Pastor Pastorum; Or, The Schooling of the Apostles by Our Lord

by Henry Latham

But, if the period of our Lord's stay on earth in the body, served its educational purpose all the better from being no longer than it was; so did that also of the forty days after the Resurrection (supposing that we accept the traditional chronology) for the opposite reason, from its being extended so long. Four days would have served as well as forty for the manifestation of the Risen Lord, for the conclusive witness to His Divine nature, and for ratifying the hope of immortality in the bosoms [pg 465] of mankind; within this time He could have given His final charge to the infant Church, and have set it on its way. A higher work however remained which could not be perfected all at once. The Apostles were now to receive the crowning lesson of the course. They were about to pass out of the training ground into the real arena of danger and of toil. They were to be gradually fitted to exercise authority, and to feel trust in the presence with them of a Spiritual Guide.

It took time for their faculties to grow into shape and adapt themselves to the change. Christ always brings His scholars on by gradual progress; He moulds them as nature moulds organic forms; there are with Him no sharp or sudden turns, no jerks in the movements, but all proceeds along one even curve. If the forty days of this transitional condition had not intervened, but the Apostles had been suddenly transformed from disciples into the rulers of a community; if, more than this, they had found themselves all at once exalted into the accredited ministers of the Almighty in the most express and patent of His dispensations, what human beings could have stood the strain? Gradually, during those forty days, they got used to possessing authority. It was not formally conferred; but the other disciples took it for granted that they were to look to them for direction or advice. In this season also, the Apostles acquired a habit of watchfulness over themselves, [pg 466] knowing that Christ was looking into their hearts, and might at any moment appear by their side.

The framing of a society in which Christ's word should be the outer Law and Christ's spiritual presence be the sustaining life, was to be the work of men, because it was to be adapted to human needs. It does not derogate from man's free agency, that he should own and follow the promptings of God, for to do this is part of his proper nature; these promptings are not an alien influence, but belong to his own self as he was intended to be.

With the descent of the Holy Spirit at the end of the forty days, the outward visible training of the Apostles, which it has been my business to trace, was brought to an end; and the guidance of God's Spirit, working in men to will and to do of His good pleasure, came in its place.[344]

The fire which Christ had come into man's world to kindle, was now alight, and the special need for Christ's presence on earth did not longer exist. What was it, we may ask, that He left behind? The chief visible outcome of His work was the little band of Apostles; but the mightiest of His influences were imponderable and unseen. Our Lord's sojourn on earth had changed the world in which He had dwelt, so that all subsequent History reads differently from that which goes before. By what means was this change wrought? Christ left no new code of regulations for men to live by. He [pg 467] introduced no changes into Human Society or into any of the forms of Government which He found upon earth. If men might not be left to frame such things for themselves, what had freedom and faculties been given to them for? What Christ did leave, was infinitely more than a reorganisation of Society or a scheme for the reformation of men. On that day of Pentecost a new faculty—that of communing with God's Spirit—came to the birth. And a new force—that of living religion—sprang into existence as a fresh agent in the affairs of the world—a force which Emperors and sacerdotal castes and schools of philosophers had soon to reckon with.

This fire has now and then burned low, but at such times some “circumstance” has often come about, which, answering to some expression of our Lord—perhaps one which seemed till then obscure—has opened out a vista in the minds of men. People say, “Now we see what that hard saying meant,” or “Christ must have had this in view when He spoke.” Or else—what has sometimes happened—an idea has sprung up in men's hearts, seemingly everywhere at once, and Christ's words have caught a fuller meaning, read by the light of this.

So far we have traced the steps by which the Apostles were taught Faith in the unseen. First by confidence in a Master at their side, next by the assurance that, though unseen, He was close [pg 468] by, and could, if needed, appear and help as of old; and now, lastly, when seeing Him no more, there comes in their hearts an assurance that He is with them to the end of the world.

When I say that the Apostles were taught Faith, I use the word taught in a different sense from that which it has when applied to the subjects of knowledge. I mean that through wise moral treatment, a quality existing only as a rudiment was so developed as to fit the disciples for communion with God; and not only did they in this sense learn Faith, but—what also need learning, more than we suppose—Love and Hope as well.

I spoke casually just now of the joy which, as appears by the Book of Acts, illumined the Apostles' lives. This came greatly of Love; not merely from the affection of the brethren for each other, but from a general Lovingness, a capacity for Love, which, on coming into action, made them look differently on all they saw. This, like their Faith, had grown up from their being in their Master's company. They felt how He loved them; and if ever one among them was disposed to think lightly or unkindly of a brother disciple, he might recollect how dear that brother—faults and all—was to Christ; and then he could hardly help feeling that if his Master bore with him he might do so too. They marked also Christ's beneficence, His eagerness to render kindness, His [pg 469] readiness to use His wondrous power for the good of those who had no claim upon Him, His gentleness in rebuke, His never recurring to a bygone fault. And this sense of being beloved, this living in an atmosphere of affection, generated in them the capacity for Loving, just as the Home Love that is round a child, not only awakens in it affection to those who shew affection towards it, but teaches it what Love is; and engenders in it a great outcome of Lovingness which it strews broadcast, and bestows, not on persons only, but on animals, and even on inanimate things.

We have had sight of the Apostles at a time when this Love was only half fledged among them, and did not understand itself. It was yet in this state in St Peter when he asked: How often he must forgive the brother who sinned against him.[345] Love with him was then only unfolding in his mind, it was still a thing of bounds and measures; later on he learnt—and his Master's sacrifice crowned the lesson—that it is in essence infinite. By the time when the Apostles had to stand alone and labour for their charge, they had learnt what Love was. From that came the unity and harmony of which I have spoken above. A common interest or even common devotion to a cause would not have gone deep enough down to have quenched all rivalries. Even if paramount interests had put [pg 470] self out of sight for a while, it would still have been there, ready to reappear when opportunity came. Impatience would have come out now and then. It is Love only which brings others as close to a man as his own self. This lesson of Love was perfected, for the Apostles, by their witnessing Christ's death upon the cross—a death not for friends, not for those under His protection, but for men “while they were yet sinners.”[346] They saw, too, that when He rose from the dead in absolute might Divine, He breathed not a word shewing that He remembered His wrongs, but quietly put the past away. All this filled the Apostles' hearts with Lovingness; they could not have gone on with their work, with so little return to shew, unless they had loved the brethren and the converts. The joy which we note in the Apostles, resting like a halo upon them, comes of their feeling sure that God loves them, and of their loving all God's creatures in return. It was this Love that fascinated their hearers; when the words of Paul, notwithstanding that his speech—so they said—was contemptible, went to the hearts of Greeks and Barbarians, as we know they did, what he touched them by was this magic of Love.