Reverting now to the first narrative see how the active antagonism of the Pharisees was the inevitable outcome of the fact that inwardly they were not with Him in heart and aim.
Because they did not like Him, and did not desire Him to gain influence with the people they would not unite in the general approbation of the crowd. Such conduct was marked and demanded an explanation. Apparently a good and wonderful miracle had been wrought. It will not do for them to merely refrain from approving. They must justify their reticence. Neutrality is impossible. If they will not adore they must malign. So they are forced to impugn the character of Christ's act. To justify their want of sympathy they must disavow its claim to their approbation. There is no alternative between frank acceptance of the miracle or open repudiation and disparagement of its character.
Still you must take sides for or against Christ, and you cannot be neutral. For His claims reach you not as external facts to be passively gazed at, but as imperative, active demands that lay hold of you, and insist that you shall take action upon them. You must yield or you must resist. You must comply or you must oppose. Christ lays His hand on you and if you will not obey you must shake that hand rudely off. In countless forms that strange, drawing power lays hold of you, and you must follow or reject. It may be a call to you to yield your reverence, your support, your participation to some benevolent or religious movement. If you will not, while others do accede to this claim, you must seek to justify your refusal. So you are forced into disparaging it, depreciating it, slandering it. You cannot own it to be of God and yet remain a rebel against its demands. So you must, with evil, malignant tongue, sneer at it as folly, or revile it as delusion—thus imitating the Pharisees who set down Christ's work to be the doing of the devil.
Remember, too, what a black-hearted, hateful sin that was they were guilty of. Try and picture that gentle, beneficent, holy Jesus. Realise the cruel blow such a thought was to the man just healed. Surely caution, reserve, would have made men hesitate to speak so. But they cruelly, malignantly, eagerly cry, "By Beelzebub He casteth out devils." It was in the face of such light, such considerate helpful words of Christ, that they did it. Think of the gracious words He spoke, and of the beauty of all that life, which in our days bring from the hearts of unbelievers encomiums that sound like adoration. In spite of all that, they were not made reverent, careful, slow to condemn. Nay, they were exasperated by it all.
But you may say, "They were zealous, mistaken men, wrongly trained; they thought Christ a heretic; they were the victims of an erroneous creed. So many had deceived them, so many false Christs had appeared! Besides, did not Moses say that they were not to believe a miracle simply, but to judge it by the teaching of the worker?" It is true, there were many such. But you do not find them among the number who ascribed Christ's works of healing to the devil. There were, indeed, honest but timid souls who were staggered by the pretensions and claims of Christ, but how did they act? Remember how one such came to Christ and went away with mingled feelings of attraction and perplexity; but when the body of Christ lay lone and forsaken Nicodemus came and did honour to the sacred dead. But these men were not such as he; their error was not of the intellect, but of the heart. They did not yield to the beauty of Christ's character, life, and teaching. They were not one with Him in His longing to establish God's kingdom on the earth. There was an inner antagonism of spirit, of nature. They were proud, haughty, self-righteous, and they were hypocrites, evildoers, cruel. They hated Christ because His pure life shamed and pained them, and they dreaded the loss of their own prestige and power. The secret and the essence and seat of their antagonism was not intellectual error, but deep, dark, moral perversion and evil of heart and conscience. Thus, because they were not with Christ, even in so far as to have sympathy with the undeniable good in Him, therefore they were in act and word against Him.
Finally, from the second narrative see what it is to be with Christ and how those who inwardly are not against are by His own verdict on His side. And, first of all, note the error into which the disciples fell. Very like the conduct of the Pharisees is theirs. They find a man doing good in Christ's name. He is not all he should be, not one of them, and not a constant pupil of Christ's. But instead of seeking to draw him to more perfect light, they intolerantly forbid him to do the good he was doing. So mistaken an action must have come from a wrongness of heart. They, too, fell before that evil, monopolising tendency that grudges to another God's gifts which we possess. It was a cruel thing to the man, a harmful thing, and might have turned him from Christ. Let us take the lesson to ourselves. Let us beware of refusing to allow good in those who differ from us; let us beware of rashly judging those who are not just the same as we. Harm—grave harm—is often done by treating imperfect, immature followers of our Master as if they had neither part nor lot with Him. But mark how this man was with Christ; only, remember, he is not an example of what we should be, rather he is a specimen of one just over the borderland: but over. It was not intellectual orthodoxy; not a perfect knowledge of God's mysteries that he possessed. He was very ignorant about God, about Christ. He did but know a little of the power of Christ and His majestic character and stupendous work. Yet so far as his knowledge went of Christ he had received it gladly. He rejoiced in the power of the Saviour's name to cast out devils, to cure the troubled ones. He did the good he knew. He acted up to his light. In his measure he gave glory and reverence and obedience to the Saviour. He was working for good and mercy and truth and God in the world. Thus he was not against Christ in these his aims, and so was for the Lord. It is only of those who are not against Christ in this sense that He says they are on His side.
Friends, there is warning and comfort in that. Warning there is, for, mark, that vain dream is dispelled which would read Christ's words as meaning that if only you do not oppose Him actively you are to be counted on His side. No! if that is your position, you are not for Him; you must be against Him: for passivity, neutrality is impossible.
Comfort there is, on the other hand, to you who feel yourselves very feeble, very imperfect; to you who find it hard to understand; to you who fear you are mistaken about many things. Ah! men may condemn you; the disciples may dissuade you from taking His name and counting yourself His, but do not fear. If you do, as far as you see how, strive to do the good He has taught you; if you do, it may be afar off, follow in His footsteps; if you have learned to find in Him in any degree a power that helps you to cast out the evil spirits in your soul and in the hearts of men: be sure that though you may not follow with other disciples, though you may be very deficient, very immature, a very unworthy servant—be sure that, nevertheless, you are not against, but for Him, and that in the end of the days He will not forbid you to claim His name, but will acknowledge you for His own.