“And as he was going forth into the way, there ran one to him, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? [pg 381] And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good save one, even God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour thy father and mother. And he said unto him, Master, all these things have I observed from my youth. And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. But his countenance fell at the saying, and he went away sorrowful: for he was one that had great possessions.”[289]
Behind the young man's question there lay this view. He regarded eternal life as the reward of certain good works and the punctilious observance of what was divinely enjoined. Our Lord on the other hand represents it, not as being granted or withheld according to the record of performances, but rather as coming “of congruity”[290] along with the fitness for it which has been acquired in the whole education of a life. The man's works have no doubt had very much to do with making him what he is, but other influences have acted as well.
Our Lord rejects the appellation “Good Master.” In these terms, scholars addressed the Rabbi at whose feet they sat, they accepted his dicta, and gave up all independent judgment of their own. [pg 382] But our Lord, fostering and, in some sort, respecting the individual principle in each man, would free them from fetters of all kinds, those of the Rabbis among the rest. Here He would say, “Why do you run to a human master” (for as such only could the mass regard our Lord) “to tell you what it is right to do? About this no authority can be absolute but God, and His commandments you know.” These commandments the young ruler had kept, indeed it was hardly possible that one in his position could have done otherwise, but an empty place was still left in his soul. Life he felt sure must have a higher meaning and more satisfying occupations than any he had yet found. Surely he thought “The Master cannot mean to put me off with telling me to keep the commandments;” and he was right. He had known of no other guide to virtuous life than rules of conduct, and so he had come asking for a fresh set of such rules; but a new light was breaking on his soul and what he really wanted was for the clouds to be cleared away. This young man had a noble soul and our Lord “looking on him loved him.” The scribe, spoken of above, would do best by remaining where he was; but this young man would do best by following. He was worth rescuing from the conventionalities and littlenesses of his every day life and lifting into communion with God. Had he the force to wrench asunder the bonds, slender singly but countless in number, which fastened [pg 383] him down, and to give up, not merely soft living—that he would abandon with joy—but the social consideration and what went with it, personal connections and all, which he would fling away by doing as Christ bade? This was the question.
Our Lord had not told the scribe to sell all he had and give to the poor. He laid no such rule on His disciples, but here it was these possessions and, more than all, the position they conferred that clogged the soul and prevented its rise. The “giving to the poor” is not enjoined merely as benevolence; in that virtue it was not likely that this young man would fail, it is only a means of disposing of the weight that drags him down; the magnitude of the sacrifice required staggered the young ruler and he went sorrowful away; but perhaps there was more hope of him than if, at our Lord's word, he had impulsively surrendered all that he had. He may have been one of those who afterwards sold their land or houses “and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them at the Apostles' feet.”[291] From this interview our Lord draws the moral, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God;” this is not a denunciation of the rich but rather a commiseration of them, owing to the peculiar and insidious temptations to which they are unceasingly exposed.
The Apostles are “astonished exceedingly”[292] [pg 384] at our Lord's severity, they had perhaps been pleased at the prospect of the accession to their community of a man who was rich and high in station and well spoken of on all sides. As soon as they had heard him told to give up all and follow, Peter, with a touch of almost infantine nature which stamps the narrative as authentic, looking to his own case says, “Lo we have left all and have followed thee.” This was no boast or our Lord would not have answered as he does; it was rather an expression of relief at finding that this special difficulty which beset the young ruler no longer stood in their way. They had been called to leave settled homes and they had done so. Peter, we know, had a wife, and James and John had a father and mother alive. Our Lord seems to give them very positive comfort. Those who had left home or family or lands for His sake and the Gospel's should now, in this time, receive the same a hundred fold[293] as well as life hereafter.
We seem to find here a direct promise of worldly benefit, which would be strangely out of accord with the general tenour of Christ's words; but then comes a clause, preserved only by St Mark, which alters all the meaning. It contains but two words “with persecutions.” This appears to unsay all that was said before; for of what good, in the way of enjoyment, are family and possessions “in [pg 385] the midst of persecution”? Our Lord, to my thinking, in this passage has His eye on a certain time to come; the “brethren and sisters and mothers and children” must mean the great Christian family, and the “lands” are the possessions of that community which, while the Church was confined to Jerusalem, had all things common, “When the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own.”[294] In the exaltation of spirit in which that community lived, persecution would seem only a superficial ill, without which their happiness would have been too ecstatic for permanent spiritual health. Their condition as we know from the Acts was replete with joy; over and over again we are reminded of the gladness which filled the souls of the early converts. The reward promised, when qualified by this phrase, might rightly be set before the Apostles, for it was no reward at all except to spiritually minded men. These two words, which are omitted by St Luke, enable us to understand—what seems a little strange—why this promise is not accepted with joy and with eager questions as to when this happy time should come; it puzzled the hearers. Any rising exultation is checked by the words, “with persecutions,” and the hearers are perhaps set wondering why Christ [pg 386] often drops difficulties into His speech, just when He seems to be going to reveal what men particularly want to know, and why, when holding out a promise, He should dash the cup from their lips.
Parable of the unjust Steward. St Luke xv., xvi.
More and more, as our Lord's work draws near the close, do we notice that His eye, somewhat diverted from what is passing about Him, is directed to a condition of things foreseen “being yet far off.” It is to provide for this that He is ever taking thought and imparting lessons; and if no state of things had come about in which these lessons might find a field of exercise, we should be at a loss to understand what they meant or why they were there. The explanation is found in the early history of the Church of Christ. In the parables and discourses of the later ministry there is one image to which our Lord again and again recurs. It is that of men labouring in a Master's service, and most commonly in that of a Master who is away from home and may at any time come back. It may be that the Master is a great King, in which case the labourers are his ministers, and frequently there is mention made of diversity of office and of some who exercised [pg 387] authority over “men-servants and maid-servants.” In these cases we frequently find, either in the parable itself or in the “hard saying” which commonly closes it, an allusion to some special danger attaching to delegated power.
One such moral danger there is besetting those entrusted with any charge, and above all with a spiritual charge, which is very insidious, and more easily corrected by a lesson given in a story than by direct reproof; it is that of the severity and rigour which comes of over-scrupulosity and over-zeal. The trustee of a property will sometimes feel morally or legally bound to exact the very uttermost, and to use a hardness which he would never think of shewing in his own affairs; and by habitually constraining himself to use hardness he may become actually hard of nature himself. When we come to matters spiritual and ecclesiastical all this is true in an intensified degree.
The more exalted the priest's notion of his function and the more genuine his appreciation of the Majesty of God, the more impossible it seems to him to abate one iota of God's claims. Things sacred, he has been taught to think, differ in kind from things secular, and demand rules of management of their own. He holds it unlawful to make composition with offenders against God; he is the appointed upholder of the rights and dignities of the Almighty and he dares not bate a hair. Honestly awe-stricken at the tremendous [pg 388] responsibility, he flies where he can to a written Law, and, pointing to the letter, he takes refuge in the sacerdotal “non possumus” as an answer to every extenuating plea.