Fourthly. We find in the earlier portions of the Sermon on the Mount, which best represent this [pg 206] preaching to the multitude,[147] that our Lord assumes a certain positive authority, by putting His own commands in contrast with the written Law.
It had probably been given out by our Lord's opponents that He had come to destroy the Law, and our Lord in this Sermon declares that He is not come to destroy but to fulfil.
We shall see the point most clearly, if we understand the word “fulfil,” to mean, “carry out into its full completeness.” For our Lord does not destroy the Law but he supersedes it by bringing God's ways to light, and merging in this light the previous partial revelations, of which the Mosaic Law was one. A mathematician supersedes the practical rules which the pupil at first employs for solving particular cases of a problem, by giving a complete and general solution of the whole subject. This may illustrate the way in which our Lord merges the particular case of human conduct in a wider rule embracing human dispositions, and which regards, not only what men do, but also what they are, and what they will become.
To take another point. Slavery to the letter of a written Law hampered moral and spiritual growth; it led men to regard authority as the sole test of truth; it tended to prevent their thinking for [pg 207] themselves as our Lord desired them to do. No word of our Lord countenances the idea of verbal inspiration. He treats the provisions of the Levitical Law as subject to criticism, He never attributes them to God, but either to Moses or those of old time, and after quoting them in His sermon and elsewhere He commonly adds, “But I say unto you” and then delivers His own precept—embracing that of Moses no doubt—but so widely overstepping it, that it would seem to the people to amount to a repeal. A teaching which claimed authority coordinate with that of Moses might well startle the multitude by its contrast with that of the scribes.
It may be asked—“Why, if our Lord desired to free men's minds, did He not declare how far and in what sense their sacred books contained the word of God.” We answer, “He would have caused utter bewilderment if He had entered on such a matter at all.” The truth may be gathered by observing His practice. He never states abstract principles, but He acts as He deems fit and leaves us to infer His views by marking what He does. He never contests the rules about the Sabbath, but He observes them only in His own way. He does not tell the Jews that their Law is not traced by the finger of God, but He amends and criticizes its provisions as though they were of man.
Let us suppose, for a moment—not of course that He had cried down the Law like one who [pg 208] exulted in finding a flaw—but that He had attempted to put into men's heads views about it which their minds had not yet shaped themselves to receive; that He had told them, for instance, that laws must be fitted to human needs, and that as these needs vary, laws must vary too, and cannot be the subject of an ordinance unchanging and Divine. Could He, by such explanations, have given His auditors any true view of Divine rule? Would not the Galileans have cried out, “That if the tables of the Law were not graven by God's finger they were nothing at all?” Nothing, in our Lord's wisdom, strikes me more than His moderation with regard to error. What seems false to one man's mind may be true to that of another. When men, as soon as they spy out an error, cry, “Root it up,” our Lord seems to answer, “Along with the tares some wheat needs must go.” Men are complex beings; and much that is best in them is so intertwined with habits and association that we cannot sweep away long-standing notions and outward symbols and ceremonies without destroying also what is of the essence. Take away from an Italian woman her belief in the Virgin, or from a Scotch peasant that in the sacred obligation of the Sabbath, and a great deal of what is best in them will go too.
Our Lord's way of proceeding is always positive, never merely negative. He leaves the Law, but He sows seed which will grow up and displace the spirit [pg 209] of blind subservience to it: just as some particular species in the herbage of a land is often ousted when a more robust one is brought in. The Apostles had, up to the end, many wrong notions, and we may wonder why our Lord did not set them right; but it would have shaken the whole fabric of their belief if He had so done; and the sure teaching of circumstances would, as He knew, dissipate the errors in time.
So far we have dealt chiefly with the matter of our Lord's teaching of the multitudes, but something must be said about its form. One striking point in our Lord's practice in contrast with that of the scribes, is this. He cites no authorities, all comes from Himself; there is hardly a text of Scripture in the fifth chapter of St Matthew, except those which are quoted in order to be extended or gainsaid. The scribes depended on their learning, they overwhelmed men with quotations, they laid text by text, and built up their conclusions upon an array of authorities. Now a preacher, or a teacher of any kind, is sure to lose hold of his audience when he goes away from himself and gives other people's opinions instead of his own. They look to him for guidance; and when he says, “This is one man's view and that is another's,” and not, “This is mine,” then they turn from the trumpet of uncertain sound. The multitude suppose that in all questions there is a right and a wrong—just as there is a right and a wrong answer to a sum—and they do not [pg 210] want to know what one authority says or the other, but what they are to accept.
Again, rightly to apprehend the form of this discourse, we must bear in mind that it is not a written collection of precepts,—though St Matthew may have appended some delivered at a later time—and that still less is it a Code of Laws. It is an oral address to a crowd of villagers gathered on the top of the fell. We mark in it the natural rhetoric of earnest speech: the first necessity is always to win men to listen, and thus the speaker at the opening strikes His most impressive chords.
Words of blessing fell on the ears of those who were used only to hear of their shortcomings and to be treated as outcasts; and when their attention was caught by the unusual sound and they listened to hear who it was who were blessed, they found it was not the strong and the wealthy and the high spirited—those whom they regarded as having the good things of existence while they themselves had the bad—but the blessed are the poor in spirit, and this Kingdom of Heaven, newly proclaimed, belonged to them. The attention caught by the opening is kept alive by the unexpected nature of the matter.