above. The words are these.
“And when the multitudes were gathering together unto him, he began to say, This generation is an evil generation: it seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah.”[324]
On this text as given by St Matthew I have already commented; it is only the coincidence of the time when it was spoken with the gradual withdrawal of visible Signs that I have to notice now. Our Lord looks to sowing the germs of spiritual Faith. This would not grow up either from the curiosity of those who sought for Signs, or the stupefaction of those who gazed in wonderment. Henceforth it is “the word of eternal life” which lays hold of men. The questions asked in the deepest earnest turn now upon this.[325] The revelation of it did not come by express statements or descriptions, but rather it grew up in men through their consorting with Christ. They could not believe that He would perish, and He told them that because He lived they should live also.[326] Christ, speaking just before the end, rests His expectation of bringing about the knowledge of God, not on His works but on His Personality. His reply to the words “Shew us the Father,” is [pg 429] not, Have I not done mighty works before your eyes? but, “Have I been so long time with you and dost thou not know me, Philip?”
I now pass to the raising of Lazarus. It is not within my scope to discuss the nature of the miracle, I have to do with it only in its relation to that Law of the working of Signs, which is suggested in the Temptation of the Pinnacle of the Temple. No Sign is given to men whose belief is in the formative stage, in order to force it on; but to those whose belief is already assured a conclusive miracle may be shown, because it does not now constrain judgment but only confirms it. If the miracle had been at once published wherever the gospel was preached, and if it had been supported by testimony which no one could dispute, this would have been an exception to the rule so often marked in our Lord's conduct. This miracle is in its nature appalling and conclusive, and it could not be attributed to Beelzebub; but a loop-hole in point of evidence is left for those indisposed to believe, for it rests on the unsupported testimony of St John. The raising of Lazarus was not, we may conclude, recorded in the Apostolic memoir which some suppose to have been the basis of the Synoptic Gospels. I have said in the last chapter that I think it possible that the entire body of Apostles were not continuously about the person of our Lord during the six months between the Feast of Tabernacles and the last journey. When Thomas [pg 430] said, speaking of the proposed visit to Jerusalem at the time of Lazarus' death, “Let us also go that we may die with Him,”[327] I can hardly suppose that Peter can have been by and have held his peace. Supposing then that the writers of this memoir, among whom Peter must have held a foremost place, confined themselves as much as possible to what they knew from personal knowledge, they would have abstained from introducing a matter so wondrous as that of the raising of Lazarus, which they had not witnessed themselves. In whatever way this silence is to be explained, the silence itself accords with the above-noted Law.
Passing on to the events of the Passion week, we may be struck by the absence of all public and notable Signs at a time when, if ever, they seemed of vital importance for the cause. A signal miracle wrought before the crowd in the Temple would have rallied the people to the side of our Lord in such numbers and with such vehement support, that none of His foes would have dared to lift a hand. For even if the priesthood should have persisted in persuading themselves that our Lord's power did not come from God, yet, they would not have dared to move, if the popular feeling had been strong, lest they should provoke a riot and the Roman authorities should intervene.
But the people were themselves disappointed [pg 431] by our Lord's working no Sign or Wonder, during these last days of teaching in the Temple. Some looked for the restoration of Israel, and were impatient at the continued delay, while the lower part of the populace had set their hearts on seeing a prodigy, and none came. It may be true that, among the crowd who had shouted “Hosanna,” the lead had been taken by the caravan of pilgrims from Galilee, but still, at the time of the triumphal entry, the feeling of the people of Jerusalem went the same way; this had cooled down to indifference when our Lord left the Temple for the last time; and disappointment had turned into contemptuous chagrin when our Lord, after yielding passively to the Temple guard, stood before Pilate apparently as powerless as they would have been themselves.
To Christians of to-day it seems of the essence of Christ's sacrifice that He should have submitted of His own free will to indignity and torment, when, by raising a finger or uttering a word, He might have shivered the power both of the priesthood and of Rome. His behaviour in this point is therefore exactly what we expect. But this truth, inconceivable for the people, had hardly dawned as yet on the Apostles' minds. The multitude would be told and would, in general, believe that the miracles of Jesus, which all had heard of and some had seen, must have been unreal or the work of Beelzebub; while those who had leaned towards [pg 432] Him would conclude that, if He had ever been endowed with Divine power, it had left Him now, or He would certainly have used it for defence.
But the Apostles were not left without fresh assurance, given to them alone. Although of Signs, notable and public, during this period there were none, still two Signs of a special character there were, which exactly met the requirements of the case; they created no stir, they were not observed by the people, but they served to keep alive in the Apostles' hearts the certainty that God was with their Master still. One was the withering of the fig-tree, the other the foretelling that Peter would deny his Lord; of the first of these miracles I have spoken fully before.[328]
This latter miracle is connected with our Lord's strange faculty of seeing what was passing in men's hearts, and of tracing what the outcome of it would be. When men felt that Christ knew their hearts, they were getting near the idea of His spiritual presence with them; so that all this leads up to the crowning point of Christ's education, the rendering the Apostles sensitive to every breath of the Spirit, capable, amid a din of inward voices calling them diverse ways, of discerning with sure ear the tones of God.
This miracle and this event contain a lesson on forgiven error, intended for all time. Here, as before observed, we have an instance of Christ's way of [pg 433] ensuring that what He desired to preserve should be handed down. This event is stamped with life-like particulars which ensure its currency and its becoming familiar in the mouths of men.
The words “the cock shall not crow twice” give to the incident a reality which vitalises the story and preserves it for ever. Contrast the tale such as we have it, with what it would have been if our Lord had only said, “You will deny me before I die.”
As to the miracle itself a few words must be said. It brings out the identity of the idiosyncrasy of St Peter, who is given up to the impulse of the moment.
The Peter who denied and then wept bitterly, is the same man, psychologically, as he who begged his Master to call him to come upon the sea, and whose faith failed. This liability to panic clung to him; years after, we find him at Antioch going along with Paul in freeing the converts from Jewish obligations; but, as soon as “certain came from James,”[329] he was alarmed at his temerity and separated himself, “fearing them that were of the circumcision.” (See also pp. [423], [424].) Neither by our Lord or any of the brethren is this failing of Peter's ever touched upon again.
This is exactly a case of what was noted at page [421]. Christ washes from off Peter's feet the soil contracted on the way, and he becomes clean [pg 434] every whit. The evil was only skin deep and had not tainted the blood. For this denial was, I am sure, not due to any base fear. Peter had drawn and struck for his Master, and was naturally bewildered at finding that his Master would neither suffer His disciples to fight nor call the legions of angels to His help. In their utter confusion of mind the Apostles fled, but Peter and John followed a little way off. This they would not have done if they had been in actual terror of being punished themselves. But there was no real ground for any such fear; no attempt is made to apprehend any follower of our Lord. To have tried to do so would have increased that danger of riot, which the rulers shunned. What Peter did fear was forcible separation from Christ. He was afraid that, if proved to be a follower of Jesus, he would be turned out of the judgment hall of Caiaphas. He would have said or done almost anything to avoid that. It was, as we have seen, part of his nature to be mastered by the feeling that was uppermost. He clung to his Master's side with the instinctive fidelity of a Highland henchman to his chief. Thrice he might have gone away, but this he will on no account do. After being noticed he on each occasion moves away and returns, only shifting his position; he goes into the vestibule, and finally tries to mix with the crowd round the fire, whence, out of the half-darkness which saved him from recognition, he could still see his Master.
But “his speech bewrayeth” him; he is noticed again as he had been before, and for the third time he denies. Whereupon the cock crows, and turning towards the arcade at the end of the court where the trial was going on, he meets our Lord's eyes fixed upon him. Then, for the first time, it strikes him that he has done wrong. It never occurred to Peter that in saying “I know not the man,” he was being disloyal to the Master he loved. He wanted to keep sight of his Master, and did not feel bound to speak the truth to a foe. No words are needed to shew him his fault. One look of our Lord settles the matter; it awakens the higher sense of truth, which had gone to sleep when the old instinct of the Oriental peasant, the habit of confronting authority with a flat denial, became dominant in Peter's breast. When the company of Apostles was scattered on their Master's apprehension, the strength they had drawn from association with Jesus vanished at once; and then Peter dropped from the moral level of a disciple of Christ into the Galilean fisherman he had been before. He had been used to regard officials of Herod, or any ruling power, as his natural enemies, to whom he was not bound to speak the truth, and to this, his old self, he came back now.
But though Peter's heart may have acquitted him of cowardly forsaking his Master,—though he knew that he would, if need were, have gone with him to prison and to death,—yet he felt that this [pg 436] denial was, in words—though only in words—a falling away from perfect loyalty; it made clear to him, as it may have been meant to do, the weakness of his character in the way of yielding to impulse, and awakened floods of self reproach. He went out and wept bitterly; but no trace appears afterwards of a loss of self respect, or of his feeling it possible that he could be in disgrace with his Master; in fact his part in his Master becomes all the greater, owing to his having needed that He should wash his feet.
These two miracles of instruction then, the prediction of Peter's denials and the withering of the fig tree, were an assurance to the disciples that our Lord still retained His superhuman power, and that whether He should drink of the cup or put it away, up to the last, rested entirely with Him. These powers of His could not be displayed to the people without hindrance to the accomplishment of that Baptism with which He “had to be baptised;” even the working of miracles of healing might so have moved the crowd that they would have risen in His defence.[330] The Apostles, however, were to be rendered sure that these powers remained what they had ever been and that they were, for them, in operation still; so that they might never doubt but that, amid all the apparent defeat, it was with the voluntary sufferer on the Cross that the real Victory—the moral Victory lay.