2.01.08. The two families - the natural and the spirtual

VIII. THE TWO FAMILIES— THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL.

“ Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press. And it was told him by certain which said. Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee. And he answered and said unto them. My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.”— Luke 8:19-21.

WHILE Jesus was in the act of preaching in the centre of a crowd, Mary his mother approached the spot, accompanied by some members of her family. Unable to penetrate the throng, they remained on its outskirts, and sent in a message, from lip to lip, that they desired to speak with him. Not permitting his public ministry to be authoritatively interrupted even by his mother’s word, he set the demand aside by the memorable answer, “ My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.” From these words of the Lord Jesus I learn —

That, without repudiating the family relations of earth, he institutes and proclaims the family relations of heaven. The prophecy is not limited to any single or private interpretation; it has a meaning for all kindreds and all times. As a faithful minister of the gospel said once to a despotic sovereign—” There are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland,*’ explaining how Church and State may live and thrive on the same spot at the same time, giving and receiving help reciprocally, if each will consent to confine itself to its own sphere and exercise only its own functions; so the Scriptures intimate that two families pervade society, both having to a great extent the same persons as members, yet without jealousy or collision, getting and giving reciprocal support. Both families are of God. He has planned and constituted them. To him they owe their origin, and from him they receive their laws. A place has been assigned to the one in creation; to the other in redemption. The one«has been in full operation since the birth of our race; the other was long a secret hidden institute, nor was it completely formed and openly manifested till Christ came into the world. The members of the first family enter its circle by birth; the members of the second by the new birth. The one is the grand Institute of Nature; the other the grand Institute of Grace.

Both are good, each as far as it goes; but the second is deeper, longer, broader, higher than the first. The first is the family for time; the second is the family for eternity. In this text, and in others of similar import, the Lord Jesus, without pulling up the first family, plants another among its roots. The first, being an institute existing from the beginning hitherto and manifest to all, he simply leaves as it is; the second, being in a great measure new and unknown, he proclaims, defines, and approves. The first, being strong in nature, he leaves to its own resources; the second, being feeble, he protects against the possible oppression of its robuster neighbour. The rights of the one family are secured in the decalogue; the privileges of the other are pronounced by the lips of Christ. In short, as the Redeemer and Head of his ransomed Church, the Lord does not condemn and annul relations of blood; but he refuses to permit them to burst in and dominate relations by the Spirit. By silence he permits the natural affections to rule in their own sphere; but by express intimation he forbids them to usurp authority in another. At the proper time and place, Jesus the son owned the law of Mary his mother; but Jesus the Saviour will not, at this woman’s word, interrupt his work, and scatter an assembly of disciples.

Let us therefore endeavour to explain and apply in their order and relations these two lessons:- —

L Christ in the Gospel permits the natural family, in all II. Christ in the Gospel establishes, on the same sphere, a new spiritual family.

I. Christ in the Gospel permits the natural family, in all its integrity, to remain imdisturbed.

Jesus was himself the member of a family. He received the benefits of that position, and fulfilled its duties. In his ministry he recognized the institute, and in his conduct he obeyed its laws. Nor is it enough to say that he knew and acknowledged those affections that bind family-groups together: himself had planted them in the human constitution at the first. He is the contriver and creator of humanity, with all its original capacities. Wisdom, as in the Proverbs, was with the Maker “ when he set a compass upon the face of the deep,” and his peculiar “ delights were with the children of men.” He who stands in the heart of that crowd, and receives a message from a mother, shared in the mysterious counsel, “Let us make man in our own image.” It is essential to the depth and stability of our faith to bear in mind that our Redeemer is the Eternal and Almighty God. He who is now redeeming man from sin made man in the beginning sinless. He imprinted instincts, such as he saw meet, on the core of his creature; and these, as they came from his hand, were all very good: these are all very good still, in as far as they have been set in his own work by his own hand.

While the incarnation is to us the grand evidence of God’s condescending kindness, it is fitted also to exalt to the utmost the dignity of man. Therein we get a glimpse, which the fallen could not have otherwise obtained, of the place which unfallen humanity held, and which the redeemed will enjoy for ever. “ The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” “He took not on him the nature of angels,” but ours; and he bears that nature still. We learn here that God is not ashamed of his own conception embodied in the constitution of the human race. He did not repent of his plan, and has not withdrawn it to substitute another. He did not fling his work away, even when it fell. He abides by all that is his own in us; and will abide by his redeemed, not ashamed to call them brethren when they are at last completely restored. Before the mystery of the incarnation we ought first to adore the condescension of God, and next to reverence ourselves.

Honour all the pure affections of human nature, for they thrill in the Saviour’s breast; loathe all the sins that stain it, for they crucified the Son of God.

If you examine the natural affections and instincts of living creatures, you will find that one principle lies like a measuring rod along the whole — utility. These affections are inserted, and inserted such as they are, in the constitution of the creature, because of their usefulness.

They are the instruments whereby the Maker works out his own design. “ God is good,” will explain all. “ The eyes of the Lord are in every place.” “ The hairs of your head are all numbered.” The instincts go as far as is necessary for the good of the creature, and no farther.

There Sno wa i! the mechanism of creation a d providence. Sufficient power is provided to produce the desired result; and by a self-acting apparatus the power ceases to operate as soon as the result has been attained. Some living creatures, as fishes and certain species of birds, have no perceptible filial or parental affections at all. In their case the instinct is not needed, and therefore is not found. In others, including all the higher grades of the brute creation, the parental affection is developed in great intensity for a short period, and then altogether ceases. A mother that would have shed her blood for her offspring a month ago, when it was feeble, does not know it to-day, at least does not acknowledge it in the herd. The instinct, having served its purpose, is not left dangling after its work is done. It has been cut off* short and clean; remnants would only encumber, and therefore none are left.

Relative affections in human kind expatiate on a wider field, and are more enduring. Here we enter a region in which these affections find room to range; they become, accordingly, manifold and strong. The roots go deeper down in the deeper, richer soil. A short-lived maternal love would not serve the purpose here; and therefore a mother’s love in this region is not short-lived. In this sphere a moral end is proposed, penetrating through time into eternity; and in the economy of Providence adequate means have been provided. The relations of the family, like the flowers are fair even on the surface and to the casual observer; but beauties unnumbered and unmeasured lie beneath the leaves to reward more earnest and careful inspection.

Christ was a perfect man. He was not only perfectly holy, but completely human. He took all our nature, without its defects and defilements. He experienced filial and fraternal love. He loved his mother and his brethren with the true affection of a son and a brother. The bosom on which he slept when he was an infant, he never tore when he became a youth and a man. The woman who cherished him from his birth was dear to his heart till death. How the filial regard, a merely human emotion, was affected by the love divine wherewith he, the same person, regarded Mary as a sinner saved, we can neither comprehend nor explain. “We are treading here on the lip of the unrevealed and the unrevealable; if we turn one step aside, or go forward one step too far, we are in an instant helplessly beyond our depth. One thing we know surely — that the man Christ Jesus fulfilled a son’s and a brother’s part to the woman Mary and those men of her family who are called his brethren. No disciple of Christ is permitted to break the bonds of kindred, and abjure the aflFections of consanguinity, on the plea of his Master’s example or command. Superstition has always shown a tendency to exalt the spiritual relations by crushing the natural; it would build up, according to its own false conception, the family of God on the ruins of the family of man. It even represents, that to extinguish by violence every spark of specific filial regard to an earthly parent, is the way to become a first-class favourite among the children of our Father in heaven. This is a mistake — a mischievous will- worship. God has not required — will not accept this service at our hands; he is not pleased — he is displeased with those who, on any pretence, rudely break the bonds which his own hands have so skilfully constructed.

God did not build up the family in order to pull it down again. By permitting the bonds by which it is united to twine around his own heart, the Lord our Redeemer has intimated that in themselves they are pure, and in the Church shall be permanent; these laws he came not to destroy, but to fulfil. As the ordinances of the earlier dispensation were a shadow, and so a prediction, of better things to come in Christ, the natural family is a type, and so a promise, of the spiritual and heavenly. That which is earthly is first, and will be superseded when that which is spiritual shall have fully come. It occupies its place and serves its purpose; for its time and its purpose, behold it is very good.

Christ came to plant another family beside it — a family which is now growing among its roots and under its shade, and will at last cast it out and assume its place; but in the meantime, and while the world lasts, he leaves all the relationships and instincts of human families untouched, except to hallow them by his own example and approval.

He will not permit the affections of the present time to grow too rank, draining often the heart’s riches, and starving the affections that are unseen and spiritual within his own; but even in the act of checking the family instincts and forbidding them to travel beyond their sphere, he leaves them honoured and approved in all their integrity to expatiate within their own sphere. He will not permit the family to exalt itself above its own place; but neither will he depress it beneath its own place: he will neither banish it from earth, nor permit it to intrude into heaven. On this, and on one or two other occasions, the Lord Jesus maintains towards Mary his mother a measure of reserve which at first sight attracts notice, and perhaps even excites surprise. We know from the record of his life that equally in his childhood and at his dying hour a fervent filial love glowed in his breast; but some incidents also recorded in the Gospels, although not contrary, distinctly point in another direction. Two lines in regard to this matter, not hostile or inconsistent, but articulately distinct, seem to run through the Lord’s life on earth. Here emerges a true, deep, human, filial love; there appears a subdued and measured, but meditated intentional reserve. These facts, I believe, were prophecy; and upon them, as upon the spoken prophecies, subsequent events have thrown light.

He saw the end from the beginning, and so acted from the first; we now see the beginning from the end, and perceive the reason why he acted thus. The Mariolatry of modern Rome, lying, like, all other events, open before the mind of the Lord during the period of his personal ministry, must have sensibly affected those of his words and actions whose relation to it he, in his omniscience, foresaw. Li short — for I desire to throw out this thought frankly and without ambiguity — I believe that the Lord Jesus, deliberately and presciently, adopted towards Mary, the mother of his humanity, precisely that line of conduct by which he might on the one hand sanction by his own example all the relations and affections of the family, and yet, on the other hand, withhold from a great but grossly superstitious community, in these latter days, every semblance of pretext for citing his authority in support of a loathsome idolatry on which he foresaw they should absolutely go mad. Why should we hesitate to accept this solution? Wist ye not that he must be about the Father’s business? Even in smaller matters we enjoy to-day the benefit of ancient prophecy, not spoken in figurative language, but deeply relieved in historic fact. For what purpose has the Holy Spirit permitted and directed the record to be inserted, in two distinct and far distant portions of Scripture, (Matthew 8:14; 1 Corinthians 9:5) that the Apostle Peter was, and continued to be, a married man? If Rome had chosen any other one of the twelve than Peter as the head of her celibate priesthood, I am not aware that direct proof could have been found in the Scriptures that, in the matter of marriage, the practice of the chief condemned the precepts of his followers. Why, when the family relations of the rest have been permitted to pass into oblivion, as unimportant to the Church, have two witnesses separately testified in Scripture that Peter was a married man? If you ascribe this to chance, you may ascribe all to chance, and refuse to recognize in the world the traces of an intelligent government. For my part, I see God’s finger in the fact; and I read it as a prescient, prophetic condemnation of the Romish celibate — a system that brands a divine ordinance with a stigma of reproach and elevates at its expense a mischievous invention of man. In presence of the idolatrous worship addressed to Mary, which has been swelling like a tide for ages, and has reached its culmination only in our own day, practically superseding Christ in the devotions of the multitude, I reverence and love with peculiar interest that chastened reserve wherewith Jesus saw meet to modify his filial tenderness throughout his intercourse with Mary his mother. Ah, there was no sorrow like unto his sorrow, because there was no knowledge like unto his knowledge of the desperate wickedness which from generation to generation broods in human hearts. In that distance and coolness, approaching almost to coldness, with which he treated Mary, I see the Man of sorrows covering his human filial love, and limiting to the utmost the visible expression of its fervour, that misguided men might not in later ages wrest his words to justify apostasy — might not be able on any pretence to plead his authority for turning aside to trust in another Saviour.

II. Christ in the Gospel establishes, on the same sphere, a new spiritual family. The Redeemer’s mission was to re-establish the relations which sin had broken between God and man, on the one hand, and between man and man on the other. The redeemed on earth are united to their Head and to one another by affections which are completely different from, but not in any sense contrary to, the natural instincts. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: in the new creature a multitude of new affections spring and flow, but being on a higher level, they never run foul of the affections that expatiate on the lower sphere of temporal things. Mind, conscience, immortality, have been imparted to man, and these faculties have free scope for action; but those operations of the higher nature do not in any measure impede the inhalation of air, the circulation of the blood, or any of the other processes which belong to us in common with inferior creatures. Now, as mind, acting in another sphere, comes not into collision with the functions of the body, so the new spiritual affections, which belong to ns as Christians, do not interfere with the original affections which belong to us as men.

It is a great thing to be in the regeneration a child of God; it is a great thing to be a brother or a sister in that family, which is already like the stars of heaven in number, and will yet be like them in purity and glory. The new relation is formed, and through the earlier stages of its growth consolidated, while the old relation remains in vigour. The germ of the new sonship and brotherhood is rooted in the heart unseen, without disturbing the sonships and brotherhoods of the present world, which grow thick and fresh all around.

There is a process in agriculture which presents an interesting parallel to the simultaneous and commingling growth of relations for time and relations for eternity in human hearts. A field is closely occupied all over with a growing crop which will soon reach maturity, and will be reaped in this season’s harvest. The owner intends that another crop, totally different in kind, shall possess the ground in the following year; but he does not wait till the grain now growing has been reaped — he goes into the field and sows the seed of the new while the old is still growing and green. In some cases a method is adopted which is, from our present point of view, still more suggestive: the seed which shall complete its functions within the present season, and the seed which, springing this year, shall bear its fruit upwards, are mixed together in the same vessel and scattered together on the same ground. Nor does the one lie dormant for a season while the other monopolizes the soil; both spring up at the same, or nearly the same time. The plant for the future germinates at once, but it does not reach maturity till the following year; the plant intended for the present season — the wheat or the barley — grow» rapidly and ripens ere the winter come. Lowly, meekly at the roots of the waving grain springs the plant of the future; it passes through its earlier stages while the tall stalks of the wheat are towering over its head. It springs although the grain is growing on the same spot, and springs better because the grain is growing there. The vigorous growth of another species all around it shelters its feeble infancy; and after the winter has passed, in another season, it starts afresh and comes forth in its own matured strength.

Thus the affections and relations that belong to the future spring and grow under the shadow of the affections and relations that belong to the present. The Sower who came forth into time to sow a seed that ripens in eternity, did not first cut down and cast away as cumberers of the ground all the natural affections which he found covering its surface with a luxuriant growth; he sowed the seeds of the future among the growing crop of the present, and these seeds grow better there than in a soil bared of human loves and joys. The seed of the word for eternal life, other things being equal, thrives better in a heart where all the natural emotions of the family circle swell, than in a heart that has been prematurely shorn of human affections, and caged in a cloister for protection from the world. The two seeds are of different kinds, and for different seasons; there is not a collision of interests when both grow on the same spot and at the same time. The question whether or how far thesties of nature, as we know them here on earth, will survive or revive in the resurrection, has been often raised, but from the nature of the case cannot be fully answered. The family relations, as they are exercised here, do not go into heaven in the lump, — to this extent the Scriptures definitely inform us; but how many and how much of them may be permitted to pass through the narrow gate we cannot tell. I would not venture to pronounce that the bonds which so sweetly bind heart to heart on earth, leave no mark of their existence in the world to come. I think it is not probable that those lines which have graven themselves so deeply into our being here will be all blotted out in the middle passage.

One thing strongly favours the supposition that the affections of nature will in some form survive, — the longings of believing hearts certainly do go out with great intensity after their own who die in the Lord. It would seem contrary to the analogy of his ways in other departments, that our Father should plant that desire, or permit it to flourish in his children, if he had provided no satisfaction for it at his own right hand. In this matter I would, venture to apply and appropriate the promise of the Lord, • Blessed are they that hunger and thirst: for they shall be filled.” But while we are straining to see where there is hardly any light, a thought, containing all the force of an axiomatic truth, rises up to cheer us, — if those best earthly bonds survive not — if, in heaven, all be the same to all, the absence of individual affections will not constitute any diminution of happiness. If such a levelling of distinctions shall take place in the better land, it will be because love to all the saved brotherhood has risen to such a height that particular affections have been overwhelmed in the flood.

If those particular preferences which stand out, to our view, like mountains on the horizon of time, are in eternity altogether lost, they are lost because love to the Lord and all his redeemed has covered them as the ocean covers the vegetation in its bed. If those deep traces of affinity and consanguinity shall be blotted out, they will be blotted out by a river of blessedness that will leave them unregretted, as the childish things which in manhood we forget. Most certainly if, in the place of rest, mother be nothing more to son, and son nothing more to mother, than any of all the redeemed, the love of all to each, and of each to all, in eternity, will be immeasurably greater and sweeter than the most loving heart has ever been able to conceive in this place of pilgrimage. If mothers and brothers melt into the mass, it is not because mothers and brothers become less dear in heaven than they were on earth, but because Christ and all the saved become more dear.

Those stars that studded the dark blue canopy of the sky were lovely: often through the weary night did the lone watcher lift his eyes and look upon them. They seemed to him a sort of company, and, while he gazed on the bright glancing throng, he felt himself for the moment somewhat less lonely. Yet you hear no complaint from that watcher’s lips when those stars disappear; for the cause of their disappearance is the break of day. Either the many fond individual companionships which cheer disciples in the night of their pilgrimage will remain with them, as bright particular stars in the day of eternity, or they will fade away before its dawning: if they remain, their company in holiness will be a thousand-fold more sweet; if they disappear, it will not be that those joys have grown more dim, but that we do not observe them in the light of a more glorious day.

Two practical lessons, one in the form of a warning, and the other in the form of an encouragement, depend from the subject visibly, and claim a notice at the close.

1. Be verting again, for a moment, to the analogy of seed for the future sown and springing under the shade of a crop that is growing for the present season, we may gather from nature a caution which is needful and profitable in the department of grace. When this season’s crop, amidst which next season’s seed was sown in spring, has been cut in harvest and carried home, I have seen the field in whole or in part destitute of the young plants which ought at that time to have covered its surface, the hope of future years. Sometimes after this season’s harvest is reaped, no living plant remains in the ground. As you walk over it at the approach of winter, you see rotting stubble, the decaying remnants of one harvest, but no young plants, the promise of another year. Why?

Because the first crop has grown too rank in its robust maturity, and overlaid the second in its tender youth. It is somewhat like the heavy slumber of a drunken mother, that quenches the life of her child by night. Ah, it is not safe to feed and fatten too much either the corn of our farm or the natural affections of our hearts: when either grows too gross, it both injures itself and oppresses a more precious plant that is seeking shelter underneath. The principle of this lesson applies to the business of life as well as the reciprocal affections of kindred. Beware!

Open your hearts and take the warning in. Have you hope for pardon and eternal life in the Son of God, the Saviour? Then bear in mind that, under the shade of your city-traffic and your home-joys, a tender plant is growing, native of a softer clime — a plant whose growth is your life, whose decay your ruin, in the great day; a plant that needs indeed the shelter of honest industry and pure family affections, but dies outright under the choking weight of their over-growth; and see to it that the profits and pleasures of time do not, by their excess, kill the hope for eternity. What is a man profited although he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul?

2. It is ever true, according to the symbolic prophecy of the Apocalypse, that the earth helps the woman — that the occupations and affinities and friendships of this life may and do cherish the growth of grace in the soul. In many ways the loves and cares that appertain to the family institute, growing normally, healthfully vigorous, and not morbidly, feebly rank, do in point of fact shield and stimulate the seed of eternal life that has been sown, and is springing, in the heart. Many a son can tell, and will tell in heaven, that the good seed of the word would have been scorched and blasted, if it had not lain for a time under the kindly shade of home. Many may say with truth, If I had not been born at first in such a family on earth, I probably would not have been born again into the family of God.

Let us be content with our lot; especially let us beware of fretting against family responsibilities, and the demands of lawful business, as if these were necessarily impediments to the growth of the spiritual life. If these affections and occupations were taken away, the spiritual life, deprived of its shelter, would be burnt by the heat or blasted by the wind. Beware of that intemperate rankness in the growth of temporal affairs which would kill in its infancy the planting of the Lord in your heart; but fear not when the lawful cares and affections of time spring thick and grow vigorous: God has sown these seeds with his own hand in creation, and he will employ them to cherish and protect that “ Christ in you “ which is his own special delight. For the safety and the increase of the life of faith, the best place to be in is the place in which God has put you. He that believeth shall not make haste: it is not change of place, or change of occupation, that will make you safe or holy. Shake off sins, as Paul shook the viper from his hand into the fire; but as to the affections and cares that spring in nature, and accord with the divine law, fear them not when you feel them penetrating your being and warping round all your faculties. All things work together for good to the people of God. His children may thrive equally in circumstances the most diverse; but if it were his will to give me my choice, I would, even with a view to the prosperity of my soul, request him to plunge me into the tide of merchandise that flows through London, rather than send me, an unemployed annuitant, to some rural jetreat; or to hang on my shoulders the cares of a large family, rather than leave me with nothing but myself to bear. The affections of nature in time, will help and not hinder the affections of grace for eternity; for, each in its own place, both are equally the planting of the Lord.