11. St. John In The Pentecostal Age

ST. JOHN IN THE PENTECOSTAL AGE

XXXIX.

St. John’s name holds a prominent place in the list of the followers of Jesus who, as we are told in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, were assembled in an upper room in Jerusalem immediately after the Ascension.

What were they doing there? They were waiting. They had been told by their departing Lord that they were to be endued with power from on high, and then their work as his witnesses would begin. What exactly this promise meant they did not know; but they were waiting to see. Already they were in possession of all the facts which were to form the theme of their testimony: they had been assured by many infallible proofs that Jesus was alive; they had seen him ascend to sit at the right hand of God; they knew that it was to be the task of their life to make these facts known. Still they lacked something. Their Master had forbidden them to appear as his witnesses till the Holy Spirit should come upon them. So they waited. They had time to think, and to arrange in their minds the remarkable experiences through which they had been passing. They had time to pray, and their prayers deepened their sense of need. The magnitude of their task expanded before their imagination, as they contemplated it; and they wondered the more what the mysterious influence was to be by which they should be qualified for executing it. At length the hour of Providence struck, and the promise of the exalted Saviour was fulfilled, when, on the Day of Pentecost, in rushing mighty wind and tongues of fire, the Spirit descended on them. Not only was the conversion of three thousand, which immediately followed, due to this divine gift, but the whole drama of the Book of Acts—the miracles, the sermons, the extension of Christianity, the creation of institutions, the emergence of remarkable personalities, the triumph over opposition, which this book records—all are the results of the fulfilment of the promise of Christ to send the Holy Spirit. As man after man comes to the front— apostle or deacon, evangelist or prophet—one after another is described as “full of the Holy Ghost;” and this is the secret of the wonders performed. That Pentecostal age was a glorious epoch of originality, gladness and formative influence; but the inward energy by which the movement in all its developments was sustained and carried forward was the Holy Spirit.

St. John was in the very midst of these events. He, if anyone, was, in those Pentecostal days, full of the Holy Ghost. The divine power poured through him; gladness filled his heart; he was a prominent actor in all that was taking place; and he was in complete sympathy with what others were doing. His name does not, indeed, occur often, nor are there any incidents in which he is the principal figure; but the occasions on which he is mentioned are enough to give a notion of the experiences of a great time and to show that he played in it an important part.

One of the first scenes in which he is mentioned is the miraculous cure of a lame man.

St. John and St. Peter used daily to go up to the temple at the hour of prayer; and one day, as they did so, they passed a lame man, laid at the Gate Beautiful to beg for alms. The cripple was about forty years of age and had long been wont to beg there, the ugliness of his deformity contrasting with the beauty of the pillar against which he rested, and his helplessness appealing to the charity of the passers by in those moments of devotion when they were remembering their own mercies. He begged an alms of Peter and John. They happened at the time to be without money, but they were full of exultant joy; life was overflowing within them; and they were overmastered by the impulse to communicate to this helpless brother-man something of the strength with which they were blessed. In the name of Jesus Christ they commanded him to rise and walk; and immediately God fulfilled their benevolent wishes; for, the feet and ankle bones of the cripple receiving strength, he leaped up and rushed forward, holding Peter with one hand and John with the other; and he entered the temple, “walking, and leaping, and praising God.”

It must have been with a strange mingling of awe and exultation that the apostles thus saw the motions of their will taking effect in the bodies of others. They knew quite well, indeed, and confessed at once, that they had not done the deed by their own power or holiness. But they were the channels through which the divine power passed; it was the Holy Spirit which both inspired them with the instinct of helpfulness and caused their philanthropic desires to take effect in this remarkable manner. The age of such miracles is long since past. Were we, in imitation of Peter and John, to order a cripple, in the name of Christ, to rise up and walk, the physical healing would not follow. But the impulse to help is still the mark of a follower of Christ; and a sacred enthusiasm to communicate freshness and fulness of life is one of the most natural results of being filled with the Spirit of God. Nor are we without resources. We can call to our aid the skill of the medical man, the deftness of the nurse, the legislation of the statesman, the authority of the municipality, and the many other resources of science and civilization. We have to take a somewhat roundabout road, but the length of the road matters little; if only the impulse to help be passionate enough it can make long roads short. Indeed, by the use of preventive measures, by which disease and distress are cut off at their sources, Christian philanthropy is finding shorter roads than even that of miracles; and so the Lord’s wonderful word is being fulfilled: “The works that I do shall ye do also; and greater works than these shall ye do.”

XL. When the cripple who had been cured went leaping and shouting into the temple, he naturally attracted a crowd, to whom St. Peter and St. John seized the opportunity of communicating the secret of the resurrection. Bat the temple police and some of the authorities, who chanced to be present, coming upon them, broke up the gathering and carried off the two apostles to jail as disturbers of the peace. This was the first time Peter and John had seen the inside of a prison, and it gave them a foretaste of the consequences which the new mission on which they were embarked might involve. But the heat and glow of the enthusiasm with which the Holy Spirit was inspiring them were too intense to allow them to feel such a misadventure. When, the next day, they were brought up before the Sanhedrin they not only answered the questions put to them with intrepidity, but seized the occasion to urge home on the consciences of the authorities the crime of which they had been guilty, in crucifying One of whom God had shown his approval by raising him from the dead. The force of conviction so loosed their tongues and raised them morally above their accusers that, it is said, the authorities, perceiving them to be unlearned and ignorant men, marvelled at them; and they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. There are certain states of mind in which the distance put by conventional distinctions between man and man disappears, and he who has the larger manhood, or who has truth and justice on his side, towers over his opponents, who are made to feel how little the mere authority of office can avail them; and this victorious consciousness is imparted by the Holy Spirit, when it is received in purity and fulness.

Shortly after this not Peter and John only, but apparently all the apostles, were, in similar circumstances, brought into collision with the Jewish authorities. The Christian doctrine was spreading more and more; men were being converted by the thousand; and the authorities, taking alarm, cast the apostles again into prison. But they were miraculously delivered, and again appeared at their post in the temple as witnesses of the resurrection. The authorities had them brought again before their judgment-seat, but to the question why they had broken through the interdict the apostles replied that they must, in such a case, obey God rather than man. On this occasion the entire apostolic college were on the point of losing their lives, the feeling against them being so bitter that the authorities thought of stamping out the heresy by the death of all its preachers. But this murderous zeal was checked by the intervention of Gamaliel, and the feeling of the authorities was satisfied with beating the apostles and dismissing them. This, though it is so lightly told, probably means that St. John and the rest had to endure forty stripes save one—a punishment which, in ordinary circumstances, would have formed in the life of a Jew an indignity never to be forgotten. But in the state of mind in which they were it hardly made a mark on their memories, and, so far from being broken by it, “they departed from the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name”; and they went on with their work as if nothing had happened. A far severer trial befell St. John some time later, when his brother James was cut off by the sword of Herod. Of this incident no details are given. We do not know how James should have become a man so marked that the hand of authority struck at him in preference to any of the other apostles. But no doubt it was by the boldness of his testimony for Christ that he won this distinction; and, although the loss must have entered like iron into the soul of his sensitive brother, yet the grief of St. John would be tempered by the sense that the martyr had sacrificed his life for a great cause and had gone to inherit a great reward. A life filled with the Holy Ghost is likely to be a life of trial and suffering, because the impetuosity of its forward movement brings it into collision with conventional authorities and vested interests; but the glow and warmth of its own feeling will lift it lightly over difficulties, and convert experiences which in ordinary circumstances would produce feelings of bitter shame and despair into reasons for joy and triumph.

XLI. The Pentecostal epoch was an era of marvels. The historian of it has, in every other paragraph, to remark how excitement and wonder were caused by what was happening. Not only were those astonished who saw or heard what was taking place, but the chief actors themselves were carried forward in a kind of dream of wonder, as, following the indications of Providence, they advanced from one scene of novelty to another, by a path which it would never have entered into their own hearts to tread.

Especially astonishing to them was the way in which the fences within which their religious life had been confined broke down, and they were carried into one new territory after another as preachers of Christ; the oddest circumstances sometimes giving the providential impulse to fresh developments. Not infrequently it was by persecution that the new faith was driven out of one place into another, where, but for this reason, it might never have been heard of; so that the opposition which threatened to extinguish the fire of the Gospel only scattered its embers far and wide; and wherever they fell a new fire was kindled. Of course the supreme surprise was the admission of the Gentiles to an equal share with the Jews in the privileges of the gospel. This was one of the greatest revolutions of thought and practice in the history of humanity; but its beginnings belong rather to the life of St. Peter and its consummation to the life of St. Paul than to the history of St. John. Before, however, the decisive step was taken by the baptism of Cornelius at the hands of St. Peter, there were fragmentary and tentative movements in the same direction; and with one of these St.John had an interesting connection.

Those who were scattered abroad from Jerusalem by the persecution which ensued on the martyrdom of St. Stephen went everywhere preaching the Word; and Philip, one of the seven deacons, drifted to Samaria, where he began to make Christ known; because in those days none of Christ’s followers could keep to themselves the secret which was burning in their bones. So striking were the effects of Philip’s preaching that the news came to the church at Jerusalem, and St. John and St. Peter were sent down to Samaria to inspect and direct the movement. The Samaritans were neither Jews nor Gentiles, but stood on the border line between the two; and, in ordinary circumstances, Peter and John, as strict Jews, would undoubtedly have felt scruples about holding intercourse with them. But what they saw on this occasion made them forget their prejudices; they threw themselves into the good work which was going on; they were the means of communicating to the converts the gifts of the Spirit; and, before returning to Jerusalem, they “preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.” In St. John this was the more remarkable because of an incident of his earlier history which will be remembered. Being at the entrance of a Samaritan village which refused to receive his Master, he asked to be allowed to call down on it fire from heaven. Such was the natural man in St. John; such was the natural prejudice of Jew against Samaritan. But, when filled with the Holy Spirit, John was full of love, and he saw objects to admire or to pity where formerly he had only seen objects to hate and to destroy. When men are filled with the Holy Ghost they will look on their fellow-creatures with new eyes; they will see in the worst of them precious souls to be loved and redeemed. Nothing so transmutes to our feeling the most objectionable of our fellow-men as an honest effort on our part to do them good. Only get near enough any child of Adam, and there can never fail to be found in him something to which the heart can attach itself.

XLII.

One of the most remarkable features of the Pentecostal epoch was the development of brotherly feeling. The religious sentiment is a centripetal one; and, when it becomes intense, it draws men irresistibly together. Thus, in the Book of Acts, we read continually of the earliest Christians being “all with one accord in one place.” They almost lived together; and for a time it looked as if they were permanently to have a common table and a common purse. In this close brotherly intercourse, it is easy to believe, the affectionate heart of St. John would take cordial part. The love of many must, however, have also concentrated itself in special friendships, and this was the case with St. John. In those days he and St. Peter became so closely associated as to be inseparable. In every scene in which St. John is mentioned in the Acts St. Peter is mentioned along with him. They were together in the upper room waiting for the gift of the Spirit; they were together when the lame man was healed; they appeared together before the Sanhedrin, and were imprisoned together; and they went down together to evangelize Samaria. The origin of this friendship was, indeed, far earlier. John and Peter were natives of the same town. As boys they learned the same trade, and in manhood they were partners in business. They, in all probability, went together to Jerusalem to the feasts and they both were involved in the movement of the Baptist. They were introduced to Christ on the same day. Not only were both among the twelve apostles, but both belonged to the chosen Three. In many a scene of the life of Christ they were especially drawn together at the close; they exhibited their mutual understanding at the Last Supper; they were side by side in Gethsemane: they were in the high priest’s palace together; and they ran together to the Lord’s empty tomb. But it was after the Ascension that their friendship took its final and most perfect form. The Master whom both loved being away, each felt more than ever the need of the other. In the fire of the Pentecostal enthusiasm their hearts were riveted to each other; and thus there was formed one of the most memorable friendships of the world, like that of David and Jonathan in the Old Testament, or of Luther and Melancthon in modern times. The two men were very unlike; but this is no obstacle to friendship, but rather the reverse; for different peculiarities complement each other, if only there be a fundamental identity of sentiment; and this Peter and John had in their common devotion to Christ. What a source of happiness their friendship must have been to them, as they talked over the incidents of their extraordinary career, helping one another to recall the words of their Master and the traits of his character, and as they faced danger or labored in the Gospel, or discussed together the plans of the great enterprise in which they were engaged! Surely friendship never can be so sweet and helpful as when it is founded on common love to Christ and common enthusiasm in his work. In this friendship St. Peter was, to outward appearance, the predominant partner. In the first half of the Book of Acts he is always the leader; and St. John retires behind his more prominent figure, playing an altogether subordinate part. But it is one of the finest peculiarities of a time like Pentecost that all engaged in the work of God forget themselves, being too concerned with the work itself to have time to spare for estimating the magnitude of their own share in it or contrasting it with that of others; and we may be certain that the heart of St. John would have been the last to envy the honor vouchsafed to another. Besides, St. Peter must have known all the time that in this friendship he was getting more than he could give. There are gifts which qualify for leadership and publicity; but those who occupy the second place, or who are hidden altogether from the eyes of the world, may have the deeper nature and the finer graces. Some gifts are intended for immediate effect; others come slowly to maturity, but their influence is far more lasting. St. Peter had the gifts necessary to break ground for Christianity, to champion it in the face of opposition and to direct its first conquests; but St. John, sunk out of sight, was far nearer the heart of Christianity. In his Gospel there is a view of the Holy Spirit widely different from that which is found in Acts. In Acts the Holy Spirit is the power by which Christianity is extended—the very power which rested supremely on St. Peter; but in the fourth

Gospel the Holy Spirit is the substitute for Jesus, the Intermediary between the invisible Christ and the visible Church, who takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us. In the Spirit’s influence, as it is represented in Acts, St John had his share; but he especially shared in the other mode of the Spirit’s influence described in his own Gospel. The things of Christ were shown to him, the character of Christ was put upon him, the spirit of Christ was breathed into him. And this gave to his fellowship a priceless value; for all other advantages which friendship can confer grow small in comparison with the charm and the influence of the beauty of holiness.