The hostility of the Scribes, we see, is very deadly. The Pharisees are often scandalised at infractions of their sabbath notions, but they do not seek our Lord's death as the Scribes do. The latter were probably Sadducees, tinged with [pg 183] western philosophy, and they were actuated by other motives beside zeal for the Law.
For one thing, they were in reality made uneasy by our Lord's assertion that a living God was working among them and close by. Ministers of state who have possessed themselves of sovereign power are startled and infuriated if their nominal monarch personally asserts his power: and, something in the same way, a priesthood occupied in promulgating ecclesiastical laws and carrying on the externals of worship were frightened at the announcement that God, instead of leaving matters for them to manage, had Himself come to reign and rule upon the earth.
But what was more effective than even spiritual awe was their personal alarm. The dread which one of their body afterwards expressed—“The Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation”[134]—was always over their heads. They were a sacerdotal oligarchy trembling for their existence. The people hated the Romans, and the Scribes were bound to stand well with both: an outbreak might bring to an end whatever ecclesiastical independence they still possessed. The priesthood saw something in our Lord which might lead the people to take Him and make Him a king.
The reply, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work,”[135] is characteristic of our Lord's way. He does not meet the charge by contesting the interpretation [pg 184] of the Law. He ignores all quibbles of legality and goes to the root of the matter. It is by the working of God that the world is maintained. His Father worketh hitherto, on Sabbath days and all, and He, the Son, follows in His Father's ways. The same test of Sonship—that the child takes after the Father—is applied in the Sermon on the mount.[136]
I must notice another verse of this discourse,
“I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”[137]
Our Lord here lays bare the reason why so few would follow Him. He touches the very centre of the matter. To kindle enthusiasm among a mass of men, you must have a person or a name. A cause is best embodied in an actual claimant standing before men's eyes; but failing this they will often rally to a name that they know. Our Lord used only His Father's name; this did not move their human sympathies for “The Father” had no personality for them. It was reserved for the Apostles to draw men over to the Faith, and they were given the advantage which Jesus was content to forego. They could put forward a personal claimant for the loyalty of men: they had Christ's story to tell and Christ's name for a watchword and they won men for the kingdom of [pg 185] God by gaining their homage for the Son of Man.
The temporary separation of the Apostles from our Lord during the summer of a.d. 28 may have answered higher ends than merely enabling them to earn their livelihood. It gave them time to think over the events of the last six months.
It is a feature of our Lord's way in His course of teaching, not to suffer one set of ideas or influences to be disturbed before they have had time to take root. After a period of stress, or when new impressions had been stamped on the minds of his disciples, He provides for them an interval of calm. When the disciples return exulting from their mission through the cities, He says, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.” When crowds thronged them and courted them for access to their Master, He carried them away, that the impressions He wanted to preserve might not be effaced in the turmoil. It may have been in pursuance of this treatment that, after the resurrection, they were sent for a time into Galilee, there to wait and to watch.
All teachers know that the time of rest that follows a period in which new matter has been taken into the mind is precious for good mental growth: conceptions then become more clear and complete, and effect a sure lodgement in the mind: but this, like many processes in education, helps to widen the distance between the weak and the strong. For it is only with the more thoughtful that this [pg 186] half unconscious brain-process goes on; the active minded mature their acquirements during rest, while the unthinking let them fade away. It argued well, in consequence, for Peter and Andrew and John, that Christ's influence had lost nothing through (as I believe) weeks of separation, but that as soon as they were called they sprang to their feet at once,—“they straightway left the nets and followed Him.”[138]