LIX.
In Christ, after the discipline of long-waiting years, there was no ambition, no self-delusion. He had measured the way, and counted the cost, of lifting his own people and the world out of bondage to visible things and false gods, and bringing them to the only Father of their spirits, into the true kingdom of their God. He must, indeed, have been well enough aware how infinitely more fit for the task he himself was than any of his own brethren in the flesh, with whom he was living day by day, or of the men of Nazareth with whom he had been brought up. But he knew also that the same voice which had been speaking to him, the same wisdom which had been training him, must have been speaking to and training other humble and brave souls, wherever there were open hearts and ears, in the whole Jewish nation. As the humblest and most guileless of men, he could not have assumed that no other Israelite had been able to render that perfect obedience of which he was himself conscious. And so he may well have hurried to the Jordan in the hope of finding there, in this prophet of the wilderness, “Him who should come,” the Messiah, the great deliverer—and of enlisting under his banner, and rendering him true and loyal service, in the belief that, after all, he himself might only be intended to aid and hold up the hands of a greater than himself. For we must remember that Christ could not have heard before he came to Bethabara that John had disclaimed the great title. It was not till the very day before his own arrival that the Baptist had told the questioners from Jerusalem, “I am not he.”
But if any such thought had crossed his mind, or hope filled his heart, on the way to the Baptist, it was soon dispelled, and he, left again in his own loneliness, now more clearly than ever before, face to face with the task, before which even the Son of God, appointed to it before the world was, might well quail, as it confronted him in his frail human body. For John recognizes him, singles him out at once, proclaims to the bystanders, “This is he! Behold the Lamb of God! This is he who shall baptize with the fire of God’s own Spirit. Here is the deliverer whom all our prophets have foretold.” And by a mysterious outward sign, as well as by the witness in his own heart and conscience, Christ is at once assured of the truth of the Baptist’s words—that it is indeed he himself and no other, and that his time has surely come.
That he now thoroughly realized the fact for the first time, and was startled and severely tried by the confirmation of what he must have felt for years to be probable, is not only what we should look for from our own experiences, but seems the true inference from the gospel narratives. For, although as soon as the full truth breaks upon him he accepts the mission and work to which God is calling him, and speaks with authority to the Baptist, “Suffer it to be so now,” yet the immediate effect of the call is to drive him away into the wilderness, there in the deepest solitude to think over once again, and for the last time to wrestle with and master the tremendous disclosure.
LX.
In following the life of Christ so far as we have any materials, we have found one main characteristic to be patience—a resolute waiting on God’s mind. I have asked you to test, in every way you can, whether this kind of patience does not constitute the highest ideal we can form of human conduct, is not in fact the noblest type of true manliness. Pursue the same method as to the isolated section of that life, the temptation, which I readily admit has much in it that we cannot understand. But take the story simply as you find it (which is the only honest method, unless you pass it by altogether, which would be cowardly) and see whether you can detect any weakness, any flaw in the perfect manliness of Christ under the strain of which it speaks—whether he does not here also realize for us the most perfect type of manliness in times of solitary and critical trial. Spare no pains, suppress no doubt, only be honest with the story, and with your own conscience.
There is scarcely any life of first-rate importance to the world in which we do not find a crisis corresponding to this, but the nearest parallel must be sought amongst those men, the greatest of all kind, who have founded or recast one of the great religions of the world. Of these (if we except the greatest of all, Moses) Mohammed is the only one of whose call we know enough to speak. Whatever we may think of him and the religion he founded, we shall all probably admit that he was at any rate a man of the rarest courage. In his case too it is only at the end of long and solitary vigils in the desert that the vision comes which seals him for his work. The silver roll is unfolded before his eyes, and he who holds it bids him read therein the decree of God, and tells him, “Thou art the prophet of God, and I his angel.”
He is unmanned by the vision, and flies trembling to his wife, whose brave and loving counsel, and those of his friends and first disciples, scarcely keep him from despair and suicide.
I would not press the parallel further than to remark that Christ came out of the temptation with no human aid, having trod the wine-press alone, serene and resolute from that moment for the work to which God had called him.