In the last four verses of the address our Lord again speaks to the whole company of hearers. He takes one of His familiar topics, viz., that good is not only to be admired, it must also be done. This is expressed by the illustration of the [pg 260] house on the rock and that on the earth. Many who followed Him counted themselves His disciples because they carried away his commands in their heads and talked about them. He tells them that they can only get firm hold of them by putting them into practice. There were many hearers who would put our Lord's precepts away somewhere in their memory, and be satisfied with possessing right and beautiful thoughts without carrying them into practice, keeping them like curios in a drawer. These were like men building on the earth, who do only just what the moment requires. But the habit formed by steady obedience effects a structural change in the man's own mind. This is a lasting possession—it has taken time and pains to acquire, but it is storm proof like the house upon the rock.
When speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, I touched on the form in which our Lord delivers what He says. The remarks there made apply to the discourse before us and, in addition, it may be said, that this address is admirably adapted to be carried away by the hearers as a whole. It is strongly marked by its characteristic style, so that an addition or alteration by another hand would strike even an unpractised ear, as not having the true ring. There are four beatitudes and four denunciations, corresponding each to each; this numerical symmetry assists recollection. Then comes the sermon, made up of sayings so short and [pg 261] terse that the most unlettered may carry the whole away; and finally all ends with a parable, which is so well suited to the popular mind that it is now perhaps the best known of all pieces of Bible imagery. Those who like may trace in this a certain prevision, a designed fashioning of the garb of the word to suit it for that oral transmission on which, at one period, its preservation would depend.
When our Lord had finished His discourse He returned to Capernaum.
“And he cometh into a house. And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his friends heard it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.”[179]
There were occasions in our Lord's life in which the Divine nature seemed to glow through the human receptacle. It was so when He came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, so too, when he went forward, apart from the rest, at the outset of His final journey to Jerusalem; and so I believe it was when He came back to Capernaum bringing with Him the Twelve whom He had chosen to form the nucleus of His everlasting Church. Something in His air seems to have amazed His friends, “they said he is beside himself.”
The Scribes, marking the temper of the crowd, thought it wise to drop their schemes of violence, but they set afoot the notion that He was possessed [pg 262] by the Prince of the Devils and ruled the spirits of evil in his name. Our Lord made no long stay at Capernaum, but took the Twelve with Him on a journey to the cities in Galilee that they might see how He preached and taught, and, what was more, that they might learn to put complete trust in His wise guidance and sheltering love. This was the first practical lesson they collectively received.
It was in the interval between the calling of the Twelve and the despatching of them, two and two, on their missions, or possibly while they were gone, that the messengers sent by the Baptist came up with our Lord and His party.
As the next chapter will be taken up with the lessons belonging to this mission of the Twelve, I shall deal with this incident in this chapter, although, chronologically, it might fall in the next. It is related by St Matthew as follows:
“Now when John heard in the prison the works of the Christ, he sent by his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Go your way and tell John the things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me.”[180]
The question asked by the Baptist shews us his condition of mind. A voice in his heart had told the Baptist that he was born to be the forerunner of one mightier than himself, and the sign at the Baptism had shewn him who that Person was. He had recognised in Him “the Lamb of God who was to take away the sins of the world,” the Son in whom the Father was well pleased. This conveys the impression that John regarded our Lord as the Jewish Messiah, but the Baptist's notions about the Messiah may have been vague, like those which the people and even the Scribes entertained; although he was a prophet and more than a prophet, he would not know more than other people, except on matters directly revealed to him. The Divine light is indeed a “lantern to a man's path,” but it is a lantern that throws its light only in the direction in which he who carries it has to go. I believe that John sent to our Lord because he was bewildered by what he heard. That the Messiah should preach and heal was agreeable to what he had expected: but, “Was this to be all?” Was He going to restore the kingdom Himself, or was another to come and take up that portion of the work?