All through the Gospel we mark how men cling to the Letter, and how Christ, with tender hand extricates the Spirit from it and tells His hearers, that it is this which gives the Letter its worth. A law such as that of Moses has its place [pg 460] in the Schooling of a race at a certain epoch of national life; but a code or a creed that cannot be expanded must at last be outgrown. If however a Divine and living Spirit be enshrined in a Church, it may direct its development, and transform the outward tenement as inward need requires.
Christ came to set men spiritually free; but, strange to say, men are slow to take this freedom up. Among some African races, a man set free from a master at once goes and sells himself to another, he cannot be troubled with managing for himself. This is like the way in which men liberated from one absolute and infallible authority have so often handed themselves over to another. They must have something or somebody to take their beliefs and consciences in charge. Fancying that they are to be saved by holding proper opinions—for by belief they often mean no more than taking up and maintaining opinion—they come, asking, “What are we to believe?” just as the Scribe asked, “What am I to do?” Christ's answer to him practically was, that he possessed already grounds enough to frame for himself a rule of conduct such as he required. Might He not answer the others nearly in the same strain?
Belief, in Christ's sense of the word, is not the acceptance of a theory, it is something that will actuate the man's whole being, and which requires the concurrence of an emancipated will. Now this emancipation brings with it a responsibility—a call [pg 461] to mental effort—which a large proportion of mankind steadfastly abhor.
Thus the Israelitish party in St Paul's time and after, hugged the chains of the Jewish Law; then, after turbulent ages of fierce doctrinal dissension, when combative spirits found in polemics the strife which their temperaments required, the Churches of Greece and of Rome took charge of the consciences of men. A revolt at length took place against the external authority of the Church, but there was no more religious freedom under the new regimes than under the old. Confessions of Faith came into vogue, and men tried to tie down after ages to the ways in which the controversialists of the sixteenth century had, with much giving and taking, agreed to regard the insoluble problems of existence. The Bible was now often held up, not to reveal God's will and ways, but to yield texts for weapons in disputes. Christ's care to guard against a bondage unto written matter is apparent in the whole form of His teaching; and especially in His leaving no writings of His own, and no directly accredited record of His life; but the craving of men after an unerring touchstone of truth has wrapped them again in bonds like those from which Christ would have set them free; and the Canonical books have been invested with a character of literal inspiration, not unlike what would have attached to writings of our Lord Himself.
The verses of John, Chap. xvi. 9, 10 which [pg 462] follow that of which I have been speaking, while leading us to the profoundest Theology, bear on the change from a visible teacher to a spiritual one, and so far they come within my scope. I have only to do with them so far as they illustrate this change. The reason given for the intervention of the Spirit is, that Christ, in the body, will no longer bring home to the world the sense of sin and of righteousness and of judgement.
“And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgement, because the prince of this world has been judged.” John xvi. 8-11.
I should place the emphasis on the pronouns—He and I. The Spirit is to take the place of the departed Lord. So long as Christ was in the world He Himself brought home to the men who believed on Him the sense of sin; He presented the ideal of righteousness, and He enforced the conviction that moral evil brought doom and destruction upon men. Henceforth the witness to all this would no longer be Christ in the body, whose contact with the world was necessarily limited to one point, but the Holy Spirit, which could speak to the hearts of all mankind at once. It would lead me too far from my province if I enlarged on the topic of Judgment; and I turn to another matter.
It may be asked, Why did this Post-Resurrection state last as long as it did and not longer? God's reasons we leave aside, but this we can say, Christ never hurries forward processes in the Apostles' mind, and these processes, in this case, needed all the time allowed; also, since a state of watchfulness involves a nerve-strain, it agrees with Christ's carefulness for the body that this condition should not last too long. The durations of the different stages of our Lord's teaching—that while He was in the flesh, and that while He wore the body of the Resurrection—seem to me just as wisely ordered for the end in view, as are the other circumstances of the case.
Christ's way of teaching is the very opposite of that which would make the learner a mere reflection of his Master. In the Mission to the cities and in the ministrations of their every-day life, Christ had left the Apostles to act very much for themselves, He had kept their self-helpfulness alive in various ways; we find them bold to question, and not slow to murmur, and both questions and murmurs are readily tolerated by our Lord. But, even with all these precautions, if they had remained too long in attendance on Him, we can imagine that they would have got confirmed in the habit of looking constantly to their Master and of, at once, carrying to Him every difficulty without considering it themselves, and they would thus have lost capacity both to think and to act. They might [pg 464] also have fallen into habits of mind which, serviceable so long as they were subordinates, would stand in their way when they had to take the lead. They might have become faithful to execute, but helpless to plan. When subordinates, or young people, are too long deprived of opportunity for judging and acting for themselves, their minds are apt to become passive and purely receptive; they become slow to start a notion or suggest an expedient; ideas of theirs, they fancy, are not wanted, and so they soon cease to have ideas at all.
Our Lord guarded against this by restricting the period of the Apostles' pupilage. As soon as the ground plan of their characters was marked out, He left them to rear the superstructure for themselves. He was so tender in preserving every line of individuality that He would not shackle freedom of growth in His disciples, even by prolonging His own companionship and instruction beyond the proper time.