Professor W. G. Elmslie, D.D.: Memoir and Sermons

by William Gray Elmslie

Among the guests gathered around the table, that night before our Lord's death, was Judas, who betrayed Him. He had sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver, and was watching his opportunity to complete the covenant of blood. He sat there while Jesus washed their feet. Jesus knew all his falseness, all his heartlessness, all his treachery. He knew it, and He washed the traitor's feet.

The perfection of our Lord's holiness is apt to mislead us into the idea that because it was faultless, it was therefore easy. We conceive His goodness as spontaneous, His sinlessness as without effort. But in truth He was a man tempted in all points like as we are. He was obedient unto death, but His obedience He learned by the things which He suffered. He was perfect in purity, meekness, self-denial, but only by humbling Himself and crucifying the flesh. His self-control was absolute, but it cost Him as much as it does us—perchance more. His sinless, holy heart shrank from sin's foulness, and suffered in its loathsome contact as our stained souls cannot. The base presence and false fellowship of a Judas must have been a perpetual pain to His pure spirit. But He endured his meanness with a heavenly self-restraint that curbed each sign of repugnance, and to the last He maintained for the traitor a Divine compassion that would have saved him from himself, and that in Jesus's nature compelled the very instincts of loathing to transform themselves into quite marvellous ministries of superhuman loving. It was no empty show of humility and kindness, it was pity and love incarnate, when Jesus knelt at Judas's back, and washed the feet of His betrayer.

That seems to me one of the most wondrous, most tragic scenes in this world's story. Could we but have seen it—Jesus kneeling behind Judas, laving his feet with water, touching them with His hands, wiping them gently dry, and the traitor keeping still through it all! What a theme for the genius of a painter—the face of Jesus and the face of Judas—the emotions of grandeur looking out of the one, of good and evil contending in the other! If anything could have broken the traitor's heart, and made him throw himself in penitent abasement on the Saviour's pity, it was when he felt on his feet his Master's warm breath and gentle touch, and divined all the forgiving love that was in His lowly heart.

This was our Lord's treatment of a faithless friend. On the night of His betrayal He washed the feet of His bitterest enemy, of the man who had sold Him to death. He rises from that act, and speaks to you and me, and says, "I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you." If you have a friend that has deceived you, do not hate him; if you have an enemy, forgive him; if you can do him a humble kindness, do it; if you can soften and save him by lowly forbearance, be pitiful and long-suffering to the uttermost. It is the law of Christ. If you call it too hard for flesh and blood, remember how your Master, that night He was betrayed, washed the feet of the man that betrayed Him

V.

Read Isa. xl., and 1 Cor. xiii.
The Secret of Magnanimity.—John xiii. 12-17.

There is a contagious quality in greatness. Young hearts, generous souls, dwelling in the vicinity of a hero, are apt to catch his thoughts, and words, and ways. Christ's greatness is His goodness, and that is absolute. Men look at Jesus, behold His perfection, grow to love Him, and hardly knowing how, become like Him. We see His tranquillity, whose minds are so perturbed by life's worries and men's wrongs. We wonder at His infinite peace, whose hearts are so hot and restless with the world's rivalries and ambitions. Our spirits, tired, and hurt, and fevered, gaze wistfully at the great serenity of His gentle life, and ere we know it a strange longing steals into our breast to learn His secret and find rest unto our souls. Plainly the panacea does not consist in any change outside us, for, do what we will, still in every lot there will be crooks and crosses that cannot be haughtily brushed aside, that can only be robbed of their sting by being humbly borne and patiently endured. Moreover, the world was not least, but most unkind to Him, yet could not mar His peace, nor poison the sweetness of His soul. Within Himself lay the talisman of His charmed life, the hidden spring of His unchanging goodness. It was the spell of a lowly, loving, and loyal heart. This is the key to the enigma of His perfect patience. He loved us, and He gave Himself for us. And so, whether His friends were gentle and obedient or wayward and rebellious, whether they were kind and sympathetic or cold, and hard, and selfish, whether they were good or evil, He remained unchanged and unchangeable. "Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end."

The machinery of life is not simple, but complex and intricate. In its working there cannot but be much friction. If the strains and jars of social existence are to be borne without irritation and ill-will, there must be between us and our neighbours a plentiful supply of the oil of human kindness. The pressure and constraint that from a stranger would be irksome or unendurable become tolerable or even gladsome when borne for one we love. Did we, as God meant us to do, love our neighbour as ourself, life's burdens would seem light, for love makes all things easy. But then the difficulty just is to love our neighbour as ourself. Here, as elsewhere, it is the first step that costs. For too often our neighbour is not lovable, but hateful, and our own self is so much nearer to us than any neighbour can be. Its imperious demands silence his claims on our kindness, and drown the calls of duty. Its exuberant growth overshadows his, and robs him of the sunshine. Its intense acquisitiveness absorbs all our care and interest, all our sympathy and affection, so that we have no time or heart to spare for his exactions—no, not even for his necessities. Clearly in this inordinate love of self is the root of the wrong and unrest of our life. Because we love our own self too much, we love others too little to be able to be generous and good like Christ. Wrapped up unduly in selfish anxiety for our own happiness and dignity, we become too sensitive to the injuries of foes, the slights of friends, the cuts and wounds of fortune. The reason why we lack the lowliness of Jesus, and miss the blessedness of His heavenly peace, is our refusal to take up the cross and follow Him in the pathway of self-sacrifice. It was His detachment from self that made Him invulnerable to wounds, imperturbable amid wrongs, good and kind to the evil and to the froward. Because He cared much for others and little for Himself, He was lifted above the strife and restless emulation of our self-seeking lives. The charm that changed for Him the storm of life into a great calm was the simple but potent spell of self-renunciation.

The thought is one that captivates fresh hearts and noble souls with the fascination of a revelation. It seems to unlock all doors, to break all bars, and to lift from life its mysterious burden of perplexity and pain. The pathway of renunciation opens before their eyes with an indefinable charm, unfolding boundless vistas of lofty achievement, haunted by sweet whispers of a joy and content, dreamt of many a time, but never before attained. It is a fond delusion, that experience soon dispels. At the outset the way glows with the rosy light of a new dawn, and our footsteps are light with the bounding life of a fresh springtide; but ere many miles are traversed the road becomes hard and rough, and we, with heavy hearts, drag hot and dusty feet along a weary way. For the way of the Cross has indeed blessedness at the end of it, but easy it cannot be till it is ended. To curb our pride, to crush our self-seeking, to conquer passion, to quell ambition, to crucify the flesh—these things are not easy. They have the stern stress and strain of battle in them. To be patient under injuries, to suffer slights and wrongs, to take the lowest place without a murmur, are conquests that demand a strong heart and a great mind. Where shall we learn a serenity that can be disturbed by no trouble, where find a peace that disappointment cannot break, where reach a goodness that no wrong can ruffle? What is the secret of magnanimity?

The answer comes to us from John's picture of his Lord's humility. In the forefront we behold Jesus kneeling on the ground and washing His disciples' feet, and we wonder at such lowliness. But now John's finger points, and our eyes rest on the heart of this lowly Saviour, and reverently we read His thoughts. "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God," washed the disciples' feet. There is at once the marvel of His condescension and its explanation. He was so great He could afford to abase himself. His followers stood on their dignity, and jealously guarded their rank. He was sure of His position. Nothing could affect His Divine dignity. He came from God; He was going to God. What mattered it what happened to Him, what place He held, what humiliation He endured, in the brief snatch of earthly life between? And we, if we would be great-minded like Him, must have the same high faith, the same heavenly consciousness. We must know that this world, with its wrongs and disappointments, is not all; that this life, with its pride and pomps, is but a passing show. We must remember ever the grander world beyond, the infinite life within, and even now, amid the glare and din of time, live in and for eternity. Then we should no longer fret for a thousand trifles that vex us, we should not trouble for all the wrongs that pain and grieve us. What dignity, what grandeur, what Divine nobility there would be in every thought, in every word, in every deed of all our life on earth, were the consciousness ever glowing in our hearts that we too came from God and are going back to God!