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.