Close by the side of this matter lies another on which I must only say a word. It is one of the Gesta Christi that He has put woman into her right place. Slowly and quietly has this come about, as a growth from seed turned up in the soil, and not a construction upreared by men,—as indeed, with the changes that are wrought by [pg 409] Christ is mostly the way. He says not a word about the social condition of women or their position in the eye of the Law; He puts forward no grievances, He asserts no claim. To have done either one or the other in His day would have been to bring about a violent upheaval, which would have destroyed all chance of the germination of the seed. Nowhere do men cling to old usages with more tenacity than in the matter of relations between sex and sex. These variations of usage may rest upon solid grounds, and it would have stood in the way of the adaptability of what He left to the needs of all races and all times, if by one rigid ordinance He had enforced uniformity, even in the justest way. But though our Lord says little about the right place of women yet He treats them as though that proper place were already theirs; for parts are given them in His great world-drama consistent with those they take in the common life of family and home.[307]
One word that our Lord drops has too important a bearing on this point to be passed by. Frequently as our Lord alludes to eternal life, it is rarely that anything as to the modes of this [pg 410] life can be gathered from His speech, but in the one passage in which He does touch on this directly, He implies that distinction of sex ceases with the life upon earth.
“But they that are accounted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: for neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”[308]
There is to be no marrying or giving in marriage in the Kingdom of God. All will there be as the angels of heaven. There can be no such thing as a male or female soul. Some may be educated for eternal life in the frame of man and others in that of woman, but when out of the body all distinction comes to an end, and both one and the other, if deemed worthy of the resurrection to life, assume the nature of angels of God. When this comes home to a people and they see that the distinction of male and female is one of a day, while the angelic existence, in which no distinction shall remain, is an everlasting one, then whatever remains that seems degrading in the condition of woman will be in the way to disappear.
I will end this by stating the truth which I have had it in view to bring out.
Supposing that Christ, lest He should hamper [pg 411] free human growth, was unwilling to tie down posterity to particular rules touching the affairs of life, and that He also foresaw that in time men would take His behaviour as a model for their own; then the course He actually took, in refusing to sanction by His example this or that course of proceeding in matters coming within man's cognizance, was admirably suited to His end, and met perfectly the circumstances of the case.
Our Lord's action prospective.
But if our Lord's behaviour in secular matters is often hard to explain, unless we suppose Him to have had a glimpse of what has actually come to pass, much more is this the case in what concerns the building of His Church. We know from His own words that He saw His end to be near at hand. We know how He loved the Apostles and we know how His heart was set on His great work; so that it is inexplicable that He should have left the Apostles without directions for their personal conduct, and as to the practical shape they were to give to the work in view. All is explained, if they were merely being exposed to a few hours of trial, and if our Lord meant to commission them with definite duties and give the necessary directions, when He rose again. Apart from any miraculous [pg 412] foreknowledge, our Lord could foresee that His end was near, and that persecution awaited those who for more than two years had formed the chief visible interest of His life. Would He have left them at Jerusalem perfectly at a loss, would He have left them in the position of a boat's crew in the open sea, whose captain has died without giving them their course? If He had not felt certain of being soon again by their side, then indeed we should, with the author of “Ecce Homo,” have felt constrained to confess “that there was no historical character whose motives, objects and feelings remained so incomprehensible to us.”
After the Resurrection, the forms needful for a religious community are delivered to the Apostles. They are given a rite, marking admission to the body, and sacramental words serving as a symbol and the nucleus of a creed. They are to go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Moreover they are told what they are, for the moment, to do. They are to remain at Jerusalem, till they be endowed with power from on high. Christ opens to them the Scriptures and possibly left some instruction as to the earliest form of His Church which, agreeably to His unfailing method, He does not communicate to aftertimes. He will not stereotype the outward garb which he would have adapt itself to the changing wants of men.
Christ's intimations of the future wear the appearance of being given, less to communicate fore-knowledge than that when the event came to pass the hearers might feel that Christ had “told them before:”[309] if He had thought good He would have made the lessons plainer. It may have helped to sustain the Apostles during the terrible hours when their Master lay in the grave, to turn to these words of forecast and from them to gather that all was being carried forward towards a purpose preordained of God. It is true that our Lord had told the Apostles again and again what the end was to be, but they could not believe that He would permit His enemies to prevail, and our Lord hardly seems to expect that they would take His words as literal truth. If, during the last days, they had really believed that He was about to perish on the cross, they would have been paralysed with anguish and dismay, and the last lessons would have fallen on the ears of men who were prostrated and stunned.