13- The Divine Right To Rule

XIII. THE DIVINE RIGHT TO RULE.

John 10:2. “He that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. “ IN the passage in which our Lord declares himself to be the Good Shepherd, he is not speaking of himself only. He begins with a denunciation of bad shepherds. Shepherds here mean rulers, men who have any control or power over other men. The name was commonly used in ancient times to denote the governing part of a country or society, the superiors who stand above inferiors. It is of the qualities which ought to characterize rulers or superiors that our Lord is speaking. The passage, when thus considered, acquires a new interest to many readers. The quality which our Lord ascribes to himself becomes in him more real when it is recognized as the fountain and highest example of that which should be shewn by all men in their relation as superiors. And his teaching on this subject is perceived to be a lesson not only of what we are to him as his flock, but also of what we ought to be, as his followers, to those who are put in any way under us. A chapter of the prophet Ezekiel, which was probably in our Lord’s mind, begins thus: “The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.” And he proceeds to prophesy, accordingly, with astonishing directness and vigour, against the ruling classes of his country, telling them that the Lord God says, “ Behold I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock.”

Now, a greater prophet than Ezekiel, he who was not merely a son of man but the Son of man, was again moved to prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Jesus of Nazareth was in declared opposition to those who then exercised the chief power amongst his countrymen. St. John, in giving illustrations of the conflict, sometimes calls them “ the chief priests and Pharisees,” sometimes “ the Pharisees,” sometimes simply “the Jews.” The following passage indicates what the state of affairs then was. “ The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things concerning him,” that is, that the common people were beginning to think that Jesus must be the Messiah. “And the Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers to take him.” The officers returned without him to the chief priests and Pharisees; “and they said unto them, Why have ye not brought him? The officers answered, Never man spake like this man. Then answered them the Pharisees, Are ye also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? But this people, who knoweth not the law, are cursed.” There we learn the temper of the shepherds of Israel both towards their flock and towards the prophet who was calling them to account. A little later, after the cure of a blind man, Jesus spoke some words significantly asserting the authority which lays bare imposture and denounces usurpation. “ For judgment I am come into this world; that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind.” It was sufficiently understood for whom such allusions were intended, and some of the Pharisees who were near him could not keep silence, but broke out, “ Are we blind also? “ Thus challenged, Jesus was ready to tell them what he thought of them. “ If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.”

It is plain that our Lord is denouncing the shepherds of Israel as being not true shepherds but rather thieves and robbers. But what is the particular fault he finds with them? This is not quite on the surface, and his hearers, we are told, did not exactly understand him. The fault, in one word, was this, that the rulers did not identify themselves with the people, Besides that chapter of Ezekiel, there is another much older passage, which may well have been at the same moment in our Lord’s mind. It is in Numbers 27. We read that Moses, desiring the appointment of one who might be his successor, spoke thus unto the Lord (Num 27:16), “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd.” In answer to which prayer, Joshua the son of Nun was selected and consecrated to be the leader of the children of Israel. You observe the curious emphasis of repetition with; which the relation of the leader to the people, that he goes before them and they follow him, is here insisted upon. This relation is equally the prominent point in our Lord’s account of the genuine shepherd. You must bear in mind the mode of tending sheep in that Eastern country. The pasture lands are wide and open; the fold is an enclosed place, protected by a sufficient wall. The shepherd does not drive the sheep before him, but he leads them, going out with them from the fold in the morning, returning with them into the fold at night. He is in the front, to encounter any danger, to find the best pasture, and to encourage the flock with his voice. The sheep know his voice, trust to his guidance and protection, and follow him.

This, says our Lord, is the type of the true leader of men. A man is not set over his fellowmen that he may make them tools of his ambition, food to his vanity, ministers of his pleasure, foils of his splendour. He has his superiority as a charge, that he may serve those put under him by leading them. The real test of the genuine ruler is this, Does he separate himself from his people, or does he associate them with himself? The good ruler goes in and out at the head of his followers by the same door with them; the bad one tries to separate and exalt himself, climbs lip some other way. This is a central and a universal principle, the divine key to all lordship and superiority amongst men. Let men talk of the divine right of kings, or of the rights of property, or of the deference due to rank and station, as they please; according to the law of the eternal Maker, as illustrated by the history of mankind, as vividly declared by the Son of God, and what is more than all as embodied in the life of the Son of man, a man has no real divine right to his higher position except as he makes it useful to those beside him in the lower. This is true in Church and in State, of the savage chief, of the imperial autocrat, of the constitutional ruler, Sovereign, President, or Minister, of the commander of an army, of the employer of labour, of the mistress of a household, of the master of a school, of the parent of a family. Our Lord’s teaching about the good and the false shepherd, familiar and sacred as it is to our ears, fails to reach our minds and consciences unless it reminds us that the divine right to rule is in serving. To apply this test resolutely to all who have power, is not dangerous to a community; it is the true safety. In the eyes of a Christian, the example of Christ must settle the question. Do we call him Master and Lord? Yes, and we say well, for so he is. What Christian does not acknowledge his Lordship? He is not Lord of the clergy and Sunday school children only, but of all sorts and conditions of men. And how did he reveal himself? He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. “ I am among you,” he said to his obedient followers, “ as he that serveth.” He did not abolish command and obedience, ruling and serving, superiority and inferiority. No, but he insisted, that as he who was the Master of all gave himself to be the servant of all, so amongst them who should call themselves by his name, he should be held chief who did the most service. As regards human laws, it may no doubt be found expedient that privilege and power and authority should be secured against attack, however unworthy and unserviceable the person in whom they are vested may be: but by the law of the kingdom of heaven no man can claim to be a ruler of others except by proving that he can serve them. And if we consider the rulers who have distinguished themselves in history, it may be seen that, on the whole, those have been felt to be the best shepherds who have most thoroughly made common cause with the sheep, not climbing up by some exclusive way, but going in and out before the sheep through the door of the fold. There have been selfish and ambitious conquerors who have been very successful although their chief motive was to aggrandise themselves, a class of whom the first Napoleon is the most conspicuous example, but even these have generally had the instinct or the skill of identifying themselves with their armies or populations, and have really led by sympathy and endurance men who willingly followed them. But the best rulers have been those who have consciously lived for their subjects, men like the Moses and the David of sacred history, who felt that they were called and appointed to a charge of great responsibility, not that they might lord it over God’s heritage, but that they might lead the people onward in the path of safety and prosperity.

Wherever rule has been justified to the common conscience, so that men have rejoiced in their rulers and been grateful to them, whether the power was nominally despotic or limited by law, the secret has been that the rulers cared not for themselves but for the people. But there is a natural and Divinely inspired discontent felt against those who have power, when they shew that they have forgotten the essential reason of authority and subordination, and that they fancy that, because they were born in a certain station or have in some way got power into their hands, the Maker and Father of all has put some of his children under their feet to pamper their luxury or their pride.

You might be sure that if the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has ordained government and subjection, the end of such ordination must be the good not of the few but of the many; and this truth, which Christ has taught, the instincts and experience of mankind have abundantly illustrated.

Yet the tendency of vulgar greatness is always to dissociate itself from the common herd; to be exclusive rather than sympathetic, in interest, in taste, in enjoyment. We in England, my brethren, know perfectly well what this danger is. We know too well the secret of what made the false shepherds of Ezekiel’s time and of the days of our Lord. There is not one of us here, I venture to say, who may not be the better for being reminded that the true shepherd is one who walks with his sheep and gives his life for them. There is not one of us who has not been tempted to draw off from other persons, to look down on them, to find satisfaction in claiming to belong to a superior class, or to have a more cultivated taste. That impulse, to make the burdens of others our own, is so rare, so difficult to cherish! That desire, to help and encourage others with any advantage that we possess, has so weak and occasional a hold upon our hearts! The simple and natural fellow-feeling, which joins hands with the true man in each neighbour in spite of any vulgarities and faults, and would help him unconsciously against the vulgarities and the faults, the fellow-feeling which draws and binds human beings together, and builds up a living society, -has so hard a fight against our stupid vanity and self-love!

It is good, then, that we should be led to honour a character and a career like those of the heroic traveller and missionary, whose mortal remains were laid yesterday in the most sacred soil of this our English land. We reasonably pay a tribute to Livingstone’s energy and unconquerable resolution; these are qualities we cannot afford to make light of. But it is not by these chiefly, I think, that the national heart has been drawn to Dr. Livingstone. We have all learnt something of his goodness, his generosity, his gentleness, his enthusiastic and yet patient desire to serve the natives of Africa, his willingness to lay down his life for them in contending against the wolfish slave-trade which has been devouring them. Hardly any one has known so much of the native races of Africa as Livingstone, no one has spoken of them with more respect, no one has behaved towards them with a more hearty and simple goodwill. And I suppose no European has been so successful in winning their confidence and affection. This career, of long and successful fellowship with men of inferior races, is one of great interest for us to contemplate. It is evidently not easy for Englishmen, when they come into contact with inferior races, to be mindful at all times of their Christianity or even of their civilization. English settlers and soldiers, finding the Oriental or the African to be generally untrustworthy, sometimes treacherous, sometimes filthy, always difficult to understand and appreciate, have too often fancied themselves to be justified in treating these darkcoloured subjects or neighbours as if they were wild beasts. They have allowed themselves to beat and shoot and burn, in Africa and the East, with a freedom which would be considered shocking if the objects of these wild severities had been white men. It is difficult for us in England to judge fairly those who are tried by difficulties and exposed to dangers of which we have no experience; and we most of us feel a natural and not ungenerous desire to stand by our countrymen and justify them in any proceedings they may think necessary against savages. I hope it was unwillingness to say a word which should appear to reflect on the conduct of the handful of gallant men who vindicated the honour of our country on the pestilent shores of the Gold Coast, which kept almost every English tongue from uttering even an expression of regret at the burning of Coomassie. And yet it is scarcely possible, surely, to think without misgivings as well as pain of the deliberate destruction by fire in cold blood of all the houses of a populous city, as a punishment of the faithlessness of its ruler. If such a thing were done, even in hot blood, in Europe, it would excite, as we well know, a cry of execration against its perpetrators. The excuse is that the men, women, and children, whose every home was made a ruin in Coomassie, were African savages, and that the town had been defiled by atrocities which seemed to ’cry to heaven for vengeance. Well, I am as unwilling as others to judge the humane and honourable men who set that unhappy city on fire.

But, when it is assumed that savages, or people of Oriental civilization like the Chinese, are not to have the benefit of the laws which mitigate the horrors of war between European nations, but that we may give their cities and their palaces to the flames without mercy, it is timely, I think, that we should ask ourselves why we are proud of Livingstone. Is it not, in a great degree, because he treated Africans let those who will scoff at the phrase as men and brothers? Is it not because he would have shrunk with repugnance from doing to an African what would have been an act of brutality if done to a European? From his grave in Westminster Abbey the single-minded friend of the Africans yet speaks to us; a more tried friend than any other, because he lived so long alone amongst them, bearing alone whatever was repugnant to European taste in their customs, and not turning from them in disgust; a friend who, the more intimately he knew them, felt for them not only the more pity but also the more respect.

He appeals to us most earnestly to do whatever we can to help his Africans, and especially to drive away that desolating scourge of the slavetrade from their shores. But he appeals to us also to cherish in all our dealings that spirit of large and tender humanity which he had himself received from heaven, and to be in this respect followers of him, even as he was of Christ.

It has been my chief desire this morning, brethren, to commend to you this spirit of the true Shepherd as one which, if we admit it into our hearts, will pervade and Christianize all our actions and manner of life. But before I conclude, let me remind you of the more familiar lesson, that we are the sheep of the Good Shepherd. Our Lord did not shrink from declaring “ I am the Good Shepherd.” He was referring, no doubt, primarily to his Galilean followers. They knew him as the perfect Shepherd, going before them, leading them with his voice, prepared to suffer death for their deliverance. But he had other sheep than them; other followers who in other times and places were to learn the tones of his attracting voice, and to find safety and joy in going where he leads. His voice is that of the Father’s love, entreating us also to come to God and to be at one with him. It calls us to the labour and pain of self-conquest, perhaps to the patience of suffering. But it bids us go nowhere but where Christ has gone before. As we follow that voice, we keep near to him, and he will lead us to refreshing pastures and sweet waters. Let us not choose to stray from his guidance. If we do we shall lose ourselves, and one day we shall repent of our wilfulness. If we are straying now, the Good Shepherd is seeking us, and calling us by name with that voiqe of mercy. He desires to save us from ourselves and from our enemies. He promises us rest in obedience. “ Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”