The World's Great Sermons, Volume 09: Cuyler to Van Dyke

by Unknown

And then came the great moment. It was the very next day after the great confession—so exact is the apostle's memory. The very day after, John saw Jesus coming toward him, and a wonderful word broke from him: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." Taketh away the sin! Oh, the peace of such a promise to those who had been washed in Jordan, and had repented, and had confest, and yet found their burden of sin as miserable, as intolerable as ever! The words haunted them; and when, the day following, John uttered them again, two of them at least could not rest. Their hearts burned to know more. Who is this strange visitant—so quiet, so silent, so unobserved? He makes no sign. He says no word. He invites no attention. He does not even stop to look. He just passes by; and, lo! He is already passed—in another moment He will have gone. They must act for themselves then. They will force Him to stop and tell them the secret. So two of them that heard John speak followed Him—two of them, and John the beloved, who now tells us the story, was one of the two. And now that they followed, He, the Stranger, must turn and speak. For the first time, then, He looked upon them with that look which again and again had power to draw a soul, by one glance, out of the night of sin into the life of eternal light. He turned and saw them following, and it was then they heard His voice first speak—that voice which by its cry could raise the dead. "Whom seek ye?" That was all. And they—they hardly knew what to say—only they must see Him, must go with Him; and they stammered out: "Rabbi, where dwellest thou?" And He said: "Come and see."

Come and see! It was all as quiet and natural and easy as any ordinary interview. No one could have seen anything unusual. Just a few words of salutation—just three short sentences that could be said in half a minute. And yet that sealed their lot for eternity. That was the moment of decision. "Come and see." They went and saw. So intense is the apostle's memory of that blest hour that he can never forget the very hour of the day. It was just ten o'clock when he got to the house. They stopt there with Him that night; and in the morning they were sure of what they had found—so sure that neither of them could rest until he had hurried off with the good news to find and bring his brother. Andrew found his brother before John could find James; or else it was that both went at once to seek for Peter, and Andrew found him first. Anyhow, when Peter was found, both were prepared to assert, "We have found the Christ." And so they brought the great chief to his Master; and in a moment the Master knew what He had won in that loyal, loving soul, and He turned those deep eyes upon him, and named him by his new name. "Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called Cephas."

So it all began. The very next day after that the Master Himself added one other to the number—Philip a friend of Peter's and Andrew's—and Philip brought Nathaniel; and these were the little band whom the Master took with Him from Jordan to Cana—the seed of that great Church which now reigns from Babylon to Rome.

"And what next"—so the listeners ask—"what was the next step made?" Three days later, at Cana, for the first time, came that strange secret of which the apostle had spoken. The glory shone out with a sudden flash from the deeps within Him; a word of power leapt out—very quietly. Very few saw or knew it. But as the few saw there the white water redden into wine, they knew, and felt the wonder of that change which had passed over their own being. That word of power was at its work within them, transforming them from out of sickly impotence into splendid energy. They saw now what it was that had happened when the Lord spoke, that it would have the same power whether He spoke to matter or spirit, to body or soul; whether He said: "Thy sins be forgiven thee," or "Rise up and walk." As water into wine, so the old into the new.

So the light flashed; so the secret made its first disclosure. It had vanished again, for His hour had not yet come; but they had seen it, and this is John's enduring record, remembered by us this day, that there first at Cana Jesus manifested His glory, and there His disciples first believed in Him.

And what next did they learn? It was at Jerusalem, the Passover feast. The Master made His first entry and startled them, for He who was so quiet and reserved burned with a sudden fury as He looked upon the temple of Jehovah. Very, very rarely did He show Himself excited or disturbed; but then He was terrible. He bound together a scourge of small cords. He drove the cattle in front of Him; He dashed over the money-changers' tables. And John can recall still the look of the coins as they poured down upon the pavement. And they, the disciples, wondered at the violence of the emotion, until a word from an old Psalm came into their minds, and they remembered how it was written that the zeal of the Lord's house should be in a prophet's heart like a devouring fire.

At that time, too, the Lord Himself gave a sign and spoke a word, which at the time the disciples could make nothing of, and forgot. It was about the temple being destroyed and raised again in three days. They forgot it; but long after, when He had risen from the dead, the old words came back to them: "After three days I shall raise it again"; and they remembered then how He had spoken them two years before His death, and as they remembered, they believed....

And how can we stop to follow the apostle through all the wonderful story? Yet just one thing we can not pass over—the awful hours of crisis in Galilee. It came just when all looked brightest, when the people were rushing round Him, and would have made Him a king. They would have gone with Him to the death. But He—He threw it all away to the winds. He hurried off the twelve in a body across the lake, for they had caught the crowd's enthusiasm, and could not be calmed. He scattered the crowd; He fled back Himself alone into the dark hills, and on the morrow at Capernaum, He broke it all down by a word which staggered the rising belief. It was a saying about His body and His blood—a very hard saying. Not only were the Pharisees furious, but His own followers were dumfounded. They could not bear it, could not believe. They fell away, and walked no more with Jesus.

"And you, O disciple dearly loved, what of you and your brethren?" "Most terrible, most bitter that hour, my children," the old man answers. "We walked trembling, quaking, behind him. We were cowed and disheartened, until he the Master felt himself the chill of our dismay, and He turned to us and challenged our failing faith. 'Will ye also go away?' Oh, the shame of being open to a charge of such meanness! The very tenderness of the question and of the reproach recalled and recovered us. We knew nothing. We could explain nothing. Every clue was lost. The darkness was thickening over our heads, our hearts were failing for fear, our souls were sinking in the great water-floods, earth was falling from us; struggle, and anguish, and doubt shook us with wild alarm; and yet, even so as he turned his eyes upon us, the old unconquerable faith woke, and stirred, and quickened; and with a rush, as of a mighty wind, it lifted us; and out from Peter's lips broke the words which saved us—the words which sealed us to Him forever: 'Will we go away? Nay, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life!' So we spoke with burning hearts, and yet through and through us still those strange eyes of His pierced. Deep below all our emotion He penetrated. Quite calmly He weighed its worth; and in one of us even then He detected a flaw which would widen and worsen. One of us, He knew, hung back from echoing St. Peter's confession. One spirit there was there that could not throw off its dismay, one dark spirit in whom the hard saying was the seed of bitter and poisonous fruit. 'Have I not chosen you twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?' He spoke of Judas Iscariot, who should betray him."

So they followed and clung, the trembling band; clung through all the narrowing days in which the Jewish enmity hardened itself into the hate of hates; clung even tho their souls fell away from the rapture of St. Peter to the desperate wail of Thomas: "Let us go with him that at least we may die with him"; clung even through the terrors of that last evening, when they sat shaking with the very shudder of death, and the soul of the Master Himself was trouble-tossed, and there was the scent of treachery in the air, and the end was very near, and He spake dim, dark words that they could not follow—only they knew one thing, that He was to be taken from them, and they sat shrouded in a mighty sorrow such as no assurances even of His could lessen or lift. One moment there was indeed even then in which they seemed suddenly to lay hold of His meaning. "Now we believe," they cried. "Now we are sure that thou camest forth from God." So they cried, and yet He met their professions with a sorrowful hesitation. "Do ye now believe? Yea; the hour is all but come when ye will all flee and leave me alone." How sad and cowed they felt at the rebuff! Were they then never to rise into the joy of clear and entire belief? Yes; it came at last. Blest assurance! Let John tell how it was reached by him.