THE
GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.

THE
GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.

A Series of Discourses.

BY

FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A.,

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

"Johannes redet schlecht und einfältig wie ein Kind, und lauten seine Worte (wie die Weltweisen sie ansehen) recht kindisch. Es ist aber eine solche Majestät drunter verborgen, die kein Mensch, so hoch er auch erleuchtet ist, erforschen noch ausreden kann."—Luther, Auslegung des Evangel. Johannis, 1, 5.

NEW EDITION.

London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1882.
[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.]

London:
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

A valued friend, to whose judgment on a critical question I shall always defer, has sent me the following observations upon certain passages in the 11th and 16th Discourses of this volume. I have made no alterations in the text.

John v. 3, 4.

It is implied at page 143 that certain "honest and earnest men" are unwilling to believe that St. John wrote the verse relating to angelic interposition in the cures wrought by the pool of Bethesda, merely because they consider the doctrine unworthy of him. It may be so: but it is at least possible to assent fully to the doctrine, and yet reject the verse, along with the last clause of the preceding verse, on purely outward and critical grounds. Of the six most important Greek MSS. two (and those, perhaps, the best) omit the whole passage, ἐκδεχομένων—νοσήματι, two the clause, ἐκδεχομένων—κίνησιν, and two the verse, ἄγγελος—νοσηματι: not more than one or two tolerable Greek MSS. support the received reading. Of important early versions three omit the whole passage (including the recently discovered "Curetonian" Syriac, probably the earliest and most important of all), another (and two MSS. of a second) omits the verse, and two others omit or obelize part of the verse. Of early patristic evidence there is hardly any either way. Origen's commentary between iv. 54 and viii. 19 is unfortunately lost. Tertullian in one place shows an acquaintance with the belief about the angel, and probably with the whole passage. With this exception, the passage appears to be known in either form to no Father previous to St. Ambrose, no Greek Father previous to St. Chrysostom: they and their successors follow the common text. The only important early authority in its favour is the Old Latin version, (with which must be taken Tertullian;) and yet its MSS. differ surprisingly in the details of the verse, presenting it for the most part in a shorter form than the Greek MSS., which likewise differ considerably among themselves. In short, all the familiar phenomena of interpolation are present in the most flagrant shape. In all probability the passage was added by degrees in the second century in the Western Church, and passed over to the East in the fourth century.

John vii. 53-viii. 11.

At page 229 "some of the Fathers" are said to have "disliked the moral of" the story of the woman taken in adultery, and therefore to have been "glad to believe it not genuine." It is needless to go into the overwhelming critical evidence against its genuineness,—a matter quite distinct from its truth and authority. But surely the charge here made is founded on an oversight. The earlier Fathers (with the doubtful exception of Eusebius, who has been reasonably supposed to allude to the same incident, as recorded by Papias, and in the Gospel according to the Hebrews) nowhere refer to the narrative, apparently for the simple reason that it was entirely unknown to them. Origen's commentary on this part of the chapter is lost; but in a minute recapitulation, included in his remarks on verse 22, he passes at once without observation from vii. 52 to viii. 12. St. Chrysostom and St. Cyril ignore the passage in the same manner. There is really no reason whatever to suspect fraud here. St. Ambrose warns his readers of the danger of reading the story carelessly (otiosis auribus), but does not appear to doubt its genuineness. St. Augustine, arguing against an excessive rigour on the part of injured husbands, rebukes certain persons (modicæ fidei vel potius inimicis veræ fidei), who, as he fancied, banished it from their MSS. because it seemed to be more lenient to women than to their guilty selves. St. Jerome states that it was found in many Greek and Latin MSS., and proceeds to rest an argument upon it. Surely these three Fathers, if any, would have been "glad to believe it not genuine."

Both passages are pretty fully discussed by Dr. Tregelles (Account of the printed Text of the Greek New Testament, pp. 236-246), with the help of some evidence not before accessible.

PREFACE.

I made many attempts to write a commentary on the Gospel of St. John. All of them proved abortive; though each of them made me more alive to the duty of endeavouring to impart to others some of the lessons which I had received from it. At length I was convinced that unless I studied the Gospel first of all with reference to my own congregation, and used it as a lesson-book for them, I never should be able to express what was in my mind to men whom I did not know. Critics, I doubt not, will know excellent reasons why a book of Scripture cannot be satisfactorily expounded in pulpit discourses. I certainly shall not dispute their opinion. No one is more aware than myself that I have not satisfactorily expounded this book of Scripture. I have not hoped to do that. But I believe I may have given my hearers and my readers some encouragement to seek a better Expositor of it than I or any much wiser teacher can be. If a few have been led by my words to hope for that guidance, and to place themselves under it, I trust they will ask for themselves and for me, that we may never desert it for any other, least of all for our own.

CONTENTS.

[DISCOURSE I.]
PAGE

St. John I. 1.—In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Ages of the Church—St. John the Theologian—Accounts of him in the first Three Evangelists—His Jewish feelings—The opening Sentence of the Gospel—What Psalmists and Prophets mean when they speak of the Word of God—How Alexandrian Jews spoke of the Living Word—Confused opinions at the end of the First Century—How the opening of this Gospel meets them 1

[DISCOURSE II.]
St. John I. 14.—And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

The same subject continued—How the Living Word was implied in all the teaching of the Old Testament—The Word, the Creator of the World—The Word enlightening human beings—The testimony of John to Him in this character 15

[DISCOURSE III.]
St. John I. 29.—The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

John the Baptist an Old Testament teacher—How St. John the Evangelist learnt his wisdom from him—His dialogue with the Pharisees—Wherein the Jews were wrong in their apprehension of the Christ—How John's message concerning Him that was before him met these confusions—His testimony to his own disciples concerning the Lamb of God 28

[DISCOURSE IV.]
St. John I. 46.—And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.

The same subject continued—The Scape-Goat and the Lamb—Why the last is a more satisfactory image than the first—The Lamb identified with the Man—The Spirit and the Dove—John's Disciples following Jesus—Nathanael confessing the Man of Nazareth to be the Son of God—What was promised him hereafter 43

[DISCOURSE V.]
St. John II. 11.-This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him.

Miracles and Signs—The change from the desert to the feast—The dialogue between Mary and her Son—Effects of the Sign upon those who had not, and those who had, believed Jesus to be the Christ—Christ giving His blessing to Marriage—Christ the spring of Life and Joy—The beginning of Signs—Object of St. John in recording them—Their message to us 57

[DISCOURSE VI.]
St. John II. 16.-Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

Difference between St. John and the other Evangelists in reference to Galilee and Jerusalem—The Two Purifications of the Temple—Jewish feelings respecting the Temple, easily understood by Englishmen—The Temple-Market—The impression of our Lord's Zeal on the minds of the Disciples—The Words 'My Father's House'—The Temple raised in three days—Double senses 72

[DISCOURSE VII.]
St. John III. 3.—Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Effects of the signs at the Passover on the crowd—Their impression on Nicodemus the Pharisee—Seeing the Kingdom of God—The New Birth—The perplexity of the Pharisee—The Spirit and the Wind—Earthly Things and Heavenly Things—The Son of Man from Heaven and in Heaven—The Brazen Serpent—Consciousness not the basis of God's Kingdom—The Will of God 85

[DISCOURSE VIII.]
St. John III. 30.—He must increase; I must decrease.

Return to John the Baptist—What John's Disciples say of the new Teacher—John's answer—The Gift from above—The Royal Bridegroom—The friend of the Bridegroom—The joy of John in his insignificance—The Earthly and the Heavenly Speech—How the Divine Testimony is received—The Difficulty of believing in God—The new Revelation of the Father and the Son—The Wrath of God 101

[DISCOURSE IX.]
St. John IV. 10.—Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.

Water a Sign of Purification and a Sign of Life—Jesus in Samaria—The Gift of God—The Well of Life within—The woman revealed to herself—The Place of Worship and the Object of Worship—Spiritual and superstitious tendencies of the Samaritans—Christ declaring Himself to the woman 115

[DISCOURSE X.]
St. John IV. 48.—Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.

The woman's Message to her countrymen—'Is not this the Christ?'—Wonder of the disciples—The Reapers and the Harvest—What rewards Christ promises—The Samaritan Faith—The Galilæan Faith—How the Nobleman's Faith was affected by the Cure of his Son 128

[DISCOURSE XI.]
St. John V. 16-18.—And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, because He had done these things on the sabbath-day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He had not only broken the sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.

Jesus at Jerusalem—The Pool—The Angel—Whether the story interferes with Science—Records of Angels in the Old Testament—How the cure of the Man concerned the doctrine respecting Angels—The Sabbath-day—How the Pharisee regarded all the commandments—Reasons of their conflict with Jesus respecting this commandment—'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work' 141

[DISCOURSE XII.]
St. John V. 43.—I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.

The charge against Jesus of making Himself equal with God—How Jesus refuses to exalt Himself—How He discovers the true Idea of Godhead—The Son quickening the dead—All judgment committed to the Son—The Light which that Language throws upon our Experiences—The Son ruling and judging in the unseen World—The Testimony of John—The Testimony of the Father—The Scriptures and the Word 156

[DISCOURSE XIII.]
St. John VI. 35.—And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Jesus feeding the multitude—The Prophet and the King—Jesus walking on the Sea—Use of that Sign—The crowd seeking Jesus—The Bread of Life—The Son of Man and the Father—The Manna falling from Heaven—'My Father giveth you the Bread'—The Will of the Father—Christ promised to the Race and to each Man 172

[DISCOURSE XIV.]
St. John VI. 62.—What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?

How to give thanks for a Peace—How the Nation of Israel was taught that it did not live by Bread alone—How Jesus interpreted that Language—The Teaching of the Father—'The Bread that I will give is my Flesh'—Whether St. John was speaking of the Lord's Supper—Spiritual Eating not metaphorical Eating—How the History of the Church explains the Words, 'Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no Life in you'—How the Ascension is connected with these words—The Faith of Peter—The Unbelief of Judas—How connected with this subject—Its relation to modern events—Christianity and Mahometanism 186

[DISCOURSE XV.]
St. John VII. 37-39.—In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

Meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles—Why the brethren of our Lord wished Him to go to Jerusalem—The Jewish World—Christ teaching in the Temple—Doing God's Will and knowing His Doctrine—The Sabbath-day and Circumcision—In what Sense Christ's Life was mysterious, in what Sense open—'Ye shall seek me, and not find me'—The Gift of the Holy Ghost 209

[DISCOURSE XVI.]
St. John VIII. 29.—And He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him.

Bethlehem and Nazareth—The division in the Sanhedrim—The Story of the Woman taken in Adultery—Jesus declaring Himself the Light of the World—The Two Witnesses—The Descent and the Ascent—The Answer to the Question, 'Who art Thou?'—The Son of Man lifted up—How St. John preaches the Trinity 226

[DISCOURSE XVII.]
St. John VIII. 43.—Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.

The repelling and attracting Power of Christ's Words concerning His Father—The Promise of Truth—The Promise of Freedom—The Servant in the House and the Son—Abraham's Seed—The Desire to murder the Prince of Life—The claim of God as a Father—The charge of being children of the Devil—The Speech and the Word—The Temporal and the Eternal—'Before Abraham was, I am' 240

[DISCOURSE XVIII.]
St. John IX. 39.—And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.

How the story of the Blind Man is connected with the previous discourse—Final causes of bodily disease—The obligation upon Jesus to work—Process of the cure—The debates in the Synagogue—The Doctors and the Beggar—His arguments and their answer—What his blindness had done for him—The Revelation of the Son of God 259

[DISCOURSE XIX.]
St. John X. 27-29.—My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.

The Mount of Olives—The sight of the Sheepfold—The Wicket-Gate—Why the Pharisees could not understand the symbol—St. John's Parables—The robbers and murderers who claimed to be Christs in the Old Time—Application to Modern Times—How is it true that the Sheep did not hear them—The Good Shepherd and the Hirelings—Communion between the Shepherd and the Sheep—Communion between Christ and His Father—The other Sheep—Why Jesus did not say, 'I am the Christ'—'My Father is greater than all'—'I and my Father are one'—'I have said, Ye are gods' 274

[DISCOURSE XX.]
St. John XI. 25.—Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

Jesus and the Disciples again in the Wilderness—The common feeling respecting the Resurrection of Lazarus, the true one—The Sisters and the Brother—The Message concerning Lazarus—The hours of Night and Day—Our Friend sleepeth—How the Two Sisters endure their Comforters—The Resurrection in the Last Day—'I am the Resurrection, and the Life'—The Groaning of Jesus—The Glory of God—Lazarus returning to his Home—Resurrection not a Break in a Man's History—The Renewal of Family Bonds—Deliverance from Unbelief 300

[DISCOURSE XXI.]
St. John XI. 49, 50.—And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

Why the Sadducees did not wish to stone Jesus—The Prophecy of Caiaphas—The Romans and the Cross—The Feast at Bethany—The Box of Ointment—Its Effect on Judas—Jerusalem during the Passover—When the Disciples learnt the meaning of Christ's Entry into the City—The Greeks at the Feast—The Seed falling into the Ground and dying—The Moment of Agony—The Son of Man drawing all Men to Him—'Who is this Son of Man?'—How that Question is asked and answered in our day 321

[DISCOURSE XXII.]
St. John XII. 44-50, and XIII. 1.—Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me. And he that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me. I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak. Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.

The last Signs to the Jewish people—How Isaiah had explained their inefficacy—The Glory of Men and the Glory of God—The Words which closed Christ's public Ministry—The Last Supper—The Washing of the Feet—What had to be washed away—Why the feet only had to be washed—Christ's Example—How one Man can purify another—The Disciple not above his Master—'He that receiveth you receiveth Me'—The trouble of Spirit—The Disciple whom Jesus loved—'That thou doest, do quickly'—The Son of Man glorified—The New Commandment—The prophecy of denial 341

[DISCOURSE XXIII.]
St. John XIV. 25, 26.—These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

The two causes of Trouble—The double support under them—Why Jesus did not speak of dying—The message concerning a Father's House—Jesus the Way—To what the Way leads—'Have I been so long time with you, and hast thou not known me?'—The greater Works—Praying in the Name of Jesus—The promise of the Comforter—Loving and obeying—How the Disciples learnt their need of a Spirit—The gift of the Spirit the gift of Peace—The Prince of this World—The love of the Father to the World 365

[DISCOURSE XXIV.]
St. John XV. 1.—I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

Allusions to vines in the old Scripture—The interpretation of them here—'Abide in me'—Ground of the union of the Disciples to Christ—The gift of Joy—Servants and friends—The command to love—The world's hatred a hatred of God 383

[DISCOURSE XXV.]
St. John XVI. 1.—These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.

Effect of Christ's words upon His Disciples when they met with persecutions—Method of His education—The conviction of the world by the Spirit—The Spirit not speaking of Himself, but of the Son and the Father—'A little while and ye shall not see me'—The birth of the Man into the world—The Apostles' belief—The world overcome 396

[DISCOURSE XXVI.]
St. John XVII. 1.—These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.

Words, their power and their weakness—How to connect Christ's prayer with other prayers—'Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee'—The gift of eternal life—The order of the prayer—The part of it which refers to the Disciples—'I pray not for the world'—The son of perdition—Truth and sanctity—'That they all may be one'—The world which has not known the Father 411

[DISCOURSE XXVII.]
St. John XIX. 37.—And again another scripture saith, They shall look on Him whom they have pierced.

Arrangement of our services in Passion Week—Agreement of St. John with the other Evangelists—Why all dwell upon the arraignment of Jesus—Peculiarities of St. John—The night-scene with the officers—Jesus before the High Priest—The dread of defilement—Jesus before Pilate—'Art thou a king?'—'Behold the man!'—'Whence art thou?'—'We have no king but Cæsar'—The title on the cross—Rending the garment—The Son and the Mother—'A bone shall not be broken'—'They shall look on Him whom they have pierced'—Nicodemus at the sepulchre 424

[DISCOURSE XXVIII.]
St. John XX. 30, 31.—And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name.

Reasons why St. John should record the history of the Resurrection carefully—How far he or the other Evangelists cared to produce evidences—Peter and John at the sepulchre—How John could find in the Scripture that Jesus should rise again—Appearance of the angels—Differences of the Evangelists—Jesus speaking to Mary—'I am not yet ascended'—'Peace be unto you'—The commission to bind and loose—Thomas the Doubter—The conclusion of the narrative—The resumption of it—The Apostles returning to their nets—Jesus on the shore—The fish and the bread—'Simon, lovest thou me?'—The two Apostles—John tarrying till Christ came—The things which Jesus did, and is doing, and will do 443

NOTES.

DISCOURSE I.

THE JEWISH FISHERMAN, THE CHRISTIAN DIVINE.

[Lincoln's Inn, Septuagesima Sunday, January 20, 1856.]

St. John I. 1.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

An eminent man, who died not long since in Germany, was wont to divide the life of the Church into three periods. That before the Reformation he called the Petrine; the three centuries since the Reformation, the Pauline; one he maintained was at hand, which would last to the end of this dispensation—that he named the Johannine. The classification is perhaps too ingenious to be true; and there are many reasons why we ought not to treat all the years before the sixteenth century as belonging to the same division. Nevertheless, there is something in the observation concerning St. John which has commended itself to minds of a very different order from his who put it into this shape. Some have supposed that St. John is to displace the earlier writers of the New Testament, because his teaching is more profound, or more charitable, or more simple than theirs. Some suppose that he was especially appointed to explain, unfold, bring out into their fullest light, all that previous Prophets and Apostles had presented under different aspects, in forms suitable to their own times and circumstances. Wide as this difference is, both may agree that the writings of St. John, much as they may have been studied hitherto, deserve a fresh and a more earnest study. Both may hope that if they have been intended for the illumination of our days, the meaning of them may come forth to us with greater clearness than it did to our forefathers; not because we are wiser than they, but because a larger experience, perhaps an experience of more intense doubt and ignorance, may make us more ready to welcome the divine interpreter, and less eager to anticipate his discoveries by the conclusions which ask to be corrected by them.

There are three books in our canon which we attribute to St. John, besides the two short letters to Gaius and the Elect Lady. Of these, his Gospel appears to me a perfect summary of Christian Theology, his First Epistle of Christian Ethics, his Apocalypse of Christian Politics. I do not despair of seeing even this last book come forth, out of the hands of soothsayers and prognosticators, as a real lesson-book respecting the dealings of God with the nations, respecting the method and the issues of His righteous government. The craving there is in the minds of men for a faithful history of the past, which shall be also a faithful guide to the future, will surely be satisfied some day; this book may teach us how it shall be satisfied. It requires even less faith to expect that when we are tired of speculations about the maxims and principles of morality, which do not make our morality better, while yet their very failure convinces us that there are principles which we did not create and which must bind us, we may turn to an old and simple document, which sets forth the commandment that has life—which tells us what the end of our existence is, what has deranged it, how each man may recover all that he has lost, and be what he was created to be.

I had thought at first that these Bible ethics might be more suitable to a congregation of men, busy in the world and valuing higher maxims only as they can test them by their application to its daily occasions, than what I have called by the more imposing name of Theology. I should have acted upon that thought if I had believed that St. John's theology was of that stamp which has made the word agreeable to schoolmen, offensive to those who would turn words into acts. If theology is a collection of dry husks, the granaries which contain those husks will be set on fire, and nothing will quench the fire till they be consumed. It is just because I find in St. John the grain which those husks sometimes conceal, for which they are sometimes a substitute; it is just because theology in his Gospel offers itself to us as a living root, out of which all living powers, living thoughts, living acts may develop themselves; it is just because there is nothing in him that is abstract, because that which is deep and eternal proves itself to be deep and eternal by entering into all the relations of time, by manifesting itself in all the common doings of men; it is therefore, I believe, that he makes his appeal, not to the man of technicalities, not to the school doctor, but to the simple wayfarer, and at the same time to the man of science who does not forget that he is a man and who expects to ascertain principles only by the honest method of experiment.

To all such, I am sure, the careful study of the fourth Gospel will prove of unspeakable worth and interest. A preacher may do much to hinder such study; he may also do something to promote it. He will hinder it if he seeks to make texts give out a sense which he has first put into them. He will hinder it if he seeks to stifle any doubts which the words themselves may excite; any that are suggested by the contradictions of the world, and the perplexities of the reader's own mind. He will hinder it if he breaks the continuity of the narration by taking a passage here and there to inculcate a particular moral, without considering how it is related to the passages that precede and that follow it and to the general scope of the Evangelist. He may promote it so far as he believes that he is a fellow-learner with those whom he is teaching; so far as he is convinced that the words of the Evangelist are clearer and diviner than any which he, of his own wit or by the help of inferior books, can put in their place; so far as he desires that his own eyes, and those of all students, may be purged that they may see what is actually in the words; so far as he believes that there is One who is above the words, above the writer of them, to whom they point, and from whom all the wisdom that is in them comes; so far as he trusts for himself, and encourages all to trust, that this Teacher wills us to come to the knowledge of His truth, and will withhold no help that we need in the pursuit of it. Beseeching the Holy Spirit of God to keep alive this temper in your minds and in mine, I would begin the examination of St. John's Gospel to-day, desiring, if God permit, that we may go through with it to the end.

When I talk of St. John as a Theologian, I adopt the title which was given to him at a very early time. In our own day that title has awakened a suspicion about the genuineness of this Gospel. He is spoken of by the other Evangelists as a fisherman mending his father's nets; as one of two Apostles whom our Lord called Sons of Thunder; as giving some warrant for that designation by desiring to call fire from heaven upon a Samaritan village; as showing signs of a special ambition by his prayer that he himself and his brother might sit one on Christ's right hand and one on His left in His kingdom; as exhibiting the sectarian and exclusive temper of his nation, by forbidding a man to cast out devils in Christ's name who did not follow with His Apostles. Was there anything in these early characteristics to prepare one for expecting that he would be the divine, not of a Jewish synagogue but of a Christian Church? True, he is spoken of as being present on the Mount of Transfiguration, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. On both occasions his eyes were heavy, like those of the other disciples, with the sight of glory and the sight of suffering. When others forsook and fled, he did so likewise. In the Acts of the Apostles he appears, no doubt, in a conspicuous position, but it is still expressly as a Jewish Apostle. If he is joined with St. Peter in healing the sick man, it is when they are going up to the Temple at the hour of prayer. He endures the reproaches and the scourges of the Sanhedrim. But after the preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles, we hear no more of him; he vanishes out of sight. St. Paul calls him one of the Apostles of the Circumcision, but alludes to him no further. When we meet with him again, not in the sacred record but in the mist of ecclesiastical traditions, there are reports of him as adhering to the Jewish observance of the Passover, as in some sense representing the dignity of the high-priest. How could we suppose from such intimations that he would open a Gospel with the words I read to you in the text, words which seem to intimate an acquaintance with heathen speculation, even with a high philosophy? Does that language belong at all to the simplicity of the first century? Is it not much more in accordance with the spirit of the next age, when plain narratives were combining themselves with curious speculations, and Christian teachers were introducing what they had learnt in the porch or the academy among the doctrines and the exhortations which had been uttered to fishermen on the lake of Tiberias or to the crowds who were gathered round the mount?

From what I said of my reasons for selecting this Gospel as a subject for discourses in the pulpit, you will anticipate part of the answer which I should give to these suggestions. If the Gospel is what those who make them, say that it is, they are right. If its theology is of an abstract, artificial character, compounded of elements drawn from all heterogeneous sources, let it be attributed to an age—I do not determine whether the second century was or was not such an age—in which an artificial habit of mind prevailed, in which system-building had become a profession. If there are no traces of such a disposition in the fourth Gospel,—if it is, in its language, in the construction of its sentences, in the style of its narrative, the simplest of all the Gospels,—then we may have good cause to think that it savours more of the fisherman to whom it has been for so many ages ascribed, than of the learned convert from some Gentile school, the ingenious blender of Jewish and Gentile dogmas, whom critics of this age have imagined to be its manufacturer.

I do not, however, desire to avoid a part of the inquiry which these remarks may not seem at first to meet. All the accounts of St. John in the New Testament, all that we can guess of him from other sources, certainly lead us to think of him as one whose mind had been cast in the Hebrew mould, who had learnt the lore of a child of Abraham, who had not, in the same sense that St. Paul did, thrown himself among the inhabitants of the Greek cities, and become as 'one without law, that he might gain those that are without law.' St. John's position in the city of Ephesus, during his latter years, does not affect the opinion that he was essentially a Jew. Jerusalem had fallen, or was about to fall; nowhere, perhaps, would he be more likely to find a colony of men attached to the customs of his forefathers than in that city. Confessedly, he had no part in founding its Church or converting its Gentile inhabitants; that had been St. Paul's work. And we may admit without scruple the evidence, imperfect though it be, that St. John in that city did preserve some of the characteristics of his childhood and of his education, even when the world to which those strictly belonged was passing away.

How do these admissions affect our belief that he was the writer of the sentences which introduce the Gospel that bears his name? I believe they strengthen that belief exceedingly. I can conceive nothing more thoroughly Hebrew than these sentences. I pass over the resemblance, which will strike you all upon this day,[1] between these verses and those at the commencement of the Book of Genesis; though the correspondence between their style and the style of Moses, is one of those internal correspondences which we feel the more strongly the more we reflect. But I would beg you to notice the essential difference between this kind of writing and that of any person who had been brought up in any school of philosophy whatsoever, whether one purely Greek, or where Greek and Hebrew elements were mixed as they were at Alexandria. Would you expect in such a person the broad, simple, assertive tone, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'? Would not the true philosopher try to vindicate his name by proving that he was a seeker after wisdom? Would not the false philosopher, if he were ever so much inclined to dogmatise, at least produce some plausible arguments in support of any statements which he advanced? Where, but in the writings of the Old and New Testament, do you meet with such an adventurous proclamation as this? Where, even in the Books of the Old and New Testament, do you meet with one that is quite a parallel to it?

And then look at the contents of the sentence. What have you been hearing of, all through the Psalms and the Prophets, but of God's word, which was to give Joshua courage, which David delighted in and fed upon, which was a fire in the heart of Jeremiah? On the surface of the Bible this language encounters you. I mean, that your eye cannot wander over a page without being arrested by expressions of the kind; you become so familiar with it that you forget the peculiarity of it. But if you stop for a moment to think, you will perceive that whenever the word of God is spoken of, something most vital and most inward is intended. It is a quick, penetrating power, entering into the man, affecting his heart and his reins, standing out in the sharpest contrast to the idols which speak to the eye. The 'word of God' is the favourite expression in the writers of the Old Testament, because they are testifying of an invisible Lord who speaks to man's spirit; because they are denouncing all attempts to make the objects of men's senses into their lords. How frightful, then, to an old Prophet would have been the thought of confounding the mere letters of a book, which could be seen, handled, copied out, with the words of the Lord! No doubt these words might have characters found for them; they might be handed down in these characters from age to age: it would be a glorious witness of their enduring quality if they were so. But it would remain unalterably true, that as words coming forth from the mouth of God, and not to return to Him void, they addressed themselves to the wills, hearts, consciences of men; into these only could they enter.

Whence did they proceed? Solomon, the wise king, had spoken of a divine Wisdom, from which his was derived. He had spoken of that Wisdom as brought up with God—as His counsellor—as an object to be sought for, embraced, loved by men. The Prophets had spoken of the Word of God coming to them. The Word ruled them, searched them, judged them. They were not the speakers; the Word was the speaker. Could such language be uttered continually in the ears of earnest men and be disregarded? It was not disregarded; it moulded the very heart of all true Israelites. But soon it was forced upon them in another way. After the Babylonian captivity, they were brought into contact with heathens; they were obliged to learn what heathens had been thinking of. Elsewhere they heard of great mythological conceptions, of the Lion, the Eagle, the Ox, the Man, which represent different aspects of the Divinity. But in the city of Alexandria they heard how Greek sages, in their struggle to get rid of mythological fancies, had spoken of a Logos or Reason in themselves, which lifted them above themselves. It was strangely connected with the power of speech; it pointed to the very source of speech and thought. It was often described as an eye, blinded in most, and yet of which those in whom it was open could only say, 'It makes us know what the privilege is of being men, what the responsibility. Now we are sure that man has something to do with the Divinity, as all the traditions of our fathers tell us that he has. But what he has to do with the Divinity, who can inform us? for the traditions only bewilder us when they try to explain.' Was it strange that a Jew should say to himself, 'Why, my oracles have been telling me from the very first of a Word that speaks to men, a Word of God; a Word that withdraws them from the idolatry of sense, and the pursuit of sensible things; a Word that has taught them how to rule themselves; a Word that has taught them how they may seek after their Creator, and hold converse with Him.' Men of cultivation as well as of honesty might be easily overwhelmed by this twofold discovery; they might vacillate between their Gentile lore and their Jewish; they might mix them sometimes confusedly together; they might resort to allegories for the sake of explaining the connexion, which the simpler student of either would reject as unsatisfactory and frivolous.

These descriptions apply, in some measure, to those commentaries on the Old Testament which are contained in the Apocryphal books called 'The Wisdom of Solomon,' and 'Ecclesiasticus.' The characteristic of these books is their recognition of a divine Wisdom, which the writers sometimes speak of as if it were abstract, quite as often as if it were personal and substantial. These modes of speech are confessedly derived from the Scriptures. They speak of no history but the Hebrew history; probably they were acquainted with no other. Still it is probable that they were holding intercourse with Gentiles, perhaps were explaining the Hebrew books to them. But all the peculiarities I have mentioned became far more marked and definite in Philo the Alexandrian, who was an old man when he went on an embassy from the Alexandrian Jews to Caligula. In him the idea of a divine Word, who unites God and man, and holds converse with the spirit of man, becomes the ground of all his thoughts. Every book in the Bible speaks to him of such a Being. The belief in Him alone explains to him the life of patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets. Yet he admits that such a Being must also have been the source of all wisdom to Gentile philosophers. It is his privilege, as a Jew, to explain to them their own conceptions of such a Being. Moses could declare that that was which Plato felt must be.

All must see, if we had not positive evidence of the fact, how much such thoughts, coming forth at such a time, must have affected Jews, may have affected Gentiles. Yet Philo wrote avowedly for the learned. He wished to put himself at a distance from all others. It was a satisfaction to him that he could, by the use of dark allegories, keep the profane vulgar at a distance. How, then, could his thoughts blend with those of the men who came preaching that One who was called a carpenter's son, One who had chosen fishermen as His disciples, was the King of men and the Son of God? 'To the poor the gospel is preached,' was the maxim which they were to exhibit in their lessons and their lives. How could such doctrines as Philo's be addressed to the poor?

And yet the disciples were obliged to speak of Jesus as the Son of Man who sowed the word in men's hearts, which sprang up and bore fruit, thirty and sixty and an hundredfold. They were obliged to speak of Jesus, the Son of Man, as opening a kingdom of heaven which was within men. They were obliged to speak of that kingdom as the kingdom of His Father. They were obliged to say that the Son of Man had opened it to all, because He was also the Son of God. They were obliged to say that they could only testify of this kingdom because He had given them the Spirit of His Father. And when St. Paul learnt that he, the Hebrew of the Hebrews, was called to be the Apostle of the Gentiles, it was 'by a revelation of the Son of God in him' Whom he was 'to preach to the Gentiles.' To the Corinthians, among whom he had determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, he still spoke of Jesus Christ as the 'Wisdom of God' and the 'Power of God.' To the Ephesians he spoke of their having 'been chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that they might be holy, and without blame before Him in love.'

What was the consequence? Jews said, 'You are exalting a man into the place of God; you are denying the words which you were taught on your mother's knee, "The Lord our God is one Lord."' Gentiles said, 'You are robbing us of the belief we have had of friendly beings of another world, who have sympathised with ours, who have had loving converse with sages and heroes, who have mixed with us as men among men.' Philosophers said, 'What has your teaching to do with all those glimpses of light in the reason which wise men have spoken of, which they have been sure that they received?' Disciples of Philo asked, 'What has this human Teacher of yours to do with that Word of God whom our master discovered in all the history of the Old Testament?' Disciples of John the Baptist (still numerous, and probably much connected with the Alexandrian teachers, as in the instance of Apollos) said, 'Our master preached repentance and turning to the living God. You say he spoke also of a Teacher who was to come after him. Do you mean that he wished us to turn away from the living God to this future Teacher?' Christian men began to ask themselves whether Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, because He was born in a wonderful manner of the Virgin? They began to dream of Him as a demigod, or a superior angel, half human, half divine. Other Christians began to boast that they were sons of God only because they were baptized men, and that their sonship was a sentence upon all the world before them and around them. A cloud of opinions—vapours gathered from all quarters—was floating about in the world; was nowhere, perhaps, denser than in the great emporium of Ephesus. A great convulsion was at hand. St. Paul had said a great apostasy was at hand.

Then, if we may believe the tradition of centuries, spoke out the old man of Ephesus, the Galilean fisherman, the Son of Thunder,—he whose brother had been taken by an early death to the right hand of his Master,—he who was himself to linger till the end of the age,—the passionate Jew, who had desired fire to come from heaven;—then spake he who had been on the Mount, and in the Garden, and at the Last Supper: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God; which were born not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God.'

Except at the close of the first century, when the Old Testament age was passing into the New, I conceive these verses could not have been written. Except by the most earnest of Jews, the most simple of Christian Apostles, I believe they could not have been written. But if they are, as they are sometimes supposed to be, merely a doctrinal proem to an actual Gospel, I admit they must have proceeded from some one else. I hope to show you hereafter that they explain every narrative which follows, as every narrative which follows illustrates them. I hope you will find that the whole Gospel is a Theology just as much as these verses; because it is a Gospel to mankind, a Gospel to the conscience of each man, from God and concerning God.

DISCOURSE II.

THE WORD THE LIGHT OF MEN.

[Lincoln's Inn, 1st Sunday in Lent, February 10, 1856.]

St. John I. 14.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

When I spoke to you last, I proposed to examine St. John's Gospel carefully and in order. It was impossible not to pause earnestly upon the opening sentence, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' What does that text say to us? 'It declares,' some will answer eagerly and decisively, 'the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Be it so; but the name Jesus Christ is not introduced till the seventeenth verse of the chapter. If we are sitting at the feet of an Apostle or Evangelist, we cannot change his method for a method of our own. The writers of the other Gospels start from the birth of Jesus, or from the preaching of John the Baptist. We cannot understand them unless we go with them to Bethlehem or to the wilderness. St. John leads us back to the beginning of all things. We cannot understand him, if we assume events that were to take place in the fulness of the time.

Acting upon this principle, I reminded you that the expression 'word of God' is one of continual recurrence as well as of most solemn import in the books of the Old Testament. I could not find that, in its lowest sense, it ever meant less than a message from the invisible God to the mind and spirit of man. The assertion that God speaks to men by His word, and that men are capable of hearing that word, was the great testimony for the truth which was implied in heathen superstitions, the great testimony against these superstitions. Idolaters were not mistaken in thinking that they needed intercourse with that which was higher than themselves; they were mistaken in seeking, in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth, for Him who was nearer to them than He was to all the things He had made, who was the Lord of their hearts and reins. The more you study the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, the more you meditate the earliest and simplest book of the Bible—that which tells of the Voice which spoke to Adam in the garden, of the Voice which called Abram to go forth whither he knew not—the more, I am persuaded, you will feel that this is the most characteristic peculiarity of these records, that which connects them with each other, that which has given them their power over mankind.

Nevertheless, the life of the men who were said to receive these communications was eminently practical and manly. They did not pore over their own thoughts; they went forth and did the work which was given them to do, feeding flocks, bringing up children, fighting enemies. It is evident that their belief in the invisible did not in the least interfere with their business in this visible world. That they were to till and subdue by the same charter which assured them that they were God's servants, and that His word was directing them. While they kept their faith in the unseen Teacher, the firmament over their heads became a clear daily and nightly witness respecting Him and themselves. The stars told them what their seed should be; the sun, going forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, carried the message of their God into all lands. It was when the faith in the invisible grew weak, that they bowed their heads and worshipped the forms which once testified to them of their greater nobleness and sublimer origin. And with this came another idolatry, in its essence grander, in its results baser. The man felt that beings of his own kind had more power over him than all the hosts of heaven. He did homage to their goodness, their wisdom, their beneficence, their strength. He confessed the king, and was raised to a higher sense of his own freedom and kingship. The king became a giant and a tyrant; he became a dwarf and a slave. What should raise men out of either oppression? What should set them free from the yoke which creatures below their own kind and of their own kind had imposed upon them? The Jew was taught that the Lord God was his King; that He broke the yoke of the Pharaoh and of the Pharaoh's gods; that He claimed the most abject slaves as His servants. The Israelite was brought under an order which had this foundation. In the strength of it, kings were to reign and decree judgment; they were to preserve the people from lapsing into the idolatry which would destroy their obedience and their freedom. They were to reign by the word of the Lord.

But what was this word of God which held men back who had fierce inclinations in their hearts, and who had swords to execute them in their hands? It could not be a statute; that had no such power. It could not be a set of moral maxims; they had no such power. It could not be a promise, or a threat, about the world that is, or the world to come; neither had such power. The Prophet, living amidst the signs of decay and ruin in his own polity, amidst the earthquakes which were shaking all nations, under the overwhelming power of empires that sought to put out the life of nations, began to attach another and deeper sense to the word of God, not incompatible with the older use, but involved in it; not a metaphor or allegory deduced from it, but a higher truth lying behind it. The Word of God came to him, spoke to him in the very depths of his heart. He spoke to it, sympathised with it. But dared he say it any longer? No; in some wonderful manner this Word must be a Friend, a Person; One who could work with him, reprove him, illuminate him. This Word must be the Teacher, the Friend, the King of Israel. This Word must one day prove Himself to be the Lord of the whole earth. Awful discovery! which makes him tremble, and yet which makes him bold; which sometimes draws forth from him the cry, 'Woe is me! for I am an unclean man, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts;' which again gives him all his hope both for himself and for his people. At every step of his own experience and of his nation's experience, new visions unfolded themselves out of this vision. It must be that all those various objects in nature which men were worshipping, that all the living order of nature in which those things were comprehended, proceeded from this living Word. It must be that all the races of men, all their politics, were under His guidance and government. It must be that all the light that had entered into any man's heart had come from Him. It must be that the darkness which was in any man's heart had come from rebellion against Him.

In various ways and in different measures this truth was unveiling itself to the Prophets of old: I have had other opportunities of pointing out to you the steps of its manifestation. When I quoted the first fourteen verses of St. John's Gospel, at the close of my last sermon, I wished to show you that he had gathered up into one distinct statement, one full revelation, that which it had taken ages to spell out. I wished you to feel that there was, in one sense, no novelty in his proclamation, because he was saying that which was implied in all the past history and literature of his people; yet that there was, in another sense, the most important novelty, because that which had been implied could now for the first time be expressed. I hinted to you that in this case, as in every case, the expression did not come, till all the doubts which called for the expression had been awakened, and had become clamorous. In fact, these doubts were leading Jews, heathens, disciples of Jesus, very near indeed to the gulf of atheism. Was there an absolute Being dwelling in His own perfection? Was there a Word who uttered His mind? How was this duality compatible with the unity of the divine nature? Here was the first grand difficulty, one which did not more exercise the Jew, who had lived to proclaim that unity as the primary truth of the universe, than the Gentile philosopher who had arrived at it as a final result, as an escape from the polytheism which the vulgar must still be left to believe in. St. John uses no such phrases as unity or duality. We have the broad, old, simple Hebrew language, the language for human beings, not for speculators. We hear of a living God, not of a notion. And this God is, as the old record had said, a Creator. Men had been asking in all countries how is the world related to God? Did He make it as an artificer makes a dead instrument? Did it flow from Him as a thought flows from the meditative man? Or is it self-made? Is God Himself a part of it, merely the spring of its movements? St. John answers, 'The world was made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life.' It was no dead instrument turned forth by a mechanist. It was no part of Himself. It was no order moving by itself without Him. It was a world of living, productive forces, governed by a Person. His own life was quickening the movements of His creatures; His own wisdom was directing them. The philosophical puzzle is met by words which, I think, you will find are adapted to the physical science of the nineteenth century, as much as they were to the theological doubts of the first century; which show where theology and physical science meet, how they are distinguished, how they are reconciled. And yet the language is still the child's language, the fisherman's language. It is Moses, not Plato, who is revived in the Ephesian teacher.

Then come verses which meet the troubles of the heart and conscience of man, as those meet the troubles of his intellect,—which speak to him of himself, as those speak of the world. How simple they are! How entirely they accord with what I have been showing you were the thoughts of old Patriarchs and Prophets! And yet what worlds of speculation they encounter! what theories about the conscience they come in contact with! what webs of mythology they unravel! Above all, how they explain the thoughts of those who cannot reason, and yet are subject to those laws about which all reasoning is conversant! 'In Him was life, and the life was the light of men: and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness does not take it down into itself.' What have not those words been to men, who have been for years trying to reconcile the contradictory phenomena of their own spirits! 'Word of God, thy light has been shining in me, flashing into my heart, discovering the dark places and passages there! The darkness tries to comprehend, to hide, to quench thy light! Thanks be to Thee, it cannot.'

The transition appears great from this sentence—so general, yet so individual,—concerning the beginning of the world and the latest days of it—to the words, 'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.' No doubt we are reminded by the change that the writer belonged to a particular age—to an age in which there were many disciples of John the Baptist still alive, who were inclined to claim for him the very highest honour that could belong to a divine messenger.[2] The Apostle was especially likely to know what followers of the Baptist would say and feel respecting him, since he had probably been one of them. But he does not forget the subject with which he was occupied before, when he turns to his old master and to those who were paying him an extravagant homage. He introduces John that he may declare what every man sent from God in the former times had done,—what every such man in that time, in all time to come, must do: 'The same came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.' 'You who listened to John, if there are any of you yet on earth, what was the effect of his speech, his look, his baptism upon you? I will tell you what it was upon me. As he said "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," my darkness was revealed to me. That darkness was discovered by the divine light of which he spoke. He came to bear witness of this light, that you and I might believe in it.' Here was one mighty, unspeakable cause of gratitude to him. But, 'He was not that Light, but was sent that he might witness of the Light.' So was it with John preaching by the side of Jordan. Was the saying less true of Jeremiah preaching beside the temple that was to be desolate, of Ezekiel preaching by the river Chebar? Was it less true of St. Peter on the day of Pentecost, of St. Paul at Antioch? Was it less true of Bernard, of Francis of Assisi, of Luther, of any man who in later days has awakened men out of a slumber of death? What can be said of each except this: 'The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light'? What would each have said of himself but this: 'I am not that Light, but am come that I may bear witness of that Light'?

The Apostle says this; but he has something greater and deeper to say. He says, 'That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' 'We may have felt, when we heard the preacher in the wilderness, as if there were some new light shining then for the first time into our hearts. We may have supposed it was kindled by the speaker. But no star arose in the firmament at his bidding; that which struck us with such wonder had been with us from our birth. When any man comes into this order of ours, he finds the Word there.' 'He was in the world, and the world was made by Him and the world knew Him not.' Think of all the strange dreams of immortality that have visited human beings; their sense of a law of right and wrong; their acknowledgment of powers which assert the right and avenge the wrong! Think how these great facts of humanity have affected the condition of men in every region of the world,—how politics, legislation, civil society, have been shaped by them! Think of the confusions respecting immortality, respecting the boundaries of right and wrong, respecting the justice and injustice of the invisible kings and judges whose power has been confessed and feared! Think of the superstitions, oppressions, slaveries, that have grown out of these confusions! And then read once again this sentence, 'He was in the world'—He from whom light came—'and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.' See if you have not there the clear, scientific explanation of these strange facts; the universal law which tells you how they could exist together. See if that scientific explanation, that universal law, is not brought to an experimental test; so that every man, every child may know, from that which has passed in himself, what it means. 'He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.' The light came into men's hearts, as into its proper native dwelling-place. The Word from whom that light issued asserted His right over all the feelings, instincts, impulses, determinations of these hearts, as over His own rightful domestics and subjects. But the light was repelled; the rightful Ruler was treated as an intruder by these domestics and subjects. There was anarchy and rebellion, where there should have been subordination and harmony. A usurper had reduced those into slavery who would not have the service which is freedom. 'But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God; which were born, not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God.' The last words seemed to speak of an order subverted, of a creation which had lost its centre. These declare that the order was preserved; that the centre still proved its power to attract, and to retain in their orbits, the bodies which were intended to move around it. There were those that confessed the Light; there were those that entertained it, that sought to walk in it. There were those who submitted themselves to the government of their true Ruler. And they attained the stature of men; they learnt themselves, they manifested to others whence they had come, what was their parentage. 'To them gave He power to become sons of God.' They were sons of men, born to the same condition as others of their kind; but He made them know that in their inmost being they were not born of earthly or human seed, but had their life from above, from Him who liveth and abideth for ever.

Up to this point, I conceive, the Evangelist has not even touched upon any principle or fact specially belonging to the Christian theology, to the new dispensation. He has been unfolding the principle of the old. He has been discoursing of that law and government under which all had lived, whether they were prophets or people, whether they were true prophets or false, whether they were Gentiles or Jews. He has claimed the high prerogative of a Jew, the prerogative of interpreting the condition of mankind; of declaring in what relation those stood to God who had been ignorant of their relation, or who had seen it dimly, or had denied it. Even when he speaks of John, it is as the Prophet of the old world; as winding up the witness which previous Prophets had borne to the Word, from which all the light that was in them had streamed out. He says nothing yet of any future Teacher to whom John pointed. And, as we shall see hereafter, when he does come, in due order, to the part of John's teaching in which he spoke of One whose shoe's latchet he was not worthy to unloose, it is that he may quote the memorable language, 'He that cometh after me is preferred before me; for He was before me. And of His fulness have all we received, and grace answering to grace.' You cannot hear that fragment of a divine discourse without perceiving that the object of the Evangelist is to carry us into the past before he speaks of the future; that he regards the especial grandeur of the new time as this, that it reveals that which had been of old, that which had been from the beginning. But it was absolutely necessary to the coherency and continuity of the Apostle's statement that he should not introduce these words of the Baptist—wonderfully as they illustrate the account of his mission which had been given previously—till he had first made that announcement which is contained in the text: 'And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.'

This, my brethren, I regard not as the text of my sermon, but of St. John's Gospel. I conceive that Gospel is nothing more nor less than the setting forth how Jesus Christ proved Himself in human flesh to be that Word of God in whom was life, and whose life was the light of men, who had been in the world, and by whom the world was made, and whom the world knew not; how in that flesh He manifested forth the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father; how He manifested the fulness of grace and truth. It is because the theology of St. John comes forth in these human facts that I affirmed it to be a theology not merely different from the systematic school theology, but the great deliverance from it. I should, therefore, be departing from my object and belying my professions, if instead of waiting for the gradual discovery of the meaning of these words in St. John's story, I began with thrusting my own meaning into them. All I ought to do,—and this I must do, for the very purpose of showing you how strict and beautiful the Apostle's method is, and how much wrong we do to ourselves and him when we forsake it,—is to point out, very shortly, the connexion which I trace between this verse and the one that immediately precedes it.

The Evangelist had said of those who received the Word, 'to them, gave He power to become the sons of God.' A new expression—to a certain extent, a new thought—is brought before us here. We had heard of the Word as One in whom is life; we had heard that His life was the light of men. All the language concerning Him had been such as applies—not to an abstraction, not to an essence, but—to a Person. But now it is said that those who accept His government, who are penetrated by His light, acquire a power which they had not before. They discover a relation which had been hidden from them. It was the greatest of all their earthly blessings that they had fathers according to the flesh. A higher blessing is conferred upon them now; they can act as if they had a heavenly Father. As if they had a heavenly Father! But are they never to know certainly whether they have or not? Is the power of becoming sons not to be associated with the clear consciousness that this is their proper and original state? 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.' He became a man among men. We beheld Him, and we know that He was—what He told us that He was—not an independent Being, but a Son. He was not merely a Light of lights. We are sure that He was the ground of all human sonship; that He was the only-begotten of a Father. That higher, more blessed, more perfect name thenceforth mingled itself with all our thoughts of that God whom no man hath seen or can see; it turned our thoughts into trust and worship. The Absolute Truth and Goodness shone forth through Him. The only-Begotten revealed Him who had been from the beginning. He opened a new dispensation, because He made us know that God who had been speaking to us in the old.

DISCOURSE III.

THE TEACHING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

[Lincoln's Inn, 2d Sunday in Lent, February 17, 1856.]

St. John I. 29.

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

John the Baptist is represented throughout this chapter as speaking of One who had been before him, though He was coming after him. This is the burden of his discourse. It has been asked by the bold critics of another country, whether such language does not presume a belief in the preexistence of our Lord, which might belong to one of his apostles, but could scarcely belong to his forerunner. English divines ordinarily reply, that the question is one which cannot be entertained. 'How can we dispute the right of the Divine Wisdom to make a special revelation of this doctrine to one person or to another?'

This may be the right method of treating such an objection; but if the remarks which I made in my two last sermons were true, we are not under any necessity of resorting to it. I endeavoured to show you that the principle which St. John asserts in the opening verses of his Gospel, was far from being characteristically a doctrine of the New Testament. It belongs to the Old. It is involved in the words, acts, lives of the Jewish Prophets. It could not indeed be enunciated by them as it is enunciated by the beloved disciple. There is a largeness in it which could not be fully realized till the barrier between Jews and Gentiles had been broken down. Still it was as a Jew—as an interpreter of the Jewish records—that the writer of the fourth Gospel spoke of the Word of God. He was not using new language, which would have startled his hearers. He was expressing, in simple and familiar language, what others of his countrymen had hidden from the vulgar under learned phrases and dark conceits. Why is it difficult to believe that, in doing so, he was recording some of the lessons which he had first received from the preacher in the wilderness? Was it strange that he, the last of the Prophets, should utter in more distinct terms that which all the Prophets before him had been imperfectly uttering? External evidence would be in favour of such a supposition. The Baptist was a contemporary of teachers who notoriously spoke of the light in men's hearts and of the Word from whom it issued. Many of his disciples became, we know, afterwards blended with their disciples. There was, however, one all-important distinction between him and them. He spoke to the hearts of the multitude,—to the publicans and the soldiers; they spoke to students. He appealed to those who were conscious of folly and sin; they spoke of the illumination which was granted to the righteous and the wise. And that is just the difference which we have recognised between the statements of the Apostle, the disciple of the Baptist, and those Alexandrian teachers whom some suppose him to have imitated. It is not only that his style is simple and childlike. Throughout he speaks of the light as making men aware of the darkness that is in them. Throughout he speaks of the light as lightening all men.

Are these reports of the Baptist inconsistent with those which we derive from the other Evangelists? Are we not told that he came to level the hills, and exalt the valleys? Are we not told that he bade his countrymen not say within themselves that they had Abraham to their father, because God was able of the stones to raise up children to Abraham? What finer commentary can we find on these announcements than the words, 'He testified of the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world'?

Still the reader of St. John's Gospel will continue to ask himself, 'Is not the lesson which I am taught here, in some sense or other, a more advanced lesson than that which was imparted even by the first Evangelists,—à fortiori, than that which was imparted before the day of Pentecost, before the resurrection, the death, even the preaching, of Jesus Christ?' I think, my brethren, that there is a confusion latent in this word 'advanced'—a confusion which besets other studies as well as theological. We speak of Bacon's discovery of the true method of physical investigation, as the greatest step in advance which it was possible for the man of science to take. But in another sense that discovery involved a retrogression. The schoolman, who had proceeded with the greatest satisfaction to himself in building a tower of speculations respecting nature, is stopped in his work and bidden to look back to his foundations. Classifications and generalizations, which had appeared convenient and indispensable, are disallowed, because they hinder direct intercourse with the facts. And the laborious collector of facts, though he is commended for his diligence, is told that every one of them must be submitted to tests before we can know what it is worth. Is it not true, in this and in all similar instances, that the greatest progress consists in the assertion and elucidation of first principles; that when they are asserted and elucidated, all faithful effort is seen to have been directed to the search for them,—all unfaithful, self-seeking efforts, to the construction of systems on hypothetical sand?

Applying this remark to the case before us, I conceive we may freely say, as some of the early Fathers said, that St. John's Gospel is the most spiritual and divine of all the Gospels. And we may maintain its claim to that honour, by showing that it leads us to a grand primary truth, affecting all human beings, capable of being apprehended by those who have least of what is called culture, capable of making itself manifest to the consciences of the most guilty. Does not his Gospel, for this reason, establish the truth of the other Gospels and Epistles, which had been unfolding the ways of God to men? May it not, for the same reason, have brought a number of false gospels to the test, and have scattered a number of windy theories and popular systems, which, under philosophical or theological pretences, were separating God from His creatures? Nor can I find anything inconsistent with reason and probability—or with the doctrine of Scripture that the Spirit of God brings back to the remembrance of those whom He is teaching the lessons they received, the states of mind they passed through in days long past—in the supposition that the Apostle owed his clear perception of this universal truth, in a great measure, to the vividness with which the experiences of his youth were revived in him; the sixty or seventy wonderful years which had passed over his head since he stood by the Jordan, and saw the shaggy form and awful eye of him who first spoke to him of a kingdom of heaven, helping him to take in the meaning of the words which seized and possessed him then, though he was not able to seize and possess them.

I have been anxious to make these observations, because it seems to me that the passage of St. John's Gospel of which I am to speak to-day will be utterly obscure to us—nay, that the whole Gospel will be obscure—if we forget them. St. John can in nowise separate the idea of the Baptist from that of a witness concerning the Light, a messenger to declare the divine Word that in Him all men might believe. This he considers the fundamental, radical meaning of his mission, apart from which his baptism of repentance had no sense or purpose whatever. But to identify a man as connected with this teaching—as the subject of it—this was the difficulty. To do this the Baptist needed a special, formal revelation, accompanied by an outward sign. The baptism of Jesus, and the visible token that the Spirit was given Him, are said to have been the assurance which was required. While he was without it, he was a preacher of the Word who was with God and was God. He was a preacher of a light of men. He was announcing, as the prophets of old had announced, that a day of the Lord was at hand; that there would be a manifestation of the light. Thenceforth he began to mingle his previous message with announcements concerning the Word made flesh. These announcements are not repeated as if they were parts of a continuous discourse, like his words to the crowds that had flocked to him from every part of Palestine. They come forth as if they were the effect of sudden intuitions—lightning flashes which must often have been followed by periods of dimness and darkness. John knew that a crisis was at hand which would try the hearts of all men. He knew that he was sent by God to speak to their hearts of Him, as being the same now that He had been in the days of their fathers. He knew that whatever good was awaiting his countrymen must come from a fuller revelation of God. This was the preparation, the only possible preparation in his own mind, for the recognition of Jesus as the Christ,—the only way in which he could prepare his countrymen for such a Christ.

We are all aware—we dwell upon the assertion—that the Jews were at this time expecting a Christ, but that their expectations were of a wrong kind; that they pointed to a deliverer different in most respects from the One who had been promised them. We cannot, perhaps, exaggerate this error, but we may make considerable mistakes when we try to state in what it consisted. We sometimes say that the Jews were looking for a great Prince. Undoubtedly they were. If they read the Prophets, they must have looked for a king. The other Evangelists say that Jesus proved Himself to be a King, and so fulfilled the words of the Prophets. We shall find that St John says the same. 'Yes,' we go on, 'a King in a certain sense, but not a temporal king' What! is not our Lord said to have been born in the days of Herod—to have been baptized when He was about thirty years old—to have been tempted forty days—to have kept annual feasts—to have risen the third day—to have tarried forty days among His disciples after the resurrection? All the acts which are recorded of Him in the Gospels were acts done in time. 'Yes,' we resume, 'if you define temporal in this exact manner. But the Jews thought He was to be an "earthly" king.' And were not all the powers by which He showed Himself to be a king, exercised upon earth for the sons of earth, for the removal of the plagues and diseases to which earth is liable? We make another experiment. We say, they supposed that He was to be a Jewish king. Could they suppose otherwise? Was not David to have an heir to his throne? Do not the Evangelists take pains to speak of their Master as the Son of David?

The Jews of that time cannot be fairly condemned on these grounds; and yet our conviction that they were under some grievous mistake, gains strength from all we read of them—nay, from our very failures to define the quality of it. May not St. John himself explain the error which had caused him such unspeakable sorrow, better than we can? Have we not the explanation here?

The Jews looked for one who was coming to be a leader and deliverer. He might come with the manifest tokens of royalty. He might come as one of the old prophets had come. It was not impossible that he might be born in some humble station, for David had been a shepherd. It was probable that he would be born in a lowly village, for Bethlehem was associated with the name of David. He might be this John, for his coarse food and raiment certainly did not show him not to be an Elijah, or an Isaiah, or a Daniel. And John had given this proof of power, that he was drawing multitudes to hear discourses that had no apparent charm—that were stern and terrible. It was not at all impossible, nay, it might be presumed, that when the Christ came, He would introduce some new ordinance, or give a new force to one already in use. The river of Jordan had a sacred historical importance; to wash men in that might denote that he was preparing Israelites for conquests like those of Joshua. No doubt, other signs might be added to this in due time; there would probably be strange appearances in the heavens,—some of the tokens which had accompanied the rare visits of angels that are recorded in the Old Testament. For who could tell whether the Christ might not be an angel, the visitant from another region? Who could tell whether He might not be an old seer returning to the earth again? There were all these possibilities. One was stronger in this mind, and one in that. Which was the truest, the scribes hoped in due time to discover, by studying the letter of the divine oracles, and ascertaining what particulars of time and place were indicated in them as necessary conditions of the deliverer.

What was there faulty in such speculations? What was there to complain of in the test which was applied to ascertain their worth? St. John suggests this answer to us. They were expecting one that should come after all prophets, not one that had been before all. They were looking for a son of David, a prophet, an angel; they were not looking for One who had been with God, and was God. They were looking for one whom they should recognise with their eyes; they were not looking for One whose light had been always shining in their hearts. They were looking for a king who should reign over men; they did not think that that King must be One who had from the beginning been the Light of men. They thought of one who should be born into the world; they did not think that He who was to be born into the world was One who was in the world, and by whom the world was made, though the world knew Him not.

It was precisely to bring this information, in the only way in which it could be brought to any human being, that we are told the man John was sent from God. And because the whole mind of the Prophet was possessed with this conviction, he was able to receive the communication which told him that a Man, without any signs of royalty, without any signs of prophetical dignity, One who had apparently been born and brought up in Galilee, One who had given no proof that He possessed any power of commanding the services of multitudes or of individuals,—was that Christ in whom all the characteristics of King and Prophet were to meet. This Man, he says, this carpenter's son, was He of whom I spake, 'He that cometh after me is preferred before me; for He was before me.' Possibly a better translation of the last clause might be found, but the one we have is good enough; it conveys the sense of the original, though it be a little diluted. The next verse, as I said last Sunday, is naturally connected with this. Both, I believe, must be taken as part of John's witness. Here is that divine Word of God, out of whom all grace has issued. Each right and true man has had some grace, denoting him to be of divine origin. In Him dwelt that fulness of grace and glory, of which these were the scattered rays. Then the Evangelist comments upon this witness, and connects it with what he had said in the fifteenth verse. 'For the law was given through Moses, but the grace and the truth became through Jesus Christ.' Outward law, literal commands, tables of stone, had been given through a mere man, a mere servant or messenger. But all the grace and the truth, which were the essence of the law, which could not be expressed in letters, but only in the lives and acts of human beings,—these became parts of any man's character through Jesus Christ. For these belonged to the nature of God Himself,—these constituted His being. In Himself they could not be seen: 'No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.' He it is who in all ages has brought forth the divine perfection, in distinct qualities, and has exhibited them to men, and in men.

So far we have the testimony of John, originally addressed, it would appear, to his own disciples—now illustrated and expounded by the matured wisdom of one of them. Next we have the record of John, 'when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask Him, Who art thou?' They had a right to know. A new pretender had started up. Slight as his credentials seemed to be, the people were crowding about him. He was baptizing, not Gentiles, but Jews; he was treating the most religious and exalted as if they were impure, as if they needed the same cleansing as those needed who had not been born in the covenant. What did it all mean? The messengers must get some clear distinct satisfaction on this point before they returned to their masters. 'And he confessed, and denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ.' The questioners must have been surprised. If he did not actually claim a title which so many had claimed, they might have expected a little hesitation. He might have left the point open; he might have allowed his scholars to assert the dignity for him. There was another possibility. Malachi had said that an Elijah would come. John certainly had few marks of grandeur about him; but he dwelt in a desert; he did not fear the face of kings; he could have denounced Ahab and Jezebel, as he afterwards denounced Herod and Herodias. He evidently understood the question literally, for the messengers intended it literally. They supposed that Elijah had been carried away into some invisible region, and that from thence he himself would descend. Seeing, therefore, that John was not one who trafficked with words in a double sense, or who would convey a falsehood in the terms of truth, he answered to this demand also, 'I am not.' But Isaiah, Jeremiah, all the Jewish seers, had not only spoken of a great Conqueror,—they had spoken also of a Sufferer. A few might try to identify the characters. The prevailing opinion among the Jews was of course then, as it is now, that they were separated,—one description denoted a King, the other a Prophet. If he was not a King, was he that Prophet? And again he answered, 'No.'

The messengers have exhausted their guesses; they begin to be provoked. It will not do to go back merely with a set of negatives. 'Then said they, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us: What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.' You see how carefully he associates his message with that of the old prophets; how confident he is that he is preparing a way just as they were; how sure he is that it is the way of the Lord—that wonderful road between the unseen Being and the heart of His creatures, of which they had one and all spoken. So far he was using language which belongs to every psalmist and every prophet. In adopting the words in the 40th chapter of Isaiah, as the description of his calling and his work, he proved more distinctly that he was 'sent to bear witness of the Light, that all men through Him might believe.' For the burden of that chapter is, that Jerusalem should lift up her voice, and say to the cities of Judah, 'Behold your God;' and it is the beginning of a series of prophetical inspirations, in which the Jew is represented as holding up the true image of God to all nations, that the images which they had made of Him might be confounded. John was preparing the way, then, for a declaration or manifestation of God; he was clearing away the thorns and briers which blocked up the path between the Word of God and the conscience of man.

St. John significantly intimates how little language of this kind could be intelligible to the Jewish emissaries, for he adds, 'They that were sent were of the Pharisees.' Very characteristically they relieved themselves of the embarrassment which the Scripture always caused them, when it could not be measured by lines and rules, when it appealed to the hearts of living men, by asking, 'Why baptizest thou, then, if thou art not the Christ, neither Elias, neither that Prophet?' They had an excuse for urging that demand. It was an audacious thing for a man to practise such a rite, to press it upon all, to speak of it as a baptism for repentance and the sending away of sins, if he had not some divine authority for what he was doing. Yet he had produced none. And now he refused all the titles which would seem to have been the warrants for such an innovation. Nor does he tell the Pharisees when or how he received his commission. His answer is, 'I baptize with water: but in the midst of you there standeth One whom ye know not; He it is who, coming after me, was preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy that I should unloose.' More is not said here. The messengers are not told what this Person who is in the midst of them would do, which John could not do; that announcement is reserved for another occasion. The thought which he still dwells upon is, that there is a mysterious Being in the midst of them, their Lord and his; One who has power to command, One whom he is bound to obey. By speaking of the latchet of the sandal, he clearly intimates that this Person is among them in a visible form. But neither in that form, nor in His own proper nature, do they know Him. They would know Him as little if they were told His name, if He stood out before them, even if He exhibited His power to them, as they did then. I am warranted in believing that this is the sense of the words; for we shall find how continually our Lord resorts to the same phrase in His conversations with the Jews, and assures them that though they saw Him, they knew Him not.

We have now reached the words of the text. They are carefully separated by the Evangelist from the discourse with the Pharisees. 'These things,' he says, 'were done, in Bethabara, beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John seeth Jesus coming to him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.' But though the sentence formed no part of that discourse, it is immediately joined to the words which have recurred so often: 'This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a Man which is preferred before me; for He was before me.'

It is evident, then, I think, that we shall never enter into the force of this wonderful sentence, which has exercised more power over eighteen centuries, than perhaps any which was ever spoken or written, if we take it apart from the context of John the Baptist's life and of his preaching. All have felt that the preacher must have meant those to behold the Taker-away of sin, who had come confessing their sins, and to whom he had spoken of the remission of sins; that upon others the words must have fallen as dull, dead words, in which they had no interest. Is it not equally true that the words, 'sin of the world,' must have been connected by them with what they had heard of One who was in the world, and whom the world knew not? and with what they had heard of a light which lighteneth every man who came into the world, and of a darkness that had not comprehended it? I do not mean that this discovery to each man of his own darkness, this perception of a light near him which he had resisted, this conviction in each man that his sin was the sin of the world, were of themselves sufficient to unfold the infinite mystery which lay in the Baptist's words. I say of them, what I said of the verse, 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth;' all this Gospel is written to expound them. We must decipher them by degrees, as the Apostle and Evangelist himself deciphered them; he will lead us along with him, if we are content to follow. And do not let us be chary and timid in the demands we make upon him. Let us endure no half explanations that rob us of any portion of the meaning which must be hid in such an utterance. Let us have no imperfect substitute for any syllable of it. For the sake of our own inmost being, for the sake of our brethren, we want the whole meaning in its fullest strength. If we are told that there is One who takes away sin, we must not be content that He should be shown to take away some accident or consequence of sin. If He is said to take away the sin of the world, we must not be told that the world is a metaphor for a few individuals. We must ask why He who takes away sin is called a Lamb,—why he is called the Lamb of God? If a lamb is associated in our minds with innocence and purity, we must learn how that idea is fulfilled in this Lamb. If it was connected in the mind of every Jew with the sacrifice of the Paschal feast, we must ask how this Lamb includes whatever is expressed in that sacrifice and that feast? I do not anticipate St. John's answers to these demands; but as he has himself excited them, I am sure he will prove himself to be an honest and a God-inspired man, by telling us how they were satisfied for him, how they may be for us.

One thing more he must tell us also, and may God open our hearts to receive his instruction! John the Baptist says, that he had come baptizing with water, in order that He might be manifested to Israel who would baptize with the Spirit. Here is evidently the turning-point of the two dispensations; here the teaching of John melts away into the teaching of Jesus; here the witness of the servant is changed for the witness of the Son. Seeing, then, that St. John takes so much pains to mark this transition; seeing that the office of Christ, as the Baptizer with the Spirit, is evidently that which he will especially dwell upon in the after portions of his Gospel,—let us not doubt, but earnestly believe, that what we have heard respecting the Word will be a preparation for this more especially Christian lore, provided we have not only heard with our outward ear, but have suffered the light which is shining now, as it shone of old, to penetrate our consciences and hearts, and to turn them from their own darkness to the God who dwelleth in perfect light, in whom is no darkness at all.

DISCOURSE IV.

THE LAMB OF GOD AND THE SON OF GOD.

[Lincoln's Inn, 3d Sunday in Lent, February 24, 1856.]

St. John I. 46.

And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.

I made no attempt to explain the verse which I took for my text last Sunday. I merely endeavoured to show you how it was connected with those which preceded it. I was sure that it would receive abundance of light from those which come after it. A series of ages, I said, had confessed the force of the words. We must take care that we do not allow the strength of any one of them to evaporate in our hands.

Some have been surprised that John should speak of a Lamb who beareth or taketh away the sin of the world. Was there not another image which would present itself more naturally to a subject and a student of the law of Moses? Might not the scapegoat, upon whose head the priest's hands were laid, over whose head the sins of the people were confessed, be said more strictly to bear away sins than the Paschal Lamb? Did not the scenery by which John was surrounded far more naturally recal the animal who went away into a land not inhabited? Why should the man whose food was locusts and wild honey go to a feast for his emblem? Why should the preacher in the wilderness think of the Paschal feast, which belonged to the city and the family?

A modern preacher would attach great weight to these considerations. As a rhetorician, he would be careful to choose the topics which are most likely to impress his immediate audience. There can be little doubt that among (what he would call) the types of the Old Testament, the scapegoat would seem to him far the most impressive. I am not drawing too much upon your reverence for the man who was 'more than a prophet,' if I ask you to believe that he may have had reasons, almost as good, for his course. Some of these we may see more clearly hereafter; one of them, I think, we may divine now. The disciples whom John was addressing had heard his call to repentance, had received his baptism of repentance. They had the sense of a sin close to themselves, in themselves. To men who have this awakened consciousness, sin presents itself as a present burden; as such, the most ignorant, the most simple, feel it and speak of it. We often fancy that the conscience of poor men only responds to palpable pictures of future torments. Multitudes of religious tracts and books, Romish and Protestant, are composed upon this calculation; they are written for the people. There is one English religious book written by a man of the people, by one who had endured all possible anticipations of future misery himself, the habits of whose school would have led him to press them as the most powerful motives upon others. The genius of the book has been confessed of late years by scholars; its power has been felt by peasants in this land, and in all lands into the language of which it has been translated, almost since it issued from the writer's gaol. To what is the Pilgrims Progress indebted for this influence? Certainly to the strength with which the feeling of evil, as an actual load too heavy to be borne, is brought home to its readers. It is the man groaning with the burden upon his back, whom rich and poor sympathise with, whom each recognises as of his own kindred, who is suffering something which is incommunicable, and yet which every other man is suffering from, or has suffered from, or should suffer from. So it is with the tinkers and ploughmen of England, when they are aroused out of their sensual sleep; so it was with the fishermen and publicans who were gathered about the Jordan. They knew they had a burden, an actual burden, upon them. John's baptism had given them a pledge and witness that it might be taken from them. Already it seemed to be lightened; sometimes they could think they were free from it. How could they be delivered from it altogether? To confess themselves to God was an infinite relief; they rose up happier men. But did the confession really ascend to God? Was it possible in deed and truth to approach Him? Was there nothing to intercept the communion? Was there any one who could interpret them to Him, and Him to them? Was there any one who knew what they were feeling? Was there any one who could bear the burden that was crushing them, not into an uninhabited land, but into the very presence of God? For was not this burden, after all, a sense of separation from a Being to whom they ought to be united, apart from whom they could not live? Had not the light which had come from Him into their hearts brought this discovery with it? The scapegoat contained, no doubt, a deep lesson to those who pondered it well; but it was not this lesson—it was not one which those could take in who were feeling sin as an inward torment pressing upon their hearts. The Paschal Lamb spoke of a deliverance from bondage; it spoke of a deliverance as coming from God; it spoke of an offering to God. The thoughts which the name suggested might not be distinct; they might be hard to reconcile with each other. But the cravings which it met, though importunate, were also apparently contradictory. It awakened hopes; the satisfaction of them might come hereafter.

But if John had merely spoken of an animal, let it have what associations with Jewish or with human feeling it might—let it be the aptest symbol in the world—the impression upon disciples who had been stirred in the inmost depths of their souls as his had been, would have been a very faint one. It was because he pointed to an actual Man, and said of Him, 'Behold the Lamb of God,' that he spoke with power. Those who were suffering from a burden might desire to cast it upon God, might doubt if any one but He could sustain it. But who could understand their grief, who could feel its pressure, except a Man? All their sympathies and wishes pointed to a Man. Yet hitherto John had discoursed of a Light and of a Word. To that message their hearts had replied. It was that which had effected all the change within them. Was he now altering the tone of his preaching? Was he beginning to tell them of some one of whom they had not heard before? He removes that suspicion at once. The old sentence recurs again, but with a variation: 'This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a Man which is preferred before me; for He was before me.' He goes on: 'And I knew Him not.' This assurance jars with some of the thoughts which pictures that are dear to us have awakened in our minds. We can hardly separate the infant Christ from the infant Baptist. We feel as if the reverence expressed in the words, 'His shoe's latchet I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose,' had begun in the earliest years of their sojourn upon earth, and had been maturing ever since. I rather fancy we weaken the effect which we might derive from the artist's symbols, by endeavouring to give them an historical value to which they can certainly make no pretension. It is not that these pictorial traditions are based upon passages in the other Evangelists, and that they are only at variance with St. John. St. Luke speaks of Jesus as being taken by His parents into Galilee after His circumcision. He speaks of John being in the deserts until the day of his showing to Israel. St. Matthew interposes the flight into Egypt between our Lord's nativity and His dwelling at Nazareth. Both surely favour, rather than contradict, the strictest interpretation of the saying, 'I knew Him not.' I do not say that we are absolutely obliged to adopt that strictest interpretation. But we are, I conceive, obliged to conclude that no external acquaintance or relationship had the least effect upon John's knowledge of Jesus, in that character in which He was revealed to him at His baptism. The Apostle is evidently very anxious to impress us with this conviction. Few as are the words of his old Master which he reports, these are emphatically repeated. It belongs, I think, to the very design of this Gospel, to show us that John came to testify, first, of the Light of the world, then of that Light as manifested. 'That He should be manifested to Israel,' he says in the next verse, 'therefore am I come baptizing with water.' That He might be revealed as what He is; that through His flesh the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father might shine forth; that the inward eye of men might be purged to behold Him in His true character and in His true relation to them,—this has been the end of my preaching, and of the outward rite that accompanied it.

'And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him. And I knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.' That there should be an outward sign visible to the eye, a Dove lighting upon the head of a Man,—that there should be a Voice speaking to Him,—this is a great scandal to many readers and critics in our day. 'Are not these,' they say, 'the ordinary tokens of mythical narratives? Are they not what always awaken our suspicion in the records of the Old World or of the Middle Ages?' Yes, brethren, in the Old World and in the Middle Ages, men alike felt the need of outward signs to testify of inward realities. They felt it because they were men, separated from each other by place, by customs, by language, by religion,—but alike in being men; alike in their conviction that there must be an outward world which they could see, and an inward world which they could not see. It is equally true that in the Old World and in the Middle Ages, the sensible thing was confounded with the spiritual, the sign was substituted for the thing signified; and that hence arose all kinds of superstition and idolatry. It is true, also, that in those days and in later days—in these days most especially—people create for themselves a middle world, neither sensible nor spiritual, in which there are no signs, because there is nothing to be signified; in which there are only forms and abstractions of the intellect, some of which are distinguished as religious forms, some as ethical or philosophical, pleasant to the vanity of those who have need of nothing, and can keep themselves alive by talking and disputing, but vague, unreal, utterly tormenting to men who are seeking a home and a father. St. John does not dwell in this limbo of vanity. He is like the writers of legends, in so far as he assumes that there are signs, and that there are realities which correspond to the signs. He tells us that when God was about to reveal the greatest of all realities to the spirits of men, He vouchsafed a sign of it which was discernible by the eye. He is unlike the writers of those legends, in so far forth as they rested in signs, or forgot in the signs that which they denoted. The Dove is to him the sign of a Spirit, which would enable Him in whom it dwelt without measure, to rule his own senses and the world of sense. The Voice was a witness that a Man who had flesh and blood was really and actually the Son of God.

John the Baptist has still more to declare concerning signs, and that which they signify. He had baptized with water. The water had spoken in language clearer than any which can be put into letters, of cleansing, of purification. Those who had received it had come to it because they were sure that they needed the blessing of which it testified. They had come because they believed, more or less clearly, that God had ordained the rite, and that He alone could bestow the blessing. But the preaching of repentance for the remission of sins had made them aware that the evil was in a region which the water could not reach. Had it, then, been all a delusion? Was this rite, new at least for Jews, a mere phantasy, less powerful even than the rite of circumcision which had not prevented them from being treacherous to each other, and from blaspheming the name of God? Was the stern speaker of truth a mere mocker, trifling with the consciences which he had himself aroused? If his baptism was from himself, he was. If it was bearing witness of One who had come to men in past days, and given them power to become sons of God, the baptism was good because it was His sign and instrument. But the sign of what? Surely the sign of some process that was taking place in the spirits of men. And if so, would not that process be declared whensoever He was declared? Would not the baptism thenceforth be the assurance that a power adequate to the purification of that which was defiled, to the restoration of that which was decayed—adequate to the renewal of the whole man—was bestowed by Him who had in all times given those who received Him power to become sons of God? 'Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, the same is He which shall baptize with the Holy Ghost.'

'Again, the next day after, John stood, and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as He walked, he said, Behold the Lamb of God.' The words, 'which taketh away the sin of the world,' are not repeated, at least not in the best manuscripts. They had been spoken once. Now the Lamb of God had been connected with a new and higher name. John had borne record that this was the Son of God. All the dignity and wonder of the former title were attached to Him still. There was an awe about this which must have made the disciples wonder, but yet which attracted them. 'They heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.' The story of their intercourse is most simple. There is no mysterious concealment; there are no surprising incidents. 'Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto Him, Rabbi, (which is, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest Thou? He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day; for it was about the tenth hour.' What is there in such a record to detain us for an instant? Only this, brethren; it is the beginning of the history of Christendom, of the whole new world. This meeting of these two men—one of whose names we do not know, the other whom we do know to have been a Galilæan fisherman—with Jesus of Nazareth is the first step in a movement which has in some way or other changed the life, polity, relations of mankind. If it is so, we may consider with ourselves, in some quiet hour, why it is so? Perhaps we may find some other explanation than that which St. John gives—that the Man to whom these disciples came was the Light of men, and that He proved, by contact with those who had least light of their own, that He was their Light. Or perhaps we may find that interpretation, on the whole, the best: and then we shall not seek further, but lay that to heart.

The three next verses bring us a step further in the history; they are still of the same character. 'One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, He said, Thou art Simon, the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.' We found how hard it was for the Pharisees to make out a conception of the Christ, though they pored continually over the Scriptures, and had a series of interpreters to assist in divining the sense of them. And here this unlettered fisherman—unlettered probably in the strictest sense—boldly tells his brother that he has found the Christ. He is sure that he has. He can bid him come and see whether it is a mistake. 'What fanatical confidence!' every scribe would have exclaimed—nay, did exclaim—as soon as he learnt what these fishermen were believing. Should not most of us say the same if we spoke our minds? For what had Andrew to convince him? He had seen none of the miracles upon which we say the evidence of Christ's mission rests. We may be sure that he had not heard Jesus say that He was the Christ; for He scarcely ever did say so. And on what, then, was his faith grounded, that faith which England has accepted for somewhat more than a thousand years? I do not know, unless the Light of the world made him feel that He was the Light of the world—unless the King of men made him feel that He was his King. But I also do not know, brethren, upon what your faith and mine is founded—on what the faith of all the men that have believed during the last eighteen hundred years has been founded—upon what the order and civilization of all the earth has been founded, except it be upon that same revelation of a Light and of a King, which made Andrew say these words to his brother Simon.

And now He who has received this name from a disciple, bestows a name upon a disciple: 'Thou art Simon; thou shalt be called a Stone.' The creatures were brought to the first Adam, that he might say what was the name of each. If this was the second Adam, He could say to any one of His human creatures, 'That is thy name; understand by it what is the work I have given thee to do.' Simon Peter, after many perplexities and falls, did learn fully the meaning and force of his new name. He declared to the Jews at Pentecost, he declared to Cornelius the heathen, that Jesus had been proved to be both Lord and Christ. A society of Jews and Gentiles grew up which recognised Jesus as its Corner-stone. Lest they should fancy that he or any mere man could be a rock or resting-place for them, he wrote an Epistle specially to show that his Master is the Corner-stone, elect, precious, on which men are builded together a spiritual house; that such a spiritual house cannot be overthrown; that any spiritual house which is built on any weaker foundation, which has any other stone or rock, must be destroyed.

'The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.' Philip does not go in search of the Lamb of God, as those did who heard John speak. Jesus is said to find him, and to speak the words, 'Follow me,' which he obeys. The effect is the same as in the former case—only Philip is, perhaps, a little more courageous: he speaks confidently of this as the Person to whom all the holy men of old were pointing. He speaks so even while he makes the offensive announcement, 'He is Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.' From what place the new teacher came, was nothing to the young disciple. He had proved Himself to him to be the King over his heart. Whose son He was called was nothing. In the most living sense He must be what John had called Him—the Son of God. Hereafter doubts and questions might arise upon these points; the Prophet's words respecting the city of David might have to be reconciled with this apparently Galilæan origin of the new Teacher; explanations might be given respecting His parentage. For Philip all this was premature and unnecessary. The deepest knowledge must come first; the other would follow when it was wanted.

The same truth forces itself upon us still more mightily in the answer of Nathanael to his friend: 'Nathanael said to Philip, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael saith unto Him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus saith unto Him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto Him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.'

Nathanael, who was apparently a Galilæan, might not have the same prejudice against Nazareth which would have been natural in an inhabitant of Judæa. But there is another prejudice, often hinted at by our Lord, which is quite as hard to overcome. Can a prophet appear in our neighbourhood, close to us? Must he not come upon us from some more sacred region? The Galilæans, who were despised by others, must have learnt to despise themselves. All their habits of mind must have prepared them to expect that Jerusalem, or some place near it, would be the seat and birthplace of the great King. There was, therefore, at least as much ground for doubt and unbelief in this man's mind as in that of any learned scribe. Nevertheless he comes, and he is hailed a genuine Israelite, an Israelite without guile. The first title might seem only to claim the dweller in any part of Palestine as of the same stock, a true child of Jacob; but that which is joined to it marks out the man himself as a wrestler with God—one who had sought to purge his soul from deceptions—one who believed that God desired truth in his inward parts, and would make him to know wisdom secretly. It was a wonderful commendation; but what was the warrant for it? Till then Nathanael supposed that his face had not been known to the speaker; how much less his heart. Had they met for the first time? Had he never sat and kneeled beneath the fig-tree, the favourite place of secret devotion to the pious Israelite? Had he never wrestled for light to himself, for blessings to his country? for the scattering of its worst enemies—which were also his own—covetousness, pride, falsehood? for the revelation of its promised Deliverer? 'There, before Philip called thee, I saw thee;—I had conversed with thee.' Nathanael heard and wondered; there was no more debating within him about Galilee or Judæa, Nazareth or Bethlehem. A flood of light was poured into his soul, not through chinks and apertures in the prophetical oracles, but from the clear heaven where God dwelt. 'Rabbi, Thou art He whom I have sought after with cries and tears, that none but Thou hast known of. Thou hast often been with me before. I behold Thee now. Thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.'

And then came a promise and assurance of a mightier blessing, of a fuller revelation hereafter to him, and to multitudes unborn, 'Because I said, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these. And He saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'

'Faithful and true Israelite! the vision to thy progenitor who first bore that name shall be substantiated for thee, and for those who trust in me in lonely hours, through clouds and darkness, as thou hast done. The ladder set upon earth and reaching to heaven,—the ladder upon which the angels of God ascended and descended,—is a ladder for thee and for all. For the Son of Man, who joins earth to heaven, the seen to the unseen, God and Man in one, He is with you; through Him your spirits may arise to God,—through Him God's Spirit shall come down upon you.'

DISCOURSE V.

THE MARRIAGE FEAST.

[Lincoln's Inn, 4th Sunday in Lent, March 2, 1856.]

John II. 11.

This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him.

The word 'Miracles,' which our translators have adopted in this verse, gives little trouble to a reader. He thinks of some singular, glaring effect, which makes men wonder, and which they can refer to no known principle. That effect he calls a miracle. To produce astonishment is the immediate object of him who works it; to convince those who see it, and those who are told of it afterwards, that he is not subject to ordinary laws, and has the power of setting laws aside, is his ultimate object.

Such thoughts, I say, are suggested naturally enough by the word Miracle. It is otherwise with the word 'Sign' (Σημεῖον), which St. John uses himself. That word is simpler in sound than the other, but it gives rise to a longer and more troublesome inquiry. Outward display, the excitement of wonder, departure from rule, have no necessary or natural connexion with it. The name drives us to the question, 'A sign of what?' And all these qualities—supposing they were present in the sign—would not help us to answer the question. In the case before us, the act of turning water into wine—in which the miracle is supposed to consist—cannot be separated from the other parts of the narrative: together they constitute the sign. And to find the signification of the sign, we must have recourse to the first chapter of the Gospel; we must ask St. John himself to tell us why he has introduced it, and how it bears upon the subject of the history.

'On the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there.' On the third day, no doubt, after the events which we were speaking of last Sunday. What were those events? A preacher who had drawn crowds by his word, who had attached to him some devoted disciples, had spoken of One mightier than he, who was coming after him, but had been before him. He had pointed to a certain man. He had said of Him, 'Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.' He had said that he came baptizing with water, on purpose that this person might be manifested to Israel as the Son of God, who would baptize with the Holy Ghost. Two of those who heard these words, we are told, followed Jesus. They invited others, saying that they had found the Christ. One or two more Jesus Himself called to come after Him.

What expectations were these men likely to form of their new Master? All their deepest impressions had been received from John. Would not He whom John declared to be greater than himself exhibit all His characteristics in a higher degree? They had first seen Jesus in the desert. Might not that be His favourite home? Would not He be more of a solitary, more of an ascetic, than His predecessor? Would not He, whose origin was said to be heavenly, be more withdrawn from the things of earth, than the man who said he was not worthy to unloose the latchet of His sandal? This was a reasonable supposition. There was another, which would strike many as even more reasonable. The Christ was associated with thoughts of royalty. He might be the very reverse of John; not one who could converse familiarly with disciples; not one who could speak words of friendly admonition to publicans and soldiers; but one who would walk aloft, asserting the dignity of His descent, claiming to rule the people, impatient of even seeming to belong to them.

On the third day came a sign which showed how far either of these expectations corresponded to the truth. There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and Jesus was sitting there beside His mother. This is the appearance He made to those disciples who had heard Him described by such magnificent titles,—to those disciples who had learnt to look upon the desert life, the life that is withdrawn from all family relations and sympathies, as the specially holy and prophetical life. And yet it is clearly no august regal marriage which is taking place at Cana. A homely, rustic wedding,—one in which there is feasting and merriment, but no pomp. To this He is bidden; and those fishermen who had joined Him are bidden too. They are called His disciples. They had but lately seen Him or known Him, but they are already fast bound to Him. As His disciples they go with Him, not into a far-off desert, but to a wedding-feast in a little town.

Here is surely the sign of a change,—a change the very reverse, perhaps, of what we were looking for. We are coming nearer to the common earth, to those bonds which connect the inhabitants of earth with each other, to those which touch all earthly feelings and earthly interests. The next incident surely does not weaken this impression. The wine at the feast is said to have failed. We might easily have formed some vague notion of a festival that was different from all others, marked by no vulgar events; at least we might have wished that these should be kept out of sight—that we should not be informed of them. St. John, the divine, the theologian, does not indulge us in this wish. He is determined that we should understand it to have been an ordinary wedding-feast, at which men drank as at others. 'The mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine.' Whatever meaning we may discover in the words when we know who spoke them and to whom they were spoken, they are plain words, the announcement of the plainest fact. Some interpreters suppose that Mary only intended to say, 'Let us withdraw, that the deficiency may not be apparent.' I like their honesty, their determination to find the simplest sense they can; but if we consider what must have been the intercourse between Mary and her Son for so many years; if we remember that a crisis had come in His life, which must have appeared to her the fulfilment of all her expectations concerning Him; if we remember that He was now gathering about Him a set of disciples; it surely is most reasonable to suppose that these words expressed her desire that He should, and her belief that He would, put forth some unwonted power which had been latent in Him hitherto. The old Scriptures told how Elisha had used his divine powers for the relief of ordinary necessities,—to heal, for instance, the waters which might have poisoned the sons of the prophets. Was it strange that a devout reader of these Scriptures should think that her Son might prove He had divine endowments in like manner? It belongs to the very nature of a woman, to the finest part of her nature, to think that power is best exerted in individual cases, for individual needs. What we are apt to regard as too mean and minute occasions for a divine might, she measures by a wiser and more loving rule. The distinctions of little and large are forgotten, as they ought to be, when the Eternal is in question. The most blessed of women ought to have exhibited this tendency in its highest degree. In doing so, she was not degrading Him whom she loved and reverenced most; she was judging rightly for what ends His powers on earth would nearly always be put forth.

But yet there was a weakness in this feminine eagerness. There was a thought that a mere circumstance or necessity could determine the exercise of an internal energy. And this is what He appears to rebuke in the next sentence. 'Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.' A comparison of this passage with one in the seventh chapter of our Gospel, in which Jesus uses a similar expression to His brethren when they urged Him to go up to the feast at Jerusalem that He might make Himself known openly, shows that He designed to tell His mother that no events or outward motives could decide when it was right for Him to do a work,—that the Spirit which He had received without measure was regulating His acts—that He must be always doing His Father's business. Such an intimation, conveyed to the one who in all this world knew Him best, who had most inward sympathy with Him, was no discouragement to her faith,—rather was certain to awaken it. The power would come forth, not in obedience to her call, but to a more lofty, more divine, impulse. She could say, therefore, to the servants, without hesitation or anxiety, 'Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.'

I believe, my brethren, that all these passages in the story just as much belong to the sign, are quite as essential elements of it, as anything which follows. Nothing can be more simple or brief than the passage which comes next. 'There were set there six water-pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And He saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew:) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.' It cannot have escaped you how carefully St. John informs us that not even the ruler of the feast, the taster of the wine himself, knew whence the wine came; he merely makes an idle, merry observation about it. Most of those who sat round him were probably just as ignorant and as little concerned about the matter as he was. The servants may have wondered at what they saw; but their wonder had so little to do with the intention of the act that the Apostle does not stop to notice it. Very little, then, of the notion which we affix—honestly and etymologically affix—to the word miracle has any application here. There was no effort to produce surprise; if surprise was produced, it led to no conviction. Not one of those who tasted the water that was made wine, simply on that ground believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.

What, then, was signified by this act? What force lay in it? I can only beg St. John to tell us. He says, 'This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him.' What glory did He manifest? In all fairness and reason, we must again consult the writer of the words about the sense which he puts upon them. He had said, 'And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.' I said, when we met with this passage in the last chapter, that it was evidently the text of the whole Gospel. The Gospel would either show how the Word made flesh manifested His glory to those among whom He dwelt, and how that glory was as of the only-begotten Son full of grace and truth, or it would fail of its purpose, it would belie its name. Of the Word it has been said before, 'that all things were made by Him: that in Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.' The manifestation of His glory, we might surely then expect, would include a manifestation of Him as one who exercised creative power, as one in whom the Life that quickens all things dwells inexhaustibly. One might expect that this Life, if it was exhibited upon things, would still be in some very remarkable sense an illumination of men. But one would be certain that that illumination could not be outward to the eye. As life is internal, as all its movements and operations are secret, though its effects are so palpable; so the Light which proceeds from this Life—that which is emphatically the Light of men, as distinguished from mere animals—must be light penetrating into the inner being, filling the heart, reason, and conscience, scattering darkness in them, preparing them hereafter,—since the Light is not put into any one to be hid under a bushel, but to be set upon a candlestick,—to show forth what had so marvellously affected and changed them, to the world.

Now, if we consider the sign in Cana of Galilee with these thoughts in our minds,—which we have not invented for ourselves, but derived straight from the Evangelist,—I cannot doubt that all its different aspects will come out very harmoniously before us.

The first aspect of it is that which is brought before us in our own Marriage Service. Christ is said to have 'adorned and beautified the holy estate of matrimony with His presence and first miracle that He wrought in Cana of Galilee.' This has been the conclusion at which the reason of the most thoughtful men has arrived, and to which the instinctive feeling in all has responded. If Jesus was the Word made flesh, if the order of the world was established by Him, then His acts upon earth would be done for the purpose of vindicating this order. By them He would claim it as His. By them He would say that it did not belong to the evil one. Marriage, as one of the fundamental parts of this order, as one of the earliest institutes of humanity, as one that had suffered most from abuse, would be one of the first over which He would assert His dominion. And because the ordinance is one in which all are interested, we should look for the assertion to come in some distinct and yet very general way; not, I mean, in a broad proclamation, or in a maxim which is forgotten speedily or frittered away in the application to each individual instance; not again in some case clothed with circumstances that take it out of the common range of cases, not the wedding of a king or of a saint, but one of which every peasant as well as every king might say, 'This tells me to whom I must look to bless my wedlock, because He is the Author of it.'

Then, again, that part of the story which refers to the mother of Jesus becomes, I think, clearer when we contemplate it in this light. Romanists are puzzled by it, Protestants exult in it, because it seems to put a kind of slight upon the Virgin. But Protestants and Romanists agree that Jesus had a divine Father and a human mother. If this act was one of the manifestations of Him as the Son of God, can anything be more natural or consistent than that it should be introduced by words which declare that He could not be in subjection to any earthly authority, while yet the act itself was an act of ministry to even the commonest necessities of the sons of earth? Is not this apparent contradiction the accomplishment of His work, the exhibition of Him in His complete character? He will not be the servant of His creatures, not even of His mother; He obeys the Will, which all are created to obey. He will be the servant of His creatures: He is come into the world for that end. He is doing the will of His Father when He is stooping to the lowest of all.

But if this be our judgment of two parts of the sign, it must, I think, greatly modify, if not alter altogether, the apprehensions which we have formed of the third part, that which concerns the turning of the water into wine. We cannot regard the main characteristic of the marriage and the marriage-feast as being their commonness, their similarity to what is going on in every part of the world—to what is going on among ourselves; and then make the essence of that which our Lord did at the feast consist in its uncommonness, in its unlikeness to everything that is done elsewhere—to everything that is done among ourselves. We must abandon one habit of feeling or the other. Which we shall abandon depends, it seems to me, upon the strength or the weakness of our faith in St. John's assertion, that in Him who sat at that feast was life and that all things were made by Him. If we take those words literally, if we suppose the Evangelist to mean what he says, then we must assume that what happened then was but an instance of the working of a universal law. We shall conclude that all living processes—be they slow or rapid, be they carried on in the womb of nature or through the intervention of human art—have their first power and principle in Him, that without Him nothing could become that does become. Such a belief undoubtedly carries us into great depths and heights. It increases the wonder with which we regard every dynamical discovery. But it does not interfere with any discovery. It gives solemnity and awfulness to the investigations of science. It forbids trifling in them. It stimulates courage and hope in them. It makes all superstitious dread of them sinful. The Word, who is the Light of men, will Himself teach those who seek humbly and diligently to enter into those operations of life of which He is the first Mover.

But there are other thoughts connected with this word Life, which it is impossible to sever from it in any case, and which suggest themselves more directly than any others when the subject is a wedding-feast and the turning of water into wine. Life has a relation to joy, which is as close as the relation of death to sadness. Our minds become confused upon this point. We talk of the burden of life. We talk of death as delivering us from this burden. But these are careless expressions, against which the conscience of man rebels. The Scripture is in harmony with the conscience. It speaks of our carrying about with us a burden of death from which we need to be delivered. If it ever speaks of the moment of departure from the world as a moment of deliverance, it is because, as the poet says, 'Death itself there dies.' In creating the wine, then, which is said in the old Scriptures to make glad the heart of man, which had been a symbol of joy as well as of life to the heathen—the symbol of high inspirations even when it was actually acknowledged to be the cause of the lowest animal degradation—the Son of Man was claiming to be the Giver of all joy, to be the Redeemer of all joy, even in its humblest earthliest forms, from that which had made it base and inhuman. In what sense the Source of Joy was also the Man of Sorrows, St. John will tell us in due time. There is something which binds this very story of the feast at Cana to His deepest sorrow. Mary has not appeared before in this Gospel; she never appears again till we meet her beside the cross. She knew that a sword was to pierce through her soul, at the very time when she was asking her Son to prove Himself the Lord of nature and the Giver of delights to man. One work did not interfere with the other. He could not be really the Word made flesh unless He fulfilled both.

And now, then, we may understand why we are told so expressly in the text that 'He manifested forth His glory, and that His disciples believed on Him.' Who were these disciples? One of them must have been that Andrew who told his own brother Simon, 'We have found the Christ.' One would have been that Philip who said to Nathanael, 'We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and the Prophets, did write.' One would have been that Nathanael who said, 'Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.' Not one of these had received a sign or a miracle to impart to them these convictions. The witness of John concerning the Light, met by the witness in their own hearts, the manifestation to those hearts that Jesus was the Light of whom they had heard,—this was their preparation for the marriage-feast and for what passed there. Because they had acknowledged Jesus and had become His disciples, with a feeble, imperfect, confused knowledge of course, but with a desire of the knowledge which they should receive from continual converse with Him; therefore the sign of the water being made into wine had a meaning for them which it had not for others; therefore it was to them a manifestation of His glory; therefore it gave them a belief in Him, as answering to John's testimony, which they had not had before. An outward exercise of power strengthened their belief in a power which lay entirely beyond the region of their senses. They were sure that a sign had been given them that He who blesses marriage, He through whom all things live, He from whom all men derive their light and joy, was actually dwelling among them.

I have been the more careful in considering this subject, my brethren, because St. John records it as the beginning of the signs which Jesus did. It is not recorded in the other Evangelists. It is told here as if the whole scene had come back to the mind of the old Apostle; as if he had been at that feast, and felt himself transported there again from his chamber at Ephesus. I think there must have been a reason why that day was brought again to his remembrance, why he was enabled to describe it so briefly yet with such distinctness. People in that age, as we know from St. Paul's Epistles, as we might have guessed if we had not this decisive information, were prone to set great store by the powers which had been bestowed upon the Church to manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit within it. From magnifying the powers, they had passed, by a natural process, to magnify the outward effects of these powers; then, to exult in them because they were strange and peculiar. St. Paul had urged the Corinthians to remember that all gifts were bestowed for use, and not for show; that it was better to speak five words which could be understood and might be profitable, than to speak a thousand words in an unknown tongue, unless it were interpreted. In spite of these exhortations, the sign was no doubt gradually losing itself in the miracle. The unseen Presence, which could not be recollected without a sense of awful responsibility, was far less thought of than the display which could be made in the eyes of the ignorant. Whenever such a temper begins to prevail, we may be sure that tricks, impostures, lies in the name of Christ and of God, will spread rapidly; the spirit of falsehood will creep into the heart which has confessed its allegiance to the Spirit of truth. Ephesus, we know from the Acts of the Apostles, had been a favourite home of the magician and the enchanter. In the first fervour of their belief in Him who is the way and the truth and the life, the Christians had burnt their books and abjured their lying trade. But St. Paul, as he told the elders of the city, dreaded that after his departure grievous wolves might come in among them. There was no sheep's clothing these wolves were more likely to wear than this. Reverence for Christ's miracles might be made an excuse for practising all old heathen arts and enchantments in His name. How suitable a work for the aged disciple of Christ to lay his axe to the root of this deception! How fitting a thing was it for him to say, 'You talk of the miracles of the Christ. I remember the first of them all. I remember what it taught me then, what it teaches me still. It was not an enchantment; it was not a wonderment. It was a sign of His presence in whom is all grace and truth, who was manifested that He might put down all falsehoods whatsoever, and who will put them down at the last.'

It was the beginning of signs. I do not say that our examination of it will save us from the trouble of examining each new sign as it comes before us. By rigorously adhering to that name, as St. John does, we assume that each has a signification of its own. We shall find them all very different from this in their circumstances, in some of their internal characteristics. But I believe that if we follow out the line of thought into which I have endeavoured to lead you this afternoon, and if we make St. John's first chapter the expounder of his object in every subsequent narrative, we shall be delivered from innumerable difficulties by which the study of miracles generally, and of each particular miracle is beset. To those who tell us that a Church which can work miracles is a true Church—to those who speak of miracles done with a serious purpose in former days, or of miracles done for the amusement of men that crave for some new thing in our days—we may make the same answer. The Scriptures teach us to care for no miracles except so far as they are signs. Of what are your miracles signs? Do they signify that the Word who was made flesh is not continually acting in the affairs of men now? If so, they contradict those signs which we confess to be true signs, those which have signified to us and to our forefathers that all life is in Him, that all light is from Him. Or do they say this? Then they say what every marriage is saying just as clearly; what our ordinary food and wine, what the growth of trees and flowers, what the plough of the husbandman and the laboratory of the chemist are such pledges of as your miracles can never be. God may perform wonders to break the chains of sense, to make us aware that He is always at work. We are sure that He will not enact wonders to rivet the chains of sense upon us, to turn away our thoughts from Him to some low earthly agent. Only a wicked and adulterous generation seeks for such wonders, for such signs. The signs which will be given to it, if it does not repent, are signs of fire and of blood, the slaughter of the first-born, the cry in the Temple, 'Let us depart.' But if we receive the beginning of signs which Christ gave us in Cana of Galilee, all common things will become sacraments of His presence. The husband and the wife will confess that He has united them. We shall receive the water and the wine both as His gifts. He will drink the new wine with those who come at His bidding to give thanks for the blood which He poured out for the redemption of the world.

DISCOURSE VI.

THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE.

[Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday in Lent, March 9, 1856.]

St. John II. 16.

Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

The first three Gospels have been sometimes called the Galilæan Gospels; the fourth, the Jerusalem Gospel. The distinction would be a very false one, if it implied that our Lord's relation to Jerusalem was not present to the minds of the earlier Evangelists, or that St. John overlooked His relation to Galilee. In the ninth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, we are told that Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem. All the chapters which follow refer to events which took place in that journey, and contain discourses relating to the end of it, and to the city itself. In the thirteenth, we hear of His sending a message to Herod, that a prophet could not perish out of Jerusalem; in the nineteenth, of His looking down upon Jerusalem and weeping over it. The climax of the narrative, not only of St. Luke, but of St. Matthew and of St. Mark, is the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, to be hailed as a king, to die as a malefactor. On the other hand, St. John presents his Master to us in the midst of Galilæan disciples. He carefully omits any allusion to the birth at Bethlehem; he records the first manifestation of His power and nature as given at Cana.

But though these observations show how easily the supposed difference between these narratives may be exaggerated and perverted, they do not prove it not to exist. We have no hint in the first three Evangelists of Christ's presence at any of the Jerusalem feasts, between that in His twelfth year and that which preceded His crucifixion. The scene of the most memorable acts and discourses recorded in St. John, is laid at Passover, Tabernacle, Dedication feasts, to which He had come up from Galilee. The three Evangelists speak of Him continually as teaching in the synagogues; only at the close of His ministry as teaching in the Temple. The second manifestation of our Lord spoken of by St. John is when He drove out of the Temple those who were selling and buying in it.

This narrative is the most signal instance of discrepancy between St. John and the other Evangelists which we shall meet with in our whole course. An act similar, in nearly every particular, to that which our Gospel appears to connect with the period immediately after Christ's baptism—before the Baptist's imprisonment—is said in the others to have been performed when He was about to keep the last passover. 'May not these reports,' it has been asked, 'refer to the same transaction? Need we suppose that St. John troubled himself about chronology? May not his recollections of events at which he was present have been united by some other thread than one of years or days? Oftentimes we may have observed how a word evokes a train of slumbering thoughts. Why may not he who had just been speaking of the first sign which Jesus did, have been led on by that name to the question of the Jews in the eighteenth verse, "What sign shewest Thou that Thou doest these things?"'

Such a method of removing a grave difficulty might be reasonable enough. But is there a grave difficulty—is there any difficulty—to be removed? There is no internal improbability in the supposition that our Lord inaugurated His ministry by one act of purification, and wound it up by another. If we accept the one Evangelist as an authority for the first, the three for the second, we gain, I think, what more than compensates us for an apparent repetition. We acquire a deeper sense of the meaning of the Temple, of the relation in which it stood to the Jews, to mankind, and to Christ. We understand better what the three Evangelists mean when they say that the disciples thought that the destruction of the Temple must be the end of the age, of their world; what St. John means when he speaks of the temple which would be destroyed and raised again.

Some commentators upon the Scriptures, who really wish to understand them, but who feel entangled by the habits and notions of their own time, lament that they cannot reproduce the state of feeling which belonged to the Jew when he gazed upon his temple, or entered within its precincts. 'What help,' they say, 'lies in the descriptions of the most accurate and lively travellers? What should we gain by beholding them with our own eyes? We need to annihilate time as well as space. The mind of the people who gazed eighteen hundred years ago upon these spots will not come back to us merely because we are able to receive a tolerably correct impression of the spots themselves.'

I confess, my brethren, that I am quite unable to sympathise with these complaints. I do not think it requires any effort of imagination to realize the state of mind of an ordinary Jew, as he walked through the city of David, or stood upon the holy hill, in the days of Herod and of Pilate. If we realize the state of mind of an ordinary citizen of London, walking in our streets, or entering the Abbey which contains the sepulchres of our kings and poets, we shall not need any other aid to bridge over the chasm which divides us. Occupation with everything that is before us, with the news of the hour, with the private business which we have most in hand, indifference and torpidity about the past,—these would be our general characteristics. They may be varied by our greater or less interest in architecture—our desire to maintain or confute some architectural theory—by national pride, if we should be making our buildings known to foreigners—by a certain painful sense that we ought to put our minds into a sentimental attitude. Do you suppose the case would have been different with the Jews? Do you suppose there was any charm in the outside of the Temple, which forced a sensual money-getting race into a more elevated or more serene habit of feeling than that which we drop into? Do you suppose that their sacred traditions, their glorious history, their divine calling, must have broken the charm of custom for them, or have lifted the incubus of the world from their hearts? If you do, you adopt a notion which the Scriptures confute in every line. They never tell us that the gravitation of the Jewish soul to earth was less strong than that of other men. They never represent the Jew as wanting one bad and base tendency which belongs to you and me. The evidence which the Bible has produced of its veracity to people of all conditions, in all countries, the most unlike outwardly to those of whom it speaks, is this, that it shows us creatures in all inward respects like ourselves, as little capable of being moved by present signs or by records of the past, out of chillness and death, as we are.

Accordingly, what spectacle is it which the passage I am considering brings before us? The spectacle of no appalling crime, of none of those hideous and revolting acts which we know from the Jewish historian were perpetrated at the time, and in which the religious sect of the day had its full share. It is a spectacle which had become familiar to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which every Pharisee had continually before his eyes when he went into the Temple to pray,—most glaringly, it is probable, during the most sacred festivals. Within, the priests offered the regular sacrifices; without, in another part of the house, there was a market for sheep and oxen; there were seats for the money-dealer. The practice was so regular, so sanctioned by prescription, that no one thought anything of it. The pious Jew was no more scandalized by it than the pious Englishman is scandalized by reading an advertisement for the sale of a living. If we have distinctions which satisfy our consciences between the disposing of an actual cure of souls and of the right to endow another with such a cure,—if a line, sometimes invisible to the naked eye, separates the sin of Simony from deeds which laymen may lawfully do, and by which clergymen may lawfully benefit,—the people of Jerusalem had distinctions just as recognised, quite as capable of being defended in argument. The holy place might not be approached by any profane feet; that was sacred indeed to the Lord. But the outer court—why might not that be left for ordinary traffic? Perhaps the separation of the priests from the mere throng of worshippers—above all, from the Gentile who might be found among them—was better marked by the concession of this privilege. At all events, it was a privilege guaranteed by usage to the trader. If it was disturbed, would he not probably become disgusted with his country's sanctuary altogether? Might he not betake himself to some Roman temple,—to a worship which was more associated with amusement, if not with business?

I do not know that this calculation was altogether a wrong one. I do not suppose that if the Sanhedrim had chosen or had been permitted by its masters to prohibit these markets, any moral benefit would have been gained for the nation. For what had made the Temple holy and dear to any Jew of that day or of former days? Not its situation, not its having been built by the wise king, not its having been restored after the captivity, not the goodly stones with which Herod had adorned it. No! but the sense of an invisible glory; the belief that God—whom no man had seen at any time—had been pleased to meet His people there. Could any Jewish laws restore this conviction when it had departed? Could regulations to protect a certain enclosure from pollution give rise to anything, except despicable subterfuges, except the vilest hypocrisy, when the only ground and warrant for these regulations was forgotten, when those who would have made them as little confessed the Divine presence as those whom they would have excluded. For this—this was the secret of the Jewish desecration of the Temple. The priests who ministered at the inner shrine did not, for the most part, believe in the Divine presence more than the people who sold sheep and oxen without. A trade was going on in both places. There it was a traffic with God; here it was a traffic among men. The awe of One who dwelt with them, who revealed Himself to them, whose righteousness was their strength, had been exchanged for the fear of One who might call them to account for their treacheries to each other if they withheld their customary and toilsome services from Him.

The preacher in the wilderness had been taught that, when a nation has reached such a condition of rottenness as this, it is not enough to lop off withered branches; the axe must be laid to the root. When the Scribes and Pharisees came to him, he told them to bring forth fruits of repentance, fruits which would show themselves in the Temple as well as the market. But he did not visit either the Temple or the market. Jesus concerned Himself with both. 'He went into the Temple, and found them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting. And when He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the Temple, and the sheep and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables.'

Some who read this story say, that it offends their notion of our Lord's dignity. Could He, with His own hand, chastise these traders? Some say, it offends their notion of His benignity. Could the All-Merciful exhibit such wrath against a tolerated, perhaps an unconscious, profaneness? Before we consider these opinions, it may be well to hear what the disciples felt, when they saw Him with the scourge by whom they had sat at the feast, whom they had hailed as the Giver of the marriage blessing, as the Inspirer of joy. 'They remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.' These words came unbidden into their minds. His look, His voice, expressed all that they had ever heard of the vehement earnestness with which kings and prophets of old had felt the pollutions of God's Temple, and had sought to purge it of them. Josiah and Ezekiel revived in Him. He had forgotten Himself. He was possessed by the spirit that possessed the men of old. There was a fire burning in Him that could not be quenched, till it had consumed all the chaff from the threshing-floor.

Such was their impression at the moment. Looking back upon it after all later events had interpreted it, St. John felt that this was a manifestation of grace and truth, as much as the making the water wine, or the healing the sick. For he had learnt that a gracious Being must be intolerant of that which is ungracious, that a true Being must seek to destroy falsehood—that falsehood most which is nearest the heart of a nation, the altar of God. He felt that this wrath must have reached its highest point in the most gracious, most true Being, in Him from whom all had received their portions of grace and truth. He felt that this wrath must have been least restrained in Him by any thoughts of what would look well in the eyes of men. What were all the notions which he had formed about dignity or comeliness? The Word made flesh was making it manifest that every punishment of every wrong doer was administered by Him; that whatever agents He may employ to purify his Church, to inflict vengeance upon those who have defiled it, the rod is really in His hand,—that it is He who directs and measures every blow.

But St. John saw more in the act than this. He had said in his former chapter, not only, 'We beheld Him who was full of grace and truth, Him of whose fulness we had all received,' but 'We beheld His glory, as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father.' He teaches us to recognise a manifestation of this glory, also, in the driving the money-changers out of the Temple. 'Jesus said to them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.'

The zeal which devoured Jesus was surely a zeal for the house of that God to whom Solomon had prayed, 'Lord, wilt thou in very deed dwell upon earth?' It was for the house of that God whom kings and prophets had worshipped between the cherubim. But which of these had dared to use the language which He used? Which of them had ever said, 'It is the house of my Father'? It was a new name,—a wonderful and awful name. And yet the whole force of the testimony which Christ bore for the old building—for the house in which their fathers worshipped—lay in this name. If that house was not to be a house of merchandise—if it was ever to be that again which holy men had believed and found it to be—this new name must remove its debasement, this new revelation must restore its greatness. No other could suffice to undo the hypocrisy of the priests, because that hypocrisy came from their thinking that the house was theirs—from not believing that there was any relation between themselves and Him to whom they offered their worship and their sacrifices. If there was a man who could call it 'my Father's house,' heaven and earth were not at the distance they thought and hoped,—their Judge was very near. On the other hand, no revelation but this could have brought the outer court once more into union with the inner court, could have made both parts of the house of God. For the reason why the people traded in that court, and felt they had no business anywhere else, was that they had no belief that God cared for them, or that there was any fellowship between them and Him, except through those priests who were the barriers to all fellowship. If Jesus of Nazareth, the poor man, one of them, could say, 'It is my Father's house,' the publican might feel then,—even the Gentile might feel afterwards,—that there was a house for him; not a place for selling sheep and oxen, and changing money, but a refuge from the weariness of merchandise, from the haggling and lying of the world, in the presence and heart of a Friend who giveth to all liberally, of One who is altogether righteous and true.

In after days we shall find the Jews felt the boldness of this language, and made it their principal charge against Jesus that He dared to use it. On this occasion it seems to have fallen dead upon their ears. Their question is not, 'What sign shewest thou seeing' thou sayest this, but 'seeing thou doest these things?' They meant nothing more, I suppose, than, 'Why dost thou, a mere Galilæan stranger, take upon thee to drive out these oxen? A prophet might do it—perhaps even a zealot, if he was a Levite, and claimed the honours of his ancestor Phinehas, might do it—but what sign canst thou produce that such an office belongs to thee?' I do not find more in their demand than this; but the answer of our Lord refers to His previous words as well as to theirs. He could not give them a sign that He had a right to cleanse the Temple, which would not also be a sign that He had a right, in the strictest sense, to call the Temple 'His Father's house.' You must recollect that this was the claim He had to make good, if you would understand Him when He says, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'

The sentence was, of course, enigmatical. The Jews regarded it simply as the language of a fanatic or a madman. 'Forty and six years,' they said, 'was this Temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?' St. John evidently indicates that it was not much more intelligible to him and to his fellow-disciples, when they first heard it, than to their countrymen. But he says a time came when they did understand it. 'He spake of the temple of His body. When therefore He was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had said.'

Are we to suppose that the third day of the resurrection was the key which unlocked our Lord's meaning? No doubt that was an outward help in the discovery of it; but it would have been a most imperfect help, if they had not attached a meaning to the resurrection which had nothing to do with days or years. By raising Jesus from the dead, God declared Him to be His Son. This was St. Paul's language to the Romans,—this was the very substance of his preaching. By raising Him from the dead, He declared that in Him all the building fitly framed together grew to be an holy temple in the Lord. This was his language to those Ephesians among whom the son of Zebedee was now dwelling. It was the resurrection, then, which taught the disciples that the body of Christ was that real temple of God, of which all stone temples had been the symbols,—that in this only the fulness of God dwelt,—that in this the prayer of Solomon, that God, whom the heaven of heavens could not contain, would dwell with men upon earth, could be actually fulfilled. Some critics say there is an awkwardness in supposing that our Lord pointed to His own body when He spoke of destroying the Temple; and that if He did not, the Evangelist would seem to charge Him with using words in a double sense,—so deceiving His hearers. I do not see why we should imagine Him to have pointed to His body; why His eyes may not have been fixed on the building which He had called His 'Father's house.' He did mean, that, if they destroyed that house,—if their money-worship, falsehood, hypocrisy, brought it to utter ruin, and it was at last given up to Roman soldiers,—there was a house not made with hands, which was all that Solomon's, in the very best and noblest conception of it, had tried to be. He meant certainly more than this. He meant that they might and would try to destroy the outward fabric of this more glorious temple; but that in three days the dead body would come back from the tomb, and be proclaimed to the world as God's own everlasting habitation. You may call this a double sense of words, if you like; but by such double senses deceptions are not caused or promoted—they are cleared away. The Jew was labouring under a terrible deception; he was practising a continual equivocation. The Temple of the Lord was a sacred place to him,—he gloried in possessing it; yet he did not in his heart believe that God was meeting His creatures, holding any intercourse with them, caring for them. The building itself, therefore, acquired a reverence in his mind which was apart from reverence to God, nay, fatal to that reverence. God was absorbed in the Temple. The inward thought of the priest was, that if it perished God would perish. Hence arose infinite contradictions in his practice, alternations of scrupulosity and profaneness. Now the money-changer is permitted to sit within it,—now a cry is raised that a Stephen speaks evil words against the holy place, and must be stoned. There was but one way of breaking down this habit of mind: it was to affirm and prove that the Temple was not a fiction,—that the belief of the elder men respecting it was not a fiction,—that God and man were not divided,—that the prophecy of their complete fellowship was not an idle prophecy leading to nothing,—that men might draw nigh to God, as to a father, on the holy hill of Zion; because there was an only-begotten Son, whose body was filled with that Spirit which would raise it out of the grave.

No; our Lord did not deceive the Jews when He gave them the fullest, truest sense of their own Scriptures, of their own calling and history. If any words, any acts could have undeceived them, they would have been His. Alas! when money-worship has reached the vitals of a nation, when it has entered into the house of God, the very words and acts of the Son of God may not purge it of its delusions,—they may take their shape and colour from these delusions. May God avert the omen from our land, from our Church! May He enable us to believe that every building in which He permits us to worship Him, and to present before Him the finished sacrifice of Christ, is indeed the house of our Father, because of His Father! May every chastisement He sends to us, individually or nationally, be viewed by us as a scourge with which He is cleansing His temple of them that sell and them that buy in it,—of our corrupt traffickings with our own consciences and with Him! May He help us to believe in Christ's incarnation and passion, that we may attain to the full glory of His resurrection, and may find in it the proof that His body was the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that ours are to be temples holy and acceptable unto Him!

DISCOURSE VII.

THE NEW BIRTH.

[Lincoln's Inn, Palm Sunday, March 16, 1856.]

St. John III. 3.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

It is undoubtedly right to connect the beginning of this chapter with the latter verses of the preceding one. 'Now when He was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast, many believed in His name, when they saw the miracles which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for He knew what was in man.' I must ask you here, as everywhere else in St. John, to substitute the word signs for miracles. Our unfortunate adoption of this last word—which cannot be referred, as some of our careless translations may be, to the following of the Vulgate, for it has signs—has sadly weakened and perplexed the Evangelist's statements. Here, for instance, he does not tell us what the acts of Christ were which were done at the passover. He does not say whether He healed the sick, or cast out devils. He fixes our attention on this point,—that the acts were received by many of those who were gathered at the feast as signs. 'They believed on His name.' The word name, in every part of Scripture, expresses that which is invisible. It is the contrast to an idol, or that which may be seen. Even idolaters recognised the name of the god as that which was expressed by the outward image, as that which only the mind could recognise. We cannot, then, give less force to the phrase, 'They believed on His name,' than this,—they confessed a power within Him which put forth these outward manifestations of itself. We should not try to be more definite when we are describing the vague feelings of a people. One moment they might think, 'Some divine power is at work in Him; He is a Prophet.' At another, 'He is the Deliverer, the King we are looking for.' The passover was a time at which such opinions were most likely to be discussed, when parties were most likely to be formed about any new leader. The words which follow, 'But Jesus did not commit Himself to them,' indicate, I think, that such a party was ready to gather itself round Him. He did not covet their support. He did not show the least desire to make use of their services, as one claiming to be the Christ might have done. But the language was capable of another sense. It might denote the caution of a chieftain who was waiting till he had sounded the dispositions of his followers, till he had assurance from some competent witnesses of their fidelity. The notion of such prudence in One who came to give His life for the world, of such need of information in Him whose life was the light of men, was utterly revolting. St. John adds, that the reason of His not committing Himself to this party was, 'that He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify concerning Man: for He knew what was in Man.' They were not to discern and choose Him; He was to discern and choose them. He was not a King that a faction was to set up; He was the original Lord of men—ruling them not as a stranger, not as one who is separate from them, but as one possessing the most intimate knowledge of that which is distinct and peculiar in each man, and of the man that is in all.

That there should be many in the crowd at the passover—many of the ignorant expectants of a Christ—who thought that Jesus had given sufficient signs of His right to the name, is not surprising. They might be all the more willing to recognise Him, because He seemed to be of their class. But these signs had affected some to whom the thought of a Galilæan peasant must have been utterly scandalous. 'There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these signs which thou doest, except God were with him.' The words express more than an individual opinion. Nicodemus must have been conversing with other members of the Sanhedrim. A suspicion that a new Teacher—perhaps a Prophet—with some unusual powers, had appeared, might be diffusing itself through the body. Whence the powers were derived, whether the prophet was true or false, were still questions to be asked. It was a further question whether the Prophet had any claim to be considered the Christ. The people might easily arrive at that conclusion; a ruler would be disposed to reject it. Yet it might be the true one. Nicodemus would evidently like to know. He could not take the rash step of putting himself under the banner of one who might lead him to rebellion; but he would ascertain the fact privately, if he could.

The reply meets the thought in the heart of the speaker, not the words he had uttered. 'You wish to know whether I am about to set up a kingdom. "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."' The phrase 'kingdom of God,' or 'kingdom of heaven,' is one which is continually recurring in the first three Evangelists; it may be said to be nearly their most characteristic phrase. It is not characteristic of St. John; he uses it rarely. But if we want a commentary upon every passage in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in which it is to be found; if we want to know why we hear of it in connexion with the parables,—why the Gospel which the Apostles were to preach is called the Gospel of this kingdom,—I should point you to this verse and to the conversation which follows it. Nicodemus was expecting, in some way or other, to see the kingdom of God. Signs were to show who the divine King was; He would present Himself in such wise to His people, that they should have no doubt of Him and His authority. All this he thought would be granted by God, if He fulfilled His promises, and raised up the Son of David to sit upon David's throne. Was the hope a wrong one? Could less than a clear demonstration be a warrant for accepting any being clothed in human flesh as the divine Prince and Deliverer? Verily, nothing less. They must see the kingdom of God. It must reveal itself to them with an evidence which they could not gainsay. It must lay hold upon them as its subjects, de facto and de jure, with a compulsion not weaker but mightier than that with which the Roman empire had laid hold of them. The arguments of the Christ must be as decisive in their own kind as the arguments of the Cæsar.

But were they of the same kind? Our Lord says, 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' This language does not occur for the first time in our Gospel. We heard before that the divine Word 'came to His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God; which were born not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God.' Here is the announcement of another kind of birth from that which we call the natural birth. And yet it is not a portentous, unnatural birth. If the doctrine which is the foundation of this Gospel is true; if the Word that was with God and was God is Creator of men; if His life is the light of men; those who entertained His light, those who did not refuse to be penetrated by His life, became what they were meant to be: they fulfilled the purpose of Him who called them into existence. The power which He gave them to become sons of God was a power to become men, in the true sense of that word—to rise above the condition of animals.

When, therefore, our Lord tells Nicodemus that only those who were born again, or born from above (there is a justification for each rendering—ἄνωθεν, perhaps, unites the force of both), can see the kingdom of God, He tells him that the vision of the true state of man,—of that order which is intended for men,—is only given to those who receive the Light which lighteneth all men. Theirs is the nobler, better birth—the divine birth; and theirs is the power of perceiving that kingdom which surrounds all men, to which all are subject, but which, being the kingdom of God, and not the kingdom of the Cæsar, does not act upon men through material armies, and tax-gatherers at the receipt of custom,—does not manifest its power and majesty to the outward eye. This kingdom is over the man himself, not over his accidents and circumstances; he must be a man, not a creature of these accidents and circumstances, in order to see it; and that capacity of being a man he must derive not from flesh and blood, but from the Father of his spirit.

This conversation by night must have been remembered and recorded by Nicodemus himself. As he repeated it to St. John,—probably long after that day when he came with spices to anoint the body of Jesus in the tomb,—the words which had been spoken to him, and the words which he had spoken, must have come fresh to his memory; the meaning of the one, the deep ignorance of the other, seen by the light that fell upon them from the experiences and the revelations of after years. As he was an honest man, he did not suppress or soften his own answer to the 'Verily, verily,' of Christ. 'How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?' In truth, he had no cause to be ashamed of himself for having stated his difficulty in that rough way. To veil it under seemly phrases would have been no evidence of enlightenment.

The Jewish doctors, it is said, not uncommonly described the Gentile as one who became a little child, who began his life anew, when he was received by baptism into the privileges of their outer court. If so, Nicodemus must have been familiar with the expression; but it must have been to him, and to most who availed themselves of it, a mere figure of rhetoric—one of those counters which pass among religious people, which have a certain value at first, but which become at length so depreciated that they serve no purpose but to impose on those who take and those who give them. However little Nicodemus might know of Jesus, he did know that He was not resorting to figures of rhetoric—that if He spoke of a birth, He meant a birth; and he must have perceived that what He said did not apply to sinners of the Gentiles, but to him, the religious ruler of the Jews. It was, therefore, a good and healthy sign, a proof of the power of the new Teacher, that he forgot the conventionalisms of the Sanhedrim, and spoke out coarsely and naturally, as a peasant might have done. Our Lord, surely, passed this judgment upon him; for, instead of rebuking him for his question, He meets it in the most direct manner possible: 'Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' The object of Nicodemus in coming to ask Him about His kingdom, is still kept prominently forward; but there is a noticeable change in our Lord's words. He had spoken of seeing the kingdom of God; He now speaks of entering into it. Each expression may, unquestionably does, involve the other; still they are distinct. To see a kingdom, is to have an apprehension of its reality and of its nature; to enter into a kingdom, is to become a subject of it. And then the thought forces itself upon us, 'How can any one choose to become a subject of God's kingdom? Is he not a subject of it necessarily? If God is the King of kings and Lord of lords, can he escape out of His kingdom? Is he not bound by the laws of it, whether he likes them or no?' We cannot state this difficulty to ourselves too frequently; we cannot meditate upon it too earnestly. Our consciences tell us that we are the subjects of God's kingdom; that its laws do bind us; that they avenge themselves upon us when we break them. But our consciences tell us, also, that there is rebellion in us against that which holds us so fast, which executes its decrees so certainly. This is the contradiction, it exists—it is a fact, the fact, of our lives. No theories can get rid of it. But who shall tell us how to get rid of it? Before we can understand what could remove it, before we can even ask with any seriousness to have it removed, we must know and feel how deep the contradiction is. Suppose the government of God should be a government over our wills, rebellion in those very wills must be the most fearful we can conceive of. And the entering into the kingdom of God must import the return of the spirit of man to its allegiance,—the claim of a voluntary spiritual being to be under the will with which it is its misery to be at strife. John had come preaching, 'the kingdom of God is at hand,' calling men to repentance, baptizing with water, proclaiming One who would baptize with the Holy Ghost. When Jesus says to Nicodemus, 'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,' He takes up the teaching of his forerunner, He expounds his act, He announces the fulfilment of his promise. The being baptized with water, He declares to be the act of submission to the Father of spirits,—the sign which a man gives that he accepts His government, that he surrenders himself to it. It is a surrender,—that is the only word we can find,—a confession by the human will of its impotency. It must be guided, governed, inspired, or it can do nothing, it can only struggle against its blessedness. The acceptance, therefore, of this water-sign, by a creature conscious of his own irregular strivings, of his separation from God, is the expression of a desire that God would act upon his will, would raise it to its proper condition, would quicken it to the acts and impulses which belong to it,—in other words, would baptize it with the Spirit.

We see, then, how water and the Spirit are connected with the entrance into the kingdom of God,—the kingdom over the spirit of man. Our Lord goes on to explain that He had used the word birth in its relation to both, not carelessly, but strictly. 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' One is as true and actual a birth as the other. The coming forth of the fleshly creature into light, its beginning to breathe, the voice which accompanies that breathing, are not more undoubted facts—very mysterious facts they must appear to all who reflect upon them—than the coming forth of a spirit out of its darkness, than the sense of light which startles it, than its breathings, than its cry.

I have introduced this thought concerning breath and the voice of the new-born child, because it seems to me to connect itself with the words which follow, and to remove a confusion which our translation of them has introduced into our minds: 'Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.' The philological objections to this rendering of the words are very numerous. In the first place, ἄνεμος, not πνεῦμα, is the proper word for wind. But suppose, by reducing the wind to a faint low breathing, we escape from that objection, there is the second, that πνεῦμα is used twice in the same sentence in different senses. Yet this is a slight fault compared with the next. We actually attribute will to the wind; it blows where it listeth, ὅπου θέλει. After this flagrant departure from all scriptural and spiritual analogy, it is scarcely necessary to mention another, which is, nevertheless, not unimportant, and is of the same kind. Φωνὴ is the articulate voice of a living being; it is here changed into a natural sound. Now, wherever violence is done to the truth of language, I believe more or less of violence is done to some higher truth. What need have we to introduce the sighing and soughing of the wind, in order to make our Lord's explanation more clear and forcible, if we understand Him to say,—'All the breathings of God's Spirit are free, not fixed and fettered by material or mechanical conditions. You hear His voice continually; but whence the Spirit comes, whither it is going, you know not. And so it is with him that is born of the Spirit. The process of birth cannot be perceived by you; you hear the voice which indicates birth, you see the signs and tokens of life; but how the spiritual being came to be what he is, you know not.' If we take this to be what our Lord told Nicodemus, and what He is telling us, are we not to learn that, at every moment of the day, the Spirit of the eternal God is moving around us, speaking to us, acting upon us; but that His mightiest operation, that which alone fulfils His purpose towards us, is when He enables us to become the willing servants and children of our Father in heaven?

'How can these things be?' asked the doctor of the Sanhedrim, in a bewilderment which many of us can well understand. It was, indeed, a strange new world into which he was transported; it seemed to him a world of dreams, because he had been himself so much amidst dreams, because he had known so little of realities. 'Art thou a master of Israel,' was the rejoinder, 'and knowest not these things?' 'What hast thou been learning all thy life? what hast thou been teaching thy countrymen? Hast thou not been reading of an unseen God, who holds converse with men,—of a God of the spirits of all flesh? Hast thou not believed that this God is a living God, as He was when He appeared to Moses in the bush? when He touched the lips of Isaiah with fire in the Temple? Hast thou not understood that He is thy God, as much as He was the God of any Israelite to whom the commandments were spoken on the Mount? Hast thou not bidden the people of Israel of this day to believe that He is their God?' 'Verily, I say unto you, That which we have known, we speak; that which we have seen, we testify.' 'This is the characteristic of every true teacher, of every called prophet. This has been the characteristic of John; this is mine. We do not speak things that we have learnt by report—things that have been transmitted to us; we speak the truths with which we have been brought face to face.' 'And ye receive not our testimony.' 'These things we tell you of, because they are about you, because you are created to know them, and have fellowship with them. And you turn away from them in search of things that are at a distance from you—of formalities and trifles which you call by lofty names, which give rise to endless disputings, but which do not concern you as human beings in the least.' 'And if I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of the heavenly things?' 'If these things which have to do with your daily lives, which bear upon your ordinary business, which you can test by the experience of your failures and your sins,—if these seem to you incredible, how will it be if I speak to you of God Himself, of His purposes, of His nature?'

His words imply that He has a right to speak of these things also, that He is able to speak of them. On what ground could a power so amazing rest? He goes on to declare the ground of it: 'For no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven.' Of all paradoxes, this appears to be the greatest. And yet if the heart of this ruler—if the heart of any man—has been delivered from the oppressive fears and superstitions that connect themselves with the thoughts of a distant heaven in space, which looks coldly and drearily down upon earth—of a distant heaven in time, which stands aloof from all human sympathies; if ever the belief in heaven has been regarded as a spring of hope and energy to the sons of men; if ever they have learnt not to think of earth as a place in which they were to cozen and lie for threescore years and ten, and heaven as a place to which some might escape, if they made compensations to the Ruler of it for the evils which they had done in the other region of His government; that deliverance, those better and nobler thoughts have come from the paradox which is uttered in this verse. Poor people—utterly bewildered by all they have heard from divines and masters in Israel about heaven, and the way in which they are to obtain heaven—have taken this sentence home to their hearts,—that the Son of Man, He who suffered for them and with them on earth, is He who has ascended into heaven, and who is always in heaven. They have entered into the kingdom of heaven with those spirits which were born of the divine Spirit, as they entered into the kingdom of earth when they were born of the flesh; they have seen the kingdom with the spiritual eye which God has opened, as clearly as they have seen the trees and flowers of earth with the fleshly eye which He has opened.

How He opens that eye, and what He reveals to it when it is opened, the next words will tell us. 'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.'

How can I introduce such a passage as this at the close of a sermon? Because I would not allow my sense of the immense worth and importance of every clause, of every word, of which it consists, to hinder you from tracing the method of our Lord's discourse. The question about the kingdom of God lay at the threshold of the dialogue. Here He declares how He is to claim His kingdom, to what throne He is to be raised, that all men might confess Him as their King. Jesus might have spoken of the exaltation of David or of Solomon as the pattern of His own. He goes back to an older and sublimer event in Jewish history. The brazen serpent to which the eyes of those were turned who had been bitten by the serpents in the wilderness, the common life-giving, life-restoring object,—this was the sign which He chose of that dominion which should stretch from sea to sea, which should reach to the lowest depths, and work the mightiest deliverance. 'You would know if I am a King. You will see me lifted upon a cross: there you may learn what I am. Whoso sees the Son of Man, his Lord and King there,—whoso believes and trusts Him there,—will rise up indeed a new man, will be saved from the plague which is destroying him, will awaken to health and freedom. He will not perish in his wretched, selfish isolation; he will have that life which is the common life of all.'

And why? He will see there the love of God to him and to the world. The only-begotten Son upon that cross will declare Him as He has always declared Him; but the revelation will be immeasurably fuller and clearer than it has ever been. He from whom men have turned as their enemy, as plotting their destruction, as pledged to destroy the world, will be manifested as their Saviour and its Saviour. That which has been the curse and misery and death of man, his separation from God, his hatred of God, will cease for those who believe that in this Son of Man He is making known what He wills, what He is. They will have that eternal life of trust and love which is His own life.

And therefore He goes on: 'He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.' The belief that Jesus does by His cross manifest the tender love of God to mankind, that in Him God's whole will and mind and purpose are revealed to men,—this takes away the condemnation from their consciences; this restores them to trust and liberty and hope. And therefore, conversely, not to believe this, is to have a sense of alienation and distance from God, to feel that there is an abyss between us and Him which has never been closed—an abyss into which we are casting our sacrifices and works of devotion, in the dream that it may at last be filled up; while all our efforts, being efforts of discontent and distrust, efforts to conciliate a foe, widen and deepen it. Our Lord pronounces this unbelief to be its own all-sufficing punishment. 'The light is there; you do not love it; you fly from it. What worse state can there be than that? You hug the evil deeds from which you might be delivered. You choose the evil which is contrary to the being and nature of the blessed God in whose image you are made. What torment can there be so great as that?'

I spoke of the new birth, or the birth from above, by which men are made capable of seeing the kingdom of God, as one of which those may become conscious who are conscious of a rebellious will, and who would fain submit to their rightful Ruler. This latter part of the dialogue confirms and enlarges that statement. He who is bitten with serpents may turn to the brazen serpent; he who has been alienated from God may become at peace with Him. But our Lord's words also discover to us another truth, different from this, nowise inconsistent with it. They show us that our consciousness is not in any sense the foundation of God's kingdom, that His love is the foundation of it. They make us understand that the revelation of that Love is in very deed the reconciliation and regeneration of the world; that we may claim all as included in that reconciliation and regeneration; that our baptism of water and the Spirit, while it gives all warrant for conscious repentance and faith, must comprehend the unconscious, must declare upon what their consciousness is to stand. They are sons of God. God's Spirit is given them, that they may grow into the knowledge of their sonship, that they may be able to live in conformity with it.

The conclusion of this memorable discourse also takes off all the edge which has been given to those words, in the earlier part of it, in which it is said, 'the Spirit breathes where He wills.' I have treated that language as expressing the entire freedom of His operations, His independence on material agents as well as on the will of the creature. But if any one concludes that the Spirit does not will that all men should believe and come to the knowledge of the truth, he must deny that He is the Spirit of that God who sent not His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

DISCOURSE VIII.

THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE BRIDEGROOM'S FRIEND.

[Lincoln's Inn, Easter Sunday, March 23, 1856.]

St. John III. 30.

He must increase; I must decrease.

We have seen, in the first chapter of this Gospel, how much the work and office of John the Baptist are connected with all the deepest thoughts and announcements of the Apostle. The more we study him, the more probable, I think, the old tradition of the Church, that he was a disciple of the Baptist, must appear to us,—the more we shall understand the cause of his anxiety to point out the exact relation between his two teachers.

I have endeavoured to show you that it is not the superiority of the Christ to the forerunner which he chiefly dwells upon. That difference had been sufficiently brought out by the earlier evangelists. He insists that the superiority of the Christ rested on His priority; that the later in order of manifestation was the first in order of being; that of His fulness John and all previous prophets had received; that of Him, as the Word of God, as the Light of men, they had all borne witness. Whether Jesus was or was not the Word made flesh,—whether He did or did not prove that in Him was the Life of all things, and that He was the Light of men,—are questions which the Evangelist undertakes to resolve for us in the course of his narrative. Upon that point the Baptist may at times have had a strong conviction; at times he might be doubtful. But that there was such a Word of God, such a Light of men, and that He would make Himself manifest, this was the groundwork of his prophecy; by this proclamation he proved himself to be of the same class with Isaiah and Ezekiel; by this he showed that a kingdom of heaven must be at hand, in which the least might be greater than he.

How our Lord spoke to a ruler of the Jews concerning that kingdom, and the qualifications for entering into it and seeing it—how he connected it with a birth by water and by the Spirit—we have heard in the first part of this chapter. The narrative which occupies the remainder of it carries us back to John. Not long after the passover at which the conversation with Nicodemus took place, Jesus, we are told, went with His disciples into the country part of Judæa—the land of Judæa being here set in contrast, not with Galilee, but with the city of Jerusalem, at which He had been during the feast. 'There He tarried with them and baptized.' This expression is used loosely; it is qualified in the next chapter. 'Jesus,' it is said, 'Himself baptized not, but His disciples.' Still it was regarded, to all intents and purposes, as His baptism. It was naturally compared with that of John; for he was still at large, and was 'baptizing in Ænon, near to Salim, where there was much water.' Perhaps the numbers that went out to him had diminished; but it is obvious from the context that he was still an object of attraction to many; 'they came to him, and were baptized.'

'Then there arose a question between some of John's disciples and a Jew' (the plural is evidently quite out of place) 'about purification.' We need not inquire into the nature of this dispute, seeing that the Apostle tells us no more of it. Before that time, and ever since, the subject of purification has given rise to thousands of questions, all bearing more or less directly upon the relation between outward acts and the inner man,—what the former can or cannot do to make the other better. Such questions were certain to be awakened by a baptism with water, and a preaching of repentance such as John's; any of them may have suggested to his disciples the thought whether there was some greater virtue in that of Jesus, or whether He were merely a rival and imitator of the elder teacher. With surprise and perplexity, and something of the indignation which was natural in men jealous for the honour of a beloved teacher, 'they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, He that was with thee beyond Jordan, and to whom thou barest witness, behold the same baptizeth, and all men come unto Him.'

There was probably a pause before John gave his answer. The news which he heard may have stirred up strange thoughts and doubts within him, not in a moment to be quelled. Was his work over? Was he to have no more power over men? Was he no longer a witness for God? The magician says, when the fabric of his vision is dissolved—

'Now my spells are all o'erthrown, And what strength I have's my own; Which is most faint.'

A mournful conclusion, and yet one to which many a man of high genius has been brought, and out of which, perhaps, in the end he has derived very precious lessons. Was this to be the result of the prophet's meditation also? No! it comes forth in quite other words, which were a reply both to the questionings in his own soul, and the shallower perplexities and speculations of his disciples. 'A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from above.' As if he had said: 'You need not be careful of my fame. If I have ever spoken a word which has entered into you, and shown you your ownselves, and has made you truer, better men, that word was given me by the Lord of your spirit and mine; He enabled you to take it in. Out of the bosom of God, where that Word is whose life is the light of men, did these quickening, illuminating words proceed. Just so far as my words have led you to turn to that Word who is always with you, and who has promised that He will come and manifest Himself to you,—just so far have they been wholesome and effectual. "You yourselves bear me witness, that I said I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him." As I never pretended to be that unseen Light, which I told you was struggling with your darkness, so—you know it well—I never pretended to be the Christ, the Anointed One, the King of Israel. For my message was that this Christ must be that Light of the world, that Word made flesh. I told you that He alone would baptize with the Spirit, because He alone would be fully baptized with the Spirit. I am sent before Him,—sent, as I said, to baptize with water, that so He might be made known to Israel who has the higher baptism.' And then, as if he were caught away by a new and diviner inspiration, as if the very meaning of that word, Christ the anointed, were revealed to him,—as if, in the light of that meaning, a thousand old songs and symbols were interpreting themselves to him,—he goes on, 'He that hath the bride is the bridegroom.' The vision of a king was before him; of a king, the direct contrast to the tyrants of the earth. In place of a Deioces, hidden in the recesses of some Median palace—in place of a Tiberius, governing the world by spies—he sees One 'who is fairer than the sons of men, upon whose lips grace is poured, whose sword is on His thigh, and who rides on in truth and righteousness.' He sees Him coming to woo and claim His bride, 'whose beauty He greatly desires, who is all-glorious within, whose clothing is of wrought gold.' Such a Bridegroom all the prophets had, in one form of speech or another, been discoursing of. They had proved that they were dealing in no metaphors—pouring out no Oriental rhapsodies; for their revelation of Him had been connected with the homeliest exhortations to domestic union and purity; they had affirmed the relation of the particular husband and wife to have its foundation in this higher relation; they had treated all breaches of the marriage-vow as indications and results of the adultery of the race to its unseen Husband. And though the race meant in their minds Israel; though the people whom God had chosen, and with whom He had made a covenant, were those whom they taught to regard themselves as united in this eternal bond, of which covenants were but the outward expression, which existed long before Abraham or Noah; yet their language was always too large for even these limitations—was continually breaking through them. The King who was to reign over the Gentiles must be represented as their Husband; whensoever He should be revealed as the glory of His people Israel, He would certainly be revealed as the Light to lighten all the nations; that is to say, whensoever he appeared as the Christ of God, He would certainly appear as the Bridegroom of Humanity.

To speak of Him, then, by this name, was not, as some would make out, to anticipate the discoveries of New Testament Apostles. It was expressly to endorse and unfold the discoveries that had been made to Old Testament Prophets. It is only when he speaks of his own office in relation to this Bridegroom, that John looks at all beyond the previous teachers of his land; and then, that he may make their office also more intelligible.

'The friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.' I know scarcely any words in all the Scriptures which have a deeper and diviner music in them than these, or which more express all that a Christian minister and a Christian man should wish to understand and feel; and should hope that some day he may understand and feel as he who first spoke them did. That may seem to us a high ambition; we ought to consider it a poor ambition. After eighteen hundred years we should be able to understand better, to feel more intensely than John did, that all the joy which is intended for a human being—nay, in the strict sense, which is possible for a human being—comes from hearing this Bridegroom's voice. I do believe, brethren, that by sore experience, shameful experience, those of us who have had fewest saintly aspirations may learn that lesson. We have listened for the echoes of our own voices; we have longed to know what impression they made; we have tried to feast on the outward praise or the inward consciousness of their power or sweetness. Has it not been very miserable, unsatisfying food? has not the day's gluttony brought nausea and disgust on the morrow? Has not the gratification of that vanity gradually formed in us a craving, which no indulgence could appease, which every disappointment made intolerable? How much better has it been, if we have striven to take delight in the words and deeds of other men, to feel the praises of them as our own! 'As our own! Then we still are intended to connect what is outside of us with ourselves; we must, in some sort, refer them to a standard within us?' Here is the puzzle; one always recurring; one infinitely more tormenting in the practice of life than it ever can be in speculation; one that affects all our judgments of our fellow-men; one that never deserts us when we are alone. It never can be set at rest till we confess a Lord, from whom all that is good and dear and worthy to be admired in any human being is derived—a root of all mutual understanding and genial sympathy—a centre of life and joy. If we think that there is a Bridegroom who is ever bestowing His own treasures and loveliness upon the creatures who were formed after His likeness, whose nature He has taken, who is ever drawing those creatures out of their own narrow and dark prison-houses, to come and claim their rights as spirits, and to share with Him the free air and light in which He dwells, then we may begin to claim the place of His friends, and in our own hearts, as well as in those who have been most estranged from us, to hear Him speaking. That speech will not be monotonous; we shall know why it is said in the Apocalypse to be as the sound of many waters. In the accents of humiliation and penitence, in the accents of thanksgiving and praise, in the confessions upon sick-beds, in the laugh of children, in the stillness of the churchyard, in the noise of cities, in the cries upon the cross, in the message, He is risen,—we shall hear the Bridegroom's voice. It testifies that He has come and is coming to us and to all. Our joy is fulfilled only if we learn to welcome Him, and to bid our brethren welcome Him also.

And therefore John proceeds, most consistently and harmoniously: 'He must increase; I must decrease.' If the words had been spoken only of a new teacher who was baptizing more disciples than he, there would be a sadness and a kind of murmur in them, however they might denote a necessary submission. But when it is the Bridegroom of his own spirit, the divine Lord, from whom alone he had received light, in whom alone he could see light, who was to increase, the 'I must decrease' is not a qualification of the joy he had claimed as the Bridegroom's friend, but a principal part of it. How many a one has felt the misery of a self; has longed to become absorbed in the universe—to be nothing! It was a wish which a holy man such as John was did not dare to cherish, and yet which must have haunted him more than most. To have a glimpse of this annihilation; to see that it was possible to become less and less, while He in whom he was bound up, in whom was the spring of his life and joy, grew greater and greater; to feel that he might find his own personality in another;—was not this the consummation to which God had always been leading him? Was not this, too, the very meaning and explanation of the work in which he had been engaged? The Word, the Light of men, of whom he had told his countrymen, needed no longer his witness; for He was coming forth Himself to witness of that Father with whom He had dwelt eternally, to tell mankind of Him.

This higher testimony, this newer and grander revelation, is the subject of the verses which follow: 'He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: He that cometh from heaven is above all. And what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth; and no man receiveth His testimony.'

John had said before, that a man receives nothing but what is given him from heaven. He does not recal that language, but affirms it anew, when he says that every man in himself, every child of Adam, though a living soul, is 'yet of the earth, and speaketh of the earth.' He is tied to earthly measures and standards. If he applies even the faculties which he has derived from heaven to judge of heaven, he reduces it to the level of earth. But there is One who cometh from above, One who is above all, One who draws His light from the Fountain of light, One whose light in us is not a part of our darkness, but a divine power to scatter it. He testifies of that which He has seen and heard, of the heavenly things, of the will and nature and purpose of God. 'And no man receiveth His testimony.' Strange that John should say that! What he had heard from his disciples was that Jesus was baptizing, and 'that all men came to Him.' We are not told that he doubted their information; we are not told that he had any different information from more trustworthy sources. And yet he confidently affirms that His testimony is not received. Why? Because he was not speaking of what had happened in the few days or weeks since Jesus came to Jordan to fulfil all righteousness, but of the four thousand years during which He had come to His own, and His own had received Him not. That testimony which He had borne as the invisible Word of God He was bearing still, now that He was made flesh and dwelling among men. It was mightier in degree; it was not different in kind. It was still a testimony to the heart, to the inner man, and must be entertained or rejected there. What, therefore, the Baptist could say of the past, on the warrant of so long an experience, he could say surely of the present. The darkness would fight against the light. No man of himself, without an operation from above, without a higher baptism than that of water, whether administered by John or by Christ, would believe that which the Son of God came to tell him.

That this limitation to the expression 'no man' is involved in the very nature of the Baptist's discourse, is evident from the next verse: 'He that hath received His testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.' But what need of a limitation? Why should he have made a large assertion in one sentence, which is to be modified or contradicted in the next? The answer is contained in the words themselves: 'He who receives this testimony sets to his seal that God is true.' The Christ comes to baptize men with the Spirit, that they may receive that which of themselves they are both reluctant and unable to receive. The man who accepts that testimony, confesses his own reluctance and inability. He believes God to be strong and true, though he is weak and lying. And his mind becomes stamped with the impression of God's truth. The Spirit of God raises him above himself to know Him. It was necessary, then, to make the one assertion in its breadth and fulness, that the other might not lose any of its breadth and fulness. It was necessary that no man should suppose himself capable of entering into the mind and kingdom of God—that all men might know that God was not deceiving them, when He promised to bestow that capacity upon them.

'For,' John continues, 'He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him.' He speaks the words of God. If He proclaimed a doctrine, a theory, a scheme of the universe—that might be taken in,—if some thought ill of it, others would embrace it. But He comes speaking the words of God—revealing the mind of the Eternal Being—showing forth Him who is truth and who is love. How can we grasp such a manifestation as this? What have our poor beggarly conceits to do with the idea of a Goodness without bounds? Let us understand it well, brethren. The Jews rejected the testimony of Christ, because it was the testimony concerning such a God as this. The difficulty of all difficulties, whatever we may fancy, is to believe in God, in a living and true God, in a God who loves His creatures. It is a difficulty which no arguments can remove; a difficulty which the progress of ages does not diminish in the least, but makes stronger; a difficulty which is often most overpowering to the most religious men. The logician says, 'The understanding is finite; you cannot bring the Infinite within its range.' The philosopher of advanced civilization says, 'The belief in God was for little children; science is for us. Physical science does not reveal God; our worship of humanity dispenses with Him.' Religious men see evil all about them and within them. They can conceive of a punisher and avenger of evil; they can conceive that this punisher and avenger, if he has motive and compensation sufficient, may exempt some from the destruction which he has decreed for the majority. They cannot believe in Love.

The logician is right. St. John said, eighteen hundred years ago, that the Light had shined in the darkness, and the darkness had not comprehended it. If we think only of our understanding, if we refuse to believe that there is a Word always illuminating it, we think only of the darkness, and we may say boldly, 'It can know nothing of God; we have nothing to do with Him.' The modern philosopher of advanced civilization is right. We cannot discover God in the world; we cannot discover in the world anything higher than ourselves. If there is no Bridegroom of humanity, who witnesses to it of a Father, and binds it to a Father, we can only worship the world, or worship humanity—that is to say, worship ourselves. The religious man who exalts evil into the throne of the universe is right. All the witnesses of the conscience that there is a God infinitely good,—all the witnesses of the heart that man is made to be in conformity with that infinite Good, and can be satisfied with nothing else—are simply mockeries and delusions, which it is the business of the disciple and minister of Christ to trample upon, to confute with words taken out of the Bible, till he has succeeded in making young men profligates and atheists, old men worldlings and hypocrites,—if there has not been in the world an only-begotten Son full of grace and truth, who has come forth from the Father to testify of the Father, and to whom the Father has given His Spirit without measure, that He might baptize with it all who receive His testimony, all who believe that God is true, not false—good, not evil.

To this subject the last and most memorable words of this whole chapter refer, those in which John the Baptist looks into the promised land which he was not to enter, in which he winds up the old dispensation, in which he introduces the new. 'The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand. He that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life: he that believeth not the Son of God hath not life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.' Henceforth we shall hear no longer of a prophet discoursing of a Word who has come to him, and from whom his light and the light of all men has been derived. We shall find that Word discoursing as a Son concerning a Father, conversing with a Father, showing forth a Father. We are to hear how this testimony is received, especially how it is received by the most religious portion of the Jewish people. We are to learn that, though their opposition to Jesus took many forms, there was one dark root of all their hostility and hatred. They could not bear to hear Christ speak of a Father—of a Father who loved the world. Whenever they thought of God, a dark image of wrath was present to them; that wrath abode upon them, settled in them. How was it possible for them, then, to see in Jesus the perfect image of the Father,—in His wrath against all baseness and vileness and hypocrisy, the true Divine wrath which is the expression of the deepest love,—in His sympathy with publicans and sinners, the self-same love? How was it possible for them to see in the Son lifted on the cross, the King whom prophets and holy men had desired, the Son of God in whom dwelt the fulness of the Father, because the fulness of love, bodily? And, therefore, the wrath which they had invoked upon all others, and cherished in their own hearts, came upon them to the uttermost. They rejected their King and Bridegroom, and all the national and spiritual life which had proceeded from Him perished inevitably.

I have come back to the subject of which I was speaking last Sunday. All Christian preaching should return continually to the Cross. It can never find any other object so central or so glorious. But the death of Christ and His resurrection are inseparable. I have been preaching you an Easter sermon to-day. For, if you think of Easter as apostles and martyrs thought of it, you will think of it as the witness that the Bridegroom of humanity has presented and justified humanity before His Father. You will pray for the Spirit of the Father and the Son, that you, believing in that justification, may rise with Him to newness of life. And you will join to these prayers another, that each of us, when the hour comes in which strength and heart fail, may be able to say with joy, 'I must decrease, that He may increase.' All that belongs to my own poor and selfish nature must decay and perish, that He, my Lord and Saviour, may be exalted,—that I and all His redeemed may see our own blessedness and glory only and for ever in Him.

DISCOURSE IX.

THE WATER OF LIFE.

[Lincoln's Inn, Sunday after Easter, March 30, 1856.]

St. John IV. 10.

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.

The dispute between John's disciples and the Jew, of which I spoke last Sunday, was about purification. Apparently, John's answer to them, when they came to tell him that Jesus was baptizing, and that all men were coming to Him, had little reference to this subject. Really his words threw the greatest light upon it. He did not say whether the baptism of Jesus had a more purifying effect upon those who received it than his baptism. But he spoke of another gift which Jesus, if He was indeed the Son of God, would confer upon those who believed in Him. 'He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son of God shall not see life.' It was a mighty thing for men to be purified, to have corruptions removed from them. But corruption is the consequence of death. Where corruption is, death must have entered. He who is the source and spring of life, He who can restore life, must have in Himself the very principle and power of purification. All instruments of purification must derive their virtue from Him. He must be the Purifier.

Accordingly it is to this quality of the divine Word, or Son, that St. John has from the first directed our thoughts. 'In Him was life, and the life was the light of men:' this is the starting-point of his Gospel. The sign in Cana of Galilee was the sign that Jesus was the communicator of life. His discourse with Nicodemus turned altogether upon the life from above which the Spirit of God would confer upon men, and which would enable them to see the kingdom of God. The primary announcement of the forerunner, therefore, respecting the Word made flesh, 'He shall baptize with the Holy Ghost,' whatever more it might mean, could mean nothing less than this: 'He shall not merely cleanse away defilements; He shall impart the life which those defilements obstruct and seek to extinguish.' John did not say for a moment that water should not be the sign of entrance into the kingdom that was at hand—that it should not be Christ's sign, as it had been his sign;—but he said that it should be the sign, not merely of repentance and remission of sins, but of a higher and eternal life.

Was this an unusual and arbitrary application of the symbol? Surely not. Water, when it is applied outwardly, suggests only the thought of purification. Water, when it is taken inwardly, immediately suggests the thought of life. And this, therefore, is the point of connexion between the discourse of John with his disciples, which occupied us last Sunday, and the discourse of Jesus with the woman of Samaria, which is to occupy us to-day. The Evangelist points out the relation between the two subjects in his own mind and in the history, by the first words of the fourth chapter: 'When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, (though Jesus Himself baptized not, but His disciples,) He left Judæa, and came again into Galilee.' What the disciples of the Baptist had angrily conjectured, the Pharisees would of course take for granted. They would assume that John and Jesus were rival teachers, and that one was supplanting the other. The thought of this might become the thought of Christ's own disciples: if it did, they would utterly misunderstand the work of their Master, and His relation to the preacher of repentance. Was not this a reason for leaving Judæa, and going into Galilee?

'And He must needs go through Samaria.' That was the most natural road. He might no doubt have avoided it; there was an inward and moral necessity why He should not. If He was setting up a kingdom in the whole land, portions of it which had been most separated from the rest must be claimed as belonging to it.

'Then cometh He to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph.' This country was connected with the oldest traditions relating to the commonwealth of Israel,—to the period before the giving of the Law, when the life of the fathers of the nation was entirely domestic and pastoral. In these traditions was the link between one part of the people and the other. The local associations with the events recorded in the Book of Genesis were witnesses that the rocks had once been united, however rudely they had in later times been rent asunder. There, especially, was the simplest and most faithful token of patriarchal times—a well. It was believed to have been dug by Jacob. It brought the name of the head of all the tribes, and the likeness of his mode of existence to their own, before those who could read no letters, and had little in their own thoughts to tell them that they were members of a chosen race.

'Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For His disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat.)' Such a request from a weary and thirsty traveller would not commonly have been refused by a woman of Palestine; and certainly we have no reason to think, from the Gospels, that a Samaritan was likely to be less friendly or courteous than one of the Southern people. It is not probable that the woman meant to refuse. But she thought she had a right, on behalf of her country, to trifle a little with the pride of a Jew, who, in a difficulty, would ask a favour of those whom he despised, though he would not hold any intercourse with them, or meet them upon fair terms. 'How is it,' said she, 'that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings' (do not traffic) 'with the Samaritans.'

That word, 'have no traffic or dealing,' seems to explain the first part of our Lord's answer. 'If thou knewest the GIFT of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.' She had come day after day to draw water at that well. Had she never known that that water was a gift of God? Had no thirst on a hot day, or no failure of the spring, taught her that? Was water a thing to traffic in? Did not she recollect that it was a man, and not merely a Jew, who was saying, 'Give me to drink'? Did she never think of the gift of water as something very free and universal? This lesson was contained in the opening of the sentence; and the look and the voice of the Stranger had, perhaps, already carried it home in some degree to the woman's conscience. But the speech suddenly took another turn. There might be an exchange of gifts here also. 'If thou knewest who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.'

The words conveyed no immediate sense to her mind as to the nature of the gift which was spoken of. But her answer shows that the presence of the Stranger had not been without its effect. She speaks with less levity than before, with something of doubt, if not of awe,—'Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his children, and his cattle?' I am far from supposing that this question indicates any suspicion in her mind that He was greater than their father, or that He could know the country and where to find its secret springs as Jacob did. But that very reference to Jacob showed that the feelings of the woman were becoming more serious than they had been. The petty disputes of Jews and Samaritans were giving place to those remembrances of the past which make all common spots sacred, and ennoble even the vulgarest minds. Her well, that well at which she had so often filled her pitcher, was the one out of which, eighteen hundred years before, the patriarch had drunk, and his children, and his cattle. It was a step in her education, a preparation for the words which follow.

'Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.' I do not say that our version of this passage is in itself an incorrect one; nothing is harder than to find the most suitable equivalents for the words which are rendered here 'never' and 'everlasting:' but it would, I conceive, have been most desirable, by some means or other, to make the reader feel (which scarcely any reader of our translation does feel) that the two clauses answer to each other,—that εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, follows 'shall not thirst,' and that the adjective, αἰώνιος, is that which qualifies 'life.' I shall make no further use of this observation,—for there is enough in this passage to occupy us without any reference to it; but I could not pass it over because the word 'life,' which is the cardinal one of the passage, and I might say of the dialogue, must be considerably affected by that which accompanies it. I am far more anxious, however, that you should consider how our Lord describes the difference between the water of Jacob's well and that which He would give. 'The water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.' The woman had wondered where He would go to discover a fountain deeper and more abundant than that which Jacob had bequeathed. The answer is, 'He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again.' 'He must come, as you do, to fetch water continually. The supply of to-day will be no supply for to-morrow. But what if each man should have the spring in himself? What if it should be a spring ever renewed, kept alive by Him who first opened it?' 'A strange thought,' you will say, 'to set before an ignorant woman! What could she understand about springs or fountains within?' Very little at first, if we believe the Evangelist. Her reply is just what we might expect it to be. She relapses into the sort of banter with which she had begun the conversation. The gravity which she had exhibited for a moment has disappeared: 'Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.' A sufficient proof, most would say, if they dared, that this kind of mystical discourse was very little adapted to the comprehension of such a person as she was. But, my brethren, if we say this, we must say more. We must say that the whole Gospel of St. John—the simplest, as I have said already, in language and construction, of all the Gospels, that which Luther was wont to designate the child's Gospel—is unsuitable to simple people, and must be reconstructed according to our notions of simplicity. For that Gospel begins from the principle that Christ, the living Word of God, is the life and light of men, the life and light of all men. If that is true, it must have been the work of the Son of Man, of the Word made flesh, to let all manner of people know that He was the source and spring of their life,—that apart from Him they had none. Now, life must be inward; it cannot come to a man from the world which is about him. That may be full of signs and tokens of the life he wants. Each well, each drop of rain, may testify of it. But it must spring up within him. Whatever is enduring, whatever he wants to satisfy the infinite thirst within him, must be there.

You say, an ignorant woman could not enter into such a mystery as this. But there were mysteries that she could enter into. 'Jesus said unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.' It was a curious and startling break in the conversation. What had it to do with Jacob's well, or with the living water which she could not find there? Very much indeed. 'The woman said, I have no husband. Jesus answered and said, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.' Here were facts concerning her past and her present history; here was a revelation of something that concerned her own very self. With this there was no trifling. It was not of Jacob's well, or of another well, that the Stranger was discoursing now. He was speaking of her,—He was telling her what she was. 'In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.' She confessed it in her way,—'Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet.' All was not quite right with her;—He knew it, and He made her know it. She had offended the Power above,—perhaps He could tell her, also, how she might appease Him. Her fathers might have taught her wrongly. She would like to know. She would rather like, moreover, to make the discourse more general, less personal. A wish for truth, and a fear of it, light and darkness, in her, as in all of us, fought for the mastery. She said, 'Our fathers worshipped in this mountain,'—this venerable Gerizim,—'and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.' Whether or not she would have been ready at the bidding of a Jewish prophet to repair her errors, and earn the favour of God by giving up her Samaritan faith, and becoming a proselyte of the Temple, she had not perhaps asked herself; how much she would have gained by the exchange, our Lord's words in another Gospel, about those who became proselytes from heathenism, may partly tell us. But He who had sat by the well did not ask this proof of her desire for reformation. 'Woman,' He said, 'believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.' All she had asked—all that most Samaritans or Jews would have disputed about—was where they ought to worship. The thought upon which Jesus fixes her mind, is the Being to be worshipped. That new name, which John said the Son was come to reveal, is now proclaimed in the ears of a separatist and a sinner. He speaks not of the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, but of the Father. Such a name the woman might or might not have heard, as one of the names of Him who dwelt on Gerizim. At all events, it would be but one of them—one that would be lost amidst the various titles by which He was invoked—carrying no special significance to the mind of the worshipper. Still, far down in that mind there was that which responded to the word Father, which would awake up at the sound when it came from lips that felt all the power and reality of it. She who had had five husbands, had had a father. To feel that the God of the distant hill had anything to do with that human relation, was the dawn of a new day to her. The sun was rising in her heart, if there were ever so many clouds concealing it.

I have said that our Lord was drawing the woman's thoughts from the place of worship to the object of worship. He goes on, in the next verse, to tell her that ignorance of this object was the special ignorance of the Samaritan: 'Ye worship ye know not what.' And then He introduces words that have startled many, especially in this connexion: 'We know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews.' 'Could He,' it has been asked, 'claim this dignity for His own nation, at the very moment when He seemed to be breaking down all distinctions of nations? And did the Jew know what he worshipped? Did not Jesus Himself say, "Ye know neither me nor the Father?"' I apprehend, brethren, that the assertion of this, as the great calamity of the Samaritan—that he knew not what he worshipped—is abundantly borne out by history. It was in all times a country of superstitions, the early home of Baal-worshippers, the later home of enchanters and fanatics, and of sects putting forward pretensions to all kinds of spiritual powers, appealing to great necessities in the human mind, always leading it astray from its centre. The hard, cold Jew was not half so much open to these impressions. The sects in his land were dry and formal, bound together by certain notions about the law. Becoming more and more selfish, measuring everything by rules of profit and loss, he grew at last to be a mere worshipper of Mammon. How was it possible, then, for him to know Christ and the Father? But in his debasement, he still preserved the shadow of the blessing which had been conferred upon his race, and which his neighbour, though freer and more open-minded, had lost. He still clung to a distinct object of adoration. He was a protestant against the worship of spiritual phantasies. This poor shadow showed what the substance was which the Jew had inherited, and which was his distinction among all nations. Salvation was to go forth from his land. And salvation, so our Lord teaches us, consists in knowing what we worship; for that knowledge saves men from slavery to the world's idols, and to the idols of their own hearts, which is their great curse and misery.

But if this is salvation, it could not be salvation to worship in the temple of Jerusalem any more than in the temple of Gerizim. If this salvation was to go forth from the Jews, it could not be limited to them. Therefore He proceeds—'The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.' Here was a proclamation which, in a wonderful manner, combined the truth that had been partially revealed to the Samaritan, and the truth which still subsisted, though commonly hidden, distorted, even inverted, among the Jews. The confused sense of a spiritual worship, of men being spirits, was that which gave the magicians among the Samaritans all their power. They did acknowledge some invisible presence and influence acting upon them, and capable of producing wonderful effects, though they did not know what they worshipped. The Jew bowed down before a Being mightier than himself, who could lay down laws for him, who would execute those laws upon him. But he turned that Being into a selfish tyrant. A double transformation! The tyrant is revealed as a Father. The enchantments are supplanted by a Spirit proceeding from that Father, a Spirit of truth. Men are not to climb up to that Father by their offerings on Mount Moriah or Mount Gerizim, by their sacrifices or by their enchantments. The Father is seeking them. He gives them His true Spirit to make them true worshippers. They must not wish to draw Him down to them; He would draw them up to Him.

'For God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' In those first words there was, as will be evident from what I have said, much that was in harmony with Samaritan feeling,—even with the feeling of an ordinary Samaritan like this woman. She had heard of spirits; she thought more about spirits than a Jew would have done. She did not speculate about them, but supposed that they might appear to her, or have some influence over her. But then came that other part of the sentence, which went to the very root of the tricks and superstitions with which she and her countrymen were familiar; 'they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' The Spirit of truth—that must enter into you, that must govern you, that must reform your life. A message this meant for the universe,—going to the very root of all religion and all philosophy, and yet bearing straight upon the conscience of that woman of Sychar who had come to draw water at Jacob's well.

Perhaps there is nothing that strikes us more in this conversation, which is so very direct and consistent in its purpose, and yet which follows all the windings of the human heart, beginning from 'Give me to drink,' and ending with a revelation of the nature of God; perhaps, I say, there is nothing more remarkable in it all than the result of it. You expect to see the woman bowing before the mysterious Foreigner, expressing her astonishment at his high doctrine, lamenting that she had spoken to Him so uncourteously. Not at all. She says, 'I know that when Messias cometh, He shall tell us all things.' 'Our people speak of One who is to be sent from God, of a Messias. I suppose, if these things are true about God being a Spirit, and about our having a Spirit of truth, He will tell us. We shall know as much of these things as we can know.' Evidently this part of the conversation has not yet taken hold of her. The part about herself has. 'The Messias will tell us all things; but this Jew has told me of myself; He has seen what I am.' And therefore, when Jesus answers, 'I that speak unto thee am He,'—so making a more direct profession of His name and dignity to this Samaritan than He had made in Jerusalem,—He surely meant to fix this impression on her mind: 'Yes, this is the test of Messiahship. Look for no other. Do not ask for some outward signs to tell you when He is coming, or what He can do. I that speak unto thee—I that lay bare thy heart—am He. That is the proof of my kingship over human beings; that is the proof of my being sent from God. I know what is in thee—the wrong of thy outward life, the evil of thy inward life. I know thy deepest necessities. I know thy want of a new spring of life within, of water of which thou mayest drink, and not thirst again. Thou needest that. All Samaritans, all Jews, all men and women who shall live, all nations and generations to come, will need it. I can give it them. For I can give them that Spirit of truth which the Father desires them to have, that they may know Him and worship Him.'

Lord, evermore give us this Spirit, that we thirst not, nor seek to draw the water of life, which is only in Thee, from the wells of earth!

DISCOURSE X.

THE REWARDS OF LABOUR, AND THE KINDS OF FAITH.

[Lincoln's Inn, 2d Sunday after Easter, April 6, 1856.]

St. John IV. 48.

Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.

Distance of time is not always unfavourable to accurate recollection. We often remember a friend's words better, years after they were spoken, than the next day; because we understand them better, because we see how one of them rose out of another. So, I imagine, it must have been with the woman of Sychar. If she had repeated the dialogue with Jesus to her neighbours, as soon as she returned to her city, she would probably have misrepresented it. Short as it was, she would have mistaken words, she would have changed the order of them. A time will have come when she would be sure of what He had said, and of what she had said,—when she could say confidently to those who were collecting His words, 'This is what He told me—this, and nothing else.'

At first she seems to have been too full of one part of the Stranger's speech to care about the rest. She did not say, 'I have received strange lessons from this Jewish prophet about God being a Spirit, and about the water of life;' she expressed far more simply the effect of this speech upon her: 'He told me all that ever I did.' Was this exaggerated language? At first we are inclined to say so; then, perhaps, to justify her by resorting to some awkward hypothesis of our Lord having said many things to her which the Evangelist has omitted. The experience and conscience of human beings justify her far better. One who repeats to us all the passages of our history ever so accurately, does not tell us all that ever we did. A single flash of light may make the whole past visible to us, and show us that it is our past. Thus was it with her. Her inmost self was revealed to the Stranger. And, what was wonderful, she did not wish to escape from His gaze. Awful as it was, she was attracted, not repelled by it. She had the comfort,—the greatest almost that we can experience,—of feeling that she had no longer anything to hide,—that there was One who knew thoroughly all that was wrong and all that was right in her. For Jesus had given her a sense of there being a right in her which she had never had before. She could not have explained how it came to pass; she was an ignorant peasant;—but it was so. The Stranger's speech had raised her to a new level. She had never seen the evil in herself as she had seen it now; but she had never so much risen out of the evil. When do we rise out of our evil but when the truth is told us, and we like to hear it?

And therefore she said, 'Is not this the Christ?' 'Can it be any one else? And must He not be the Christ for you, my fellow-citizens, as He is for me? Must He not know all that you ever did, as He knows all that I ever did?' It was the right sermon. They acknowledged at once that it was such a Christ they wanted; not one who could tell them about all things in the world, but who could tell them all things that ever they did. He who had that power might or might not be such a Christ as scribes and doctors talked of; He might or might not have the marks by which they discerned the coming King and Deliverer. But He was the Christ for poor people who hewed wood and drew water, who were human beings, and who had committed sins. These were the proofs of His mission to them. He must give these; they asked no others.

The Apostle could have been no ear-witness of the conversation with the woman. But he describes with such vividness, the impression made upon the disciples who returned when she was departing, that it is difficult to suppose he was not one of them. 'And upon this came His disciples, and marvelled that He talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest Thou? or, Why talkest Thou with her?' The sense of astonishment which they all felt,—the look which showed to each how the other was sharing it with him, and yet the awe which restrained them from questioning Him,—the confidence that He had some great purpose, though they knew not what it was; all this came back to the old man as clearly as if he were then by the well of Sychar, not amidst the merchandise of Ephesus. And so, by a single instance, he makes clearer to us than he could by a multitude of explanations, what must have been continually in the minds of the disciples, when they stood in that presence, and heard words spoken and saw acts done which they could not sound with their plummets, and which called forth faith in Him because they could not.

But though this was so, they had no dread of speaking to Him about common earthly necessities. They knew that He had sat down weary on the well; they knew that He hungered and thirsted. He had sent them to buy food, and they could say, 'Master, eat,' without any doubt that He would partake of it just as any of them did. Probably He took what they offered Him, even while He said, 'I have meat to eat which ye know not of.' They had so little suspicion that He would ever work a miracle for His own support,—they were so inwardly certain that He would not,—that they said at once to each other, 'Hath any man brought Him ought to eat?' No. He had waited for their coming. The ravens had carried no nourishment to Him; He had not commanded the stones to become bread. There must have been a special joy, an unwonted radiance in His face as He answered, 'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work.' He had that spring of life within Him, of which He had spoken to the woman, from which life might flow forth to her and to all. And yet He speaks of it as not an original fountain, even in Him. There was One from whom He was sent. The satisfaction of doing His will, of accomplishing his purpose,—this was His food; this was the sustaining principle within Him. St. John has taught us already, and will teach us more completely hereafter, that the relation of the Son to a Father, with all the trust, obedience, communion which it implies, is the subject of the new revelation. To be doing the will of Him that sent Him, to be in perfect sympathy with the will which is at the root of the universe, to be fulfilling the purposes of this will,—this Christ affirms to be meat to Him in a double sense; meat, as that which keeps up the strength of the man—meat, as that which gratifies and satisfies his desires.

One may feel there is great general force in such a sentiment as this; but what is its special application to the story we are reading? Had His interview with the woman supplied Him with what could be called meat in either of these senses? What was there to sustain Him, what was there to delight Him, in her way of receiving His words?

The answer is given in the following passage: 'Say ye not, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already unto the harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.'

Many who have gathered crowds about them, who have produced a marked impression upon those crowds, have said, and said truly, that such success was meat and drink to them. If it did not feed their vanity, but sustained them because it showed them they were doing God's will and finishing His work, they may have understood something of Christ's meaning. But the secret food He partook of certainly came from no sudden success that followed His words. First, He met with a woman who had in general answered Him with levity; then a few people of her own rank came at her call. How little would such honours satisfy the ambition of some eloquent disciple of Christ, who has the power of influencing thousands! Could it satisfy Him who came to found a kingdom of which there was to be no end? Yes; for in these first sheaves He could see the certain pledges of a nation's, of a world's, ingathering. The corn-fields which the disciples saw about them would not be reaped for four months; yet the harvest would appear, because the seed had been sown. These men whom He saw coming showed Him that the other harvest was nearer still. The fields were white already for that harvest; the disciples themselves would be reapers in it. He had sent them, and they would receive the wages of reapers. What wages? He had already told them that His own wages were to do the will of God, and to finish His work. Did they want better? They would gather in fruit,—the fruit of all His work and travail, of all God's revelations of Himself from age to age, of all the toil of patriarchs, kings, prophets. These had laboured,—they were entering into their labours. They were come in at the end of a period when all things were hastening to their consummation. They would have the reward which all these men had longed for,—the reward of seeing God's full revelation of Himself, of opening the spring of eternal life of which all might drink together. The divisions of time had nothing to do with an eternal blessing. The sower and the reaper would rejoice together. Why might not Jacob, who had given the well, and the newest Samaritan convert who drank of it, share in those pleasures which are at the right hand of Him, who is, and was, and is to come?

I have only given you a hint or two which may assist you in tracing out the sense of these great words. The Apostles did not enter into them for many years,—not till they had begun to reap the harvest of which He spoke, not till they had learnt that some of the wages of the reapers were persecution and disappointment. So they understood by degrees how unsatisfactory all promises were but those which He had given them; how miserable a thing it was to hope for any reward but that which had been and is His reward. I suppose we must be trained to understand Christ's doctrine in the same school. Till we have been under His discipline we shall have the temper of hirelings, counting His work a hardship, expecting to be paid hereafter for consenting to do it. Or else we shall look for instant harvests,—for mighty effects to follow at once from the things that we speak,—for those fruits which least manifest the calm, patient, loving will of God, and therefore bring no true and inward satisfaction to the spirit of a man. We must learn to see in the seed that same eternal life which is in the perfect flower and fruit—to believe that God will bring the one out of the other; otherwise we shall have much excitement and much weariness, but no food which can support us, no joy which will connect us with the ages that are past and the ages to come. That will not be given to us till we see, in God's revelation of Himself to one sinner, the token of His love to the world.

The whole doctrine concerning the rewards for obedience, which has been the subject of so many wearisome folios by philosophers and divines, is contained, I think, in these eight verses, and may be drawn out of them for daily use by any who think that the Apostle has a higher wisdom than can be found in his commentators, or in their own speculations. The remainder of the chapter contains, in a form as simple and as available, the solution of another problem which has exercised the wits of schoolmen and the hearts of wayfarers. Who has not been tormented with questions and answers about the nature, conditions, kinds, of belief,—about the force of testimony which produces it,—about the organ which exercises it,—about the security or the insecurity of the person who has it or who wants it? On all these points St. John gives us no dissertations. But he tells us a short story about certain Samaritans, and then another rather longer story about a certain Galilæan, which I think may supply the place of many dissertations.

The first is contained in these verses: 'And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on Him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. So when the Samaritans were come unto Him, they besought Him that He would tarry with them: and He abode there two days. And many more believed because of His own word, and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'

Suppose this was translated into school phraseology about implicit and explicit faith,—suppose each of these terms was laboriously explained,—all the different opinions of Fathers, Mediæval Doctors, Reforming Doctors, Modern Doctors respecting each compared, weighed, adjusted,—how much learning we should possess! how much the Apostle's doctrine would expand in our hands,—how much we should expand in our own estimation! But supposing we had actually to find out what belief is in our own case, to trace the history of its progress, how thankful we should be to any one who would translate back the learned language into the language of the Gospel, who would let us hear what these Samaritans—vulgar people of our own flesh and blood—said about their belief and its growth!

The first stage of it we have considered already. What the woman told them had a great effect upon their minds, because she spake of what she knew, and not of what she did not know. If she had said, 'He explained the prophecies to me,'—who would have cared? What judge was she of the prophecies, and what judges would they be? If she had said, 'He wrought a miracle in my sight,'—there had been enchanters enough among them, who had imposed upon much wiser people than she was. Her fellow-citizens, if they were not very curious, would not have deserted their common business for such an announcement as that. But, 'He told me all that ever I did;' then she spoke from her experience. Whether she were wise or silly, a good woman or a bad, that was worth listening to; there were signs of truth about that.

They came and heard Him themselves. And then He told each of them what he had done, showed him to himself, made him feel that he was in the presence of a Light. The Light entered into the separate hearts, and showed them their dark passages. And yet it was a common Light; it gave them a sense of fellowship they had never had before; it gave them a sense of being men, which they had never had before. And, moreover, it was a Light which scattered confusions, ignorances, falsehoods, that had been dwelling undisturbed within them, or that had only been disturbed by what they felt must have been a ray of this same Light. And therefore, without asking the opinion of any wise man whatsoever, these bold peasants said out frankly and broadly, 'We have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'